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Page 9
"We must then accept as our point of departure the principle that
there is a hierarchy of races and of civilisations, and that we
belong to the higher race and civilisation.... The essential
legitimation of conquest is precisely this conviction of our own
superiority.... Nations which do not hold this belief, because
incapable of such sincerity towards themselves, should not attempt
to conquer others."
The late Lord Salisbury was grasping at such a justification when he
likened the Irish to Hottentots; it would be a justification of a kind
if it chanced to be validated by the facts. But it does not. There is so
much genuine humour in the comparison that, for my part, I am unable to
take offence at it. I look at the lathe painted to look like iron, and I
set over against him Parnell. That is enough; the lathe is smashed to
fragments amid the colossal laughter of the gods. The truth is that in
every shock and conflict of Irish civilisation with English, it is the
latter that has given way. The obscuration of this obvious fact is
probably to be ascribed to the military successes of the Norman, or
rather the Cymro-Frankish invaders. If we were the higher race why did
we not put them out? Replying on the same plane of thought we observe
that if they were the higher race they would have put us down. But a
more detailed assignment of qualities between the two peoples is
possible. In general it may be said that the two stood on much the same
level of mentality, but that they had specialised on different subjects,
the Normans on war and politics, the Irish on culture. Of the many
writers who help us to reconstruct the period we ought to signalise one,
Mrs A.S. Green, who to a rare scholarship adds something rarer, the
genius of common sense. This is not the place in which to recall the
whole substance of her "Making of Ireland and its Undoing" and her
"Irish Nationality"; but from borrowings thence and elsewhere we can
piece together a plain tale of that first chapter of the Irish Question.
CHAPTER III
HISTORY
_(b) Plain_
In those days war was the most lucrative industry open to a young man of
breeding, courage, and ability. Owners of capital regarded it as a sound
investment. What Professor Oman tells us of the Normans in 1066 was
equally true of them in 1169:
"Duke William had undertaken his expedition not as a mere feudal
lord of the barons of Normandy but rather as the managing director
of a great joint-stock company for the conquest of England, in
which not only his own subjects but hundreds of adventurers, poor
and rich, from all parts of Western Europe had taken shares."
The Normans, then, came to Ireland with their eyes on three objects. In
the first place, property. This was to be secured in the case of each
individual adventurer by the overthrow of some individual Irish
chieftain. It necessitated war in the shape of a purely local, and
indeed personal grapple. In the second place, plunder. This was to be
secured by raids, incursions, and temporary alliances. In the third
place, escape from the growing power and exactions of the Crown. This
was to be secured geographically by migration to Ireland, and
politically by delaying, resolutely if discreetly, the extension in that
country of the over-lordship of the King. Herein lies the explanation of
the fact that for three and a half centuries the English penetration
into Ireland is a mere chaos of private appetites and egotisms. The
invaders, as we have said, were specialists in war, and in the
unification of states through war. This they had done for England; this
they failed to do for Ireland. The one ingredient which, if dropped into
the seething cauldron of her life, must have produced the definite
crystallisation of a new nationality, complete in structure and
function, was not contributed. True, the Cymro-Franks proved themselves
strong enough in arms to maintain their foothold; if that physical test
is enough to establish their racial superiority then let us salute Mr
Jack Johnson as Zarathustra, the superman. But in their one special and
characteristic task they failed lamentably. Instead of conquest and
consolidation they gave us mere invasion and disturbance. The disastrous
role played by them has been unfolded by many interpreters of history,
by none with a more vivid accuracy than we find in the pages of M.
Paul-Dubois:
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