Ireland as It Is, and as It Would Be Under Home Rule. Buckley Robert John
but nurse their grievances. Twenty years' firm government, as Lord Salisbury said, would enrich the country. Do the right thing by them – put them level with England and Scotland, and then put down your foot. Let them know that howling will do no good, and they'll stop it like a shot. Paddy is mighty 'cute, and knows when he has a man to deal with. Put a noodle over him and that noodle's life will be a burden. And serve him right. Fools must expect fools' reward."
A Catholic priest I met elsewhere was very chary of his opinions, and confined himself to the "hope that England would see her way to compensate the Church and the country for centuries of extortion and oppression." This he thought was a matter of "common honesty." He did not exactly suggest a perpetual church-rate for the benefit of the Catholics of Ireland, but the thing is on the cards, and may be proposed by Mr. Gladstone later on. Something ought to be done, something substantial, for the gentlemen educated under the Maynooth Grant. Mr. Bull has admitted the principle, and his sense of fair play will doubtless lead him to do the right thing, always, of course, under compulsion, which is now usually regarded as the mainspring of that estimable gentleman's supposed virtuous actions.
Ballymena is a smart looking place, trig and trim, thriving and well-liking, a place to look upon and live. The people are all well-clad, and prosperous, well-fed and well-grown. The men are mostly big, the women mostly beautiful; the houses are of stone, handsome and well-built. On the bleaching grounds you see long miles of linen – Irish miles, of course – and all the surroundings are pleasant. After this, no need to say the place is one of the blackest, most Unionist, Protestant, and loyal in the whole country. A number of buff placards issued by Nationalists attract respectful attention. The same bill is stuck all over Belfast – in the High Street, on the hoardings facing the heretic meeting houses, everywhere. It purports to present the sentiments of the great Duke of Wellington re the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and is to the effect that in moments of danger and difficulty the Roman Catholics had caused the British Empire to float buoyant when other Empires were wrecked; that the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and they only, had saved our freedom, our Constitution, our institutions, and in short that it is to the Irish Roman Catholics that we owe everything worth having. Alone they did it. The priest, in short, has made Mr. Bull the man he is.
Can anybody in England "go one better" than this?
These extracts are plainly taken from some speech on the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill, and refer to the valour of the Irish soldiery, whose bravery in fighting for a Protestant cause was doubtless invaluable to the cause of liberty. There is an apocryphal story concerning Alfred de Musset, who on his death-bed is reported to have conveyed to a friend with his last breath his last, his only wish, to wit: —
"Don't permit me to be annotated." The Iron Duke might have said the same if he had thought of it. He could not know that, shorn of his context, divorced from his drift, he would be placarded in his native land as an agent in the cause of sedition and disloyalty. This truly Grand Old Man, who, in his determination to uphold the dignity and unity of the Empire "stood four-square to all the winds that blew," would scarcely have sided with the modern G.O.M. and his satellites, Horsewhipped Healy and Breeches O'Brien.
One word as to the alleged "intolerance of the fanatic Orangemen of Belfast."
The placards above-mentioned were up on Tuesday last. They are large and boldly printed, and attracted crowds of readers – but not a hand was raised to deface them, to damage them, to do them any injury whatever. I watched them for four-and-twenty hours, and not a finger was lifted against any one in the High Street or elsewhere, so far as I could ascertain.
There are twenty thousand Orangemen in the city, and the Protestants outnumber the Papists by three to one. Yet the placard was treated with absolute respect, and although I entered several groups of readers I heard no words of criticism – no comment, unfavourable or otherwise, no gesture of dissent. The people seemed to be interested in the bill, and desirous of giving it respectful consideration. I have seen Liberal Birmingham, when in the days of old it assembled round Tory posters – but the subject becomes delicate; better change our ground. It is, however, only fair to say that the Gladstonians of Birmingham, who, as everybody knows, formed the extreme and inferior wing of the old Radical party, can hardly teach the Belfast men tolerance.
Ballymena, April 6th.
No. 6. – THE EXODUS OF INDUSTRY
Derry is a charming town, unique, indescribable. Take equal parts of Amsterdam and Antwerp, add the Rhine at Cologne, and Waterloo Bridge, mix with the wall of Chester and the old guns of Peel Castle, throw in a strong infusion of Wales, with about twenty Nottingham lace factories, stir up well and allow to settle, and you will get the general effect. The bit of history resulting in the raising of the siege still influences Derry conduct and opinions. The 'Prentice Boys of Derry, eight hundred strong, are ardent loyalists, and having once beaten an army twenty-five thousand strong, believe that for the good of the country, like the orator who had often "gone widout a male," they too could "do it again." They do not expect to be confronted with the necessity, but both the Boys and the Orangemen of Derry, with all their co-religionists, are deeply pledged to resist a Dublin Parliament. "We would not take the initiative, but would merely stand on our own defence, and offer a dogged resistance. We have a tolerable store of arms, although this place was long a proclaimed district, and we have fifteen modern cannon, two of which are six-pounders, the rest mostly four-pounders, and one or two two-pounders, which are snugly stored away, for fear of accident." Thus spake one who certainly knows, and his words were amply confirmed from another quarter.
Derry makes shirts. The industrious Derryans make much money, and in many ways. They catch big salmon in the middle of the town, and outside it they have what Mr. Gladstone would call a "plethora" of rivers. They ship unnumbered emigrants to the Far West, and carry the produce of the surrounding agriculturists to Glasgow and Liverpool. They also make collars and cuffs, but this is mere sport. Their real vocation is the making of shirts, which they turn out by the million, mostly of high quality. Numbers of great London houses have their works at Derry. Welch, Margeston and Co. among others. The Derry partner, Mr. Robert Greer, an Englishman forty years resident in the town, favoured me with his views re Home Rule, thus: —
"The bill would be ruinous to Ireland, but not to the same extent as to England. Being an Englishman, I may be regarded as free from the sectarian animosity which actuates the opposing parties, but I cannot close my eyes to the results of the bill, results of which no sane person, in a position to give an opinion, can have any doubt. We are so convinced that the bill would render our business difficult, not to say impracticable, that our London partners say they will remove the works, plant, machinery, and all, to the West of Scotland or elsewhere.
"About 1,200 girls are employed in the mill, and 3,000 to 4,000 women at their own homes all over the surrounding country.
"Mr. Gladstone may think he knows best, but here the unanimous opinion is that trade will be fatally injured. Ireland is no mean market for English goods, and the market will be closed because Ireland will have no money to spend. Go outside the manufacturing towns and what do you see? Chronic poverty. Manufacturers will remove to the Continent, to America – anywhere else – leaving the peasantry only. The prospective taxes are alarming. We know what would be one of the very first acts of a Dublin Parliament. They would curry favour with the poor, the lazy districts, by an equalisation of the poor rate. In Derry, where everybody works for his bread, the rate is about sixpence in the pound. There are districts where it runs to ten shillings in the pound. The wealthy traders, the capitalists, the manufacturers of the North will have to pay for the loafers of the South. The big men would gather up their goods and chattels and clear out. There are other reasons for this course."
Here Mr. Greer made the inevitable statement that Englishmen out of Ireland did not understand the question; and another large manufacturer chipped in with: —
"Leave us alone, and we get on admirably. There is no intolerance; everybody lives comfortably with his neighbour. But pass the bill and what happens? The Catholic employés would become unmanageable, would begin to kick over the traces, would want to dictate terms, would attempt to dominate the Protestant section, which would rebel, and trouble would ensue. They would not work together. It is impracticable to say: Employ one faith only and Home Rule means that Catholicism is