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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES

tJNIVERSITY of CALIFORM/
LOS AMGELES

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in 2008 witin funding from

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DUBLIN ESSAYS

DUBLIN ESSAYS

BY ARTHUR CLERY

MAUNSEL AND COMPANY, LTD.
DUBLIN AND LONDON. T919

i454i).*^

Printed by George Roberts, 50 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin

Tit

UooS

TO
VINCENT CLARKE

PREFACE

I have called these, Dublin Essays. They have

been written and published in this city over a period

of twenty years, perhaps the most interesting years

in its history. They deal with the problems of politics,

of art, and of letters, as they come to one who works

in the city and lives its life. The revival of art and

of national life that Dublin has seen in the first two

decades of the twentieth century has been extraor-

^ dinary. Those who have lived through the period

" ^ scarcely realize it. A native theatre, a native litera-

"^ ture, and a new courage of nationhood have been its

^ manifestations. The most sluggish Irish heart has

p felt a quicker pulse. Unless the judgment of living

fc. men upon themselves is wholly wrong, the age of

d^Pearse will, in after time, have a glory like the

^ age of Pericles. These essays can have only a

^ faint reflection of that glory, but they have been

^ written in the golden days. Such as they are,

^ they embody the ideas of half a lifetime, ranging

from the hope and exuberance of the student to the

cO more cynical and perhaps less true outlook of middle

f»life. Dealing with many topics, some of them far

c enough afield, they will be found to have a common

"'thread. They are an expression of the thoughts of

*^the native Irishman, by one who is himself a native

vii

PREFACE

Irishman — most people who write about Ireland are
not. Except for the last two, which are now first
published, they have appeared in the Press that
native Irishmen read, most of them in The Leader or
Studies ; two of them in The Irish Educational Review ;
one of them in the Irish Review. Two of the
essays deal with those hatreds which it is thought
bad form and certainly bad policy to mention. But
it is hoped that the reader will receive what is new
in this book with complacency, what is old without
boredom.

Arthur Clery.

viu

CONTENTS

PAGE

THOMAS KETTLE I

A GAELIC UNIVERSITY I5

A FORGOTTEN VIRTUE 27

AS IN 1800 30

is iret.and a country or a county ? 33

the justice of the british democracy 36

could our religion be rushed ? 4o

the religious angle in ireland 44
the passing of university college,

Stephen's green 54

THE plague OF B.A.'S 58

THE SECT OF THE GAEL 62

RUGBY FOOTBALL AND THE " CONDUMNIUM " 66

SOME LIES OF EARLY IRISH HISTORY 7I

DEMOCRACY OF DIALECT 78

IRISH GENIUS IN ENGLISH PROSE 83

VOTES FOR CHILDREN 93

THE PSEUDO-SCIENCE OF CLASSICS lOO

THE SNOBBERY OF QUINTUS HORATIUS FLACCUS I06

THE THEATRE: ITS EDUCATIONAL VALUE II4

THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE 122

IRELAND, IRISH AND OTHERWISE I3O

POLICIES IN IRELAND I42

IX

THOMAS KETTLE

Kettle is gone. After all, he was probably the
most brilliant mind of his generation, the generation
that succeeded Parnell and Yeats. He had not
the brilliant originality of Griffith, the deep social
insight of Moran — that clearness of vision that could
effect a revolution by mere writing, the political
capacity of Devlin, still less the unbending, Cato-
like uprightness of his murdered kinsman, Sheehy-
Skeffington. His chance of continued memory is of
course, far less than that of the patriot dead of Easter
Week. He claimed no high place as a poet ;
he certainly was not an economist. But he had a
quality of brilliance proper to himself that no one
else of his time quite possessed. It might be described
as a great breadth of intellect, combined with a
marvellous capacity for suddenly mobilizing the
whole of his intellectual forces upon a narrow front.
He never attempted, certainly he never carried
through, any work of broad conception and full
achievement like that of Erskine Childers or of
Paul-Dubois, which he edited. Now and then he
formed projects, to write a historical novel about
the fall of Tara, or to publish a treatise on Irish
economics (he had, I think, made some progress in
the latter). But at his death he left behind him only
two small original works that had attained to hard
covers — The Open Secret of Ireland, a brilliant pot-
boiler, and that collection of supremely good essays,
The Day's Burden, in which, with one exception, the
best of him is to be found. It would be easy to
collect another volume almost equally good from his
miscellaneous writings.^ But his literary output in

• Such a volume has since appeared,

THOMAS KETTLE

any permanent form was a small one. This is the
common fate of brilliant Irishmen who write to be
read by other Irishmen ; of J. F. Taylor, for instance.
A public much inclined to book-making, but steadily
averse from book-buying, chills any long hope in an
Irish writer, and drives him inevitably to journalism.
The Irishman who would write for posterity must
write for export, as Lecky discovered. His case was,
indeed, rather a favourite illustration with Kettle.

The accepted principle of" DeMortuis Mendacia"
would be specially foolish in Kettle's case. He was
far too big a man to have his memory fobbed off with
that mendacious panegyric, which is commonly the
meed of the middle-class dead. His character was
much disputed while he lived ; and if his memory
survive, the dispute must inevitably survive with it.

That coloured speech which is styled oratory
is of its essence a Swiss : it may attack to-morrow
what it defends to-day. " Hannibal " Plunket, for
instance, delivered quite as cogent and imaginative
an oration in prosecuting Emmet as in opposing
the Union, or pleading for Catholic rights.

This severe criticism, which Kettle in his last and
best writing, the preface to the Irish Orators, passes
upon the eighteenth-century Plunket, is certain to
form the model for criticism upon himself. Men will
point out that he began his career by writing seditious
poetry for the United Irishman, a journal of which
the later Sinn FHn was merely a milder recension.
Most Irish writers, and certainly most Irish poets,
begin in that way. I doubt if Kettle was ever, except
perhaps in his very earliest youth, a real disciple of
Emmet ; he was too much the politician. Like
many another who believed himself to be walking
in Emmet's footsteps, he got a bad shock when he
came upon someone who was not merely in Emmet's
footsteps, but in his shoes. Kettle was at all relevant

THOMAS KETTLE

times a constitutionalist, with a highly developed
dramatic sense; and I am convinced that within the
limits in which sincerity is at all possible to a practi-
cal politician Kettle was, in all his actions, thoroughly
sincere.

In the period between the end of the Parnell split
and Sir Edward Carson's assembling of his Pro-
visional Government, which proved the beginning
of a new era in Irish politics, three schools of
thought flourished among native Irishmen. First,
there was the orthodoxy of the Irish Party, tracing
its apostolic succession from Davitt and Parnell. It
was powerful and popular. But its followers too
often came to look upon Faith — Faith in the Party
— as an all-sufficient substitute for personal good
works. Over agafnst them were the " good workers"
of various descriptions — language revivalists, indus-
trial revivalists, men who devoted themselves to
Irish poetry, Irish music, Irish pastimes, Irish
drama, or Irish Art, many of them then looked upon
as heretics, or at least schismatics in matters politi-
cal. Of this movement, or series of movements, to
which the name " Irish Ireland " came to be applied,
Moran was the prophet, or as he would put it him-
self, the philosopher. But there was also a third
movement, which never advanced very far, but which
influenced many thinking minds. A casual observer
would describe it incorrectly by some such loose
adjective as " socialistic.'" It was the effort to apply
cosmopolitan ideas of regeneration (often without
any very clear idea of what they were) to the social
conditions of Ireland, more especially to the social
conditions of its cities — in fact, an aspiration towards
modern " progress " of the less brutal kind.

Kettle's effort in life was to combine the first
school with the third — Party orthodoxy with social
advance. He was, as Mr. Lynd has put it,
"European "in his sympathies. With the second

3

THOMAS KETTLE

movement, on the other hand, with everything that
could be described as " Irish Ireland," though he
sometimes gave it a nominal support in words, he
had a very minimum of agreement. He looked upon
it as insular and un-European. He was quite alive
to the fact that his own family was not one of Gaelic
race. He was fond of playing cricket. He looked
forward to that progress which should be borne to
Ireland acrossthe seas. But above all, strange though
it seem in a man who was destined later on to give up
his life for a cause, he had no sympathy with that
idea which lay behind all " Irish Ireland " notions,
that the way to advance a cause is by each man
doing his own part, irrespective of his neighbour's
backwardness. Kettle always thought in multitudes.
He sought for broad effects. If he did a thing, he
blushed to find it was not fame ; not through vanity
(he had less of the vice than the common run), but
because he realized that this was the way to do things.
And he had in a high degree that capacity for saying
anddoingthingsinamannerthatattractspublicatten-
tion, which is the first essential of political success.
With Kettle the idea of " Progress," beloved of the
last century, was almost the dominant enthusiasm.
The men of the nineteenth century had certainly
better reason to speak in the name of Progress than
those of our time. Kettle was beyond all else a
"modern," a "progressive." He hated the cynical
atttitude, and had a particular detestation for the ideas
of a man like Belloc. He believed in politics and in
party. He was always on the look-out for the
newest thinker, the freshest enthusiasm. He liked
German philosophers and Russian novelists. He
had at all times a leaning towards socialism; in a
celebrated phrase he said that he agreed with
everything in socialism except its first principle.
He was by tradition a strong democrat. His
political ideals are brilliantly expounded in his essay

THOMAS KETTLE

on the Philosophy of Politics, in which, improving on
John Morley, he deals with Politics as the science
of the second worst. Kettle's disposition towards
things "liberal" and "modern" was so strong that
if he had been brought up in a different religion, or
perhaps even in a different country, he would not
improbably have been a Free Thinker. As it was,
like many other Irishmen of advanced social ideas,
he was a believing and enthusiastic Catholic. He
always confined his social and political enthusiasms
within the limits of Catholic discipline, though he
rather delighted to march up to the boundary and
look across the wall, or perhaps one should say —
for he was a mountain-climber — to look down from
the edge of the cliff. He often shocked timid people.

In his private life he had that virtue which a
native Irishman only loses when exposed to foreign
influences — he was a man of the strictest purity.
Indeed, in the many years of my association with
him I think I never heard him tell a doubtful story
or even make a doubtful remark. To another
different orthodoxy he was no less faithful, though
here again he liked to walk upon the edge — the
orthodoxy of Party discipline. It was much the
heavier restriction. To a man of Kettle's idealistic
temperament the discipline of the Irish Party in the
period of his connection with it, must often have
been a severe strain. But he never even considered
the idea of breaking away. He made the best of an
unenthusiastic lot. He was a member of the Ancient
Order of Hibernians. He confined his speculation
and his political action alike within practical and
permissible limits.

From what has gone before there is little difficulty
in understanding the enthusiasm with which Kettle
espoused the French and British cause on the out-
break of the war. They were the champions of all
that was progressive and modern. The Czar he

5

THOMAS KETTLE

regarded as the apostle of Polish freedom : his poem
has attained some celebrity. For once he was
wholly free to champion the cause of what was
progressive and modern without any fear of
incurring ecclesiastical censure or the displeasure of
party leaders. He threw himself heart and soul
into the campaign. Many men faced death; Kettle
faced unpopularity, a much harder thing for a
politician to do. Indeed, he probably looked upon
the sacrifice of his own life as the lightest sacrifice
which he was called upon to make.

When I first met Kettle he was a small boy with
a treble voice, with his interests divided between
cycle-racing and winning Intermediate prizes. He
was good at both. We came to Clongowes from
different day-schools. As his father had been
"detained" by Forster in the Frongoch of these
days, he was naturally a hot politician. His study
was Mathematics ! He took German instead of
Greek. Seeing that the publication of Intermediate
results is now looked upon as a crime, almost fit to
be restrained by the Press Censor, it may be
interesting to remark that Kettle was a " First Place
in Senior Grade," one of three from the same
school in four years. He had "Anthony Wharton,"
the well-known dramatist, and a high public official
in Dublin as his predecessors in the distinction.
He played up hard at the school games. He used
to say in later years that his taste for literature
dated from a "fallow" year in which he had no
examination ; indeed he constantly complained that
he had been over-worked at school. Dublin boys
were not very popular at Clongowes, and, like other
hard-working students, Kettle had little influence.
He moved in a set that devoted itself to cycling.
His satirical humour had already begun to develop.
But the most vivid recollection of him I possess is a
speech at the school debate in which he maintained

6

THOMAS KETTLE

that the man who died on the battlefield died better
than the man who died in his bed with the consola-
tions of religion. In those days the sentiment
caused a sensation ; and he found it necessary to
make a sort of recantation.

It was at the University that he first came into his
own. His University course was not indeed a
specially distinguished one. As the result of bad
health and bad management in choosing courses he
failed to repeat the academic distinction of his
school-days. He eventually graduated in Philosophy.
But he at once became a power among the students.
His first achievement was characteristic. Mr. Pierce
Kent, the present Secretary of the Insurance
Commissioners, who was a friend of his, was a
candidate for an elective position in the religious
sodality of the students. Kettle composed an
election address and a poster, " Vote for Kent and
Christianity," which at once carried the day.
Soon after Kettle was elected auditor (as in Dublin
the student President is called) of the students'
Literary and Historical Society; a few years later
found him editor of St. Stephen's, the new college
paper, which was " unprejudiced as to date of
issue," as its editor happily announced. It may be
remarked in passing that, seeing that it was
popularly supposed to afford no true education
whatever, the old University College of the Catholic
University succeeded at this period in producing a
remarkably large number of persons who, to put it
no higher, have got the public to talk about them.
Trinity College has no one but Hannay to show in
the same epoch.

The most remarkable episode of student life with
which Kettle was connected, though only in an
indirect way, was the famous seizure of the Uni-
versity organ by the students during Lord Meath's
Chancellorship. Kettle had no part in the actual

THOMAS KETTLE

occurrence ; he was not even privy to it, though it
is understood that a detective, mistaking him for
another gentleman of Hterary appearance, identified
him as having been there. Kettle, however, having,
like Alan Breck Stuart, the special advantage of
being innocent, immediately took up the running.
He at once caught the public fancy by a speech in
denunciation of the Universityauthorities, in which he
announced his intention of burning his degree ! The
upshot of the business was that the attempt to punish
the students failed, and the Chancellor resigned.

Kettle's connection with the College paper led to
his founding an institution, which brought him out at
his best, the Cui Bono Club. Recruited mostly from
the staff of the old paper, its dozen members met
periodically for the discussion of "all subjects save
such as were silly or indecent." Kettle was the
Johnson of the Club, its acknowledged dictator and
wit. In such circumstances his brilliant parts showed
at their best — his lambent humour, hiscleverdialectic,
his extraordinary personal charm, his marvellous skill
in telling a story. Most of its members were clever
men with distinguished careers, but Kettle was the
sun of the firmament. He was in after years greatly
attached to this little foundation, and looked upon it
as a sort of oasis of friendship in the parched plain
of politics.

Politics was soon to claim him. His first serious
entry into this field was made in 1905 as a political
journalist, as editor of the brilliant but short-lived
Nationist. After a few cases, mostly political
defences of cattle-drivers. Kettle wearied of the Irish
Bar, to which he had been called. He had, indeed,
manifested his old skill in examinations by taking a
law-prize at King's Inns. The only enduring result
of his legal experiences is his clever sketch of an
assize-court in The Day's Burden, from which the fol-
lowing characteristic passage may be quoted :

THOMAS KETTLE

Then, as you look up at the bench, your eye is
caught by a veritable decadent touch — the Judge's
flowers. I do not know whether it is part of the
ritual or not, but I have never been at Criminal
Assizes without seeing that incongruous bunch of
flowers — this time they are ragged, white chrysan-
themums in a vase of blue china — beside the inkpot
in which the judicial pen is dipped as it takes notes
of the evidence or records the conviction. It
reminds one of Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mai —
Blossoms of Evil.

But, after all, you may expect anything of the
Judge. He is a wild symbolist. He wears scarlet
to manifest the wrath of the law and ermine for
the purity of the law — a spotted purity, to guess
from the specimen before us — and a black cap by
times for the gloom of death.

Politics was and continued to the end to be the
real enthusiasm of Kettle's life. For a very short
time he was attracted by Mr. Arthur Griffith's
" Hungarian " policy of passive resistance, to be known
later by the famous title of " Sinn Fein." A new
propaganda always fascinated him. But he soon
conformed to Parliamentary nationalism. He was,
to all appearance, a sincere convert. If he ever
afterwards had any leanings towards extreme
opinions, the opposition he received from Irish
extremists in the U.S.A., when he went there some
time later as the envoy of the Irish Party, fixed him
in the constitutional view and made him ever after-
wards very bitter against the extreme party. It is
interesting to note, however, that in his " Philosophy
of Politics " he maintains the moral right of Ireland
to rebel, "if it were possible." This brilliant essay,
already referred to, was first read as a presidential
address at the Young Ireland Branch of the United
Irish League. Seldom has a pronouncement con-
taining so much political philosophy, so many

9

THOMAS KETTLE

abstract ideas, been read before a branch of a
working political organization in any country. But
then the famous and much-abused " Young Ireland
Branch " was a political assembly of a very unusual
kind. This is not the place to discuss the fortunes
and merits of that ever storm-tossed foundation. It
is sufficient to point out that the youthful Kettle
had the merit or responsibility of being its founder.
Kettle's fortune was exceptional in one way. He
was the only young man of abstract ideas (or at
least with a capacity for expressing such ideas) to
make his way into the Irish party since the Parnell
split. The men of this type belonging to his genera-
tion for the most part turned their energies into
other channels and became either indifferent or
openly hostile to the Irish Party. Kettle's amazing
success in Parliament shows what a man of ideas
can achieve if he is once allowed to get a start.
A young and unknown man, without influence or
political backing, he began to take his place with
men like Redmond, Balfour and Asquith as a
debater. He made an immense impression upon
Young England, an England that was unfortunately
never destined to grow up. Of course I cannot
speak at first-hand of this period of his career, which
began in 1906, but the secret of his Parliamentary
success would seem to be that he threw aside tradi-
tional clap-trap and thought out at least new modes
of expression for himself. His early mathematical
training also came to his aid, and he showed an
unusual command of figures. The Irish University
Bill was the Parliamentary measure with which his
name will be especially connected. But a man in
the twenties only attains success of this kind at the
price of much jealousy and ill-feeling, and Kettle
was by no means the man to allay feelings of that
sort. For he was neglectful of the smaller courtesies
of life, and he was not at all an easy man to work with.

10

THOMAS KETTLE

He had accepted a professorship in the new
National University, for the establishment of which
he had worked hard. As the subject (National
Economics) was off the beaten track, he had few
students and the duties were not heavy. There
seemed, however, to be a certain inconsistency
between holding a whole-time professorship and
being a Member of Parliament ; so, after a short
interval, he sent in his resignation to the Irish Party.
It is now generally understood that he had counted
upon the Party taking a line in this matter which
would enable him to withdraw his resignation and
remain in Parliament. But if he had any such hope,
he was destined to a severe disappointment. He
was allowed to go. (Grattan, as a politician, says
Kettle, in his last writing, " committed the two
deadly sins, which are to sulk and to retire") From
this forth Kettle's career was simply a career of
despair. One or two hopeless attempts to get back
into politics only served to darken the gloom. A
man familiar, as he was, with the realities of politics
could never devote himself to the nonsense of politi-
cal economy. *' Economics," he used to say, " is
not a science, but a series of controversies with a
fixed terminology." You cannot expect strength
of character from a man broken with despair. Some
of his former political associates must have felt
strangely when at the last Kettle became the martyr
of their principles.

Apart from that quality of intellectual concentra-
tion already referred to, Kettle's greatest literary
asset was an intense brilliancy of phrase. In this
he had something of the skill of Grattan or Tacitus.
Speaking of Grattan, he might have spoken of
himself when he said :

The epigrammatist, too, and the whole tribe of
image-makers dwell under a disfavour far too

II

THOMAS KETTLE

austere. We must distinguish. There is in such
images an earned and an unearned increment of
applause. The sudden, vast, dazzling, and deep-
shadowed view of traversed altitudes that breaks
on the vision of a climber, who, after long effort,
has reached the mountain-top, is not to be grudged
him. And the image that closes up in a little room
the infinite riches of an argument carefully pursued is
not only legitimate but admirable.

As with A Kempis, so you will best appreciate
Kettle if you read but four or five of his sentences at
a time, the five just quoted for instance. You can
make them the subject of a long mediation. Often
a single sentence of his is enough to stand by itself.
"Cynicism, however excusable in literature, is in
life the last treachery, the irredeemable defeat."
Or again — "It is with ideas as with umbrellas: if
left lying about they are peculiarly liable to change
ownership." There is always a combination of the
sardonic and the imaginative in his writings, a kind
of eloquence that is the more effective for being
eternally self-critical. Consider this description of
an orator:

The sound and rumour of great multitudes,
passions hot as ginger in the mouth, torches,
tumultuous comings and goings, and, riding
through the whirlwind of it all, a personality,
with something about him of the prophet, some-
thing of the actor, a touch of the charlatan,
crying out not so much with his own voice as
with that of the multitude, establishing with a
gesture, refuting with a glance, stirring ecstacies
of hatred and affection — is not that a common,
and far from fantastic, conception of the orator.
But when the fire is become ashes, and the orator
too; when the crowd no longer collaborates;
when the great argument that transfigured them

12

THOMAS KETTLE

is a paragraph in a text book, yawned over by
schoolboys. . . ."

This is Kettle at his best. Or take again this
short and brilliant description of the State. Like
the modern composer who deliberately introduces a
discord, Kettle gets his effect by the misuse of a
single word :

The State is the name by which we call the
great human conspiracy against hunger and cold,
against loneliness and ignorance; the State is the
foster-mother and warden of the arts, of love, of
comradeship, of all that redeems from despair
that strange adventure that we call human life.

One other quotation will show him in a political
vein. It is from his article, " On crossing the Irish
Sea":

Ireland has been finally conquered at least three
times; she has died in the last ditch three times;
she has been a convict in the dock, a corpse on
the dissecting table, a street-dog yapping at the
heels of empire, a geographical expression, a
misty memory. And with an obtuseness to the
logic of facts which one can only call mulish, she
still answers " Adsum." Her interdicted flag still
floats at the masthead, and, brooding over the
symbol, she still keeps building an impossible
future on an imaginary past. English parties in
turn wipe her for ever off the slate of practical
politics. . . . New battalions loom up to the
right wing or the left ; and the Tory press remem-
bers the phrase of the Confederate general ....
"There comes that damned green flag again ! "

You must go to Swift himself if you would find
one to surpass Kettle in that peculiarly Irish quality,
sardonic enthusiasm.

13

THOMAS KETTLE

Kettle's greatest defect, if in a politician it be a
defect, was an almost complete incapacity for appre-
ciating the point of view of an opponent. Many of
his speeches that " stirred ecstacies of hatred " are
to be so explained. One could not find a better
example of this weakness than his chapter on Ulster
in that otherwise clever work, The Open Secret of
Ireland. His treatment of the subject is tremend-
ously unfair ; it is simply a collection of brilliant
insults, "annual brain-storm," and the rest, each
cleverer and more unjustified than the one going
before it. On the other hand, he was a man of the
very greatest personal magnanimity. He often
required magnanimity in others; he always showed
it himself. He had never the least difficulty in
making up with an opponent however bitterly they
might have quarrelled. When William O'Brien,
the subject of his bitterest satire, for a time rejoined
the Irish Party, Kettle was quite sincere in declaring
that the past was not only a sealed book, but a burnt
book. And it is but a few months ago since,
chancing to meet him at an intimate's house, he
had a very friendly interview with Eoin MacNeill.

The last time I met Kettle was a few weeks after
Easter 1916. He was driving in military uniform
on a car with his little daughter, and stopped it to
speak to me. I congratulated him on his preface to
the Irish Orators. But his whole conversation was
of MacDonagh and the others who had been put to
death in Low Week, of the fortitude they had shown.
He felt very bitterly, and he spoke of their fate with
that wistfulness which Mr. Lynd also noticed. I
think there must have been a time in his life when
he looked forward to die as they had died. He died
in a different way and for a different cause. But the
idea of final self-sacrifice was as much a haunting
desire with him as it was with Patrick Pearse.

14

A GAELIC UNIVERSITY

There must be few things which an ordinary man
finds it harder to believe in than Universities. They
seem to him collections of persons, whose energy is
less than the average, whose practical capacity is
enormously less. Their labours have no result visible
to the naked eye. Football and boat-races, or, in
other countries, duelling clubs, with an occasional
glimpse of infirm old men in queer gaudy costumes
complete the concept. And this is the sort of thing
he is called upon to reverence and, what is worse, to
pay for. The answer usually given is to point to the
great importance attached by sane and sensible men
in America, Germany, and other countries to the
provision of University education. But there is a
still better argument, the great importance that was
attached in our own country to not providing it. It
was men equally sane, and in a narrow sense equally
sensible, who made it the settled policy and business
of their lives to deprive the great bulk of the native
population of Ireland of any reasonable facilities for
higher education for over three centuries, who after
two centuries of open bigotry throughout the third
were satisfied to assert that the provision of educa-
tion for one hundred odd persons was a supply
sufficient to meet a demand which we now know
to have been that of nearly two thousand students.

These things did not happen in the distant past,
or even in the eighteenth century. It is only within
our own life time, that in conditions the most
hampered and degrading that can be imagined it
was for the first time made possible for an Irish

15

A GAELIC UNIVERSITY

Catholic to possess a University degree and a
conscience at the same time. The men thus
educated have taken a big part among the nevi^er
generation in the events of our time. It is less than
ten years ago since the long continued campaign to
exclude, or practically exclude the native population
of this island from higher education definitely failed,
a campaign of exclusion which many men made the
eager and long-sustained enthusiasm of their lives,
which broke ministers, which drove governments
from office. No greater testimony can surely be
given to the importance of University education in
Ireland than that those who sought our degradation
should have thought it of such high importance to
prevent it.

The denial of higher education to those who
formed the bulk of the native population, though in
later days it seemed an isolated anachronism, was
once part of a great and broad policy, a policy set
forth in two volumes. When the long denial of
higher education to Catholics was ended, we had
only come to the end of the last chapter of the first
volume. The policy as originally contemplated
was to bring about unity of religion and unity of
language in England, Scotland, and Ireland. The
attempt to bring about religious unity between
England and Scotland soon failed. The effort to
enforce religiousunity between England and Ireland,
with consequences that men of all religions now
admit to have been disastrous, continued down to a
fairly recent date. It is less than half a century
since it was definitely given up; indeed the results
of the economic pressure, applied during two cen-
turies to bring it about, endure down to our own day.
We are not, however, concerned to discuss them here.
We have to deal rather with the second volume, the
other half of the policy, the determination to enforce
unity of language in the three countries.

i6

A GAELIC UNIVERSITY

In this endeavour State Policy has been far more
successful. It has often been said that it is hard to
conceive a system of persecution worse than that
inflicted upon those who practised the Catholic
religion in Ireland. Bourke's description of the
Penal Laws, "a machine of wise and elaborate
contrivance ; and as well fitted for the oppression,
impoverishment, and degradation of a people . . .
as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of
man," has become a commonplace. It is indeed
hard to imagine anything worse. But if anything
may be put beside it, it is the vigorous persecution
of those who practise the Irish language as their
native tongue, a persecution whose severity is only
less evident in our day because it has come so near
to achieving its end, because there is nowadays so
little resistance, because there are so few Irish
speakers left to persecute. No doubt an Irish-
speaking man who speaks no other language than
Irish is not liable to have his land taken from him
by his son who conforms to English. He can own
freehold property or a horse worth more than five
pounds. He can. if nominated (though any court
would be slow to appoint him) act as guardian of
his relative's property. So far his position is better
than that of the Catholic in the eighteenth century.
But only so far. An Irish speaker who is only an
Irish speaker, is debarred from all public employ-
ments whatever, even the humblest, except perhaps
that of a private soldier. He could not be a police-
man. Possibly he could obtain empiojment as a
scavenger. He cannot be a barrister, doctor,
solicitor, engineer or chemist. He could not in
practice belong to the ministry of any church, unless
indeed he were sent abroad in early youth. No
commercial position is open to him except perhaps
that of a country shop assistant, and scarcely even
this. No education of any kind whatever is avail-

c 17

A GAELIC UNIVERSITY

able for him, unless on condition of studying
English, which usually means conforming to it.

There are no hedge schools. He might just possibly
be educated abroad, if there were money for it, which
of course there is not. There is not one single school
for Irish speakers in the island of Ireland. But from
the Irish speaker's point of view the matter is worse
than this. Attendance at schools where English is
taught is compulsory. And as the employment of
torture is well recognized as a daily incident of all
primary and secondary education, Irish children
have been literally tortured out of speaking Irish, a
process continued for a century. A blow a word
was the tariff. Irish has been forced from the lips
of Irish boys by whipping their bodies. If a man
should regard the exclusive use of Irish as essential
to his salvation, his position would be no better than
that of the eighteenth century Catholic. Nor is
there anything surprising in a man looking on Irish as
essential to his salvation. There are in all human
probability a great many Irishmen in hell, as I
write, who would not be there if they had known
no other language than Irish. The only develop-
ment of the language situation in our time has been
that of a greatly decreased resistance, in other words,
of the almost complete success of the persecution.
About a century ago something like three-fourths
of the Irish people were Irish speakers. Nowadays
the number of those whose exclusive language is
Irish has been reduced to a few thousands. If
Polish were the language, and these things were
done in Poland — perhaps like things used to be
done. But the persecution can scarcely have been
so unmitigated. In the circumstances it is not sur-
prising that the use of Irish as a native language has
declined.

Some such discussion as this having arisen at a
meeting, I once heard that strong Unionist, the late

i8

A GAELIC UNIVERSITY

Lord Justice Fitzgibbon, give this as an answer :
" Who gave up Irish ? Wasn't it the Irish them-
selves ?" The suggestion has a fractional truth, but
it has no more. In all the matters of which I have
spoken no representative, that is, no popularly elected
Irish body has ever had the smallest say. Before
we blame the Irish people for the state of things
described, we must consider how inrinitesimal is the
representative element in Irish government. Outside
the narrow sphere of local government some degree
of hostility to popular opinion is indeed, in practice,
a condition precedent to the exercise of any public
function whatever in Ireland. Almost the only
educational matter on which Irish elected bodies have
ever had a say has been the question of " Essential
Irish " in the University.

But the real question is not how Irish was lost,
but how it is to be regained. How are we to get
back our old tongue thus filched from us ? Many
different systems of teaching and study have been
suggested. Personally I believe, and I thus come to
the real subject of the article, that you can never
make a man Irish speaking by merely teaching him
Irish, no matter what method you adopt. In this
Irish does not differ from other languages. I may
be pardoned a personal reminiscence. Like other
classical students, I devoted thirteen or fourteen
years to the severe study of Latin and Greek, my
living depending on it most of the time. And yet I
can't speak two sentences of either language, and
I never met a classical student who either could or
would. The greatest Greek scholar of modern times
is said to have confessed that he could not read a
Greek play with anything like the same ease as a
daily newspaper. And if I had been smattering at
Greek and Latin by the various easy, improved,
rational, direct, phonetic, up-to-date, etc., methods
by which I have been nibbling at Irish for the past

19

A GAELIC UNIVERSITY

twenty years, I really don't believe the case would
be much better. In practice I fancy I could, as the
result of a couple of mountain-climbing holidays and
a phrase-book, make almost a better hand of German,
which I never was taught atall. When the mountains
are sehr schivey, the day ziemlich heiss, and you
develop an almighty thirst for kalte ungekochte milch
or etwas bier, as the case may be, these are realities.
In the same way the only Irish over which I have
any real hold is the small talk of an Irish college.
C-^CAin c.Mnip ? 1l4b»Mf as xxn f50|\ui-6eACc ? An
iretoip Leoc lAinnce ? t)eit) a tuiLLe ce aj-ac? t)«Mniie
mA']" e "oo coiL e — -^5Uf iiuT)4i n\A\\ fin. These also
are realities, thoughts, not mere words. It is no
good learning to speak a language. You must learn
to think it.

Mention has been made of Latin and Greek.
Take, then, the case of an ecclesiastical student who
has done his studies in Latin. That man has a real
hold on Latin. His acquirements are in most cases
far inferior to those of an average classical scholar.
He probably does not know a single emendation to
Horace or to Aeschylus. He stills looks upon these
writers as a poet and a playwright respectively. He
is quite unable to tell you the rule of syntax which
led Cicero to end his sentence with a subjunctive —
" esse videatur." But within the domain of his
studies in the world of philosophy and theology
such a student will think in Latin. Philosophical
and theological ideas will present themselves to him
in the language in which he has learnt them. He
will even find it a matter of difficulty to translate
them into any other. That is to say, he will have
a grasp of Latin, which no classical scholar ever
has, because what he has been learning is not Latin
but other things through the medium of Latin.

If this illustration seems to wander afar it is merely
to drive in this truth, the basis of these proposals

20

A GAELIC UNIVERSITY

that if you want to make a man Irish speaking, you
must first make him Irish thinking, that is, you must
teach him not so much Irish itself as other things
through Irish. If you do, he will at any rate within
the ambit of his education speak Irish, as a native
speaker does, not because he feels he ought to, but
because he wants to, because it's " easier." He will
suffer from none of that strain in Irish speaking,
which is very often noticeable even in the case of
enthusiastic speakers of the language, who begin
their conversation or their letters wath a few
sentences of Irish, like a grace before meals, till at
last the surface-tension gives way and they sink back
into English. There is very little true bilingualism
in the world. A visit to Switzerland or Belgium —
countries thought to be bilingual — or indeed to our
own Irish speaking districts will show this at once.
A man may possess many languages, but he owns
only one. If Irish is ever to be revived, we must
face a sacrifice, we must drop English, not indeed
necessarily as a language of study and acquirement,
any more than we need drop school French, but as
a language of ordinary use in daily life. As long as
we continue to speak broken English — that is all we
do speak — with anything like our present facility, we
shall never become Irish speaking much less Irish
writing. There is a notable difference of principle
in these matters between the Gaelic Athletic Asso-
ciation and the Gaelic League, perhaps inevitable
in the circumstances. With the G.A.A. a Gael
means a man who plays Gaelic football and hurley,
and no other like game whatever. But if a man
played " soccer " six days in the week, Rugby occa-
sionally, and Gaelic only in odd intervals of time,
he would be as much a Gael as the best of us are in
lan{2:uage matters.

Of course the Gaelic League set out to achieve
a stupendous task. At the beginning of this article

A GAELIC UNIVERSITY

I but faintly indicated the difficulties in its way.
The wonder really is that, in less than a generation,
it has achieved so much. Even if the Gaelic League
should wholly fail in its main object, it would have
been of incalculable benefit to the cou^tr3^ Yet
though the study and knowledge of Irish — even a
little Irish — may have, and has had, the most
beneficial results, moral, intellectual, and political,
for Irishmen, something else is needed if we are to
revive the Irish language. Irishmen must learn to
think in Irish; within certain limits they must put
away English. To spread Irish thought is a task of
great difficulty, in face of the determined efforts that
have been made, and the still persistent measures
that are adopted — I have indicated their nature — to
prevent its spreading. Seeing that those against us
are so strong, so well entrenched, it might seem that
the way to start the counter-attack was at the bottom
in the primary school. But in this case the paradox
is the true wisdom. Ideas never begin at the bottom.
They come from above. An educational system, if
one may use the figure, rests on its top. The men
who permitted Catholics to open primary schools,
but for a century refused them University Education,
saw this truth very clearly. They recognized that
a University was, or at least should be, the heart of
acivilization — sending a pulse through all its arteries.
They hated the civilization. If Gaelic thought is
ever to be revived and our old speech thus to be
made a living language through the country, some-
thing of this kind is necessary. A Gaelic University,
a University dealing with all subjects in the Irish
language, might be the centre of an intellectual
Gaelic revival.

We have numerous Gaelic colleges, most of them
admirable institutions. They are perhaps the most
satisfactory achievement of the Irish revival, but
they all fall short of what I mean. Except in rare

22

A GAELIC UNIVERSITY

instances, they confine themselves to teaching Irish
and methods of language study, which is indeed the
business for which they were established. A Gaelic
University must have a wider curriculum. It must
go on to teach other subjects — Philosophy, History,
Economy, Science, Music — through the medium of
Irish. It should teach men to think and to think
highly in Gaelic ; such a foundation has formed the
centre of many language revivals, of the revival of
the Czech language in Bohemia, to take a single
instance. There is nothing fantastic or chimerical
in advocating such a foundation for Ireland. Once
Irishmen are convinced of its value, there will be
little difficulty in setting it up.

The Gaelic College with which we are all familiar
might be made the pattern for the more ambitious
establishment of a University. Now Irish Colleges
conform to two types ; on the one hand you have
the Summer College, and on the other the College
open all the year, w hich trains its students by evening
lectures. Such celebrated foundations as Ballin-
geary. Ring, Spiddal, Omeath, and Cloghaneely are
of the former type. The Leinster College, the
Dublin College of Modern Irish, and the successful
Colleges in Cork and Belfast of the latter. The
reason that Gaelic study has assumed these forms
is that people who study Irish are usually earning
their daily bread in some manner and cannot afford
to suspend the process during their period of study.
A Gaelic University, if it were to be a practical pro-
position, must be conducted either as a Summer
College or by night lectures. It need not suffer in
efficiency on that account. The man who studies
in his time of leisure is a man of character.

A question which must be decided on the
threshold is whether our new Gaelic University
should be entirely independent, or should be con-
nected with one' of our existing Universities, or

23

A GAELIC UNIVERSITY

University Colleges, receiving its degrees, adding to
and sharing in its prestige. The matter is one for
debate, but the history of the Catholic University
would seem to point strongly in favour of the latter
course. Such sections of the Catholic University as
were not able to confer a recognized degree or qualifi-
cation proved a relative failure, while its medical
faculty in which a recognized qualification was
available was a distinct success. Suppose for the
moment, then, that it was determined to connect
the new Gaelic institution with an existing Uni-
versity College, and to adopt the "Summer College"
pattern, Galway College, with its pleasant site and
Irish atmosphere — Irish is spoken by native speakers
up to the gates of the College — would inevitably be
the place to select. The term might be from June
to October, while most of the ordinary students and
professors are away. In an article some years ago
in The Leader, which worked out the scheme in
detail, I showed how it could be done for about
;^i,ooo a year. An initial endowment of about
;^5,ooo would probably be sufficient. While they
are waiting for that line of cross-Atlantic steamers,
that does not seem to turn up, perhaps the men of
Galway might consider the question. You can have
a Gaelic University for a fraction of the cost of one
steamer, and it will bring as many people from
Ireland as the steamer will from America.

The other alternative — and the alternatives are by
no means exclusive, both could be attempted together
— is to work by night lectures, on the model of the
Dublin, Belfast, and Cork Gaelic Colleges. Here
there is a clear opening for University education
which the Irish movement can seize. Cardinal
Newman's establishment of night lectures, leading
to a degree, at the old Catholic University was, so
it has always seemed to me, one of the noblest acts
in his career. He is in truth one of the very few

24

A GAELIC UNIVERSITY

strangers to whom we in Ireland owe gratitude. To
have estabHshed these lectures — everyone knows that
beautiful conference in which he proclaimed their
establishment — may have seemed a small thing.
Yet in what it implied it was a very great thing.
Remember who Newman was. If ever man could
claim the title, he was the flower of English Univer-
sity culture, a culture highly refined but fiercely
exclusive. By establishing facilities for University
education for the man who was working for his daily
bread, whom poverty or family need had sent forth
to earn an early living, Newman broke with all the
traditions of his time. He cast aside the Reforma-
tion and the Renaissance, and went back to the
broader and nobler ideas of the Middle Ages, when
daily toil and the highest learning were not looked
upon as incompatible, when, in fact, the greatest
minds of the monastic world regarded the one as the
complement of the other. It was the Renaissance
and Reformation civilization which first made
learning the special preserve of wealth, which
divorced it from labour. And if in most modern
countries we find below a certain point an immense
populace without clothes, without food, without
faith, the phenomenon is closely connected with
that policy which has made higher learning the
preserve of the moneyed classes. Newman, as I
have said, definitely broke with this policy. Within
the restricted limits in which it was possible for him,
he threw open the doors of learning, and many men,
living and dead, with honoured names received their
education at his classes, what time they worked for
their daily bread. The institution which he thus
established continued for over fifty years; for it was
later kept on by the Jesuits when they came after
him. It most unfortunately fell through on the
establishment of the new University.

I have suggested that there is here an opening for

i25

A GAELIC UNIVERSITY

the Irish movement. Of course, in what I say I
speak only for myself. This is how I see it. As
we know, there has been a strong movement to
re-establish the night lectures again ; the University
convocation has frequently moved in the matter.
But so far only very partial success has been attained.
Several causes have worked against the movement.
But if the night lectures were to be delivered in
Gaelic, many objections that might otherwise arise
would be removed. There could, for instance, be
no question of compelling the professors to do two
shifts in the day. The lectures in the Gaelic founda-
tion must be delivered by assistants, enthusiastic
5'oung men — who would qualify themselves for the
purpose. I believe there would not be the least
difficulty in obtaining such a staff if the thing were
once set on foot. It would indeed serve as a train-
ing ground for the day portion of the University.
It mav be urged that it is a hardship to ask even
night students to attend their lectures in Gaelic.
But being matriculated, they have all ex hypothesi
passed a qualifying examination in Irish. A very
little more should make them able to follow lectures
in Gaelic. A clerical student, with a parallel qualifi-
cation in Classics, goes forth to attend lectures in
Latin at Rome, or Paris, or Salamanca. The cost
of such a foundation would be quite moderate. Its
results would be out of all proportion to its cost ;
for it would mean that the first great step had been
taken towards freeing the Irish mind, the rebirth of
Gaelic thought from the womb of a Gaelic University.

?6

A FORGOTTEN VIRTUE

Patriotism, an internal principle of order and unity, an organic
bond of the members of a nation, was placed by the finest
thinkers of Greece and Rome at the head of the natural
virtues. . . . And the religion of Christ makes of patriotism a
positive law; there is no perfect Christian who is not also a
perfect patriot.

If I am asked what I think of the eternal salvation of a brave
man who has consciously given his life in defence of his country's
honour, and in vindication of violated justice, I shall not hesitate
to reply . . . that death accepied in this Christian spirit assures
the safety of that man's soul. — Cardinal Merciev.

I wish these words of a great Churchman were
put up in every schoolroom of Ireland, beside the
Ten Commandments. Cardinal Mercier's famous
pastoral must have astonished many people in this
country, many religious people. To their surprise
they discovered the existence of a wholly new virtue
— patriotism. Hitherto they had regarded it as some-
thing between a joke and a rather pardonable short-
coming: they spelt patriot with a " h." Now they
discover you may be damned for want of patriotism ;
that Sadieir committed perhaps a less crime, when
h'' took poison, or Pigott when he shot himself than
when each of them sold his country. For that is what
Mercier means, if he means anything. And the
pronouncement of this Belgian Croke is all the more
important in that the dc facto Government of his
cotmtry ivas, of course, violently unpatriotic, when his
words were written, so that no Erastian taint can
infect them.

I have headed this article "A Forgotten Virtue."
I believe it has almost been forgotten in Ireland
that patriotism is a Christian virtue. I know a man

27

A FORGOTTEN VIRTUE

who has taken a great part in political Catholic
work in Ireland, who is fond of saying that morality
in this country is run on one Commandment, like a
wheel-barrow. This is of course a wild exaggera-
tion. But it expresses the fact that there are
perhaps some chapters of Christian obligation to
which we in Ireland are inclined to afford a rather
hurried glance. One of these is patriotism. I have
been looking through the Maynooth catechism, the
whole gospel of religious life for so many in Ireland.
The word patriotism does not, I think, occur in it,
nor even the idea, in any clear way. The nearest it
seems to get to it is in referring to Ireland as being
"our island" or at least as having been "our
island " in the year 432 a.d.

I wonder if it ever occurs to people in Ireland that
you cannot lead a Christian life if you leave out one
virtue altogether, that you cannot atone by any
degree of formal piety for such an omission. Suppose
a man living in grave moral sin were to go to Bene-
diction with great regularity and be assiduous in his
attendance at sermons we should view his conduct
with disgust. If a man has got a job by selling his
country, to instance the commonest form of anti-
patriotism, what are we to think of him when he
turns devotional, as he usually does in Ireland ? If
Mercier is right, the man is living in sin.

Or again, take that old man to be found in one or
more of the secondary schools in Ireland, who has
devoted his life to suppressing the patriotic impulses
of his students, to turning them away from the study
of Irish, to training them for jobbery and emigration,
what will God say to such a man when he comes
before the judgment seat, let him have been ever so
devout, if Mercier is right ? Will he be sent to hell
for his anti-patriotism? How many young lives
must such a man have blasted by quenching that
spark of patriotism that would have kept their ideals

?8

A FORGOTTEN VIRTUE

pure and their spirits upright. How many public-
house loungers or worse have to thank such an
anti-patriot for their degradation?

It has always struck me as surprising that our big
Colleges take with entire equanimity the fact that
a substantial portion of their students, as they would
express it themselves, "go to hell" within ten or
twenty months after leaving them. It is clearly a
direct result of their training. Does this happen to
boys of the same ages from the Christian schools to
the same extent. I have seldom met a boy from the
Christian schools who, whatever his other defects,
had not a really deep religious faith and a true purity.
I am told (I have not had the same opportunity ot
making observations) by employers of labour and
others, that at the other end a similar difference may
be observed between boys trained by the Christian
Brothers and boys trained in the National Schools.
The former have the Christian virtues. For all this
there may be several explanations. But I suggest
that one is that the virtue of patriotism has never
been omitted from the list by the Christian Brothers.
It is a grave thing to train a man in life and leave
out even one virtue, especially if it be the organic
body, the principle of order and unity.

Christianity must be accepted as a whole. Christ
Himself chose to come before us as a patriot. His
Crucifixion was brought about by one of the meanest
crews of anti-patriots that history has ever seen.

In conclusion, I may point out that this article is
written throughout on an assumption. It assumes
throughout that Ireland is our country.

29

AS IN 1800

(Written in the winter 1914-1915.)

We have the Freeman of a hundred years ago.
What a pity we have not the Independent. If we
had a file of the pages from 1780 to 1810 (supposing
it to have existed in those times) it would surely
make interesting reading ; Lord Clare's efforts on
behalf of the Empire against French militarism ;
Mr. Grattan's latest speech ; Wolfe Tone's letter
on the back page. The present situation is singularly
like that in the last twenty years of the eighteenth
century, the day of Irish Independence, in which
Liberalism was to iind itself finally submerged and
extinguished in a European war. You have first
the black days of Irish slavery, in which the spark
of a constitutional movement begins to glimmer.
It soon becomes a fire that sweeps the country.
Then come the Volunteers and the Irish are strong.
(It was principally an affair of Palesmen, yet, poli-
tically and economically, it was for Ireland as a
whole.) The cause of Ireland triumphs. Liberty
is won, in so far as freedom can be built of paper.
The Act of Renunciation guarantees Irish liberty,
as the Home Rule Act guarantees it to-day. And
the Volunteers are there to make it a reality. But
the politicians grow afraid of the Volunteers ; an
armed force does not square with their political
theory. The patriot party in the Volunteers, led
by the Protestant Bishop of Derry, are defeated at
the Rotunda Convention, and the Volunteers, still
numerous, become but a splendid shell, with the soul
gone out of them. The more vigorous spirits keep

30

AS IN 1800

the soul but lack the body. Forsaking constitu-
tional paths — for the Volunteers were a strictly
constitutional, and in the best sense a loyal organiza-
tion— they become " United Irishmen." The country
does not follow them.

All this happened in the days of the Irish Parlia-
ment in the space of a few years. We have seen it
happen in the space of one, with this difference, that
in the present instance Catholics, with a handful of
Protestants, were the actors, instead of Protestants
with a handful of Catholics. Will the sequel in our
time be. different ? What ensued in the time of the
Irish Parliament is shortly told. Once the national
forces were broken up or enfeebled, Irish liberty was
at the mercy of its enemies. Lord Clare' and his
Orangemen played their part. The very patriotic
enthusiasm of the "United Irishmen" which made
them enemies of the Irish Parliament and Consti-
tution, helped to bring about the catastrophe. The
red flag appeared in the national ranks, and
frightened the respectable classes. War without
and a rising within terrified men's minds and ruined
the influence of the constitutional leaders. Reaction
and military outrage reigned supreme. In vain
Grattan proposed to re-assemble the Volunteers,
when it was too late. Soon the Irish flag was
lowered in Dublin, and the Union Jack floated in
its place. Grattan left for Westminister to denounce
Napoleon and make fruitless efforts on behalf of
Catholic emancipation. There is, as I have said, a
striking resemblance between the two situations.
Few things seem more certain than that the enemies
of Irish liberty are waiting the opportunity for their
counter-stroke now, as they did then. Their
acceptance of paper Home Rule has been too
ready to be permanent. Such a counter-stroke is
in such circumstances almost an axiom of politics.
And when it is delivered in six, or twelve, or

31

twenty months from now, in what plight will the
Irish forces be found ? The prospect is not pleasant.
The same symptoms of corruption are appearing in
the Press as in the days that preceded the fall of the
Irish Parliament ; there are even some signs of their
extending to public life. By alienating their more
enthusiastic members, the constitutional leaders have
emasculated the national forces. The official
Volunteer movement must inevitably perish for
want of aim and enthusiasm. Napoleon's phrase
about the importance of moral factors applies as
much to Volunteers as to regular soldiers. On the
other hand, the action of the dissident enthusiasts,
like that of the " United Irishmen," will probably
play, unintentionally, into the hands of Irish enemies.
Cut off from the body of the nation, they must tend to
become ever more and more extreme in theirviewsand
actions. Finally, I suppose some outrageous wrong
will be put upon John MacNeill, and he will then
become a national hero, before whose shrine future
generations of Whigs will drop a grain of incense
as they pass in to dinner. Twenty years hence there
will be appreciative articles about him in the
Saturday Telegraph and the Cork Weekly Examiner.
The constitutionalists will call out for Volunteers
when it is too late, and find there are none. You
cannot resist Carson with a company of Crown
Prosecutors.

32

IS IRELAND A COUNTRY OR A
COUNTY?

I ended my last essay, but one, by saying that it was
based on the assumption that Ireland was our country.
This was not sarcasm. It was a very necessary
reservation. At the moment of writing^ probably a
majority of the inhabitants of this island do not
believe Ireland to be their country; and, taking
Mercier's doctrine to be right, it is just this fact that
will save many of them from hell, a sort of invincible
ignorance. For the man who believing Ireland to be
his country is false to the duties of patriotism, is to
be numbered with the murderer and the adulterer.

But there are a great many minds into which the
idea that Ireland is their country, the centre and the
focus of patriotic effort and emotion, has never
entered; into which it could not enter. This is the
case with the vast majority of Protestants. Ireland
a nation seems to them as ridiculous and evil as
Purgatory or convents. It is not that they do not
lov:i Ireland, every stone in it. They look upon it as
their county; they love it as a Corkman loves the
Mardyke and unstraightened Patrick Street. But
they regard a proposal to give it a separate parlia-
ment and government w^ith much the same feelings
that the average Irishman would regard a proposal
by Mr. William O'Brien to give Cork a separate
parliament, an attitude of derision verging into
speechless indignation, as the outrage seemed to
come within the bounds of possibility.

'1915-
D 33

IS IRELAND A COUNTRY OR A COUNTY?

No man can have two countries, certainly not if
the idea of country has attached to it the grave
obligations to which Mercier and other thinkers bear
witness. What a man looks upon as his country
usually appears from the language he uses. If he
looks upon Ireland as his country he will use such
words as "nation," "national," "patriotic," "our
country," "our history," and the collective "we," as
referring to his country, Ireland. If, like the Irish
Protestant, he looks upon Ireland as merely his
county, he will use these words with some other
reference. His collective sense will not go beyond
football matches — Rugby football matches.

A country is a land inhabited by a nation. I think
it was George Wyndham who said that the proof
that Ireland was a nation was that men were ready
to die for her. He was not an Irishman; nor did he
die for Ireland. Yet he came near enough to both to
taste the splendid bitterness of patriotism. The
blood of her martyrs has been the testimony of Ire-
land's national faith. That strange lamp of love
has kept alight through seven black centuries. Who
ever yet died for a county? Who would go forth to
shed his blood for a county council?

To Protestants Ireland has long been a county
and no more — a unit of racing or Rugby football. A
thin line of stern Protestant patriots has at all times
stood apart from the views of the overwhelming
majority; they have not shaken them. But the
astounding thing is that from half to a third of the
Irish Catholics have now of a sudden come round to
the Protestant view. They still want, or profess to
want, or even hope for, a county council in College
Green — an Irish Parliament without an Irish nation
would be no more — but they have in reality accepted
the Protestant standpoint; they hold the Protestant
language. To them, Ireland is neither country nor
nation. The qtiasi-pditnotism of the East Ulster

34

IS IRELAND A COUNTRY OR A COUNTY?

man for Ulster is an immeasurably deeper and
stronger feeling than is theirs for what they once
thought to be their country.

Since the time of the Protestant Reformation, no
such fundamental change upon so vital a principle
has ever been carried out so quickly — O'Connor's
curve. In the one case as in the other the strange
suddenness is apparent rather than real. In the
case of the Protestant Reformation, the immoralities
and , infidelities of the Renaissance had long been
sapping at the minds that seemed of a sudden to
lose the Catholic Faith. In our time we have seen
a parallel process. When Croke made his famous
prophecy about the effects of English pastimes, he
was only a few years out of his reckoning. Men
laughed at us when we said cricket was the enemy,
music-hall songs were the enemy, Sunday papers
were the enemy. We were told you could be Irish
without Irish. Now the thing is done. The explo-
sion has followed the long undermining. The
Protestant Reformation was not the work of the
people, it was the work of a body of politicians and
of a well-to-do middle class, influential enough to
make their voice heard on behalf of the whole
nation, to suppress the life-long devotion of the
silent poor. And the change appeared for a time a
small one. The same clergy prayed in the same
churches. Only the language seemed to have altered.
Changes that are vital and fundamental are often
the last to be perceived.

35

THE JUSTICE OF THE BRITISH
DEMOCRACY

(Written in 1907)

" Ireland's chances of political redemption lay in
the strength of the appeal which she might be
able to make to the deep sense of justice which
undoubtedly existed in the hearts of the British
Democracy." I have forgotten the name of the
gentleman who spoke these words, if I ever knew
it. He presided at a recent Home Rule meeting.
A chairman thus reported must display striking
brilliancy in his address to induce you to enter on
the tedious task of unravelling his identity. This
chairman was just an ordinary Englishman,
supremely important as a sample, highly uninterest-
ing as a unit. He expressed the views of the ordinary
Englishman about his own moral qualities — those
views that he has found it so difficult to induce
the rest of humanity to accept — clearly and con-
cisely. A Senator lecturing the Sugambri or the
Helvetians on the clemency — nota ilia et antiqua —
of the Roman people could not have done it better.
He even put into a phrase one of the methods of
obtaining self-government that has often been pro-
pounded in this country. Perhaps I did wrong to
belittle his abilities. It is because I believe his
statement has a sort of antipodean importance, as
being diametrically the opposite of the truth that I
have placed it at the head of my essay.

Ireland has, in my view, absolutely nothing to
hope from the sense of justice of the English

36

JUSTICE OF THE BRITISH DEMOCRACY

democracy, if such a sense, in fact, exists at all.
Let me make two reservations. First, I do not
deny the possession of a sense of justice to individual
Englishmen. They may or may not have one.
There may be just-minded Englishmen. Again, it
is possible that the lower classes of England, if the
Government were really in their hands, might prove
less unjust than the upper and middle classes who
have so large a share in its control at present. I
have felt, on the rare occasions when I have travelled
tothe Mile-end Road on a 'bus, that the people who
mounted the vehicle in that district were much more
like other Europeans — in a word, much more human
— than the ordinary Englishman of commerce, whom
we are accustomed to meet. But we have no real data.
If you cannot foretell what a political party will do
when it assumes office, still less can you judge the
future action of a democracy who now revel in the
optimism of impotence. But be that as it may, I
assert without hesitation that whatever be the
sentiments of individuals, whatever be the leanings
of the lower classes, as long as the British system
of politics and government continues to be what it is,
considerations of justice and abstract fairness will
count for nothing in the dealings of the English
Government with Ireland.

To treat of such a topic as self-government or
liberty, in proving this proposition, is manifestly
unfair. All men have agreed that robbery on a large
scale — what is called "empire" — differs not merely
in degree, but in kind, from larceny of a less extensive
kind — say, purse-snatching. In the former case, you
are entitled to take into account equitable considera-
tions, " whether it is for the others good," which
moralists commonly refuse to recognize in the case of
the latter. An Englishman may find so many
authorities to justify his detention — I use a neutral
term — of Ireland, India, or Egypt, that one cannot

37

454

J^'tii-tOo

reasonably call him unjust if he be persuaded by
them. But there are other matters in regard to
which a like difference of opinion does not prevail.
Savage chiefs, for instance, commonly believe that if
they enter into a compact, bringing them great
advantage, they ought to keep it.

The Act of Union was such a compact and the
English can scarcely plead their own fraud as a
defence to claims based upon it. By that compact
the English agreed to grant the Irish two advantages
only; first, a certain fixed number of representatives
in the House of Commons; secondly, a rate of taxa-
tion based upon certain ascertained principles. As
to the former, a majority of the House of Commons,
including a very great majority of the English repre-
sentatives, have more than once manifested their
desire to diminish it, the treaty notwithstanding.

The history of the latter is not very different. The
just contribution of Ireland according to the prin-
ciples enunciated in the compact was ascertained
some time since by a tribunal appointed by the
English (Liberal) Government to be one-twentieth
of the whole. With the knowledge of that fact before
them, a contribution, never less than one-iifteenth
— that is to say an excess of twenty-five per cent. —
has been exacted by the English Government from
the Irish people from that day to this. No relevant
excuse has been offered. Henceforth, the Irish con-
tribution will be raised to nearly one-thirteenth of
the whole.^

The fact is that Ireland's financial case has nothing
but abstract justice, arithmetical justice, behind it,
and justice doesn't count. Your Englishman expects

•Mr. T. M. Kettle's interesting figures, showing that, owing to
the recent increase of English wealth by half, the Irish contribution
should, on Union principles now be only onc-thirticth, is not in
point ifor my present argument. [What would be the figures
now ? — A.C.].

38

JUSTICE OF THE BRITISH DEMOCRACY

you to see the humour of such arguments, just as he
does. You might as well propose the evacuation of
Egypt. If there were some way of backing up the
claim, some way of hitting back, then he would be
at once alive to the force of your case. In fact, to
put it bluntly, there is but one way of affecting his
conscience, and that is by kicking his body. Of
course he will try to hit you back, but he will
go away feeling sore and, in a certain sense,
conscience-stricken. That is the English sense of
justice.

I have spoken of finance, because the proof was
mathematical. But precisely the same considerations
apply to self-government. Nothing has ever been
got and nothing ever will be got — minor measures
apart — except by giving trouble. Gerald Balfour's
concession of Local Government came nearest to an
exception. There is no new method in Irish politics.
There are only alternations of slackness and activity.
And it is as hard to obtain anything from an
Englishman's sense of justice to-day as it ever was.

39

COULD OUR RELIGION BE
RUSHED ?

(Written in 1915)

The Irish nation has been driven from one Hne
of defence after another. Many centuries ago the
strong rampart of political independence preserved
its integrity. But all trace of that has vanished,
vanished two hundred years ago. Next there was
the language. No serious breach was made in that
strong line of defence till about a century since. Then
that line, too, was broken through, and there was a
general retreat upon the next, the line of political
nationality. We had neither language nor inde-
pendence, but we still held out ; we claimed to be a
nation on other grounds; our history, our traditions,
our distinctive insignia, the separateness of our poli-
tical thought. Men differed in their conceptions of
political expediency ; there was a right wing and a
left ; but there was a unity in the whole ; the centre
was very strong ; the position had been so long held
that it seemed impregnable. Now this line has been
broken through in its turn, and the national forces
are again in full retreat.

The Irish nation is in fact thrown back upon its
last line of defence, its religion. Should that perish
or be impaired, even the name of Ireland will be
forgotten. And the thought that keeps persistently
occurring to me is, could this line, too, be broken ?
Can it be held indefinitely when so much else has
been abandoned ? The position is enormously strong.
Against any frontal attack it is impregnable. Could

40

COULD OUR RELIGION BE RUSHED ?

it be taken in flank ? But a few months ago the
political position seemed scarcely less strong, the
green flag firmly nailed to the mast. I do not say
the thing will happen to-day or to-morrow. But
could it happen ? If you let others do your thinking,
you may find yourself thinking strange things. A
nation that takes the Daily Mail for its breakfast
and an English Sunday paper for its Sunday dinner,
may one day find a change in its Friday menu.

I conceive the thing as coming to pass somewhat
in this wise. Last autumn I spoke of the process of
cold-shouldering the Pope. Since then matters
have gone further. Instead of praise for the true
Christianity of the greatest of Christians, attacks —
unanswered attacks — on the Pope are now a regular
feature of the Irish press, both Unionist and non-
Unionist. Sniping the Pope would be the more
correct description of the existing practice. The
idea that the Pope is something apart from the
Catholic Church, though not put into words, is
indirectly conveyed, Now suppose some great crisis
were in the future to arise in the Church. If France
were to go into schism, for instance, a thing never
wholly off the cards.

An enormous body of opinion in Great Britain
would receive such a happening with enthusiasm,
an enthusiasm far greater even than that which
greeted Garibaldi's efforts in our fathers' time.
English public men might or might not write
pamphlets on "Vaticanism" — there would surely
be some "ism," at any rate. We should perhaps
hear that in breaking with Rome France was fight-
ing the battle for Progress against Obscurantism
(I hazard this as the appropriate Graeco-Latin
substantive for the occasion). In our fathers' time
Ireland had no doubt about her attitude towards
this kind of thing. On some matters at least she
thought for herself. "What would be her attitude

41

now or a few years hence ? I don't mean in a time
of profound ecclesiastical peace, but in a crisis, a
time of spiritual stress, when perhaps issues were
confused — I hope she would stand firm. But frankly,
when ever}' other line of defence has been abandoned,
I believe the line of our national religion might be
subjected to terrible and almost overwhelming
pressure. I see things like the following :

THE FIGHT AGAINST OBSCURANTISM

At a meeting at Northampton last evening the
Northampton Irish, amidst scenes of great enthu-
siasm, passed a resolution bidding God-speed to
their fellow-countrymen at home in their splendid

fight against Obscurantism. The Reverend ,

the famous Nonconformistdivine, who wasaccorded
an ovation, the audience singing "Nearer My God
to Thee" in compliment to' him, recalled the
magnificent struggle carried on by the early Irish
Church, led by Saint Patrick' (cheers) against the
forces that were now once again setting out to sap
liberty and impede the march of Progress. The
meeting concluded bv singing " Faith of Our
Fathers."

THE " FAITH " REGULATIONS

"Answering an Irish member in the House of
Commons yesterday, Mr. Robertson said that the
accused, Finlay, had not been deported under the
' Faith ' Regulations, but under the ordinary law.

"An honourable member: It is real Catholic
Emancipation now."

IRELAND AND OBSCURANTISM ; GREAT SPEECH OF

MR. ; SPLENDID DEMONSTRATION; ULSTER

SPEAKS OUT

Addressing an immense concourse, including six
brass bands which played "Faith of Our Fathers"

42

COULD OUR RELIGION BE RUSHED ?

yesterday in Belfast, Mr. said : " It was an

infamous lie to suggest that the Catholicity of the
Irish peasant, a.ye, and of the Irish citizen (great
applause), was less than it had ever been. No
peasantry, not even the Russian peasantry, the most
religious peasantry in the world, were more devoted
to Catholic principles, true Catholic principles,than
the Irish were. Let a few obscurantist cranks —
there were not many of them, thank God, in this
great, free and progressive city — they had no use for
them — let a few enemies of Progress croak in their
holes . . .

(A Voice — We'll smoke 'em out (laughter).

" The faith of Ireland was as undimmed and
untarnished as in the days of their martyred
ancestors. But Ireland has taken her stand against
Obscurantism, and she would not recede. When
did Irishmen ever fail to take their stand against
Tyranny and Oppression ? They were not going to
have the Inquisition in twentieth-century Ireland.
The ecclesiastic who lived in Spain and called him-
self Bishop of Rome, would never again bring the
unhappy name of Pope to raise dissension between
different classes of Irishmen. . . ."

All this perhaps seems a little impossible. Many
other things have seemed impossible. I pray God
that it may not happen in our time.

43

THE RELIGIOUS ANGLE IN
IRELAND

Ireland is like an examination paper, all questions,
no answers. And of these the most difficult, most
recurrent, and that which has led to the greatest
number of failures is the famous religious question.
There is, of course, a religious question in every
country, except, I am credibly informed, Japan.
But the religious question in Ireland has attained a
celebrity beyond that of other countries. For it has
been its fortune to come athwart the working of a
great empire and now and then bring about a
stoppage of the machinery. In so doing it has
inevitably made a mighty noise.

The thing itself is very simple, and has scarce
anything to do with theology. Even the desire to
make converts is comparatively rare among resident
Irishmen ; proselytism in Ireland will most often
be found to have an English origin. Probably there
is no section of civilized humanity that contains so
small a proportion of persons interested in theological
problems as the inhabitants of this island. The
question is quite a different one.

Yseult and Sir Tristan of old found themselves
chained together by an immoral love brought about
by another's deed, which no act of theirs could
remedy or make less. The modern native Irishman
and the British immigrant — the Catholic and the
Protestant — find themselves bound inseparably by an
immoral hate, not of their own making. Good wishes
avail nothing. The thing is fixed, immutable. The
individual will is powerless in its grasp ; and efforts

44

THE RELIGIOUS ANGLE IN IRELAND

to improve matters have not seldom ended by leaving
them worse.

A casual visitor to Ireland, especially if he came
in winter-time, might voyage throughout the whole
country and notice none of these phenomena.
Everybody in Ireland holds language of the utmost
broadmindedness and benevolence. There is com-
plete charity on both sides; at most a keen observer
might remark that the Catholic charity tends to be
of a fraternal and the Protestant of a paternal
variety. So, I make no doubt, one might have
visited the court of the excellent King Mark in
Cornwall, the British realm of those days, admired
the monarch's admirable bass singing, and camiC
away noticing nothing wrong. There are even to
be found Catholics and Protestants quite unaware
of their real feelings towards each other, but that
does not change the feelings.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the religious
question in Ireland, and yet the one least noticed, is
the way in which the Catholic and the Protestant
live socially apart. This exists quite as much in
Dublin as in the North. It is perhaps less true of
the small Protestant communities of the south, yet
even there it applies to a certain extent. Socially I
happen to belong, I believe (at the time of writing),
to something like the middle of the Irish upper
middle-class — perhaps nearer the bottom than the
top. I have only once in my life dined in a
Protestant house. Though I am entering on middle
life, and my dancing days almost over, I have
never yet been at a dance in a Protestant house.
I don't include in this the menages that result from
mixed marriages ; they are neutral ground. Years
ago, by an accident, I once found myself at a charity
ball organized by Protestants of the middle upper-
middle class for some non-sectarian purpose. I
found that the only girl I knew in the room was the

45

THE RELIGIOUS ANGLE IN IRELAND

only Catholic. With trifling and accidental varia-
tions, this is, I believe, the general experience of
Catholics of my own class and any classes below it.
At the very top of the upper middle class, where the
number of Catholics thins out very much, the segre-
gation of faiths is, I understand, less marked ; whilst
among the very small handful of Catholic aristocrats
I dare say the social demarcation would scarcely
exist at all. As for the state of things existing in
the bulk of the middle class, I have set it out, but I
make no complaint. Catholic society is conducted
on a like basis of separateness. In Dublin, at any
rate, neither religion feels the want of the other
socially; each is self-sufficing.

In the market-place, in business life, men of all
religions mingle freely. They become firm friends
and appreciate each other's good qualities. They
lunch together; they drink together; and in one
sense they forget the religious question. Yet it is
really present sub-consciously all the time. All the
friendliness is to a certain extent like the "frater-
nisation " of soldiers in opposing trenches, the
inarticulate protest of human nature against
conditions that are too strong for it. A single shot,
a blast on the bugle, a tap on the drum, and
they rush to take their places in the opposing firing
lines.

The casus belli is most commonly economic. Apart
from Drink, which Protestants make and Catholics
sell, there are three great industries in Ireland — (a)
Agriculture, (b) Linen-making, and (c) Jobbery. I
treat ship-building as subsidiary to the linen manu-
facture, as in a sense it is. The famous land war
was, viewed broadly, a fight between Catholic and
Protestant for the control of agriculture, the owner-
ship of the land. Of course there were Catholic
landlords and Ulster farmers, but I speak of the
broad issue. Sir Edward Carson's celebrated

46

THE RELIGIOUS ANGLE IN IRELAND

unfought war may be looked on as in essence a fight
for Linen.

Jobbery, with its yield of near ten millions a year,
is scarcely less important than the other two, and
the fight to control it is waged unceasingly in a sort
of guerilla warfare between Catholic and Protestant.
The capture of a judgeship, even a county-court
judgeship, is acclaimed as a victory in the official
communique of the day. Above all, the recapture of
any position in which the enemy thought he had
established himself is a cause of unbounded exulta-
tion. In reality the situation does not vary very
greatly. The Protestants are very firmly dug into
their entrenchments; their supplies are excellent.
They can hold out for an indefinite time against the
numerical superiority of the Catholics. Part of the
line is held by the Episcopalians and part by the
even better disciplined Presbyterians. There is
always talk of a general advance or a magnanimous
peace, but neither has come about so far. The
situation may be summed up by saying that the best
things in the patronage of the central government
are in Protestant hands.

The conventions of this form of warfare are some-
what peculiar. The actual religious fervour or even
the speculative convictions of the job-seeker are
almost a negligible consideration. Occasional
attendance at a place of worship of the religion
to which the common opinion assigns him has in a
few cases been considered necessary; but, on the
whole, public opinion is against any such require-
ment as tending to confuse the issues, and the filling
up of a census paper is thought a sufficient profession
of faith. Even if a gentleman were to proclaim
himself a disciple of Nietzsche, his appointment
to any public position would be duly chronicled as
a Catholic or Protestant appointment respectively
in accordance with the putative religious opinions

47

THE RELIGIOUS ANGLE IN IRELAND

of his family and connections, and compensation
demanded on that basis. Up to a few years ago had
Mr. George Moore — I don't say that he follows
Nietzsche — been appointed to some public position,
say a body of public trustees of some kind, he would
have been set down unhesitatingly as a Catholic
appointment and a Protestant put on to balance
him. The actual change of opinions from Catholic
to Protestant, or vice versa (though viewed with
popular disfavour — people were quite hurt by Mr.
Moore's defection) is however recognized ; Episco-
palian and Presbyterian victories are separately
chronicled. But outside these limits variations of
religious opinions are scarcely taken account of.

The struggle is not, of course, confined to industry
and government patronage. Catholics complain
that they are in large part excluded from " non-
industrial " business, from many branches of retail
trade, for instance. Some houses in the hardware
and ironmongery business are specially exclusive,
Catholics being, on principle, wholly shut out. I
do not know whether Protestants have any counter-
charges to make in this regard. Protestants have
been certainly extraordinarily successful in the
retail trade in every part of Ireland. Much of the
carrying and wholesale distributive trade of Ireland
is for obvious reasons in the hands of actual English-
men. These form a very important element among
the Irish Freemasons. It is usually found that when
the mode of entry into any large concern, as a bank
or railway, for instance, is by competitive examina-
tion it means a great increase in the number of
Catholics employed, at least in the junior ranks of the
business. Protestants would probably say this is
because competitive examinations don't test manners.
Good manners are usually a function of average
income taken over a long period ; and the average
Protestant income in the South and West is inevi-

48 .

THE RELIGIOUS ANGLE IN IRELAND

tably higher than the average Catholic income, as
there is no Protestant proletariat outside Ulster.
All Protestant barbarians hail from north of the
Newry canal. Catholics, on the other hand, would
say that their success in competitive examination
results from the fact that competitive examination
is the only method of choice not subject to corrupt
influence.

Theplay of indirect religious influences in matters
wholly unconcerned with religion is a perpetual sub-
ject of complaint by Catholics among themselves,
and (as far as I can ascertain) by Protestants.
When the last Protestant leaves the room the topic
commonly arises. Catholics complain that Protest-
ants always "stick together," and that while
Catholics give a fair share of their business to
Protestants, while Catholic convents, and even
Catholic bishops, employ Protestant solicitors and
doctors, on the other hand (if one omits the small
class of men who in all walks of life are so eminent
as to be inevitable), no Protestant tongue is sub-
mitted to Catholic eyes, no Protestant brief goes
astray ; the Protestant purchaser looks for Protest-
ant potatoes, Protestant mutton, Protestant patent
medicines. Of course this is a clear exaggeration;
but there is a sufficient element of truth in it. Irish
Protestants are at least as cohesive in such matters
as, say. Irishmen in America. They will in most
cases give a preference to a less competent Protestant
over a more competent Catholic.

I dare say when the door slams on the last Catholic,
Protestants tell each other a different story. They
say they are living almost on sufferance among a
quasi-hostile population; that they are prevented
from succeeding bytheirreligion.orelsebythepolitics
that are its all but inevitable accompaniment ; if not,
they are succeeding against considerable odds in
spite of it. They themselves are broadminded, and
E 49

THE RELIGIOUS ANGLE IN IRELAND

save for a few Ulster extremists, take no account
of religious differences. Catholics, people like the
present writer, for instance, are perpetually harping
on them. Irish gentlemen are Protestants; Catholics
are, well — many of them very worthy people. If
things were in Protestant hands there would be no
question of religion at all; and matters would not be
in their present pass if the English government had
not abandoned the interests of men always faithful
to it, who have sacrificed not a little in its service.

I fear I am getting into politics. But the dis-
tinctions, of which I write, are in no sense political.
I know no men who feel and (when you get them
alone) speak more bitterly on religious subjects than
Catholic Unionists. By the way, the invariable sign
of a Catholic having bitter religious feelings is that
he calls himself a Papist. Catholic Unionists are
usually full of hatred for Protestants, and can scarcely
contain their sentiments about Presbyterians. They
have a sort of feeling that it is not reasonable to
expect a man to be a Unionist for nothing and that
they are not being paid the honest price of their
services. Paradox as it seems, such men in the long
run often argue themselves into Nationalism along
this strange path.

Manyremedies have been suggested for the religious
evil, that strange paradoxical phrase. Personally I
do not believe that either the concession of self-
government or "the bloody sacrament of a common
battle" will effect any sudden change in conditions so
deeply inbedded in the social system. Neither the
hind nor the panther will change its spots (if I may be
pardoned that bold metaphor), at least not in our
lifetime. But these are political considerations. A
purely social remedy, combined education, has per-'
petually been suggested. It is said that Catholic and
Protestant pull well together — the words may be
literally applied to the boat club — in Trinity College,

50

THE RELIGIOUS ANGLE IN IRELAND

and that if this system were indefinitely extended,
reHgious differences would disappear among old
school-mates. In fact, a solution of the University
question was prevented for nearly a century by this
argument. In all this I disbelieve most thoroughly.
My personal experience is that Catholic graduates
of Trinity College have, in after life, quite as keen a
sense of religious distinctions as anyone else, in fact,
often a much keener sense. The happy relations that
exist between the Catholic and Protestant under-
graduates of Trinity College come chiefly from the
fact that a minority of only twelve per cent, is not
sufficiently large to excite disfavour or encourage
reprisals. If you had forty-seven per cent, of
Catholics in Trinity College, as so many would desire,
still more if you had fifty-three, there would, I firmly
believe, be Tartarus to pay; even as it is the favour-
able position of Catholic students in Trinity College
has not led to any considerable number of Catholics
afterwards making their appearance on the College
staff. The late Sir Francis Cruise once complained
to me most bitterly of the way in which he had been
treated (in his belief owing to his religion) in
regard to such an appointment. I have, however,
no personal knowledge of the facts.

But be this as it may, any general adoption of the
system must present extraordinarj^ difficulty. In
many parts of Ireland you would have to import an
experimental Protestant in order to train his fellow
scholars to be tolerant to him. Moreover, it is pre-
cisely in those parts of the country where men have
scarcely ever met a Protestant that the most tolerant
Irishmen are to be found. It may be no more than
a coincidence, but the least tolerant come from those
parts of Northern Ireland where some slight degree
of religious co-education exists.

Again, it is often thought that the best way to
meet the religious difficulty is by closing our

51

THE RELIGIOUS ANGLE IN IRELAND

eyes to it. With this I wholly disagree. It is
aa idea founded upon the pernicious philosophy of
Edmund Bourke, the apotheosis of systematized
humbug. Shortsightedness is not a cure for any
social evil whatever. We must first face facts
before we can conquer them.

Another experiment might be more interesting, if
it were not plainly impossible. At present one of
the few points about which all religions in Ireland
are in complete agreement is a rooted objection to
mixed marriages. This is probably a large part of
the cause of the religious separateness. A Protestant
girl who dances with a Catholic knows that she is
wasting her time ; and why should her mother have
fresh tea made and distribute her cakes and scones
to a man who is plainly unmarriageable. This
consideration runs through the whole social life.
Were the impossible to happen, and mixed marriages
to come into favour, it would be interesting to
discover whether the corrupt motives of family
influence would outweigh those of religious pre-
ference. An attempt to encourage mixed marriages
in this view was, I understand, made in Germany.
Here again, however, it is at least doubtful if the
result achieved would be quite what was expected.
Of every ten bigoted people of my acquaintance,
seven at least are the offspring of mixed marriages.
One trembles to think of an entire population so
recruited.

It is a mistake to exaggerate the degree of religious
hatred in Ireland. It is probably less than in other
countries. It is certainl}^ less than the hatred
between Catholic and anti-Catholic in France or
in Germany, and immensely less than the hatred (in
normal times) between Catholic and non-Catholic
in Belgium. It may be doubted even if the social
contempt of church people for Nonconformists in
England is not a more cruel and ruthless sentiment

52

THE RELIGIOUS ANGLE IN IRELAND

than any existing with us; the great amount of
proselytism, from chapel to church, through
interested motives, in England goes to show this.
Extensive proselytism is a plain sign of severe perse-
cution. In any event the hatred existing between
religions in Ireland is much less than the hatred
existing between the different classes in the same
religion. Women of different religions do not refuse
to speak to each other. Catholic and Protestant do
not edge away from each other on a tram, as the
middle class man edges away from an artizan.
Compare those two events, of which we all know
instances, a mixed marriage and a mesalliance —
which of them causes more commotion and heart-
burning in a family? Indeed men who complain of
religious bad treatment in a social sense very often
say that because of their religion they are being
treated as though they were socially beneath the
other party. Social contempt they look upon as
right and natural. But of social hatreds I hope to
treat hereafter. In itself religious antipathy outside
Ulster is not intense in Ireland. It is because the
line of religions cleavage in Ireland coincides with
the line of political cleavage that the two coming
together make a jar.

53

THE PASSING OF UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE, STEPHEN'S GREEN

As I write, the end has come. My old Alma Mater
is no more. A hearse-like furniture van stands at
the door to excite the curiosity of the chance passer-
by. Strangers called it " Stephen's Green." Among
ourselves we knew it as "The College," wherein we
differed from T.C.D. students, who make it a rule to
omit the "The," and always refer to their place of
education as " College." We differed from them in
much else as well, and not always, if one old Uni-
versity College man may express his views, for the
worse. Personally, I shall never regret that the
College, that is just now closing its doors, and not
any more famous seat of learning, was my place of
instruction, let theorists argue as they will in a
contrary sense. If University College of old had
any special defect, it was really that it was too true
a University, and complied overmuch with the ideal
of culture for its own sake. Students from other
places of education were, indeed, more likely to
succeed in the world, even in the world of educa-
tional promotion, just for this reason, that their
intellectual training was less complete. That I
should thus exalt the training of my old college
above that of other universities may, perhaps, be set
down to mere filial piety. Yet, if outsiders had
known the brilliant and varied college life that existed
behind the shabby exterior of the Stephen's Green
buildings, they might be more of my way of thinking.

Some of the men of that time are already on the
road to distinction, in science, in philosophy, in

54

THE PASSING OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

public life, in various paths of effort. Others may
never fulfil their early promise. It is all but a
memory now. But the college life, which had these
men in the first promise of youth as its chief figures
was indescribably brilliant and interesting. The
period of which I speak began with the return of
Father Delany, S.J., to the Presidency of University
College in 1897. For some time before there had
been a period of slumber in College affairs. His
coming back brought about a revival. The first
organ of college life to take on a new vitality was
the Literary and Historical Society. It had perished
in the troubled times of the eighties, and it was now
revived largely through the efforts of the late
Dr. Coyne, and of Mr. Walter Callan. It was, indeed,
the third revival, for the " Literary and Aesthetical,"
or, as the students dubbed it, "Atheistical," Society
of the old Catholic University had perished long
since. In the early days of the revival, the attend-
ance was small, and it is on record that, standing
orders being suspended, two students once sustained
the debate for a whole evening.^ But the new insti-
tution became popular ere long. No human beings
were ever so proud of themselves as we, the committee,
when we first held a public inaugural meeting, that
could vie with those of Dublin University in its
splendours. The Society received constant support
and encouragement from Father Thomas Finlay and
Mr. William Magennis, his brilliant pupil. Upon
our young and impressionable natures the intel-
lectual influence of two such men was very powerful,
and I think we all strove to imitate them more or
less. And no one was a more frequent participant
in its debates, and more interested in its welfare, than
Father Joseph Darlington, S.J., a man, the kindliness
and simplicity of whose character almost hid his real
intellectual acumen. Of the whole college staff,
'The late Mr. Sheehy-Skeffington and the present writer.

55

THE PASSING OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

indeed, he was perhaps the most keenly interested
in every phase of college life.

The College Sodality also began to excite a new
interest. Spiritual positions in connection with it
became the object of fierce competition among the
students. Concerts also became a prominent feature
of college life, and a choral union was soon to spring
into being. It was always a moot point whether it
was the concerts themselves or the tea and cake
which invariably accompanied them that attracted
such thronging audiences. The most popular features
of the concerts in those days were the Gaelic songs.
At the time I speak of, the Gaelic League was
beginning to get into its stride, and nowhere was
the new movement accepted with more enthu-
siasm than among the students of University College.
Voluntary Gaelic classes became the rage. Sophocles
and 0'Growney,Higher Plane Curves and O'Growney,
Hegel and O'Growney, became the recognized diet
of the various classes of students. Ireland owes the
College at least one well-known Gaelic singer, Mr.
Clandillon. Yet the new movement, by giving us
students an ideal, raised the tone of our lives, and an
exceptionallyhigh moral standard prevailedamongus.^
There was, at all times, a considerable interest taken
in athletics, but we were heavily handicapped in this
respect by want of resources, and Stephen's Green,
unfortunately, offers no facilities for boating. But
the greatest feature of College life, the college paper,
St. Stepheii's, has yet to be spoken of. Many people
look back upon it as one of the cleverest papers
ever published in Dublin. It was conducted by a
students' committee, but Professor Browne, S.J.,
turning aside from Grammatical and Homeric

1 Readers of Mr. James Joyce will get a different impression, but
this is the actual fact. Among the students of the college about
this time were P. H. Pearse, T. M. Kettle, F. Sheehy-Skeffington,
Joyce is true as far as he goes, but confining himself to one small
knot of medical students he gives a wrong impression of the whole.

56

THE PASSING OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE

studies, had not a little to say to the conduct of it.
It was " unprejudiced as to date of issue," as it once
editorially declared, but made some attempt to
appear monthly. Humour was its strong point,
and it waged unceasing war with the Choral Union.
Auditors, too, experienced a treatment in its columns
much different from that of the speakers, who talked
of their brilliant and suggestive addresses at the
inaugural meetings of the debating society. The
ladies' column, alleged to be, but not always in fact,
the- composition of a girl graduate, was a point of
much difficulty. Lady students always cavilled at it
as being too frivolous.

The rather juvenile staff observed one rule in con-
ducting the paper which showed a wisdom beyond
their years. Stability was secured by the remarkable
principle (I now reveal it for the first time) that there
should always be two dull articles. I wonder if, when
Professor X received a request to describe his visit
to the sources of the Ganges, he had any inkling
that he had been fixed upon by the staff as the writer
of one of the dull articles for the coming month. Yet,
so it was. It must have been the neglect of this
saving principle that eventually caused the subse-
quent college trouble, in the course of which the
journal perished after a comparatively long and
brilliant career. But, if I were to speak further of
the old college, and tell of a dozen other societies and
institutions that flourished there from the Chess
Club to the Vincent de Paul Society, I should
become garrulous. It was a brilliant chapter in life
to be looked back upon. When the old University
College is in the present month absorbed in a new and
more extensive institution, the book will be closed.
As I pass by the old place, now occupied by new men
with new problems, I shall think a little, wondering
if the college men, in their new circumstances, will
have as bright, as brilliant, as full a life as we had in
the old time. e«

THE PLAGUE OF B.A.'S

(Written about 1910)

I am a B.A. It is a deadly distinction. About
a year ago a father asked me to which university
should he send his son. (When he asked this
question he had of course made up his mind to
send him to Trinity.) To none at all, quoth I,
and thereby astonished him. And in truth the great
advantage of night lectures, such as I spoke of
recently, is that they educate a man without incapa-
citating him. They provide food for the mind,
without simultaneously withdrawing it from the
body. I have known a man who had taken First
Class Honours in his Degree and First Place in
his year, bitterly regret that he had not entered
for some small Civil Service Post on leaving school.

What, indeed, is your B.A. to do when he doffs
his rabbit-skin hood? He is no nearer a living. He
is too old to start medicine. It would take him
another five or six years, and entail a large expendi-
ture of money. If he have capital, he can, in another
three years, join the overcrowded, but sometimes
lucrative, ranks of the solicitor's profession, but even
for that he is a little old. Then there is engineering,
for what it is worth. He is not likely to find a
vocation for the Church. If he has exceptional
examination ability, and about two hundred pounds,
he can have a shot for the Home or the Indian Civil
Service; the Home Civil in most cases involves
emigration. He is, of course, hopelessly unfitted
for a commercial or industrial career, unless he has
one already made for him by his father. He may

58

THE PLAGUE OF B.A.'S

know political economy, but he can't work a letter-
press, and very possibly is incapable of answering a
call on the telephone. Merchants and industrials
unconnected by family ties simply don't want him,
and have no intention of undertaking the difficult
task of his business education. And, even were he
not too old, a bank would at once fight shy of his
personal appearance. In practice three careers
remain open to him : the Bar, journalism, being
an M.P.

As regards the last, I shall say nothing more than
that it seems distinctly easier to decide to be an M.P.
than to become one. Personally I have never made
any effort in that direction, but I should fancy
that a University degree would be, if anything, a
hindrance. Whilst as for the Bar, it is rather like
going to Monte Carlo — ten or twenty to one against
making a fortune, three or four to one against even
getting your money back. Some of the most success-
ful barristers, as, for instance, the present Recorder
of Dublin, who was leader of the Common Law Bar
in his time, never proceeded to a B.A. degree. As for
journalism — well, all I can do is to give Mr. Punch's
advice. Even in England literary journalism will
soon be a thing of the past.

Can this state of affairs be changed ? No greater
nonsense was, indeed, ever uttered than to say there
are no educated Catholics to fill public positions.
The fact is, that the positions are there, the educated
Catholics are there. They are never introduced to
one another. The element of truth in the statement
is this, that younger Catholics being seldom
employed in respectable positions in the public
service, when you come to look for middle-aged
men to fill important positions, you naturally
discover few Catholics among the men in the normal
line of succession. If anything were wanted to prove
this, it is the number of really brilliant Catholic men

59

THE PLAGUE OF B.A.'S

who have been ready to bury themselves, at meagre
salaries, in the wretched pigeon-holing of the Four
Courts offices, just because this is almost the only
piece of public patronage open to Catholics for
which a higher education is a qualification. The
grievance in this respect has in no way been remedied
in recent times.

But after all, the main purpose of education should
not be to produce Civil Servants. Is practical edu-
cation in a real sense feasible ? I must say I have
my doubts. The new University would, it was hoped,
afford a practical education, but I see no signs of its
doing so. The faculty of commerce is the only
attempt in this direction. And personally I shall
be much surprised if it produce one graduate per
annum (not being a man with a family business
behind him) who shall succeed in making his living
out of either commerce or industry. Like the
American colleges, it is, I fancy, far more likely to
turn out teachers of commerce than commercial
men.^

Descending from the level of Universities, even in
the lower branches of education, practical education
seems either to be found impractical, or else to be
very little attempted. Take our secondary schools,
for instance, not to speak of any more skilled employ-
ment, they do not devote themselves even to giving
a practical education to clerks, which so many of
their scholars must afterwards become. To a clerk,
apart from reading and writing, just three subjects
are practically useful : addition, shorthand, and
typewriting. The first is commonly taught badly,
the second and third very often not taught at all.
Pure geometry, on the contrary, the bane of the
Irish mind, which is calculated to ruin a man by
making him logical, is a much favoured subject of

' Experience is showing that the results of the commerce faculty
are fairly hopeful.

60

THE PLAGUE OF B.A.'S

education. The real problem of " bread-studies " is
entirely unsolved, and, indeed, very little regarded.
There is, however, a class of practical education
of a different kind, the education that makes a man
practical in the sense of being good for himself with-
out being good for the community. A spice of
blackguardism is, I venture to say it, almost
necessary to real success in this country, black-
guardism either of the militant or the merely passive
description. Of course there are exceptions. What
else did Charles Russell mean when he defended
his emigration from Ireland on the ground that most
of the men he had seen succeed there were mean men,
passive blackguards as I would call them. He saw
that the type of successful men and of good citizens
v^ere, in this country, almost opposed. Had he
analysed the situation further he would probably have
said that the alternatives before an Irishman were
treachery, poverty, or emigration. For himself he
chose emigration. It is, after all, but a disguised
form of treachery.

6i

THE SECT OF THE GAEL

It is no uncommon thing in movements that after
a time men forget whither they are moving. The
means swallow up the end. In a certain sense this
has happened to the Irish movement. Copies of
the Philosophy of Irish Ireland would need to be dis-
tributed at intervals. (Could some such body as the
C.T.S. be induced to bring out a penny edition to
meet the difficulty?) I am sure I could bring
together quite a number of well-intentioned persons
who would tell you that the Irish movement had for
its object to promote temperance by setting up Irish
classes as rivals to the publichouse, or something of
the sort. Nothing is more irritating, indeed, than
the condescending approval of persons who bless the
Irish movement on moral grounds only. Parnell
once said of the land movement, in a famous phrase,
that he never would have taken off his coat to it had
it been only a question of the land, and few Irish
Irelanders would ever have taken off their coats to
the language movement — and they did take them
off — had it been merely a matter of O'Growney.
The revival of our language was adopted as an
essential element of national freedom — intellectual
freedom — and its object, as set forth in the Philosophy
of Irish Ireland for instance, was to make Irish the
ordinary medium of communication between Irish-
men. It was a purpose extraordinarily high, extra-
ordinarily difficult of attainment. And we need not
be disheartened if we have not wholly attained our
object. The enterprise might fitly be described as
miraculous, and though the Irish movement has

62

THE SECT OF THE GAEL

achieved many miracles, it has not wrought that
one^'^^.

The result has been quite otherwise. It is nonsense
to say we use Irish as our ordinary vehicle of con-
versation. We don't. Most of us have only broken
Irish and are never likely to have anything else. The
bad English we ordinarily speak is our effective native
tongue, and is (illusion and sentiment apart) likely
to continue to be so during our lives. I succeeded
in keeping up a conversation for twenty minutes last
summer with a man who knew no English (a very
intelligent man), but that kind of thing brings matters
no further. If Ireland is to become Irish-speaking
it requires a further miracle, and such may yet occur,
but what has happened up to this is of quite a
different kind. In fact, if one might put it so, the
Gaelic movement in Ireland has brought about a
result something like John Wesley's movement in
the Church of England. He set out to reform the
church to which he belonged, and only succeeded in
creating a new sect of nonconformists. The Gaelic
movement has in fact created a sect of men of
pure lives and high ideals, but leading a life quite
apart from the general body of the population, who
look upon them for the most part with benevolent
wonder. As I heard a well-known Gaelic Leaguer
put it at a meeting some weeks ago, Gaelic Leaguers
are a body as much estranged from the general life
of the people as are the Jews.

Now to have brought into being a body of very
good young men speaking rather bad Irish, young
men becoming middle-aged too often nowadays, is
an excellent thing in itself. They are a valuable
asset in the community. But it is very far from the
ideal of the Irish movement. Unless you can operate
upon the lives and manners of the general population
your movement has been a failure. Gaelic Leaguers
have often been compared to early Christians — every

63

THE SECT OF THE GAEL

sect makes that comparison — not always with a
complimentary motive. The problem I would suggest
in this article is, is it time to come out of the cata-
combs, even though there be an inevitable loss of
early Christian virtue in doing so ?

In all Irish morality, "don'ts" figure much more
largely than "do's." It is not surprising then that
"don'ts" occupy the most prominent place in Irish
Ireland morality. The proportion of the one real
"do," namely, " learn Irish," is quite small by com-
parison. How many books of O'Growney would be
a compensation for one cricket match, for instance ?
Not that I in the least favour that absurd exotic,
cricket. But you will never in our time get the
general public to live at the intense pressure of Irish
Ireland morality or I am greatly mistaken. Most of
them shrink from treading that high narrow path
on which one false step means destruction. And
as they grow corpulently old their disinclination
increases the more. Yet, on the other hand, the
fight for compulsory Irish showed that the general
body of the nation were whole-heartedly on the
side of the Irish movement, and that in fact the
"Philosophy of Irish Ireland" had become the phil-
osophy, though not as yet the practice, of Ireland as
a whole. Can it be made the practice ? Is there
any method of taking advantage of this new situation ?
The average man is on the side of Gaelic. Can he be
made Gaelic in a full sense? The existing apparatus
of the Gaelic League does not, I fancy, provide any
means for doing so. It is too hard for the average
man to live the life of a Gaelic Leaguer. There has
even been a reaction against the Irish movement in
many directions. Irish songs, for instance, have
been almost banished from the concert stage; Irish
singing and dancing have been shut up like a
beleaguered garrison within the fortress of the League
itself. Is it possible to effect a sally without abandoning

64

THE SECT OF THE GAEL

the fortress ? That is the question, and though I
have started the problem, I do not profess to solve it.
Let me take a single example. Take the case
of hurley, a magnificent game, with a wealth of tra-
dition behind it, yet absolutely cold-shouldered by
the upper middle class. Suppose you wanted to
introduce hurley into Blackrock College^ — I can
speak about that institution with a mind wholly
unbiassed by the facts, as my acquaintance with it
is only such as can be derived from the top of a tram.
I suspect that it would not be really difficult to intro-
duce hurley into that college by a strong effort, if
that were all you wanted, if you confined yourself
to the " do." But if you wanted to bring in a
" don't " as well, if you wanted them to give up their
Rugby, they would see you much further than the
Irish movement has yet progressed. This is but a
type of the whole. The number who admire prin-
ciples is very large, but the number who are ready
to exchange pleasures for principles is quite small,
perhaps because they have bartered so many
pleasures for food and clothes and lodging already.
If you want a wide extension for a movement, you
must sadly limit its comprehension. If, on the other
hand, you go in for Logic and Jansenism, you will
spend your efforts at Port Royal. The most rigid
disciplinarian in the severest Order never yet pre-
scribed the same rule for the laity as for the religious.

' I understand it has been lately introduced.

65

RUGBY FOOTBALL AND THE
"CONDUMNIUM"

I hope " Condumnium " is right. Unless there is
a misprint in the book from which I take the word,
it signifies the state of things existing in those
European monasteries, where some of the monks
Hved according to the harder Irish rule, and others
followed the easier rule of Continental monasticism.
The result was in every instance what might be
expected in such a case. Human nature won the
day. The easier rule triumphed, and before long
Irish monasticism disappeared, leaving nought save
a name behind it. But this is not an essay on
monasticism. Rather it is about Rugby football
and things of the sort.

I was not at the famous " international " where
" we " won the other day. I should like to have
been, but stayed away in churlish virtue. However,
I almost got the effect of being there by lunching at
a restaurant where everybody else was going,
meanly explaining *' I hadn't got a ticket " — oh !
thin pretence of ascetic patriotism! Two other
facts have recently floated into my conscience. I)
was looking at a photograph of a "soccer" teami
the other day. I happened to know six of its twelve
members. (I am counting in the draped secretary.)!
Of the six, four to my certain knowledge and a!
possible fifth were expert in Gaelic, i.e., not Gaelic]
football, but the Gaelic language. Some of themj
were indeed of exceptional expertness in this subject.
The same evening I met perhaps the most Gaelic!
person of my acquaintance. He is equally versed]

66

RUGBY FOOTBALL

in Irish language, music, dancing, etc. He can play
hurley. He wears a kilt. He is a Volunteer, and
thereby, of course, incurs a liability to many years'
imprisonment. He is, to my certain knowledge, a
true enthusiast. He announced his intention of
playing in his first Rugby match, whereupon we
trousered hypocrites cast up our eyes, and one that
was there upbraided him. It was much as if he had
announced his intention, let us say, of getting married
in a Registry Office.

Now this is the "religious " conception of Gaeldom,
pure and simple, and the question is whether it is a
wise one. As we all know from the green catechism,
if you refuse to accept any one doctrine, you might
as well, for practical purposes, reject all the others
as well. That is the characteristic of religion. And
it will be observed that the doctrine of Irish Ireland
is worked out exactly on this basis. A man may
think, speak, dress, fight, sing and live " Irish-Irishly,"
but if he playeth Rugbically,it profiteth him nothing.
A man living in cricket is living in sin. I knew a
poor man indeed, a real hero of our own country,
whose greatest asset in life was a leg-break, and he
gave it all up and resigned himself to a life of
inactivity on principle. Many saints have done less.
Fortunately tennis, though ever suspect, is not, I
believe, yet definitely and clearly on the index; per-
haps the memory of the tennis-court oath saves it.
As for golf, I only know a single Gael who is a golfer;
I know quite a number of golfers who are ex-Gaels.
And this is natural. As things are if you give up one
point you give up all. The religious conception of
being " Irish-Irish" drives out an enormous number
of persons, who perhaps differ on but a single point
of practice, as I am sure that in the South Seas there
have been many who felt that they would willingly
embrace the doctrines of the missionary if only he
would accommodate them on one point; if he would

67

RUGBY FOOTBALL

withdraw his objection to their consuming the leg of
a well-cooked baby occasionally. The illustration,
of course, begs the question. Even as it is I know
among the younger men of to-day — brought up in a
later school than us elders — a surprising number of
examples of combination and partial performance,
cricketers who dance Irish dances, "soccer-playing"
Gaelic Leaguers, Irish-speaking and kilt-wearing
Rugbyites, and the rest. The question is, should
this tolerance of view and practice be extended and
the "religious," i.e., " take-it-or-leave-it " conception
definitely put aside. By the wa)', why is it always
the unimportant points that are most insisted on ?
No one insists on a member of the Gaelic Athletic
Association speaking Gaelic in the same way that it
is insisted that an Irish student shall play Gaelic.
Reverting to the case of my kilted friend, if every
member of the Gaelic Athletic Association, who
suffered from a cosmopolitan clinging to trousers,
were to stand condemned, what would be its
membership?

All of which brings us back to the " condumnium,"
the system of take your choice and go as you please,
with which I started. But the result in former
times was, and if no preference be given to Irish
things, would I believe be again, that things Irish
would be wiped out, not because they were worse,
but in most cases because they were better and
therefore harder. For the whole tendency of West-
Britainism is to reduce everything to a flat level of
dullness. You might almost take the dull flat waltz^
substituted for the figured Irish dance as the type of
the process. The English song, be it drawingroom
or music-hall, empty of thought and music, but easily
popular, is another example of the same tendency.
Moreover there are tremendous forces consciously

1 Nowadays the " one-step."

68

RUGBY FOOTBALL

employed against things Irish. The national battle
of Lngland is waged incessantly and in all directions
at the same time. Catholic students may play
English games. It is not through accident that
Trinity College plays no Irish ones. Indeed a
Gaelic Leaguer might be tempted to say, only that
it isn't Irish, Que messieurs les assassins commencement.

If an American baseball team visits Britain and
seems to threaten hurt to British national pastimes,
there will not be wanting a British editor to ridicule
or denounce them. Nineteen-twentieths of the power
and wealth of the English in Ireland is of set purpose
directed against native Irish institutions of all kinds.
Its force is so great that it induces a like hostility
among the wealthier Catholic classes. The remain-
ing twentieth patronise them patronisingly.' Hence
I believe we dare not accept the free " condumnium."
On the other hand, the " religious " conception of
Irish Ireland has been carried too far, and has led
to our more than losing in numbers what we have
gained in force and effectiveness. In my view the
attitude of absolute compulsion (with virtual excom-
munication as its sanction) should be dropped, and
no more than that " decided preference " which we
claim for our manufactures ought to be demanded
for our institutions. But it must be a real preference,
and the great difficulty is to secure this. Let not a
man be excommunicated for Rugby football, any
more than for Danish butter ; nay, even though he
combine the study of Irish with a taste for low
music-hall songs, a combination far from uncommon,
let us still cherish him. But see to it, all the same,
that there is a real preference for Irish goods, Irish
games, and Irish music sufficient to countervail the
English attack.

One other interesting point remains. A friend
recently said to me : " The exclusion of Ulster is
the logical outcome of your Irish Ireland ideas.

69

RUGBY FOOTBALL

You have, in the terms of logic, increased the com-
prehension, or 'connotation' of the idea of Ireland,
this has inevitably decreased the ' extension ' or
'denotation' of the idea. If you are to have a full
concept of Irish nationality, a concept, full with
language, history, religion, music, life, how can
the Protestant music-hall-going, ' soccer '-playing,
English-thinking, Ulsterman be brought under it ?
The inevitable result is exclusion." But this raises
too broad a problem to deal with further in this essay.

7c

SOME LIES OF EARLY IRISH
HISTORY

History we all know becomes offensive if it has
any smell of fact/ The statement that history is
"the lie agreed upon " is indeed a paradox that has
by this time almost mellowed into platitude. Pro-
fessor Kettle has merely improved on it by setting it
down that Irish history is the lie disagreed upon. To
this I only object that the disagreement does not
begin soon enough ; it does not go back much beyond
Strongbow. I hope to deal in this article with some
disputed points, or points that ought to be disputed
in a still earlier period.

It is, to begin with, a question whether the man
of the old stone age ever reached Ireland. Most
probably he did not. Ireland was, however, certainly
in the full tide of the civilization of the new stone
age.

But we may pass by these matters as they have no
direct bearing on present day politics. The same
cannot be said of the next point how far the Irish
nation are a Celtic people. From Matthew Arnold to
Mommsen more appalling nonsense has been written
about the Celtic characteristics of the Irish people
than perhaps on any other known subject. By the
way, to make a momentary digression, have you
ever noticed how this particular kind of thing is
worked, as regards the ancient Romans for instance,
you can always have it either way. "The cold,

'The references are to The History of Ireland by Arthur Ua
Clerigh, K.C (Fisher Unwin.)

71

SOME LIES OF EARLY IRISH HISTORY

impassive Roman remained seated in his curule chair
unmoved by the taunts of the GauHsh invader," or
if you prefer it, " His hot Italian nature could brook
the insults no longer; he felled him with a blow."
Head I win ; harp you lose.

Celticism, we are told, is the second dose of original
sin, and the other party of English critics who deign
to patronize us only improve on this by saying what
an attractive thing sin is, even if it be original,
and even though you have a double measure of it.
What a delightful, impracticable people these Irish
are; how lovable their Celtic temperament. As a
matter of sober fact, until the new French Professor
in the National University is appointed, probably the
only real Celt left in Ireland is the French Consul,
if he be a Celt.

Your true Celt — the only variety recognized by
the scientific ethnologist — is the black-haired, bullet-
headed, sallow-complexioned man of the comic
papers, who saves his money and cherishes his dinner
in the centre of France. There is not improbably
a considerable admixture of these among the dark,
green-eyed population of England, the normal type
of Londoner for instance — the fair-haired, blue-eyed
Saxon is a pure myth — but none of these Celts ever
reached our shores. They would have had to get
round Great Britain to do so. When they set out
on their travels they preferred to cross by Dover and
Calais. There is, indeed, a considerable brunette
population, short in stature, along the southern and
western shores of Ireland — the Spanish, or, as
uncomplimentary critics, and perhaps rivals, call
it, the " Danny-man " type — but they are not Celts.
They are descended from the dark non-Celtic, long-
headed races who lived along the Mediterranean,
especially in the South of France, and came by sea
to Ireland.

It is from the extreme north of Europe, however

72

SOME LIES OF EARLY IRISH HISTORY

that the most important element in our population,
the Gaels (or Milesians) came to us. Still blue-
eyed and long-headed, and in those times fair-haired,
or even red-haired, they are almost certainly a
Teutonic people. The whole centre and eastern
seaboard of our country was settled by them. Save
only for a further admixture of fair-haired northmen,
they have maintained their type down to our own
time. It is from the mingling of the dark race with
the -fair that the type of black hair and blue eyes,
which, when it occurs, is the most striking type of
Irish beauty, comes about. Gaelic, which is of
course a Celtic tongue, seems at all times of which
we have any account to have been the common
language of both peoples, both before their coming
to Ireland and afterwards. But the one thing
definitely established about them, as about the
darker inhabitants of our western shores, is that
they were not and consequently we are not Celts.

The next historical romance I wish to investigate
is the great anti-clerical story of the destruction of
Tara. The anti-clerical chiffonier has always been
an eager delver in the field of early Irish history,
hoping ever to find there the ammunition of present-
day controversy. The story of the destruction of
the centre of Irish unity by St. Ruadhan upon a
trifling scruple seemednaturally an effective addition
to his armoury.

The story is ordinarily told in this way: "Guaire
gave a stroke of his sword to the king's spearman
and took his head off. This Guaire was half-brother
to St. Ruadhan of Lothra, to whom he fled for pro-
tection. The saint made a hole in the floor of his
hut and put Guaire into it. When the king arrived,
the king saluted Ruadhan with bitter words, saying
it did not belong to one of his cloth to shelter a man
who had killed the king's sergeant, and prayed that
there might be no abbot or monk to succeed him at

73

SOME LIES OF EARLY IRISH HISTORY

Lothra. 'By God's grace,' said Ruadhan, 'there
shall be abbots and monks for ever, and there shall
be no king dwelling in Tara from henceforth.' The
king asked where Guaire was. * I know not,' said
Ruadhan, ' unless he be where you stand,' for so he
was indeed, under the king's feet. The king after-
wards had suspicions, searched, found Guaire and
took him prisoner to Tara, Ruadhan followed him,
and on his refusing to release Guaire, Ruadhan and
a bishop that was with him, took their bells, which
they rung hard, and cursed the king and place, and
prayed God no king or queen ever after would or
could dwell in Tara, and it should be waste for ever
without court or palace, as it fell out accordingly."
The fall of Tara is in reality not to be explained
by this absurd legend, which, even, as it is, goes on
to state that St. Ruadhan eventually ransomed his
brother for thirty horses, which one might assume
was the end of the lock-out, but by a much simpler
cause. Tara, in the centre of Ireland, lay in the
territory of the Southern O'Neills, who were at this
time in a perpetual state of war with the Northern
O'Neills. The famous battle of Cuildreimhne, for
which St. Columcille is wrongly held responsible,
was the eighth battle between these two clans in
sixty years. It resulted in the Northern O'Neills
wresting the sovereignty from their kinsmen as the
fruit of their victory. The Northern O'Neills there-
upon transferred the seat of Irish Government away
from Tara to a place near Derry, in their own terri-
tory in the north, much as another conquering race
transferred the seat of government from Dublin to
London in after days. To hold two saints, one of
them a famous advocate of peace, responsible for
these ordinary tribal amenities is ridiculous. The
stories that seek to fix them with liability are evident
romances. " The battle of Cuildreimhne would have
been fought if Columcille had never existed, and the

74

SOME LIES OF EARLY IRISH HISTORY

desertion of Tara can be accounted for without
praying in aid, the bells and curses of St. Ruadhan."

Another wild legend found embodied in our earlier
Irish histories is that which states, on the faith of
certain manuscripts, that the Irish Church began its
career with three hundred and fifty bishops, all saints.
In sober fact there were about fifty, one for each
of the dioceses. Their jurisdiction was essentially
territorial. And each diocese corresponded to
the territory of a single tribe, thus Kilmacduagh
corresponded to the territory of the Ui Fiachra
Aidhne, Ross to the territory of the Corca-Laidhe,
Ossory very nearly represents the tribe land of the
Ui Osraighe, and Dromore the tribe land of the
Ui Ecac — Iveagh. The dioceses are the oldest
existing divisions of our country.

The next legend, with which it may be worth while
to deal, is that which represents King Brian of the
Tribute, the tribute which he exacted from the men
of Leinster, as something in the nature of a national,
or even a Christian, hero instead of the ambitious
tribal chief — no better or worse than other chieftains
— which he actually was. The fact that the battle of
Clontarf happened to be fought on Good Friday has
lent colour to the story. No doubt Brian's ultimate
success, like that of other ambitious kings in Europe,
would have benefitted his country by the unity it
must have brought about. But the battle of Clontarf
was not in any sense a national or religious conflict
between the Irish and the foreigner, as it is commonly
represented to be. The men of Ulster, Ulidia and
North Connacht stood aloof from it. The men of
Leinster and Ossory fought shoulder to shoulder
with the Norsemen. Brian had only the Dal Cais,
the men of South Munster and South Connacht, and
possibly — though this is disputed — the men of Meath
under Maelseachlainn, The Danes living in Ireland
and Dublin, who took part in the battle, were very

73

SOME LIES OF EARLY IRISH HISTORY

largely Christian. The Northmen from over the sea
were to some extent Christian, and certainly came to
Clontarf for hire and plunder, and not to wreak
vengeance or extirpate Christianity. Brian's own
daughter was married to Sitric, the king of the Dublin
Danes. It has even been asserted that Brian himself
married Sitric's mother, Queen Gormlaith. But
seeing that Queen Gormlaith had a husband and
Brian a wife at the time, there are, to say the least,
difficulties in the way of accepting this last story.
But, be this as it may, the Danes had by that time
become an integral part of the Irish people, and were
more Gaelic than the Gaels themselves. The battle
of Clontarf differed very little in its essence from the
many inter-tribal contests in which ambitious kings
and chiefs found themselves perpetually engaged
in Ireland.

I come finally to the celebrated love-story of
Dermot MacMurrough. Our own story of Sir Tristan
and the lady of Chapelizod having been definitely
appropriated by the Germans, it was necessary to
find something else. The romantic elopement of
Dearbhforgail (or Dervorgilla) seemed to be eminently
suitable for the purpose. And as it coincided with
the arrival on our shores of that highly sentimental
people, the English, it has attained a considerable
popularity. It has even been looked upon as an
improving anecdote, owing to its political moral.
Now, of the pair of alleged lovers in this case, it may
be stated in limine that Dearbhforgail, the lady, was
aged 44, and Dermot about 65, at the time of the
supposed romance.

The Four Masters say: " Dearbhforgail, daughter
of Murchadh Ua Maelseachlainn, wife of Tigherman
Ua Ruarc, was brought away by the King of Leinster,
with her cattle and furniture, and he took them
with her according to the advice of her brother
Maelseachlainn."

76

SOME LIES OF EARLY IRISH HISTORY

The entry in the continuator of Tighernach is
simply: "The daughter of Murchadh came away by
flight from Leinster."

In reality she was probably taken away for safe
keeping and as a hostage, with the consent of her
family, and restored to her husband when he made a
submission to Turlough O'Connor. There was no
romance in the matter whatever. She was, it may
be added, a great benefactor to the Church, and died
at Mellifont in the 85th year of her age. The popular
fable is a cruel insult to the memory of a good woman.
Father George O'Neill has also dealt with this matter.

Of the whole story we may say with the Greek poet :

ovK I'jv irvfMos o Aoyo?.

77

DEMOCRACY OF DIALECT

It seems as if we are in for a period of anti-
democratic reaction. It has come a little later in
the twentieth century than it did in the nineteenth ;
that is all. In Rome it was always the Volscians who
blighted the aspirations of the plebs. As far as
politics are concerned, the democrat has little to
hope for, except perhaps the complete equality of
empire. In these circumstances I venture to suggest
a new field for his labours, an intellectual field. The
literary oppression of the lower classes is enormously
greater than their political oppression has ever been,
even under the worst governments. It is stronger,
deeper, and better sustained than those tyrannies of
birth, creed, colour, or race, against which humanity
has at different times cried out. Indeed it is so
strong that it can even do that which is the supreme
achievement of tyranny, it can suppress the mention
of itself.

The matter can be put in a single sentence.
Modern civilization allows the poor man a vote ; it
refuses him a voice. His words, spoken and written,
are treated as filth — sound or symbols in their wrong
place — and every available means taken to suppress
them. The dialect or slang of a very limited class,
into which it is impossible to gain an entry without
wealth, or (too often) with morals is arbitrarily fixed
upon as a standard. And every man is invited to
express his thoughts in this dialect or maintain a
dead silence from the cradle to the grave. But in
modern times an alleviation is attempted. The poor
are educated up to a certain point. Great pains are
taken to teach them the favoured dialect, and many

78

DEMOCRACY OF DIALECT

men of humble condition even succeed in mastering
it, in a sense. So Frenchmen, native Irishmen,
and Germans — especially Germans — master English.
But they don't produce English literature. You
can't write really well in a foreign language. Even
a great writer can't do it. Gibbon, Burns, and our
own Owen Roe each attempted it, and each failed
miserably. Think again of the incomparable energy
and even the supreme ability that has for centuries
been devoted to composition in the Latin and Greek
languages, and the literary result — absolutely nothing.
And yet the poor are permanently condemned to write
in a foreign language the dialect before alluded to.

Let us take the case of Burns himself. Like Lord
Bacon, he possessed two languages, in one of which,
his own language, he could write, and in the other
of which, he thought he could write. The latter
was the respectable language. What a tremendous
blessing for Burns that he was a Scot, and so might
make bold to write in a separate dialect. Had he
been born an Englishman of the lower classes, he
might also have possessed two languages, literary
English and his own. But he would have been
afraid to write his own English; and would have
stayed a minor poet all his life, or else remained
wholly silent. Tasso and Dante would have had no
better fate had they written in Latin instead of the
unlearned Italian.

Now, my thesis is simply this : that (Bradley's
Arnold notwithstanding) no one dialect is better or
worse than any other, that each man should speak
in the dialect that comes natural to him, and write
as he speaks. The poor have powers of observation ,
and even of reflection much above those of the rich.
They have a greater sense of life. They have a
deeper religious sense, and there are to be found
among them men with all those keen sensuous per-
ceptions and imaginative strivings that make the

79

DEMOCRACY OF DIALECT

poet. And if they are Scots ploughmen, they some-
times prove this fact by expressing what they feel.
But among most European peoples the literary
tyranny is too strong for them. They are educated
or intimidated. They remain mute and inglorious,
simply because they are taught that, if they write
at all, it is their duty to be Miltons.

The most surprising example of this principle at
work is American literature. It has been cause for
perpetual remark that for their size and population,
the United States have contributed singularly little
to the literature of the English language, which they
speak. Various explanations have been offered, as
that Americans are not educated or not interested
in literature. Both statements are patently untrue.
I suggest that the real explanation is that American
writers, like Burns in his English writings, and
Bacon in his Latin, are composing in a language
that is not their own, and earning literary mediocrity
for the reward. If they would throw the English
language into Boston harbour and take courage to
write in that vivid American, which is really their
native tongue, they would find the same amazing
results flowing from literary as from political freedom.
As it is, the best and freshest things in American
literature are those compositions in real American,
which under the guise of dialogue or humour have
found their way into the literature of the United
States. Humour has always been the first defence
against tyranny. Who would not prefer David
Hanmi to the vapidities of Washington Irving ?
Some day American literature will take courage to
be itself.

To compare a small people with a very great, much
the same is true of the attempts of the native Irish
(I am one of them) to write English. Mangan, the
most successful, owes far more to his Gaelic originals
than is usually recognized. Next comes Moore, a

So

DEMOCRACY OF DIALECT

clever versifier, but scarcely a great poet. After him
a few novelists and one poet who reach mediocrity,
and a vast number of writers who do not even attain
that standard. These men were all trying to write
a foreign language. The results they achieved are
ludicrously small in comparison with the splendid
contribution made to the literature of the English
language by the English colonists in Ireland from
Swift down to our own time.

In these last examples there are of course national
differences, but the principle is the same. The
American and the Irish Gael are no further away
from literary English than are the lower classes of
the various European countries from their literary
dialects. The suggestion to give voice to these lower
classes, it need scarcely be said, lends itself readily to
light humour. All movements of emancipation do.
Voices for men is quite as funny as votes for women,
and, Heaven knows, that kept the humorists going
long enough. Some brilliant things, with the words
"Not 'arf" coming in frequently, could be written
about the new literary compositions of the poor. If
professional humorists ever dip into so serious a maga-
zine as Studies I recommend the suggestion to them.

My proposals, if they are understood at all, will be
seen to be highly revolutionary. They strike at the
oldest, deepest, and best-established tyranny, the
most potent instrument of oppression in the world,
literary or linguistic tyranny. It is proposed that
as democracy allows the poor man to think for himself
and to vote for himself, so he shall be listened to
when he speaks for himself. I suppose most people
have already decided that I am running my head
against a stone wall, attacking institutions and con-
ventions, of which the foundations are laid too deep
for them to be easily shaken. It reads very well on
paper, but in practice ! Will they be surprised to
hear that the thing has already been not merely
G 8i

DEMOCRACY OF DIALECT

attempted, but actually done, and that it has been
a complete success. Where ? In Korea, perhaps.
No; not in Korea, in another small country — in the
west. In fact, to give away the secret, in Ireland.

You have probably heard of a certain Dr. Kuno
Meyer, who received the freedom of Dublin. Did
you ever hear of a certain Father Peter O'Leary, who
got it the same day ? His achievement was that he
did everything suggested in this article, and did it
successfully. There was in Irish, as in other greater
languages, a literary dialect. It had traces of Cicero
about it. The greatest Irish writers had written in
it. After a sharp combat he overthrew it, and
insisted on writing in the common speech of the
common people. The result has been a renaissance
in modern Gaelic literature, comparable to the earlier
renaissance that arose in Gaelic poetry, from the
overthrow of the bardic schools. Gaelic is a small
and weak language, spoken by comparatively few.
Yet, even in Gaelic, a return to truth has wrought
marvellous results. The battle is over, and the thing
is admitted nowadays. What must be the result of
such a return to truth in any of the greater languages ?
If France would dare to be revolutionary and throw
aside that literary tradition, in which nothing is
variable, except moral standards. If Germans would
write with the simplicity of conversation. If Italy
would use all her dialects.

The world has surely grown tired in its literature.
Was there ever such barrenness as in the recent
war ? It was a moment of supreme emotion. The
countries of Shakespeare, of Tolstoi, and of Voltaire
were in labour. "Tipperary" is brought in in a
warming-pan. A period of reconstruction is surely
at hand. The time has come for a rebirth of litera-
ture. It can be brought about in each country by
casting aside literary cliques and conventions, and
returning to the speech of the people.

82

IRISH GENIUS IN ENGLISH
PROSE ^

rt..cannot be doubted that it is by the spiritual
possession of her intellect, rather than by any more
material estate, that Ireland must support her claim
for renown before the court of humanity ; and when
she would put forward her intellect it must be above
all on that intellect as crystallized in literature, as
preserved eternally in the great works of her greatest
writers that she must base her demand. Of Irish
literature, however, there are two great divisions :
that which is written in the soft and beautiful tongue
of old, and that conveyed in the language most of us
speak to-day, a language less melodious, but one in
which the most sublime masterpieces of human
eloquence have been pronounced by our fellow-
countrymen. Of one only of these divisions I
intend to treat in this paper. Our early literature
is still on the way ; it has not as yet, like the litera-
ture of Greece or Germany, attained that rank of
world possession, which we all hope to see it
one day reach. And it will be my task in this paper
rather to assert our claim to those dominions, which
we already possess of right, than to join in seeking
any new addition to them, however just be the
annexation.

The invention of an easy English style is con-
temporary with the entry into literature of Steele
and Swift, the first great Irish writers. As St.
Augustine was still the African, though writing in

' A paper read at Universitj' College, Stephen's Green, in i8gg.
83

IRISH GENIUS IN ENGLISH PROSE

Latin, so the great Irish prose-writers of the last
two centuries, the true inheritors of the ancient GaeHc
genius, when expressing their thoughts, found in the
English language not a yoke but an instrument.
Too much of the time and resource of our critics is
spent in seeking for Irish poetry in the English
language, a quest of which the outcome is seldom
satisfactory. For this eagerness to exalt the most
trifling product of our verse-makers over all our
more solid begettings arises from a strange misappre-
hension. It is commonly taken for granted that our
nation is still prolific in poets. The high standard
of early Irish poetry is universally known. That we
are an intellectual and highly-sensitive race, equally
so. It is forthwith concluded that an abundance of
high-class poetry is being or has lately been produced
in our midst, and explorers are straightway deputed
to go in search of it.

Proceeding, however, upon a more scientific basis,
if we look to actual facts and results, we must
necessarily arrive at a far different finding. It will
appear that so far from Ireland being in later times
a nursery for bards and sending out poetic mission-
aries to the rest of Europe, our poetry has during
the last two centuries attained only a very moderate
degree of excellence, and has, in fact, lagged very
far behind our prose. Admittedly the best Irish
poet is either Moore or Mangan. Their respective
admirers are, indeed, still disputing as to which of
them is no poet. Yet we need not hold so low an
opinion about either as the followers of his rival do.
We need not fail to see poetry in the " Meeting of
the Waters," or meaning in " Dark Rosaleen," but
surely we cannot admit either writer amongst the
poets of the first rank, or agree that he has attained
the same degree of perfection in his own art that
Swift or Bourke did in theirs. Both poets wrote
pretty verses, but few would compare them to Keats

84

1

IRISH GENIUS IN ENGLISH PROSE

or Shelly. What, I wonder, would be their position
relative to Shakespeare or Dante, Pindar or Sophocles.
Such a comparison may doubtless seem unfair. But
we must remember that from a like one, in their own
class, neither Bourke nor Swift need shrink. It is
a moot point whether the Drapier's Letters or the
Philippics of Demosthenes be the more splendid
monument of persuasive oratory ; whether, in
grandeur of eloquence, the Philippics of Cicero are
superior- to the Revolution Philippics of Bourke :
whether, last of all, in Juvenal, Dryden, Voltaire —
whether in all the satire that has struck terror into
erring mankind in recorded time there be found any
equal to the fiery lava-stream of Swift.

These great masters of prose I would put forward
as the true representatives of our genius in so far as
it has taken form in English.^ To Gaelic our best
verse belongs ; to English our prose. It is a well-
observed phenomenon of all literatures that a period
of great poetry is succeeded by a cycle of prose-
writers. Our era of poetry occurred while we
still spoke our native language. That era is now
unhappily almost past. The eighteenth century
saw the coming of our age of prose, and, owing to
the circumstances of the time, the expression of our
thoughts and feelings under this form clothed itself
in the English tongue. To search in our English
literature of the last two centuries for any analogue
to the poetic harvest of earlier ages is to act upon a
mistaken principle. The dainty English versifiers
of recent times are no true counterpart tothemightv
Gaelic creators of the past. We should rather look

' Twenty years after, I see this essay full of the cock-sureness
of a young fellow in his twentieth year, insensible to the poetic
revival around him, clinging to received opinions with the strange
loyalty of youth, failing to notice that few or none of the writers
mentioned were of the native population. The writer was pro-
bably not then aware that the best Gaelic poetry belongs to the
eighteenth century. — A.E.C.

85

IRISH GENIUS IN ENGLISH PROSE

for a development, and that development we should
seek to find embodied in a period of excellence in
the more sober art ; and we do find it represented
in the works of our great eighteenth-century writers.
As Plato and the orators were a natural development
of Aristophanes and the tragedians; as Shakespeare
and his compeers found their successors in Addison,
Richardson, and the prose-verse of Pope, so Swift
and Goldsmith, Steele and Berkeley, Sheridan and
Bourke are the lineal descendants of our lyrists and
our epicists.

To offer any proof of the greatness of such writers
would be a useless task. All mankind has already
admitted it. The attacks we have to parry, in
asserting our claim to them, are of a different kind.
The energies of successive generations of English
literateurs have been devoted to proving they were
not our countrymen. As the success of a descendant
ennobles Chinese ancestors, so the performance
of any great achievement by an Irishman results in
the transplanting of his family-tree to the richer
soil. Famous Irishmen become English after death.
The finding of a grandfather in Lincoln follows close
on the discovery of a great-aunt in Sussex, and we
are forthwith informed that our mighty humorist
was mistaken as to his nationality, and his humour
really an alien product. The evidence of character
is then brought forward to back that of genealogy.
It is pointed out that Swift and Berkeley were not
Irishmen, because they were not formed on the model
of Goldsmith, and sometimes, with nicer refinement,
that Goldsmith was not one either because he was
not the counterpart of Bourke. The method by
which a standard of Irish character has been arrived
at in our neighbour country is indeed not a little
peculiar. No one ever thinks of criticising John
Bright or Sir Robert Peel upon the basis of their
powers of beef-consumption, or their resemblance to

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IRISH GENIUS IN ENGLISH PROSE

a Punch caricature of John Bull. But a corres-
ponding method is commonly applied to determine
the nationality of distinguished Irishmen. Irish
characters are subjected, not to analysis, but to a
strange sort of synthesis. A composite nature is
made up out of the most outre characteristics of
Bourke, Swift, Goldsmith, and Sheridan; an imagi-
nary being as witty as Swift, as rhetorical as Bourke,
as i-mprovident as Goldsmith, as intemperate as
Steele or Sheridan is conceived and dubbed the
typical Irishman. It is then discovered that each
of these writers lacked something of this strange
ideal; that the writings of the Drapier and the
Citizen of the World are simple in style, that Bourke
was not witty, that Swift used to walk to bed
unassisted, and actually had, when he died, a balance
at his bankers. They are all straightway set down
as un-Irish, and sentenced to eternal transportation
across the Channel.

This strange method of criticism, a method we
ourselves, unhappily, are only too ready to submit to
and adopt, arises from the same fallacy which we<
have had to consider before, that of supposing all
things Irish to be uniform and conformable to some
one pattern. Characters, however, are quite as
various in our island as in the rest of the world.
There are economical Irishmen as there are lavish
ones. Bourke, the only eighteenth-century writer
with a pure Irish pedigree, spent his leisure hours
in vain but desperate attempts to make a joke.
This, however, would not justify us joining a dis-
tinguished lady writer in her flight to the conclusion
that the native Irish are not a witty people, and what
is known as Irish humour is really a Saxon quality.
We must be prepared to meet with many and various
Irish natures, and must not attribute every deviation
from the conventional type to English ancestry.
This plea of English pedigree is indeed the customary

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IRISH GENIUS IN ENGLISH PROSE

excuse for robbing us of our best authors. Walt
Whitman is never claimed as an English writer.
Mark Twain preserves his nationality after death.
But hereditary ownership is alleged in all Irishmen
whose families may have been originally derived
from England. However sharp the line which
divides their characters, different though they be
amongst themselves, from those formed in the other
island, no explanation is ever sought in the all-
important factors of national absorption, and, above
all, education. The theory that man is wholly the
product of his time and circumstance may not be
altogether true. Yet certainly the conditions of
bringing up and early surroundings must have no
small share in the formation of character and mental
development. To call Laurence Sterne an Irishman
is the mere pedantry of birth registration. But if it
was found that in Norman times such families as the
Fitzgeralds became more Irish than the Irish them-
selves, why should not a similar phenomenon explain
the characters of our Goldsmiths and our Sheridans?
Nay, if a foreign pedigree cannot rob Athens of her
Pericles, or France of her Napoleon, why should our
great men alone be the creatures of genealogy ?

I have in this paper joined in the endeavour to
save for our literature those pages which the criticism
of a neighbouring country, often assisted by our own
partisan complacency, has attempted to filch from
it. What, it may be asked, do these pages contain ?
I do not*liesitate about an answer. Of what is
good in English prose literature they comprise that
which is best. At a period when English prose had
reached its highest level — when it had freed itself
from the intricacies and Latinisms of the seventeenth
century, and had not as yet fallen into that sensa-
tionalism and straining after effect which mar it
at present — every great prose writer, save Addison
alone, was Irish. Even he cannot be wholly granted

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IRISH GENIUS IN ENGLISH PROSE

to England until we ascertain how much more of
what is conventionally attributed to Addison, must
be added to the newly-discovered realms of our
countryman, Dick Steele. Compared with our great
writers, how little value can be accorded to the
splendid but ephemeral novels of that period, the
forgotten and unreadable works of Smollet, or the
vast and now well-nigh untrodden wildernesses of
Richardson. Nay, from a literary point of view, the
hybrid prose of Gibbon can entitle him only to a far
lower eminence.

In the works of the eighteenth century writers five
great strains appear. Whether in the writings of
Berkeley, the Plato of the English language, the
deepest thought is to be found, is a subject for the
unparliamentary discussions of philosophers. But
that of all thinkers he enshrined his thought product
in the purest prose, that his instrument of expression
is attuned to the most delicate harmony, is conceded
even by his most bitter opponents. To the music of
Berkeley's style, the ease of Steele's tea-table essays,
and the beautiful simplicity of Goldsmith, a sim-
plicity that yet found, perhaps, its sweetest expression
in the Vicar of Wakefield, form a fitting counterpart.
In his embodiment of comedy, the third great strain,
Goldsmith is also pre-eminent. She Stoops to Conquer
needs no exposition. The theatre or the library has
made it familar to all of us. Criticism could only
repeat those expressions of admiration that all man-
kind has already bestowed on it. Poor Oliver's
comedy seems destined to outlast all other plays,
except, indeed, the masterpieces of his countryman,
Sheridan. For the latter's wit appears fated to out-
live even the fame of his oratory. The woes of the
dowagers of Oude drew tears from a crowded House
of Commons, the humours of Charles Surface and
Mrs. Malaprop seem likely to divert humanity for
ever. Yet of the mighty strain of oratory, Sheridan

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IRISH GENIUS IN ENGLISH PROSE

was one of the most splendid exponents. With
Bourke and Grattan he made up that triad of inspired
speakers who have made eloquence peculiarly our
own. To his fame, B3Ton, twenty years later, bore
witness. As to his companions, it is no exaggeration
to say that in the Revolution drama, Bourke, tower-
ing above Mirabeau, held amongst the orators a
position no less exalted than that of Bonaparte
among the men of action; whilst as to Grattan,
though true oratory is now but little in vogue, it is
safe to forecast that with a juster standard of taste
and a more generous appreciation of the power and
harmony of voice, he will once again be regarded as
a mighty master by all who seek to be enthralled or
to enthrall the minds of men.

Whether Swift, for it is with this master of satire
the fifth great strain I would conclude, was justified
in abandoning his party and some of his principles
in order to maintain others which he considered of
paramount importance, is a problem of political
ethics of which I cannot hope to offer any solution
in this paper.

The specific gravity of Wood's halfpence is now a
matter of little concern. But the question of the
nationality of the greatest satirist the world has ever
seen cannot but be of supreme interest. We must
of necessity feel a certain pride and affection, mingled
though they be with awe, when we look on that vast
nature-fighting spirit that once pulsated in our midst.
Yet, from all claim to the Dean of St. Patrick's
Thackeray would debar us. Always an enemy to an
Irishman, he was only too glad to sever Swift from
his compatriots, that he migh vivisect him at greater
leisure before his spinster-audiences in England. In
his superficial essay he pressed home a certain
harshness that we find mingled with the DeaJi's
character, to prove it was un-Irish. It is this view,
unhappily, that has gained currency in our country

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IRISH GENIUS IN ENGLISH PROSE

in later times. Cheap editions of Thackeray and of
Macaulay — the latter of whom having no space for
Swift in his corridor of heroes was obliged, accord-
ing to the canons of his art, to place him in his
gallery of villains — have begotten ideas directly at
variance with tradition. People whose grandfathers
still tell pleasant tales of Swift, and who, had they
been his contemporaries, would have thought it an
honotir.to join his bodyguard, and probably have
doubted .whether Mr. Wood or Chief Justice
Whitshed more nearly resembled anti-Christ, now
see in the great Dean only a churlish and un-Irish
boor.

Yet this was not the man that Vanessa longed
for, that Stella loved. Though he was harsh as the
bard of old, none the less Swift's nature was Irish.
But its nationality was obscured by the demoniac
influences that beset his existence; it was an Irish
nature, but an Irish nature permeated with vitriol.
In his soul the beautiful and the repulsive were
strangely mingled. Charitable beyond measure,
loving his friends and loved by them, using his genius
ever for the good of his fellows, the flowers that he
culled withered beneath his touch. The awful
malady of hating for its imperfections that which
he loved, tainted all. His benevolence for his
fellow-man was unparalleled, yet his fellow-men
form without distinction the subject of his direst
satire. The betterment of his native country appears
to have been the great object of his existence, but
towards that country he seems to have professed
throughout his life only feelings of horror and
indignation. Nor can we doubt that it was hatred
of himself and hatred of common humanity that
prevented that union with Stella, which might have
done so much to bring back his desolate spirit from
the dry places into which it had wandered.

Swift's was a life of good deeds and ghoul-faced

91

IRISH GENIUS IN ENGLISH PROSE

sorrows. He craved not our pity, yet he deserved
it. Still, though we pity, we cannot but exult ; for
we may not forget that, dreadful as were the con-
ditions under which his genius worked, that reason-
ing that could scatter armies, that plain-spoken
rhetoric that could stir nations to their depths, that
wit that could lash humanity, are one and all but
portions of the heritage of our national mind. It is
to the product of that mind that I have tried to
afford definition, and, in some way, criticism, in this
paper. Our national soul has had two great embodi-
ments. First, the literature of the Gaelic language,
in which poetry flourished, with which it expired,
and with whose revival I, for one, hope it may again
take life; secondly, the splendid works of the
eighteenth century, a true embodiment of our
national genius, that, taking fresh life under new
forms, as it had once been pre-eminent in poetry,
so now established an empire over prose. Over-
shadowing the reflected efforts of contemporary
poets, Irish writers, though of English race, the
famous authors inspired by it, wits, orators, essayists,
philosophers, took captive the conquering English
tongue, and moulded in it that vast and imperishable
monument that will preserve the memory of our race,
when, to the dead century, be added yet another, and
yet to that another and another.

