Chapter 47

A moderate Unionist said:--"To speak of tolerance in the same breath with Irish Roman Catholicism is simply nonsense. You will not find any believers in this theory among the Protestants of this district, although being more numerous they are not so much alarmed as the unfortunate residents in Romanist centres. We cannot believe anything so entirely opposed to the evidence of our senses. A Protestant farmer of my acquaintance, the only Protestant on a certain estate, has confided to me his intention of leaving the district should the bill pass, because he thinks he could not afterwards live comfortably among his old neighbours. A woman who had occupied the position of servant in a Protestant family for forty years, recently went to her mistress with tears in her eyes, and said her clergy had ordered her to leave, as further continuance in the situation would be dangerous to her eternal interests. A girl who had been four years in another situation has also left on the same plea. The progress of Romanism is distinctly towards intolerance. It becomes narrower and narrower as time goes on. This is proved by the fact that formerly dispensations were granted for mixed marriages--that is, Catholic and Protestant--on the understanding that the children should be brought up, the boys in the father's faith, the girls in the mother's. All that is now changed, and dispensations are only granted on condition that all the children shall be Roman Catholics. The absolute despotism of the Catholic clergy is every year becoming more marked. They rule with a rod of iron. A bailiff of my acquaintance who had paid all his clerical dues, was very badly treated because he was a bailiff and for no other earthly reason. No priest in Ireland would perform the marriage ceremony for his daughter, who actually went to America to be married. She was compelled to this, the bridegroom going out in another boat. The ceremony being performed, they returned to Ireland, and the girl's father assures me that the affair cost him fifty pounds. The case of Mrs. Taylor, of Ballinamore, was a very cruel one, which a word from the priest of the district would have altogether prevented. But that word was not spoken, for she was a Protestant. Her brother had discharged a cotter, I do not know whether justly or unjustly, but although Mrs. Taylor had nothing whatever to do with the affair--and it was not asserted that she had--she was severely boycotted. The brother, who was the guilty party, if anybody was guilty, was rather out of the way, and being a substantial farmer, quite able to hold his own, could not be got at. But Mrs. Taylor was a widow, and lived by running a corn mill. Nobody went near it, nobody would have anything to do with the widow, who, however, struggled on, until the mill was burnt to the ground. She was compensated by the County, and rebuilt the mill. This spring it was again burnt down, and she is ruined. Her property is now in the Receiver's hands, and she is going through the Bankruptcy Court.

"The Home Rule Bill has produced, with much that is tragic, some comical effects. Since the passing of the Second Reading our servant has become unmanageable. She is evidently affected in the same way as many of the most ignorant Papists, believing that the time will soon come when, by the operation of the new Act, she will so far rise in the social scale as to be quite independent of her situation. This kind of thing is visible all around. There is work for everyone about here, but the farmers cannot get labourers. In many parts of Ireland the cry is 'There is no employment,' but here it is not so. There is plenty of work at good wages, waiting to be done, but men cannot be got to do it. The Sion Mills, which employ twelve hundred people, eight hundred Catholics and four hundred Protestants, would employ many more if they could be had. The labourers of this district are Catholic, and they prefer to stand loafing about to the performance of regular work. They believe that a perpetual holiday is coming, and that they may as well have a foretaste of the ease which is to come. Up to the times of the Home Rule Bill they were industrious enough. The Catholics of Tyrone and Donegal are not like those of the South and West. They are very superior, both in cleanliness and industry. Having for so long mingled with the Saxon settlers of the North, they have imbibed some of their industrial spirit, and until lately there was no reasonable ground of complaint. Their morale is unhappily now sadly shaken, and whether the bill passes or not it will be long, very long, before they resume their industrial pursuits with the energy and regularity of men who have nothing on which to depend but their own exertions. And whatever happens to the bill, the country will be the poorer for its introduction. Ireland is now an excellent country to live out of, and those who can leave it have the most enviable lot."

A man of few words said:--"Under Home Rule the landlords may take their hook at once. Their property will disappear instanter. The tenant has already more lien on the land than the fee-simple _in toto_ is worth, and with a Nationalist Parliament he would pay no rent at all. The judges would not grant processes, and if they did their warrants could not be enforced. The destruction of the landlord class means the destruction of English influence in Ireland. A short time ago two men were talking together. One was doubtful, and said, 'Michael Davitt says we must have only five acres of land. Now you have twenty-five acres, you'll lose twenty.' 'Ye didn't read it right,' said the other. ''Tis the landlords and them that holds a thousand and two thousand acres that'll be dispossessed, and their land divided among the people. In six years we'll have the counthry independent, and then we'll do as we like. Every Saxon will be cleared out of the counthry. Only keep yer tongue between yer teeth. Be quiet and wait a bit till ye see what happens.'

