This is a sample Orange proclamation quoted by Mr. M. J. F. M’Carthy in Five Years in Ireland. Now seventy-five per cent. of the population of Ireland are Roman Catholics; what is more, they are Roman Catholics of the devoutest and most devoted type. Probably the Orangemen do not number ten per cent. of the population; yet they are allowed to insult the Head of the Roman Church in the grossest manner, with absolute impunity. If any secret society or other body in Ireland were to post a notice in Donegal to-morrow announcing a grand national demonstration, and winding up with some such ejaculatory remark as “To Hell with Mr. Balfour,” there would be arrests and terms of imprisonment and howls from every corner of England. It goes without saying that the Pope is not Mr. Balfour, and when His Holiness is wished “to Hell” nobody is really a penny the worse. But can it be claimed for a moment that there is either justice or reason in allowing such insults to be placarded in the midst of a Catholic population? Nobody above the level of a Scotch Presbyterian would attempt to justify anything of the kind. It may be that when the Orange lodges were founded they had a use and were necessary for the protection of the Protestant religion against the wiles of Roman Catholicism. At the present moment they serve no purpose whatever that is not essentially evil. In point of fact they are organized centers for the encouragement of bibulous sentiment and the open flaunting of the power of an ill-conditioned minority over a decent and fairly tolerant majority. The Protestant religion in Ireland must be in a distinctly parlous condition if it requires any such backing or any such “protection.” The fact is that nothing of the sort is necessary, or believed to be necessary, even by the more bigoted Irish Protestants. That being so, Orangeism would seem to be ripe for extirpation. If the English Government were as secular as it is commonly held to be, the Orange lodges would have short shrift. It is their supposed connection with religious liberty which shields them from suppression. Yet every Irishman, Protestant or Catholic, knows well that the religious element in Orangeism is little more than pure farce. The entire Orange forces of Ireland could not muster a couple of saints, lay or clerical, to save their lives. At the present time the Orange faction is literally powerless to do anything but create disturbances which are, in effect, street rows of the most vulgar and ill-considered nature. The stoning of Cardinals belongs properly to the same order of sport as the baiting of Jews. Neither pastime would be tolerated for a moment in England.
Why the Northern Irish should be indulged passes comprehension. The majority in Ireland is Green and Catholic as opposed to a tiny minority of Orange and Protestant. The majority has an admitted right to its way in England—why not in Ireland? Much has been said as to the “sinfulness” and “wickedness” of Mr. Gladstone in disestablishing the Irish Church. I am not sure that even the Catholics are quite convinced that Mr. Gladstone’s action was wise. But one thing is certain, namely, that the disestablishment of the Irish Church was eminently just, having regard to the relative position of religious parties in the country. The suppression of the Orange lodges, or, at any rate, the penalization of Orange demonstrations, ought to have followed as a matter of course. There will never be real peace nor content in Ireland till Orangeism is deprived of its present scandalous powers of annoyance, disturbance and tyranny. Toleration on both sides, Catholic and Protestant, is the only hope for a “United Ireland,” or for an Ireland that is to work out its own social and political salvation. And you cannot have tolerance where you have an organization of chartered reactionaries who, in spite of their alleged religious purpose, are little removed, whether in temper or intention, from the common Hooligans of London. The Irish Catholic Church, which, after all, possesses some say over its adherents, has, during late years, done all that lies in its power to prevent collisions between Catholics and Orangemen; it avoids as far as is possible the occasions of such collision; it is careful neither to provoke nor challenge, and in practise it literally “turns the other cheek.” The Irish Protestant Church is equally anxious for peace and equally assiduous in its efforts to secure it. Yet Orangeism flaunts itself at large and without let or hindrance. It furnishes forth “riots o’ Monday” at its own sweet will, and hoots, and mobs, and waves crimson handkerchiefs, and throws stones, and breaks windows and heads to its heart’s content. There is really nobody to say it nay. Authority stands by and winks, for is it not the great principle of Protestantism that is being protected? And are not these same Orangemen vigorous and violent anti-Home-Rulers? Herein, indeed, you have the true inwardness of the modern English attitude toward King William’s men. The domestic quietude of Ireland and the religious freedom of two-thirds of her population cannot be of the remotest consequence compared with the maintenance of the Union. That Ireland no longer seeks Home Rule does not matter. Orangeism has severed the Unionists passing well in the day that is just past. Let it reap its reward in the shape of leave and license. It deserves well of England; who shall raise a finger against it? And, moreover, it is Scotch, and the Scotch are the backbone of Ireland, as of England—manners and morals and all other decent things on one side. As I indicated at the beginning of this chapter, to attempt to rid Ireland of Orangemen were to attempt the impossible. But to deprive Orangeism of English approval and countenance is possible. Break up the lodges, bring to bear on the suppression of Orange demonstrations and Orange disturbances one tithe of the forces you brought to bear against Irish nationalism, and you will have gone a great way toward removing the last obstacles to the peace and contentment of the Irish people as a body.
