Chapter 35

The best authority in Achil said:--"The hat is always going round for the islanders, who are much better off than the poor of great English cities. They have the reputation of being in a state of chronic famine. This has no foundation in fact. They all have land, one, two, or three cows, and the sea to draw upon. For their land and houses they pay nothing, or next to nothing; for good land in some cases is to be had for a shilling an acre. The lakes also abound with fish. They glory in their poverty, and hail a partial failure of crops with delight. They know they will be cared for, and that provisions will be showered upon them from all sides. They say, 'Please God, we'll have a famine this year,' and when the contributions pour in they laugh and sing, and say, 'The distress for ever! Long live the famine!' The word goes round at stated intervals that they are to 'have a famine.' They jump at the suggestion, act well together, and carry out the idea perfectly. The Protestants never have any distress which calls for charitable aid. They live on the same soil, under the same laws, but they never beg. They pay their rents, too, much more regularly than the others, who of late years can hardly be got to pay either rent or anything else. The Protestants are all strong Unionists. The Catholics are all strong Home Rulers. Their notions of Home Rule are as follows:--No rent, no police, a poteen still at every door, and possession of the land now held by Protestants, which is so much better than their own because so much more labour has been expended on it, and for no other reason. Who tells them to 'have a famine'? Why, the same people who arouse and keep alive their enmity to the Protestants; the same people who tell them lies about the early history of the Colony--lies which the tellers know to be lies, such as the stories of oppression, spoliation, and of how the mission took the property of the islanders with the strong hand, aided by England, the home of robbery, tyranny, and heresy. The people would be friendly enough but for their priests. Yet they have marched in procession before our houses, blowing defiance by means of a drum and fife band, because we would not join one or other of their dishonest and illegal combinations. They opened a man's head with a stone, producing a dreadful scalp wound, and when Doctor Croly, the greatest favourite in the whole island, went to dress the wound, five or six of them stopped his horse, with the object of giving him a 'bating,' which would have ended nobody knows how. The doctor produced a revolver, and the heroes vanished like smoke."

The good doctor is himself a Unionist, but more of a philanthropist than a politician. He is the parish doctor, with eight thousand people to look after, the whole being scattered over an immense area. I accompanied him on a twenty-mile drive to see a girl down with influenza, much of the road being almost impracticable. Some of his experiences, coming out incidentally, were strange and startling. He told me of a night when the storm was so wild that a man seeking him approached the surgery on all-fours, and once housed, would not again stir out, though the patient was his own wife. The doctor went alone and in the storm and blackness narrowly escaped drowning, emerging from the Jawun, usually called the Jordan, after an hour's struggle with the flood, to sit up all night in his wet clothes, tending the patient. On another occasion a mountain sheep frightened his horse just as the doctor was filling his pipe. The next passer-by found him insensible. Nobody might have passed for a month. A similar misadventure resulted in a broken leg. Then on a pitchy night he walked over the cliffs, and was caught near the brink by two rocks which held him wedged tightly until someone found him and pulled him up, with the bag of instruments, which he thinks had saved him. And it was as well to pause in his flight, for the Menawn Cliffs, with their thousand feet of clean drop, might have given the doctor an ugly fall. Two girls, whose male relations had gone to England, had not been seen for three days. Nobody would go near the house. The doctor found them both on the floor insensible, down with typhus fever, shut up with the pigs and cows, the room and its odour defying description. The neighbours kept strictly aloof. Dr. Croly swept and garnished, made fires, and pulled the patients through. "Sure, you couldn't expect us to go near whin 'twas the faver," said the neighbourly Achilese. Mr. Salt, the Brum-born mission agent, was obliged to remain all night on one of the neighbouring islands--islands are a drug hereabouts--and next morning he found an egg in his hat. Fowls are in nearly all the houses. Sometimes they have a roost on the ceiling, but they mostly perch on the family bed, when that full-flavoured Elysium is not on the floor. I saw an interior which contained one black cow, one black calf, some hens, some ducks, two black-and-white pigs, a mother, and eleven children. Where they all slept was a puzzle, as only one bed was visible. The hens went whir-r-r-up, and perched on the bedstead, when the lady smiled and wished me Good Evening. She looked strong and in good going order. The Achilese say Good Evening all day long. A young girl was grinning in the next doorway, a child of fourteen or fifteen she seemed. "Ye wouldn't think that was a married woman, would ye now," said a neighbour, with pardonable pride. "Aye, but she is, though, an' a foin lump iv a son ye have, haven't ye, Maureen." Mr. Peter Griffin, once a land commissioner, told me that a boy having applied for the fixing of a judicial rent, the commissioners expressed their surprise upon learning that he was married. "Arrah, now," said the applicant, "sure 'tis not for the sake of the bit that the crathur would ate that a boy need be widout one o' thim!"

