IRELAND'S DEMAND.

Auckland Star, Volume XX, Issue 166, 15 July 1889, Page 2

IRELAND'S DEMAND.

By Canon Basil Wilberforce, In "Contemporary Review," March, 1889. In the present article I desire mainly to restrict myself to the application to the Irish difficulty of one fundamental test, based npon the golden rule of the everlasting Gospel. Ib is, however, necessary, before doing this, briefly to consider the position from the popular standpoint. I am fully conscious of the impossibility of adding new matter to the cataract of words ceaselessly poured forth from press and platform since Mr Gladstone produced his proposals for Home Rule. Indeed, the most emphatic utterance upon the Irish question is of thepre-Gladstone era, andnow historically venerable, having been spoken by Lord Beaconsfield (then Mr Disraeli) in 1845 : "Thelrish," he said, "in extreme distress, inhabit an island where there is an establisneci church, which is not'their church, and a territorial aristocracy, the richest of whom live in foreign capitals. Thus you have a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien church; and, in addition, the weakest executive in the world. This is the Irish question. Well, then, what would hon. gentlemen say if they were reading of a country in that position ? They would say at once 'The remedy is revolution.' But the Irish cannot have a revolution ; and why? Because Ireland is connected with another and more powcrml country. Then what is the consequence? Ihe Nje-riectioh with -England thus becomes the cause of the present state- of Ireland. If the connection with England Prevents .evolution, and a revolution , is the> only remedy, England, logically, is m the. odious position of being the cause ot all the misery in Ireland. What, then, i 3 tho duty ot an lingusn Minister? To effect, by his policy, all those changes which a revolution would do by force. That is the Irish question in its integrity ; but I Will say, if these recommendations are adoptee, that in SO years hence the men who shall succeed the present generation in Parliament will And the people in Ireland a contented and thriving peasantry." The sentiments of this speech were not only never repudiated, but subsequently re-affirmed by Lord Beaconsfield : " England, logically, is in the odious position of being the cause of all the misery in Ireland." This tremendous indictment is no rhetorical exaggeration, but the outspoken declaration of a historical fact. Since Henry 11. established himself in Dublin as "Lord Paramount," England has been painstakingly qualifying heiself for the verdict of Lord Beaconsfield. Ib is incontrovertible thab Elizabetk made Norbh Ireland a "land of carcases and ashes." James I. confiscated three million acres of land, and, . according to Reid's history of the Irish Presbyterians, colonised them with "the seam of the English and Scottish nations." Charles 1., through the guilty hand of Strafford (Black Tom), according to Le'cky (historian), bribed judges, packed juries, and stole 3,000,000 acres of land, which he BoldinLondontotheTradesGuilds,thuscommencing absentee proprietorship. Cromwell confiscateds,ooo,oooacresofland, with which _c paid his soldiers of fortune; William 111., called in Limerick William the Conqueror, after violating the Treaty of Limerick, confiscated more than a million of acres. In the year 1800, at the cost of 48 patents of nobility, two millions of money added to the national debt of Ireland, and Pitt's unfulfilled pledge of Catholic emancipation, the sale of the Constitution, commonly callsd tho " Act of Union," was accomplished. In 1824 De Beaumont, a French stabesman, declared that he had seen the Indian in his wigwam and the negro in his chaius, bub thab the condibion ot the Irish peasant was worse than that of the savage or the slave. During the fifty years of the roign of Queen Victoria, in spite of certain ameliorations wrung with difficulty from the British Parliament, we have the following horrible record, under the cold arithmetic of which lies hid an agony indescribable :— Died of Famine 1,225,000 Evicted by Landlords .. .. 3,668,000 Emigrated 4.186.0CG Say a total of 9,079,000 of our fellow subjects. Land gone out of tillage during the last twenty years, 100.000 acres; good land now waiting for reclamation, 1,500,000 acres. Verily, Lord Beaconsfield, being dead, yeb speaketb, and the obiter dicta of the patron saint of the Primrose League might profitably be writ . large upon the walls of every " habitation," as the strongest argument for a complete and immediate reversal of the bludgeon, bayonet, and batteringram policy, ever accompanying the 88 coercion Acts (one annually since the Union) under which Ireland has been oppressed during this century. When the average Englishman thinks or speaks of Ireland his mental attitude is that attributed by St. Paul to the Jews studying the Old Testament, " The veil is upon his heart." Not one in 10,000 has arrived at the opinion he holds by careful study of history and independent investigation upon the spot. It is curious to notice how wibh many bhe name "Irish " climabically is synonymous wibh bog, misb and a melancholy ocean ; while anthropologically it is suggestive of crime, drunkenness, and indolence. Every characteristic, both of scenery and inhabibanb, conbradicb3 the slander. The wooded splendour