Impressions of Ireland

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IMPRESSIONS OF IRELAND

BY

Very Rev. PROFESSOR ERNESTO BUONAIUTI, D,D., Pli,D.
ROME

Translated irom the Italian by
REV. BERNARD MAGUIRE, C.C.
Anglinamtillen V7est, Co. Mona^flian.

Dublii.

K n. GILL & SON, Ltd.

1913

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/

IMPRESSIONS OF IRELAND

lAiPRESSIONS or IRELAND

BV

Very Rev. Professor Ernesto Buonaiuti, D.D., Ph.D.
• Rome

Translated jrom the Italian by

Rev. Bernard Maguire, C.C.

AUGHNAMULLEN WeST, Co. MoNAGHAN.

M. H. GILL & SON, LTD.
1913

DA
QUO

PRIN'lED AND BOUND

IN IRELAND
BY

M. H. GILL & SON, LTD.
50 Upper O'Connell Street, Dublin

ONSLi LIBRARY
BOSTON CXXLEGE

IMPRESSIONS OF IRELAND

CHAPTER I

The Resurrection of a People

'* The heroes thou weepest are dead ;
Can they live again ? "

— 5. Patrick to Ossian in the Lays of Ossian

Every year in August when the warm sun gilds
the rich cornfields of the Golden Vale, between
Cashel and Limerick, and when the groves of
Killarney and Glengarriff are in the full splendour of
their vegetation, the GaeUc League, founded to promote
the Celtic Revival, holds its general assembly — its
Solemn Oireachtas — in Dublin. Delegates from the
various branches throughout the country report on the
progress of the movement. Single and group competi-
tions, in singing, dancing and Irish History are held ;
officers are appointed, and an attractive programme of
festivities, distinctly Celtic, is gone through, with the
object of interesting in the movement an ever-increasing
number of Irishmen, especially from among the natives
of Dublin — a city, upon which English influence has
been longest and most successfully exercised. The
congress is a real balancing up of the progress annually
achieved by Ireland, in the work of restoring her lan-
guage and customs, and, very opportunely, is held at a
season, when her verdant plains' and "'uplands, rich in
pasture and flowers, renew their perennial bloom.

The foreigner who happens to be present at the
opening of the festival, carries away a deep impression.
What amazes him, beyond all else, is the rapid success
which has followed the Gaelic League in its propaganda.
Started under very modest auspices in 1893 by a few
Celtic enthusiasts (Douglas Hyde, Eoghan O'Growney,
John MacNeill, David Comyn, and O'Neill Russell), and
thanks to an apostolate of organizers, men of clear
intellect, and iron will (such as Thomas Concannon) it
speedily succeeded in firing the entire country with its
own ideals, viz., the preservation of the Gaelic tongue,
wherever it is still spoken, and its complete restoration
in districts where it is already dead or dying. It is
the aim of the League that the 600,000 Irishmen who
can speak English or Gaelic, with equal ease, as well as
the 20,000 inhabitants of the West who are almost
completely ignorant of English, should not forget the
language of their fathers, nor allow it to yield one inch
of ground to the tongue of the invader. It aims, like-
wise, at restoring to currency the rich native idiom, in
those parts where long centuries of slow English pene-
tration— specially active. in the last hundred years —
have completely driven it out. The results already
attained have exceeded all expectation. To-day from
Belfast to Cork, from Sligo to Waterford, no Irishman is
ashamed of his mother tongue. It is rather those who
cannot speak it, that are ashamed of the fact. In the
scholastic year 1908-1909 more than 46,000 children
passed successfully the Irish examination in the primary
schools ; 5814 — I.e. more than fifty per cent, of the total
number of pupils — in the secondary. Lastly, as the
result of a determined agitation in the country, the
national language — medium of the mythological and

epic cycles, from which, on the testimony of G. Paris,
are drawn the most exquisite fictions of medieval
chivalry, from Tristan to Lohengrin— has been assigned
a privileged status in the programme of the new National
University. This same GaeHc League, has, with
prodigious rapidity, multiplied its offshoots in the country,
and counts to-day not less than 800 affiliated branches,
some of them amongst the Irish of America and Australia.
These, however, are mere figures, and give no adequate
idea of the enormous work accomplished by the League
in organising popular open-air festivals, establishing
schools and fostering colleges, such as that of St. Enda
(in which the form of education and general usages,
even to the costumes worn by the young students and
the system of g5^mnastics adopted, are distinctly Irish),
in founding bursaries and promoting native industries ;
thus restoring to the gaze of contemporary Irishmen,
whom England is making her last efforts to assimilate,
the glorious past of the venerated Island of Saints and
Scholars, that stretches westwards towards the New
World, whither she has sent so many of her sons, after
having sent eastwards over the continent the pioneers
of Christian civilisation and Christian sanctity in the
Middle Ages. For it is to be observed that while the
revival of the Irish Language is the principal, it is not
the sole, aim of the League. Free from political and
rehgious prejudice ahke, its aim is to fuse the rabid
Orangemen of Ulster, and the devout Catholics of
Connacht, in a united struggle for the intellectual and
economic regeneration of their common country, which
has been so long and so bitterly tried.

