AN IRISHMAN LOOKS
AT HIS WORLD
GEORGE A.
BIRMINGHAM

>sq

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT
HIS WORLD

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS
AT HIS WORLD

BY
GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM
Author of " General John Regan" "Benedict Kavanah," 6fC

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
MCMX1X

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
PAGE
IRISH POLITICS — THE OLD PARTIES ... 9

CHAPTER II
IRISH POLITICS — THE NEW PARTIES ... 42
CHAPTER III
THE ISLAND OF SAINTS — IRELAND'S RELIGION. 77
CHAPTER IV
 AND SCHOLARS — IRELAND'S CULTURE . 102

CHAPTER V

EDUCATION  PRIMARY, INTERMEDIATE, UNI
VERSITY  123

CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI
PAOB
EDUCATION — THE GAELIC LEAGUE AND THE
IRISH AGRICULTURAL ORGANISATTON
SOCIETY  156
CHAPTER VII
THE IRISH ARISTOCRACY  186
CHAPTER VIII
THE FARMERS  199
CHAPTER IX
THE MIDDLE CLASSES  DUBLIN .... 226
CHAPTER X
THE MIDDLE CLASSES — BELFAST . . . 257
CHAPTER XI
THE MIDDLE CLASSES  THE COUNTRY TOWN . 275
CHAPTER XII
CONCLUSION  801

vin

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT
HIS WORLD
CHAPTER I
IRISH POLITICS — THE OLD PARTIES
The most striking feature of Irish politics
is the stability of parties.
Here Ireland differs from England, and
indeed from every other country where
people possess voting power. Elsewhere
one party succeeds another in popular
favour, and any party may hope to win a
majority at the polls. The voters transfer
their allegiance, change their opinions, and
there is always a chance of persuading
them by speeches, posters, newspaper
articles, and personal solicitation to sup
port a cause which a little whil before

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
they hated. In Ireland no such thing is
possible. The Nationalist remains stead
fastly Nationalist. The Unionist remains
steadfastly Unionist. No one imagines
that the opinions of the voter can be
altered by any means.
It is true that the last General Election
saw the complete defeat of a great Parlia
mentary party, a defeat which amounted
to annihilation and is unparalleled in
English election history. But though the
change was great, it was something
quite different from the change that
takes place when the Conservative
Party wins a victory over the Liberal
Party in an English election. We
passed through a political revolution, but
every Nationalist constituency still elected
a Nationalist, and every Unionist constitu
ency still elected a Unionist. The new kind
of Nationalist was just as impotent in
Unionist Ulster as his predecessors of the
old party had been. No Unionist, in spite
of the sudden dissolution of party loyalty,
stood the smallest chance of winning a
10

IRISH POLITICS— THE OLD PARTIES
seat in Nationalist Ireland. There were
startling changes, but essentially the old
stability remained. Nationalist Ireland
altered its tactics, not its aim. Unionist
Ireland altered nothing. As between
Nationalist and Unionist there was no
change at all. No body of voters large
enough to be discernible in the election
returns passed from one side to the other.
This stability makes Irish politics a
simple business. It has for a long time
been possible to say beforehand with
certainty what the strength of each party
will be after a General Election. There is
a very small margin of possible change,
two or three constituencies which are
doubtful. But even in them an election is
not fought, as elections are in England,
with speeches, arguments and accusations
calculated to influence dubious voters. In
Ireland there are no dubious voters. The
elections in the doubtful constituencies
are really fought and won or lost months
beforehand in the courts of the revising
barristers. The question for the party
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
leaders is not how to persuade a few un
certain men to vote for a particular
candidate, but how to get votes for those
who are sure to support one candidate
and how to exclude from the register those
who are sure to support the other.
This stability has certain advantages,
but it has one disastrous effect. Since it is
plainly useless to try to persuade anyone
to vote against his party, there is no public
discussion of political questions. Our
candidates make speeches, of course, but
they never make speeches intended to
convince their opponents. They speak only
to their supporters, being comfortably
aware that no one except their supporters
will listen to them or afterwards read what
they say. So, since it is foolish to bring
forward arguments to convince those con
vinced before, a political speaker in Ireland
has nothing to do except to shout ancient
phrases and devise new forms of abuse.
No effort is ever made by men of either
party to state their case to their opponents.
The ordinary Nationalist voter does not
12

IRISH POLITICS— THE OLD PARTIES
know that there is anything to be said for
the Union. For him a Unionist is simply
an obstinately wicked man whose ways
are as incomprehensible as they are de
testable. The ordinary Unionist does not
know, because he has never heard, what
the Nationalist has to say for himself.
For him the political issue is a simple matter
of keeping blackguards from obtaining
power. Questions of Irish policy are no
doubt argued out and cases stated in
important and expensive magazines. But
the ordinary voter does not read important
and expensive magazines. He depends
for guidance on speeches and articles in
small papers. He gets no argument or
discussion in either the one or the other.
Intimate friends, if they happen to be
educated men, will occasionally discuss
politics with each other. But the ordinary
Irishman does not discuss politics with
his neighbour. It is a gross breach of
good manners to suggest that a man's
political faith is wrong. It would scarcely
be more offensive to tell him that his wife's
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
virtue is doubtful. He is bound to believe
in his politics and his wife's honour. He
would, very naturally, resent an attempt
to discuss either.
Irish politics have been stable for so
long that we are apt to forget that they
ever were anything else, and find it very
difficult to believe that they can ever
become fluid. Yet half a century ago there
was no solid Nationalist Ireland and no
unchanging Unionist Ulster. Also it is
possible, even now, to discern signs of the
existence of a new force in Irish politics
which may cut slantways across both the
old divisions.
It is an interesting and curious thought
that our present stability followed the
enfranchisement of the voter. Political
theorists sometimes assert that democracy
is essentially changeable, that a crowd is
never long of the same mind. In Ireland
experience leads us to the opposite opinion.
During the first three quarters of the
nineteenth century, while the franchise
slowly widened, the Irish voter remained
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IRISH POLITICS— THE OLD PARTIES
in leading strings. He voted as he was
bidden, sometimes as he was bidden by his
landlord, sometimes as he was bidden by
his priest, with a fear constantly present
in his mind of material loss or spiritual
disaster. He did not vote according to his
own wishes or opinions. While he was thus
shepherded he was unstable, and Irish
constituencies both in the north and south
might change and did change from one
party to another. Elections were con
tested, in the same sense in which elections
are contested in England. There was no
certainty about the results of Irish elec
tions then. Candidates argued, schemed
and threatened, when they could, with a
view to obtain votes, for voters could be
influenced. It was possible to detach a
body of voters from one party and to swing
them over to the support of another.
During the last quarter of the nineteenth
century the Irish voter broke his leading
reins, became a free man and voted as he
chose, not as he was told. He ranged
himself at once ; became Nationalist or
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
Unionist ; and Nationalist or Unionist
he has remained ever since, unwavering.
The beginning of democratic freedom —
whatever it may have been elsewhere — has
in Ireland been the beginning of political
steadfastness. I. The Irish Nationalists, in spite of the
faithfulness of the people at the polls and
in spite of an almost perfect party disci
pline, have never possessed a fundamental
unity. There have always been two
parties, and the first problem of the
leaders has been to keep the two parties
together so as to present an unbroken
front to the Unionist enemy. We distin
guish between moderate and extreme
Nationalists, sometimes between consti
tutional agitators and believers in physical
force. In reality the division is something
quite other than the difference between the
moderate man and the extremist, who
generally agree about their point of depar
ture and only fall out over the question of
how far to go. Nor can we be satisfied
with classing Irish Nationalists as con-
16

IRISH POLITICS— THE OLD PARTIES
stitutional or advocates of physical force.
No one would advocate an appeal to arms —
in Ireland's case a singularly hopeless
venture — if he saw any other way of
getting what he wanted. No one would
continue to use constitutional means,
merely for the sake of being constitutional,
if he were quite convinced that they
offered no chance of attaining his end.
The most vehement advocate of physical
force would prefer a peaceful argument
if he thought it any use. Few would be
found to deny the abstract proposition
that an appeal to force may sometimes be
right. The difference between the two sections
of Nationalists is deeper down. It lies
in their reason for being Nationalists.
There are Nationalists who believe that
the union between England and Ireland
ought to be dissolved because it works
badly or does not work at all ; perhaps
because it works to the disadvantage of
Ireland. This is the position of a practical
man who sees things as they are, who
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
wants to arrive at the best arrangement he
can for Ireland, the country he belongs
to ; perhaps also for the Empire of which
he may reckon himself a citizen. This
man has a very great deal to say for him
self. He can appeal to the fact that
England is and must be the predominant
partner in any union between the two
countries and will consider her own
interests first. He can maintain, quite
rightly, that the life of England is so
different from the life of Ireland that the
interests of the two countries are seldom
or never identical. He can produce
instances of laws which suit England and
do not suit Ireland, which nevertheless
Ireland must accept, at great inconveni
ence. He can assert, without much fear
of contradiction, that the Union, which is
now more than a hundred years in exist
ence, has not been a success, that Ireland
is profoundly dissatisfied, that England is
perpetually irritated by a sore in the body
politic. So much and a great deal more
this Nationalist can say in justification
18

IRISH POLITICS— THE OLD PARTIES
of his demand for some measure of Home
Rule, for Colonial Independence, for the
complete independence of an Irish Re
public. He may see hope in the most
moderate measure of self-government or
no hope without absolute separation. He
may be an extremist or he may be a
moderate ; but he is a Nationalist of
expediency, a pragmatist in politics. He
wants what will work best and would
secure the fullest possible good for his
country. If the Union worked well he
might be and should be a Unionist.
There are also Nationalists who believe
that Ireland is a distinct nation and there
fore entitled to a separate existence. This
is the position of the idealist, who sees
things not precisely as they are but as
they must be. He demands for his country
an inalienable and indisputable right. He,
too, has much to say for himself. He
points to the fact that Ireland once had a
civilisation of her own, a language of her
own, her own system of jurisprudence ;
that Ireland has never consented to be
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
anglicised ; that though centuries have
passed since the Brehon Laws ruled the
lives of Irishmen and Gaelic culture flour
ished in Irish schools, yet Irishmen have
never developed a loyalty to English law
or a love of English civilisation. He may
assert, again without much fear of contra
diction, that Ireland remains to-day as
different from England in mind, in spirit,
in all essential things, as she was before
Strongbow married the Princess Eva.
It is seldom possible to disentangle one
kind of Nationalism from the other. They
have always been mixed together, and the
public utterances of Nationalist leaders
suggest that they consider it desirable in
the interest of their party and their cause
to avoid clear thought and precise defini
tion. Yet it is plain that the difference is
of the utmost importance to those who
must deal with what is called the Irish
problem. If the maj ority of Irish National
ists are of the first kind, then the policy
of the English Conservatives — or perhaps
we should say the declared policy of the
20

IRISH POLITICS— THE OLD PARTIES
English Conservatives — has a fair chance
of success. If every Irish grievance were
removed, if in every respect Ireland had
fair play, if the country became materially
prosperous, if its economic problems were
justly settled, the Nationalism of expedi
ency and convenience would cease to exist.
There would be no reason for its existence.
Englishmen of good will, conscious of
having done their best for Ireland and still
wishing to do their best, are puzzled by
the continued existence of irreconcilable
Nationalism. They do not understand
that a policy of reform and amelioration
and the granting of every reasonable
demand do not affect the position of the
idealist. To him anything that tends
to make Ireland content with the Union is
of the nature of a bribe. All that is best
in him rises up in protest against the
doctrine that it can profit a nation to gain
the whole world, if in gaining it she lose
her own soul.
It is because of this difference between
Nationalists that their leaders have never
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
been able to say precisely what they want,
or to give a pledge that this or that measure
will be accepted as a final settlement. It
is extremely difficult to say that any
measure of Home Rule would remove all
the practical grievances of Ireland. It is
utterly impossible to say that a nation,
driven by the very law of its being to
seek self-expression, will find the desired
opportunity under any constitution short
of actual independence. The plain man
has asked the Irish leaders what they
want, has asked impatiently, and has been
angry when he got no answer. He does
not realise that no Irish leader can answer
that question ; not merely because his
political position forces him to be ambigu
ous, lest he lose the support of one section
or another of his followers, but because the
question is in itself unanswerable. Parnell
understood that when he said " No man
can set bounds to the march of a nation."
The Irish Party in Parliament came into
existence under Isaac Butt. There had,
of course, been Irishmen in Parliament
22

