|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 12
Ireland said that the Establishment too must go; and, with the echoed
menace of Fenianism ringing in his ears, Mr Gladstone hauled down the
official blazon of Ascendancy. "Ulster" did not fight. But the fierce
struggle for the land affords the crucial test. Landlordism of that most
savage type which held for its whole gospel that a man may do what he
likes with his own was conceived to be the very corner-stone of British
rule in Ireland. It controlled Parliament, the judiciary, the schools,
the Press, and possessed in the Royal Irish Constabulary an incomparable
watch-dog. It had resisted the criticism and attack loosened against it
by the scandal of the Great Famine. Then suddenly Ireland took the
business in hand. On a certain day in October 1879, some thirty men met
in a small hotel in Dublin and, under the inspiration of Michael Davitt,
founded the Land League. To the programme then formulated, the
expropriation of the landlords at twenty years' purchase of their rents,
England as usual said No! The proposal was thundered against as
confiscation, communism, naked and shameful. To any student, with
patience sufficient for the task, the contemporary files of such
journals as the _Times_ will furnish an exquisite chapter in the
literature of obtuseness. England sustained her No! with batons,
bullets, plank-beds, Coercion courts, and an occasional halter; Ireland
her Yes! with "agitation." Is it necessary to ask who won? Is it
necessary to trace step by step the complete surrender of the last
ditchers of those days? The fantastic and wicked dreams of the agitators
have in thirty years translated themselves into Statute Law and solid
fact. An English statesman of the period, say Mr Balfour or Mr Wyndham,
is fortunate if, with a few odd rags pilfered from the Land League
wardrobe, he can conceal from history his utter poverty of ideas.
This, then, is the essential wisdom of Irish history: Ireland has won
all along the line. The Normans did not normanise her. The Tudors did
not exterminate her. She has undone the Confiscations, and drawn a
cancelling pen through the Penal Laws. The Act of Union, so far from
suppressing her individuality or overwhelming it, has actually brought
it to that full self-consciousness which constitutes the coming of age
of a nation. Tears, as we read in Wordsworth, to human suffering are
due; if there be anyone with tears at command he may shed them, with
great fitness, and with no profit at all, over the long martyrdom of
Ireland. But let him, at least if he values facts, think twice before he
goes on to apply to her that other line which speaks of human hopes
defeated and overthrown. No other people in the world has held so
staunchly to its inner vision; none other has, with such fiery patience,
repelled the hostility of circumstances, and in the end reshaped them
after the desire of her heart. Hats off to success, gentlemen! Your
modern God may well be troubled at sight of this enigmatic Ireland which
at once despises him, and tumbles his faithfullest worshippers in the
sand of their own amphitheatre. Yet, so it is. The Confederate General,
seeing victory suddenly snatched from his hands, and not for the first
time, by Meagher's Brigade, exclaimed in immortal profanity: "There
comes that damned Green Flag again!" I have often commended that phrase
to Englishmen as admirably expressive of the historical role and record
of Ireland in British Politics. The damned Green Flag flutters again in
their eyes, and if they will but listen to the music that marches with
it, they will find that the lamenting fifes are dominated wholly by the
drums of victory.
CHAPTER IV
THE OBVIOUSNESS OF HOME RULE
Ireland, then, has made it her foible to be not only right but
irresistible in her past demands. What is it that she now claims, and on
what grounds? She claims the right to enter into possession of her own
soul. She claims the _toga virilis_, and all the strengthening burdens
of freedom. Now it is difficult to represent such a demand in terms of
argument. Liberty is no mere conclusion of linked logic long-drawn out:
it is an axiom, a flaming avatar. The arguments by which it is defended
are important, but they bear to it much the same relation that a table
of the wave-lengths of various rays of light bears to the immediate
glory of a sunrise. There is another obstacle. Self-government, like
other spiritual realities, say love or civilisation, is too vast,
obvious, and natural to be easily imprisoned in words. You are certainly
in love; suppose you were suddenly asked "to state the case" for love?
You are probably civilised; suppose you were suddenly asked "to state
the case for civilisation"? So it is with the Home Rule idea. To ask
what is the gate of entrance to it is like asking what was the gate of
entrance to hundred-gated Thebes. My friend, Mr Barry O'Brien, in
lecturing on Ireland, used to begin by recounting a very agreeable and
appropriate story. A prisoner on trial was asked whether he would accept
for his case the jury which had tried the last. He objected very
vehemently. "Well, but," said the Judge, "what is the nature of your
objection? Do you object to the panel or to the array?" "Ah!" replied
the traverser, "if you want to know, I object to the whole damned
business." That is approximately our objection to the present system of
government in Ireland. But let me attempt to group under a series of
somewhat arbitrary headings the "case for Home Rule," that is to say,
the case for applying to Ireland the plain platitudes of constitutional
freedom.
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|