Ireland as It Is, and as It Would Be Under Home Rule. Buckley Robert John
regularly trained to office routine. English Home Rulers, unable to see a yard in front of them, whose training and instincts are of the goody-goody, milk and water type, – the lily-livered weaklings, who measure the courage of others by their own, – may be excused their inability to conceive the situation. They cannot understand the dour, unyielding spirit of the Ulsterman in a matter which affects his property, his religion, his freedom. A party backboneless as the Globerigina ooze, and, like that sub-Atlantic production, only held together by its own sliminess, must ever fail to realise the grit which means resistance, sacrifice, endurance; cannot grasp the outlines of the Ulster character and spirit, which resemble those which actuated the Scottish Covenanters, the Puritan army of Cromwell, or even – and this illustration should be especially grateful to Gladstonians – the Dutch Boers of the Transvaal.
But although the surface is placid the depths are turbulent. If Dublin is simmering, Belfast is boiling. The breed is different. The Northerner is not demonstrative, is slow to anger, but being moved is not easily appeased. The typical Irishman, with his cutaway coat, his pipe stuck in his conical caubeen, his "sprig of shillelagh," or bludgeon the Donnybrook Fair hero who "shpinds half a-crown, Mates wid a frind An' (for love) knocks him down" is totally unknown in these regions. The men who by their ability and industry have lifted Ireland out of the slough, given her prosperity and comparative affluence, marched hand in hand with the English people, have only seen, with wonder, the rollicking Kelt, devoid of care, forethought, and responsibility, during their trips to the South and West – or wherever Home Rulers most do congregate. Strange it is, but perfectly true, that in most cases an Irishman's politics may be determined by outward and visible signs, so plain that he who runs may read. In Dundalk, which should be a thriving port, you see in and around the town long rows of low thatch-covered cabins, with putrid dunghills "convaynient," dirty, half-fed, barefooted children, and – magnificent Catholic churches. Home Rule rules the roost. As you move northwards, the symptoms of poverty gradually disappear. Scarva, the annual meeting ground of 5,000 to 10,000 Orangemen, who on July 13, the day after the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, fight the battle o'er again, with a King William and a King James, mounted respectively on their regulation white and bay chargers – Scarva is neat, clean and civilised. Bessbrook, the Quaker colony, is, as might be expected, a model community. Lurgan is well built, smart, trim, and delightful, a wealthy manufacturing place with the general aspect of Leamington. As the train steamed into the station an American traveller took a general survey of the district, and said to the general company —
"I reckon this is a Unionist place."
A fierce-looking man from Dundalk admitted the soft impeachment.
"Thought so. Can spot a Home Rule town far off as I can see it. Mud huts, whitewashed cabins with no upstairs, muck-heaps, and bad fences. Can spot a Home Ruler as far as I can see him. Darned if I couldn't track him by scent, like a foxhound. That's the rank and file – very rank, I should say, most of them. And old J. Bull concludes to let the dunghill folks, powerful lazy beggars they seem, come top-sawyer over the fellows that built a place like this, eh?"
The Newry man, taking off his hat, revealing a head of hair like a disorderly halo, took from the lining a little paper which called upon the Irish peasantry to remember their wrongs, referred to the time when Englishmen could murder Irishmen with impunity, stated that the thing had often been done, and called upon every male from fifteen to fifty to enrol himself in the Irish Independent Army – referring to the Protestants as "a cruel and bloody minority." The Yankee returned the bill contemptuously.
"You think this a question of counting noses. Now, I'm a sympathiser of Home Rule, but if I was J.B. it would be different. I'm hanged if I would not stick to my clean, clever, faithful friends, though they were outnumbered by twenty to one. An' I'm a Republican, mind ye that. Ye might ask me to put the muck-heap men at the head of affairs – ye might ask till doomsday, but ye'd never get it. An' any man's a fool that would do it."