IRISH POLITICS— THE OLD PARTIES
before his time who devoted themselves to
the interests of Ireland, men like George
Henry Moore. But Butt was the first
leader of a distinct Nationalist Party.
He was a lawyer and believed in the
possibility of persuading men by argument.
He failed to persuade Englishmen of any
party that Home Rule for Ireland was
desirable. It is the fashion in Ireland now
to condemn Butt as a weakling. But
there is something to be said for his policy.
No one in his time understood the true
nature of a modern Parliament. The
House of Commons was still regarded as a
deliberative assembly in which men con
sulted together, listened to argument, and
made up their minds how to act. We
know now that a Parliament is nothing of
the sort, that it is an assembly of delegates,
each bound to vote with his party whatever
the right or wrong of any question may
be. The party leader, or the "boss " behind
the leader, is autocratic and supreme. It
is plainly useless to argue for the benefit
of delegates, who are mere recorders of
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
votes. The delegate's reason and his
opinion have nothing whatever to do with
the way his vote is cast. But to Isaac
Butt and his friends this was not obvious.
They believed that votes in Parliament
followed personal conviction. Perhaps in
those days they still actually did. The
policy of trying to convince seemed to be,
and was, a reasonable one.
Parnell tried another policy, the policy
of the high hand. Instead of persuading
he bullied. He aimed at degrading Parlia
ment and making the conduct of public
business impossible until his demands were
granted. Parliament replied to his ob
struction by altering its rules of procedure
in such a way that naked obstruction
became impossible. Parnell altered his
tactics and threatened, not Parliament
itself, but the leaders and " bosses " of
English political parties. He was strong
enough in any ordinary Parliament to
make it impossible for either party to take
its legitimate turn at governing. He said
in effect to the leaders of both parties,
24

IRISH POLITICS— THE OLD PARTIES
' You must give me what I want or I shall
prevent your holding office. ' ' Parnell came
very near success. He was beaten because
the English party leaders preferred coali
tion to submission. Men of parties vio
lently opposed to each other shook hands
and so became strong enough to hold
office in spite of Parnell.
Redmond, who succeeded Parnell, tried
a third policy. He entered into an in
formal alliance with one of the two English
parties. He pledged it to grant his demands.
He agreed to fight by its side in opposition
and to support it when in power. He
kept his part of the bargain faithfully.
The English Liberals, after much hesitation,
tried to keep theirs. They did not do so
completely, perhaps they could not, and
Redmond, like Butt and Parnell, failed.
Then came the election which ended, for
a time at least, the existence of an Irish
Party in Parliament. Irish Nationalists,
having repudiated Butt's policy of persua
sion and refused to follow out Parnell's
policy of bullying, perceived the failure
25

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
of Redmond's policy of alliance. There
does not seem to be any other possible
policy for a Parliamentary leader, and so
Parliamentary action, though not neces
sarily constitutional action, came to be
regarded in Ireland as useless. It had
been tried and found wanting.
Irish Nationalism remained unchanged.
Nationalists of expediency still chafed
under what they felt to be an unwise and
irritating kind of government. National
ists of idealism still clung to their passionate
belief in the rights of an Irish nation. The
two kinds of Nationalists are still in alliance,
still for the most part think and feel
confusedly, still use one another's argu
ments without consciousness of any incon
sistency. But both are convinced of the
futility of Parliamentary action. Both
have cast about for some new way of
winning what they desire.
II. Irish Unionism is divided geographi
cally. The Unionists of North-East Ulster
form a powerful party. The Unionists
of the rest of Ireland are almost impotent.
26

IRISH POLITICS— THE OLD PARTIES
At the last election they won only one seat
— leaving out of the count Dublin Univer
sity, a peculiar constituency whose electors
are not necessarily Southern Irishmen.
But these Unionists are not wholly without
political power. Their party commands
respect. It contains men of ability and
character whose opinions can scarcely be
ignored even in Ireland. It possesses
influence, if not voting power, in the
councils of the State, and it has shown that
it is not irreconcilable. Unlike the Bour
bons, the Southern Irish Unionist is capable
of forgetting and of learning — of forgetting
the old story of the agrarian struggle with its
hatred and crimes and learning that Irish
Nationalism is something other, or at least
might be something other, than a class
struggle, soiled with religious j ealousy . The
real weakness of the Southern Unionists lies
in the fact that they are in effect a party of
gentlemen, and gentlemen are not much
use in politics, just as D'Artagnan with his
rapier and his code of fighting honour
would not be much use in a modern
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
bayonet charge, however gallant and
debonair he showed himself.
The Ulster Party, understanding the
weakness of Unionism outside Ulster, and
failing to appreciate the moral value of the
old unity, has deserted the Southern
Unionists. In justifying their action they
will perhaps quote the prophet Isaiah, for
the Ulsterman likes to feel that he has the
support of the Bible. " They were all
ashamed of a people that could not profit
them, nor be a help nor a profit, but a
shame and also a reproach." That must
be very much the way the Belfast de
mocracy feels about the Southern Union
ists, even though these impotent folk are
still in a position to send princes to Zoan
and ambassadors to Hanes.
The Ulster Unionists are strong, aston
ishingly strong. Though a minority, and a
small minority, in Ireland, they have
succeeded up to the present moment in
imposing their will upon the rest of the
country. The legal Union between Ireland
and England remains a fact. The rest
28

IRISH POLITICS— THE OLD PARTIES
of Ireland made its mind up long ago.
The majority of Englishmen and Scotsmen
decided lately that the Union must be
dissolved. North-East Ulster said " No," and
North-East Ulster prevailed. The fact
requires some explanation. We are sup
posed to be a democracy, and the one clear
principle of democracies is that the will
of the majority must prevail. Yet in this
single case the will of the majority has not
prevailed. Since the struggle began there
has been a steady majority in Ireland in
favour of a dissolution of the Union, more
or less complete. There has several times
been a large majority in Parliament in
favour of some form of Home Rule. The
minority in Ireland is small, so small that
it might be regarded as helpless. Yet
it has shown itself, so far, the stronger
party. A minority, led by men of conspicuous
ability, can sometimes in a modern State
hold a majority at bay by clever tactics,
astute political moves, and a policy of
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
insinuating divisions among its opponents.
But the Ulster Unionist Party has never
had leaders of conspicuous ability. It has
produced no Parnell, no Gladstone. Its
political action has never been clever or
its tactics astute. It might on several
occasions have taken advantage of divi
sions in Nationalist Ireland. It had not,
apparently, sufficient intelligence to do so.
I remember discussing the position of the
Ulster Party with a Northern Unionist
just after the introduction of the last
Home Rule Bill. He deplored the stu
pidity — the word was his, not mine — of his
friends. " If such a one " — he named a
leading Ulster Unionist — " were to die
to-morrow and to be buried, the whole
brains of Ulster Unionism would lie in that
grave." The statement was an exaggera
tion, though not a very grave one. Later
on, in 1913, when the Ulster Volunteer
movement had caught public attention, I
listened one day to a discussion. " Is
Ulster in earnest," some one asked, " or
is it putting up a great bluff ? " A very
30