In Achil, as elsewhere, the better people are certain that the Home Rule Bill will never become law. From their point of view, the thing seems too absurd to be possible. They are face to face with a class of Irishmen, among whom civilisation seems to have made no perceptible progress for centuries, who scorn every improvement, and are so tied and bound down by aboriginal ignorance and superstition as to be insensible to everything but their ancient prejudices. It cannot be possible, they argue, that Ireland should be given over to the dominion of these people, who, after all, are in the matter of advancement and enlightenment fairly representative of the bulk of the voters for Home Rule all over the country. The civilised community of Achil are unable to realise the possibility of such a surrender. They do not discuss the measure, but rather laugh at it. An able business man said:--

"We get the daily papers a little old, no doubt, but we follow them very closely, and we concur in believing that Mr. Gladstone will in the long run drop the bill. We think he will turn round and say, 'There now. That's all I can do. Haven't I done my best? Haven't I kept my promise? Now, you can't blame me. The Irishmen see it coming, and they will get out of it as much dramatic effect as possible. The party organs are already urging them to open rupture with the Government. Compulsion is their game, and no doubt, with Gladstone, it is the most likely game to pay. But he might rebel. He might grow tired of eating Irish dirt; he might pluck up spirit enough to tell these bullies who are jockeying him, and through him the British Empire, to go to the Divil. Then we'd have a fine flare-up. Virtuous indignation and patriotic virtue to the fore! The Irish members will rush over to Ireland, and great demonstrations will be the order of the day. The Irish love demonstrations, or indeed anything else which gives a further excuse for laziness. The priests will orate, the members will prate, the ruffians elate will shoot or otherwise murder a few people, who will have Mr. Gladstone to thank for their death. For what we wanted was twenty years of resolute government, just as Lord Salisbury said, and if Mr. Balfour had been left to carry it out Ireland would have come her nearest possible to prosperity and contentment. But with steady rule one day, and vacillation, wobbling, and surrender the next, what can you expect? The Irish are very smart, cute people, and they soon know where they can take advantage of weakness. The way these poor Achil folks, those who have been to England, can reckon up Mr. Gladstone! They call him a traitor now. And yet he promises to let the Irish members arrange their own finance! 'Here, my boys,' says he, 'take five millions and spend it your own way.' Will John Bull stand that? Will he pay for the rope that is to hang himself? Will he buy the razor to cut his own throat? Where are his wits? Why does he stand by to witness this unending farce, when he ought to be minding serious business? This Irish idiocy is stopping the progress of the Empire. Why does not Bull put his foot on it at once? He must do so in the end. Where are the working men of England? Surely they know enough to perceive that their own personal interests are involved.

"In Achil we have practically peasant proprietary and nothing else. Eleven hundred men and women are at this moment in England and Scotland from Achil alone. They will return in October, each bringing back ten, fifteen, or twenty pounds, on which they will live till next season. The Irish Legislature would begin by establishing peasant proprietary all over Ireland. The large farmers would disappear, and men without capital, unable to employ labour, would take their place. Instead of Mayo, you would have the unemployed of the whole thirty-two counties upon you. Ireland would be pauperised from end to end, for everybody who could leave it would do so--that is, every person of means--and as for capital and enterprise, what little we have would leave us. Which of the Irish Nationalist party would start factories, and what would they make? Can anybody tell me that?"

I submitted that Mr. William O'Brien, the member for Cork, might open a concern for the making of breeches, or that Mr. Timothy Healy, the member for Louth, who was reared in a tripe shop, might embark his untold gold in the cowheel and trotter business, or might even prove a keen competitor with Walsall in the manufacture of horsewhips, a product of industry of which he has had an altogether exceptional experience. "Is not this true?" I enquired.

My friend admitted the fact, but declined to believe in the factory.

Dugort (Achil Island), June 22nd.

No. 39.--IRISH UNFITNESS FOR SELF-GOVERNMENT.

