For seven hundred years England had been busy in efforts to form a government for Ireland, and the result was the most disgraceful failure known in history. For seven hundred years Ireland had rebelled, plotted, invoked foreign aid, in the hope of throwing off the galling yoke; and after centuries of bloodshed she found herself more strongly bound to England. In the presence of this great historical teaching both nations seemed prepared to pause and deliberately to examine their mutual relations, and both seemed to feel that the special objects at which each had been aiming were unattainable. The geographical position of the two countries renders their union inevitable so long as either is able to subjugate and hold the other in the bonds of a common government. Had Ireland been in condition to maintain her independence, England, surrounded by enemies, could never have risen to the position which she has held for centuries. The national aspirations for power and dominion could not be realized while Ireland was permitted to retain her separate existence, and her conquest was therefore inevitable the moment England felt herself strong enough to undertake it; nor can the wildest visionary seriously believe that there is the faintest hope that the connection between them will ever be dissolved except in their common ruin. So long as England’s power remains, so long will she hold Ireland with the unerring instinct with which a vigorous people clings to its national life; and should England’s downfall come, there is no good reason for thinking that it would not be the knell of Ireland’s doom. They have the same language, the same fundamental principles of government, the same commercial and political interests; and under these common influences the differences and antagonisms which still exist are likely to become more and more inactive. The English people are not without their own grievances, which, in some respects, are more serious than those of the Irish—the consequences of feudalism, which in England has been able to resist more successfully than elsewhere the social movements of modern times. Henceforward Ireland is the natural and necessary ally of the more liberal and fair-minded portion of the English people, and she will co-operate most efficiently in helping them to bring about the reforms which are so much needed.
For the perfect religious liberty which can exist only after the disestablishment of the Anglican Church England will be indebted to Ireland, whose people have already compelled the British Parliament to admit principles and adopt measures which will inevitably lead to the dissolution of the union between church and state throughout the whole extent of the empire. The Irish land system must be sacrificed as the Irish Church has been sacrificed; and this will be the first step towards a complete revolution in the system of land tenure throughout Great Britain. The growing influence and increasing number of English Catholics will help greatly to create a more cordial and genuine religious sympathy between the two races of these sister islands; and this sympathy will be still further strengthened when the church in England, through the disestablishment and disintegration of Anglicanism, shall have gained a position and power which will give to her special weight in forming public opinion. As the community of interests of the two countries becomes more manifest, political parties will cease to be influenced by national or religious prejudice, and will be constituted upon principles which relate to the social interests of the people. England has already confessed the radical error of her Irish policy, and her leading statesmen have admitted that the cause of its failure lay in its viciousness—in the fact that it wantonly violated the rights and interests of the people because they belonged to a different race and held a different religious faith. Her legislation was unjust because it was narrow and exclusive—favored a class and a creed, and, in order to favor these, repressed and crushed the national energies. The government believed, whether truly or falsely, that it could rule Ireland only by fostering divisions and feuds among her people; and to do this it sought by every means to intensify and embitter the prejudice which separated the English from the Irish, the Protestant from the Catholic. With this view Scotch and English colonies of Protestants were planted in Ireland, and, lest the intercourse and amenities of life should soften the asperity of religious bigotry, the government took special care to encourage the hatred which kept them aloof from the natives, first by local separations, and afterwards by the social distinctions which arose from the enforced poverty and ignorance of the Catholic population. The American Revolution taught England, if not the iniquity, the folly of this conduct; and from 1778 to the present day she has been slowly receding from a course in which she had grown old. She has receded unwillingly, too, and with hesitation, and has thus often increased the discontent which she sought to allay. Nations, like individuals, find that it is hard to recover from inveterate habits of wrong-doing. The wages of sin must be paid; repentance can save from death, but not from humiliation and punishment. Nor has England repented, but she has entered in the way of penitence; she has made some reparation, but has not by any means done all that must be done before Ireland can be content. For nearly half a century now—that is, since 1829—there has been, we believe, a sincere desire to govern Ireland fairly, chiefly, no doubt, because English statesmen had come to see that it was not possible to govern her in any other way; but these good intentions have been thwarted by the constitutional repugnance of the English people to apply strong and efficacious remedies to social disorders. Nowhere else among civilized nations are ancient abuses guarded and protected with such superstitious veneration. Hence the government thought to satisfy Ireland by half-measures of redress, and these it took so ungraciously that they seemed to be wrung from it, and not conceded with good-will. Men are not grateful for favors which are granted because they can no longer be withheld.