IRISH POLITICS— THE OLD PARTIES
able man, much experienced in political
affairs and international diplomacy, closed
the discussion with a definite pronounce
ment, " Ulster must be in earnest. She is
too stupid to bluff." This, too, was an
exaggeration. But it remains indisput
ably true that North-East Ulster has not
displayed striking political ability or the
faculty for manipulating events to her
own advantage. Yet North-East Ulster
has prevailed. The blank " We'll not
have it " of Belfast has torn through the
spider webs of politicians and rendered
the voting powers of majorities impotent.
Nationalist Ireland might be wise, even
now, to paint her cheeks, tire her hair, to
don the soft garments of Delilah, to take
the head of this blundering Samson on her
lap and whisper to him : " Tell me, I pray
thee, where thy great strength lieth and
wherewith thou mightest be bound to
afflict thee." After a while, having tried
the green withes and the new cart ropes,
she might learn the secret and shear the
invincible locks. 31

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
No doubt great strength lies in the fact
that Ulster is plainly and simply in earnest.
The Northern Unionist has not, for many
years now, regarded politics as a game,
played by rules, in which each player does
his best to win, but if he loses, still
abiding by the rules, either scowls or
smiles and pays. Ulster is content to let
the cards be dealt, to sort her hand, to
make her declaration ; but when her
opponent unexpectedly leads an ace which
must capture the decisive trick, she
throws down her hand and threatens to
upset the table, cards and all. The ordi
nary player, the English politician, trained
to the game and unable to realise that
there are people in the world who are not
playing games, stands aghast, bewildered,
and passes into a state of speechless indig
nation. Then, foaming a little at the mouth,
he picks up his ace again. Nationalist
Ireland, which is also in earnest, has rapidly
grasped the fact that it is possible for both
sides to kick the table over. She has
learned something, but not yet the whole
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POLITICS— THE OLD PARTIES
secret of where the great strength lies.
Mere refusal to obey is useless unless
behind the refusal there is some power to
make the refusal good. The ladies who
swore they would not soil their tongues
by licking gummy stamps did not indefi
nitely hang up the National Insurance
Act. Ulster did hang up the Home Rule
Act, though it stood in seeming safety, the
law of this realm, on the pages of the
Statute-book. The secret of the great
strength is still to seek.
Ulster Unionism is itself a union, and a
union of forces so naturally opposed to each
other that even a temporary alliance
between them might well seem impossible.
In North-East Ulster only does the Irish
aristocracy, the nobility and landed gentry,
still hold political power. Ulster has ad
mitted its aristocracy to leadership and
gained strength thereby. For the Irish
aristocracy Ms a traditional knowledge
of great affairs end a hereditary ability
in leading. Its members take a place
among the great of the Empire. Its elders
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
are present in secret council chambers.
Its sons are not afraid of fighting. Soldiers
know them and count them kin. In the
last resort, when armed forces face each
other, men are unwilling to draw their
swords against their kin. And this class
in Ulster, as everywhere in Ireland, is
Unionist by strong conviction. It regards
the Union as a bulwark for the safety of the
Empire. Nationalism in Ireland appears
as a disruptive force, disloyal, dangerous.
This aristocracy is not greatly moved by
the fears for religion which are a force in
Ulster Unionism. Nor is it deeply con
cerned with the dread of incompetent
financial management which affects a busi
ness city like Belfast. But it is filled with
the imperial spirit and is conscious of fine
imperial pride. This is small wonder, since
for centuries it has taken a great part in
building up the Empire. Its knowledge of
the world is wide enough to enable it to
realise how good a thing it is to claim
citizenship in the mightiest State on earth.
It is satisfying to see flying over tropical
34

POLITICS— THE OLD PARTIES
palm and northern pine and over every
sea in all the world the flag ; and to say
" My fathers carried it forth. My sons
fight for it." Convinced, not altogether
without reason, that Nationalist Ireland
hates the flag and wishes to destroy the
Empire, this aristocracy will agree to no
weakening of the Union.
Alongside the aristocracy, in the front
rank of Ulster Unionism, are the business
men and manufacturers of Belfast. The
alliance seems an unnatural one, for these
two classes are not usually sympathetic.
Perhaps nothing but a common danger
could have joined them together in the
north of Ireland. Danger, like misfortune,
makes strange bedfellows. Yet, while both
dread Nationalism and any weakening of
the Union, they have different reasons for
their fear. Belfast's captains of industry
are no doubt imperialists, believing that
trade follows the flag. But they care for
their trade more than they love the flag,
or perhaps they love the flag chiefly because
trade follows it. Their fear is that in
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
submitting to the rule of Irish Nationalists
they would submit to the rule of men who
are incompetent, who would muddle the
finance of the country in such a way that
the prosperity of Ulster's business would be
in danger. Sometimes their fear is more
definite still and has a sharper edge to it.
The rest of Ireland is, so they think, not
only incompetent. It is lazy and greedy.
Belfast under a Home Rule Parliament
would be the milch cow of the rest of
Ireland, and Belfast would be milked dry.
On all promises and assurances of security,
on all fair-sounding professions of brotherly
love, Belfast's commercial men look slant-
ways with cold, distrustful eyes. They
say, with perfect truth, that they have
done well under the Union, have been free
to grow and prosper. They argue, with
fair show of reason, that the rest of Ireland
might have done well under the Union
too, if it were capable of doing well at all
or prospering. If not — if, as they believe
the rest of Ireland is corrupt, extravagant
and idle — then to be placed under the power
36

POLITICS— THE OLD PARTIES
of the rest of Ireland would be intolerable.
And any way, " We won't be governed by
a Parliament in Dublin." Is not the
reputation of the Dublin Corporation
reason enough for such a decision ?
But an aristocracy is nowadays a feeble
thing, and a Chamber of Commerce, though
stronger, is not very strong. Not even
the union of the territorial aristocracy with
the captains of industry would be able to
resist the rest of Ireland if there were not a
third member of the alliance, the Northern
Protestant working man. He, for his
own peculiar reason, hates the idea of
Home Rule so much that he is content to
follow the leadership, and in matters
purely political to do the bidding, of those
whom working men elsewhere regard as the
enemies of their class. His obedience is
no evidence of a servile spirit. There is
not anywhere to be found a working man
more aggressively independent, more
radical, than the Belfast artisan. He
follows leaders and submits to discipline
because he is mastered by a fear which is
37

