The Land-War in Ireland: A History for the Times

by James Godkin

The difficulty of understanding the case of Ireland is proverbial. Its most enlightened friends in England and Scotland are often charged with 'gross ignorance of the country.' They might excuse themselves by answering, that when they seek instruction from Irishmen, one native instructor is sure to contradict the other. Yet there must be some point of view from which all sides of the Irish question can be seen, some light in which the colours are not confused, the picture is not exaggerated, the features are not distorted. Every nation has its idiosyncrasy, proceeding from race, religion, laws, institutions, climate, and other circumstances; and this idiosyncrasy may be the key of its history. In Ireland three or four nationalities are bound together in one body politic; and it is the conflict of their several idiosyncrasies which perplexes statesmen, and constitutes the main difficulty of the Irish problem. The blood of different races is mingled, and no doubt greatly modified by ages of intercourse. But religion is an abiding force. The establishment of religious equality in Ireland is a glorious achievement, enough in itself to immortalise any statesman. It is a far greater revolution than was effected by the Emancipation Act, and more to the credit of the chief actor; because, while Mr. Gladstone did spontaneously what he firmly believed to be right in principle. Sir Robert Peel did, from necessity, what he as firmly believed was wrong in principle. But no reasonable man expected that the disestablishment of the Church would settle all Irish questions; in fact, it but clears the way for the settlement of some of the most important and urgent. It makes it possible for Irishmen of every creed to speak in one voice to the Government. Their respective clergy, hitherto so intent on ecclesiastical claims and pretensions, will no longer pass by on the other side, but turn Samaritans to their bleeding country, fallen among the thieves of Bigotry and Faction. There are many high Protestants—indeed, I may say all, except the aristocracy—who, while firmly believing in the vital importance of the union of the three kingdoms, earnestly wishing that union to be real and perpetual, cannot help expressing their conviction that Ireland has been greatly wronged by England—wronged by the legislature, by the Government, and most of all by the crown. In no country in the world has loyalty existed under greater difficulties, in none has it been so ill requited, in none has so much been done as if of set purpose to starve it to death. In the reign of Elizabeth the capricious will of a despotic sovereign was exerted to crush the national religion, while the greatest military exploits of her ablest viceroys consisted of predatory excursions, in which they slaughtered or carried away the horses and cattle, burned the crops and houses, and laid the country waste and desolate, in order to create famines for the wholesale destruction of the population, thus spoiled and killed as a punishment for the treason of their chiefs, over whom they had no control.

In the reigns of James I. and Charles I. there was a disposition among the remnant of the people—

To fly from petty tyrants to the throne.

But the Stuarts appealed to Irish loyalty merely for the support of their dynasty, and William III. laid the laurels won on the banks of the Boyne upon the altar of English monopoly. In the reigns of Anne and the three Georges, law was made to do the work of the sword, and the Catholics of Ireland, constituting the mass of the nation, knew their sovereign only as the head of an alien power, cruel and unrelenting in its oppression. They were required to love a German prince whom they had never seen. He called himself the father of his subjects; and he had millions of subjects on the other side of a narrow channel, whom he never knew, and never cared to know. When at length the dominant nation relented, and wished to strike the penal chains from the hands of her sister, the king forbade the act of mercy, pleading his conscience and his oath as a bar to justice and to freedom, but yielding at last to English state necessity, and robbing concession of its grace, of all its power to conciliate. From the battle of the Boyne to Catholic emancipation, the king of Ireland had never set foot on Irish soil, except in the case of George IV., whose visit was little better than a melodramatic exhibition, repaid by copious libations of flattery, which however failed to melt his bigotry, or to persuade him to redeem his solemn promises and pledges, until, nine years later, he was compelled to yield by the fear of impending civil war.

Ireland may get from her sister, England, everything but that for which the heart yearns—affection—that which alone 'can minister to a mind diseased, can pluck from the memory its rooted sorrow, and rase out the written troubles from the brain.' That is just what Ireland needs above all things. She wants to be kept from brooding morbidly over the dismal past, and to be induced to apply herself in a cheerful spirit to the business of life. The prescriptions of state physicians cannot fully reach the root of the disease. Say that it is a sentimental malady—a delusion. What is gained by saying that, if the sentiment or the delusion makes life wretched, unfits for business, produces suicidal propensities, and renders keepers necessary?

In theory, Ireland is one with England; in practice, she is hourly made to feel the reverse. The Times, and all the journals which express the instincts of the dominant nation, constantly speak of the Irish people as 'the subjects of England, whom Englishmen have a right to control. They are the subjects of the Queen only in a secondary sense—as the Queen of England, and reigning over them through England. Every sovereign, from Queen Elizabeth to Queen Victoria, was sovereign of Ireland merely in this subordinate sense, even when there was an Irish parliament. The King of Ireland could speak to his Irish parliament only as he was advised by his English ministers; and their advice was invariably prompted by English interests. Her king was not hers in the true sense. His heart and his company were wholly given to another, to whose pride, power, and splendour she was made to minister. That state of things still continues in effect, and while it lasts Ireland can never be contented. Her heart will always be disquieted within her. Something bitter will ever be bubbling up from the bottom of that troubled fountain.