slopes of Killarney, and the sheer precipitous cliffs of Mohur, rising 800 feet perpendicularly out of the Atlantic, and silvered with tens of thousands of seabirds, are samples of the attractive beauty for which the Emerald Isle is famous. The Irish people are, for the most part, exceptionally patient, God-fearing, law-abiding, and moral; shepherded by a priesthood who, in simplicity of life and whole-hearted devotion to duty, will compare favourably with any body of clergy in Christendom. CRIMES IN IRELAND. But are there no atrocious crimes in Ireland, no outrages upon defenceless men and women, no cruel mutilations of cattle, indicating national unfitness for self-go-vernment ? In replying to this question it is necessary, in the interests of truth and justice, to state that, unspeakably abominable as have been some of the reprisals resorted to by Irishmen, they have been magnified, both as to frequency and malignity, by exaggerations of the grossest kind. Numerous cases of sending threatening letters, burning ricks, and doing injury to stock have been discovered to be the work of owners and caretakers unable to resist the temptation of the compensation obtainable under the Grand.Jury system, and case after case of reported outrage has been proved to be the entire invention of the enemy. For example, the " Times," of March 7th, IEB7, contained a horrible story,to the effect that a party of Moonlighters visited the house of a farmer in the neighbourhood of Killarney, and that, having found the farmer alone with his daughter, they dragged away the latter and outraged her while the man himself 'was kept in terror of his life. On March 10th, ib wa3 admitted in Parliament thab there was not one word of truth in the story. (See "Times," of March 11th, 1887.) Again, one of the most thrilling tales told by Mr Balfour in supporb of the Coercion Bill was that of a midwife who,jthrough the intimidation of the National League, refused to attend the wife of a boycotted farmer in her confinement. The midwife referred to (Mrs Margaret Dillon) lias since made a solemn declaration that she refused to attend the woman in question because she was fulfilling, on the same day, another engagement entered into three days before, and that no influence or intimidation was ■used by anyone to prevent her attending. Mrs Dillon, in vindication of her character and that of her neighbours, has since instituted an action for libel against Mr Balfour, but he has evaded service of the writ by pleading " privilege." On April 27th, 1887, a horrible case of mutilation of cattle was reported from Rabhfarnham, in the county of Dublin, It was reported that the tails of no fewer than six cows, the property of Colonel Rowley,

a noted royalist, had been cut off. On May 10th, 1887, it was admitted by the Government in the House of Commons that the only foundation for the story was that one cow's tail had fallen off through disease. After discounting, however, all malicious exaggerations, the deplorable fact remains that in a country proverbial for kindhearted,ness, and in which the lower animals are more humanely treated than in any spot in Europe, defenceless human beings have been injured, and cattle have been maimed, under the delirium of a revolutionary madness. Primrose dames, whose smart carriage horses have been mutilated in cold blood by the painful operation of chopping off their tails and searing the stumps with a red-hot iron, in conformity to a senseless fashion, and who can preside unshocked over the bloody slaughter of a battue, or the disgraceful cruelty of a pigeon match or sta<? hunt, will nob fail to make the most of these deplorable excesses. God forbid that any right-minded man should plead provocation as a justification of horrors which all condemn with loathing. Ib should, however, be remembered, that so truthful a statesman as Lord Melbourne, when Chief Secretary, publicly declared- of a victim of agrarian murder :-•- If half of what is told me of him be trtr if he had forty lives it would have been no wonder had they all been taken." , The scientific action of heredity has more to do with Irish outrages than the theological doctrine of original sin. The perpetrators of outrages in Ireland are descendants of those outlawed by the "Plantation of Ulster," agonised by the atrocities of Cromwell's hirelings,, stirred ■" quenchless revenge by the insult to the Celtic blood when 1,000 Irish lads were shipped as slaves to Bardadoes, and 1,000 Irish girls and women consigned to bo mistresses to the English sugar planters (See " Kingdom of Ireland," by Walpole); crushed and pauperised by centuries of boycotting of the and exports, education, manufactures, and'religion of the whole nation. It is a moral, as well as a physiological law, that perpetual irritation producesabnormalmalignity. Even the member for West Birmingham (Mr J. Chamberlain) now, under the passport of the haine tierce, courted by the royalty he is pledged to the hilt to destroy, flattered by Archbishops of the church he has sworn to sweep away, once acknowledged the galling of the fetter with which Ireland is chained. Speaking in London Juno 17th, 1885, he said : " I do not believe that the great majority of Englishmen havo the slightest conception of the system under which this free nation attempts to rule a sister country. It is a system which