Читать книгу Ireland as It Is, and as It Would Be Under Home Rule - Robert John Buckley - Страница 7

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y the Spirit of the Capital I do not mean, as an Irishman would tell you, Jameson's whiskey, nor yet the vivifying soul of Guinness's double stout, but the mental posture of the dwellers in Dublin with reference to Home Rule. There can be no doubt of the interest prevailing in the Irish metropolis. The people are wrought into a fever-heat of expectancy and intense nervous excitement. Home Rule is the only topic of conversation. In hotels, on the steamers, in railway carriages, on tramcars, in the market-place, on the steps of the temples, at the corners of the streets, in the music halls, the wondering stranger hears of Home Rule, Home Rule, Home Rule, first, last, midst, and without end.

Obviously so much discussion shows difference of opinion, divergency of conception, conflicting interests. It is borne in upon you that the Irish people are far from agreed as to what Home Rule means, and that every individual has his own pet notion, the various theories differing as widely as the education and social position of their proposers. But the most striking feature in the attitude of Dublin is undoubtedly the intense, the deep-rooted, the perfervid hatred of the bill shown by the better sort of people, the nervous anxiety of the law-abiding classes, the undisguised alarm of everybody who has anything to lose, whether commercial men, private traders, manufacturers, or the representatives of learning and culture. The mere shadow of Home Rule has already seriously affected stocks and securities, has brought about withdrawal of capital, and is sending both English and Irish commercial travellers home empty-handed. Sir Howard Grubb, maker of the great telescope of the Lick Observatory, America, an Irishman whose scientific and commercial successes are a glory to his country, and whose titular honours have been won by sheer force of merit, declares that the passing of the Home Rule Bill will be the signal heralding his departure to England, with plant and working staff, and that he has been preparing for this since 1886. One of the largest booksellers in the city tells me that, acting in conjunction with others of the trade, during the last six weeks no orders have been given to English travellers, adding—and thoughtful people should find this highly suggestive—"The Dublin Unionists are the people who have the money and the education. The people who have money to spend are becoming excessively careful. They know not what may be in store, but they fear that if Home Rule becomes law they will be ruined, and more than ninety-five per cent. of my customers are Unionists."

Further inquiry confirmed the statement that the book-buying community are practically Unionists to a man. The same figures hold good among the Irish Quakers. Ninety-five per cent. is the proportion given to me by an eminent Friend, no stranger to Birmingham, intimately known to Alderman White and three generations of the Cadbury family. He said, "Irish Quakers are Unionists, because they are on the spot, because they understand the subject, because they know what will follow, because they share the dangers of the threatened revolution. What may be the proportion of Home Rulers among the English Friends I do not know, but probably the Gladstonians have a majority, for precisely opposite reasons to those I have stated, that is—they are not on the spot, do not understand the matter, are unable to see what will take place, and regard themselves as safe, whatever happens." The Irish Quakers have issued a manifesto which should weigh with their English brethren and with the country at large. The Quakers know their way about. Their piety has not blunted their perceptive faculties, has not taken the edge off their keenness. Their reputation for shrewdness is equal to their reputation for integrity, which is saying a good deal. With them the innocence of the dove is happily combined with considerable wisdom of the serpent. And at least ninety-five per cent. of the Irish Quakers are earnest Unionists.

But although the deep concern of the respectable classes of the Irish capital is calculated to fill the wandering Englishman with grave uneasiness, it is not all tragedy. The Dubliners must have their fun, and, like the Parisians, will sport with matters of heaviest import. The poorer classes treat the universal subject lightly, as beseems men who have nothing to lose and everything to gain. The prevailing trait in their mental attitude is incredulousness. You cannot make them believe that the bill will pass. "We'll get Home Rule when a pair o' white wings sprouts out o' me shoulders an' I fly away like a blackbird," said an old market woman with great emphasis; and a Dublin jackeen, piloting an American over the city, said: "This, Sorr, is College Green, an' that, Sorr, is Thrinity College, an' that Sorr,"—here he pointed to the grand pile opposite the College—"that Sorr, is the grate buildin' in which the Irish Parliament is not going to meet!" At one of the music halls an old woman (Ireland) is represented as buying a coffin for a deceased son named "Home Rule" Bill, when the following conversation occurs:—

"Is it an oak or an elm coffin ye want?"

"Ah, thin, just a chape deal coffin, shure—wid a few archangels on the lid."

"Will ye want any trimmings?"

"Arrah, what d'ye mane by trimmin's?"

"Trimmings for the coffin."

"Bad luck to yer trimmin's. What would I want wid them? Sure 'twas 'trimmin's' that kilt him!"

It is hoped that Saxon readers will see this subtle joke when I explain that "delirium" should come before "trimmin's."