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
stronger than his class consciousness. He
is not, any more than any other working
man, passionately enamoured of the im
perial idea. He cannot be supposed to be
ready to fight in order to save his masters,
the merchants and manufacturers, from
having to pay an excessive income tax.
He dreads the dissolution of the Union
because he believes that the Pope would
govern a Home-ruled Ireland. The root
of his Unionism is religion, not so much
attachment to one faith as fear of the
domination of another.
It must not be supposed that these
divisions of Ulster Unionism are clear-
cut or that the motive, the fear, which
animates each class is pure and unmixed.
Things are never so simple as that in life.
The religious feeling, the acute, explosive
Protestantism of North-East Ulster, is
present in all classes, colouring the imperial
ism of the aristocracy, spiritualising the
business instincts of the manufacturers.
The dread of financial incompetence and
unfair dealing exists in all classes, and
38

POLITICS— THE OLD PARTIES
there is, throughout the whole Ulster
Unionist Party, a certain imperial loyalty.
But, in spite of apparent confusion, the
three fears are separable. The strength
of the Unionism of North-East Ulster lies
in the fact that it has welded three diver
gent and naturally antipathetic classes into
one party. It is a party which more than
any other party represents a whole com
munity, all classes of it. It is a party
which for the sake of a common cause is
content, and glad, at times of danger to
forget all jealousies and sink all differences.
Therefore beyond other parties it is strong.
The most hopeless feature of the political
situation in Ireland is that neither party
has any plan at all for dealing with its
opponents, except one — force. Up to a
certain point both Nationalist and Union
ist appear to believe in conciliation. Ulster
— every Nationalist has said it over and
over again — will be given every safeguard,
every guarantee consistent with the integ
rity of Ireland. Ireland — has not every
Unionist said it ? — must have every fair
39

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
play, every concession, every chance, all
she asks, consistent with the maintenance
of the Union, at least for North-East
Ulster. But if Unionist Ulster will not
even say what guarantees she wants —
but if Nationalist Ireland will not be
satisfied with any reasonable concessions,
then there is nothing for it but firm
government ; the firm government of a
Dublin Parliament, or of Dublin Castle. In
the end it comes to this : " If the others
won't agree with us — and we are most
reasonable, quite easy to get on with and
full of good intentions — then the others
must submit, must be made to submit."
No one, not even the peacemakers of our
shadowy middle parties, not even our most
moderate and conciliatory men, have any
thing to say in the end except that. No
one has suggested any other way out of the
bog in which we flounder.
Perhaps there is no other way.
Yet it is possible to hope. The hand
which holds the kaleidoscope in which
men's affairs fall into their patterns turns
40

POLITICS— THE OLD PARTIES
the tube. The fragments of coloured
glass are shaken and moved. They slip
past one another, dropping into fresh
places. The star shapes, the ribbons and
squares on which our eyes rested dissolve,
and new combinations are formed, unex
pected, startling. " Things must be thus
or thus," says the logician ; " nothing
else is possible." God smiles. Events
march on, and things are neither thus nor
thus. Perhaps even now in this valley
of dry bones there is a movement, " a
noise and behold a shaking."

41

CHAPTER II
IRISH POLITICS — THE NEW PARTIES
In 1899 Mr. Arthur Griffith established
in Dublin a weekly paper called The
United Irishman. In 1904 he published
in it a series of articles on the struggle of
the Hungarian Magyars for political inde
pendence. He republished the articles
as a pamphlet under the title " The
Resurrection of Hungary." He suggested
that Ireland might and should adopt a
similar policy.
His pamphlet appeared at a time of
profound political apathy. ParnelFs
policy of bullying the leaders of the
English parties had been abandoned. Red
mond's policy of alliance with the Liberals
had not declared itself. The Nationalist
leaders were squabbling with each other
42

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
in a subdued fashion. Some Unionists
got up a flirtation with some Nationalists.
There was squeezing of hands in corners
and a kiss or two over the policy of
Devolution. Mr. Wyndham was Chief
Secretary at the time, and ought to have
acted as chaperon ; but he was remiss, or
perhaps was not unwilling to allow the
flirtation to proceed. The Ulster Unionists
discovered what was going on and put a
stop to it in the interest of political pro
priety. Mr. Wyndham was succeeded by
Mr. Long. The Irish people, genuinely
interested in the working of the Land
Purchase Act, cared very little about
Devolution. The general feeling was that
illicit flirtation ought not to be encouraged.
It would be pleasant to record that Mr.
Griffith's pamphlet sounded a trumpet-call
which awakened a slumbering Ireland ;
that a new, virile party sprang into
existence ; that a nation, sick to death
of scheming and intrigue, declared that
henceforth its reliance should be on itself,
itself alone. Nothing of the sort happened.
43

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
A few young men and young women in
Dublin, already more or less intrigued by
the idea of a Gaelic Revival, read Mr.
Griffith's pamphlet and won for themselves
a scoffing nickname. A company of
musicians known as the Blue Hungarian
Band was at that time delighting the
patrons of London restaurants with waltz
tunes. Mr. Griffith's young intellectuals
in Dublin were known as the " Green
Hungarian Band." Here and there, in
provincial towns and country places, a few
men in whom the spirit of the Fenians
survived were sulking silently in their
tents, profoundly dissatisfied with the
condition of the Irish Nationalist move
ment. They read Mr. Griffith's pamphlet
and recognised in it a Nationalism like their
own. It was straightforward. It was un
compromising. If it did not advocate
the forging of pike-heads, it at least recog
nised that England was the enemy, to
be fought, not conciliated.
Mr. Griffith founded a party and was
fortunate at the outset in acquiring a good
44

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
name for it. Sinn Fein, which means
Ourselves, exactly expressed the idea which
inspired the new party. Ireland was hence
forth to shun all foreign alliances, to shake
herself free of the entanglements of foreign,
that is to say of British, politics, and
to become great and free by self-
reliance, self-help, self-culture and self-
sacrifice. There could scarcely have
been found a fitter name for a party with
such high ideals.
In everything else, except its name, the
forming of the new party seemed an
unfortunate enterprise. Perhaps it is
never possible to form a political party.
Parties come into existence far down at the
depths of the nation, as water begins to
boil at the bottom of a large pot. Leaders,
like bubbles, emerge from the depths, are
caught by swirlings of popular emotion,
and carried, glistening, to the surface.
No party begins with leaders or with a
policy. Both come into being out of the
vague, inchoate movements of a spirit
somewhere unseen. To form a party
45

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
with a ready-made leader and a policy
neatly summarised on a sheet of paper
seems of all forms of political activity the
most futile. Pygmalion was able to give
vitality to a statue of his own making, and
Frankenstein succeeded in a similar at
tempt, much to his subsequent sorrow.
No other man, so far as we know, ever
gave life to a thing of his own creation.
Mr. Griffith was not even fortunate in the
environment of his new party. Never
in her history was Ireland less inclined to
self-reliance. The soul of the country
was debauched with doles and charities.
An English statesman might quite truth
fully have boasted that Ireland would eat
out of his hand. The only thing which
troubled most of us was that the hand,
whether we licked it or snarled at it,
was never full enough. The idea of self-
help was intensely unpleasant, and as for
self-sacrifice ! Mr. Griffith demanded a
good deal of self-sacrifice from his followers,
but Ireland had for some years learned to
regard self-sacrifice as extremely foolish.

