Chapter XVIII: Part 18

I feared as much. What happened after I left no man will tell, though doubtless the resolutions adopted by the twenty men sitting on the forrums of ellum would vibrate through the Empire, and shake the British monarchy to its iniquitous base. Irish meetings must be taken with a grain of salt. A Westport man long drew fees for reports of mass meetings which never took place. Three or four Nationalists met in a back parlour, and their speeches, reported verbatim, rang through Ireland. Gallant Mayo was praised as heading the charge of Connaught, and Westport was lauded for its public spirit. And all the while the Westport folks knew nothing about it. The Dundalk folks will doubtless be equally astonished to learn that the cause is advancing so powerfully in their midst. This hole-and-corner meeting, waiting for the priest, addressed by the priest, bossed by the priest, is a fair sample of the humbug which seems inseparable from the Irish question. A very short acquaintance with the country and its people is sufficient to convince any reasonable person that the whole movement is based on humbug, sustained by humbug, and is itself a humbug from beginning to end. To see the English Parliament managed and exploited by these groups of low-bred and ignorant peasants, nose-led by ignorant and illiterate priests, is enough to make you ashamed of being an Englishman. The country has come to something when Britons can be worked like puppets by mean-looking animals such as I saw in the Dundalk Labourers' Hall, where the only respectable thing was an iron safe bearing the stamp of Turner, of Dudley. And this meeting, in status, numbers, and enthusiasm, was quite representative of Nationalist meetings all over Ireland. The English people are waiting for their turn while Papal behests are executed. John Bull stands hat in hand, taking his orders from Father O'Baithershin. The Irish say that England is in the first stage of her decadence, and they say it with some reason. England, the land of heroes, sages, statesmen, is the mere registrar of the parish priest and his poor, benighted dupes. Raleigh, Cromwell, Burleigh, Pitt, Palmerston, are succeeded by Healy, Morley, Sexton, Harcourt, Gladstone. England is Ireland's lackey, and must wait till her betters are served, must toil and moil in her service, receiving in return more kicks than halfpence. Britannia is the humble, obedient servant of Papal Hibernia. To what base uses we may return!

Dundalk, July 1st.

No. 43.--IN THE PROSPEROUS NORTH.

This is a blessed change from dirt and poverty to tidiness and comfort. After the West of Ireland the North looks like another world. After the bareheaded, barelegged, and barefooted women and children of Mayo and Galway, the smartly-dressed people of Newry come as a surprise. You can hardly realise that they belong to the same country. There are no mud cabins here, no pigs under the bed, no cows tethered in the living room, no hens roosting on the family bedstead. The people do not follow the inquiring stranger about, as in Ennis or Tuam, where they seem to have nothing better to do. The Newry folks are minding their own business, and they have some business to mind. Three extensive flax spinning mills, two linen weaving factories, and an apron factory, give large employment to girls. There are several flour mills, some of them possessing immense power, and having the most modern machinery. Two iron foundries of long-established reputation, two mineral water factories, salt works, stone polishing mills, seven tanneries, cabinet furniture manufactories, and coachbuilding works cater for the town and surrounding district. Granite quarries of high repute, such as the Rostrevor green granite, exist in the vicinity, and are worked energetically, the products forming a valuable addition to the exports. The town is beautifully situated on a continuation of Carlingford Lough, the choicest bit of sea around Great Britain. Thackeray says that if England possessed this beautiful inlet it would be reckoned a world's wonder. Twenty miles of winding sea running inland like a league-wide river, mountains on both sides, many of them wooded to the furthest height. Rostrevor is a bijou watering place such as only France here and there can boast. You walk on the cliff side, steep verdurous heights above and below, looking through tree-tops on the shimmering sea and the purple mountains beyond, for ten miles at a stretch, wondering why nobody else is there. Newry is encompassed by mountains, one range above another. Even as the hills stand round about Jerusalem, so stand the hills about Newry. A big trade is done with Liverpool and Glasgow by means of the Dundalk and Newry Packet Company's fine service of boats. For this inland place has been made into a thriving seaport, and these Northerners make the water hum. At low tide the artificial cutting of the navigation works looks unpromising enough, but the people of these parts would be doing business if they had to float the boats on mud. The hills are cultivated to the topmost peak, or planted with trees where tillage is impossible. The people seem to have made the most of everything. They are digging, hammering, chopping, excavating, building, mining, and generally bustling around. They break up the mountains piece-meal, and sell the fragments in other lands. To make you buy they show you how it looks when polished, and they are ready to earn an extra profit by polishing all you want by steam power. The streets are clean, well-paved, kept in perfect order. The houses are well-built and far superior to the English average. A little cockney from 'Ackney, who has sailed the six hundred and seventeen miles between London and Cork and has explored most of the South and West, is quite knocked over by Newry. Leaning on the "halpenstock" with which he was about to tackle Cloughmore, he confessed that Newry hupset his hideas of Hireland and the Hirish. "The folks round 'ere," he said, "are hexactly like hus." He would have accorded higher praise, had he known any.