This year during Oireachtas week visitors may have
studied a very successful industrial exhibition of native

8

products (notably Kilkenny furniture, products of the
Irish Tobacco Co., native Irish costumes, exquisite
jewellery from Dublin) side by side with a promising
display of the works of Irish painters. Amongst these,
Lavery, a triumphant figure of English pavilions at all
International exhibitions, did not appear. But young
artists, such as Duffy, Miller and Saunders found an
honoured place.

The Gaehc League, however, starts with the principle
that the economic revival can only be accomplished by
means of a thorough spiritual regeneration ; and with
this view the foreigner who visits Ireland must signify
his hearty concurrence. England has proclaimed to
the four winds that it was she who introduced into the
sister island the settled forms of civilised life, to which
Ireland had been a stranger ; and Irishmen have seen
themselves regarded for centuries, as belonging to an
inferior race, inherently incapable of organising itself
into an enduring social structure. How England has
vilified the tribal system ! x\nd yet, under its shade,
Ireland has produced her bards and her lawgivers, her
cenobites and her schools. Irish sentiment bitterly felt
the rude shock of long, calculating disdain. Timid,
suspicious, lacking faith in herself, mistrusting innova-
tion, shy of initiative, sorrowful and resigned, with
passive listlessness, or weeping in silence, she allowed
the industry, the commerce, the habits of life, and even
the language of the country of Cromwell, to sweep over
the land, which had witnessed the proud sway of the
O'Connors and the wealth and affluence of the Maguires.

Now, if Ireland is to be a nation, if she is ever to walk
securely in the paths of agricultural, industrial and
commercial progress, she must arouse within herself the

consciousness of her latent capacities, and, drinking
deep at the pure fountains of her glorious history,
eliminate from her lethargic spirit the habits of pessimism
and torpor, which centuries of persecution have im-
pressed upon it. What would it profit her, if to-morrow
she succeeded in wresting Home Rule from England,
and in opening once more the doors of her parhament in
Dublin, whilst she retained not, whole and entire, the
abiding consciousness of her ethnical personality, and
of her storied destiny ? Hence, the Gaelic League, with
an exquisite sense of the true meaning of education, aims
at restoring everything in the local traditions that may
contribute to the elevation of public spirit — from the
old Celtic songs with their impassioned modulations,
their long melancholy cadences, and faithful rhythm — •
sonorous murmurs of a soul in love or anguish, down to
the characteristic national dances. Hence a pleiad of
scholars, led by Mrs. Green, who has undertaken to
accompHsh for Ireland the historical task accompHshed
for England by her husband, are devoting themselves to
the work of exhuming from the immense treasury of
Irish manuscripts lying unpublished in all the principal
libraries of Europe — precious heritage left by wandering
or exiled monks — the eloquent traces of the past econo-
mic and moral grandeur of the country.

This year at the Oireachtas, I witnessed some re-
markable test performances of Irish music, executed by
Mr. Darley, an accompHshed violinist. The sweetness
of. certain lullabies, and the violence of a malediction on
Cromwell, are still humming in my ears. I was present
too, at the birth of a new society, formed for the pubHca-
tion of ancient Irish music, in support of which Mr.
Hardebeck, a German who has become hibernior

10

hihernicis ipsis, made some very interesting observa-
tions, upon the relations that exist between Irish folk-
song and Gregorian chant. According to him, the latter
is the offspring of the former. This theory appears far
from improbable, when one considers the Irish national-
ity of monks such as St. Gall, who were in their time
distinguished exponents of musical culture on the
Gregorian model.

But the most attractive item of this year's festival was
a reproduction of the National Assembly at Tara — the
Sacred Hill of Irish patriotism — according to the descrip-
tion given in the book of Ua-Chonbhail. The festival of
Tara, instituted according to tradition by Ollamh Fodla
in the eighth century before Christ, brought together,
every three years, under the presidency of the Ard-Righ,
the sub-kings, local chieftains, distinguished representa-
tives of the cultured classes, historians, jurists, and poets
of the country. At one of these festivals, according to
the Tripartite Life, St. Patrick was present, and achieved
the most signal triumph in the whole course of his
preaching.