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
A member of Parliament did, indeed,
occasionally go to gaol. But he probably
rather liked it, and certainly gained by it
in the end.
It is scarcely to be wondered at that the
Sinn Fein Party did not flourish. The
astonishing thing is that it survived at all.
Its single attempt to win an election was
an expensive failure. Its daily paper — a
very sporting venture — collapsed. Ten
years after the publication of " The Resur
rection of Hungary " Sinn Fein was as
impotent in Ireland as pacifism was in
England at the same moment.
Then a totally unexpected thing hap
pened. Deposuit potentes de sede ; et
exaltavit  the quotation cannot be con
tinued. Sinn Fein, true to its name, was
never, even in the gloomiest days, the
least humble.
It cannot be said with any accuracy that
Sinn Fein won Ireland. Ireland took over
Sinn Fern. Indeed Ireland took over very
little of Sinn Fein except the name. The
original policy, even the idea behind the
47

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
original policy, almost disappeared. The
Magyars, to whose example Mr. Griffith
appealed, won their independence by
passive resistance, having learned by pain
ful experience the uselessness of physical
force. The Sinn Feiners of 1916 asso
ciated themselves with an insurrection, and
later on preached the gospel of ten-foot
pikes. The original Sinn Feiners were
fond of adding to their name Amhain,
which indeed follows the words Sinn Fein
in the poem by Douglas Hyde whence the
title comes. " Our hope," they said, " is
in ourselves, ourselves alone." All con
fidence in foreigners was declared to be
confidence misplaced, and disappointment
would certainly follow it. The new Sinn
Fein appealed for a hearing to a committee
of foreigners assembled in conference in
Paris, has hopes of American interference
in Irish affairs, turned expectant eyes to
Germany, is not without a feeling that
revolutionary Russia may do something
for Ireland. Wolfe Tone was more mode
rate. He only sought aid from the French.
48

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
Redmond's attempt to win help from the
English Liberals, foreigners of course, was
an example of austere self-reliance com
pared to this. Of the original Sinn Fein
policy only one thing survives — the
removal from Westminster of the repre
sentatives of Nationalist Ireland.
Yet in spite of its apparent failure Mr.
Griffith's Sinn Fein Party had, before 1914,
at least prepared the way for success.
While Redmond and his followers, ab
sorbed in political intrigues in London,
were struggling to keep Mr. Asquith faithful
to the Home Rule idea, things which they
did not understand and had no time to
study were happening in Ireland. There
was an awakening of national conscious
ness, which was not in any way dependent
on politics, which disclaimed vehemently
any political conviction. The Gaelic
League, with its Irish language, Irish
customs, dances and folk-lore, caught the
affection of men and women. The indus
trial revival appealed to the business
instincts of townspeople. The Agricul-
49 e

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
tural Co-operative Society inspired country
people with the idea of self-help. Poets
and dramatists gave form to the legends
of the past and expressed the vague
aspirations of their contemporary Ireland.
Towards all these movements, awakenings,
stirrings, the Sinn Fein Party was sym
pathetic. It was Irish, and counted
nothing Irish strange to it. There was a
drawing towards Sinn Fein of all those
whose minds were most awake, who were
most active in work of any kind for
Ireland. The Sinn Fein Party, even in the
time of its extremest weakness, had many
friends though it had few adherents, and
its friends were the best and most intelli
gent men in Nationalist Ireland.
Meanwhile a deepening discontent was
arousing the mass of the Irish people from
political apathy. Home Rule, long pro
mised, was postponed and still postponed.
Always, it seemed, there was another
corner in the long road before the hoped
for city could be reached. Taxation be
came heavier and heavier. Budget after
50

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
Budget brought fresh burdens. Perhaps
the English people gathered " rare and
refreshing fruit " from expensive schemes
of social betterment. Ireland gathered
little and did not like the taste of what she
got — and paid for. Doubts assailed men.
Had the old Fenians been right after all ?
Was constitutional effort useless and
doomed to failure ? An answer came to
these questions — an answer given by wholly
unexpected voices, but clear and definite.
It appeared that Home Rule was, after all
the waiting, not to be had. Constitutional
action had been defeated and rendered
useless by a bald threat of unconstitutional
resistance. Ulster, beaten at the polling
booths, beaten in Parliament, took up
arms, and, arms in hand, won its way, im
posed its will on Ireland, on England, and
on the Empire. Never was a clearer
demonstration of the truth of what the old
physical-force Nationalists had always said.
Inter arma silent leges. In the end the
sword prevails. Never was a lesson more
quickly learned by any people. National-
51 e 2

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
ist Ireland stood bewildered for a very
little while ; then, angry and sore, turned
inquiring eyes towards Sinn Fein, which
happened just at the moment to be the
only Nationalist organisation which was
not seriously discredited.
Even the Volunteers, later to become
the striking arm of Sinn Fein, had not
originally any direct connection with the
party. They were started with the idea
of establishing in Ireland a force of drilled,
if possible armed, men like the Volunteers
of 1778. They were Nationalists indeed,
but Nationalists of a strange kind. They
professed to have no quarrel with Ulster
or the covenanting Volunteers of the north.
Indeed they occasionally cheered for Sir
Edward Carson, holding that any one who
meant to defy England and English law
was worthy of such encouragement as
cheers could give. The early Volunteers
were waifs, the street arabs of Irish
politics, no man's children. They might,
it seems, have become the children of
almost any one who chose to adopt them.
52