Englishmen still forget that Ireland has the right to be treated by them not merely with justice, but with generous indulgence. So long as the root of the evil is left untouched little will be accomplished by pruning the branches. Ireland’s curse is the system of land tenure, founded on confiscation and organized to perpetuate a fatal antagonism between the proprietors and the tillers of the soil. Irishmen will be disaffected and rebellious so long as the national prosperity is blighted by a state of things which leaves their country in the hands of men who are happy only when they are away from it.
Parliament has passed several land acts, but it would seem that they had been purposely so framed as to produce no good results. That it is possible to change the land system of Ireland radically, without doing injustice to any one, is admitted, and various projects by which this might be done have been laid before Parliament. This is not a question of tenant-rights; it lies far deeper. Nor is there any parity in this respect between England and Ireland. In England the land is owned by the people’s natural leaders; in Ireland it is owned by the people’s natural enemies. This land question is far more important than any question of Home Rule; and if Parliament will but give a proper solution to this problem, Home Rule will no longer be seriously thought of.
When landlordism vanishes from Ireland, the day of final reconciliation will be at hand. With it will disappear the filibusters, revolutionists, and Fenians, whose disturbing influence in Irish politics is made possible by the wrongs which the English government has not the will or the courage to redress. There are other grievances than the land system, but it will not be difficult to do away with them when the country shall have been given back to the people. With a free press, free speech, and an organized public agitation sustained and increased by the sympathies and interests of the masses of the people of England, it will be found impossible to withhold much longer from Ireland full and complete justice; and nothing less will satisfy her people.
TENNYSON AS A DRAMATIST.[[20]]
Alfred Tennyson is to-day one of the household gods of English-speaking peoples. He has a place in every library, a niche in every memory, an echo in every heart. He has unquestionably added a new and brilliant page to the great book of English literature. He has set there something that was not there before, and that is not likely to fade away with time. Doubtless there are men who would deny this. There are literary Gorgons who would, if they could, stare every man into stone. There are critics whose nature seems to distil venom, and who find no sweetness save in their own gall. To men of this class the very fact of a man being praised is in itself sufficient cause for condemnation. Over and above these there are probably some who honestly dislike or do not care for Tennyson. For such we do not speak, but for the great mass of English readers in whose estimation Tennyson occupies a very conspicuous, if somewhat undefinable, position. By them he is liked, and liked better than any living poet; and, indeed, he has given excellent reasons for being so liked.
That there have been greater English poets, even his most enthusiastic admirers must allow; that there have been few sweeter, all who have read him and others will admit. Indeed, sweetness, with its twin-sister purity, is one of the marked characteristics of Tennyson’s verse. No man ever mistook Tennyson for a Pythoness, a Cassandra, a Jeremiah. He is not heroic like Homer. Much of the idyllic grace, but little of the real massiveness, of Virgil he has. He cannot scoff like Horace, or Byron, or Shelley. He cannot scourge like Dante, observe with the luminous philosophy, the high inspiration of Shakspere, or build up a mighty edifice like Milton. He can do none of these things. In some respects he is perhaps less than the least of these poets. He is a sweet singer, made for sunshine and peace and harmony; the poet of the happy household over whose threshold passes from time to time the sad shadow of a quiet sorrow; not the poet of despair, of wrath, of agony, of the fiercer passions or tumultuous joys, whose very excess is pain.
True it is that, as he sang in his earlier days,
“The poet in a golden clime was born,