The Feis of this year reproduced the assembly of King
Cormac (grandson of Conn of the Hundred Battles)
who lived in the third century of the Christian era. In
the Rotunda gardens in Dublin, delegates of the League,
and visitors, were present for the first time, at the re-
production of this most characteristic national custom.
Two hundred persons all dressed in the costumes of
the period, took part. Maidens in white, with their fajr,
glossy tresses, formed the choir and group of dancers.
Troops of boys, as pages, followed the kings of Leinster,
Ulster, Munster, and Connacht, who had come to
settle questions of pubhc interest, and do homage to

II

the Ard-Righ — the great Cormac, " under whose rule,"
says the old chronicle, "the earth was fertile in corn
and fruits, the sea yielded abundance of fish, and peace,
opulence, and joy reigned over all the land.' Next in
order to the petty kings, and taking their places at
either side of the throne, come the druids, who light the
Sacred Fire in the centre of the open space. Then all
those present, with the exception of the sovereigns,
plunge their torches in this fire, so full of symbolic
meaning, hghted by the representatives of art and
culture, that they may catch the Sacred Flame. Hold-
ing aloft their torches thus Hghted, all arrange themselves
in a semi-circle ; and then when the Hghts, symmetrically
disposed, flash out in the obscurity of the park, a
numerous band of young girls trip through the mazes
of a compHcated dance, full of regularity and suggestive-
ness, around the druid's fire, which is now left to
smoulder peacefully, after having imparted heat and
light to the torches of the assembly. Thus, in the most
ancient musters of the culture and chivalry of the nation,
on the hill of Tara, did the race commemorate the
glories of its intellectual and social life. When the
dance is over, the royal cortege retires, singing hymns to
the prosperity of the nation. The public still linger in
the park, subdued by the eloquence of the scene. The
noises of the city, heard faintly in the distance, seem to
die away on the railings of the garden, in which is cele-
brated this strange evocation of the past of a race, now
at last after centuries of torpor, apparently rising from
its bed of lethargy. I felt the profound significance of
this wonderful, this unique, reconstruction — unique
because of its singular educative value. We, too, to-
morrow, might organise a procession in the Forum, and

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pass over the traces of the Via Sacra, a simulacrum of
the triumph of Augustus. It might furnish a cinemato-
graph company with material for a film, or please the
dilettante student of Roman History. The pubHc would
derive no spiritual profit from the spectacle. The
historical reproductions of the Gaelic League, on the
other hand, are not mere experiments in art. The
Ireland of to-day feels acutely that the springs of her
greatness lie in the past, and that by restoring ancestral
traditions, blending them naturally with existing social
forms, and by drawing strength and dignity from the
memories of pre-Christian and medieval Ireland, before
the Anglo-Norman had deformed and strangled her,
she may yet discover her true self, and start life afresh.
For the revival of the Gaelic language, in addition to
being an exercise spiritually profitable, is awakening
social echoes, that, at first sight, one would never dream
of. We have here, in fact, a race that through the
instrumentality of language and song, is seeking to
recover those national characteristics, that have made
her great in the past. A lady student of Irish, confessed
to me that she felt a new personality, racy of the soil,
taking possession of her, and supplanting the old ; and
an amiable young Western priest, member of an intensely
patriotic family, confided to me the particulars of similar
personal experiences, in regard to the spiritual effect
produced on him by the study of Gaelic literature. He
Hkewise drew my attention to the curious fact, that the
language revival in Ireland is accompanied wdth an
intensification of missionary zeal — a re-awakening of
that ardour for winning converts to the faith, for which
Ireland is renowned in the religious history of the old
and the new world.

13

It appears to me the most salient feature of the
Gaehc revival is this : Ireland numbers less than five
milHons of a population in the motherland ; but she
can reckon close on thirty milHons of children dispersed
throughout the world — in America, Australia, South
Africa, India, in a word wherever the English flag or
the EngHsh language is found. If to-morrow a re-
awakened national consciousness brought together the
scattered fragments of this wonderfully prolific race,
and infused into them a soul of unity, what singular
effects might not be looked for in the world !

