Part II. A Historical Argument
VIII.—Irish Nationality. By Mrs. J. R. Green
“Justice requires power, intelligence, and will.”—(Leonardo da Vinci.)
“Sinister information,” reported a Governor of Ireland under Henry VIII., “hath been of more hindrance to the reformation of Ireland than all the rebels and Irishry within the realm.” The complaint is as true to-day as it was nearly four hundred years ago, for false tongues still gain power through ignorance. Irish history has the misfortune of being at the same time trite and unknown. Men hear with the old acquiescence the old formulæ, and the well-known words carry to them the solace of the ancient prejudices.
There is indeed in these latter days a change of accusation. In former times Irishmen were marked off as an inferior people, but within the last few years the attack is altered; and it is now the fashion to assume that the Irish fail, not as individuals, but only in their corporate capacity. To Irishmen is still denied “the delight of admiration and the duty of reverence.” Holding in their hearts the image of a nation, they are warned not to ask whether it was a nation of any value, whether there has been any conspicuous merit which justifies the devotion that the Irish people feel [pg 218] to their race, and which may claim the regard of others. For it is not enough to have the mere instinct of passion for our country, unless our heart and reason are convinced that we give our allegiance to a people that, in spite of human errors, has been of noble habit and distinguished spirit.
The policy of “Unionist” leaders is to meet the Irish desire for an uplifting pride in the life of the Irish commonwealth by a flat denial. Ireland, we are told, is not, nor ever has been, nor ever can be, a nation. A disorganized and contentious people, incapable of rightly using any polity Irish or English, we have not, it is said, even the materials of a nation. We are only “material,” to use an old Irish expression, for an Empire. The island in fact was never a kingdom till England gave it a king worthy the name; so how could it be a nation? To the gift of a king England added her invention of a Parliament, but the failure of Parliament in Ireland was open and flagrant; how then talk about a nation?
“There are Englishmen and Scotchmen,” says Mr. Balfour, “who really suppose that England has deprived Ireland of its own national institutions, has absorbed Ireland, which had a polity and a civilization of its own—has absorbed it in the wider sphere of British politics; and who think that a great wrong has thereby been done to a separate nationality.... It is a profound illusion. It has no basis in historical fact at all.”
He gives a history of his own.