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
At one time the official Nationalist Party
very nearly obtained control of them,
and might, but for some accident, have
stood in the place of parents. There was
a period, just at the beginning of the war,
when the whole force might have been
enlisted in the service of the Allies. The
stupidity of the War Office, perhaps the
special stupidity of Lord Kitchener, stopped
that. There was a moment, not more than
a moment, when they might have been
officered by the Irish gentry, like their
predecessors in 1778. But that moment
passed. The Volunteers were lively chil
dren with very little respect for the con
ventional decencies of party strife. Nobody
quite knew what to do with them. Nobody
cared for the responsibility of fathering
them. They drifted into the hospitable
arms of Sinn Fein.
Wise men, if there had been any, might
have noted its powers of digestion as
evidence of the vitality of Sinn Fein.
It had the appearance at first of being
doctrinaire, a party of intellectuals ;
53

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
therefore likely to be a little squeamish and
dainty in its food. Appearance was, as
often, deceitful. Sinn Fem had a very
Irish capacity for absorbing anything that
came in its way. Poets, Gaelic enthusi
asts, industrial revivalists, agricultural co-
operators, amateur soldiers — it was all
one to Sinn Fein. Even anxious English
men, who believed themselves to be in
touch with Irish Nationalism when they
lunched with Mr. Dillon, began to realise
that Sinn Fein was a serious force. How
great a force it was no one in England
knew, very few people in Ireland guessed
before Easter, 1916.
While Ulster was covenanting and drill
ing, while the parliamentarians were orat
ing with their eyes shut, while Sinn Fein
was swallowing whole everything vital
and nourishing in Nationalist Ireland,
a new thing was appearing in the country.
For the first time in history the under
world of Irish labour achieved a class-
consciousness. Like other countries, Ire
land long ago had her guilds and lately
54

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
her trade unions of skilled workmen,
respectable and somewhat selfish organ
isations. Jim Larkin — the man's electric
personality forced the " Jim " from the
most unwilling lips — opened a fresh chapter
in the history of Irish labour. He was a
bold innovator, a reckless revolutionary,
and he was, in the eyes of every one
except the Lord Lieutenant of the time,
entirely disreputable. English labour
leaders did not like him and were a little
nervous about his doings. Respectable
Irish trade unionists were aghast at the
doctrines he preached. Employers of
labour naturally hated him and beat his
strikes again and again thoroughly, as only
Irish employers dare beat strikes. Politi
cians of all kinds regarded him with irrita
tion and dislike. He careered about
Ireland very much as a strange dog careers
about the racecourse at Epsom on Derby
Day. He seemed too small and too wild
to effect much ; but it was generally felt
that he ought not to be there. Jim
Larkin ignored all recognised kinds of
55

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
politics. He harangued Orangemen from
the Custom House steps in Belfast on the
12th of July just as effectively as he
harangued the Nationalist dock labourers
in Cork. For him it was not the Pope
who was the enemy, nor England. The
enemy was the capitalist, the master, the
wage-payer. A number of men and women
believed him. He founded the Transport
Workers' Union ; gathering into it the
worst paid, the least organised, the most
helpless classes of Irish labourers. He
set it in the way of becoming what it is to
day, the most powerful labour organisation
in Ireland, perhaps the most intelligently
conducted in the British Isles. It is
said of William of Orange that he never
won a battle and never lost a campaign.
Jim Larkin must have been singularly
unlike that saturnine monarch in every
respect ; but he also had a knack of losing
battles and winning campaigns. His
strikes never succeeded. His men were
beaten, again and again, almost to their
knees. But labour, despised and dis-
56

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
reputable, the labour of the lowest depths,
became a force in Irish life.
Volunteering was all the fashion in
Ireland when Jim Larkin worked there ;
and he was not to be outdone by any
politician, Unionist or Nationalist. He
established and drilled a force of his own
and called it the Citizen Army. The war
clouds, threatening devastating tempest,
were already gathering in Central Europe.
Ireland was, apparently, ready and most
anxious to fling herself into a battle of any
kind. Besides supplying men in large
numbers to the Imperial, the Regular,
Army, she had on foot no less than four
private armies of her own — the Ulster
Volunteers, the National Volunteers, the
Irish Volunteers, and the Citizen Army,
Whatever she became later, Ireland was
then no city of refuge for distressed
pacifists. In a country wholly given
over to volunteering even Tolstoi might
have been militarised. Whatever side
Ireland joined, it seemed certain that she
would take part in any fighting that was
57

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
going, so intensely military was her
spirit. The Citizen Army very soon faded away.
In its brief history there is only one incident
which interests us now. It quarrelled
with the Irish Volunteers, ostensibly over
the use of certain halls for drill, really
because there was a deep -reaching division,
a definite difference of aim and purpose,
between Nationalism like that of Sinn
Fein and Larkin's labour organisation.
Sinn Fein, doctrinaire and intellectual,
with its ideal of national greatness, admired
and advocated the economics of List. For
Jim Larkin and his labour party Karl
Marx was not sufficiently advanced. To
the believers in Sinn Fein Ireland was all.
Nothing else mattered.
" Shall mine eyes behold thy glory, 0 my country,
shall mine eyes behold thy glory ? "
To the casual labourer, dwelling in a foul
slum, half -starved, with a pitiful uncertain
wage, " the dear dark head " was like a
savoury, a stuffed olive, very nice at the
end of a good dinner, but irritatingly
58

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
worse than unsatisfying when there was no
other dinner at all. The bickering between
the two bodies of Volunteers might very
easily have been the beginning of an
enduring antagonism between Sinn Fein
and Labour.
Jim Larkin disappeared, to be hunted,
so we are told, from one corner of the
world to another, a modern Ishmael,
with every man's hand against him. His
place as leader of the Irish Labour move
ment was taken by James Connolly, an
abler and, I suppose, a greater man.
Jim Larkin never felt the attraction of
Sinn Fein. Connolly did. That fact ex
plains much which happened afterwards
and is the key to any true understanding
of the condition of Ireland to-day. Sinn
Fein was a magnet. It drew towards
it all insurgent spirits. It disturbed the
compasses by which even the soberest
men in Ireland tried to guide their lives.
It affected Connolly powerfully and
strangely. In his mind the internationalism
of Socialist Labour mingled with a narrow
59

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
nationalism of Irish patriotism. They areoil
and water, but in Connolly they mixed.
And the man's fierce enthusiasm gathered
strength from both sources. In him the
opposing principles did not neutralise each
other. He suffered from no Hamlet mood
of philosophic impotence, the common fate
of those who feel too many things and see
too much. But while Sinn Fein drew
Connolly into its nationalism, that
nationalism wasnotunaffected. TheDublin
strike of 1913, a long-drawn struggle in
which the workers suffered much and were
beaten, awakened the minds of many men
to the meaning of the Irish Labour move
ment. Its spirit became intelligible. Its
idealism was recognisable for the first
time by those outside. Sinn Feiners like
Pearse saw that the Kathleen ni Houlahan
of their hearts' desire did not always walk
clad in stately robes as a Celtic queen or
even in the shawls and crimson petticoats
of a Connaught peasant. She might wear,
did wear, the tattered, draggled garments
of the Dublin slums, and was the more
60