Why this great difference? Look around the shop-keepers' signs in Tipperary or Tuam and note the names. Ruane, Magrath, Maguire, O'Doherty, O'Brien, O'Flanagan, O'Shaughnessy, and so _in sæcula sæculorum_. In Newry you see a striking change. Duncan, Boyd, Wylie, MacAlister, Campbell, McClelland, McAteer, and so on, greet you in all directions. You are in one of the colonies. The breed is different. You are among the men who make railways, construct bridges, invent engines, bore tunnels, make canals, build ships, and sail them over unknown seas. You are among a people who have the instincts of achievement, of enterprise, of invention, of command, who depend upon themselves, who shift for themselves, and believe in self-help rather than in querulous complaint. The Newry folk belong to Ulster, where as a whole the people can take care of themselves. A careful perusal of the addresses presented to Lord Houghton on his current Viceregal tour accentuates the difference in the Irish breeds. The aborigines all want to know what is going to be done for them. We want a pier, we want a quay, we want a garrison or a gunboat to spend some money in the district. Will your Excellency use your influence with the powers that be to get us something for nothing? And let it be something to enrich us, or at least to keep us alive without work. We can't be expected to do anything while groaning 'neath the cruel English yoke. The Newry folks, and all of their breed, abstain from whining and cadging. The Westport people have endless quarries of hard blue marble, which they are too lazy, or too ignorant, or both, to cut. The Ulster breed would have quarried, polished, exported a mountain or two long since. The universal verdict of employers of labour proves that a northern Irishman is worth two from any other point of the compass, will actually perform double the amount of work, and is, besides, incomparably superior in brains and general reliability. The worthless hordes who approach the Viceroy with snuffling petitions are invariably headed by Father Somebody, without whose permission they would not be there, and without whose leave they dare not raise the feeble and intermittent cheers which here and there have greeted the Queen's representative. The lying expressions of loyalty referred to in a previous letter are severely censured by the Nationalist papers. One of the leading lights says: "Judging from a sentence in the address presented by the Mullingar Town Commissioners to the Lord-Lieutenant on Thursday last, it would appear that these gentlemen are looking forward eagerly to the day when they can write themselves down West Britons. This is what they said: 'In your presence as the representative in this island of her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, we wish to give expression to our fealty to the throne, convinced as we are that the day will soon be at hand when we can with less restraint, and in a more marked manner, testify our admiration for the Sovereignty of the British Isles.'" The more sincere newspaper which falls foul of these expressions goes on to say:--

"It is true that Ireland is described in the map made by Englishmen as one of the British Isles, but it is not so written in the true Irishman's heart, _and never will be_, in spite of the toadyism of gentlemen like the Town Commissioners of Mullingar."

This pronouncement embodies the sentiments of every Nationalist Irishman. The Union of Hearts is not expected to succeed the Home Rule, or any other bill, and to do Irishmen justice, they never use the phrase, neither do they profess to look forward to friendliness with England. I have conversed with hundreds of Home Rulers, and all looked upon the bill as a means of paying off old scores. The tone of the Nationalist press should be enough for sensible Englishmen. Nobody who regularly reads the leading Irish Separatist papers can ever believe in the friendship supposed to be the inevitable result of the proposed concession. Once the present agitation is crowned with success, a tenfold more powerful agitation will at once arise. The Irish people will have more grievances than ever. Already they are complaining of insult and betrayal. And their reproaches are directed against the G.O.M. and his accomplices, or rather against Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Morley, for they know as well as Englishmen know that the rest count for nothing; that, in fact, they resemble the faithful and unsophisticated baa-baa of whom we heard in our early infancy. "Mary had a little lamb, Whose fleece was white as snow, And everywhere that Mary went, The lamb was sure to go." This is the attitude of the English Gladstonian party, and the Irish people know it. A Home Ruler I met to-day disavowed loyalty except to Ireland, and asked what was the Queen and the rest of the British Royal pauper party to him or to Ireland that he should be loyal? He said:--

"All interest is over here, whether among Nationalists or Unionist. The fate of the bill affects us no longer. The new financial proposals are the last straw that breaks the camel's back. Where is the managing of our own affairs? Where does the Nationalism come in? And Gladstone, in allowing himself to make in the first proposal a mistake of one thousand pounds a day, damaged his prestige as the framer of the bill, and fatally damaged the bill itself. Anybody can now say that if he was so grossly mistaken in an ascertainable matter like revenue and figures he stands to be equally wrong (at least) in matters which are not demonstrable, but which are at present only matters of opinion and argument. I am not sure that he ever intended to give us any Home Rule at all. We are being fooled because we have no leader. The bill, as it stood at first, would never have been prepared for a man like Parnell. Gladstone dare not have done it. The whole bill is a series of insults. As a reasonable, fair-minded man you will not deny that. It purports to come from friends who confide in us, and yet every line bristles with distrust and suspicion. There is not one spark of generosity in the whole thing from beginning to end. Better have no bill at all. For as a business man, I foresee that the passing of any such bill would lead to a complete upset of trade. We should have a most tremendous row. The safeguards would only invite to rebellion. Tell a man he must not have something, must not do something, and that is the very thing he wants to do. He might not have thought of it if you had not mentioned it; but the moment you point it out, and particularise the forbidden fruit, from that very moment he is inspired with a very particular wish for that above all things. So with a nation. We want our independence. We want to do as we like. Otherwise, why ask for a Parliament? Gladstone says, Yes, my pretty dear, it shall have its ickety-pickety Parliament; it shall have its plaything. And it shall ridy-pidy in the coachy-poachy too; all round the parky-warky with the cock-a-doodle-doo. But it mustn't touch! Or if it touches it mustn't be rough, for its plaything will break so easily. We don't want this tomfoolery, nor to be treated like children. We want a real Parliament, and not one that can be pulled up every five minutes by London. For if the English Parliament have the power to veto our wishes, where's the difference? We might have just as well stayed as we were. That's perfectly clear.

