Part 3 (1/2)
”Let us follow still further what happened. The shopkeepers, finding their trade quite gone, for it was almost worth a person's life to go into their shops, watched as they were by paid spies, had to capitulate to the League. An abject apology and a promise to let themselves be evicted next time were the price they had to pay to be allowed in a free country to carry on their trade. Ruin faced them both ways. After having the ban of boycotting taken off them, with eviction not far distant, most of them held clearance sales, at tremendous sacrifices, so as to be prepared for moving. One man is reputed to have got rid of seven thousand pounds' worth of goods under these circ.u.mstances. Of the other division, who allowed their places to be sold, most of them are now evicted. Dozens of shop a.s.sistants, needlewomen, and others connected with the trade of a thriving town, are thrown out of employment, and a peaceful neighbourhood has been changed into a scene of bloodshed and violence.
”I appeal to the English people not to encourage or support a vile system of intimidation and violence, a system which not only pursues and ruins its enemies, but refuses to allow peaceably-inclined people to remain neutral. A case like this should not be one of Party politics, but should be looked upon as the cause of all who wish to pursue their lawful vocations peaceably against those who wish to tyrannise by terror over the community at large.
”I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
”FOEDI FOEDERIS ADVERSARIUS.”
”December 12.”
My private letters strengthen and confirm every word of this account; and the following letter is again a proof of personal tyranny and political malevolence not rea.s.suring as qualities in the governing power:--
”TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'TIMES.'
”Sir,--I have received a letter from my friend Mr. Edward Phillips, of Thurlesbeg House, Cashel, and the round, unvarnished tale that he delivers throws more light upon Ireland than any amount of the windy rhetoric which is so plentifully displayed on Parnellite and Gladstonian platforms. Mr. Phillips writes as follows:--
”'I hold 270 acres from Mr. Smith-Barry at a rent of 340 under lease and tenant-right, which, with my improvements, I valued at 1,000. The Land League have decided, thinking to hurt Mr. Smith-Barry, that all tenants must prepare to give up their farms by allowing themselves to be evicted. They are clearing off everything, and because I refuse to do this, and forfeit my 1,000, I am boycotted in the most determined manner. I am refused the commonest necessaries of life, even medicine, and have to get all from a distance. Blacksmiths, &c., refuse to work, and labourers have notice to leave, but have not yet done so.
”'Heretofore people were boycotted for taking farms; I am boycotted for not giving up mine, which I have held for 25 years. A neighbour of mine, an Englishman, is undergoing the same treatment, and we alone.
We are the only Protestant tenants on the Cashel estate. The remainder of the tenants, about 30, are clearing everything off their land, and say they will allow themselves to be evicted.'
”I think this requires no comment. Public opinion is the best protection against tyranny, and your readers can judge how far the above narrative is consistent with the opinions expressed by Mr.
Parnell and others as to the liberty and toleration which will be accorded to the loyal minority when the Land-National League becomes the undisputed Government of Ireland.
”Your obedient servant,
”R. BAGWELL.”
”Clonmell, December 27th.”
Again an important extract:--
”This is Mr. Parnell's language at Nottingham, but would he venture to use the same arguments in this country? Would he enumerate clearly to an Irish audience the countless advantages they derive from Imperial funds and Imperial credit, and tell them that the first step to Home Rule is the sacrifice of all these advantages? Our great system of national education is provided out of Imperial funds to the extent of about a million a year; so are the various inst.i.tutions for the encouragement of science and art which adorn Dublin and our other large towns. The Baltimore School of Fishery and other technical training places, the piers and harbours on the Irish Coast, the system of light railways, and the draining of rivers and reclamation of waste lands, are all supported out of the Imperial Exchequer. The Board of Works alone has been the medium of lending almost five millions of money on easy terms under the Land Improvement Acts in the country.
Nor have the agricultural interests been neglected. For erecting farmhouses alone over 700,000 has been given, while immense sums have been spent in working the Land Acts. For drainage over two millions have been lent, and a sum of over one million has been remitted from the debt. A debt of eight and a-half millions appears in the last return as outstanding from the Board of Irish Public Works, besides three millions and a-half from the corresponding board in England. In fact, there is not a project enumerated by Mr. Parnell as necessary, under a new _regime_, to promote the 'Nationality of Ireland,' which is not at present being helped on by the funds or the credit of the 'alien Government.' All these national advantages the supporter of a shadowy Home Rule bids us give up.”
If ever there was a case of the spider and the fly in human affairs this mild and perfectly equitable reasoning of Mr. Parnell is the ill.u.s.tration. How about the djinn crying inside the sealed jar, and the fate of the credulous fisherman who obeys that voice and breaks the seal which Solomon the Wise set against him?
In writing this pamphlet I have not cared for graces of literary style or dramatic strength of composition; and I have largely supported myself by quotations as a proof that I am not a mere impressionist, but have a solid back-ground and a firm foothold for all that I have said. Judged by these extracts it would seem that, outside the right of full communal self-government, the cry for Home Rule is either interested and fict.i.tious--or when sincere--save in certain splendid exceptions, of whom Mr. Laing is the honoured chief, and the only Home Ruler who makes me doubt the rightness of my own conversion--it is a mere sentimental impulse shorn of practical power and working capacity. In any case it is a one-sided thing, leaving out of court Ulster, the integrity of the Empire, and the obligations of historic continuity. It is a cry that has been echoed by violence and murder, by outrage and ruin, and that has in it one overwhelming element of weakness--exaggeration. It is the cry at its best of enthusiasts whose ideas of human life and governmental potentialities are too generous for every-day practice--at its worst but another word for self. For the men who raise it and hound on these poor dupes to their own destruction are men who would be rulers of the country in their own persons, or members of a Gladstonian ministry, were the Home Rule party to come to the front. With neither section does the strength, the glory, the integrity, and the continuance of the Empire count; and the honour of England, like the true well-being of Ireland, is the last thing thought of by either party. The motto of the one is: ”_Fiat just.i.tia ruat caelum_”--of the other: ”_Apres moi le deluge._”
The one abjures the necessities of statesmans.h.i.+p, the other the self-restraints of patriotism. Surely the good, wholesome, working principles of sound government lie with neither, but rather with the steady continuance of things as they are--modified as occasion arises and the needs of the case demand.
FOOTNOTES: