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.
No. 47.—THE LOYALISTS AND THE LAWLESS.[ToC]
lones, which must be pronounced as a dissyllable, is a city set upon a hill which cannot be hid. Viewed from the railway the clustered houses surround the church spire like an enormous beehive. Like other ancient Irish towns, it possesses the ancient cross, the ancient round tower, and the ancient abbey, without which none is genuine. It has not the sylvan, terraced, Cheltenham-cum-Bath appearance of its neighbour Monaghan, though it somewhat resembles Bath in its general outline. The ruins want tidying up, and no doubt they will be looked after when the demand is greater. Ruins are a drug in Ireland, and as Mark Twain would say—most of them are dreadfully out of repair. The Irish have no notion of making them attractive, of exploiting them, of turning an honest penny by their exhibition. The inhabitants of any given neighbourhood can never give information as to their date, use, decay, general history, beyond the stereotyped "They were built by the owld ancient folks long ago." The Clones people are no exception to the general rule. The town is on the main line from Dublin to Londonderry, but is little troubled by tourists. The place is quiet and tidy enough, and like many other Irish country towns seems to live on the surrounding country, which sends in a strong contingent on market days. The people are also quiet, civil, and decent, and the land in the neighbourhood seems fertile and well cultivated. Industry is evident on every side. Everybody has something to do. A farmer living just outside the town said he experienced the greatest difficulty in getting extra hands for harvest time. In his opinion the people were incomparably better off than in the days of his youth, some thirty years ago. He said "The labouring classes are far better housed, better clothed, and better fed, than in old times. They live far better than the well-to-do farmers of a generation ago. And the queerest thing about it is the fact that the better off they are, the more discontented they seem; and during the last few months they are becoming unbearable. They are giving themselves airs in advance. And no wonder, when they see the British Parliament entirely occupied with their affairs, to the exclusion of all English business. They may well feel important. They boast that they have compelled this attention, and that they shortly will have their own way in everything. Last Sunday a drunken fellow was making a row near my house. I told him to go away, and he said, 'Before long you'll have to go away and every Blackface in the country. We'll be masters in another month.' He was alluding to Mr. Gladstone's gagging motion, which the poor folks here in their ignorance believe to mean that Home Rule will set in about the beginning of August. They are acting accordingly, and they expect to have the land which the Protestant farmers now hold—at once. It is to be divided amongst them by ballot. We feel very anxious about here, for we feel that we are only staying on sufferance, and we have no confidence in the support of the present Government. We have expended our labour and our substance on the land, and if we lose these we lose all. You may say there is no fear of that, as such a piece of iniquity would never be tolerated by the English people. But when I see them tolerating so much, I think we have good reason to feel uneasy and unsettled. For my part, I have no heart for hard work, when I feel that somebody else may reap the reward. And with a Catholic Parliament in Dublin we should very soon have to give up. They can get at the farming class in so many ways. We Protestants are pretty strong about here, and all the way to Monaghan, but still we are in a considerable minority. The mountain folks are Catholics, every one, and that is where we are outnumbered. We could hold our own if the country were like the town. We should be bound under Home Rule to suffer a large increase of taxation, because all grants from Imperial sources are to cease upon the passing of the bill. Then the country will be more disturbed than over, because the bill is only valued as a stepping-stone to an Irish Republic, and the success of the agitators in obtaining the bill will encourage them and their supporters to persevere. Instead of the end of the trouble it would only be the beginning. It is a black look-out for both Ireland and England.