Sixty years ago Renan, in a brilHant essay on the
poetry of the Celtic races, put himself this question
" Who knows what the Celtic race, which has dreamed
with St. Brendan of mystic Atlantides, might not ac-
comphsh in the field of intellect, if she once made bold
to figure in the world, and subject her rich and profound
nature to the exigencies of modern thought ! "

The question recurred forcibly to my mind that calm
evening in August, as I saw unfolded before me in the
suggestive shadows of the park, the reproduction of the
Tara assembly ; and, foreigner though I was, I had a
vague sense that something notable for civiHsation and
CathoHcism was maturing in the soul of this Irish race,
so gentle and so pure, so vehement and so dreamy, thus
taking up the volume of her noble story, reading therein
the glorious pages of her ancient past, and bent on
adding other pages no less brilliant.

CHAPTER II

St. Patrick's Purgatory

In that suggestive " Golden Legend," which was not
without its influence on the spiritual elaboration of the
Divine Comedy, the holy Giacomo de Voragine relates
how St. Patrick, for the purpose of confirming his
preaching, asked God to reveal himself by some miracu-
lous sign. And " then by divine command he marked
out with his staff a wide circle, and straightway the
ground enclosed subsided and a very deep opening
appeared. It was thereupon revealed to St. Patrick
that this opening led to a purgatory ; that all such as
went down into it would have atoned for their sins and
be dispensed from the pains of purgatory after their
death ; but that the majority of those who entered
would never be able to get out." The good narrator of
the legend goes on to tell how sundry persons went
down into the opening but never returned, and that
one, Niccolo, was privileged to come out unhurt, after
having had a fearful vision of the other world.

That clear August morning on which I left Enniskillen,
the Irish Lucerne, and, crossing the fertile County of
Fermanagh along the shores of blue Lough Erne, made
towards Pettigo, thence to pursue my journey to the
celebrated Purgatory, I had, in sooth, no intention of
trying my luck at the opening ; for I had taken a
return ticket. Besides, however much I had desired to
follow in the footsteps of the lucky explorer of the
under world, I could not have' satisfied my craving.

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15

Many years, ago the grotto which gave access to the
mysterious regions of the suffering souls, was, as a
precaution against superstition, filled up ; and a little
mound on which the pilgrims assemble before evening
devotions, now stands above it. My intention rather,
was, following the suggestion of D'Arcy Magee, to
submit to observation, at one of the most venerated
centres of Irish piety, whither from June to August of
every year thousands of pilgrims congregate, " the
power of faith."

The tiuth is, to have clear evidence of the deep religious
feeling of the Irish Celt, one need not traverse the island
from east to west, and reach the tiny islet on Lough
Derg in rugged Donegal, to which tradition points as
evidence of St. Patrick's miracle. You have but to set
foot on the Emerald Isle, and after disembarking in the
morning at Kingstown, to repair to a Catholic church
in Dublin. There you can estimate the abyss that, in
a spiritual sense, divides England, which you have left
the day before, from Ireland, which you have reached
after scarce nine hours journey from London, by Holy-
head and across St. George's Channel. You feel at
once you are in the true land of faith. On any day in
the week, at any hour in the morning, every church,
whether it be the aristocratic pro-cathedral, or the
Franciscan church along the Liffey, or again that of
the Dominicans in one of the poorest quarters of the
city is crowded with people, in an attitude of the deepest
reverence. The Catholic churches of Dublin are not
aesthetically the finest in the country. There are better
in small provincial towns, such as Sligo, Omagh,
Killamey. In Dublin, it would seem as if the modesty
of the Catholic churches were meant to express a more

i6

eloquent protest against the English invasion, which
has transformed into Protestant churches those magnifi-
cent old monuments of Catholicism in the capital — St.
Patrick's and Christ church. But aesthetic considera-
tions are here out of the question. The most seductive
spectacle for the visitor who comes from abroad is not
the cupola or the fagade, but the praying throng, above
which hovers, in sensible form, the vivid and abiding
realisation of the divine.

If then leaving Dublin, which after all is Anglicised
to a certain degree, you journey through green Erin,
and visit the western and southern counties ; if you
stop at the lesser cities of Cork, Limerick, Galway, and
Westport, and everywhere scrutinise the manifestations
of rehgious life — the work accomplished by the Catholic
priest, the Christian perfume that breathes from the
daily life of the people — you are not long in satisfying
yourself that you are in the heart of the most Catholic
nation in the world — aye, in these days when the en-
grossing cares of material life have everywhere so ab-
sorbed human energies, as utterly to stifle the energy
of the spirit, perhaps the one truly Catholic nation on
the earth.

