“Those whom the Nationalists choose more particularly and especially to call Irishmen, namely, the original inhabitants of Ireland—those who were there before the Celt and before the Saxon and before the Norman—never had the chance of developing, they never could have developed, a polity of their own, any more than the Highlanders. That does not mean that they are in any sense inferior, but it does mean that all this talk of restoring to Ireland Irish institutions, and of governing Ireland according to Irish ideas, has no historic basis whatever.”
It is for such wayward imaginings that the historic claim of Ireland is denied. What meaning shall we give to this new dogma of the partiality of Nationalists for some pre-Celtic race—whether Iberian, or whether (as some explain the phrase) Finn MacCumhaill and his followers, ingeniously regarded by Mr. Balfour as having adorned Ireland before the Celtic age? Where was the “Saxon” settlement in Ireland between the Celts and the Normans? What is the comparison of the Highlanders with the original inhabitants of Ireland? Why should Mr. Balfour's doubts of a pre-Celtic polity put an end to all talk of Irish institutions and Irish ideas?
To come to somewhat later times, under the clan system, says Mr. Balfour, it was impossible to rise to civilization. “And when England dealt with Ireland, Ireland was completely under the tribal system” (a theory false to history). The superior English polity in due time, however, spread its hand over Iberian chaos. “An Irish Parliament is a British invention”—the word, with Mr. Balfour's easy adjustment of history to politics, is probably chosen to give the Scotch a gratuitous share in the credit, with a compliment to their spirit; for, as he says, “my Lowland ancestors in Scotland had precisely the same contempt for my Highland fellow-countrymen as the English had for the Irish in Ireland”—(the word Lowland being here misused in a non-historic sense). “Every political idea in Ireland is of English growth—the Irish dependent Parliament, the Irish independent Parliament—it is all of British extraction.” Mr. Balfour seems to imagine in his indifferent way that the “dependent form” was the first; he seems to guess that it was a single form, “the dependent Parliament”; and he calls his “independent Parliament” “a [pg 220] practically sovereign legislature.” It would be hard to gather more fundamental errors into one sentence. At any rate in his simplified scheme both forms of “the British invention” failed in Ireland. But in the success of the Union and the assembly at Westminster, England has established successfully what Mr. Balfour calls “the unity which we have inherited from our forefathers.”
Such are the “General Principles” which Mr. Balfour—speaking with all the authority of an “Unionist” statesman, head of a great English party, leader for a generation of those who refuse to Ireland any claim to national memory or national hope, absolute ruler for four years of that island—has issued in his book “Aspects of Home Rule” to rally his followers. This confusion of fictions, in all their brave untruth, furnishes the historic background and justification of the Unionist creed. We might not easily expect an “Imperial” leader so far to forego respect for himself or for his public.
There is an Old Irish proverb: “Three candles that illumine every darkness: truth, nature, knowledge.” But Mr. Balfour is as a man for his pleasure wandering in the dark among the tombs of vain things. And from places of death comes as of old “sinister information” to minister to ignorance and prejudice, and to be still the hindrance to the reformation of Ireland.
These comprehensive charges cover the two strongly-contrasted periods of Irish history—the period of Gaelic civilization, and that of Norman, or later of English settlement. All races are alike condemned. The one people had no institutions. The other misused what were given to it. In either case the fault is said to be “Irish”—the general word of contempt. Confounded together by Mr. Balfour for his own [pg 221] purposes, the two accusations have nothing in common, and must be separately considered if we wish to think justly.
We may, however, observe that to both races is denied the praise of a “nation” or “nationality.”
The definition of a “nation” may be varied: every man has his opinion, for, as the old Irish saying went, “'tis his own head he has on him.” But in the matter nature and history cannot be wholly set aside, and we may attach some importance to the unity of a country, the persistence of its race, and the continuity of its life. If we consider outward form, who ever thinks of the map of Great Britain as a whole? The form that is in men's minds is of two configurations, one of England and one of Scotland, two countries mapped out on separate sheets. The names of the countries have changed, Alban and Scotland; Britain and England; and the title of the whole is a somewhat awkward evasion or compromise. Ireland on the other hand has its unchangeable boundaries fixed by the Ocean, its provinces from immemorial times subordinate territories of the undivided country. Its successive peoples, perhaps for some four thousand years, have never known it but by one name, Erin; or by the variations of that name as it passed into other speech, Iberia, Hibernia, Ire-land. The Old Irish knew it some fourteen hundred years ago as their “Fatherland.” As far back as we can go the unity of the country as a whole is prominent in their thought; as, for example, in an ancient poem on the passing of the pagan world and the triumph of Christianity:
“God's counsel at every time concerning virgin Erin is greater than can be told; though glittering Liffey is thine to-day, it has been the land of others in their turn.”
In the Middle Irish period a legend of the coming to [pg 222] Tara of the most ancient of all the sages carried to the people the same rapt love of Ireland. When all the assembly rose up before him: