“A phantom government,” wrote Richey, “planted at Dublin fulfilled none of the duties of a ruler, but by its presence prevented the formation of any other authority or form of rule.”
If any leader appeared among the Irish of authority in peace or power in war, the whole force of England was immediately called in to his destruction, and to reestablish confusion and strife. “Ireland were as good as lost,” the English said, “if a wild wyrlinge should be chosen there as king.”
It cannot be doubted that the Irish system had sprung from the soul of a people with an intense national consciousness, that it bound the various clans under obedience to one common law, that it gave to all the inhabitants, rich and poor, learned and simple, an enthusiasm for their race and country which rooted that law in their hearts, and endowed it with a tenacity of life that no political misfortune could destroy.
The people were inspired by more than material considerations, and through centuries of suffering nothing but death could extinguish their passionate loyalty to their chief and devotion to their race. English governors could never catch the reason or meaning of that patriotism. “It should seem,” said Perrott, the ostentatious proclaimer of English superiority, “that they think, when once they leave their old customs, ... they are out of all frame or good fashion, according to that saying, They which are born in Hell think there is no Heaven.”
England, however, according to the Unionist teaching, offered a better thing. She “invented” for Ireland a Parliament. What did the Irish make of that? Here we enter on a new range of denunciations—the inadequacy to English ideas and benevolences, not of Iberians and Celts, but of Normans and of English themselves.
Every form of Parliament, the best that England could do, ended in Ireland, according to Mr. Balfour, in a “series of failures.” Ireland was already well accustomed in every one of its territories to meetings of notables and assemblies for public business; and there was no special difficulty in introducing among a people of their training a representative Parliament. But from this “British invention” the Celtic people were in effect shut out, either formally or practically. The Parliament was conferred on Normans, who had so distinguished a history in England, and on English Protestants. And yet, we are told, every experiment of an “Irish” Parliament failed; under the same malign influences, it would seem, as were set forth by a lord deputy under Henry VIII.: “As I suppose, it is predestinate to this country to bring [pg 235] forth sedition, inventions, lies, and such other naughty fruits, and also that no man shall have thanks for services done here.”
This seems to have been the view of Mr. Litton Falkiner, who in his Essays has drawn attention to the conspicuous faults of the Parliament as shown in the history of Poyning's Act. That statute, according to him, reduced Ireland to legislative impotence, but the Parliament willingly and with no difficulty passed it; and not only was the bridle placed in the mouth of the Irish legislature with its own assent, but it was so placed by its own desire, and the Parliament long and strenuously resisted its removal. An explanation, suitable to Ireland, for this singularly irrational conduct is given.
“Not the least curious feature in the history of the subsequent operation of Poyning's Law is the great inconvenience which it occasioned to the English Government, and its corresponding popularity with the anti-English element in the Irish legislature.”
The conclusion would seem to be that the atmosphere of the island so contaminated the Anglo-Norman settlers that they exchanged reason for fantastic inconsequence, and replaced self-interest by an insanity of “patriotism.” We have here a typical illustration of the way in which the “Irish” Parliament has been thrown under rebuke, and the spirit of its condemnation. It is interesting to ask whether the facts bear out this theory of unreason, and of a wilfulness inexplicable and characteristic of this island alone.