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VOTES FOR CHILDREN

Like ping-pong and roller-skating, the art and
pastime of voting is for the moment somewhat out of
vogue.. At least it is so in Europe. Nevertheless,
this has not prevented the inauguration of at least
one suffrage movement. I take courage to suggest
another. After all, at the present time one can be a
propagandist with less danger to life and limb than
usual, since no one really cares what your views are,
on any subject save the one. The absence of free
institutions is moreover, in some respects, rather a
help to the spread of novel opinions, an absolute
government having, as has often been remarked, by
no means the same facilities for hunting down and
slaying new ideas that a well-established democracy
possesses. The Renaissance and the French Revolu-
tion were each of them the product of unfree
institutions. Women's claim to the suffrage and the
further claim 1 now venture to put forward are but
carrying the second of these movements to its logical
conclusion.

It is a trite saying that the three stages of any
reform movement are ridicule, indignation, and
acquiescence. Self-government is (outside Ulster)
in the third stage; women's suffrage was recently in
the second ; we can all remember when it was in the
first. The proposals here put forward have yet to
reach even the first stage of attentive ridicule. But
let me say that, though it may perhaps have the good
fortune to excite wide-spread derision, this article is
not intended to be humorous. It is not, for instance,
written as a satire upon the movement for women's

93

VOTES FOR CHILDREN

suffrage, as might readily be suspected. On the
contrary, the suggestions it contains are put forward
as a serious remedy for a great body of admitted
social evil.

Modern social enquiry seems to be steadily reaching
the conclusion that the human race is in large part
ruined in its 'teens. Physically, no doubt, civilized
humanity is corrupted at a still earlier age by under-
feeding, bad housing, and want of medical attendance;
and the community realizing this has entered on a
policy (limited indeed) of housing the poor, free
meals, and medical inspection for school children.
(By the way, speaking of free meals, I wish some
economist with classical qualifications would make
an independent investigation into the subject oipane^n
et circenses, and ascertain whether this state policy of
a great empire was really the evil thing that middle-
class authorities have so often represented it to be.)
The physical ruin of the poor comes early ; their
moral and intellectual degeneration comes in the
second decade of life. I need not enlarge on such
topics as child-labour, the sudden stoppage of educa-
tion, the want of technical training and "blind-alley
occupations," nor yet on these worse snares and evils
which a modern city provides in unchecked profusion
for the young. The former class of evils has been
pointed out by all recent social investigators. It
was the subject of a very able lecture by Professor
Corcoran some time ago in which he advocated cer-
tain palliatives, such as extension classes. The latter
kind of evils fall under that axiom of modern state-
craft, that "the Devil has his rights and they are not
lightly to be interfered with." Humanity between
the ages of twelve and twenty is surely the site of his
most extensive possessions.

The evils themselves are admitted. How are they
to be dealt with? The remedy for social evils is
commonly not sociological. Of course it is simple

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VOTES FOR CHILDREN

enough to combat evil; you have only to do good.
But doing good, in a public way, is about the hardest
thing in the world. It is commonly the most
unpopular. For one thing, you trench on the vested
rights alluded to in the last paragraph. One must
look to politics for the answer to the problems of
sociology. The evils of the Irish land system for
instance were known for more than a century. Royal
Commissions had discovered them. Philanthropists
had. wep.t over them. Economists had set them forth
in treatises. It required Michael Davitt and the
Land League to put an end to them. The social
sciences seldom go beyond a treatment of symptoms.
You must employ the surgery of the politician to
effect a radical cure.

There is one other proposition which has come to
be looked upon as an axiom of democracy, that
nobod}^ can look after a man's interest as well as the
man himself. Of course there are always other
people ready to take charge of them. Before 1793,
while Catholics still lacked the franchise, there were
not a few benevolent Protestants ready to promote
and foster their interests in every way, to be more
Catholic than the Catholics themselves. Wolfe Tone
for one was wholly disinterested. Still the Catholics
preferred to do the voting themselves ; they felt they
could safeguard Catholic interests better than even
their most eager well-wishers. And this has been
the view of all disfranchised classes, a view com-
monly borne out in the result. It is of course one
of the strongest grounds upon which women's claim
to the suffrage was usually based.

Now, as there were Protestants who looked after
Catholic interests before 1793, as there are Members
of Parliament at present who look after the interests
of women, so there are by no means wanting philan-
thropists who take an interest in the welfare of the
young, men who devote themselves to such questions

95

VOTES FOR CHILDREN

as "blind-alley occupations" or "child-labour," and
honestly seek a remedy for them. There are friends
of youth, just as there are friends of Ireland, and
friends of labour. But my point is that the interest
of such persons in these questions and their influence
for good in solving them is much less than the
interest and influence of the classes affected would
be if they were themselves allowed a voice in the
matter. Philanthropy is a weak battle-cry as com-
pared with self-interest. And though any one
individual may be neglectful of his own interests, a
class hardly ever is. Give boys the vote, and they
will of a surety use it, like other classes, to promote
the interests of their kind, to solve the problems of
boyhood, to punish the outrages that are perpetrated
on their age.

The wrongs inflicted by adults upon voteless
adolescents are very considerable, and yet like most
such things readily laughed away. Laughter is the
best defence for the indefensible. Some of them,
such as the problems of boy-labour, have already
been alluded to. The system which to suit the con-
venience of their elders turns the city street into an
occasion of sin, is an evil scarcely less crying, though
perhaps less perceived. But even in small matters
it is remarkable how the adult constantly sacrifices
the interest of the young to his own most trifling
convenience. The English monetary system and
system of spelling are two of the most glaring
examples. Here the interest of the young is in
direct conflict with the inertia of the adult, and the
adult does not hesitate to inflict years of useless
drudgery upon the school-boy or school-girl in order
to avoid the three or four weeks of discomfort that
would be caused by the change to a more rational
system. Here again laughter is the defence.
American adults laughed as loudly at Roosevelt's
spelhng changes as English adults would laugh at a

96

VOTES FOR CHILDREN

proposal to introduce dollars and cents as a basis of
computation.

The young, too, have certain of the other marks
of a servile class. With procurers and garrotters
they remain the only sections of the community still
liable to torture — by stripes. Laughter again tends
to be the defence. And the jokes about flogging
boys bear a close family resemblance to the jokes
about flogging adult slaves, with which readers of
Terence and Plautus are familiar. It is only in
comparatively recent times that the same treatment
has come to be looked upon as no longer suitable
for women. Some such phrase as " it is good for
them," or perhaps even " they like it," is in such
matters usually thought a sufficient justification.
That for which a class beyond all else needs the
vote, is to protect itself from degradation.

Of course it will be said that if the young had the
vote, they would not know how to use it, that school-
boys are not the persons most fit to decide questions
of foreign policy, for instance. Are agricultural
labourers ? Youths under twenty-one have those
qualities which are perhaps most lacking in modern
statecraft, honesty and enthusiasm. They would
form an uncorrupt element in every electorate.
Honesty — public honesty — is the quality of the
'teens and the early twenties. It is all but gone by
the thirties, surviving later perhaps in a few chosen
individuals, in men like Davitt, for instance, who
have had their principles preserved in the antiseptic
atmosphere of a British gaol.

Nor have boys shown themselves in anyway lacking
in those other qualities that make the good citizen.
In Ireland at least, taking them one with another,
they certainly work harder than adults, and their
work is more disinterested. They have a far keener
desire for intellectual improvement, and are more
interested in serious questions. They read serious

H 97

VOTES FOR CHILDREN

books for pleasure. Not one adult in a hundred does.
Until contaminated by some of the sources of cor-
ruption already alluded to they are more religious
and much less vicious than adults. In our time, in
such bodies as the boy-scouts, they have shown a
remarkable capacity for patriotism and organization.
Irish boy-scouts have at least one very striking
achievement to their credit in quite recent times.
The "military" argument commonly urged against
the female vote cannot be used in this case. Whilst
on the other hand a well-known argument for
women's suffrage, that the highest type of woman is
immeasurably superior to the lowest type of male
voter, applies with even increased force in the case
of boys. A well-educated and clever boy has faculties
immensely superior to those of the lowest type of
adult voter. Yet even were this not the case, the
objection would be irrelevant. It is not because of
his capabilities as a governor, but because of his
rights as one of the governed, that modern democracy
gives an individual the vote.

Finally, it may be asked, what is the concrete
proposition? Are voters in arms to be carried to the
poll by their nurses, for instance ? This is the
reductio ad absurduin of the proposal. The proposi-
tions of practical politics always admit of a reductio
ad abstirdum ; it in no way impairs their validity.
There is a limit. But one can be damned at seven.
I propose to give the vote at twelve, or at all events,
at fourteen, when the individual incurs full criminal
responsibility, and a large degree of civil responsibility
for his acts. In the Roman empire the privilege of
citizenship was acquired about this age. In other
words, the interests of the school population, so
much talked about, so little really attended to, would
receive a real representation in the commonwealth.
Educational questions would at last be looked at from
the point of view of those who are to be educated,

98

VOTES FOR CHILDREN

instead of from everyother point of view under heaven.
Nor would this point of view resolve itself into a mere
demand for idleness, as the cynic may suggest. Boys
as a class are no more fools than anyone else, in fact
rather less so. It might, however, easily resolve
itself into a demand that learning should be associated
with humanity.

It remains to deal with a few rather obvious objec-
tions., "They have shown no desire for the vote,
they don't want it." As this objection is a standard
one against all franchise andemancipation movements
whatever, I need only refer the objector to the well-
known answers, which are now almost as definitely
in stereotype as the objection. "They would not use
it if they got it," " it would bring ruin and ridicule
on the commonwealth." " It is too ridiculous to be
seriously discussed." To these the same remark
applies. Finally, the subtle humorist, if he be of a
logical turn of mind, can urge something really
original. " Why stop short in your democracy ?
Why not give votes to the other excluded classes,
criminals and lunatics? " Well, as for lunatics, any
politician must admit, nay he has perpetually stated,
that they are fully represented — on the other side.
Whilst as for criminals, many of them in fact have
the vote; but in any event criminals belong com-
monly not so much to the classes that vote, as to the
class that is voted for. To take the most famous
instance, the hero of Victor Hugo's Story of a Crime
received the almost unanimous suffrages of a people.

I cannot, of course, hope for an immediate accept-
ance of these proposals. I shall be satisfied if I awake
some first faint stirring in the political conscience
of the community, even though that stirring should
have its beginning in the risible faculty.

99

THE PSEUDO-SCIENCE OF
CLASSICS

The subject of Classics is now, roughly speaking,
in the same position as Religion was in the reigns of
Louis XV and Louis XVL It is still respectable ;
it has its paid professors, who are people of conse-
quence, if not of influence; a limited amount of it
(every day becoming less) is still supported by a
severe legal compulsion ; but it is thoroughly hated
by everybody ; no one has the courage to say a good
word for it in private.

There was a time when public men embellished
their speeches — in those days people used to read
them — with quotations instead of epigrams. Virgil
and Cicero enjoyed almost the respect now given to
the latest Russian novelist. And copies of Horace
were then as common as those of Tagore or
Baudelaire in our time. Nowadays, in Ireland at
any rate, we should almost prefer a biblical to a
classical quotation ; and that is saying a great deal.
In England the feeling about the classics seems to
be very much the same. The aristocracy who, from
reasons of policy (is not classics still the mark of a
gentleman and even a New Zealand professor of
Greek still respectable ?) have hitherto given classics
a formal support, must one of these days proclaim
their adhession to the general dislike. At best, in
the United States of America, that home of Demo-
cracy and other lost causes, ever respectful of
tradition, something of the old honour may continue,
and the hungry Greekling may find refuge in Harvard

100

THE PSEUDO-SCIENCE OF CLASSICS

or Yale or Washington, much as he did in Ireland
in the dark ages.

I have compared the contempt for classics to the
contempt for religion in the eighteenth century. It
is interesting to remark that that contempt proved
wholly mistaken. No men ever had had their
prognostications more falsified in the result than
the savants who in the latter half of the eighteenth
century predicted the speedy disappearance of
religion. The exact contrary occurred ; as I write
men are marching to their death under religious
banners in every country in Europe. A later age
discovered that it was the ahbc\\\\o\\^s contemptible,
not the Church ; and it was only because men
had ceased to live their religion, that religion
seemed a dead thing. And if one may compare
a purely secular study one might say that the
study of classics in our time is in the same case.
It has been stifled by a false science. But it must
one day revive ; for the thing itself is deep down in
the heart of man,

I have no statistics by me. I daresay there are
more editions and more accurate editions of the
classics produced in our time than in any previous
period. (There were probabh' more churches and
much better ones in France in the time of Louis XV
than in the time of St, Louis.) But the thing itself
is slipping from our grasp. Classical study has all
but ceased to be an integral part of modern life.
Part of this is no doubt the fault of our age, A
generation that can scarcebear the intellectual strain
of reading a halfpenny newspaper and prefers to
acquire knowledge of current events from the
" movies," naturally sits down with no small reluct-
ance to unravel a speech of Thucydides or a chorus
of iEschylus — ixkya ftLfiXiov fieya KaK6u, said the men
of Alexandria. In our time we are well on the way
to drop the first word of the quotation and affirm

lOI

THE PSEUDO-SCIENCE OF CLASSICS

quite simply (or at least we should make the affirma-
tion, if a knowledge of Greek still persisted), fSi/SXiov
fuya KaKov. When men are in this frame of mind
the Latin and Greek classics have but a poor chance.
Yet, granted that a gradual weakening of intellectual
fibre, a steady growth of mental lassitude has been
a marked feature of the last thirty years, this cannot
of itself account for the deep unpopularity of
classical study or, rather, classical knowledge. Nor
is the increased study of German or the increased
respect for French literature, nor even the study of
translations of other modern literatures the real
explanation. The study of classics could not have
lost its hold, as it has done, classical knowledge
could not have fallen into so deep a contempt if none
but external causes were at work. It has, in large
part, been destroyed from within. The classical
professor has ruined the classics.

It is a fairly well-observed phenomenon that, if
any system or organization finds itself in a stress of
competition with an opposition system, it tends to
abandon its characteristic qualities, and attempt to
assimilate these of its victorious enemy, often with
the most incongruous and disastrous results. This
is what has happened to classics. For centuries the
classical authors had held the leading place in that
body of thought, supremely true in my view, which
Pope summed up in the formula, " the proper study
of mankind is man." The tale of Dido's love, the
subtle analysis of her psychology, or (again) such a
passage as the following :

ev w TAa/xwi/ oo , ovk e"yco //-oi^os,
7rdvTo9ev /Sopeios ws rts
a/cTo, Kviia-TorrrXr)^ X^'M^P"* jcXovetTat,
(US Kai Tovoe kot aKpas
Seivat KvfiaToayeis
VLTai, KX.oPiova-iv a<i ^vvova-ai,
102

THE PSEUDO-SCIENCE OF CLASSICS

ai fJL€v (XTT deXtov Sucrpiav,
ai 8 avareAAovTos,
at o ava /txecrcrav aKTiv ,
at 6 ewDX'ttV aT^o 'PiTrav

were rightly looked upon as supreme, as the noblest
efforts to interpret man to man.

But a great change came over thought in the last
ceatujy. I refer not so much to that poetic revolu-
tion which, under pantheistic influence, came to look
upon the scenery in life's drama as more important
than the actors, which would, in the passage just
quoted, have more feeling for the sorrows of the
beach than of CEdipus. This was, of course, a
reaction against classic ideas, in part no doubt a
needed reaction. It was, we must remember, in some
degree inspired by Gaelic literature. But it is not
this that has led to the ruin of classical study.

Another movement of a very different kind arose
about the same time as the Romantic movement.
In one sense it was the very opposite of the Romantic.
The great development of scientific research and
adventure led to the most amazing results in the last
century. The interest in scientific pursuits naturally
became wide-spread and intense. Science, on its
two sides of exuberant imagination and painstaking
accumulation of exact knowledge, obtained extra-
ordinary respect and universal popularity, even with
those who had neither imagination nor capacity for
ascertaining fact. On both sides it was inhuman,
even anti-human, and in so far it was profoundly
anti-classical.

Nineteenth century human beings were assailed
not by imaginary drat, but by still more imaginary
ether-waves. Both afforded an adequate explanation
of observed phenomena. The latter, however, differed
from the former in being capable of exact measure-
ment ; they were equally unreal. They were ever so

103

THE PSEUDO-SCIENCE OF CLASSICS

much less human. And this cult of the inhuman
came to pervade the whole life of the century, its
morality, its economy, even its politics. People
wanted to measure everything, even the incommen-
surable, to weigh the imponderable. It is scarcely
an exaggeration to say that in the nineteenth century
mathematics became the enemy of life; and it was
in large part a mathematics of imaginary quantities,
" the economic man " and the rest. All this was, of
course, a deadly assault upon the position of classics
and its allies. For they dealt with that by no means
imaginary quantity, the human being, with his joys
and his sorrows, his individual soul. You could not
fit him into an equation or test him effectively by an
experiment. Nineteenth century science had little
in common with those things for which the classics
stood. The jar was inevitable.

But how did the classicists meet the attack? They
were guilty of an amazing folly. They abandoned
the strongest position in the world, the heart of man.
They set out to become scientists themselves. Never
was there a sorrier spectacle. Classical learning had
certain essential facts, of grammar, of textual varia-
tion, of social conditions associated with it. And
men had at all times been employed to serve up texts,
as men (or women) are employed to cook dinners.
Bentley, for instance, had gained distinction in this
art a century earlier, though his contemporaries, who
had an unquestioning respect for the classics, rightly
thought more of Addison, the poet. For the future
this secondary aspect of classical learning was to be
developed almost to the exclusion of everything else.
Men were encoura^jed to devote themselves to the
cooking rather than the eating. The various sub-
sidiary elements in classical learning were worked
up into a science ; the good classical student was
encouraged to divide his time between observing
subjunctives and imagining emendations. Even men

104

THE PSEUDO-SCIENCE OF CLASSICS

with fine qualities of taste, discrimination and human
feeling like Jebb and Tyrrell had to bend to the
yoke of pseudo-science, though as scientists they
were as much out of place as Lucretius himself.
The inevitable result followed ; anyone can see it
with his own eyes. Each day and each week the
hatred of classics, apostate classics, classics false
to its own first principle, the pseudo-science of
classics, grew more intense, more wide-spread. It
extended to every class ; the classical student him-
self came to hate his gain-study ; till to-day the great
bulk of men view classics, classical authors, classical
teachers and classical quotations with almost a
passionate dislike. The old respect has wholly
disappeared. The anti-clericalism of a French
Freemason is scarcely as bitter as the anti-classicism
of the average citizen. And yet classical scholars
do not realize that all this is their own handiwork.
They have ruined their study because they have
betrayed it.

In very recent times an effort is being made to
popularize classical studies, by calling in the aid
of classical archaeology, a useful and valuable
science in itself, and especially useful in illustrating
many points of classical learning. But this is to
give water to the dropsical. What is needed for
classics is not a new addition of science, the very
evil from which it is suffering and almost expiring,
but rather that it should shake itself free from science
once for all and resume its place as a study and
criticism of life. If the classical authors are ever to
live again, in public esteem, it must be by restoring
them to their position as living literature, and no
longer leaving them as corpses on the dissecting-
table of the learned. Dead immortal Caijsar has
become a " subject."

105

i

THE SNOBBERY OF QUINTUS
HORATIUS FLACCUS

A snob, says William Makepeace Thackeray, "is
one who meanly admires mean things."^ He
should have known, for it is admitted that William
Makepeace Thackeray was a snob himself. It is
proposed to show that Quintus Horatius Flaccus,
better known as Horace, belonged to the same
numerous and respectable class of the community.
No doubt he had not always been so. There was
once a nobler Horace who has not come down to us,
who might perhaps have enjoyed a less popularity if
he had. Young Quintus had of course been brought
up upon the most approved principles of snobbery
by his really excellent father, who had been a slave.
Excellent fathers have that way. He had been
thoroughly instructed in platitudinous perfections
much after the manner of Polonius' advice to his son.
His father, admirable man, bade him emulate the
virtues of a Special Juror. But to complete his son's
education he was obliged to send him to the Uni-
versity or its then equivalent, Athens. Universities
are strange places ; they often make you pay dearly
for the education and refinement they impart, by
teaching you ideals, very dangerous things. And
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, the clever son of the
ex-slave, imbibed ideals.

Brutus was then making the last stand for human
liberty, or at least constitutional government, that
was to be made for many centuries. The republican

^ Book of Snobs, cap. 2, p. 9.
106

THE SNOBBERY OF QUINTUS

effort was to fail and the dull pall of the Roman
Empire was to sink upon humanity, till at last the
Christian religion should bring back colour to life.
In this last glorious stand of Brutus and the narrow
but splendid patriots of the time the young student
took his part. This can scarcel}' have been what
his careful father had looked for from all his training.
Education has strange results. It may have been
some compensation that young Quintus — the freed-
man's son — was sometimes to be found leading a
Roman legion. The young man himself was tre-
mendously proud of it. Early education also counts
for something. I am sure young Horace dealt with
the very best military tailors of the period. But
unfortunately the great adventure failed. Brutus
was beaten. And few positions are less enviable than
that of the officer of a defeated army.

Quintus Horatius Flaccus, late a commissioned
officer of the Roman Army, now no one at all, was
in sorry case. He went in for a position in the lower
ranks of the Civil Service, and was glad to get it
at that. The common idea is that Horace was
rescued from this pass by the literary taste of the
new Augustan age. This, I venture to suggest, is
a mistake. Maecenas' set was probably about as
literary as that of a modern prime minister. A real
poet, such as Catullus, was wholly alien to them.
Horace has only vile abuse for him.^ One might
conjecture that the descendant of the rather mythical
Cilnii, who were " regibus" a very long time ago,
was out of touch with the best Roman culture. Be
that as it may, the extremely rowdy and ill-mannered
set whom the tyrant's minister had gathered round
him — ista parisitica domus — required something to

• quos neque pulcher
Hermogenes umquam legit neque simius iste.
Nil praeter Calvum et doctus cantare Catullum.

Horace, Satires, Bk. 1. x, 19.

107

THE SNOBBERY OF QUINTUS

fill up their intervals of sobriety, at least when it was
too dark to play the ball game, something that should
occupy the mind without straining it — ^just like a
modern revue or daily paper. Horace's sermones
and Virgil's early poems exactly met this need.
Vulgar without being witty, you could enjoy them
between drinks ; and Maecenas, himself a drunken
and effeminate fop,^ who was a patron of the arts
much after the manner of Lord Steyne, gave these
two writers a place among his blackguards, buffoons
and sycophants. To be more precise, one of them
introduced the other. No doubt they belonged to
the opposite political party. Both had suffered for
their opinions. But who would nowadays trouble
about the politics of the author of a musical comedy,
and Horace at any rate was ready to submit to the
indignity of representing himself as having been a
coward during his military career,^ though he had
probably been a capable officer. If you think
Juvenal,^ Suetonius,^ or other writers are unfair to
the Maecenas set, read the "Supper of Nasidienus,"
as written by Horace.^ As a record of unmitigated
blackguardism and vulgarity, there are few things
to equal it in literature. Intendedto.be an attack
on Maecenas' host, Nasidienus, though it is put in
another's mouth, it lives as a terrible though uncon-
scious satire on Maecenas, on the man who wrote it,
and on the racketty crew whose taste it was written
to suit. Horace's other writings of the period are
quite of a piece with this — the buffooneries of the
Brindisi journey, his rudeness on the Sacred Way,
his gross cruelty towards Catullus, and in fact ever\'-
one who was not of the Maecenas set.

1 See the references collected in Mayor's well-known note on
Juvenal, I, 66.

2" . . . relicta noil bene parmula.'' — Horace, Odes, H, j, lo.

3 See Satires, I, 66; XII, 37.

^ See Mayor's note above referred to.

5 Horace, Satires, Bk. II, 8.

108

THE SNOBBERY OF QUINTUS

It is scarcely to be set down as blame to Horace
that he was proud of his intimacy or even of his
influence with Augustus' minister. Horace was, of
course, careful to assert that he did not use this
influence,^ that he took no interest in practical
matters, and was in fact wholly immersed in the
delights of friendship from man to man. But he
was not sorry to have it thought that a word from
him., (Horace) would set matters right.^ Horace
indeed so often proclaims the disinterested nature of
his relations with his patron that one grows suspicious.
The disinterested nature of a cow's emotions towards
a haystack must, I am afraid, always be subject to
criticism. It is, at least, peculiar if one who had
such a keen enjoyment of the grosser material
pleasures, as Horace plainly had, was in no way
eager for money, which is the normal way of pro-
curing them. Horace undoubtedly wrote poetry to
order; he produced patriotic ballads, carefully cut,
carefully dried.^ His friend Virgilius was, as we
know, paid by the line for one famous passage, not
indeed as the result of any previous agreement. But
assume that Horace's friendship with his patron, and
even with his patron's patron, was what he declares
it to be, one may acquit him on the score of his
relations with his rich and powerful friends, can one
acquit him as to his attitude towards his poorer
acquaintances? No doubt Horace despised consul-
ships and things of that kind. He might well despise
them, for he was not in a position to get them.
Neither did Horace own any granaries in which to
store Libyan harvests. He could preach unsullied
friendship to the great. But what was his attitude

• See Satires. Bk. II, 6. 11. 30-Go.
'^ . . . ill pulses omne quod obstat

ad Maecenatem memorl si mente recurras.

— Horace, Satires, Bk. II, 6, 1. 30.
■' See Odes i to 6 of Bk. Ill and Odes 4, 5, 14 and 15 of Bk. IV,
and the statement of Suetonius on the point.

log

THE SNOBBERY OF QUINTUS

towards the men just beneath him in his own class,
that is the real test ? His father was a freedman.
He himself had been a government clerk. What is
his attitude towards government clerks and towards
freedmen ? The government clerk turns up several
times in his writings, always for contemptuous
reference. Could anything, for instance, be more
hurtful to the feelings of a rising poet, once a com-
missioned officer, like Horace, than to address him
by his Christian name, and ask him to attend a
meeting of civil servants.^ He lets us know his
sentiments on the matter; whilst as for freedmen,
his father's class, he commends Maecenas' rule of
making no social distinctions in his friendships, /)ro-
vided only the persons are not mere freedmen.'^ Save
that the ambit of exclusion is less, this is very like
the suggestion underlying so much English literature
— all Thackeray's benevolencies, for instance — that
no social distinctions be made, provided only the per-
sons are gentlemen, that is, belong to the "public
school-university" class. At any lower depth no
organism can exist socially.

Snobbery, like egoism, is much more tolerable on
paper than in real life. Horace is, of course, one of
the most agreeable of human writers; he was quite
right in prophesying for himself an everlasting
popularity; if anything he underestimated his immor-
tality;^ his defects are indeed in large parts his
qualities. But a great development took place both
in Horace and in Virgil from the time when they first
joined the Maecenas set. The set itself probably

^ " de re communi scribae magna atqiie nova te
oralumi hodie numinisses, Qiiinie, reverti."

— Horace, Satires, Bk. II, 6, 36.
^ciim referre negas, quali sit quisque parente

natiis, dumingenuus . . . — Horace, Satires, Ek. I, 6, 8
^ ... duin Capitolium

scandet aim tacita vivgine pontifex.

—Horace, Odes, Bk. Ill, 30. 11. 8-9.