A placard announcing the formation of an Irish Army of Independence, and calling on the people to enrol themselves, has been extensively circulated, and it is said that the Roman Catholics, like the Protestants, are industriously drilling, north, south, east and west. I am careful to use the term Protestants, as the force available is drawn from the general body of Nonconformists. Orangemen are members of the Church of Ireland, and have always been regarded as Conservative. On the contrary, Presbyterians and Methodists are considered to be advanced Liberals, and herein lies a popular English fallacy – Gladstonians often refer to the Orange agitation against the disestablishment of the Irish Church, which they would fain compare with the present opposition to Home Rule, forgetting or ignoring the fact that the strength of Ulster resides in the Nonconformist bodies, and that these were all in favour of disestablishment, leaving the Orangemen in a hopeless minority. Now, however, the Nonconformists have joined their forces with those of the Orange bodies, which creates a very different aspect of affairs. The English Home Rulers say the opposition will end in smoke. It is said that the most insane are sometimes wiser than they dream, just as liars sometimes speak truth by accident. The movement will end in smoke, but it will be the smoke of battle. Every man who supports the Home Rule Bill incurs the stigma of blood-guiltiness. The bill that succeeds Home Rule will be the Butchers' Bill. No doubt Mr. Gladstone will explain away the "painful occurrences which we all deplore," and will endeavour to transfer the blame to other shoulders. His talent for explanation is unapproachable, but unhappily he cannot explain the slain to life again.
In a former letter I pointed out how cleverly the Nationalists dissect the bill, how they point out that its proposals are insulting to Ireland, how they prove that its provisions are inconsistent and unworkable, how they propose to discount the trumpery restrictions and the gimcrack "safeguards" of the proposed measure, how in short, they tear the bill to rags, laugh its powers to scorn, and hold its authors in high derision. The Belfast men do not discuss the bill, do not examine it clause by clause, do not quibble over the purport of this or the probable effect of that, do not ask how the customs are to be collected, or who is to pay for this, that, or the other. They descend to no details, enter into no particulars, point out no minor fallacies, argue no questions of the ultimate effect of any one section of the bill. They reject the measure as a whole. The principle is bad, radically rotten, and cannot be amended. With the Home Rulers they agree that the bill means Separation, and therefore they put it away en bloc. They will have no part with the unclean thing, but cast it to the winds, bundle it out neck and crop, kick it downstairs, treat it with immeasurable contempt. They are well versed in the broad principles of Constitutional law, as it at present exists; will tell you that the Irish Constabulary is the only force that can be brought against them for the collection of the taxes, which they will absolutely refuse; declare that the military can only be used against them for this purpose by Act of Parliament; cite the preamble of the Army Bill, which shows that there is no standing army, but only a force renewed in its functions from year to year; show that the monarch has ceased to be generalissimo of the British troops since such a year, refer to the sad case of Charles I., who would fain have collected Ship-money from a certain John Hampden, and endeavoured to use the English army for this laudable purpose, meeting a fate at once horrible and instructive. Then comes the application. Similar causes, say they, will bring about similar effects, and if the quality and temper of the people be considered their arguments seem reasonable.
The Irish army of Independence is already a subject of mockery. "Ten of our men would make a hundred of them run like hares. On the 27th ult. a party of Orangemen were fired upon near Stewartstown, and although unarmed they stormed the hill whence came the shots, while the heroic riflemen who had fired 14 bullets, luckily without effect, showed that if too cowardly to fight, they were not too lazy to run." This occurrence, of which I had the description from authority, would have excited some attention in England, but here it is lightly passed over as nothing exceptional. "We are holding back our men. The other party are egging us on to outbreak, in the hope that our cause will be discredited, and that Lord Salisbury's visit in May might be hindered." There is a mutual repugnance between the two peoples, but the character of the repulsion is different. The Roman Catholics manifest an unmistakable hatred – the term is no whit too strong – a hatred of the social and intellectual superiority of their fellow-countrymen, who in turn look upon the Catholics (as a whole) with mistrust, mingled with contempt. As well ask Brother Jonathan to submit to the rule of the negro, as well ask the London