Читать книгу Ireland as It Is, and as It Would Be Under Home Rule - Robert John Buckley - Страница 13

The most extraordinary curiosity of Derry, the lusus naturæ of which the citizens justly boast, is the Protestant Home Ruler of brains and integrity who, under the familiar appellation of John Cook, lives in Waterloo Place. Reliable judges said, "Mr. Cook is a man of high honour, and the most sincere patriot imaginable, besides being a highly-cultured gentleman." So excited was I, so eager to see an Irish Home Ruler combining these qualities with his political faith, that I set off instanter in search of him, and having sought diligently till I found him, intimated a desire to sit at his patriotic feet. He consented to unburden his Nationalist bosom, and assuredly seemed to merit the high character he everywhere bears. Having heard his opinion on the general question, I submitted that Mr. Bull's difficulty was lack of confidence, and that he might grant a Home Rule Bill, if the Irish leaders were men of different stamp. He said they were "clever men not overburdened with money," and admitted that a superior class would have been more trustworthy, but relied on the people. "If the first administrators of the law were dishonest, the people would replace them by others. The keystone of my political faith is trust in the people. The Irish are keen politicians, and may be trusted to keep things square."

I submitted that the patriots were in the pay of the Irish-Americans, who were no friends of England—

"The present Nationalist members are not purists, but to take money for their services, to accept £300 a year is no more disgraceful than the action of the Lord Chancellor who takes £10,000. The American-Irish cherish a just resentment. They went away because they were driven out of the country by the land system of that day. And the Irish people must be allowed to regenerate themselves. It cannot be done by England. Better let them go to hell in their own way than attempt to spoon-feed them. But the injustice of former days does not justify the injustice to the landlords proposed by the present bill. It is a bad bill, an unjust bill, and would do more harm than good. England should have a voice in fixing the price, for if the matter be left to the Irish Parliament gross injustice will be done. The tenants were buying their land, aided by the English loans, for they found that their four per cent. interest came lower than their rent. But they have quite ceased to buy, and for the stipulated three years will pay their rent as usual, and why? Because they expect the Irish legislature to give them even better terms—or even to get the land for nothing. Retributive justice is satisfied. For the last twenty years the landlords have suffered fearfully. The present bill is radically unsound, and I trust it will never become law."

And this was all that the one specimen of a Protestant Home Ruler I have found in Ireland could say in favour of his views! His intelligence and probity compelled him to denounce Mr. Gladstone's Bill as "unjust" and radically unsound, and his patriotism caused him to pray that it might never become law! I left him more Unionist than ever.

The great Orange leader of Derry, Mr. John Guy Ferguson, once Grand Ruler, and of world-wide fame, deprecated appeal to arms, except under direst necessity. "I should recommend resistance to all except the Queen's troops. Before all things a sincere loyalist, I should never consent to fire a shot on them. Others think differently, and in case of pressure and excitement the most regrettable things might happen. The people of Derry are full of their great victory of 1688, and believe that their one hundred and five days' resistance saved England from Catholic tyranny. The Bishop of Derry, as you know, had ordered that the troops of King James should be admitted when the thirteen Prentice Boys closed the gate on the very nose of his army." I saw the two white standards taken from the Catholic troops flanking the high altar of the Cathedral; which also contains the grandly-carved case of an organ taken from a wreck of the Spanish Armada in 1588, just a century before the siege. The people have ever before them these warlike spoils, which may account for their martial spirit. An old Prentice Boy told me of the great doings of 1870, how a Catholic publican, one O'Donnell, endeavoured to prevent the annual marching of the Boys, who on the anniversary of the raising of the siege, parade the walls, fire guns, and burn traitor Lundy in effigy; how 5,000 men in sleeve-waistcoats entered the town to stop the procession, how the military intervened, and forbade both marching and burning; how the Boys seized the Town Hall, and in face of 1,700 soldiers and police burnt an effigy hanging from a high window, which the authorities could not reach; how Colonel Hillier broke down the doors and stormed the hall at the bayonet's point, to search both sexes for arms. Gleefully he produced an alphabetical rhyme, which he thought rather appropriate to the present time, and which ended as follows:—"X is the excellent way they (the authorities) were beaten, and exceeding amount of dirt they have eaten. Y is the yielding to blackguards unshorn, which cannot and will not much longer be borne. Z is the zeal with which England put down the Protestant boys who stood up for the crown." In 1883 Lord Mayor Dawson of Dublin wished to lecture at Derry, but the Boys took the Hall and held it, declining to permit the "colleague of Carey" (on the Dublin Town Council) to speak in the city. There you have the present spirit of Derry.

Two miles outside the town I came on a fine Home Ruler, who had somewhere failed to sell a pig. "Sorra one o' me 'll do any good till we get Home Rule." He paid £5 a year for two acres of land with a house. "'Tis the one-half too much, Av I paid fifty shillings, I'd be aisy," he said. Truly a small sum to stand between him and affluence. I failed to sympathise with this worthy man, but my spirits fell as I walked through a collar factory, and thought of Mr. Gladstone. The dislocation of the shirt trade is less serious. Few Irish patriots have any personal interest in this particular branch of industry.

Dublin, April 8th.