Underneath the incredulity of the lower classes—and be it observed that their incredulity is obviously based on an instinctive feeling that the claims and arguments of their own party are alike preposterous—underneath this vein of unbelief is a vein of extraordinary credulity. Poverty is to be at once and for ever abolished. "The millions an' millions that John Bull dhrags out iv us, to kape up his grandeur, an' to pay soldiers to grind us down, we'll put into our own pockets, av you plaze," was the answer vouchsafed to an inquiry as to what advantages were expected from the passing of the Home Rule Bill. The speaker was a political barber. Another of the craft said, in answer to the same query, "Well, Sorr, I think we have a right to our indipindence. Sure, we'd be as sthrong as Switzerland or Belgium." A small farmer from the outlying district thought that rents would be lowered, that money would be advanced to struggling tenants, that great public works would be instituted, and plainly intimated that all these good things and many more had been roundly promised by the Home Rule leaders, and that he, for one, fully believed that all would duly come to pass, once the Bill were carried, which happy event he never expected to see. Every man was to be a kind of king in his own country, evictions were to be utterly unknown; the peasantry were to live rent free, under a visionary scheme of which he had all the absurd particulars; the old sporting maxim reminding farmers that landlord shooting begins on January 1st and ends on December 31st was to become obsolete by reason of a complete extinction of the species—only an odd one being occasionally dug out of the bogs along with trunks of bog-oak and skeletons of the great Irish elk; while the family pig, which, having for ages occupied a responsible position in the matter of "Rint," is understood to be an inveterate landlord-hater, will be released from his delicate situation, will be relieved from his harassing anxieties, will no longer be sacrificed to the exigencies of the occasion; but, on the contrary, will peacefully expire of old age, surrounded by every tribute of respect. The dirtiest of the Dubliners hold opinions as to the marvellous results of Home Rule more adapted to their own positions and pursuits, but apparently on the same plane, no whit higher in the scale of intelligence. They regard the English as their natural enemies, and the lower you go the more truculent they become. One and all they hold the belief, industriously instilled by agitators, that the poverty of Ireland is due to the aggrandisement of England, that the bulk of Irish taxation flows into English coffers, and is used for English purposes to the exclusion of Ireland, and this they have swallowed and insist upon, in defiance of common reason and the evidence of their senses. The instinct of patriotism is not en évidence. The dominant passion is cupidity, and nothing higher; sheer greed of gain, lust of possession, and nothing nobler. Selfishness and the hope of plunder are the actuating impulses at the poll; crass ignorance and bitter prejudice the mental disposition of the lower class of voters. Four hours' slumming convinced me of this, and must convince anyone. "We'll bate the English into the say," said a resident in the sweet region yclept Summer Hill. "Whin we get the police in our hands an' an army of our own, we'd sweep them out o' the counthry av we only held cabbage-shtalks. Ireland for the Irish, an' to hell wid John Bull! Thim's my sintiments." And those are the "sintiments" of his class. I have spent days among the Irish Home Rulers without having once heard of the Union of Hearts. The phrase serves well enough to tickle the simple souls of the long-eared but short-headed fraternity of pseudo-philosophical-philanthropists across the water, but it has no currency in Ireland.

Like the country folks the city slummers believe that unheard-of advantages would follow the great Bill, and, unconsciously parodying Sancho Panza, say in effect, "Now blessings light on him who first invented Home Rule! it covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot." The bare thought of the coming Paradise illuminates their dirty visages. Like the lunatic, the lover, and the poet, they are of imagination all compact, and, unlike the character mentioned by the Bard, they "can hold a fire in their hands, By thinking on the frosty Caucasus, And cloy the hungry edge of appetite By bare imagination of a feast; And wallow naked in December snow By thinking on fantastic summer's heat."

Meanwhile, they lounge about in idleness, hugging their misery, discussing the "bating" of the Unionist party, or, as I saw them yesterday evening, listening to the crooning of an ancient female gutter-snipe, a dun-coloured heap of decrepit wretchedness, chanting the great future of the Irish Parliament in a picturesque and extraordinary doggerel anent the "larned reprisintatives of the Oirish na-a-tion. Promiscu-o-ous they shtand in em-u-la-a-tion." The small shopkeepers, once ardent Nationalists, seem to be changing their minds. One of them confided to me the fact that he and his fellows, brought actually face to face with the possibility that the end of their aspirations and agitations would be attained, were beginning to ask whether, after all, taxation would be remitted, whether indeed the rates would not be heavier, and whether the moneyed people would remain in the country at all. Hearing on all sides these and similar confessions, accompanied by urgent admonitions of secrecy, you begin to ask whether the past conduct of these enlightened voters had any more substantial basis than a cantankerous and unreasonable discontent, superadded to an Irishman's natural love of fighting. The leaders of the Separatist party have made the most frantic efforts to win over the police, but apparently without much success. The Dublin constabulary, a body of 1,300 men, is totally separate and distinct from the Royal Irish Constabulary, but I have reason to believe that the feeling of both forces is averse to Home Rule. Said a sergeant yesterday, "John Bull may have faults, but," and here he winked expressively, "but—he pays!" Then he went on—"I am a Westmeath man, a Roman Catholic, an' as good an Irishman as any of thim; an' I'd like Home Rule if it was local self-government, what they call the gas an' wather management, or the like of that. But although I've the highest respect for my counthry, an' for my counthrymen, I'd like to feel that my pay was in better hands, and—what is of more importance—my pension, afther 30 years' service."