There stands a city neither large nor small, Its air and situation sweet and pretty. It matters very little if at all. Whether its denizens are dull or witty. Whether the ladies there are short or tall, Brunettes or blondes--only there stands a city. Perhaps 'tis also requisite to minute, That there's a castle and a cobbler in it. It is not big enough to boast a barber. These indispensable adjuncts of civilisation exist in Connaught, but only at rare intervals. Roughly speaking, there is a space of about a hundred miles between them. From Athlone to Dugort, a hundred and thirty miles, there is only one, both towns inclusive. Castlereagh is a deadly-lively place for business, but keenly awake to politics. The distressful science absorbs the faculties of the people, who care for little else. Like all the Keltic Irish, they are great talkers, and, surely, if talking were working the Irish would be the richest nation in the world. "Words, words, words," and no deeds. The Castlereagh folks are growing despondent. The Irish Parliament that was to remit taxation, present every able-bodied man with a farm, do away with landlords and police, and reduce the necessity for work to a minimum, seems to them further off than ever. They complain that once again the people of Ireland have been betrayed. Mr. Gladstone has done it all. To be sure they never trusted him, but they thought him an instrument in the hands of Fate and the Irish Parliamentary party. Spite of all he is supposed to have done for the Irish, Mr. Gladstone is not popular in Ireland, and, as I pointed out months ago, they from the first declined to believe in his sincerity. They rightly regarded his action anent Home Rule as the result of compulsion, and, rightly or wrongly, believed that he would take the first opportunity of throwing over the whole scheme. That he should act thus treacherously (they say) is precisely what might be expected from an impartial review of his whole career, which presents an unequalled record of in-and-out running--consistent only in its inconsistency. Having apparently ridden straight for awhile, it is now time to expect some "pulling." His shameful concessions to the Unionist party may be taken as a clear indication of his congenital crookedness, and the refusal of the Nationalists at Killybegs, on the visit of Lord Houghton, the other day, to give a single shout for the Grand Old Man, bears out my previous statement as to the popular feeling. Amid the carefully organised show of enthusiasm and mock loyalty which greeted the visit of the Viceroy, not a cheer could be raised for Mr. Gladstone. The local wirepullers did their best, but the priests who for weeks have been arranging their automata, at the last moment found that the dummies would not work. There were rounds of cheering for this, that, and the other, and when the mob were in full cry, someone shouted, "Three cheers for Mr. Gladstone." Dead silence. The Gladstonian Viceroy and his following were left high and dry. The flood of enthusiasm instantly receded, and the beating of their own hearts was the only sound they heard. Mr. Morley's name would have obtained a like reception. The people were doubtless willing to obey their leaders, and to make some slight sacrifice to expediency, but every man left that particular cheer to his neighbour. Hence the fiasco for which the people have already been severely reprimanded. Someone should have called for cheers for Balfour. Anyone who knows the West of Ireland knows there would have been an outburst of hurrahs, hearty and spontaneous. The Irish are delightfully illogical.

A respectable old Fenian had a poor opinion of the present Home Rule agitation. He said:--"I am of the school of Stephens and Mitchel. When a people or nation is radically discontented with its rulers it should throw them off by force. If the Irish could hold together long enough to maintain an armed insurrection for two weeks only, help would be forthcoming from all quarters. When a young man I cherished the hope that this would be accomplished, but I have long abandoned the notion that anything of the kind will be possible in my time. For individual Englishmen I have as much friendship as anybody, not being himself an Englishman, can entertain. What I dislike is English rule, and the present movement does not interest me, because its leaders profess allegiance--for the present, anyhow. No doubt the general idea is to obtain as much advantage as possible, and to gradually increase the strength of Ireland; but, in my opinion, the Fenian movement was the true and legitimate method, and the one best suited to the genius of the Irish nation. Notwithstanding all that has been said and written by English speakers and writers, the movement was worthy of honour, and had it been successful, would have received high praise and commendation from every country except England. To be respectable, revolutions or insurrections must be successful, or at any rate, must have a certain amount of success to commence with. The English people never properly understood the Fenian movement. To begin with, the name of Fenians was not assumed by the Irish body of conspirators. The Fenians proper were entirely confined to America, where they acted under the instructions of John O'Mahony, with Michael and Colonel Corcoran as lieutenants. The Colonel commanded the Irish brigade of the American army, and was pledged to bring over a strong contingent at the right moment. The Irish party in Ireland under Stephens was called the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, to which I am proud to say I belonged. That is all over now, and I am content to be loyal, under compulsion. There is nothing else for it. The young men are all gone to America, and the failure of the enterprise has damaged the prestige of the cause. The organisation was very good, and you might say that the able-bodied population belonged to it, almost to a man. England never knew, does not know even now, how universal was the movement. The escape of James Stephens, the great Number One, from Richmond Bridewell, was something of an eye-opener, but not half so astonishing as some things that would have happened if the general movement had been successful. It was Daniel Byrne and James Breslin, who let him out. Byrne was a turnkey, Breslin was hospital superintendent, and both held their posts on account of their well-known loyalty. Byrne was found out, or rather it was discovered that he was a Fenian, but they could not prove his guilt in the Stephens affair, and he never rounded on Breslin, who went on drawing his screw from the British Government for many a long day, until he took a trip to America, where his services to the cause landed him in a good situation. So he stayed there, and told everything, and that was the first the British Government knew about it, beyond suspicion of Byrne.

