Ireland as it is, and as it would be under Home Rule

by Robert John Buckley

No. 50.—THE HOLLOWNESS OF HOME RULE.[ToC]

his beautiful watering place cannot be compared with the celebrated holiday resorts of England, Wales, Scotland, or France without doing it injustice. It is unique in its characteristics, and globe-trotters aver that earth does not show a spot with an outlook more beautiful. From the beach the view of the mountain-bordered Lough extends for many miles seaward. On the opposite slopes to the right are the fresh green pastures and woods of Omeath, backed by the Carlingford mountains. On the left are wooded hills a thousand feet high which lead the eye to the Mourne Mountains at Rostrevor, where is the famous Cloughmore (Big stone), a granite block nine feet high by fifteen feet long, poised on the very apex of the mountain in the most remarkable way. How it got there is indeed a puzzle, as it stands on a bed of limestone nine hundred and fifty-seven feet above sea level. You can see it from the square of Warrenpoint, four miles away, and no doubt good eyes would make it out at a much greater distance. Geologists talk about the glacial age, and say that the boulder was left there by an iceberg from the north; but the mountain peasants know better. They know that Fin McCoul heaved it at Brian Boru, jerking it across the Lough from the opposite mountain five or six miles away, as an indication that he didn't care a button for his rival. These modern mountaineers are almost as easily gulled as their ancestors. They believe in Home Rule because they will, under an Irish Legislature, "get all they want." They have votes, and they use them under clerical advice. "I don't know anything about Home Rule except that we are to get all we want." Those are the very words of an enlightened and independent elector resident near Cloughmore. Never was there more simple faith, or more concise credenda. The Newcastle programme is comparatively unpromising. The wildest Radical, the most advanced Socialist, never came up to this. The Grand Old Man himself in his most desperate struggles for place and power, never exactly promised everything that everybody wished. To get all you want is, indeed, the summum bonum, the Ultima Thule, the ne plus ultra of political management. After this the old cries of peace, retrenchment, and reform sound beggarly indeed. Never was there such a succinct and complete compendium of political belief. Nobody can outbid the man who offers "all you want." For compactness and simplicity and general satisfactoriness this phase of Home Rule diplomacy takes the cake. Failure to fulfil the promise is of course to be charged to the brutal Saxon. Meanwhile the promise costs nothing, and like sheep's-head broth is very filling at the price.

Not long ago the point in the Lough was a rabbit warren, whence the name. Before that the situation was too exposed to the incursions of rovers to tempt settlers, and Narrow-water Castle, built to defend the pass, was (and is) between the town and Newry. But times have changed. Settlers flocked across from Ayr, from Troon, from Ardrossan, and other Scots ports lying handy. A smart, attractive town has sprung up, starting with a square a hundred yards across. Big ships which cannot get up to Newry discharge in the Lough by means of lighters. An eight-hundred-ton barque from Italy is unloading before my window. There is a first-rate quay, with moorings for many vessels. The harbour is connected by rail with all parts of Ireland, and in it seven hundred to eight hundred ships yearly discharge cargoes. The grassy beach-promenade is half-a-mile long, and an open tramcar runs along the shore for three miles. The residents are alive to the importance of catering for visitors, and the Town Commissioners, a mixed body, have provided bathing accommodation for both sexes. Galway, with thrice the population, a fine promenade, good sands, and a grand bay, has no such arrangements; and Westport has very little accommodation for tourists. The contrast between the North of Ireland and the South and West comes out in everything.

The Methodists and Presbyterians are strong in the town, to say nothing of the two Protestant Churches, one in Warrenpoint and another in the Clonallon suburb. The Catholic Chapel is counterbalanced by the Masonic Hall. Wherefore it is not surprising to learn that the bulk of the townsmen are staunch Unionists. The Nationalist papers have little sale hereabouts, the Belfast News Letter and the Irish Times having the pull. A business man, who has lived here for forty years, said:—

"We are fairly matched in numbers but the Conservatives have the wealth and respectability. The fishermen and labourers are nearly all Home Rulers, simply because they are Catholics. They are quite incapable of saying why they are Home Rulers, and some of them even profess to regard the proposed change with alarm, and say they prefer that things should remain as they are. But although they speak so fairly, yet when the time comes to vote, they vote as the priest tells them. They have no option, with their belief. I don't blame the poor fellows one bit. I followed the report of the South Meath election petition very closely, and I know that the same kind of pressure was exerted here. At Castlejordan Chapel Father O'Connell commanded the people, in a sermon, to go to a Nationalist meeting, and said he would be there, and that their parish priest expected them to go. He said that if any were absent he would expect them to give a good and sufficient reason for their absence. On another occasion a priest met a number of men who were going to an opposition meeting, and turned them back with threats. These priests not only threatened to refuse extreme unction to persons who voted against the clerical party, but they also threatened personal violence, and then said, 'Don't hit back, for I have the holy sacrament on me.' Father John Fay, parish priest of Summerhill, County Meath, told his people that they must not look on him as a mere man; if they did they might have some prejudice against him, for all had their shortcomings. 'The priest is the ambassador of Jesus Christ, and not like other ambassadors. He carries his Lord and Master about with him, and when the priest is with the people Almighty God is with them.' That is what Father Fay reckoned himself. Almighty God, no less. He alluded to the consecrated wafers he had in his pocket. The doctrine of transubstantiation is here invoked to assist in carrying a Home Rule candidate of the right clerical shade. And all the awful language used from the altar, in the confessional, all the threats of eternal damnation, and burning in the fires of hell, all the refusals of mass, and to hear dying confessions, were directed against another section of the Home Rule party, and not against a Unionist at all. How does this promise for the working of an Irish Parliament?