Nor let it be supposed that this is due to a peculiar idiosyncrasy in Ireland—to some unhappy congenital malformation, or some original taint in the blood. It has been often asked whether England would have submitted to similar treatment from Ireland if their relations were reversed. Englishmen have not answered that question because they cannot understand it. They find it difficult to apply the Divine maxim, 'Do as you would be done by.' in their dealings with other nations. But they can scarcely conceive its application to their dealings with Ireland, any more than the American planter could have conceived the duty of fraternizing with his negroes. If we draw from this fact the logical inference, we shall be at a loss to discern whether the Celt or the Saxon suffers more from the moral perversity of his nature. The truth is, both are perverted by their unnatural relations, which are a standing outrage on the spirit of Christianity.

The Emperor of Austria long laboured to govern one nation through another and for another, in right of conquest, and we know the result in Italy and Hungary. Lombardy, though well cultivated and materially prosperous, could never be reconciled to Austrian rule. Even the nobility could not be tempted to appear at court. Venetia was more passionately and desperately hostile, and was consequently crushed by military repression, till the country was turned into a wilderness, and the capital once so famous for its commerce and splendour, became one of the most melancholy scenes of ruin and desolation to be found in the world. The Austrians, and those who sympathised with Austria as the great conservative power of the Continent, ascribed all this to the perversity of the Italian nature, and to the influence of agitators and conspirators. Austria was bountiful to her Italian subjects, and would be more lenient if she could, but their vices of character and innate propensity to rebellion, rendered necessary a system of coercion. Hence the prisons were full of political offenders; the soldier and the executioner were constantly employed in maintaining law and order. All the Emperor wanted was that his Italian provinces should be so thoroughly amalgamated with Austria, as to form one firmly united empire, and that the inhabitants should be content with their position as Austrian subjects, ruled by Austrian officials. But this was precisely what they could not or would not be. 'They smiled at the drawn dagger and defied its point.' They would sacrifice their lives, but they would not sacrifice their nationality at the bidding of an alien power.

This illustrates the force of the national sentiment, and the tremendous magnitude of the calamities to which its persistent violation leads. But the case of Hungary is still more apposite as an illustration of the English policy in Ireland. The Hungarians had an ancient constitution and parliament of their own. The Emperor of Austria was their legitimate king, wearing the crown of Hungary. In this capacity the Hungarians were willing to yield to him the most devoted loyalty. But he wanted to weld his empire into a compact unity, and to centralise all political power at Vienna, so that Austria should be the head and heart of the system, and the other provinces her hands and her feet. Hungary resisted, and revolted. The result was a desolating civil war, in which she was triumphant, till the Czar came to the rescue of his brother despot, and poured his legions in overwhelming numbers into the devoted country. Hungary was now at the feet of her sovereign, and Austria, the dominant state, tried to be conciliatory, in order to bring about the desired amalgamation and consolidation of the empire. She did so, with every apparent prospect of success, and it was generally considered throughout Europe that there was an end of the Hungarian kingdom. But Hungarian nationality survived, and still resisted Austrian centralisation. The Hungarians struggled for its recognition constitutionally, manfully, with admirable self-control, moderation, and wisdom, until at length they achieved a peaceful victory. Their sovereign reigns over them as King of Hungary; he and the empress dwell among them, without Austrian guards. Their children are born among them, and they are proud to call them natives of Hungary. The Hungarians, as subjects of Austria, were discontented, miserable, incurably disaffected. As subjects of their own king (though he is also Emperor of Austria) they are intensely loyal. They are prosperous and happy, because they are free. And though they have their distinctions of race and religion, they are united. The Magyars of Hungary correspond very nearly to the Protestants of Ireland. Though a minority, their energy, their education, their natural talent for organisation and government, their love of freedom, their frank recognition of the rights of conscience, enable them to lead without inspiring jealousy, just as the Protestants of Ireland were enabled to lead in 1782, notwithstanding the existence of Protestant Ascendancy. Religious equality is not a cause of tranquillity in itself. It tranquillises simply because it implies the absence of irritation. It takes a festering thorn out of the side of the unestablished community—a thorn which inflames the blood of every one of its members. Let worldly interest, political power, and social precedence cease to be connected with the profession of religion, and religious differences would cease to produce animosity and intolerance. If the Magyars had been the Hungarian party of Protestant ascendancy, and if the Protestant interest had also been the Austrian interest; if the mission of the Magyars had been to act as a garrison, to keep down the Roman Catholic majority, their cause could never have triumphed till Protestant ascendancy should be abolished. But Hungarian Protestantism did not need such support, although the Pope has as much authority in Hungary as in Ireland. Of course the cases of Hungary and Ireland are in many respects dissimilar. But they are alike in this: their respective histories establish the great fact that the most benevolent of sovereigns, and the wisest of legislatures, can never produce contentment or loyalty in a kingdom which is ruled through and for another kingdom.

We can easily understand that when the light of royalty shines upon a country through a conquering nation still dominant, the medium is of necessity dense, cold, refracting, and discolouring. Of this the best illustration is derived from the relations between Austria and Hungary, now so happily adjusted to the unspeakable advantage of both nations. Austrian rule was unsympathetic, harsh, insolent, domineering, based upon the arrogant assumption that the Hungarians were incapable of managing their own affairs without the guidance of Austrian wisdom and the support of Austrian steadiness. But the Hungarians, united among themselves, putting their trust, not in boastful, vapouring, and self-seeking agitators, but in honest, truthful, high-minded, and capable statesmen, persevered in a course of firm, but temperate and constitutional, national self-assertion, until the Austrians were compelled to put away from them their supercilious airs of natural superiority, and to concede the principle of international equality and the right of self-government.