CHAPTER VII
THE LOW SCOTCH
I have no desire to offer in the present pages a re-hash of a former work of mine, which is said to have provoked the Scotch to the point of laughter. But I do desire to assert that, in my humble opinion, it is the Scotch, or alien population of Ireland, which has been at the root of Ireland’s principal troubles throughout the past century. Ulster may be a fine kingdom, the wealthiest, most industrious, and the wisest and happiest in the country, if you like. Yet it is Ulster that bars the way in all matters that make for the real good of Ireland. Every proper Irishman knows this, and Ulstermen will be at no pains to deny it. Rather are they disposed to glory in it and to brag about it. Ireland, they will tell you, is their country. It is they who have made it, they who have saved it, they who have enriched, beautified and adorned it. They point to the linen industry and to the shipbuilding industry; they crack about Belfast and Portadown, and about “eminent Ulstermen in every walk of life.” There would be no Ireland at all if it were not for themselves. They rule Ireland. What Ireland wants she may have, if it pleases Ulster. What Ireland does not want she must have, if Ulster so much as nod. That, at any rate, is the view of Ulster, the view of the thrifty, douce Scotch bodies whose fathers got gifts of other people’s lands from James I. of England and VI. of Scotland, and whose sons go up and down and to and fro upon the earth, calling themselves “Irishmen of Scotch descent.” There are no Irishmen of Scotch descent. And Ulstermen are not Irishmen unless their descent be Irish. Failing this, they are simply interlopers, or, at best, colonists and plantation men, and they had best put the fact in their pipes and smoke it. Nobody can deny that it was a bad day for Ireland when they came grabbing and grubbing to her shores, just as it was a bad day for England when she “took up” with them. They got Ulster for nothing, and they have kept it for “that same.” They have lived and waxed fat on Irish plunder, and the whole force of English legislation has been directed toward maintaining them in their place, fostering their projects, pampering and propitiating them, and “protecting” them against the wicked, degraded, unreasonable Irish outside. Nor have they been content to confine their greedy attention to their own proper “kingdom,” which is not theirs. Where the carcass is, there will the vulture be; and where there is a soft job, or obvious pickings, there you will find a Scotchman. So that throughout Ireland, Scotchmen have been scattered wherever the Government could find a place for one. There is scarcely an office, sub-office, or sub-deputy office worth the having in all Ireland which has not been made the perquisite of a Protestant Scotchman. Even the Congested Districts Board employs Scotch factors, and Thom’s Almanac is little more than a catalogue of Scotch patronymics. And the pride and insolence and unfairness of them! From a booklet called The Scot in Ulster, written by a Scotchman, and published, if you please, by Blackwood’s of Edinburgh, I take the following: “Their English and Scotch origin seems to me to give to the men of Ulster an unalienable right to protest, as far as they are concerned, against the policy of separation from Great Britain to which the Irish, with the genius for nicknames which they possess, at present give the name of Home Rule.” Could sophistry, craft, subtlety, disingenuousness, or the Scotch genius for cunning misrepresentation go further? To say that when the Irish people have said Home Rule they meant separation, is to promulgate a deliberate and wily untruth. The Irish people proper invariably mean what they say, no more and no less. Home Rule never meant more nor less to the Irish than “a parliament on college green.” It was the Scotch, and the Scotch alone, who set up the cry of “separation” for a bugbear and a bogy wherewith to frighten the timorous English ruler into stubborn acquiescence in the Scotch view of Irish affairs. Yet here we have a Scotchman assuring us in cold print that Home Rule is merely an Irish “nickname” for “separation.” I note with considerable satisfaction, however, that, as Scotchmen will, the author of The Scot in Ulster proceeds religiously to give away the whole Scotch-Irish question. “For centuries,” says he, “the Scot had been wont to wander forth over Europe in search of adventure. [The italic is ours.] As a rule, he turned his steps where fighting was to be had, and the pay for killing was reasonably good. [Again the italics are ours.]