Ireland In The New Century

by Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett

But I may ignore this as I wish here to recall attention to that other element, which was, as I have already said, the real force which turned the British democracy against Home Rule—I mean the commercial and industrial community in Belfast and other hives of industry in the north-east corner of the country, and in scattered localities elsewhere. I have already admitted that the political importance of the industrial element was not appreciated in Irish Unionist circles. No less remarkable is the way in which it has been ignored by the Nationalists. The question which the Nationalists had to answer in 1886 and 1893, and which they have to answer to-day, is this:—In the Ireland of their conception is the Unionist part of Ulster to be coerced or persuaded to come under the new regime? To those who adopt the former alternative my reply is simply that, if England is to do the coercion, the idea is politically absurd. If we were left to fight it out among ourselves, it is physically absurd. The task of the Empire in South Africa was light compared with that which the Nationalists would have on hands. I am aware that, at the time when we were all talking at concert pitch on the Irish Question, a good deal was said about dying in the last ditch by men who at the threat of any real trouble would be found more discreetly perched upon the first fence. But those who know the temper and fighting qualities of the working-men opponents of Home Rule in the North are under no illusion as to the account they would give of themselves if called upon to defend the cause of Protestantism, liberty, and imperial unity as they understand it. Let us, however, dismiss this alternative and give Nationalists credit for the desire to persuade the industrial North to come in by showing it that it will be to its advantage to join cordially in the building up of a united Ireland under a separate legislature.

The difficulties in the way of producing this conviction are very obvious. The North has prospered under the Act of Union—why should it be ready to enter upon a new 'variety of untried being'? What that state of being will be like, it naturally gauges from the forces which are working for Home Rule at present. Looking at these simply from the industrial standpoint and leaving out of account all the powerful elements of religious and race prejudice, the man of the North sees two salient facts which have dominated all the political activity of the Nationalist campaign. One is a voluble and aggressive disloyalty, not merely to 'England' and to the present system of government, but to the Crown which represents the unity of the three kingdoms, and the other is the introduction of politics into business in the very virulent and destructive form known as boycotting.

Now, hostility to the Crown, if it means anything, means a struggle for separation as soon as Home Rule has given to the Irish people the power to organise and arm. And (still keeping to the sternly practical point of view) that would, for the time being at least, spell absolute ruin to the industrial North. The practice of boycotting, again, is the very antithesis of industry—it creates an atmosphere in which industry and enterprise simply cannot live. The North has seen this practice condoned as a desperate remedy for a desperate ill, but it has seen it continued long after the ill had passed away, used as a weapon by one Nationalist section against another, and revived when anything like a really oppressive or arbitrary eviction had become impossible. There seems to have been in Nationalist circles, since the time of O'Connell, but little appreciation of the deadly character of this social curse; and the prospect of a Government which would tolerate it naturally fills the mind of the Northern commercial man with alarm and aversion.

Again, the democratisation of local government which gave the Nationalist leaders a unique opportunity of showing the value, has but served to demonstrate the ineffectiveness, of their political tactics. North of Ireland opinion was deeply interested in this reform, and appreciated its far-reaching importance. Elsewhere, I think it will be safe to say, people generally were indifferent to it until it came, and the leaders seemed to see in it only a weapon to be used for political purposes. To the great vista of useful and patriotic work opened out by the Act of 1898, to the impression that a proper use of that Act might make on Northern opinion, they were blind. It is true that the Councils when left to themselves did admirably, and fully justified the trust reposed in them. But at the inauguration of local government it was naturally not the work of the Councils but the attitude of the party leaders which appeared to stamp the reception of the Act by the Irish people.

It is true, of course, that many thoughtful men among the Nationalist party repudiate the idea that the methods of to-day would be continued in a self-governed Ireland. I fail to see any reason why they should not. Under any system of limited Home Rule questions would arise which would afford much the same sort of justification for the employment of such methods, and they could hardly be worse for the welfare of the country then than they are now. There is abundant need and abundant work in the present day for thoughtful and far-seeing men in a party constitutionally so strong as that of the Irish Nationalists. If those among them who possess, or at any rate can make effective use of qualities of constructive statesmanship are as few as the history of recent years would lead us to suppose, what assurance can Ulster Unionists feel that such men would spring up spontaneously in an Ireland under Home Rule? I admit, indeed, that a considerable measure of such assurance might be derived from the attitude of the leaders of the party at and since the Land Conference. But this adoption of statesmanlike methods which cannot be too widely understood or too warmly commended is a matter of very recent history; and though we may hope that the success attending it will help materially in the political education of the Irish people, that will not, by itself, undo the effect of a quarter of a century of political agitation governed by ideas the very reverse of those which are now happily beginning to find favour.