"I note that the English Home Rule papers say nothing good of the bill. They are always praising the management of the Old Parliamentary Hand. They beslaver him with fulsome adoration. They cannot point out anything good in the provisions of the bill, nor in the central idea of the bill, but they must fill up somehow, and they praise his artfulness, how he dodged this, and dexterously managed that. They have nothing but admiration for his jugglery and House-of-Commons tricks. They bring him down to the level of a practised conjuror or a thimblerigger. But, with all his wonderful cleverness, he is not admired or supported by any intelligent body of public men. The gag-trick ought to settle him. We in Ulster feel sure that a general election to-morrow would for ever deprive him of power. Of course the Old Hand knows that, and will not give the country an opportunity of pronouncing judgment. He and his flock of baa-lambs will put off the day of reckoning as long as ever they can. Either on the present or next year's register he is bound to be badly beaten. His course is clear. He used to have three courses open to him, but now he has only one. He must try to weather the storm until he has a chance of faking the voters' lists so as to improve his own chances. It is said that Mr. Henry Fowler is already preparing such a scheme. Like enough. If tricks will win, I back the G.O.M. There are more tricks in him than in a waggon-load of monkeys. The strangest thing I ever saw or ever heard of is the calmness with which the English people take the proposition that Ireland shall manage English affairs, while Ireland is to manage her own without any interference. I should have expected the British workman to processionise about this. I should have thought the British middle-classes would have been up in arms at the bare thought of so monstrous a proposition. And so they would if they thought it would become law. But, like us, they know there will never be any Home Rule. Then, they are not so nervous as we in Ireland are, because they don't know as we do what Home Rule really means.

"No earthly power can assist the Irish peasantry so long as they remain under the dominion of the priests. Popery is the vampire that is sucking the life-blood of the country. It is fashionable nowadays to abstain from denouncing other religious systems, on the plea of toleration. I agree with perfect toleration, and I am not desirous of making reference to Romanism. But they force it upon us. The Papist clergy say that the poverty of the country is due to English rule. We who live here know that it is due to Romish rule. How is it that all Protestants are well off, and make no complaint? How is it that their children never run barefoot? How is it that their families are well educated, that their dwellings are clean, and that they pay their way? Home Rule may impoverish those whom the teachings and habits of Protestantism have enriched, but neither Home Rule nor anything else will enrich those whom Popery has impoverished. England should turn a deaf ear to the cry for Home Rule, which means the ruin of her only friends in Ireland, and unknown damage to herself. To give her enemies the means wherewithal to damage her is very midsummer madness."

The difference between Protestant and Roman Catholic farmers was shown in striking contrast on the Marquess of Lansdowne's estate in Queen's County. Most of the tenants were non-judicial, and the total rents amounted to £7,000, of which the Marquess allowed £1,100 to be annually expended on the estate. In 1886 the tenants demanded thirty-five per cent. reduction on non-judicial and twenty-five per cent. on judicial rents, threatening as an alternative to adopt the Plan of Campaign. The Marquess refused to comply with this exorbitant demand, but offered reductions of fifteen to twenty-five per cent. on non judicial rents. The tenants declined to pay anything, and the landlord enforced his rights, Mr. Denis Kilbride, M.P., declaring that "these evictions differed from most of the other evictions to this extent,—that they were able to pay the rent. It was a fight of intelligence against intelligence, a case of diamond cut diamond." Mr. Kilbride, who held a large farm at a rental of seven hundred and sixty pounds was one of the evicted. Another of these poor destitute, homeless tenants, brutally turned out on the roadside to starve, or die like a dog from exposure, was no sooner evicted than he entered a racehorse for the great contest of the Curragh. This victim of Saxon tyranny was named John Dunne, and his holding comprised more than thirteen hundred acres. Let us hope the colt did him credit. Let us trust that the evicted quadruped carried off the blue ribbon of Kildare. For under the Lansdowne "Rack-rents" the struggling farmer could barely keep one racehorse, which, like the fabled ewe-lamb of ancient story, was his little all. Perhaps Mr. Dunne's colt was related to that well-bred travelling horse, of which the picture adorned the walls of Limerick and its vicinity, and which gloried in the name of Justice to Ireland. There were no evicted Protestants on the Lansdowne estate. Every Protestant farmer paid his rent and steadfastly refused to join the Plan of Campaign.