is founded on the bayonets of 30,000 soldiers, encamped permanently as in a hostile country. It is a system which is as completely centralised and bureaucratic as that with which Paissia governs Poland, or as that which was common i in Venice under Austrian rule. An Irishman to this moment cannot move a step; he cannot lift a linger in any parochial, municipal, or educational work without being confronted, interfered with, controlled by an English official appointed by a foreign Government, and with-' out a shadow or shade o£ representative authority. I eav the time has come to reform altogether tho absurd and irritating anachronism which is known as Dublin Castle—to sweep away altogether these alien boards of foreign officials, and to substitute for them a genuine Irish administration for purely Irish business." j Again, all who know from personal observation the indescribable attachment of the Irishman to the dreariest cabin which he calls home, will understand the unreasoning fury with which he resents the misery caused by the four million evictions of the Victorian era. With a few exceptions eagerly seized upon and published in leaded type in the " Times," the history of Irish evictions is the same. Bare mountain land squatted on, enclosed, cultivated, cropped, studded with outhouses, stocked with cattle, gradually increasing in value, a3 the steady labour and unceasing thrift of half a generation of tenants bury their life blood in the soil, until that which was once worth three shillings an acre becomes worth twenty-one shillings. Then the scramble fox the eighteen shillings, the bitter contest over the unearned increment; the rent raised again and again, tho tenant being fined for his own and his parents' industry, until a succession of bad seasons makes payment impossible. Then appeals to the landlord, followed by the appointment of a new and severer agent; next evictions and revolts ; and lastly, the adoption of the Plan of Campaign and the occupation of the proclaimed district by an armed force. The ferocity and cold-bloodedness with which these evictions are often carried out, is exemplified by the following case, extracted from a leading Irish newspaper in March, 1888 :— '' Mr Jas. Kilmartin, of Ballinasloe, was imprisoned by the magistrate, and his sentence doubled on appeal to the Recorder, for encouraging his fellow-tenants to join the Plan of Campaign- When Ihe Government had put Kilmartin out of the way the chivalrous landlord (Mr Thos. J. Tuliy, Rath Farm) proceeded with an army of emergency men aud police to evict his wife and seven children from their home. The poor woman begged for God's sake to be spared, as she was sick and in great pain. The following certificate, which was handed to Mr Tully, confirmed her statement:—'This is to certify that Mrs Kilmartin, Shralea. has been under my treatment for some weeks, suffering from severe mammary abscess; in addition, she is on the eve of being confined, and in my opinion eviction from her home in her present condition may seriously imperil her life. (Signed) P. P. DelaHunt, L.R.O.S. arid p Ed., Ballinasloe, June Ist, 1888." But tho. tender-hearted Mr Tully cared for none of these things, ' He came,' he said, ' for his legal rights, and, by God, he meant to have them.' He had his rights. The poor sick woman was dragged out by the Crowbar Brigade. She fainted threo times in the course of the removal, She was flung in a heap on the ground, her seven young children clamouring around her. Father Costello, who knelt beside her, feared each moment would bo her last. Meantime, the hearth was quenched, and the furniture bundled out into the street after the owner. The triumph of law and order was complete. The coldblooded evictor stood by carelessly switching his cane, and now and again addressing a word of reproof and direction to his subordinates. Even the poor request that she should be readmitted as caretaker until some shelter could be provided he contemptuously refused. She might havo died in the street for all he cared. She would havo inevitably died in the street if some charitable neighbour had not offered her and her children the shelter of his roof." We will nob comment on this scene. We date not trust ourselves to comment on it. The words that rise hot from a man's heart after reading it aro not words to be addressed to an excitable people maddened by their sufferings. These are the dragon's teeth from whose sowing springs the crop of reprisal and revenge. All who would know the truth, and realise how Irish peasants have suffered under the unjust cruelties of irresponsibility iv possession, should read " The Struggle for Life on the Ponsonby Estate," written by the Rev. Canon Keller, a clergymen of high character, loving spirit, and unimpeachable veracity. One other aspect of the Irish question claims a passing notice. There is a stage in the history of most movements when ib is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous. : This climax is reached in the antiHome Rule struggle, when the member for West Birmingham poses as " Defender of the Faith," and warns all true Protestants against the policy of Mr Gladstone by sounding the no-Popery trumpet. "To give Ireland autonomy," he declares, "will be to hand over the Protestants bound hand and foot to be persecuted by the Roman Catholic majority." A more preeminently mischievous andinsultingslander was never uttered by an ex-Minister of the Crown against the religious sentiments of a people. Ib is true that the unreasoning ignorance and savage bigotry of political Orangeism, lashed into turbulence by such inflammatory utterances as Lord Randolph Churchill's memorable, " By God, gentlemen, you will fight," may, and probably will, call for firm dealing at the hands of an Irish Parliament with the control of its own police, and such firm dealing is sure to bo called religiouß perse- : cution. Political Orangeism, however, has no connection with genuine anti-Catholic conviction, a conclusion easily derivable from bhe complacent silonco with which a recent