We Latins might easily be induced to believe that so
deep a realisation of the Gospel must be accompanied
by the most fanatical bigotry. Nothing of the kind.
The Irishman, unless by a very rare exception, is no
bigot. He abhors the studied ostentation of his faith,
feels the most cordial antipathy towards every practice
that savours of fetishism or superstition, reahses by
intuition the superiority of God's law over that of man,
and has a heart open to the widest tolerance.

Were I to venture an impression of my own I should

17

say that Irish faith has within itself a preventive against
any pharisaical deformity, because it reposes on a
mental attitude sensibly different from that which as
a rule inspires the profession of religion in the Latin
countries. Our attachment to rehgion is, if I am not
mistaken, in very notable measure determined by the
thoughts of the other world, and the desire of divine
grace. The Irish Celt's religion on the contrary springs
from the actual sense of the divine, which accompanies,
nurtures and sustains his daily hfe ; from a famihar
need of the supernatural.

Besides this, after ages of unexampled sufferings,
cheerfully borne for the faith of his fathers, the Irish-
man sees, in Christian practices, the most urgent and at
the same time the sweetest duty that devolves on social
hfe. In old Gaehc the church is called " people's house."
In fine, the dogmas of revelation, the teaching authority
of the church, the actual presence of God, are for the
Irishman, not cold intellectual formulae, but truths
incarnated in practice, and tangible in the actions of
daily hfe. In Donegal the poor peasant who speaks
Gaelic while he addresses everyone else in the second
person singular, addresses the priest in the second person
plural, because the priest is not alone ; God is in him.
Such a pinnacle of reverence, one may easily understand,
constitutes a perilous occasion for Catholic priests, to
abuse the piety of the faithful. But anyone who has
lived in intimate association with ecclesiastical life in
Ireland, must acknowledge that the priest responds
conscientiously to the people's trust, and ever prompt
to their call for the legitimate assertion of their rights,
never turns to his own profit the veneration of which
he is the object.

i8

But if the spectacle of deep faith everywhere meets
the stranger in Ireland, it is there in the little island
in Lough Derg, sacred to the revered memory of St.
Patrick, that it presents itself in all its singularity.
For my own part I have never regretted the journey.
From Pettigo one of the characteristic Irish jaunting
cars, with its high wheels and side seats, took us to the
lake, which, set in its waving coronal of hills, breaks
suddenly on the pilgrim's view, and reveals to him at a
glance the island of penance, about two hundred yards
from the shore. My travelling companions, evidently
ladies and gentlemxcn of high social rank, were touched
with emotion and prayed devoutly.

I have seen other religious pilgrimages. But what a
difference from the pilgrimage of Lough Derg ! In our
countries there is something restless and disorderly in
the behaviour of the crowds that wend their way, singing
hymns to Loretto or to Pompeii ; and the goal of their
travel seems not rarely as if summoning to a festive
gathering. \Mth the Irishmen who, in June, July and
August, from every county in the land, come to visit
the little island in Donegal, a spirit of recollectedness
and severe penance is the predominant note. They wear
on their very countenances the consciousness of an in-
estimable religious rite, discharged in communion with
the entire race, which ever since the days of St. Patrick,
has reverently walked in his footsteps, in the pious
expectation that, on the last day, he will be their own
judge.

Having crossed the little expanse of lake and disem-
barked on Station Island, the pilgrims take off their
boots and forthwith commence the prescribed practices.
These are neither few nor easy. They must visit the

19

two churches of the island, make numerous circuits of
the principal one of the two, extend their arms several
times on the cross of St. Brigid (a very old Celtic de-
votional rite) , and in due order make prolonged stations
in the penitential cells or beds of St. Brigid, St. Brendan,
St. Catherine, and St. Columba. Lastly, the exercises,
which are to be repeated on three consecutive days,
are brought to a close near a rude cross, which bears
the name of St. Patrick.

With these pious exercises the pilgrims combine a
strict fast, and the plain accommodation* of the common
hospice. And here, in the levelling tendency of a
regime imposed on all alike, consists perhaps the most
beneficial social effect of the pilgrimage. The rich
merchant of Cork or Tralee, the well-to-do farmer of
Ulster, the Dublin tradesman, the poor fisherman of
Gal way, are all reduced to a common level in presence
of the ritual imposed by the devotion of the place.
For my own part I have never seen a Christian practice
that exceeds this in instilHng a sense of equahty among
men.

I have not been able to read into the souls of the
pilgrims, and I know not whether in the secrets of their
hearts this visit to the rude island in Donegal really
means to them escape from purgatory after their deaths.
The fact remains that as they turn homewards to the
four points of the compass, they carry away a deep
content of soul, and all contribute to sustain the fame
of the place — venerated and loved to-day as it was in
the time of the pious Ligurian Dominican Jacobo de
Voragine.