110

THE SNOBBERY OF QUINTUS

improved and became more serious. In the absence
of actual knowledge, one may hazard the conjecture
that some of its more prominent and popular members
succumbed to their social qualities at an early age.
I wonder if Vibidius and Balatro lived long, or did
death come to avenge their damnable drinking.

The work of the real men of genius in the circle
shows a steady rise in tone. A recent writer has
compared Rudyard Kipling to Theocritus.^ Without
suggesting any personal comparison to Horace —
I should think they have little in common — one may
from the literary point of view cite Kipling as an
interesting example of a writer of the attractively
commonplace and even the low, who, when the
occasion called for it, developed a noble rhetoric in
the service of his government. This is what happened
in the case of Virgil and Horace. Virgil, having
been at first a light writer, devoted himself to the
cause of government agriculture, presumably at a
certain profit to himself. From agriculture he went
on to patriotism, and finally became the most
glorious rhetorician of all the ages, exhibiting a com-
bination of dignity and imagination that no other
writer has approached. Bourke would be similis, but
not secundus. Horace was less fortunate. His state
poems lack the grandeur of Virgil, though they contain
lines that have become immortal, as, for instance, the
hackneyed " Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.''''^

It was in his translations or imitations of the
Greek lyric writers, whichever they are — we scarcely
have evidence sufficient to decide — that Horace
attained his highest point. As Mr. Wilkins puts
it, "he clothed in language of unequalled felicity
commonplace reflections on a narrow range of topics."'^

• A paper read at the National University by Mr. Murphy,
Secretary of the Classical Association of University College, Dublin.
•^ Horace, Odes, Bk. III. 2. 13

'■'■Introduction to Epistles, p. xviii.

Ill

THE SNOBBERY OF QUINTUS

The verdict of Horace's fellow republican, Thomas
MacDonagh, is very similar. MacDonagh was a
careful student of Horace, and refers to him six
times in his last book.

Modern Europeancriticism(hesays)hasadopted,
with whatever modifications, canons drawn from
the works of Greek and Latin literature. ... It
has not broken from the hypnotism of their old
conventions. . . . Some odes of Horace, with no
philosophy and no emotional appeal, are still
traditionally admired. The admiration is in fact
due to the influence of the conventional criticism,
which drew its canons originally from work of the
tradition in which the poet wrote, and which now
applies those canons to that work. In part also
it is due to the influence of the known personality.
We think of him in terms of his urbanitas and his
curiosa felicitas ; still he may prophecy as of old:

Ego postera
crescam laude recens,

for always we admire his modernness, a quality
which may as well be shown in the interpretation
of some ancient artificiality which has lived on
into our modern civilization ; as in the expression
of some old natural emotion of the heart of man.^

That is the best that can be said of Horace. A
poet, as we ordinarily understand it, he certainly
was not. His odes, as MacDonagh put it, are
"merely fine words well set and not poetry at all."^
Goethe has said the same. He had no "vision";
still less was he, what he believed himself to be, a
philosopher. Few men, indeed, have ever had a less
philosophical mind than Horatius Flaccus. As with
FitzGerald of Omar Khayyam, his views, if taken

^Literature in Ireland, p. 104. 'Ibid., p. 121.

112

THE SNOBBERY OF QUINTUS

seriously, are not merely the negation of philosophy,
but almost the negation of life. Both men (the
enthusiasms of Horace's youth being at an end)
flourished at a dead point in life, in a sort of "pocket"
of existence, a period of complete disillusionment.
It is only at such a time that men can preach a purely
static conception of that eternally moving thing
which we call life. It is perhaps because they appeal
to aiLmen in the static moments of existence, in the
moral backwash of life, that both writers are so popular.
There is a famous passage in theworks of Newman,^
in which he speaks of men coming back in later years
to the classics after the experience of life. They then
recognize, he says, the truth of that to which they
had formerly given only a notional assent. In the
case of Horace I must confess to an opposite
experience, if I am as yet entitled to have one.
Coming back now after fifteen or twenty years to
works of which I was once an eager student, I feel
them much less true now than I then did. The
pagan negative is far more attractive to an active
young man in his 'teens than to one who has had
some actual experience of life, who has come to
recognize the necessity of that higher gospel of
existence which was destined to supplant the per-
versions and platitudes of Horace and his friends.
But ienues grandia. We are getting into the deep
water of philosophy. It is enough if in this essay i
have drawn attention to an aspect of Horace's
character and writings that is sometimes overlooked.

^Grammar of Assent (1892 ed.), p. 7S.

113

THE THEATRE: ITS EDUCA-
TIONAL VALUE'

To make one of the notorious offenders of history
a subject of panegyric is said to have been a favourite
exercise with the sophists. When one considers some
of the indictments brought against the theatre at
various times, one cannot help thinking his task seems
no very different one. For, when I write of the
educational value of the theatre, I mean the living
theatre — the stage with the actors upon it. That
plays themselves have, when read, a value, no excess
of fanaticism has ever attempted to deny; admission
has rendered argument unnecessary. But it is not
the perfect, lifeless organism, but the living being,
capable alike of evil and exaltation, that it will be
our task to consider.

Between the play acted and the play written the
gulf is very wide : for in reading the text of a drama
we rather see where beauty was intended than feel
it and delight in it ourselves. The action dies. The
quick retort grows pointless. A printed direction is
all that remains of blinding tears. Yet dulled as are
our feelings, our judgment is even more at fault.
Single speeches pall on us because we have forgotten
those others that make them pertinent. We estimate
each action by itself and not in reference to the
character deduced from all his actions. From this
faulty appraisement, acting saves us. It is the
actor's duty to synthetize, to give in one performance
what can only be obtained by many readings, to fill
each word with life, making the speeches their own
1 A paper read at University College, Dublin, in 1898.
114

THE THEATRE: EDUCATIONAL VALUE

commentary : in a word, like Pygmalion, to make of
marble, man.

Yet from all the arts acting has ever been singled
out by prejudice for its onslaughts. These attacks
have been of two kinds. To the first class belong
those unreasoning diatribes which still emanate from
that most narrow-minded of all societies, the lower
mid Jle-class of England, interesting only as a survival
of those prejudices which led Cromwell to break
church windows and brought Sir Hudibras' wrath
upon performing bears. In such productions argu-
ment soon gives place to anathema. They talk of
the theatre as under the ban of heaven. In Pande-
monium they see an opera-house. For them the
fires of Tartarus are slaked with orange-juice and
fed with sawdust.

There is a form of objection to the theatre,
rational in itself and deserving to be met, not by
denial but by argument. Those who put it forward
hold that the admitted deterioration of the stage in
modern times has robbed it of its usefulness. That
the stage had at one time a great value, alike artistic
and ethical, few reasonable enquirers can deny. The
high estimation put upon the theatre by the Greeks
as an instrument of virtue is a matter of common
knowledge. Reflecting, however, that much that
was then considered as appertaining to piety is now
placed in the category of vice, it is perhaps better to
leave aside considerations drawn from this source
and have recourse to a far stronger support. We
can cite the fact that the theatre in more recent
times was founded by the Church itself. From the
old mystery plays, themselves direct developments
of the dramatic elements in the Mass, through the
morality plays down to the present-day theatre the
tradition is unbroken. To deny a value to the stage
in former times involves a condemnation alike of
mediaeval piety and renaissance art,

115

THE THEATRE: EDUCATIONAL VALUE

Between the drama of Shakespeare and the
Renaissance, however, and the drama of the present
day, the difference in point of excellence is admittedly
very great. It is, at first sight, not an unreasonable
deduction, that where there has been such great
deterioration, all educational value must have
departed.- But this reasoning leaves out of sight
the fact that even an inferior production of our own
day will affect us far more powerfully than a master-
piece of former times. For it speaks to us in our
own language. It uses the illustrations of our own
time and circumstances. Every point tells home.
iEneas steers his trireme through adignified oblivion.
We give up our night's rest to accompany Sherlock
Holmes on his steamer-chase down the river.

True as this is of literature, of the stage it is
especially true. For one of the chief purposes of
the stage is to affect us by substituting the particular
for the general. It is not abstract ambition, not the
hazy character of a forgotten historical past but
the living man Macbeth, that meets us at the theatre
and for a time seems to form a part of our lives.
If, then, the stage gains its effect by the particular,
making, as it does, its artistic generalization seem-
ingly particular to ourselves, a scene of present-day
life and conversation will move us far more power-
fully than one taken from a remote cycle. The
chloroformed handkerchief is more terrible than the
poisoned ring.

The theatre, then, should affect us, but what should
be the ultimate object of its so doing ? Adopting
the ancient theory, I maintain that in affecting and
amusing us the proper end of the theatre should be
to produce elevation. This I hold the present-day
theatre in large part does. But there are certain
broad exceptions.

First, all those pieces which simply amuse, cater-
ing to the taste of those persons who refuse the actor

ii6

THE THEATRE: EDUCATIONAL VALUE

any other faculty than that of provoking laughter
and see in the proscenium but an enlargement of
Punchinello. Chief among such pieces is the musical
farce.

True comedy often elevates b}' its delicacy and
beauty : in it that chastening effect gained by the
generalization of faults is never absent. But the
class'of. production of which the musical farce^ is the
latest and worse development seeks amusement as
its only object, and to that object very seldom attains.

Further, let us exclude that product of dilute
Ibsenism, the problem-play. To do so may perhaps
seem strange ; for we are accustomed to hear such
plays belauded as the great teaching-force of the
modern stage. This, however, is only the revival of
an old fallacy. The theory that art should teach
has long been exploded. Neither Sophocles nor
Shakespeare ever sought to point morals. Their
object was to elevate. Hence, in their hands even
a plot of an unpleasant nature is, by the method of
treatment, turned to good. In Mr. Pinero's dramas,
on the contrary, elevation is held of no account.
Everything is sacrificed to inculcating some well-
worn precept. Yet the lesson taught by the fifth
act is but a sorry reparation for the debasing effect
of the other four. The author advises virtue, his
play teaches vice.

To the problem-play must be added the sensational
drama, a class of production which seeks effects of
no higher character than such as are produced by the
bull-fight and the prize-ring. Yet in speaking of the
sensational drama the reference is not so much to the
blood-and-thunder productions of the Ambigu,Drury
Lane, or our own Queen's, as those card-games,
auctions, and similar mechanical expedients with
which Mr. Alexander enthralls his patrons. Not

' Revues had not then been invented.
117

THE THEATRE: EDUCATIONAL VALUE

that he is not a good actor, even if overrated by
female audiences on account of his personal attrac-
tions; but, like many other able men, he is given to
sacrificing art to gain, Shakespeare to Pinero.

After such large exceptions it may seem that
very little remains behind. But there will be found
a very considerable core, all the more valuable
for this paring. First, we have the revivals of
Shakespeare, which for the playgoer give his pro-
duction a life which the mere reader can never
appreciate. Side by side with these is the frequent
production of what are known as " old English
comedies," despite their Irish authorship. Moreover,
there is another class of play which belongs peculiarly
to the modern world : those plays that produce
elevation through the Christian virtues of humility
and kindness, virtues which ancient critics would
have despised, and to which Christianity may be
said to have first accorded that rank. As instance,
I would take that old and simple yet moving comedy
of Sydney Grundy, homely as its title, A Pair of
Spectacles, in which an audience is made to walk not
in the paths of patriotism or some greater virtue,
but in those of charity. Indeed, as far as the native
theatre is concerned, comedy, as in later Athens, is
at a far higher level than the graver art. Mr. Gilbert's
humour seems justly destined to outlast any of the
more serious productions of Carton or Henry Arthur
Jones. ^

Another tendency, however, has recently shown
itself in the modern theatre, and deserves all
encouragement. The production of serious drama
has been subject to a far smaller decline in other
countries, as, for instance, France, than it has in
these countries. This has, in later years, been recog-
nized in England. As a result a very praiseworthy

1 It has done so.

Ii8

THE THEATRE: EDUCATIONAL VALUE

readiness is shown at the present day, not only to
translate such works, but also to perform them in
the original tongue. Such a practice may be con-
sidered unpatriotic by Englishmen ; but in this
country, where we are more cosmopolitan, it can
meet with nothing but approval. The effect of
Henrik Ibsen is evil, but whilst such a piece as
Cop'pee's For the Crown can be seen on our boards,
we can 5till congratulate ourselves that that high
ideal elevation which has at all times been the acme
of stage production still exists in our theatres. Whilst
Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac shows an elevating
reunion of the drama and poetry which in the English
theatre have so long been unhappily divorced.

The consideration of foreign drama leads us to
another proposition. Is there any way in which we
might obtain a larger share of these ideal productions
than is doled out to us by our British neighbours ?
For it is the most unsatisfying feature of the
present-day stage that there alone is Ireland con-
sistently and unblushingly treated, not as a country,
but a province; yet not alone are the Irish, like the
French, by nature actors, but Congreve, Macklin,
Goldsmith, and Sheridan, the authors of the best
English comedies— comedies that can compare with
those of any other language — were one and all
Irishmen. In more recent times, Dion Boucicault,
Sheridan Knowles and the author of the Story of
Waterloo in our own day are again our countrymen.
Nay, had our ancestors known English in the
sixteenth century, perhaps even the immortal bard
might have found a rival.

Even at the present day, I think, had we a national
stage, it would soon soar above that materialism
with which the contemporary British stage is in
large part blighted. In regard to comedies, indeed,
there would soon be very little comparison ; whilst
as to tragedy, though the sublimity of Sophocles

"9

THE THEATRE: EDUCATIONAL VALUE

might be above us, yet the pathos of Euripides would
soon find disciples, perhaps even disciples fit to rival
their master.^ Ireland is still possessed of a virgin
genius: grant but an opportunity to her writers of
working free from the trammels of another nation's
taste, a splendid era of theatrical production will be
one of the first results. I do not, however, suggest
as an expedient those proposals for corporation-
governed theatres, with which Mr. Irving used to
garnish his foundation stones. A municipal council,
though essentially selective, is not necessarily artistic.
Even Aristotle's purging of the passions is not
especially the province of the Public Health
Department.

My remedy is a different — perhaps a somewhat
visionary — one. I would revive the ancient system
of university theatres. I would establish a university
theatre where plays might be enacted, not as a means
of displaying that elaborate scenic paraphernalia
which chokes dramatic production in present-day
London as in later Rome, but rather like the perfor-
mance of the Comedie Frangaise, as a mode of
education. Advancing even a step further than the
Comedie Frangaise we might have not only a vigorous
native drama, vigorous particularly in comedy, but
the best productions of other countries, performed in
the original. Were such a theatre established in
Ireland fit audiences would not long be wanting.

In conclusion, then, I suggest that the theatre in
England was once a great factor in that elevation of
the mind which is the chief business of education,
that play-writing has since decayed, but that the
plays of to-day make up in their effects for their loss
of excellence by their use of the language and illus-
trations of our own time. Hence, even in the stage
of the present day there is much still valuable, whilst

' The revival was shortly after to come at the Abbey.
120

THE THEATRE: EDUCATIONAL VALUE

the revival of Shakespeare and of old English, or
rather old Irish, comedy, together with the pro-
duction of foreign plays from those countries in which
theatrical production still flourishes, bring within
our reach the stage in its highest form. But whilst
holding that the present-day stage is useful, I admit
that it could be exalted and improved, and in no way
better than by allowing a native theatre to Ireland,
whose genius is still unexhausted, and where many
of those conditions are still to be found that produced
the drama of Elizabeth and of Greece. In such an
event I am confident that the drama would once
again vindicate its place as the highest of the arts,
and that even in ourselves it would find not its critics
but its audience.

121

THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF
WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE^

Women's Suffrage has of late been treated of from
many points of view, but its religious aspect has
been but little dealt with. Of its moral aspect one
hears often enough. Opponents of women's suffrage
usually state that whilst they refuse the vote to
women, yet — the word " yet " is the part of the
statement perhaps hardest to comprehend — yet they
cherish a higher ideal of womanhood than that
entertained by those who would give them the
franchise. This higher ideal would, it is said, of a
certainty be destroyed, or at least impaired, if woman
were led into the evil practice of voting. The fine
flavour, the higher and nobler aspects of woman's
nature, the subtler and more delicate nuances of
female character — in a word, all the unworldliness
of womanhood would perish and be replaced by a
debased exultation in a sordid struggle. Woman's
moral nature must inevitably perish in the new
excitement. All this would come about from women
"voting."

Now " vote " is a term almost peculiar to the
English language. Other tongues employ some
such familiar word as "voice" for the purpose.
Hence there is no extravagance in supposing a
foreigner, or even a native Irish speaker, to be per-
plexed by such a term. Supposing him, then, to

' This essay, originally published in the Irish Eevieiv, is now out
of date. The Suffrage cause has triumphed — one of the few
movements of liberation that has. It may, however, be interesting
to compare the forecast with the realitj^ — A.E.C.

12?

WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE

seek to discover the meaning of this new term
"voting," from the context, as foreigners commonly
must, at what conclusion would he arrive ? He
would hear that " voting " was a newly-conceived
and terrible instrument, for the moral ruin and social
debasement of women, that women had hitherto lived
lives of holy retirement in sculleries and other peace-
ful places ; but that voting was ruining their homes,
destroying their morals, embittering their disposi-
tions, making their manners savage and their
tempers quarrelsome, that "voting" distracted
woman's thoughts from household affairs, provided
a motive of dissension in every domestic circle and
roused that deadliest of passions, the lust of conquest,
the desire to humble those opposed to you in the
dust. "Voting" did, or would do, all these things.
It would require little imagination on the part of the
foreigner or Irish speaker to conclude that a practice
(whatever it was) which led to results so deadly and
so permanent, must at least be a practice very fre-
quently indulged in. He would most probably
believe that people gave themselves up to " voting "
three or four times a vAeek and continued "voting"
into the late hours of the night or the early hours of
file morning — hence its moral disrepute. On the
whole, he would, we fancy, come to the conclusion
that "voting" was some new form of game, some-
thing like " bridge." He might, perhaps, wonder
why the admonition to abstain from it was confined
to one sex.

As to the comparative merits of "bridge" and of
"voting" as moral agencies, I need only say that
my position is quite reasonable. I desire no
exceptional treatment, no special preference for
"voting," as compared with its rival vice. And,
though scarcely a friend of bridge, I would give mv
whole-hearted support to any movement which had
as its object to enable women — and men — to devote

133

WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE

half an hour every five, or even every three, years to
playing bridge. The resulting disturbance of their
emotions and disarrangement of their ordinary
occupations I should regard as an inevitable evil,
to which even the least opportunist statesman must
on rare occasions be prepared to submit. In this
way "bridge" and "voting" would be placed upon
an exact equality. As to the comparative utility of
the one occupation and the other, I make no point.
I speak only of their immediate effect upon morals.
As to the moral effect of political practices other
than voting, no question of course at present arises,
since from the Ladies' Land League to the Primrose
League women have at all times been encouraged
to indulge in political practices of all kinds, voting
excepted.

The religious aspect of women's suffrage is a more
serious matter, and the political developments of the
past year or two have made it especially so. The
likelihood of a measure of universal suffrage at no
distant date has set many people to do their political
sums anew. The proposal to extend the political
system of continental Europe, or the more advanced
part of it, to these islands has suggested that it may
mean the extension of its politics as well, and that
the continent of Europe is by no means so far away
as many sober-minded inhabitants of Great Britain
and Ireland placed it in their political geography.
No doubt manhood suffrage already exists in the
United States, but it must not be forgotten that
when once manhood suffrage is adopted in these
islands, there is no such barrier as the American
constitution to stand between the people, thus newly
defined, and its will, whatever that will may be.

That the difference between even a rather broad,
though thoroughly unscientific, system of franchise,
such as that now existing amongst us, and complete
manhood suffrage, is not a merely formal or nominaj

124

WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE

one, may be shown by a very simple political example.
Those of us who read the newspapers are familiar
with the phrases, " Catholic Belgium " and " Infidel
France." These, of course, refer to the religious
character of the Government in the one country and
the unreligious, and even until very recently, anti-
religious nature of the administration in the other.
But it is too often forgotten that the real difference
between the small country and the great is in large
part a difference of franchise. In Belgium, as in
France, feeling runs high upon matters connected
with religion, but the Catholic party have for a
number of years past held their power by a narrow
margin of votes. They have indeed improved their
position at the last election. One need not assert
that the Belgian character is the same as the French,
or that an alternative government would, if returned
to power, copy the French ministry in every parti-
cular. It is enough to point out that if property
were to lose its additional votes in Belgium, and the
system of manhood suffrage, which we may see
adopted in Great Britain and Ireland before long,
were to be introduced in that country, the present
Government would almost to a certainty fall from
"power and a wholly novel situation come into being.
Without indulging in prophecy, one can safely assert
that were the French franchise assimilated to that
of Belgium, or the Belgian franchise to that of
France, the difference of temper between the
governments of the two countries would be much
less marked than it is under existing conditions. It
is a grave mistake to assume that the effects of a
change in franchise are limited to the polling booths.
But there is another extension of franchise which
has often been mooted in France, but towards which
French politicians of what are called "advanced
views " have usually shown a determined hostility —
namely, the concession of woman suffrage. It might

125

WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE

be imagined that when one added the essentially
logical character of the French mind to the pro-
foundly democratic nature of French political theory,
the inevitable conclusion of womanhood suffrage
must result. But it does not. And the reason is
by no means mysterious. Upon the mind of every
modern French politician of "advanced" opinions
there operates, in this matter, a motive much stronger
than his adherence to democratic theory — namely,
his deep-seated opposition to religion and religious
influence. And he refuses any concession to woman
in this matter, precisely because he sees, in that clear
and wholly unsentimental way in which French
people view things, both good and evil, that votes
given to women would be votes given to his enemies,
votes given to the Church.

It would, of course, be sufficiently laughable to
suggest that either in France, or indeed any other
country, all women are religious. Yet the politician
is not mistaken in his rough estimate — politicians
seldom are mistaken in rough estimates — that in the
bulk women are on the side of religion. The true
and real devotion of women to the religion which
they profess, is one of the salient features of Western
civilization ; nor can it in our day be explained away
by the old-fashioned theory, still popular among
French unbelievers, of educational differences between
men and women. In the classes where religious
fervour is most to be found, there is nowadays little
difference in the curricula of male and female
education.

Perhaps it is an impertinence, especially for men,
to seek to afford any reason for what is almost a
primary fact. But two causes, at any rate, suggest
themselves as accounting for the greater religious
fervour of woman. First, that woman's nature is
more spiritual, more self-sacrificing, much less sunk
in material pleasure than that of men. And secondly,

126

WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE

viewing the matter on a somewhat lower plane,
woman feels a more urgent need of that protection
which religion affords than man does. It is the great
work of religion to combat vice. Now, it is no
exaggeration to say that women have to bear the
brunt of the vices of the world, especially of its
coarser vices. Who pays the penalty of the great
lower-class vice of drunkenness, for instance, to give
the most mentionable example ? Is it strange that,
apart from any higher reason at all, women should
cling desperately to that which seeks to avert or to
mitigate so dire an evil, whether the religion finds
its instrument in the Catch-my-Pal button or the
Sacred Heart badge. It is interesting to remark
that many men dread feminine influence for just the
same reason that they dread religious influence. A
fear lest their coarser vices should be hampered is
often one of the strongest motives in stirring men to
oppose women's suffrage. And all the great vested
interest of vice is commonly ranged against woman's
suffrage.

Of course vicious men are not the only opponents
of women's suffrage. Its most numerous opponents
are a body of persons, for the most part of irreproach-
able conduct, the great cohort of henpecked husbands.
They are to be found even in high places, and to
them fall to be added the victims of household
tyranny, whether motherly or sisterly. Such persons
seek, in a furious opposition to women's suffrage,
the only possible revenge for repeated domestic
humiliations.

I have said enough . to show that the political
influence of women is, from a religious point of view,
a profoundly important influence — important, both
indirectly in its influence upon vice, especially coarse
vice — and directly in its influence on religion itself.
It is owing to the suppression of this influence in
politics that the extraordinary phenomenon of the

127

WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE

persecution of a national church becomes possible.
The women pray; the men persecute. Under a
system of complete manhood and womanhood
suffrage, such a result must be almost impossible.
For a church that had neither women nor men to
support it could not well be persecuted. There
would be no church left to persecute. Whilst all
history shows that a strong-minded and sincere
minority — and in religious matters women will always
be sincere — possessing the franchise is quite capable
of protecting its religious practices and beliefs against
any governmental oppression. The reason nowadays
that the persecution of churches can be successfully
accomplished is that the greatest body of the sincere
and earnest supporters of the church are excluded
from political power, through disability of sex.

An interesting discussion as to the possibility of
religious persecution, or "bullying " as someone has
put it, under self-government has recently been in pro-
gress. The likelihood of such a result is not seldom
assumed on both sides. One set of combatants
complain of the probable bullying of Protestantism.
Thosewho answerthem oftenhint,ratherambiguously
of course, that the Catholic Church will be bullied
instead. Personally, I look upon this last result as
very unlikely. Putting it at the lowest, the religious
hatreds of East Ulster will for years to come be a
sufficient stimulant to prevent the Catholic majority
from growing indifferent. Whatever danger there
is to religion in Ireland would come, not from self-
government, but from a closer incorporation into the
English democracy, under the system of the Union.
When the people of Ireland had come to read the
English Press seven days in the week, then a fran-
chise like that of France in a really United Kingdom
that exalted ultra-democratic ideas and weakened
national tendencies, might constitute a real danger
to religion. The English system of education, for

128

WOMEN'S SUFFRAGE

instance, would, in such a case, almost certainly
be extended to Ireland. Some may think, how-
ever, that even if accompanied by self-government,
manhood suffrage has dangers.

I do not share that view, but rather welcome this
extension of democracy, if it be real democracy; if
the conception of "Demos" is not one that, as in
France, excludes half the nation. If we sometimes
see a democracy lead us a strange dance, it is because
it is dancing without a partner. Man and woman
are natural complements in political functions, as in
the other relations of life. The clear commonsense
of woman, and her close touch with the realities of
life, those stern realities which we call house, food
and clothes, this office and that attribute peculiarly
fit women to exercise a restraining influence on the
vagaries of an universal electorate. We have all
heard of the fable of the belly and the members.
The former has come into the greater respect in our
times. But a changed metaphor is needed in present
circumstances. In government by an universal male
electorate, we see the functioning of half an organism ;
no wonder the result is indigestion. And indigestion
has ever been the mother of discontent.

There is a very old trite motto, so old and trite
that the mention of it must inevitably sound funny,
and yet, owing to its very triteness, showing that it
touches a deep chord in the human heart — "What
is home without a mother?" Put it a little
further. The mother is the Home. And when the
father is out drinking, or out blaspheming, I claim
a vote for the homes. Once the voice — the true
voice of the homes — is heard at the polls, we need
have no fear of any change of suffrage.

129

IRELAND, IRISH AND
OTHERWISE

(a lecture to an IRISH IRELAND AUDIENCE)

There has just been celebrated the silver wedding
of the Pale and the Gael, the twenty-fifth year of the
Irish movement. The celebration took on a strange
form, its official suppression. But the thing that
mattered was that the movement had lasted twenty-
five years. A great many Chief Secretaries and
Lords Lieutenant have ridden up Cork Hill and
driven down it again in that period. Things have
been moving all the time. Colum, or Kieran, has
grown to manhood, t)tM5i"o and TTI^itie are married.
To the new generation the Gaelic movement is an
ultimate fact; a thing that seems to have lasted
forever. They never remember a time when there
was not a Gaelic League.