"So that I for one will be glad when the farce is over. The present bill at best was but a fraud, a tampering with the national sentiment. And I am beginning to think that we have no chance of a National Legislature until the coming of the next great Irishman. I am not so disappointed or broken-hearted as you might suppose. For the prospect of an Irish Parliament under present auspices is not very enticing. The country might be made to look ridiculous, and the thing, by bursting up in some absurd way, might make a repetition of the attempt impossible for a century. I would rather wait for a better bill, and also for better men to work it. We are not proud of the Irish members. But we didn't want Tories, and all the propertied men are Tories. What were we to do? We know the want of standing and breeding which marks most of our men, but we did the best we could, and came within an ace of succeeding. Let me tell you the exact feeling of the respectable Home Rule party of Ireland at this moment.

"Having exerted ourselves with enthusiasm, and having undergone considerable pecuniary sacrifice with good chances of success, we now see clearly that all our efforts are for the present thrown away. It is the fortune of war. The fates were against us, and we rest content with the hope that we have furthered the ultimate success of the movement. For the moment, we make our bow, and hope to call on Mr. Bull at a more propitious season. Of course we expect to win in the end."

The next politician whose opinions I noted was a horse of quite a different colour. He bore a Scottish name, and had the incisive, argumentative style of the typical Ulsterman, who unites the cold common-sense and calculating power of the Scot with the warmth and impulse of the Irish nature. He said:--

"The bare existence of Belfast is, or should be, enough to negative all arguments in favour of Home Rule. The agitators say that Ireland is decaying from political causes, while all the while this Ulster town is getting richer and more powerful and influential. While the people of Cork are begging the Viceroy to please to do something for their port, to please to be so kind as to ask Mr. Bull to favour the city with his patronage, the Belfast people, with a far inferior harbour, an inferior climate, an incomparably inferior position, surrounded by far worse land, are knocking out the Clyde for shipbuilding, and running the Continent very close in linen-weaving. Belfast is actually the third in order of the Customs ports in the United Kingdom. The Belfast people flourish without Home Rule, and what is more, they know their neighbours. They've reckoned these gentry up.

"How is it that the Catholic population, as a rule, are merely the hewers of wood and drawers of water? They have precisely the same opportunities as their Protestant countrymen. Where-ever you go you will find the Protestants coming to the top. Cork is a very bigoted Catholic city, and the huge majority of the population are Catholics. How is it that most of the leading merchants are Protestants? Why do heretics flourish where the faithful starve? Transfer the populations of Cork to Belfast and _vice versâ_, and, as everybody knows perfectly well, Belfast would at once begin to decay, while Cork would at once begin to prosper. Therefore it is absurd to say that Home Rule would cure the poverty existing in Catholic districts. Yes, there is a party of ascendency. The Protestants are distinctly the party of ascendency. They have the ascendency which ability and education and industry will always have over incapacity and ignorance and laziness. Now, I know something about the linen trade, and also something about the growth and preparation of flax.

"Linen has made the North, and flax is grown in the North. But it would grow much better in the South. If they would grow it we would be very glad to buy it. But they won't. And why not? Because it needs care and skill, and a lot of watching and management. The beggars are too lazy to grow anything that wants tending from day to day. It would pay them splendidly, and the advantages of flax growing and dressing have over and over again been drummed into them without effect. The climate and soil of Southern Ireland are far more suitable for flax growing than the North, and as about three-quarters of all the flax woven in Belfast is grown on the Continent, it is clear that the market is waiting for the stuff. The Belfast merchants have done all that in them lay to bring about flax cultivation in the South. They have sent out lecturers and instructors, they have planted patches and grown the stuff, and shown the pecuniary results, and with what effect? Absolutely none. The people won't do anything their grandfathers didn't do. They won't be bothered with flax, which wants no end of attention. Why, if they grew flax, they'd have to work almost every day! And nobody who knows Irishmen, real Keltic Irishmen, ever expects them to do that, or anything like it. I've been in India, and I deliberately say that I prefer the Hindoo to the Southern Irishman for industry and reliability.

"These people, who are too lazy to wash themselves, expect their condition to be improved by a Home Rule Parliament. Can anything be more unreasonable or more unlikely? And because there are more of them, their wishes are to be taken into account, and the opinions and wishes of men of whom each one is worth a hundred are to be disregarded. Where is the English sense of the eternal fitness of things?