I have thought it necessary to examine at some length the defence on the ground of tactics which is often made for Nationalist politics, because it is the only defence ever made by those apologists who admit the disturbing influence upon our economic and social life of Nationalist methods. A broader and saner view of political tactics than prevailed ten years ago is now possible, for circumstances are becoming friendly and helpful to the development of political thought. Though the United Irish League apparently restored 'unity' to the ranks of the Nationalists, the country is, I believe, getting restless under the political bondage, and is seething with a wholesome discontent. In this very matter of political education, the stir of corporate life, the sense of corporate responsibility which in every parish of Ireland are now being fostered by the reformed system of local government, must make their influence felt in wider spheres. Even now I believe that the field is ready for the work of those who would bid the old leader-following habit, the product partly of the dead clan system, partly of dying national animosities, depart as a thing that has had its day, and who would endeavour to train up a race of free, self-reliant, and independent citizens in a free state.

In this work the very men whose mistaken conception of a united Ireland I have criticised will, I doubt not, take a leading part. In many respects, and these not the least important, no one could desire a better instrument for the achievement of great reforms than the Irish party. They are far beyond any similar group of English members in rhetorical skill and quickness of intelligence and decision, qualities which no doubt belong to the mechanism rather than the soul of politics, but which the practical worker in public life will not despise. But even when tried by a higher standard the Irish members need not fear the judgment of history. They have often, in my opinion, misconceived the true interests of their country, but they have been faithful to those interests as they understood them, and have proved themselves notably superior to sordid personal aims. These gifts and virtues are not common, but still rarer is it to see such gifts and virtues cursed with the doom of futility. The influence of the Irish political leaders has neither advanced the nation's march through the wilderness nor taught the people how they are to dispense with manna from above when they reach the Promised Land. With all their brilliancy, they have thrown but little helpful light on any Irish problem. In this want of political and economic foresight Irish Nationalist politicians, with some exceptions whom it would be invidious to name, have fallen lamentably short of what might be expected of Irish intellect. For the eight years during which I represented an Irish constituency I always felt that an Irish night in the House of Commons was one of the strangest and most pathetic of spectacles. There were the veterans of the Irish party hardened by a hundred fights, ranging from Venezuela to the Soudan in search of battlefields, making allies of every kind of foreign potentate, from President Cleveland to the Mahdi, from Mr. Kruger to the Akhoom of Swat, but looking with suspicion on every symptom of an independent national movement in Ireland; masters of the language of hate and scorn, yet mocked by inevitable and eternal failure; winners of victories that turn to dust and ashes; devoted to their country, yet, from ignorance of the real source of its malady, ever widening the gaping wound through which its life-blood flows. While I recall these scenes, there rises before my mind the picture vividly drawn by Miss Lawless of their prototypes, the 'Wild Geese,' who carried their swords into foreign service after the final defeat of the Stuarts:—

War-battered dogs are we,
Fighters in every clime,
Fillers of trench and of grave,
Mockers, bemocked by Time;
War-dogs, hungry and grey,
Gnawing a naked bone,
Fighting in every clime
Every cause but our own.[^[15]]

Irishmen have been long in realising that the days of the 'Wild Geese' are over, and that there are battles for Ireland to be fought and won in Ireland—battles in which England is not the enemy she was in the days of Fontenoy, but a friend and helper. But there will be little gain in replacing the traditional conception of England as the inexorable foe by the more modern conception, which threatened to become traditional in its turn, of England as the source of all prosperity and her favour as the condition of all progress in Ireland. In the recent Land Conference I recognise something more valuable even than the financial and legislative results which flowed from it, for it showed that the conception of reliance upon Irishmen in Ireland, not under some future and problematical conditions, but here and now, for the solution of Irish questions, is gaining ground among us. If this conception once takes firm hold, as I think it is beginning to do, of the Nationalist party in Ireland, much of the criticism of this chapter will lose its meaning. The mere substitution of a positive Irish policy for a negative anti-English policy will elevate the whole range of Nationalist political activity in and out of Ireland. And I am certain that if the ultimate goal of Nationalist politics be desirable, and continue to be desired, it will not be rendered more difficult, but on the contrary very much easier of attainment if those who seek it take possession of the great field of work which, without waiting for any concessions from Westminster, is offered by the Ireland of to-day.