unconstitutional appeal to the Vatican for aid in administering, the British Empire was received by Orangemen, and the glib facility with which the time-honoured creed "to H— wibh the Pope" reconstructed itself after the Papal allocation into the formula "Go and do what the Pope bids you." Ib is, however, scarcely sufficiently recognised that the weight and influence of the disloyal minority who have publicly declared that they will rebel against the Queen's government if Home Rule is conceded to Ireland, has been greatly exaggerated, ant 1 that in so-called Probesbanb Ulsber, the o c of the anti-Home Rule agitation, 17 out of 33 members of Parliament are Nationalists. But to lift this question into a purer atmosphere, there is not theslightest ground for the apprehension that Roman Catholics, if in power, would exact unholy reprisals. The fact that in the reign of Queen Mary no Protestant suffered for his faith in Irelandluminously testifies to the latitude of Irish tolerance. Though the memory of the tyrannous abominations of the penal code, and the cruelties of Catholic disabilities must needs be undying ; though the denominational intolerance whereby Catholics are rigidly excluded from every municipality where Protestantism is now in •the ascendant, cannot but cause heart-burning, the Catholics of the South and West have never shown the slightest inclination to retaliate. In the hope of laying the phantom, the candle in whose hollow skull has been re-lit by the member for West Birmingham, I recently requested Father Behan, a prominent Dublin Nationalist, to give some pacifying assuranco that liberty of conscience would not be interfered with under Roman Catholic rules. " You should live here," ho writes, " to know that, other things being equal, we actually give the preference to a Protestant if he will only consent to be an Irishman. Dogmatic differences are entirely set aside in this contest; nay, you have a reflection of this in England, where Lord Salisbury's Home Secretary and. Mr Gladstone's Attorney-General are both Catholics. No man wonders at this as he would a generation ago, for it is merely an expression of the times. No man in Ireland could, if ho was so minded, excite the popular mind against Protestants, and the people wj-io are harping on this against us, if thoy are Irishmen, know they aro not telling the truth. Another charge against us is that we want separation. We might as well be charged with wanting the moon; we are agitating in Ireland becauso we are hungry, and naked, and bludgeoned, and put in gaol. Treat us fairly, and yon will havo to go to a dictionary to look for ' separation.' This Coercion Act does not interfere with our loyalty to England, because we areconviheed that it is not the actof the British people." Thetruespirit of the Irish people breathes through this characteristic letter and brings into prominence England's alter- ' native. "The only two powers in the I- world," said Napoleon, " are kindness and the sword." The latter, conditioned in ! 88 Coercion Acts this century, a standing army of 30,000 men, and a force of constabulary costing the Irish people a million and a-half annually, has proved, and ever . will prove, a conspicuous failure. The urgency of the crisis, the obligations of 1 conscience, the experience accumulated ; from egregious blundering, all point to the more excellent way. CANADA AND HOME RULE. Fifty years ago Canadians trooped out of their churches when Te Deums were chanted in honour of the Q.ueen's accession; they were demanding autonomy and ex- \ pressing their dissatisfaction by boycotting ' and the mutilation of cattle. ■ The year ; before last, in no spot in Her Majesty's dominions were jubilee rejoicings more ' hearty or unanimous than in Canada, and this metamorphosis is the logical 1 fruit of the Home Rule Constitution of . 1840. , THE "NO POPERY" CRY. > England surely is oblivious of her magi nificent traditions, and sinks to the bathos ' of political infatuation when she can be in- ■ timidated by the manipulation of so an- > tiquated a phantom as the "No Popery " t cry into sitting upon the safety valve of Irish discontent. Even upon thy hypo- ; thesis, which can by no means be conceded, i that the British Governmenb is right and - Ireland wrong in the present contention, j the Diviner attitude, the more certain • peace-bringer, would be to apply the - eacred principle of the Gospel, " Overcome i evil with eood," and conquer by tho simple might of concession. 