"What the Irish really seek is some effective substitute for work. They have no idea of developing the resources which lie nearest to them. Carlyle says a country belongs to the people who can make the best use of it, and not the people who happen to be found there. Ireland for the Irish is a favourite cry. Why? Is not England for the Irish, America, Australia, New Zealand? My ancestors came here in the time of Henry the Second, and I am told that I have no business in the country. Wherever English and Scots settlers have been located, there the country is well worked and the people are thriving. If we can thrive, why can't they thrive? If we can get on without Home Rule, why can't they get on without Home Rule? If it were going to be a good thing for the country we'd all be on it like a shot. If it were good for them, it ought to be good for us. We have shown by our success that our judgment is sound. Their failure in everything they undertake, their dirt, their general habits and character, should cause their statements and opinions to be looked upon with very great suspicion. Does it stand to reason that merely by Home Rule, by the exercise of the privilege of making Irish laws by Irishmen in Dublin, that these people would gain all we have attained by hard and honest labour? That is what they expect up here.

"The Catholics are our servants, and in selecting them we seldom ask their religion. Our employés in most cases expect by the bill to take the place of their masters. That is their conception of Home Rule. They have been told from infancy that the British Government keeps them down because of their religion. They know that the British Government is Protestant, and they believe that in some occult way the superior position held by the Protestants in Ireland is due to favouritism. Under a Home Rule Parliament, that is, a Catholic Parliament, this condition of things will be reversed, and they will at once, and by their own innate force, as faithful believers, spring to the top of the tree, and exchange positions with their former masters and mistresses."

The general effect of my friend's discourse was well summed up by Mr. James Mack, of Galway, who said:--

"When I see that the Belfast men who would make fortunes out of river mud, and who would skin a flea for his hide and tallow, turn their backs on Home Rule, and declare they will have nothing to do with it, I feel sure it can be no good. Then my own experience and observation assure me that, instead of a settlement, it will only be the beginning of trouble for both countries. Firmness is wanted, and equal laws for all. At present everything is in favour of Ireland." _United Ireland_ says:--"It would be better to go on for twenty years in the old miserable mill-horse round of futile and feverish and wasting agitation than to accept this bill as a settlement of national claims. And if the bill passes now it cannot deflect the national agitation by a hair's breadth, or cause its intermission for a day."

Nobody who knows the Irish people ever expected anything else. Agitators who live by agitation will always agitate, and only a few namby-pamby Radicals ever thought otherwise. Those who would fain have sold their souls for the Newcastle Programme also stand to be taken in. This Home Rule Bill will not do. Another must be brought forward immediately. Where is this dreary business going to end? When will Mr. Gladstone consider that England has eaten dirt enough?

Newry, July 4th

No. 44.--THE PROSPEROUS NORTH.

This famous historical city must be eminently offensive to Irish Nationalists. It is so clean and sweet and neat and tidy that you can at once see the hopelessness of expecting Home Rule patriotism from the place. There are no dunghills for it to grow in, and my somewhat extensive experiences have long ago taught me that Home Rule and Nationalist patriotism will not flourish in Ireland without manure, and plenty of it. Anyhow, it is mostly associated with heaps of refuse and pungent odours arising from decomposing matter, and in the south and west is scarcely ever found flourishing side by side with modern sanitation. Home Rule not only, like pumpkins and vegetable marrows, requires a feculent soil, but like them, and indeed like all watery and vaporous vegetables, it needs the forcing-frame. Left to its own devices the movement would die at once. There is nothing spontaneous about it. It is a weedy sort of exotic, thriving only by filth and forcing. It cannot live an hour in the climate of Armagh. The cold, keen air of these regions nips it in the bud. The peculative patriots who are now monopolising Westminster have from time to time made descents on the district, to sow the good seed, as it were, by the wayside. But next day came a frost, a killing frost. The Northerners are too mathematical. They have taken Lord Bacon's advice. They "weigh and consider." They want logic, and will not be content with mere rhetoric. They require demonstrations, and have opinions of their own. Before accepting a theory they turn it round and round, and test it with the square, the level, and the line. They care nothing for oratory unless there is sense at the back of it. They know that fine words butter no parsnips, and they know the antecedents of the patriotic orators. They do not believe that a paid Parliament-man is necessarily a self-sacrificing patriot, and they note that Nationalist members are making their patriotism much more profitable than their original and legitimate pursuits, if any. The Armagh folks believe in work, and in keeping things in order. The Scots element is dominant. Not so much in numbers, as in influence. The Kelts are easily traceable, but the races are partly amalgamated, and the genuine Irish are greatly improved. I paraded the streets for many hours, but I saw no dirt, rags, wretchedness. It was market day, and the country people came streaming in from all sides, everyone well dressed and respectable, and in every way equal to the farmers and their wives who on market days drive into Lichfield or Worcester. It was a pleasure to see them, and my Cockney friend, quoted in the Newry letter, might have been tempted to discard his affected superiority, and drawing himself proudly up, to smite himself on the chest, and to say "And hi, too, ham a Hirishman."

