"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."