"If Stephens had made up his mind for an outbreak the funeral of MacManus was the right occasion. He missed his tip then, and no mistake. There never was another chance like that. He said the arrangements were not complete, and from that moment the thing dwindled away, and we who were working it up in the rural districts began to think he did not really mean business. We were short of arms, but a small success would have improved our condition in that respect. Lots of the country organisers went to Dublin to see his funeral, and when we saw the crowds and the enthusiasm we all agreed that such a chance was not likely to occur again. MacManus had been a chief of the insurrectionary movement of 1848, and had been transported for life to Botany Bay, I think. He escaped to America, and died there in 1861. Mahony, the Fenian commander-in-chief, proposed to spend some of the revolutionary funds in bringing the body to Ireland, there to give it a public funeral. This was a great idea, and as the Government did not interfere, it turned out a greater success than anyone had anticipated. There were delegates from every city in America, and from every town in Ireland. It took about a month to lug MacManus from the Far West to Dublin, and the excitement increased every day. In my little place we collared all the timid fellows who had been holding back before, until there was not a single man of the peasant class outside the circle. MacManus was worth more dead than alive.

"A hundred thousand men followed the hearse through the streets of Dublin. At the critical moment Number One held back. If the streets had been barricaded on the evening of the funeral the country would have stood an excellent chance of obtaining its independence. The moment was missed, and such chances never come twice. The French would have made a big thing of that affair. Stephens was great at organisation, but he had not the pluck to carry out the enterprise. He had not the military training required, nor the decision to act at the right moment. So here we are and here we shall remain, and I am your humble, obedient, loyal servant to command.

"No, I do _not_ believe in the present leaders at all. I think they want to be paid big salaries as Irish statesmen, and that they are unfit to clean the boots of the men with whom I acted thirty years ago. The Fenians, or rather the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, had no wish to make money by their patriotism, and what is more, they were ready to risk their skins, whenever called upon to do so. They were willing to fight. These chaps do nothing but spout. The I.R.B. agreed among themselves, and obeyed orders. These fellows can't agree for five minutes together, and their principal subject of quarrel is--Who shall be master? Gladstone is fooling them now, and good enough for them. A pretty set of men to attempt to govern a country! They don't know what they want. We did. We swore every man to obedience to the Irish Republic. That was straightforward enough. The young 'uns round here have the same aspirations, but they dislike the idea of fighting. They expect to get round it some other way.

"John Kennedy, of Westport, damaged the cause in Mayo more than any man in Ireland. He was a young fellow of about five-and-twenty, only a few years in the constabulary, but somehow he got into sworn meetings in disguise, and burst the whole thing up. The queerest feature about this business is the fact that although everybody knew the man not a shot was ever fired at him. That shows the fairness of the Fenians. A member of the Brotherhood would have been promptly dealt with, you bet. But Kennedy was an open enemy, and had a right to circumvent us if he could. Give us credit for some chivalrous feeling. We certainly deserved it, as this case amply proves.

"The Land League? The Ruffian League, the Burglar League, the Pickpocket League, the Murder League--that's what I always called it. A hole-and-corner way of carrying on the fight, which had been begun by MEN, but which the latest fashion of Irishmen have not the courage to canduct as men. The Fenian conception was high-souled, and had some romance about it. We had a green flag with a rising sun on it, along with the harp of Erin. Our idea was an open fight against the British Empire. There's as much difference between the Fenians and their successors as between the ancient Romans and the Italian organ-grinders with monkeys. Good morning, Sir, and--God save the Queen."

This was a jocosity if not a mockery, but it was the first time I had heard the words in Ireland. The tune is almost unknown, and the current issue of _United Ireland_ ridicules the notion that the Irish are going to learn it. The band of the Royal Irish Constabulary, playing in front of their barracks in the Phoenix Park, Dublin, on Friday evenings, sometimes include the tune in their programme, but when I heard them it was led up to and preceded by "St. Patrick's Day in the Mornin'," to which it was conjoined by one intervening chord. A Castlereagh Protestant said:--

"The children here are taught to curse the Queen in their cradles. Don't know how it is, but hatred to England seems bred in the bone of the Catholic Irish. They make no secret of their hopes of vengeance. The Protestants will have to levant in double-quick time. The people here hate Protestants, whether English or Irish, likewise anybody who holds a Government appointment. Some few days ago I was at Westport, and while in the post office there, a beggar asked Mr. Hildebrand for alms. You know that every western town swarms with beggars. He said No, and this tramp immediately turned round and said:--

"'We'll very soon have ye out o' that, _now_.'

"A relative of mine, who holds a sub-office, has been told the same thing fifty times. There you have the spirit of the poorer people. And don't forget that the illiterates have the power in their hands. Just think what this means.

"In England, with all your agricultural districts, with all your back slums of cities, there was only one person in each hundred and seventy who could not write his name, or at all events, one in a hundred and seventy who was unable to manage his voting paper.