Part 3

During the abortive attempt at a constitutional policy, the survivors of the party of Mitchel and Lalor were not idle. It cannot be said that Ireland had at this time come to recognize the futility of parliamentary agitation, for it cannot be said to have given it a sufficient trial: but the results of it had so far been disappointing, and the tradition of independence was still fresh, and its spirit strong. The new form which was assumed by the Separatist movement after the failure of '48 was that known as the Fenian Society, or the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Its chief organizers, James Stephens, John O'Mahony, John O'Leary and Thos. Clarke Luby had all been "out" in '48. Stephens and O'Mahony had lived in Paris till 1850; Stephens then returned to Ireland, gaining his living as a teacher of French, while O'Mahony went to New York. Both in Ireland and New York the teaching of the two friends found ready listeners, and an amazing success. The Irish in America were only too ready to return to Ireland to overthrow the Government in whose authority they saw the source of their country's misfortunes and their own exile. On the conclusion of the American War thousands of Irishmen who had fought under Grant or Jackson were ready to place their services at the disposal of an Irish leader. But they found no one of sufficient ability and prestige to lead them. Smith O'Brien and the other survivors of the Young Ireland Party had become constitutionalists. John Mitchel, though he went to Paris to act as treasurer for the Society, refused to take any more active part. O'Mahony and the Americans wanted to equip and despatch an expedition: James Stephens, who had undertaken to organize the movement in Ireland, insisted that American assistance should be confined to money. The money came in slowly and though Stephens could enrol a revolutionary army he could not equip it. The Americans too wanted the rising to take place before Stephens thought the time was ripe, and the consequent quarrel between the Irish and American leaders was fatal to the chance of success. In any case little real progress was made until the year 1865, but the work of preparation went steadily on. The organization in Ireland, which at first was without a name, the oath of membership being merely an oath of allegiance to the Irish Republic, was formally inaugurated on St. Patrick's Day, 1858. In 1859 the Government, becoming alarmed, broke up the Phoenix Society of Skibbereen, an independent organization, and the members later on joined the Fenians. All the forces of the Church and the influence of such recognized leaders as were left were arrayed against the new organization. Fenians were refused the rites of the Church for being members of a secret oath-bound society, and at least one member has left upon record that having to choose between Faith and Country he chose Country. The Fenians boldly defied Cardinal Cullen and his clerical agents. The _Irish People_, founded in 1862 under John O'Leary as editor, took up the Cardinal's challenge and faced consistently and courageously the question of "the priest in politics." It did incalculable service to the Fenians by its courage and frankness. In the same year Belfast and Ulster were brought within the Fenian Circle. By 1865 there were, it was claimed, 13,000 sworn Fenians in the army, rather more in the militia, and a good many of the police had joined as well. Stephens judged it time to prepare for action, but his despatches to the country ordering preparations to begin fell into the hands of the police. The office of the _Irish People_ was seized, Habeas Corpus was suspended and the jails were filled. Stephens himself was arrested some weeks afterwards. After his escape from Richmond Prison he lay hid for three months in Ireland and then escaped to France and America. Whether better fortune would have crowned his work if he had gone on in spite of the arrests is a nice question. Some at any rate of his followers judged that he had missed his chance. The subsequent attempt in '67 under American leaders fared no better; and General Massey, arrested at Limerick Junction, judged it better to avoid bloodshed by giving full information to the Government.

The Fenian Movement, as it was called, was both in Ireland and America avowedly republican and separatist from the very first. Stephens wished to establish one form of government only--an Irish Republic, and he believed in only one method--that of armed revolution. He refused steadily to have anything to do with tenant rights or parliamentary parties or tactics.

The avowed object of the Republican Brotherhood had failed, but it brought about two measures of Irish reform, long agitated and overdue, but neglected until the events of '65 and '67 brought home to a disdainful Parliament the realities of the abuses and of the feelings which their continuance had aroused. The Irish Church Act and Mr. Gladstone's first Land Bill were due to the Fenians. They were not formally concessions to Fenianism, as the Fenians were concerned first of all to establish a Republic and then to decide upon reforms for themselves; the Government merely supposed that by mending two intolerable abuses they could cut the ground from under the revolutionary movement. This policy could be only partially successful: but it succeeded so far that for a period of thirty years there was no Irish party that openly and consistently proclaimed its adhesion to the doctrine of complete separation.

The Home Rule policy put forward by Isaac Butt in 1870 fell far short even of O'Connell's Repeal. Its object was to set up, not an independent, but a strictly subordinate, Parliament in Dublin: the effect of this proposal (whatever its authors may have intended) would have been to consolidate the Union by removing opportunities of friction and of discontent. But even the appearance of a reversal of the policy of the Union was distasteful to Parliament; and the Irish members exhausted themselves in providing an annual exhibition of eloquence and passion for the delectation of a languid or tolerant audience. The pathetic and humiliating performance was ended by the appearance of Charles Stewart Parnell who infused into the forms of Parliamentary action the sacred fury of battle. He determined that Ireland, refused the right of managing her own destinies, should at least hamper the English in the government of their own house: he struck at the dignity of Parliament and wounded the susceptibilities of Englishmen by his assault upon the institution of which they are most justly proud. His policy of parliamentary obstruction went hand in hand with an advanced land agitation at home. The remnant of the Fenian Party rallied to his cause and suspended for the time, in his interests and in furtherance of his policy, their revolutionary activities. For Parnell appealed to them by his honest declaration of his intentions: he made it plain both to Ireland and to the Irish in America that his policy was no mere attempt at a readjustment of details in Anglo-Irish relations but the first step on the road to national independence. He was strong enough both to announce his ultimate intentions and to define with precision the limit which must be placed upon the immediate measures to be taken. During the years in which he was at the head of the National Movement practically all sections of Nationalists acknowledged his leadership and his policy. If he was not able to control all the extreme elements that grouped themselves under his banner it was no more than might have been expected. Neither he nor the Irish Republican Brotherhood was responsible for the murders perpetrated by the Invincibles, who had no connection or sympathy with the Fenian policy; but their excesses were used, and used with effect, to damage not only Parnell's position but the claims of Ireland. It was he himself who gave to his enemies in the end the only fatal weapon which they could use against him: but the prompt use of it by his own party was a portentous event in Irish politics. For the first time the Irish people not alone conformed to the exigencies of an alliance with an English party, but allowed that party to veto their choice of a leader. Parnell himself had once said "As the air of London would eat away the stone walls of the House of Commons, so would the atmosphere of the House eat away the honour and honesty of the Irish members." Certainly the tortuous ways of party politics had destroyed their loyalty, and though a small band proved faithful to him in spite of the Liberal veto, the majority came to a decision, practically dictated by the Irish hierarchy and acquiesced in (even if reluctantly) by a majority of his countrymen, to terminate his position as leader. But, though this betrayal seemed to have destroyed the cause for which he had fought, it may be questioned whether it was really more than a symptom of the inherent weakness of his position. The utmost he could gain in the direction of Home Rule, the utmost anyone could have gained under the limitations which he himself imposed upon his policy, fell markedly short of the minimum which a majority of his followers thought attainable at once and of what he himself announced to be the ultimate object of his policy. He is remembered, not as the leader who helped to force a Liberal Government to produce two Home Rule Bills, but as the leader who said "No man can set bounds to the march of a nation."

The death of Parnell marks the end of an epoch. A strong, romantic and mysterious personality, he won and kept the affections of the Irish people in a way which had been possible to few leaders before him and which none has attained since. The history of Irish politics for years after his death was a story largely of small intrigue, base personalities, divided counsels and despairing expedients; and the policy which eventually emerged, for which Mr. John Redmond was responsible, was widely removed from that of Parnell. The policy to which Mr. Redmond's adhesion was given was that of a Home Rule which might be described as "Home Rule within the Union," a Home Rule which in return for a local legislature and internal control, resigned to the Imperial Parliament all claim to the right to a foreign policy and to all that would raise Ireland above the level of an inferior dependency. It is true that Parnell would have obtained little more than this, if he had lived; but he would have obtained it in a different way and would have accepted the concession with a gesture of independence. Post-Parnellite Home Rule has been based largely upon the ground that a better understanding between the two countries is desirable in the interests of both; that government in Ireland is less efficient, more costly, less appreciated than it would be if it were administered by the people of Ireland themselves, with a due regard to the interests and general policy of the Empire; its justification is found in the success of the self-governing colonies who, thanks to being responsible for their own affairs, are contented, prosperous and loyal partners in an Imperial Commonwealth. All this is true, but it is a truth that would have carried no meaning to the mind of Parnell. To him the British Empire was an abstraction in which Ireland had no spiritual concern; it formed part of the order of the material world in which Ireland found a place; it had, like the climatic conditions of Europe, or the Gulf Stream, a real and preponderating influence on the destinies of Ireland. But the Irish claim was to him the claim of a nation to its inherent rights, not the claim of a portion of an empire to its share in the benefits which the constitution of that empire bestowed upon its more favoured parts. For some years after Parnell's death the leaders of the Irish Parliamentary Party felt obliged to maintain the continuity of tradition by using the language of the claim for independence and to speak of "severing the last link" which bound Ireland to England; but even in America and Ireland such expressions were heard less and less often from official Nationalists. The final attitude of the Irish Parliamentary Party is admirably summed up in the words of Mr. John Redmond: "Our demand for Home Rule does not mean that we want to break with the British Empire. We are entirely loyal to the Empire as such and we desire to strengthen the Imperial bonds through a liberal system of government. We do not demand such complete local autonomy as the British self-governing colonies possess, for we are willing to forego the right to make our own tariffs and are prepared to abide by any fiscal system enacted by the British Parliament.... Once we receive Home Rule we shall demonstrate our imperial loyalty beyond question."

Ten years before these words were used the Sinn Fein movement had begun, as a protest against the conception of national rights which made such language possible, as the latest form which the assertion of national independence has assumed.

SINN FEIN.

Of the origin of this name as the title of a political party a pleasant tale is told. It is said that some people, convinced that (in the words of Davis) "the freeman's friend is Self-Reliance," and wishing to make it the basis of a national movement, being anxious for a suitable Irish name for such an idea, applied to a famous Irish scholar to furnish it. He told them a story of a country servant in Munster sent with a horse to the fair. The horse was sold and the servant after some days appeared in his master's kitchen, worn out but happy, and seated himself on the floor. To the enquiries of some neighbours who happened to be there, as to where he had been and what he had done, he would give no answer but "Sinn fein sinn fein." The prodigal servant's witty reply eludes the translator. To his hearers it conveyed that family matters were matters for the family: but it was no mere evasion of a temporary or personal difficulty. It was the expression of a universal truth. Society is divided into groups, large or small, which have their own problems and their own interests. Their problems they can best solve themselves, and of their interests they are themselves the best judges. The solutions and the judgments will not always commend themselves to outsiders; but though outsiders cannot be denied the right to hold and to express their opinions they have no rights of veto or of interference. This right of independence, however, is subject in practice to serious limitations, and the history of human society is largely the history of the reconciliation of the competing interests and claims of social groups, each claiming to be in the last resort rightfully independent. One of such groups is the nation, and it is generally recognized that nations as such have rights analogous to those exercised by other social groups. They may be forcibly deprived by another and stronger group of rights the exercise of which seems to the stronger to be inimical to its own interests; or rights may be surrendered in return for what may be judged to be a fair equivalent. But it is not held that rights can be extinguished by force or that, if a suitable opportunity should occur, they may not be regained either by force or by agreement. These things are generally acknowledged in the abstract; but in concrete instances there is seldom an equal unanimity: and a nation whose rights are in abeyance (especially if it be in the interest of a stronger neighbour to prevent their exercise) is in a position which seldom admits of a simple or harmonious solution. Ideally it has a right to complete independence: practically it has to be content with as much independence as it can make good; and the methods which it may employ are various, always open to challenge and compassed by uncertainty.

A nation may maintain its moral and spiritual, long after it has forfeited its material and political, independence. To such a nation the more valuable part of its independence has been preserved. But it is hardly possible in the long run for a nation which has become materially and politically dependent upon another to retain its moral and spiritual independence unimpaired. The loss of the latter is the final stage in national decline.

To the founders of Sinn Fein, a national condition was presented to which no other remedy than their own seemed to offer the prospect of relief. All previous efforts to recover the political independence lost by the Act of Union had ended in disaster and disappointment. Force had been tried and proved unavailing: the experiences of '48 and '67 had left little doubt upon the minds of reasonable men that the attempt to regain Irish independence by force of arms was (however heroic) an impossible and foolish attempt. "We believe" (wrote the chief exponent of Sinn Fein) "with the editor of the _Irish World_ that the four-and-a-quarter millions of unarmed people in Ireland would be no match in the field for the British Empire. If we did not believe so, as firmly as we believe the eighty Irishmen in the British House of Commons are no match for the six hundred Britishers opposed to them, our proper residence would be a padded cell." But if force of arms had proved useless, so had constitutional agitation. There was no argument of public justice, public expediency or public generosity which had not been urged without effect upon Parliament. Irish members had been arguing against the Union for a hundred years: there was no point of view from which the case could be presented that had been overlooked. When Parliament seemed to listen and to be prepared to act it was found not to have heard the arguments for independence but arguments for a different kind of a Union. The belief that nothing was to be expected from Parliamentary action received later a striking confirmation: for when the Irish demand was whittled down to a bare minimum and all claim to independence expressly renounced, a pretext was found in the exigencies of English political relationships for refusing even that.

Not only had political independence gone beyond the chance of recovery by either force or argument but material independence had followed it. The trade, commerce and industries of Ireland which had flourished during its brief period of independence had dwindled since the Union and from causes for which the Union was directly responsible. The "equitable proportion" of Imperial taxation to which the taxes of Ireland had been restricted by the terms of the Act of Union had proved to be inequitable, so that Ireland was overtaxed to the extent of two-and-three-quarter millions of pounds per annum: new taxes in defiance of the Act had been imposed: Ireland, again in defiance of the Act, had been made jointly responsible for a debt which was not her own: Irish banks and Irish railways were managed not with reference to Irish interests but in the interests of English finance and English trade: the Irish mercantile marine was no more: the mineral resources of the country in coal and iron remained undeveloped lest their development might act unfavourably upon vested interests in Great Britain. The population had declined at a rate without parallel in Europe: even Ulster, proclaimed to be prosperous because Protestant and Unionist, had seen the population of its most "loyal" counties almost halved in the space of seventy years. Nothing but the removal of the cause could arrest this spreading decay, and the cause was declared to be irremovable: to tamper with it was to lay an impious hand upon the Ark of a grim Covenant.

But the last refuge of independence was still safe--resolve was still strong--no weakness of acquiescence, no dimness of spirit, no decay of the soul was as yet to be discerned. An answer to these questions might be found in the history of the language and of what the possession of a native language implied. Up to the time of the Union the Gaelic language had preserved intact, in spite of Penal Laws and the instruments of repression, all that was most vital in the national spirit. Tales of warriors and heroes, of the long wars of the Gael with the stranger, the sighs of love and the aspirations of devotion, satire and encomium, all the literature and song of a people were enshrined in the native tongue. Behind it, as behind an unassailable rampart, the national culture was preserved, in misery and degradation, it is true, the mere shadow of what it was and might be, but still its existence was secure. The Irish language was understood all over Ireland, and was the familiar tongue of three-quarters of its inhabitants. It was not a necessary consequence of the Union itself that this should be destroyed, but it was a necessary consequence of the measures which the Act of Union made it possible to take. The English Government decided to embark upon the task of "civilizing" the inhabitants of Ireland by a comprehensive system of practical education. In 1831 the "National" Education system was founded and before the century was old its work was done: it had "educated" Ireland out of its traditional civilization and culture. The authors and administrators of this system were sincere and well-intentioned men: they believed that they were removing a disability and conferring a benefit. They regarded ignorance as barbarous and disgraceful; and what was ignorance if it was not inability to write, read, and speak the English tongue? A love of learning had always distinguished the Irish people; and here was the learning, for which so many vain sacrifices had been made in the past, brought in full measure to their very doors. Everything that might induce suspicion of the Danai, _dona ferentes_, was carefully avoided. The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin held a seat on the Board and no book was sanctioned by the Board without his unreserved acquiescence. The Catholic clergy were encouraged to take a share in the administration of the schools and to supervise or impart the religious instruction of the pupils. It was the avowed policy of the Board to avoid anything that might savour of proselytism on the one hand and of the perpetuation of sectarian discord on the other. Pupils of the two creeds were to meet together on equal terms and in friendly rivalry in the classroom, while their particular religious interests were entrusted to their respective clergy. But this paternal care for the susceptibilities of Irish children, this careful abhorrence of sectarian animosities, went hand in hand with an elaborate disregard of every distinctive national feeling and characteristic. English was the language of the school, while Irish was the language of the fireside and of the street. Irish history was ignored: references to national and patriotic sentiments were carefully excluded, as a possible disturbing influence, from the approved text books: while the privilege of being "British," and the duty of feeling it to be a privilege, were carefully inculcated.