Part 4
"Is it singin' yees want?" said the verger of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, when we entered that ancient sanctuary shortly before the hour for worship on a gloomy, drizzly Sabbath morning. "Then yees have come to the roight place. The choir of Christ Church is the finest in all Ireland, and mebbe in the whole wurrld, I dunno. Thay's twinty-four b'ys and min, and every mother's son iv thim is from the first families of Dooblin. The lads has been singin' frum their cradles, and they make the swatest music that ears ever heard; blessed be the Lord! Not as if they had no mischief in thim, for b'ys will be b'ys, singin' or no singin'; and thim that has the medals hangin' on their chists is the best behaved and the least mischaveous."
We remained after the service to look about, and when the verger asked what I thought of the sermon I told him.
"It's not of much consequence!" observed the cynic. And when I told him that the singing wasn't much better than the preaching, and that the boys sang out of tune, he replied apologetically:
"I hope your honor won't think the liss of thim for that; they're all honest, well-meaning lads, an' what harm is it at all, at all, if they do sing out of chune betimes?"
Christ Church is one of the oldest structures in Ireland, was originally erected in 1038 by the Danish king Sigtryg, "Of the Silken Beard," and in 1152 was made the seat of the archbishop of Dublin. In 1172 Strongbow, the Welch Earl of Pembroke, leader of the Norman invasion, swept away the original building to make room for the present edifice, which was fifty years in building. The present nave, transepts, and crypt are those that Strongbow erected, having been thoroughly repaired and restored by Henry Roe, a wealthy distiller, at a cost of £220,000, between 1870 and 1878. In 1178 Strongbow died of a malignant ulcer of the foot, which his enemies attributed to the vengeance of the early Irish saints whose shrines he had violated, and he is buried within the church he built. His black marble tomb is on the south side, with a recumbent effigy in chain armor lying upon the sarcophagus. A smaller effigy in black marble, representing the upper half of a human form, lies beside him and is said to mark the tomb of Strongbow's son, whom his father literally cut in half with his mighty sword for showing cowardice in battle. Sir Henry Sidney, who discussed the question at length in 1571, declares that there is no doubt that the remains of Strongbow were deposited here, but there is another tomb, with a similar effigy of one-half of his son lying beside it, in an ancient church at Waterford, where Strongbow dwelt in a castle and made his headquarters. The claims of the Waterford tomb are considered much stronger than those of Christ Church in Dublin, because that was where he died and where his wife and family lived after him.
The interior of the church has many points of beauty, especially the splendid stone work of the nave and aisles and the graceful arches which, although very massive, are chiseled with such delicacy that their heaviness does not appear. The floor is covered with modern tiles which are exact copies of the originals, and in the restoration of the building the architect has shown similar conscientiousness in all his work. The great age of the stone gives it a rich and mellow tone, and although here and there one may come across evidences of decay or damage, it is in better condition than most of the modern churches of Ireland.
Across the street and connected by a bridge with the cathedral is the Synod Hall, the headquarters of the general synod, which has control of the affairs of the Episcopal Church of Ireland since it was separated from the Church of England and made independent of the state by an act of parliament July 26, 1869. This was called "The Disestablishment"--a long and awkward word--but such words are common in English and Irish official literature. It is often difficult for an American to understand the meaning of the terms used in acts of parliament and reports of the officials of the government.
III
HOW IRELAND IS GOVERNED
Ireland is nominally governed by a lord lieutenant or viceroy of the king, who, since December, 1905, and at present, is John Campbell Gordon, Earl of Aberdeen. He occupied the same position in the '90's, and has since been governor-general of Canada. Both Lord and Lady Aberdeen are well known in the United States, where Lady Aberdeen has taken an active interest in the work of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and many benevolent enterprises and social reforms. She will be particularly remembered as the promoter of the Irish village at the Chicago Exposition in 1893, and for her successful endeavors to introduce Irish homespun, lace, linen, and other products, and to make them fashionable among the American people. She is a woman of great energy, executive ability, and determination, and has been applying those qualities very effectively in Ireland in local reforms. She has organized societies of women throughout the island to encourage the virtues and restrain the vices of the people, to relieve their distress and advance their welfare, physically, mentally, and morally, by a dozen different movements of which she is the leader and director. She started a crusade against the great white plague, brought Dr. Arthur Green from New York as an organizer, while Nathan Straus of New York has been co-operating with her in setting up establishments for the sterilization of the milk sold in Irish cities. She is president of almost everything, has a dozen secretaries and agents carrying out her orders, and is altogether the busiest woman in the United Kingdom.
The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland has very little to do except to open fairs, lay corner stones, preside at public meetings, give dinners, and look pleasant. He is nominally the head of everything as the representative of his sovereign, the king, and is supposed to rule Ireland in his majesty's name, but, like the Governor-General of Canada, the office is a sinecure. Its incumbent is allowed a salary of $100,000, a castle in the city, and a country lodge in Ph[oe]nix Park, a liberal allowance to maintain them and to expend in hospitality, a staff of secretaries and aids-de-camp, a full outfit of servants, and various other perquisites which would be appreciated by our President and all others in authority. And all this without any responsibilities, except to be tactful, amiable, and diplomatic, and to make friends with the people.
The actual ruler of Ireland is the Chief Secretary to the lord lieutenant, who is a member of the cabinet of the king, and spends most of his time in London, where he devises and directs the political policy of the government toward that distracted but improving portion of his majesty's empire, looks after legislation in parliament, and attends to whatever is necessary for the good of the island. He is the Right Hon. Augustine Birrell, who is carrying out the lines of policy inaugurated by Mr. Bryce at the incoming of the present liberal government. The chief secretary is expected to spend a portion of each year in Ireland, so that he can keep in touch with affairs and get his cues from public opinion. He has a salary of $35,000 and a residence, fully equipped and appointed, near that of the lord lieutenant in Phoenix Park.
The man on the ground, the general manager of the government, and the _de facto_ head of the executive administration, is known as the Under Secretary, who also has a handsome residence in Phoenix Park and all worldly comforts provided for him. He presides at the ancient castle in the center of the city of Dublin, surrounded by a staff of subordinates and clerks, and supervises the work of the several executive departments, most of them being scattered in rented quarters in different parts of the city. The government has long ago outgrown the castle and has appointed many officials and boards of commissioners and organized new executive departments without erecting buildings to accommodate them. Sir Antony Patrick MacDonnell, who resigned the office of under secretary, and was elevated to the peerage as Lord MacDonnell upon his retirement, is an Irishman who has spent his entire life in the service of his king, the greater part of it in India, where he was governor of four different provinces in succession and showed remarkable administrative ability. Retiring voluntarily, he came home to Ireland and was soon appointed to fill a vacancy in the office of under secretary, where he was very active, very positive in his convictions, and very determined in his methods. He made numerous recommendations that have not been adopted, and attempted to carry out a policy that was not acceptable to the politicians of Ireland, who rejected his plans for self-government and refused his overtures.
Sir Antony MacDonnell was the author of what is called the "devolution policy." That's a big word and has little meaning in America, but in Ireland it is in common use and full of significance; first being applied to a certain political project in Ireland by Lord Dunraven in 1904. If you will look in the dictionary you will see that "devolution" means "the act of devolving, transferring, or handing over; transmission from one person to another; a passing or falling to a successor, as of office, authority, or real estate." In its application to the Irish situation devolution means the devolving upon the Irish people of purely local affairs, to transfer their management from the British government with a string tied to them, and that is what the Irish political leaders will not consent to. Their motto is _aut_ home rule, _aut nullus_. With the co-operation of the Earl of Dunraven and others, Sir Antony MacDonnell prepared a plan of limited home rule in 1907. It gave the government of Ireland entirely into the hands of the people with the exception of the police, the courts, and the lawmaking power, which were retained under British control. The proposition was discussed by the largest convention ever held in the country and was unanimously rejected on the theory that it did not go far enough. The Irish people will never be satisfied until they are permitted to make their own laws. There were many grounds of objection from the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical authorities and others, who declare that Sir Antony's plan of government, which was based upon his experience in India, could not be applied successfully to conditions in Ireland. Sir Antony is a very positive man, and when his solution of the Irish problem, to which he had given years of thought and study, was rejected, he concluded that he was not the man to rule that country and sent in his resignation, which was accepted with great reluctance by the government and with sincere regret by a majority of the people, who admire his ability and have confidence in his integrity and intentions.
His successor is Sir John Dougherty, his chief assistant, who has been in the office of the under secretary in Dublin Castle all his life, and has been promoted grade after grade from an ordinary clerkship to his present position because of his ability and his sterling qualities. Although he is not a man of marked individuality and initiative, like Sir Antony MacDonnell, he is considered a safe, conservative, and judicious administrator.
The next in importance, who, perhaps, should be ranked first of all, is a mysterious and autocratic official, known as the Treasury Remembrancer. He was described to me as "a lord over all, and the best hated man in Ireland. Nobody knows him or cares to know him. His fellow officials seldom hear or speak his name. He is a spy and a spotter and has arbitrary authority to disallow accounts, withhold allowances, and lock up the money chest whenever he likes. There is no statute authorizing his appointment, and there is no law or regulation defining his duties or limiting his authority, which he receives from the chancellor of the exchequer in London and to whom alone he reports." The office pays $7,500 a year without any known perquisites, although the remembrancer is supposed to have mysterious sources of revenue that have never been found out. He cannot, however, spend the money of the crown. His authority is limited to preventing expenditures. He is "the watchdog of the treasury" in Ireland, and combines in one the duties and powers which are intrusted to the comptroller and auditors of the treasury in the United States. He interprets appropriation bills, customs laws, and decides how much money can be expended for this purpose and that. He audits all accounts, rejects many, disallows overcharges, and makes everybody who has to do with government finances a great deal of trouble. Hence his unpopularity and his habitual reserve.
In addition to these chief officials there are numerous secretaries and assistant secretaries, commissioners and boards of various jurisdictions, and executive departments, with corps of clerks similar to those in Washington. Each has its functions over some branch of the administration and all are subject to the supervision of the under secretary and the chief secretary in London. Their commissions are signed by the lord lieutenant, who knows nothing about them, has no authority over them, and acts only in a formal capacity, as the representative of the king. There is a great deal of complaint as to the excessive number of "civil servants," as they call them over there, although such a term would be resented by the employees of the civil service in the United States. All railway officials are called "servants" in Great Britain. Every salaried person comes within that designation. Any one who will look over the printed register of government employees in Ireland will conclude that home rule has already been adopted, because the treasury remembrancer is said to be the only Englishman on the pay roll, except the lord lieutenant, several of his secretaries, and the military officers at the garrison, and several Scotch experts in the employ of the Agricultural Department and Congested Districts Board. But what spoils it all to the people of Ireland is that these officials receive their appointments from what they consider an alien authority. The touch of the English giver poisons the gift. They will never be satisfied until their commissions are signed by an Irish name. Nobody in the employ of the government is loyal. Every man hates and loathes England, and doesn't hesitate to say so in public and in private, on all occasions, although he draws his rations from the British government. And when you remind him of that he answers promptly that the money comes from the pockets of the Irish rate-payers and England grabs £3,000,000 of it for herself.
Ireland contributes an annual average of £10,500,000 in taxes to the imperial treasury and £7,500,000 of it is expended in maintaining her government and constructing her public works. The remaining three millions is her contribution toward the support of the British empire, the wages of the king, the expenses of parliament, the support of the army and navy, and the interest upon the public debt, which is not kept separately for Ireland, and for various other purposes.
Ireland has twenty-three peers in the House of Lords and one hundred and two representatives in the House of Commons, of whom eighty-two are nationalists or home rulers. The remaining twenty are conservatives, unionists, and anti-home rulers, who believe in maintaining the present system of government and the existing relations between Great Britain and Ireland. The Irish members of parliament have been a thorn in the flesh of John Bull for many years, ever since Daniel O'Connell was admitted to the imperial legislature in 1829. They have fought fiercely for concessions term after term, have built fires in the rear of the government and have attacked it upon all sides until they have accomplished a great many reforms and are near to the point of achieving final success. If the liberal party wins at the next election every patriotic Irishman expects political emancipation, because its leaders are pledged to complete home rule on the same basis that Mr. Gladstone proposed several years ago, when he was prime minister.
The Irish peerage, like that of Scotland, are not entitled to all the rights and prerogatives enjoyed by the British peerage, and have only twenty-eight seats in the House of Lords. The total peerage of Ireland consists of two dukes, ten marquises, sixty-three earls, thirty-six viscounts, and sixty-four barons, a total of one hundred and seventy-five nobles, of whom seventeen also have titles in the English peerage, nearly all by inheritance.
The Irish peerage are represented in the House of Lords by twenty-eight of their members who are elected for life. As soon as one of these representative peers dies two or more of his colleagues notify the lord high chancellor of England of the vacancy. The latter thereupon issues a writ in the name of the king under the great seal proclaiming an election. Copies of this writ are served upon every Irish peer through the clerk of the crown at Dublin naming a date for an election. Each of the one hundred and seventy-five Irish peers has a vote, but they never assemble. They merely write to the clerk of the crown at Dublin, naming their choice, and forward a duplicate of the letter to the clerk of the House of Lords at London.
Scotland has only sixteen representative peers, who are elected by an assemblage at Holyrood Palace at Edinburgh when notified of a vacancy. There is considerable formality in the proceedings, and every peer is required to present himself to answer the roll call before he is allowed to vote. There is a good deal of preliminary canvassing in both Scotland and Ireland, and that was particularly the case of Lord Curzon of Kedleston, who was elected to the House of Lords as an Irish peer after his return from India. The candidates for the vacancy usually visit their fellow peers personally and solicit their support. Social influences go a great way. Lord Curzon was handicapped in many respects, but was elected by a large majority because of the high esteem in which he is held.
When the ballots are all in the clerk of the crown at Dublin makes up a tabulated statement which he sends with his report to the clerk of the House of Lords. The latter checks it off from his own records and announces the result to the lord high chancellor and to each of the Irish peers in person.
The representative peers at present are the Earls of Annesley, Bandon, Belmore, Darnley, Drogheda, Kilmory, Lucan, Mayo, Rosse, and Westmeath, Viscounts Bangor and Templeton, and Barons Bellew, Castlemaine, Clonbrock, Crofton, Curzon, Dunalley, Dunboine, Headley, Inchiquin, Kilmaine, Langford, Massey, Musckerry, Oranmore, Rathdonnell, and Ventry.
The premier of the Irish peerage is Maurice Fitzgerald, who is the Duke of Leinster and also is Marquis of Kildare, and represents the most distinguished and celebrated family in Ireland. His dukedom dates back to 1766. The second in rank is the Duke of Abercorn, James Hamilton, who is also Marquis of Hamilton. The third is James Edward William Theobold, twenty-seventh Marquis of Ormonde, and the fourth is Rudolph Robert Basil Aloysius Augustine Fielding, Earl of Desmond, who is also Earl of Denbigh.
The oldest titles in the Irish peerage are the following:
Baron Kinsale, created 1223. Lord Dunsany, created 1439. Lord Timlestown, created 1461. Viscount Gormanston, created 1478. Baron Louth, created 1541. Lord Dumboine, created 1541. Baron Inchiquin, created 1543. Viscount Montgarrett, created 1550. The Earl of Fingal, created 1620. Viscount Grandison, created 1620. Earl of Cork, created 1620. Baron Digby, created 1620. Earl of Westmeath, created 1621. Earl of Desmond, created 1622. Lord Dillon, created 1622. Viscount Valentia, created 1622. Earl of Meath, created 1627. Baron Sherard, created 1627. Viscount Lumley, created 1628. Viscount Taffe, created 1628.
All the remaining peerages of Ireland were created later than the year 1700.
The people as a rule are respectful towards the nobility, and treat them with a consideration which is not always deserved. The bitterness of politics is more intense in Ireland than in any other country, and, as Sydney Brooks in his recent book on "Ireland in the Twentieth Century" says, "Class distinctions are not mitigated by political agreement. Differences of creed are not assuaged by harmony of economic interests. The cleavages of racial temperament are not, as in other countries, bridged over by a sense of national unity. On the contrary, all the bitterness of caste and creed, of political and material antipathies and contrast, instead of losing half their viciousness in a multiplicity of cross-currents, are gathered and rigidly compressed in Ireland into two incongruous channels. Throughout the country you can infer a man's religion from his social position; his social position from his religion, and his views on all Irish questions from both; and nine times out of ten you infer rightly."
That is strictly true. Nowhere in the world is a man's politics so influenced by his religion and his social position as in Ireland. Although you will find home rulers in all classes of the English population, you will never find them outside one class in Ireland. If you are told what business he is engaged in or what church he belongs to in Ireland, it is not necessary for you to ask his politics.
While the ancient nobility of Ireland is gradually becoming extinct and their estates are being divided up among the farmers who till them, a new aristocracy is developing. The sons of what is called the middle class are invading the sacred haunts of the ancient aristocracy and are taking the places of the dukes and earls as the latter retire. Every peer that has been created in Ireland of late years has been a son of a manufacturer, a tradesman, or a country gentleman of the middle class, and at the present rate the descendants of earls and marquises will be compelled to stand back and give the sons of brewers, distillers, and other manufacturers their places at the front of the stage.
A century or even half a century ago no Irish trader or contractor, lawyer or doctor, unless he could produce the proper sort of pedigree, could enter the social world or the best clubs of Dublin and other Irish cities or participate in the sports of the gentry and aristocracy. But to-day their grandsons have the entrée to that gilded gate which hangs upon broken hinges and will soon be entirely removed. This is the result of the decadence of one class and the advance of another. A brewer or a distiller who can obtain a seat in the House of Lords must necessarily be eligible to the clubs where his colleagues meet. Nearly all of the twenty-three peers created by the present government in England have sprung from families of humble origin and are sons of men who made their money in manufacturing and trade. And there is room for more of them in the peerage. You hear irreverent people talking about "breeding up the peerage of Great Britain," just as they talk about improving their cattle, horses, and swine, and in the clubs of London this subject is revived every time the son of a decaying family of the nobility marries the daughter of a wealthy tradesman, or the daughter of an earl weds the son of a wealthy commoner.