… These Scots who have flocked from Leith, or Crail, or Berwick to seek fortune, in peace or war, on the Continent of Europe were mostly the young and adventurous, for whom the old home life had become too narrow. They took with them little save their own stout hearts and their national long heads. [These, too, are our italics.]… The time arrived at last, however, when war with England ceased, and internal strife became less bloody, and Scotland began to be too small for her rapidly growing population, for in those days food did not necessarily come where there were mouths to consume it. [Italics—of our own—which famine-stricken Ireland may fittingly ponder.] Then the Scots, true to the race from which they sprung—for ‘Norman, and Saxon, and Dane are we’ [think of it!][2]—began to go forth, like the northern hordes in days of yore, the women and the children along with the bread-winners, and crossed the seas, and settled in new lands, and were ‘fruitful and multiplied and replenished the earth,’ until the globe is circled round with colonies which are of our blood, and which love and cherish the old ‘land of the mountain and the flood.’” [Tut, tut!] And now mark us: “It was in the beginning of the seventeenth century that the first of these swarms crossed the narrowest of the seas which surround Scotland; it went out from the Ayrshire and Galloway ports, and settled in the north of Ireland. The numbers which went were large. They left Scotland at a time when she was deeply moved by the great Puritan revival. They took with them their Scottish character and their Scottish Calvinism. [Clearly they had both hands full!] They founded the Scottish colony in Ulster. Thus it comes to pass ‘That the foundation of Ulster society is Scottish. It is the solid granite on which it rests.’ [Glory be!] The history of this Scottish colony seems worth telling, for it is a story of which any Scotsman at home or abroad may be proud. [Where is my crimson handkerchief?] Its early history is quaint and interesting [our italics]; there is much suffering and oppression in the story of the succeeding years [our italics]; but there are flashes of brightness to relieve the gloom. The men which this race of Scotsmen has produced are worthy of the parent stock; the contribution which this branch of the Scottish nation has made to the progress of civilization proves that it has not forgotten the old ideals; the portion of Ireland which these Scotsmen HOLD is so prosperous and contented that it permits our statesmen to forget that it is part of that most ‘distressful’ country.” I venture to thank Heaven and St. Patrick that the statements we have last italicized and the word we have put in capital letters embody the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Examine them, O sons of Erin, and take heed that You are the people, and that the Scotch are but the sons of Belial and Astoreth. What has holy Ireland to do with these vapors, these swaggerings, these smitings of righteous breasts? Who be the grubby, grimy, gallowayan, grasping, governmental hucksters that so by implication and innuendo contemn You, the proper and legitimate owners of Ulster? Ask of the winds, which far around strew Scotchmen and the devil on the fair places of the earth. You are innocent to put up with it. You fought the landlords and beat them hollow. “We conquered you before, and can do so again!” Be done with this Scotch obsession. Good can come out of Ireland and Irishmen, as well as out of Ulster and Scotchmen. Lo, that green island is yours, not theirs. Seven-tenths of it are in your hands to do with as you will. “There is not, perhaps, another country on the face of the globe where more good, solid work is waiting to be done, where greater capacities lie dormant, yet where trifling of all kinds so abounds.” That is the verdict of an Irishman and an Irish Catholic upon you. In sober truth you groan, as England groans, under the Scotch superstition. Nobody can be prosperous in Ireland save Scotchmen. Nobody can manufacture but Scotchmen, nobody can farm but Scotchmen. The view is entirely false. Encourage it no longer; remember who you are, and make an end of trifling.
[2] In point of fact the Scotch are neither Norman, Saxon, Dane nor good red-herring, but sheer Scotch.