1 THE ENGLISH MASSES. ! Tho first solution, however, of this rao- , mentous question rests with the English masses, and it is hardly conceivable thab they can be unmindful of the fact that the | opponents of Home Rule are chiefly the '. very classes who withstood the rights of - the British working men as long as they | dared, pronouncing the English labourer i unfit for the franchise as contemptuously t and dogmatically as they now pronounce • the Irish voter incapable of managing his I own affairs. There are not wanting sympc toms of a change of feeling on the part of ) the British artisans, a change instinctively 1 recognised by the Irish people. The cartoons ' in the Irish illustrated papers, crude but acl curate picture lessons of phases of Irish feol--1 ing, no longer represent England oppressing ; Ireland, bub John Bull intervening- to rescue . Ireland from so-called " Unionist" coercion. 3 It is customary for the opponents of Homo ', Rule to claim that the intellect, the wealth 3 and the social rank of the nation is solid for j coercion. If the traditional sophistry of - the aristocratic habit did not blind the r eyes to the teachings of the fact, this claim i should rather awaken their anxiety than s inspire them with confidence. De Tocque--1 ville spoke no idle word when he said ? "God works behind the Democracy ;" and r one greater than De Tocqueville said, 1 "Thou hast hid these things from the ' wise and prudent and revealed them unto 1 babes." The hot spring ab Aix-la-Chapelle, 3 welling forth from earth's central fires, r, softens into the consistency of clay the black i marble basin into which it flows, though of such adamantine hardness that it yields with difficulty to the sharpest chisel. It i is thus with movements wakened into 3 activity from the central fires of a nation's 3 heart; they are finally irresistible. The I intellect, the wealth, and the social rank of s Judea combined against the claims of Him > whom the common people " heard gladly," I and the inspired narrative affords an imi pressive example that tho instincts of the j less well instructed masses, when in direct , opposition to the classes, the professions, the i ecclesiastics, can be right. The Phari- , sees answered, "Have any of the rulers ■ believed, or of the Pharisees ?" " But this 3 multitude which knoweth nob the law are i accursed." The " Appeal to the People " 3 was treated with contempt and ridicule. ■j The multitude were'ignorant, they knew ) not the law ; how could they decide a point involving a study of ancient writings and - a comparison of prophecy with fulfilment ? f In short, "they were accursed." There E was, however, a spirit of right judgment in--3 spiring their decision, and the verdict of t believing millions for eighteen centuries i has been that the people were right and the I classes were wrong. The pages of history since that day are studded with examples i of crises in the growth of nations, the . amelioration of the conditions of life, the • emancipation of men, the purification of i faiths, in which the people have been right i and the classes have been wrong. ! The time approaches when the people • will pronounce the verdict upon the fate of , Ireland—nay, rather of England, for in the : words of Lamartine, "No man, a fortiori, no nation ever rivetted the chains of slavery round the neck of his brother that God did i not secretly bub irresistibly weld the other i endofthechainroundtheneckofthetyranb;" and hath not God said, " Woe to them— ■ .they covet fields and take them by violence, and houses and take them away .: they opi press a man and his house, even a man and his heritage; therefore, thus saith the Lord, againßb this family do I believe an i Qrih'l (Micah 11. 2.)

The crisis is urgent; the issue of the f next verdict of the English people will be £ momentous ; the inauguration of anew era i of coercion may preclude the possibility of t a peaceful conclusion to the long contro- c versy, the oppressed nation may become t hardened, and learn "to love despair." 1 Like the prisoner of Chillon, Ireland may i learn to say :— * " My very chains and I grew friends, « So much a long communion tends t To make us what we are; even I ( Regained my freedom with a sigh. ( In the dignified and most pathetic appeal , with which Mr Gladstone brought to a con- j elusion the great debate of 1886, a speech { which elicited from friend and foe alike the ( tribute of a prolonged burst of irrepressible j applause, his last words were, " We have j the people's hearts.'' If as a £ declaration of present facb, it was luminous ( with discernment as a prophecy now , approaching fulfilment. The character- , istic English instinct that abhors oppres- i sion, is clearing its vision from the false j issues which the last general election be- ( clouded, and when moral right awakes it j is irrepressible. \ " Once to every man and nation 1 Comes the moment to decide, ; In the strife of truth and falsehood ( For the good or evil side. Some great cause, God's new Messiah, i Ofl'cring each the bloom or blight, | Farts the goats upon the left hand , And the sheep upon the. right, And the choice goes by for evei?_ 'Twixt that darkness and that light. 1 Hast thou chosen, ob, my people, j On whose party thou shalt stand 1 The next general election will answer the , question, and we believe that Ireland's de- , mand for Homo Rule will be conceded by , the immense majority of bho English people , in tho name of Freedom, Justice, and the ■ Fear o:? God. j