"'But,' said the objector, 'them Ulster fellows'll give us no peace. They have arms, and I'm towld they have a lot of sojers among them, and that they're drilled, and have officers, regular military officers. Sure, how would we do as we liked, wid an army of them fellows agin us? And they're devils to fight, they say.'

"'Arrah now, sure, ye're mighty ignorant, thin. Sure, they say they'll not pay taxes. Thin the sojers comes in and shoots them down, and you and I stands by wid our tongues in our cheeks. 'Tis no consarn of ours. We have nothin' to say to it, one way or another. The Orangemen can shoot the troops, and the troops can shoot the Orangemen, and they can murdher each other to their heart's contint, and fight like Kilkenny cats, till there's nothin' left but the tail. And good enough for the likes of them. Sure, twill be great divarshun for them that looks on. And that's the way of it, d'ye mind me?'"

This worthy politician must have been a perfect Machiavelli. His favourite saying was doubtless 'A plague on both your houses,' and with equal certainty his favourite quotation the bardic 'Whether Roderigo kill Cassio, or Cassio kill Roderigo, or each kill the other, every way makes my gain.' His theory of Nationalist progress was four-square and complete, and showed a neat dovetailing of means with the end. There is some justification for his simple faith. He has seen Mr. Gladstone and his supporters, converted _en bloc_, including the great Sir William Harcourt, styled by the Parnellite sheet "the new-born, emancipator of Ireland," the unambitious and retiring Labouchere, the potent Cunninghame Graham, the profound Conybeare, and the pertinacious Cobb--he has seen these great luminaries throwing in their lot with the sworn enemies of England, and doing all that in them lies to disintegrate and destroy the Empire, and the rude peasant may be pardoned for expecting that the British army will, at his call, complete what these worthies have so well begun. To narrow loyalist liberties, to tax loyalist industry, to create a loyalist rebellion, and to have the loyalists shot by other loyalists is an excellent all-round scheme. This is indeed a high-souled patriotism.

Continuing, my friend said:--"A Romanist neighbour of mine had promised to vote for Lord Frederick Hamilton, for, as he said, he had no confidence in any Irish Parliament. Just before the battle he called and said he must vote the other way, for Father Somebody had called on him and said, 'I hear you are going to vote for Lord Frederick Hamilton.' Admitted. 'Then you may call in Lord Frederick Hamilton to visit you on your death-bed. You can get him to administer the Sacraments of the Church.' 'What could I do?' said the farmer. 'I couldn't go against the priest. I could not incur the anger of my clergy without imperilling my immortal soul. Besides that, I'd be made a mark and a mock of. Perhaps I'd be refused admission to Mass, like the men in South Meath who voted contrary to the orders of the priest. So to save my soul I'll have to vote against my conscience. No use in telling me we will vote by ballot. Them priests knows everything. They fix themselves in the polling booths, and they can read what way ye went in your face. Sure, they know us all inside and out, since we were So high. We couldn't desave them.' Then they always act as personation agents, and they order people who can read and write to say they can't do either. So they have to declare aloud whom they will vote for, and the priest hears for himself. This is the true explanation of the fearful illiteracy of Donegal, as revealed by the voting papers. Is it likely that in one quarter of Donegal--that is, in one-fourth part of one county--there should be more illiterates than in the whole of Scotland? Yet according to the election returns, it was even so. The fact that the people declared themselves illiterate at the orders of the priest, when they were not illiterate, shows how degraded are the people, and how completely they are under the thumb of the priests."