It is an ultimate fact. What sort of a fact is it?
To the older generation it is different. We saw the,
sunrise. We watched the first struggle with the(
clouds. Learning Irish was in our day a very
different process from studying French or Latin
or Greek. We were "alive in that dawn," and
drank of the first enthusiasm, deep or shallow as our
nature was, but it was wine all the time. What a
wild hope was that of twenty years agone : to revive
a dying nation through its language. The schoolboy
of to-day who gets slapped with the same melancholy
resignation for missing his Irish, as for neglecting
his algebra, must look on matters in a very different
light. The dawn with its magic colours is long past,

130

IRELAND, IRISH AND OTHERWISE

and the noonday sun, as it scorches you, is a very
commonplace object. Only when it is veiled by
dark clouds do we think of it at all.

The star of Irish Ireland, when it first shone forth
in our sky, was, and still is, a five-pointed one:
language, industries, music, dancing and games.
Literature falls under language, music includes song.
Of the five points, only two were in any sense
novel — language and dancing. The worst enemies
of Ireland, just as they admired our scenery, had
usually appreciated our music, as far as they were
able, which was not as a rule very far. For to
appreciate Irish song, without a knowledge of Gaelic,
is a hopeless task. I have occasionally met people
whose dislike of Irish manufacture extended even to
our music; but these are the people who would
prefer foreign grapes to home grapes. The advocacy
of Irish industries is, of course, as old as Dean Swift
and as new as the latest Chief Secretary. The great
movement, which has captured most of what is best
in Irish manhood for native games and sports, goes
back to 1884, the days of Croke and Cusack, the
period of the land war. Only the lowest classes in
Dublin, and also the upper-middle and a small part
.of the lower-middle class of Dublin, and some other
towns stand aside from Irish games. The rest of
the country is solid in their favour. It is often
thought nowadays that the Gaelic Athletic move^
ment is in some way the fruit of the Gaelic League or
Irish Ireland movement. It belongs to the previous
generation.

The characteristic of the Irish Ireland movement,
as it came to be known, was that it combined all
these diverse and yet related elements into a single
rule of life, giving to language study a place in the
national programme, which it had never held before.
For it made Gaelic its key-note, insisting on the
importance and practicability of the study and use

131

IRELAND, IRISH AND OTHERWISE

of Irish by every Irish NationaHst. It thus sub-
stituted for, or at least added to, the purely
political concept of national endeavour then in
vogue, a complexus of duties, activities and enthu-
siasms covering a very wide area and penetrating
into the deepest recesses of our social life. Under
the impulse of a single aim, it made war on many
different fronts, carrying on a number of campaigns
with varying fortunes, all directed to a common
purpose, to save the national soul of Ireland. It
was in this way that an importance seemingly dis-
proportionate came to be attached by the new move-
ment to quite trifling things, a dance, a song, a
game, much as men cherish the feasts and fasts or
pious observances of a faith, not for themselves, but
as sentinels of that for which they stand. Among
Irish Irelanders it became no venial matter to eat
apples from an un-Irish tree. For the battle for
any one point was looked upon as the battle for all.
This was the strength of the new movement. It
would tolerate no harpists clothed in English shodd}',
or cricketers studying Irish, or hurlers singing music-
hall songs. No one has ever yet ventured to waltz
at an Irish college. My friend and frequent editor,
Mr. D. P. Moran, in his brilliant philosophy of Irish
Ireland and in the weekly paper in which he
hammered home its doctrines did much to win
acceptance for this point of view. The name Irish
Ireland itself very justly expresses it.

The new movement drew its strength from dis-
cipline and self-restraint. Discipline can rouse as
deep a fervour as liberty. It has made more converts
in every age. Once its forces were fairly mobilized,
about the turn of the century, they advanced with
the irresistible onset of a conquering army. The
movement spread like wildfire through the country.
But after a time the onset slackened ; resistance
gathered from various quarters. When the first

132

IRELAND, IRISH AND OTHERWISE

fervour had passed, say about the middle of the first
decade of the century, the advance of Irish Ireland
may be said to have been held up. The opposition
sprang from various causes. Each point in the Irish
Ireland programme hurt somebody. One man
wanted his socks and another his songs. One man
wanted Rugby football and another two steps. They
all- wanted ease, without study. The Irish Ireland
movement called on them to abandon all these things.
It was not so much that they became actively hostile
to Irish Ireland — though some did — but rather they
admired it as we admire heroic virtue from a safe
distance. Men came to have the same sort of
patronizing admiration for Irish Ireland as, say, for
the monks of Mount Melleray.

When the advance of Irish Ireland, to continue
the martial metaphor, was held up, its forces did
what any other forces would do in the circumstances.
They dug themselves in, and a sort of trench wa?;fare
may be said to have ensued ever since. Certain
territory the Irish Ireland forces occupied very
firmly ; within that territory their will prevailed,
but the Ireland that was Irish came to be separated
from the Ireland that was otherwise by a very clear
jjne of demarcation, a line of severance not less well
marked because it divided men's souls and not the
solid earth.

Within the territory of Irish Ireland, the Gaelic
language was fairly widely spread. Men read Irish
papers, or at least papers that wrote about Irish.
As for class distinction, the only class they troubled
themselves about were language classes. It was not
true, as native speakers believed, that all Irish
Irelanders rode bicycles and said Ia bpe.\^, but they
had other peculiarities. They could all dance and
dance well. They said they never waltzed, but one
sometimes had doubts about the truth of the state-
ment. They could all sing. If some sang strangely,

^53

IRELAND, IRISH AND OTHERWISE

well, perhaps it was a very special kind of ^eAn-tiof .
" Irish Irelanders" were not all poets or hurlers (or
poetesses and experts at c^m65U1•0ex^cc) but the
proportion of poets and even of hurlers among them
was larger than that in the outer world. In reality,
cycling was the pastime of the Irish Irelander rather
than any more traditional sport. Irish Irelanders
were usually temperate, often total abstainers, always
earnest, self-sacrificing, of high character. This
is the army that, for near a quarter of a century, has
held the trenches of Irish Ireland.

But what of the other Ireland, that paradox,
un-Irish Ireland. We may for the moment leave
out of account the Unionists huddled in the far
distance. They have a dim Ireland of their own, a
thing so faint and tenuous that it is little more than
a shadow cast across the face of Britain, and vet
the\' cling, sometimes even cling passionately, to
this shadow. The other Ireland, lying beyond the
lines of the Gael, is far from being Unionist, what-
ever else it may. be. A Unionist at an election cannot
poll ten votes, male or female, out of its population.
It is sincerely anti-Unionist; but it comprises every
variety of political opinion from the out and out
rebel to the most stodgy Whig. When I speak of
the rebel perhaps some of you will think of that
cunning play. Sable and Gold, produced at the Abbey
Theatre a few weeks ago, in which one character,
Gregory, an Irish Irelander of over-tense nerves,
who in the end proves a coward, is contrasted with
Paul, a representative of that other uncaring Ireland
of which I now speak, who meets death with courage.
If this contrast is intended as typical, it certainly is
not supported by the facts. No one can say that
Irish Irelanders have shown themselves wanting
in courage. The profession of anti-national and
anti-militarist sentiments is not usually associated
with military qualities. But for good or for evil,.

134

IRELAND, IRISH AND OTHERWISE

Paul in the play does stand for a great class, perhaps
the largest class of our fellow-countrymen, sound at
heart, but only at heart. Or would it be more true
to say that every Irishman has in him a Paul and a
Gregory, a striver after ideals and a complacent
cynic. It depends upon which half of him gets the
upper hand. In Irish Ireland one type prevails, in
"otherwise" Ireland the cynics and the complacents
have it all their own way. A short holiday this
summer, which circumstances ordained should be
divided almost equally between a well-known Irish
college and an equally well-known seaside resort,
brought me sharply up against the contrast of the
two civilizations. It might have been Rostrevor
and Omeath, or Cloghaneely and Bundoran, or
Spiddal and S.althill, or perhaps it was somewhere
else altogether. At any rate there was only one
thing in which the college and the seaside resort
agreed, that is politics. Both were Sinn Fein. Or
rather there were two ; for both college and resort
were fond of picnics.

In everything else they were in sharpdisagreement.
The college was of course situate in the territory of
" Irish Ireland," both morally and physically ; in
^.fact it was not very far from its capital. The sea-
side resort lay in " otherwise " Ireland, There
were Irish Irelanders in the resort, strong " Irish
Irelanders." One met them and spoke to them in
Gaelic. But the Irish Irelanders in the resort
were as thoroughly suppressed as the "otherwise
Irelanders" — I amsurethere were some — in the Irish
College. One man in a bathing costume is no match
for ten men — and still less for ten women. At first
sight the pre-occupations of the college and the
resort, even apart from picnics, seemed alike. The
college talked, the resort talked ; the college sang,
the resort sang; the college danced, the resort
danced. The college danced the Walls of Limerick

135

IRELAND, IRISH AND OTHERWISE

and the Waves of Tory, and attempted the High
Call Cap. The resort danced the half-time waltz
and the one step, and attempted the Fox Trot. An
Irish dance would have been an impossibility there,
or at least an " unthinkability." There must have
been nearly as much Irish in the neighbourhood of
the seaside resort as in the neighbourhood of the
college — it was in an Irish-speaking county — but no
one ever spoke Irish there except by stealth. In
the college they spoke English by stealth, and some-
times danced the Barn Dance and the Lancers by
stealth privately, when the official ceiLi-d was over,
though I have seen more of this kind of thing in
other places. Perhaps the seaside resort harboured
some who secretly danced fvinnce i:at)as in its cata-
combs; but if such there were, one did not come
across them. The college played Hurley ineffectively,
the resort played golf, also, I was told, ineffectively.
The college sang traditional Irish music, and sang
it well, except at unauthorized entertainments, when,
as at other colleges, the contributions were by no
means traditional. One heard Irish songs at a few
private entertainments at the seaside resort. But
its public life knew nothing of them, though it was,
as has been said, fond of singing, and there must
have been Irish traditional singing within a stone's
throw.

The resort was, if anything, too fond of music.
When one was starting off for one's first swim in the
morning — the college boated, the resort swam — one
could hear ladies singing about roses in Picardy, and
those roses were still blooming musically when one
was making for bed in the evening. Or if it was
not roses in Picardy, it was some other musical
flowers of very similar odour ; last year's flowers,
English ballads beginning to "date." And then
there were the Indian love lyrics. I wonder what
Indians think of them. People of less cultured taste

136

IRELAND, IRISH AND OTHERWISE

sang " Good-bye-ee," and " Oh, Johnny," just as three
years ago they informed us musically that she was
the only good girl in the world, and that another
little drink would not do them any harm. The last
statement was plainly untrue. Two years hence they
will be singing — heaven only knows what. Caduca
non ceterna is their motto. The most famous Irish
poet came from the county in which the seaside
resort was situate, but I am quite sure not six people
there had ever heard his name.

The customary thing would be to call the inhabi-
tants of the seaside resort j^eomini. But if feoinin
means either a person who seeks to ingratiate him-
self or herself with the enemies of Ireland, or who
pretends to a social position above that which is
normally his — its two commonest meanings — it
would be an unfair description to apply. There
never were men and women who put on less "side"
than the people of that resort, the whole spirit of the
place was against it ; there were scarcely any enemies
there to ingratiate yourself with. The people were
just "otherwise" Irelanders, people dwelling tem-
porarily or permanently in "otherwise" Ireland.
If the Irish college was fairly typical of one side of
Ireland, the seaside resort was also t}'pical, typical
of a whole side of Irish life, perhaps the largest side.

What are the ideas and tendencies embodied in
this other Ireland that is not ours? Some of them,
no doubt, are ideas and tendencies that call for the
plainest condemnation. In a country situate as ours
is there will always be a number of mean and
unworthy motives tending to draw men away from
the national side. The boycott of Irish games in a
number of our schools, to take one instance, is
inspired by no motives except those which are mean
and unworthy. The playing of un-Irish games by
the past pupils of these schools is not necessarily to
be attributed to the same motives, because, and this

^Z7

IRELAND, IRISH AND OTHERWISE

is what makes the action of such schools so criminal,,
it is nearly impossible to acquire real skill in any
game after fifteen, or even earlier, A boy so trained
is condemned, in later years, to choose between
athletic inaction and being cut off from the mass of
his fellow-countrymen by a strong barrier. I say
cut off, for he is truly cut off; it is the unimportant
things in life that really count. I knew a man once
educated at one of our big schools, who was a
promising bowler ; he had a leg-break. He became
a Gaelic Leaguer and gave it all up for Ireland.
Perhaps you don't quite realize the extent of this
sacrifice. You never had a leg-break; neither had L
But heroes of his kind are rare. As a rule a man
prefers his cricket to his country. The young fellow
of whom I have spoken is one whose name is now
very well known on the national side. His sacrifice,
however, meant, as it almost always does mean, his
abandoning athletics altogether. His health has
been poor ever since.

So much for games. But the seaside resort, for
instance, troubled itself little about them, except
perhaps about golf, which some people say was intro-
duced by Cuchulain, and others by Arthur Balfour.
But then there are people who say Cuchulain was a
Liverpool man. What of the other points of the
Irish Ireland programme? You can start Irish at
any time of life; whether you can finish it is another
matter. At any rate you can start dancing at any
age up to forty, and the Walls of Limerick is distinctly
easier than the " Half-time." It is rather a mis-
fortune that while the charm of Irish dancing is its
elan, its gracefulness, its intimate association with
the music, thewhole tendency of current cosmopolitan
dancing is the other way. It is slow, purposely
ungraceful, and in the case of the dance last men-
tioned— the most popular one, the Half-time —
purposely out of accord with the music. Again, even

138

IRELAND, IRISH AND OTHERWISE

if you can't dance, perhaps you can sing. There are
many Irish airs quite as easy, and a great deal more
tuneful, than the Indian love lyrics. I admit that
unlike " Oh Johnny," etc., they are not piping hot
from a bakery of song. Even if you can't sing, dance,
or learn Irish, the most hoarse, clumsy and stupid
person can buy a suit of Irish tweeds, and so pay
tribute to the Irish Ireland idea. Of course you then
meet the difficulty that its no use accepting four
points out of the Irish Ireland five. Like Clemenceau's
French Revolution Irish Ireland must be accepted
en bloc. But that is not the whole explanation of
what keeps people away from the Irish Ireland
trenches.

I come now to a point where I speak with some
hesitation. The commonplace man has rather a
peculiarfeeling towards Irish Irelandand all itsworks,
something I conceive likethe feeling that a great many
people in religious agreement with Y. M. C. ideals
have towards the Young Men's Christian Associa-
tion. As I said earlier in the lecture, Irish Irelanders
are, for the most part, men of high character. That's
the difficulty. High character and elevated ideals
inevitably carry a suggestion of puritanism and
iatellectualism. And of all things on earth, these
are the two that frighten the commonplace man
most. It is bad enough to ask him to attend a class,
but to ask him to amuse himself with idealists, male
and female, of high character. Nothing will make
him do that. You point to the amusements of Irish
Ireland, its brightening influences, the fact that the
tea is always good at c^iIit')S, never at dances. None
of those things will take the bad taste out of his
mouth, the taste of high character. Its alleged relaxa-
tions are much too tight for him ; he can't amuse
himself that way. In fact it's one of the difficulties
of a country situate as Ireland is, that for the middle
class at least, it is only the high life, the ideal life,

139

IRELAND, IRISH AND OTHERWISE

that is left to the native population and the national
side. The commonplace unideal life of card-tables,
bars, billiard saloons, music halls, race meetings and
betting shops is for the most part conquered by the
forces working against the country. That is a
tremendous extent of territory to leave in the
enemies' hands. The strength of the G.A.A., as
distinguished from the other and newer elements of
Irish Ireland, is in great part derived from the fact
that, while it has an ideal, it has also a large side
that is not in the least ideal, but rather makes an
appeal to the average human. Ordinary men
brought within the ambit of the G.A.A. by circum-
stances must often be under the same sort of silent
compulsion to be Irish, that ordinary men outside its
influence are commonly subjected to to make them
anti-Irish.

Much of what has gone before is, perhaps, more
true of the situation existing a few years ago than of
the situation to-day. Events have been working in
favour of Irish Ireland, and it has now a tremendous
opportunity if it can seize it. It has for the moment
the eager sympathy of numberless people outside its
own boundaries, in fact of the vast majority of the
native population. The man in the "pub." and
even the man on the racecourse are in its favour.
The national party of the day incorporates its doc-
trines in its programme. How is it to turn this new
situation to account, and make converts of its sympa-
thizers ? The old methods and the old programme
will hardly do. Even Christianity itself underwent
developments in formal unessentials when it came out
of the catacombs. I am the first to recognize the
great importance of moral qualities and high ideals
to any movement, above all to a forward movement.
They have been an immense strength to Irish
Ireland. But if, to continue our metaphor, the cam-
paign is to pass from a trench warfare to a war of

140

IRELAND, IRISH AND OTHERWISE

movement, if Irish Ireland is to conquer the popula-
tion as a whole — as Sinn Fein has already done in
politics — it must be with a rule of life, which, not
only enthusiasts and intellectuals, but the population
as a whole can live up to. Of course it will have
its counsels of perfection, but you must have a place
for the inconsistent weakling, who perpetually falls
away from national grace. You must put up with
the. man who is quite willing to have his son taught
Irish, but wont learn it himself, who plays the
wrong sort of games, sings the wrong sort of songs.
Excommunication must become a rare process, only
to be invoked for the gravest crimes. In fact you
will have to be content with a sound heart, without
asking too closely whether it is accompanied by a
sound head. Above all you must make it clear that
high character, whether high living or high thinking,
is not a condition of belonging to your communion.
And you must do this freely and not grudgingly.
Some may think these very dangerous suggestions,
involving as they do, if not a lowering of the flag, at
least the relaxation of a discipline that has been the
glory of our forces, that has given them so much of
their efficiency. So far the suggestions are tenta-
tive. They can be worked out by others. But we
all feel that a new situation and a new generation
has arisen, a generation remarkably tolerant of those
who have gone before them, yet having enlarged
ideals of its own. With such men and in such a
situation, with a sympathy so widespread in favour
of the Irish point of view, some change in the rule
and the programme that has done service these
twenty years is necessary. The golden moment has
come at last; the youth of Ireland are eager to be
its saviours; but they will save it in their own way..

141

POLICIES IN IRELAND

For the last hundred years three main poHcies
have been advocated by different parties:

(i) To drive the EngHsh out of Ireland.

(2) To drive the Protestants out of Ireland.

(3) To drive everybody out of Ireland.

The three policies have flourished under different
names at different times. And at all times they have
been more practised than avowed, but in the termi-
nology of our own time, they correspond very
roughly to

(i) Sinn Fein.

(2) "The Constitutional Movement."

(3) Unionism.

Sinn Fein would admit the statement of its object
just given. Unionism and the late " Constitutional
Movement" would, on the other hand, almost cer-
tainly deny with heat that they had any purpose of
denuding the island of Protestants or of its popula-
tion respectively. Let us take the case of Unionism
first. It is of course only a minority of Unionists
who admit to a plain malevolence of motive. Yet,
deep embedded in the soul of every Unionist, some-
thing of the sort will be found. His motive is
founded on a sort of unofficial strategy, probably a
very bad strategy. The idea is something like this.
The great danger to Great Britain from the position
of Ireland is that at some time the island might be
occupied b}^ a hostile invading force ; but it would
be supremely difficult for such a force to keep up its

142

POLICIES IN IRELAND

line of communications by sea. Hence, if Ireland
were a desolate and uninhabited island such a force
must soon perish ; a desert is one of the best strategic
boundaries. (It may be pointed out that this result
would in no way prevent mankind from enjoying
the admittedly beautiful scenery of the island in peace
time, as all the really good Irish scenery lies near
the. coast, and, as in the case of Greece and Norway,
could be visited by a sea-trip.) A desire to see Ireland
desolate, uninhabited, and thus strategically safe, is
really at the bottom of all Unionism. The late
Lord Salisbury was its greatest name, and under
his sure guidance the policy attained large success.
During the "twenty years of resolute government,"
the space intervening between the two viceroyalties
of the Aberdeens, not far short of a million persons
left Ireland for ever, about a fifth of its population.
All Unionists look upon these two decades as the
golden age of Unionist policy. Lord Salisbury and
his sovereign handed over near a million Irishmen
to the United States, much as he handed over Heli-
goland to Germany. It is only fair to say that in
pursuit of the policy of extermination the Unionist
Protestant is genuinely unselfish. Like the bee that
perishes in stinging, he is quite ready that he and
his should perish — and they are in fact exterminated
in an even greater proportion than the native
population — if only the eventual decivilization and
depopulation of Ireland can be brought about.
Hence it is that the Unionist Protestant rears his
children for export ; has them educated in another
country or, if through financial causes that be
impossible, brings them up in an intellectual exile
from the soil on which they dwell, teaching them
that everything around them is noxious, that all good
comes from without. He bids them play cricket,
because the boys around them play hurley; if those
around them played cricket, he would have them

143

POLICIES IN IRELAND

play lacrosse. He teaches them to avoid native
literature. Books must have vv'riters. He teaches
them to avoid native manufactures, because manu-
factures mean men. His whole support always goes
out to the evictor. He encourages pasture at
the expense of tillage. He drives Plunkett from
Parliament. The Unionist negative runs through
everything, stops everything, poisons everything. In
the last working out Unionism has only one test for
every proposal. Will it leave fewer men dwelling in
Ireland ?

In speaking of Unionist-Protestants, it should be
said I refer only to the normal mass who will be
found marching with their bishops and moderators
on any public question, not to the small number of
enlightened individuals, the handful who supported
Miss O'Brien on the Conscription question, for
instance. Again, the terrible nature of the campaign
of destruction does not prevent numberless kind acts
between individuals of the two sides like the wild
flowers that spring up on a battlefield. A mass hate
has little to do with the sentiments of individuals.
A propaganda so terrible as that described has very
naturally led to a counter-movement — scarcely less
terrible and certainly not less successful. Men said
to themselves that the only way to deal with an
exterminator was to exterminate him. And they
did exterminate. It is sometimes said that the
late "constitutional movement" gained no successes,
that it has nothing to show, that its movement has
been cyclic, that at a named point you will find
Redmond or Parnell or Butt standing just where
O'Connell stood. This is not a fair statement.
Unless you confine it to the Home Rule or self-
government movement alone, the statement is, in
fact, quite untrue. In its real, its unconfessed object,
the " constitutional movement " was, up to about
ten years ago, very successful, perhaps more successful

144

POLICIES IN IRELAND

even than Unionism. For amidst professions and
aspirations for union almost as benevolent as those
of Unionists to Ireland, it in effect drove out the
Protestant from one vantage point after another, as
in the well-arranged operations of a modern battle.
O'Connell found the Protestant in possession of
the land, the commercial wealth, the parliamentary
repreSexitation, the official church and its revenues,
the central officialdom, the magistracy and the local
government, all education (University, secondary
and primary), the bulk of the professions, and all
that depended on these things. After a century of
the " constitutional movement," mostly a movement
of passive or " semi-passive " resistance, and frequently
helped indirectly by physical force, from O'Connell
down to O'Brien, the Protestant has been driven
from his educational monopoly — the University
monopoly was broken just over ten years ago — from
his religious monopoly, from his monopoly of the
magistracy, from the minor ranks of the central
officialdom, from the medical, and even in large part
from the legal profession. He has been expelled
almost completely from the ownership of land, the
parliamentary representation and local government.
He has lost all that depends upon them. No doubt
he is still represented in his just numerical proportion,
but that is no use to him, especially as it is usually
fairly enlightened men who so represent him. What
Protestant ever gave a fig for Protestant Nationalist
M.P.'s. He was not sucking the orange: a lemon
was more to his taste. The Protestant still retains
the big positions in the central government, and
most of the mercantile wealth — in large part English
agency; he has rather improved his position in retail
trading. But that and the dwindling purchase
money of what was once his land is all that is left to
him. A series of movements — O'Connell's Catholic
Association, Davitt's Land League, O'Brien's United

f- 145

PQLICIES IN IRELAND

Irish League, aided indeed by the aftermjath and the
ever present possibiHty of Fenianism, have brought
this about. Looked at collectively they fall under
the not very fit name of the " constitutional movement.''

In driving out Protestants, the " constitutional
movement " was most successful. But in the inter-
vals of its successes in this matter it engaged in a
movement of quite a different and far more high-'
souled character, in which its failure was uniform,
so uniform, indeed, that it caused its ruin. This
movement has assumed diverse forms and gone under
different aliases: Repeal, Federalism, Home Govern-
ment, Home Rule, Devolution, Colonial Home Rule.
But they have all had this in common. They have
proposed to vary the policy of driving the English out
of Ireland, by persuading the English to retire from
Ireland, in whole or in part ; they have depended
rnuch on Parliamentary action. None of these efforts
has had any success whatever. They have all
advanced to a certain point and then come to a
sudden stop, whether it was the Clontarf meeting,
the Curragh revolt, or — the same stone wall loomed
up in each case. ' The " constitutional movement "
has been very effective in moving Protestants, but
very ineffective in moving anything else. It failed
vi'holly to move Englishmen. Not only has the
Government of KingGeorge V a distinctly stronger
hold on Ireland than had that of George IV, but in'
all commercial matters, banks, railways and the lik^,
the hold of the unofficial Englishman has greatly
tightened and extended.

T'he most striking result of the war period has
been the cessation of the two movements of extermi-
nation. ' Unionism and the "constitutional rhove-
ment " (except, of course, in its ineffective, or "Home
^uie ", pliase) both stayed their hands. Indeed "tlie
latter may be now said to have gbrie out of existence.
The Protestant hasrather improved his position since

146

POLICIES IN IRELAND

the beginning of the war ; in its first months he even
became popular and, with a more skilful handling
of matters, might have continued so. On the other
hand, the extermination of the Irish population, con-
tinued for so many years, came to a pause ; Unionism,
the real Unionism, was for the moment put out of
action. In the stagnation of the two active and
successful movements that had so long divided the
country, Sinn Fein has progressed enormously. It
has, of course, been helped by many adventitious
circumstances. It has no religious bitterness.
Having few Protestants in its ranks, it has no hatred
for them, no desire to expel them. Constitutional
agitation cannot flourish without a constitution.
The old safety valves of Free Speech and Emigration
were sealed up. Agricultural prosperity brought the
desire for freedom as it always does. The peasantry
of the French Revolution were, it is said, the most
prosperous in Europe. Asquith and Maxwell each
did their part. It is not proposed here to discuss
Sinn Fein. Down to a few years ago it has so long
been dormant that it has no such recent history^ by
which to judge it as have the rival polices of " Union-
ism " and the " constitutional movement." For the
last four years they in their turn have slept. Sinn
Fein has had the vigour of an awakening. If it
succeeds, the day of extermination will have ended
for ever. If it fails, doubtless the old policies of
extermination, of driving out Irishmen and driving
out Protestants will revive.

' This was written about a year ago. — A.E.C.

147

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