The country between Newry and Armagh is very beautiful from a pastoral point of view. After the savage deserts of the West it "Comes o'er my soul like the sweet south That breathes upon a bank of violets." Every yard of ground is going at its best pace. The valleys stand so thick with corn that they laugh and sing. Immense vistas of highly cultivated country unroll themselves in every direction. The land is richly timbered, and tall green hedges spring up everywhere. You are reminded of Dorsetshire, of Cheshire, of Normandy, of Rhineland. The people at the wayside stations are all well-dressed and well-shod. Achil Island seems to be at an immeasurable distance. The semi-savages who in Mayo demand autonomy have no supporters here. The Ulster folks eschew them and all their works, and would no more associate with them than with Hottentots. I use the term because the Irish people have ten thousand times been told, and told untruthfully, that Lord Salisbury had applied the term to the nation at large. The people of Mayo and some other parts of Connaught are for the most part worthy of the name, if, indeed, it be not a libel on the Africans. The disgusting savagery of their funeral customs is of itself sufficient to stamp them as lowest barbarians. I am prepared to prove this to the hilt. Let their defenders come forward if they dare.

And so it happens that the inhabitants of Armagh city are mostly Conservatives. They ought to be religious, too, for they have not only two cathedrals and an archbishop, but also a cardinal archbishop, Dr. Logue, to wit. I saw this distinguished ecclesiastic at Newry. He wore the scarlet robe, the extraordinary hat, the immensely thick gold ring of the cardinalate, in a railway carriage. An ordinary sort of man, with the round face and mean features of the typical Keltic farmer. He holds that the people should take their political faith from their priests, but the Northerners hardly agree, and are not so proud of their cardinal as they should be, seeing that he has been raised from the ranks, his father (so they say) having been Lord Leitrim's coachman, and the coachman who was driving when Lord Leitrim was shot. The Roman Catholic Cathedral of Armagh has an imposing position on the summit of a steep hill. The portal is approached by sixty or seventy steps in flights of five and ten with steep terraces between, extending over a great space, so that the flights of steps, seen from the bottom of the hill, seem continuous, and have a fine Gustave Doré effect of vastness and majesty. On a neighbouring steep stands the Protestant Cathedral, with its sturdy square tower, memorial of remote antiquity. The city is piled up between the two cathedrals, but mostly around the heretic structure, and away from the Papist pile, which stands among the fields. The Presbyterians have a very beautiful church, apparently of the Armagh marble of which the city is built, the perennial whiteness of the stone making the old place appear eternally young. The market-place, behind the market-hall, and on the steep slope to the Protestant Cathedral, was very busy indeed. Market gardeners were there with young plants, useful and ornamental, for sale. Home-made chairs with rushen seats were offered by their rural makers. Wooden churns, troughs for cattle, and agricultural implements were there galore. Crockery was artfully disposed in strategetical corners, and gooseberry stalls were likewise to the fore. None of these features are visible in the Western markets. A vendor of second-hand clothing stood on a cart well loaded with unconsidered trifles, and this gentleman was especially interesting. A number of poor women stood around while the salesman, who knew his clientèle to their smallest tricks, displayed his wares and recklessly endeavoured to ruin himself for the good of the country. Holding up an article, he would turn it round and round, expatiating on its excellent qualities, and then, after naming the very lowest price consistent with common business principles, would run down the figure to one-tenth or less, with a pause or two here and there for critical comment on his audience, of which he professed to entertain the most unfavourable opinion. Then with a final thump, punching the article contemptuously, he would offer it, regardless of consequences, for half his previous offer. Sometimes he refused to accept the money because the customer was not quick enough. Neither might the people examine his goods. He was master, and more, and found his account in it. He took up a frowsy old gown. "There ye are. Ten shillin's worth of stuff in that. An' ten for the makin'. An' that's twinty. I'll take ten, an' I couldn't afford to take a penny less. Will ye have it? Don't all spake at once. Ye won't. But I'll make ye. I'll take five shillin', four, three, two, one, I'll take sixpence. (Thump.) Take it away. Here! Have it for thruppence. Ye won't? Sweet bad luck to the one of ye is worth thruppence. Ye wouldn't raise tuppence in the crowd of ye. Ye want me to clothe ye for nothin'. An' thin ye'd want me to give ye lodgin' and washin'. 'Twas a black day on me whin I come among such a ruinatin' lot. Here now, sure this ought to timpt ye. A lady's jacket, an' a large, big, roomy jacket at that--fit for a lady that can ate a stone of praties at a male. Thurty shillin's ye'll be offerin' me, but I won't take it. Ye can give me ten, av ye're only quick enough. Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two shillin's. Eighteenpence. (Thump.) Take it for a shillin'! Ye won't? Ye didn't sell yer ducks well. Ye didn't get the money for yer eggs. Will I lind ye a trifle? What d'ye take me for? Am I to stand rammin' me bargains down yer throats like wagon wheels? Do yez iver buy any clothes at all, or do yez beg them? Me heart's bruk to pieces wid blayguardin' and bullyraggin. Luk at this. A boy's coat. An it's lined wid woollen linin'; that's the only fault wid it. An' here's a bonnet. A fortin to any young woman. Will ye be plazed to take what ye want for nothin'? Tis charity ye want, ye poor misguided crathurs. 'Tis a pack of paupers I'm discoorsin', God help me."

The Armagh shopkeepers are prosperous and content. "No Home Rule," they say. They are no longer angry with the Nationalists. The snake is scotched, if not killed outright, they think. The whole absurdity has received such a damning exposure that it cannot be revived for another generation. The Separatist party will be perforce compelled to wait until the people have forgotten what Home Rule really means. Therefore, to work again! Useless to waste more time. Ulster will sleep with one eye open, bearing in mind the favourite Northern saying which advises men to put their trust in Providence, but to keep their powder dry. For, like the Achilese, they believe that prayer is effective in shaving, only the Ulstermen prefer to pray over a keen razor. A genial citizen of Armagh said:--

"We would be as ready for Home Rule as any other Irishmen if it meant what we are asked to believe it means. But we know better. We are convinced that it will bring, not prosperity and peace, but bankruptcy and war, intolerance and social retrogression, robbery and spoliation, not only of the landlord but also of everybody else who has anything. The propertied Roman Catholics are just as dead against Home Rule as any Protestants. Only they dare not say so.

"England ought to have sense enough to see that instead of freedom from Irish difficulties, the old grievances will be intensified, and any bill whatever will at once generate a fresh series of complications, so that the English Parliament will be crippled in perpetuity, to the detriment of British interests. The Empire, as a whole, must be weakened, because the Irish masses are most unfriendly, and the more England concedes the more unfriendly Ireland becomes. For Ireland regards all concessions as being wrung from England by superior force and skill, and as being, in short, the fruits of compulsion. Therefore, the more Ireland gets the more exacting she will always become. Ask any Englishman or Scotsman resident in Ireland if the Irish masses are friendly, and everyone will laugh at you. The English Home Rule party say, 'Just so. Let us cure this. This is the principal argument for Home Rule.' They think this sounds very fine. Just as if in private life, a man to whom you have given his due, and more than his due, should continue to abuse you, while you strain every nerve to satisfy him, and go out of your way to obtain peace and quietness, he all the time becoming more and more exacting and more and more discontented. And then as if you were to say, 'I must continue my concessions, my efforts, my sacrifices. I _must_ contrive to satisfy this amiable person.' What a fool any man would be to adopt such a course. A sensible man would say 'You have your due, and you'll get no more.' Treat Ireland so, and all will be well. Be firm and the trouble will amount to nothing. Paddy will soon drop shouting when he sees it has no effect. The agitators will soon dry up, or waste their sweetness on the desert air. But so long as there is a prospect of success, so long as you have a weak-kneed old lunatic in power, so long as Paddy sees a prospect of obtaining substantial advantages, such as reduction of rent or rent-free farms, so long the row will be kept up. If Englishmen could only realize that, the whole movement would cease. For Gladstonian Englishmen mistakenly think that they can settle the thing by further concession and get to their own business. Few of them care for Home Rule on its own merits. They want Ireland out of the way. They are going the wrong way about it. To give this is to give everything. And let me tell you something new. Once the bill becomes law, and the exactions of a Home Rule Government were enforced by England a great part of Ulster would in pure self-protection, being no longer bound to England by the ties of loyalty, sympathy, and mutual dependence--a great part, practically the whole of Ulster, would box the compass and go in for complete independence, as the best thing possible under the circumstances. England would then feel something in her vitals, something serious and something astonishing. The only rebellion that ever gave England any trouble was worked by Ulstermen. The most effective agitators have nearly always been renegade Protestants. Let England think what she is about before she, at the bidding of a foolish old man, turns her back on her faithful friends to throw herself into the arms of her sworn enemies."

Another Conservative, for I met none other in Armagh, said:--"Surely the minority are worth some consideration. There are one million two hundred thousand loyal Protestants, and certainly many thousand Roman Catholics, who are against the Bill. As Sir George Trevelyan said, 'We must never forget that there are two Irelands,' and as John Bright said, 'There are more loyal men and women in Ireland than the whole population of men and women in Wales.' Yet Mr. Gladstone is so very considerate of Wales. Ireland can point to fully one-third of the entire population, who view with abhorrence the very name of Home Rule, and are pledged to resist it to the last. These people have been and are the friends of England, and England can be proud of them as having flourished under her rule. They have been and are the English garrison in Ireland, and England sorely needs a garrison here. Mr. Gladstone cares nothing for their opinions. On the other hand, he spends his life in pandering to disloyal Ireland, led by men who have openly avowed and gloried in their hatred of England, and who have hundreds of times publicly declared their determination to secure complete independence; men who have broken the law of the land, and have incited others to break it; men who turned a peaceful country into a perfect hell, and have for ever upset the people's notions of honesty. Parnellites and anti-Parnellites have only one end and aim, and only one sentiment. They hate British rule and British loyalists, and aim at the ultimate repeal of the Union, and the absolute separation of the two countries. And they would always be unfriendly. The party of lawlessness, outrage, and rebellion would never hold amicable relations with a law-abiding and peaceful commercial country. There would be no peace for Ireland either. The factions of the Irish party are yearly becoming more and more numerous. In all except hatred to England they are bitterly opposed. All very well to set up Ulster as being the ugly duckling, as being the one dissentient particle of a united Ireland. If every Protestant left the country Ireland would still be divided, and hopelessly divided. Personal reviling, riot, and blackguardism are already common between the factions, united though they try to appear, so far as is necessary to deceive the stupid Saxon. And if the Saxon cannot see the result of trusting the low blackguards who form the working plant of the Nationalist party he is stupid indeed, and deserves all that will happen to him.

"Have you noticed how the Irish people are gulled?"

Yes, I have noticed it. The _Freeman's Journal_, as the representative paper of the party and the chosen organ of the Church, is run on a pabulum of falsehood. Englishmen would hardly believe such lying possible, but the _Freeman_, as a liar, has, by constant practice, attained virtuosity. What Rubinstein is on the piano, what Blondin was on the tight-rope, what the Bohee Brothers are on the banjo, what Sims Reeves was in the ballad world, what Irving is in histrionic art, what Spurgeon was as a preacher, what Patti is in opera, what Gladstone is as a word-spinner, what Tim Healy is as a whipping-post, what the Irish peasant is as a lazybones, what Harcourt is as a humbug, what the member for Kilanyplace is as a blackguard, so is the _Freeman's Journal_ as a liar. When quoting great masters examples of their work are always interesting.

The late Chamberlain-Dillon episode is fresh in the minds of all newspaper readers. Dillon wanted the date. The date was given him. He promised to answer the charge, but anybody can see that no answer was possible. He failed to come up to time. Being lugged to the front by the scurf of the neck, he explained that he _had_ used the words, namely, that when the Irish party got power they would remember their enemies, but--much virtue in But--he used the words under the influence of exasperation arising from the Mitchelstown affair--which took place a year later!

Mr. Chamberlain pointed this out, and referring to this incident the _Freeman_ says:--

"Mr. Chamberlain literally grew pale under the succession of exposures, and wriggled in his seat, while he attempted to meet them, now by wriggling equivocations, now by reckless denial." "Mr. Goschen, prompted by Mr. Bolton," horrified the _Freeman's_ delicate taste by "jocose allusions to watertight compartments and to the vessel's toppling over, which grated horribly on the members of the House, with the memory of the recent terrible calamity fresh in their minds." I was in Dublin when the news of the Victoria disaster arrived, and I heard a typical Nationalist express a wish that the whole fleet had perished. Such sentiments are the natural result of the lying literature provided by the "patriot" press of Dublin and the provinces. Well may Home Rule opinion in Ireland be rotten through and through! Mirabeau said of a very fat man that his only use was to show how far the skin would stretch without bursting. The _Freeman_ exists to show to what lengths human fatuity can go. Lying and slander and all uncleanness, envy and hatred and malice and all uncharitableness, are its daily bread. With Home Rule in Ireland, this sheet would be the ruling power. To support Home Rule is for the _Freeman_ to breathe its native air. Under an Irish Parliament, nutriment "thick and slab" would abound, and the patriot print would wax in strength and stature day by day. Enlighten the popular mind, and the _Freeman's_ hours are numbered. It would vanish as a dream, forgotten by all except some old diver into the history of the past, who having read its pages, will shake his head sadly when he hears of Liars, and remembering its Parliamentary notes will say--

"There were Giants in those days."

Armagh, July 6th.

No. 45.--A PICTURE OF ROMISH "TOLERATION."

The country from Armagh to Monaghan is a very garden of Eden, undulating, well wooded, well watered, and in a high state of cultivation. The intervening towns and villages are neat and sweet, and the people seem to be hard workers. Monaghan itself, during the last generation, has wonderfully improved. It suffers by reason of its position on an almost inaccessible branch line, and the complete absence of manufactories, but it has no appearance of poverty. The Diamond is a well-built square, and the whole town, mostly built of stone, some of the streets on terraces, many of them thickly planted with trees, has a shady and sylvan look. The gaol, an enormous building crowning a steep hill, looks like the capitol of a fortress, and appears to have exercised a salutary effect on the neighbourhood, for it has long been disused. The district did not furnish malefactors enough to make the establishment pay. The gaol officials stood about with folded hands wishing for something to do, and probably locked up each other in turn by way of keeping up a pretence of work. The governor had nothing to govern, and the turnkeys sighed as they thought of old times. The thing was growing scandalous, and the ever-diminishing output of convicts marked the decadence of the country. Day by day the officials climbed to the topmost battlement in the hope that rural crime-hunters might be descried bringing in some turnip-stealer, some poacher, some blacker of his neighbour's eye, and day by day these faithful prison-keepers sadly descended to renew the weary round of mutual incarceration, so necessary if they wished to keep their hands in, and to apply somebody's patent rust-preventer to the darling locks, which formerly in better times they had snapped with honest pride. At last the authorities intervened, discharged the turnkeys, and locked up the place. It was a case of _Ichabod_. The fine gold had become dim and the weapons of war had perished. The officials departed in peace, each vowing that the country was going to the Divil, and each convinced that such a state of things would never come to pass under Home Rule. All became earnest Nationalists in the sure and certain hope that under an Irish Parliament business would revive, that the old place would be re-opened, that its venerable walls would again re-echo the songs of happy criminals, that the oakum-picking industry would revive and flourish, and that the treadwheel (which they identify with the weal of the country) would continuously revolve. Meanwhile, Armagh extends hospitality to stray wrong-doers and Monaghan boards them out to the manifest injury of the local turnkey industry.

The new Roman Catholic Cathedral is said to be the finest in Ireland. It was over thirty years in building, and although the stone of the main fabric cost nothing, the structure cost more than a hundred thousand pounds. The interior is more gorgeous than beautiful, and the money seems to have been expended with execrable taste. The marble mosaic of the chancel floor is beautifully done, the work having been entrusted to Italian workmen, who were engaged on it for several years. The numerous statues of Carrara marble are well executed, and other items are also of the best. But the effect of the whole is inharmonious, and the great lines are obscured by over-ornamentation. You are reminded of an over-dressed woman. The pulpit, surmounted by a lofty conical canopy richly gilt, is supported on four lofty pillars of coffee-coloured marble highly polished. The baldacchino is a glittering affair, forty or fifty feet high, and big enough for a mission church. This also rests on marble columns. The sacristy, chapter-house and other offices are splendidly furnished, and the furniture of the doors, brass branches spreading all over them, massive as mediæval work, were remindful of Birmingham. The oak drawers of the robing room contain sacerdotal raiment to the tune of two thousand pounds, and the banners, many in number, and of richest work, must also represent a small fortune. Beautiful oil paintings from Italy hang around, and the bishop's throne is a marvel of gold lace and luxury. A queer-looking utensil, like a low seat, but with round brass bosses at each corner, proved to be merely a sort of crinoline whereon the bishop might extend his robes, so as to look inflated and imposing. So does the noble turkey-cock extend himself when bent on conquest of his trustful mate, gobbling the while strange-sounding incantations. To describe in detail would require a book. The confessionals are snug, with rich external carving. Plenty of accommodation for penitents here. Amid such surroundings to be a miserable sinner must be indeed a pleasure. The spire is two hundred and fifty feet high. I mounted and saw the great bell, over three tons in weight. I also saw the bishop's robes of wondrous richness and penetrative virtue, the consecrated slippers which the acolytes wear, with their scarlet robes, remindful of Egyptian flamens and African flamingoes; the blessed candle-box and the seven-times blessed candles, which at once drop tallow on the holder's clothes and benison on his sin-struck soul. All this expense in poor Ireland, all these advantages for poor Ireland. And still the Irish are not happy. With Roman Catholic cathedrals on every hand, with monasteries, nunneries, seminaries, confraternities, colleges, convents, Carmelites, Christian brothers, and collections whichever way they turn, the Irish people should be content. What could they wish for more?

The principal shopkeepers of Monaghan have unpatriotic names. Crawford, Jenkins, Henry, Campbell, Kerr, McEntee, Macdonald, and their like must in some way be accountable for the smartness of the town and for the emptiness of the prison on the hill. And you soon see that the Cathedral was needed, for besides the Protestant church, the town is polluted by two Presbyterian churches, to say nothing of a schism-shop used by the Wesleyan Methodists. A Monaghan man said:--

"The respectable people are nearly all Protestants, and all the Protestants, and most of the respectable Catholics, if not all, are Unionists. In point of numbers the Catholics have the pull, and in the event of a Home Rule Parliament, which, God forbid, our position as Protestants would be no longer tenable. We should have to knock under, and to become persons of no consideration. The small farmers among the Protestant population would have an especially hard time of it. They mostly held aloof from the Land League and such-like associations; and when the other party get the upper hand they will have to smart for it. What Mr. Dillon said about remembering in the day of their power who had been their enemies, is always present to the minds of the lower classes of the Irish people. It is that they may have the power of punishing all sympathisers with England that some of them say they want Home Rule. No doubt they have other temptations, but certainly that is one great incentive. So keenly are they bent on getting power that they in some cases quite disregard any possible disadvantages accruing from the success of the movement. 'Let us get the power,' they say, 'never mind the money.' I have heard the remark made more than once, and it represents the dominant feeling in the minds of many. Rubbish about struggling for equal rights. Where are the disabilities of Irish Catholics?

"Ascendency is their game. Would they be tolerant? Why ask such a question? When was Roman Catholicism tolerant, and where? Is not the whole system of Popery based on intolerance, on infallibility, on strict exclusiveness? Let me give you a few local facts to show their 'tolerance.'

"In the old times the Monaghan Town Commissioners were a mixed body. Catholics and Protestants met together in friendly converse, and the voting went anyhow, both religions on both sides, according to each man's opinion of the business. Nowadays, wherever in Ireland the two sects are represented the thing is worked differently, and you may know the voting beforehand by reference to the members' religion. We are not troubled with this in Monaghan, and for the very best of reasons--all the members but one are Roman Catholics, and the solitary Protestant is a lawyer who has always been identified with them, and has always managed their legal business. He is practically one of themselves, having always acted with them.