CHAPTER XXVII.
BROTHERS.
I HAD landed in America at the moment of what is known in Canada as “the great scare”—that is, the Fenian invasion at Fort Erie. Before going South, I had attended at New York a Fenian meeting held to protest against the conduct of the President and Mr. Seward, who, it was asserted, after deluding the Irish with promises of aid, had abandoned them, and even seized their supplies and arms. The chief speaker of the evening was Mr. Gibbons, of Philadelphia, “Vice-President of the Irish Republic,” a grave and venerable man; no rogue or schemer, but an enthusiast as evidently convinced of the justice as of the certainty of the ultimate triumph of the cause.
At Chicago, I went to the monster meeting at which Speaker Colfax addressed the Brotherhood; at Buffalo, I was present at the “armed picnic” which gave the Canadian government so much trouble. On Lake Michigan, I went on board a Fenian ship; in New York, I had a conversation with an ex-rebel officer, a long-haired Georgian, who was wearing the Fenian uniform of green-and-gold in the public streets. The conclusion to which I came was, that the Brotherhood has the support of ninety-nine hundredths of the Irish in the States. As we are dealing not with British, but with English politics and life, this is rather a fact to be borne in mind than a text upon which to found a homily; still, the nature of the Irish antipathy to Britain is worth a moment‘s consideration; and the probable effect of it upon the future of the race is a matter of the gravest import.
The Fenians, according to a Chicago member of the Roberts’ wing, seek to return to the ancient state of Ireland, of which we find the history in the Brehon laws—a communistic tenure of land (resembling, no doubt, that of the Don Cossacks), and a republic or elective kingship. Such are their objects; nothing else will in the least conciliate the Irish in America. No abolition of the Establishment, no reform of land-laws, no Parliament on College Green, nothing that England can grant while preserving the shadow of union, can dissolve the Fenian league.
All this is true, and yet there is another great Irish nation to which, if you turn, you find that conciliation may still avail us. The Irish in Ireland are not Fenians in the American sense: they hate us, perhaps, but they may be mollified; they are discontented, but they may be satisfied; customs and principles of law, the natural growth of the Irish mind and the Irish soil, can be recognized, and made the basis of legislation, without bringing about the disruption of the empire.
The first Irish question that we shall have to set ourselves to understand is that of land. Permanent tenure is as natural to the Irish as freeholding to the English people. All that is needed of our statesmen is, that they recognize in legislation that which they cannot but admit in private talk—namely, that there may be essential differences between race and race.
The results of legislation which proceeds upon this basis may follow very slowly upon the change of system, for there is at present no nucleus whatever for the feeling of amity which we would create. Even the alliance of the Irish politicians with the English Radicals is merely temporary; the Irish antipathy to the English does not distinguish between Conservative and Radical. Years of good government will be needed to create an alliance against which centuries of oppression and wrong-doing protest. We may forget, but the Irish will hardly find themselves able to forget at present that, while we make New Zealand savages British citizens as well as subjects, protect them in the possession of their lands, and encourage them to vote at our polling-booths, and take their place as constables and officers of the law, our fathers “planted” Ireland, and declared it no felony to kill an Irishman on his mother-soil.
In spite of their possession of much political power, and of the entire city government of several great towns, the Irish in America are neither physically nor morally well off. Whatever may be the case at some future day, they still find themselves politically in English hands. The very language that they are compelled to speak is hateful, even to men who know no other. With an impotent spite which would be amusing were it not very sad, a resolution was carried by acclamation through both houses of the Fenian congress, at Philadelphia, this year, “that the word ‘English’ be unanimously dropped, and that the words ‘American language’ be used in the future.”
From the Cabinet, from Congress, from every office, high or low, not controlled by the Fenian vote, the Irish are systematically excluded; but it cannot be American public opinion which has prevented the Catholic Irish from rising as merchants and traders, even in New York. Yet, while there are Belfast names high up on the Atlantic side and in San Francisco, there are none from Cork, none from the southern counties. It would seem as though the true Irishman wants the perseverance to become a successful merchant, and thrives best at pure brain-work, or upon land. Three-fourths of the Irish in America remain in towns, losing the attachment to the soil which is the strongest characteristic of the Irish in Ireland, and finding no new home: disgusted at their exclusion in America from political life and power, it is these men who turn to Fenianism as a relief. Through drink, through gambling, and the other vices of homeless, thriftless men, they are soon reduced to beggary; and, moral as they are by nature, the Irish are nevertheless supplying America with that which she never before possessed—a criminal and pauper class. Of ten thousand people sent to jail each year in Massachusetts, six thousand are Irish born; in Chicago, out of the 3598 convicts of last year, only eighty-four were native born Americans.
To the Americans, Fenianism has many aspects. The greater number hate the Irish, but sympathize profoundly with Ireland. Many are so desirous of seeing republicanism prevail throughout the world that they support the Irish republic in any way, except, indeed, by taking its paper money, and look upon its establishment as a first step toward the erection of a free government that shall include England and Scotland as well. Some think the Fenians will burn the Capitol and rob the banks; some regard them with satisfaction, or the reverse, from the religious point of view. One of the latter kind of lookers-on said to me: “I was glad to see the Fenian movement, not that I wish success to the Brotherhood as against you English, but because I rejoice to see among Irishmen a powerful center of resistance to the Catholic Church. We, in this country, were being delivered over, bound hand and foot, to the Roman Church, and these Fenians, by their power and their violence against the priests, have divided the Irish camp and rescued us.” The unfortunate Canadians, for their part, ask why they should be shot and robbed because Britain maltreats the Irish; but we must not forget that the Fenian raid on Canada was an exact repetition, almost on the same ground, of the St. Alban‘s raid into the American territory during the rebellion.