Here was a complete lack of confidence, but my friend had more to say. He referred to the provisions of the bill, spoke of the six years' arrangement, and on this point exhibited great native shrewdness. "How do we know we'll be employed for six years, once the Irish leaders get matters in their own hands? They may promise fairly enough, but they would be subject to several influences which might prevint thim kaping their promise. First of all, when they had the power, they would naturally like to manage things their own way—an' not to be altogether bound down so hard an' fast by their engagement with the English Parliament. Then, although they profess such friendship, they don't altogether like us. We may tell them we are Nationalists, an' that we're runnin' over with patriotism; but they'll tell us that we stood by at evictions, an' that we fired on the people at Mitchelstown. But the greatest thing of all is this—all their counthry friends, all the terrorisers, the men that mutilated the cattle, the village ruffians that for years have been doin' their work, an' actin' as their spies—all these will have to be provided for. The same with our officers, but their case is still worse. They have had to pass a regular military examination, which means an expensive education. They will get the go-by an' the dirty kick-out, in order that the friends of the ruling party, who have been so long in the desert, may be furnished with posts. 'Tis human nature, Sorr." Wherefore, the constabulary, it would seem, may be trusted to take care of themselves, but the situation is suggestive of serious complications, once the bill were passed. A full private this morning told me that without the security of the British Exchequer the force would not hold together for four-and-twenty hours, a statement which, whatever be its value, is at least an indication of the amount of trust which some of the Irish people, and those not the worst informed, are disposed to place in the distinguished assembly which, according to the authority hereinbefore-mentioned is not to meet on College Green.

A never-ending complaint which follows you everywhere is the supineness of the English electorate. Men whose interests are seriously threatened, such as the better class of shopkeepers, are unable to understand the comparative calmness of the British public at large. Passionately they ask why England leaves them to their fate, and strongly they urge that prompt and decided action should be taken, if not for the sake of Ireland, then in the interests of England herself. Disruption, pure and simple, the breaking up of the Empire, with panic and general ruin, are in their opinion the sure and certain concomitants of the bill now before the House. They declare that Englishmen as a whole, whether Gladstonians or Unionists, fail to realise the gravity of the situation, and they lose no opportunity of saying whenever they hear an English accent, "We don't want it, we don't want it!" Not always do they trouble to say what is the thing they so emphatically reject. "Pardon me, Sir, but are you English?" Receiving an affirmative the rejoinder comes at once, and forcefully, "We don't want it, we don't want it! Tell the English people that if they knew all they would not entertain the idea for a moment." The phrase meets you everywhere, is roared at you in chorus in commercial rooms, haunts you in your sleep, and, if they would own it, must be painfully suggestive to Gladstonian visitors. But there are none so blind as those who will not see, none so deaf as those who will not hear. It is impossible to withhold sympathy with the indignation and mental anxiety of these industrious men, who have made Dublin what she is, and whose only notion of happiness is the fulfilment of duty, their sole means of acquiring wealth or middleclass comfort, hard and honest work. That the backbone of the city should stand with their fortunes subject to the will of a few unscrupulous agitators is indeed, as they say, an inscrutable dispensation of Providence.

Help, however, is at hand. As Hercules hangs backward in their need they have determined to help themselves. During the Easter recess both Ireland and England will be made to ring with denunciations of Home Rule, denunciations uttered for the most part by Irishmen. Orators will go forth throughout the length and breadth of both islands, with the object of laying the truth of the matter before the people—demonstrating the dire results which the most intelligent almost unanimously predict. There will be no lack of funds—Catholics and Protestants are subscribing, among the former the grandson of Daniel O'Connell, the great Liberator of Ireland. Money is literally pouring into the offices of the Irish Unionist Alliance. Little Roman Catholic Tralee, in the heart of Kerry, one of the most disturbed districts, has sent several hundreds. In three weeks the subscriptions have reached £20,000. That ought to be enough to enable Irish Unionists not, as one said to me, "to enlighten the English people. We do not presume to so much. But we will try to let some of the Darkness out."

Dublin, March 28th.