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Page 3
I have tried also to convey to him, with what success others must judge,
something of the "pride and passion" of Irish nationality. That is, in
truth, the dream that comes through the multitude of business. If you
think that Home Rule is a little thing which must be done in a little
way for little reasons, your feet are set on the path to failure. Home
Rule is one of those fundamental reforms that are not achieved at all
unless they are achieved greatly.
T.M.K.
_December, 1911_.
THE OPEN SECRET OF IRELAND
CHAPTER I
AN EXERCISE IN HUMILITY
In order to understand Ireland we must begin by understanding England.
On no other terms will that complex of facts, memories, and passions,
which is called the Irish Question, yield up its secret. "You have
always been," said a Lady Clanricarde to some English politician, "like
a high wall standing between us and the sun." The phrase lives. It
reveals in a flashlight of genius the historical relations of the two
nations. It explains and justifies the principle adopted as the basis of
this discussion, namely, that no examination of the Irish Problem is
possible without a prior examination of the English mind. It used to be
said that England dearly loved a Lord, a dictum which may have to be
modified in the light of recent events. Far more than a Lord does the
typical Englishman love a Judge, and the thought of acting as a Judge.
Confronted with Ireland he says to himself: "Here are these Irish
people; some maintain that they are nice, others that they are nasty,
but everybody agrees that they are queer. Very good. I will study them
in a judicial spirit; I will weigh the evidence dispassionately, and
give my decision. When it comes to action, I will play the honest broker
between their contending parties." Now this may be a very agreeable way
of going about the business, but it is fatally unreal. Great Britain
comes into court, she will be pained to hear, not as Judge but rather as
defendant. She comes to answer the charge that, having seized Ireland as
a "trustee of civilisation," she has, either through incompetence or
through dishonesty, betrayed her trust. We have a habit, in everyday
life, of excusing the eccentricities of a friend or an enemy by the
reflection that he is, after all, as God made him. Ireland is
politically as Great Britain made her. Since the twelfth century, that
is to say for a great part of the Middle Ages and for the whole of the
modern period, the mind of England and not that of Ireland has been the
dominant fact in Irish history.
This state of things--a paradox in action--carries with it certain
metaphysical implications. The philosophers tell us that all morality
centres in the maxim that others are to be treated as ends in
themselves, and not as instruments to our ends. If they are right, then
we must picture Ireland as the victim of a radical immoralism. We must
think of her as a personality violated in its ideals, and arrested in
its development. And, indeed, that is no bad way of thinking: it is the
one formula which summarises the whole of her experience. But the
phrasing is perhaps too high and absolute; and the decline and fall of
Mr Balfour are a terrible example to those of us who, being young, might
otherwise take metaphysics too solemnly. It will, therefore, at this
stage be enough to repeat that, in contemplating the discontent and
unrest which constitute the Irish difficulty, Great Britain is
contemplating the work of her own hands, the creation of her own mind.
For that reason we can make no progress until we ascertain what sort of
mind we have to deal with.
I do not disguise from myself the extremely unpleasant nature of this
inquiry. It is as if a counsel were to open his address by saying:
"Gentlemen of the Jury, before discussing the facts of the case I will
examine briefly the mental flaws, gaps, kinks, and distortions of you
twelve gentlemen." There is, however, this difference. In the analysis
upon which we are engaged the mental attitude of the jury is not merely
a fact in the case, it is the whole case. Let me reinforce my weaker
appeal by a passage from the wisest pen in contemporary English letters,
that of Mr Chesterton. There is in his mere sanity a touch of magic so
potent that, although incapable of dullness, he has achieved authority,
and although convinced that faith is more romantic than doubt, or even
sin, he has got himself published and read. Summarising the "drift" of
Matthew Arnold, Mr Chesterton observes:
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