A Protestant clergyman on his holidays, and not belonging to these parts, was very eloquent on the subject of political popery. In all my journeyings I have never interviewed a Protestant parson, save and except Dr. Kane, whom I met in the Royal Avenue, Belfast, along with the Marquess of Londonderry and Colonel Saunderson, as recorded in an early letter. I was disposed to believe that the English public might regard their evidence as being prejudiced, and therefore of little value. But my Raphoe acquaintance was a singularly modest and moderate man, upon whose opinion you at once felt you could rely. He said:--"My Catholic neighbours were friends until lately. Nobody could have been more kind and obliging. There was no sensible difference between us, except that they did not come to church. They would do anything for me and my family; we would do anything for them. Lately they have changed their manner. They have grown cold. Their children playing with mine have let out the secret. Through them we learn that the days of the Protestants are numbered. Father says this, and mother says that. My land is disposed of among my Papist neighbours. All my congregation have similar experiences. This makes things very unpleasant, and nothing can ever bring back the kind, neighbourly feeling of old. The Papist clergy are the cause of it all. Their church is nothing if not absolute, and dominancy is their aim. The Protestant party will get no quarter. I do not say we shall be murdered, or even personally maltreated. But when the large majority of a district want to see the back of you, with the idea of dividing your farm or your Church lands, they have many ways of making things so unpleasant that you would soon be glad to go. For my own part, I should endeavour to leave the country at the earliest possible moment. And that is what 999 Protestants out of 1,000 would tell you. The clergy are inimical to England. Here and there you find a Conservative, and, strange to say, the scholarly men, what you might call the gentlemanly party, are against Home Rule. These, unhappily, are very few. The Maynooth men are violently against England." This cleric called attention to the opinion of Dr. Wylie, of Edinburgh, who has made a special study of the matter. The learned professor says the more palpable decadence of Ireland dates from the erection of Maynooth. Before the institution of this school the Irish priests were educated in France, then the least ultramontane country in popish Europe. They could not be there without imbibing a certain portion of the spirit of "Gallican liberties." It was argued that by educating them at home, we should have a class of priests more national and more attached to British rule; at least we would have gentlemen and scholars, who would humanise their flocks. These have since been shown to be miserable sophisms. "Maynooth is a thoroughly ultramontane school. We have exchanged the French-bred priest, illread in Dens, with low notions of the supremacy, and proportionally high notions of the British Crown, for a race of crafty, Jesuitical, intriguing, thorough-trained priests of the ultramontane school, who recognise but one power in the world--the Pontifical--and who are incurably alienated from British interests and rule. The loud and fearful curses fulminated from the altar, which come rolling across the Channel, mingled with the wrathful howls of a priest-ridden and maddened people, proclaim the result. These are your Maynooth scholars and gentlemen! These are your pious flocks, tended and fed by the lettered priests of Maynooth! Better had we flung our money into the sea, than sent it across the Channel, to be a curse in the first place to Ireland, and a curse in the second place to ourselves, by the demoralising and anti-national sentiments it has been employed to propagate. The better a priest, the worse a citizen. And whom have Government found their bitterest enemies? Who are the parties who have invariably withstood all their plans for civilising Ireland? Why, those very priests whom they have clothed, and educated, and fed."

Such, according to an expert, are the men who now manipulate the voting powers of the Irish people. The priests do not deny that they have this full control; they merely say they have a right to it. Bishop Walsh, of Dublin, says that as priests, and independent of all human organisations, they have an inalienable and indisputable right to guide the people in this momentous proceeding, as in every other proceeding where the interests of Catholicity as well as the interests of Irish nationality are involved. He suggested, and the suggestion was adopted, that at all the political conventions held in the various Irish counties an ex-officio vote should be given to the priests! This embodied the principle that if Home Rule became law the Irish priesthood would have privileges which would make them absolute rulers of Ireland. Cardinal Logue says:--"We are face to face at the present moment with a great disobedience to ecclesiastical authority." This was in view of the Parnellite rebellion against priestly dictation. "The doctrines of the present day," said the good Cardinal, "are calculated (horror!) to wean the people from the priests' advice, to separate the priests from the people, and (here the Cardinal must have shivered with unspeakable disgust) TO LET THE PEOPLE USE THEIR OWN JUDGMENT." These are Cardinal's words, not mine. To make any comment would be to gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume o'er the violet. Well might Mr. Gladstone say nineteen years ago:--"It is the peculiarity of Roman theology, that by thrusting itself into the temporal domain, it naturally, and even necessarily, comes to be a frequent theme of political discussion." Archbishop Croke was the inspirer of the Tipperary troubles, worked out by his tools, Dillon, O'Brien, and Humphreys. Dr. Croke helped to found the Gaelic Athletic Association, which is well-known to be the nucleus of a rebel army. Dr. Croke gave £5 to the Manchester Murderers' Memorial Fund, and accompanied the gift with a letter stating that the men who murdered Police-sergeant Brett were "wrongfully arrested, unfairly tried, barbarously executed, and went like heroes to their doom." It was Dr. Croke who supported a movement to raise a pension for James Stephens, the Fenian Head-centre, the famous Number One, the general of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood. We are asked to believe that this gentleman and his crew of subordinate clergy are eminently loyal, and that the moment a Home Rule Bill puts it into their power to injure England, from that very moment they will become friendly indeed, will cease to do evil and learn to do well, and that the altars from which England is now every Sunday hotly denounced will in future vibrate with the resonant expression of sacerdotal affection.

These gentlemen must have a wonderful opinion of the gullibility of the great Saxon race. But as they see a certain portion believe in Mr. Gladstone they may expect them to believe in anything. To swallow the G.O.M. plus Harcourt, Healy, Conybeare, Cobb, O'Brien, and the Home Rule Bill is indeed a wonderful feat of deglutition.

Raphoe, (Co. Donegal), July 25th.

No. 53.--WHAT THEY THINK IN COUNTY DONEGAL.

The Stranorlar people can be excessively funny. In a well-known public resort yesterday I witnessed a specimen of their sportive style. A young fellow was complaining that the examining doctor of some recruiting station had refused him "by raison of my feet."

"I heerd tell they wouldn't take men wid more than fifteen inches of foot on thim," remarked a bystander. "The Queen couldn't shtand the expinse at all at all in leather."

"Arrah, now, will ye be aisy," said another. "Sure, Micky isn't all out so bad as Tim Gallagher over there beyant, that has to get up an' go downstairs afore he can tur-rn round in bed. An' all on account iv the size iv his feet. 'Tis thrue what I spake, divil a lie I tell ye. The boy has to get up and go down shtairs, an' go into the sthreet, an' come up the other way afore he can tur-rn round, the crathur."

"Hould yer whist, now, till I tell ye," said another. "Ye know Kerrigan's whiskey-shop. Well, one day Kerrigan was standin' chattin' wid his wife, when the shop-windy all at once wint dark, an' Kerrigan roars out, 'What for are ye puttin' up the shutters so airly?' says he. An' faix, 'twas no wondher ye'd think it, for ould Hennessy of Ballybofey had fallen down in the street, an' it was the two good-lookin' feet of him stickin' up that was darkenin' the shop. Ax Kerrigan himself av it wasn't."

A roar of laughter followed this sally, and the rejected recruit was comforted.

Stranorlar is pleasantly situated on the river Finn, in a fertile valley surrounded by an amphitheatre of green hills, beyond which may in some direction be seen the more imposing summits of the Donegal highlands. The walk to Meenglas, Lord Lifford's Irish residence, would be considered of wonderful beauty if its extensive views were visible anywhere near Birmingham; but in Ireland, where lovely scenery is so uncommonly common, you hardly give it a second glance. The tenantry are mostly Nationalist, if they can be said to be anything at all. They one and all speak highly of Lord Lifford, whose kindness and long-suffering are administered _con amore_ by genial Captain Baillie. They have no opinions on Home Rule or, indeed, on any other political subject, and will agree with anything the stranger may wish. Whatever you profess as your own opinion is certain to be theirs, and like Artemus Ward they might conclude their letters with "I don't know what your politics are, but I agree with them." Every man Jack of the Catholic peasantry votes as he is told by his priest, and no amount of argument, no amount of most convincing logic, no earthly power could make him do otherwise. He will agree with you, will swear all you say, will go further than you go yourself, will clinch every argument you offer in the most enthusiastic way. Then he will vote in the opposite direction. He thinks that in voting against the priest he would be voting against God, and his religion compels him to conscientiously vote against his conscience, if any. A burning and shining light among the Home Rulers of Stranorlar having been indicated, I contrived to meet him accidentally as it were, and after some preliminary remarks of a casual nature my friend informed me that he was agin Home Rule, as, in his opinion, it would desthroy the counthry; that the farmers believed they would get the land for nothing, and that they were told this by "priests and lawyers;" that he believed this to be a delusion from which the people would have a dreadful awakening; that Protestants were better off, cleaner, honester than Catholics; that they were much more industrious and far better farmers, and so forth, and so forth. This man is a red hot Nationalist, and was under the impression he was "having his leg pulled," hence his accommodating speech. When taxed with flagrant insincerity he only smiled, and tacitly admitted the soft impeachment. Farmers you meet in rural lanes will profess earnest Unionism, but--find out their religion--you need ask no more. Whatever they may say, whatever their alleged opinions may be, matters not a straw. They must and will vote as the priest tells them. So that the last franchise Act endows every priest with a thousand votes or so. Will anybody attempt to disprove this? Will any living Irishman venture to contradict this statement? The fact being admitted, Englishmen may be trusted to see its effect. Is there any class or trading interest which would be by working men entrusted with such enormous power? And these thousand-vote priests are unfriendly to England, as is proved by their own utterances and by innumerable overt acts. All of which merits consideration.

The Stranorlar folks are warm politicians. At the present moment feeling runs particularly high, on account of the riot on King William's Day, to wit, July twelfth. Two Orangemen were returning from Castlefinn, a few miles away, where a demonstration had taken place, and passing through Stranorlar, accompanied by their sisters, they were set upon by the populace, and brutally maltreated. Several shots were fired, and some of the rioters were slightly wounded or rather grazed by snipe shot, but not so seriously as to stop their daily avocations. The Catholic party allege that the Orangemen assaulted the village in general, firing without provocation. The Protestant party say that this is absurd, and that it is not yet known who fired the shots. A second case, less serious, is also on the carpet. A solitary Orangeman returning from the same celebration is said to have been waylaid, beaten, and robbed by a number of men who went two miles to meet with him. This also is claimed as Orange rowdyism.