Returning in the evening, on foot, towards Pettigo,
* " Discomforts " is the equivalent of the Italian.

20

over a melancholy series of hills dotted here and there
with little cottages, and patches of meadow, in which
splendid types of peasants, men and women (descend-
ants perhaps of the royal houses of O'Connor and
O'Donnell) I reflected how solidly St. Patrick had
fashioned the soul of his people to Christianity. A
week before, in the National Museum at Dublin, I had
contemplated with emotion that little iron bell, which
a very old legend declares was used by St. Patrick to
summon the faithful, and that in the eleventh century
King Donnell O'Loughlin had it covered with a mag-
nificent chased casing. What national apostle has
rung for his converts a bell whose summons has been
more widely obeyed ? The rude relic which the old
book of Cuana alleges to have been buried with St.
Patrick, exhumed by Columba and deposited for
centuries at Armagh, now rests in the Kildare Street
Museum at Dublin, in the glass case where many old
Irish bells are brought together. The custodian politely
offers you a lens that you may the better see and admire
the exquisite gilt tracery of the cover. But you are
totally distracted. No, the bell is not silent. Its peal,
the voice of St. Patrick, still reverberates in the world,
and thirty millions of' Irishmen bow devoutly to its
chimes.

In what rich measure, too, has our Latin Catholicism
been lulled by that chime ? How much has not the
Christianity of St. Patrick, the faith and piety of the
Irish Celt, deposited in the religious experience of the
Continent ? Catholicism in its exterior organisation is
a Mediterranean phenomenon. But the important part
played by Celtic Christianity in the formation of Catholic
ritual and devotion, has never yet been appreciated.

21

Only yesterday a very subtle French psychologist
declared with justice that the researches of the future
will show how the imagination of the Irish race, so
intimately modelled on the Gospel, is one of the essential
factors in the religious evolution of the West.

CHAPTER III

The Present and the Future of Irish Politics.

Erin, Oh Erin ! Thy winter is passed,
And the hope that lived through it, shall blossom at last.

— T. Moore.

Not many days have passed since the stormy session
of last July, in the course of which Mr. Asquith was
subjected to violent insult by the Tories, because, as
was now evident he had pledged himself to the Irish
Party to introduce a Home Rule Bill— that is, a bill to
secure for Ireland legislative autonomy, exercised in a
national parhament elected by the people, and em-
powered to regulate the domestic affairs of the country,
imperial questions being reserved to the Parliament at
Westminster. I may say candidty, I had expected to
find greater enthusiasm for the approaching abolition
of that Act of Union, which, for a hundred years has
been the nightmare of pubhc life in Ireland. I do not
say that the parhamentary policy of Mr. Redmond and
his numerous party has not a strong following in the
country. If you look up, in The Leader, the standing
list of subscriptions, you will see that from every parish
in the country, generous contributions flow in to swell
the funds of the party. At all events, it is impossible
to discover that attitude of impatient expectation,
begotten of mingled joy and fear, which one might look
to find in a country on the eve of realising her long-
cherished dreams. The friends of the party seek to

22

23

explain the fact by pointing out that to-day the desire
for autonomy is less keen than it was twenty or thirty
years ago, because the trend of English politics has
materially changed, and the change has been to the
advantage of Ireland. The explanation is not without
its basis of fact. Ireland is no longer the Cinderella of
the United Kingdom subjected to all the petty annoy-
ances and mortifications of English rule. The singular
vicissitudes of parliamentary life, have placed in the
hands of her deputies to Westminster, formidable
weapons of combat ; and the island beyond St. George's
Channel, has, in the course of twenty years, won reforms
of vast importance. I may mention the Local Govern-
ment and Land Purchase Acts. When one reflects that
some of the fiercest battles recorded in the modern
history of Liberal politics in England have been won
thanks to the almost unanimous support of the Irish
party, one cannot help pointing to the relentless nemesis,
which has assigned to Ireland the task of abolishing the
cherished privileges of that House of Lords, from
which has ever proceeded the most obstinate opposition
to the redress of her political and religious grievances.
Be this as it may, the above explanation is not
exhaustive. When, to-day, in the best informed centres
of Dublin, and in the small but industrious County towns
of the midlands, as well as of the South and West, you
may hear harsh criticisms of the Irish Party, and observe
on the face of the speaker an expression of ill-concealed
doubt on the subject of Home Rule ; and when the
bellicose policy of the \ oung Ireland party, of which the
Sinn Feiners appear to be the heirs, has suddenly
reappeared, and is making some headway in the country,
the cause is not to be sought merely in the improved

24

condition of the people, and in the Hkehhood of a
permanent understanding with England. True it is
that England has recently set in motion very signal
measures of reform in Ireland — partial and tardy
reparation for centuries of impoverishment. I have
already mentioned the Local Government and Land
Purchase Acts ; and may here add the measures passed
to extend the operations of the Congested Districts
Board, and the act establishing the New National
University, which has just opened its doors in Dubhn,
and is looked forward to as destined eventually to rival
the hated Trinity. Many reforms, especially those of
an economic character, have signally ameliorated the
conditions of life in Ireland. But how much in this
department still remains to be done !

When I reflect that Ireland possesses the European
ports that lie nearest to America- — those of Galway,
Clifden, Westport — that she has others, like that of Tralee,
in which vessels of very large tonnage can enter, dock and
unload ; that she has splendid navigable rivers — the
Shannon whose waters bathe the Norman castle of
Limerick, the Liffey which flows through the capital,
the Lee with Cork on its banks, the Foyle which receives
the finished products from the smoky factories of
Derry ; the Lagan which tells of the marvellous growth
of Belfast — that she could develop enormous hydraulic
power ; that she possesses vast tracts of peat ; that her
immense expanses of pasture land are unequalled in the
world — when I reflect on all this, ' as I stand on the
summit of a hill near Clifden looking out over the bay,
on which a few fishing-boats may be seen skimming
the waves, I realise, with an acute sense of pain, what
Ireland is compared with what she might be.

25

We are, it is true, in the initial stages of a r^^ival ;
but this is confined to agriculture and home industries.
Horace Plunkett, by his propaganda in favour of rural
credit societies, and by the establishment of co-operative
creameries, which now display their modest chimneys
on the outskirts of every Irish village, has much contri-
buted to this. But if we leave out the favoured regions
of Belfast, Derry, Limerick, Cork, ^¥aterford and Wex-
ford, no symptoms can be observed of a promising
industrial and commercial activity, which in any case
would encounter insurmountable obstacles in the
monstrous attitude of the railway companies.

Now, the Liberals with smiles on their faces have
come to the Irish Party, and have said to them, with an
air of candour : " Help us in reforming the Lords, and
in carrying our budget ; in exchange, we will give you
the coveted measure of Home Rule, and you can proceed
to set the affairs of your house in order." Mr. Redmond
and his friends have closed with the offer. The country
is slow to brand them as simpletons ; bat it has its
misgivings. There is an old Irish proverb which says :
" A dog s grin, an Englishman's laugh ! " Is the
popular philosophy, crystallised in the above eloquent
aphorism, about to be falsified at last ? Meanwhile,
along with the mirage of Home Rule, which a schism
in the Liberal Party might defeat, there has been
accepted by the Irish Party, and safely passed into law,
a budget, which imposes a heavy tax on alcohoHc
drinks, and thus hits Ireland and her producers and
consumers of whiskey particularly hard. It is true
Irishmen have hit back, by increased earnestness in
the temperance crusade, so as not in the net result to
pay an increase of taxation. Ireland, be it remarked,

26

is the only country in the world where every problem,
whether economic or administrative, immediately
assumes a more or less moral tinge. Is it alwaj^s lawful
to block the inroads of taxation by having recourse to
tactics of abstinence ?

Lady Clanricarde once said to an Englishman : " You
have always been as a garden wall interposed between
us and the sun ! " Many Irishmen are now asking
themselves, somewhat sceptically : "Is the wall
tottering ? " They have scant faith in the attractive
prospect opened out to them by the Liberal Party. Is
this excess of pessimism ? I should be slow to say it is.

Thus, the policy of the Irish Parliamentary Party,
and the promised measure of Home Rule, give rise to a
dilemma which is very trying to the Irish spirit.

For seven centuries — from the very day, in fact, on
which Henry II., armed with a papal bull, (authentic
or otherwise), crossed St. George's Channel, and asserted
the sovereignty of England over the lesser island — Ire-
land has never abandoned the struggle for national
independence — a struggle of two civihsations, two
souls, rather than of two states. To-day, Mr. J. E.
Redmond alone — perhaps not even he — knows what form
of Home Rule the Liberal Government is disposed to
grant. It is certain, however, that on any hypothesis,
Ireland can never have power to control her own political
and financial relations with other countries, unless on
the condition that she enter unreservedly the mighty
current of British political life. And in that case,
would not Home Rule stand for a base transaction, a
tame acquiescence, which, if sincere, would be equivalent
to the final abandonment of the majestic tradition of
the Celt, and his utter absorption in the triumphant

27

life of England ? The soul of Erin perceives the dark
dilemma, and recoils on itself. in painful uncertainty.

Before three years have elapsed, it may be, the old
Parhament House in Dubhn, that once rang with the
powerful eloquence of Grattan, will open its doors once
more to the representatives of the Irish nation. What
are to be the limitations of their legislative power ?
For one thing, the Customs will be outside their control.
And then, what benefit to industry, which has so much
need of protection, to commerce, which demands liberal
expansion and generous subsidies, will accrue, from their
presence at home ? What, then, does all the bitter
struggle come to, or what does Ireland gain by accepting
the position of a minor planet in the great British
system, if, for example, she is powerless to prevent the
price of those commodities which she largely exports,
such as butter and eggs, from falHng suddenly in the
markets of Dublin or Cork, merely because a number of
men on strike have brought railway traffic to a standstill
at Liverpool ?

The friends of the Parliamentary Party do not seek
to evade the force of these observations, but reply that
there is no better course open. An acute professor of
science in Dublin wittily remarked that, " to demolish
a wall you require a better implement than your own
head." True, and Ireland is physically unable to
extricate herself from the meshes of the English political
and economic system.

The first thing responsible for this complex Irish
problem is Nature herself, which has set this little
island, of perennial verdure — rich in rivers and inlets,
corn and fruits, with a superficies of less than 100,000
square kilometres, and a population of less than

28

^( Vnit three hours' sail
distance of but t^ ^^^^

5.000,000-at a distance ^ ou ^^^.^^ ^^

from the larger -l^"J:r^^,,\nd a POP^I^^-^ °*
than 200,000 square krlom^r^s ^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^.

close on 40.ooo.ooo. and jf^^^and ^^^ ,,,,„a thing
,^ries of hfe for all her chiWr ^^ ^^^ ^^„

responsible is /-tory^^^-h ha ^^ ^^^^^.^^^^^ ^^^,
islands two distmc races o ^^ ^^^^ ,„

they cannot -d- f ^ *, * this connection points
irreconcilable conflict. Ken , ^^^^.^^^^ „f

out that a race endowed -th a^g^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^ ^^^^
commonsense cannot get ^^^^^^_ ^^^^ ^^.^

1,33 richly endowed It m&^P^^^ ^^^^^^, aspect

been violently Pl^^^^'^'^f. ^j,, ^estion arises: if in
In face of this f ^™ ^j^^^ million inhabitants
,840 when Ireland counted ^^i ^^ ^^ ^^^,_ f

and O'Connell h^^^ them in the ^^^^.^^^

in those memorable days 01 g J ^^^^ ^^^^^^^
..hich hundreds of ^^°"-\^^^^°^P,',ompl.shed, the de-
then, the revolution ^-f^''^^^^^ li to-day might
populated and down^rodd n Ma ^^ ^^^ ^^^^^,3

perhaps hope to find her V^^'^^^^^ ^^^ ^.ee-traders
'^^^-^^^^rturfng tot; and the protectionist

;L:£s:;i:S:^./ereco— ^^^

^ To-day, Ireland has *« ^^^^ ^^j^ ,,ftality into the
moment, and keep ever^« ^-sh^^ ^^, ,y

life of the country. We mu ^^^

29

almost equal dimensions. As a matter of fact, Ireland
exports too much of those commodities which are
required for the decent support of her own population.
How far off is the day when Ireland imported every
article of luxury, salt and iron excepted, in exchange
for her surplus of products, and her people were well
fed and well clad !

Are those days ever to return for you, wretched but
virtuous fishermen of the Claddagh ; for you, dock-
labourers ot Dublin ; and you, lonely peasants of
Connemara ?

Much progress, certainly, has been made within
recent years, and the outlook is hopeful. But, then,
in the direction of progress, which is the better path ?
Viewing the question in the abstract, and having regard
to the incurable antagonism that exists between Irish
and English interests and ideals, the policy of Sinn Fein
would appear preferable. But politics, like history, is
not an algebraic problem, and in the Irishman's game of
chess, the practical needs of the moment are all-
important. Hence it is, that at the present juncture
a generous measure of credit must be accorded to the
Irish Party ; the more so, as Home Rule, given the
many psychological factors that come into play in the
Irish problem, so far from signalising the end of the
great Anglo-Celtic duel, might simply mark the be-
ginning of a new phase, pregnant with incalculable
consequences for both combatants.

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