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
beautiful because of the filth which hung
around her.
There were Sinn Feiners, more keenly
intellectual, more logically-minded, than
Pearse, who felt the essential difference
between national patriotism and class
loyalty. There were Irish Socialists who
refused to follow Connolly, who saw in his
nationalism a betrayal of Labour. But the
drawing together of Sinn Fein and Labour
was close enough. There was cross fer
tilisation and fruit. The fruit was the
insurrection of Easter week, 1916.
Even now, more than three years after
wards, it is exceedingly difficult to under
stand that insurrection. Judged by any
of the ordinary standards of life the taking
up of arms in Dublin was madness. The
rising never had the faintest prospect of
success. The leaders certainly knew, even
the humblest of the rank and file must have
expected, that disaster was inevitable. The
heads of the Sinn F&n Party understood,
for — so it appears — they did their utmost
up to the very last moment to prevent
61

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
the rising. No doubt we shall know some
day, but we do not know yet, just what was
felt and said by Professor John MacNeill
and Mr. Arthur Griffith when they faced
the crisis ; but the belief gathers strength
that the Sinn Feiners and Volunteers were
rushed into their active rebellion by
Connolly and Pearse.
What did these men mean ? What
hope, if any, lured them on ? What
passion impelled them ?
We know that for Connolly the collapse
of international socialism at the beginning
of the war was a bitter disappointment.
Everywhere, in France, in Belgium, in
England, in Germany, patriotism, which
was supposed to be dead among the
workers, arose, shook her locks, and went
forth to battle. The sense of class brother
hood disappeared like the morning mist of
a summer day. The sense of race kinship
and national unity showed itself as strong
as ever in the world's history. The whole
fabric of a dream castle tottered, crumbled,
fell. Connolly saw everywhere workers,
62

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
the oppressed, insurgent workers, marching
out obediently to slay each other — not only
marching obediently, but marching gladly.
Of the great world-wide strike, the myriad
voiced " No," which might have rendered
war for ever impossible, there was no sign
whatever. Did he dream that even then,
nearly two years afterwards, he might
kindle in the streets of Dublin a fire which
would leap from city to city of Europe,
consuming capital, destroying war ?
We know that many Irish Nationalists,
though convinced of the broad justice of
the cause of the Allies, resented Redmond's
attempt to commit Ireland to the war when
her will was not known or her approval
asked. They were bitter because Ireland
had no more chance of declaring herself
than if she had been an English county.
They were the more bitter because for a
while Ireland seemed to acquiesce in this
negation of her nationhood. Irishmen
went forth to fight, moved by Belgium's
wrongs, driven by economic pressure, or
swayed by the simple warrior spirit, for-
68

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
getting, as it seemed, that Ireland was a
nation ; behaving as though they had been
Englishmen enlisted iii their own country's
own quarrel. Did Connolly, Socialist and
Nationalist, did Pearse, Nationalist and
Socialist, deliberately accept the doctrine
of sacrifice ? Did they believe that by
dying they might redeem the soul of
Ireland — that only through the shedding
of blood comes life ?
Or were they just caught on the current
of a river on which they had lightheartedly
launched, caught and swept irresistibly
forward to the point at which, for one
dreadful instant, they were poised on the
smooth lip of the crashing falls ? We can
understand how such a thing might happen.
Emotions renew themselves and gather
strength. Things felt in hours of excite
ment become settled convictions. Words
spoken lightly and lightly argued over
become a creed. The craving for consis
tency hurries the speaker on. The plain
necessity for making good the boast, the
dread of losing self-respect and all respect,
64

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
sweep men along until they do the thing
they never meant to do. Was that it ?
The motive of the 1916 insurrection re
mains obscure. The results, though con
fused, are discernible. Sinn Fein leaped
suddenly into the position of a great
national party, the only party which could
command the respect of Nationalist Ire
land. From that point on the progress
of Sinn Fein was simple and its success
assured. The older Nationalists of the
Parliamentary party were impotent. Their
elaborate machinery ceased to work. Their
organisation, spread like a restraining net
over every town and district in Ireland,
no longer restrained any one. It was not
that any single man nor any band of men
slashed at the net with violent knives,
destroying it dramatically and suddenly.
It was rather as if thousands of little
creatures everywhere bit through its cords
and knots ; or as if all the cords had
rotted unnoticed, so that when men moved
the net fell to pieces. The Church made
one or two tentative efforts to hold or cow
65 f

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
Sinn Fein. The results were scarcely so
much as noticeable. Mr. De Valera
stepped aside to argue ethical questions
with a bishop or two. He need scarcely
have troubled himself. Ireland had made
up its mind about the ethics of Sinn Fein.
The Church could suspend a curate, but
that was all. Sinn Fein, steadily professing
deep respect for spiritual authority, went
its own way. The Government proved
curiously helpless. It threatened and
hesitated to fulfil its threats. It im
prisoned men without accusing or trying
them and then let them out again still
unaccused and still untried. It talked
with tremendous emphasis about a German
plot, and then, though Ireland might
perhaps have disliked the presence of
such a monster in the country, produced
no evidence whatever that the beast
existed, not a nail from its claw, not a
tooth, not a hair, did not even point to a
footstep in the sand. Sinn Fein scoffed
openly, and Ireland laughed, a bitter
little laugh. Conscription was threatened,

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
was postponed, and the threat in the end
abandoned. That threat did all that was
still necessary to establish the power of
Sinn Fein in Ireland. The Church, grasping
at the chance of regaining even the appear
ance of leadership, ranged itself with Sinn
Fein. The Parliamentary party tried to out
do Sinn Fein itself in denunciation of con
scription — and failed. The country, really
anxious not to see its young men marched
off to France, recognised Sinn Fein as its
saviour and gladly gave the Sinn Feiners
their reward. A party which ten years
before had been unable to win an election
in North Leitrim obliterated its opponents
in almost every Nationalist constituency
in Ireland in 1918.
The present position of Sinn Fein is the
direct result of the union between National
ism and Labour which Connolly effected.
We are inevitably reminded of the
union between the agrarian agitators and
the politicians which gave Parnell his
power. The parallel is curiously exact.
Then, as now, a party of political idealists
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
gained the driving force of popular support
by adopting a policy of economic and
social change. Then, as now, the " New
Departure " deepened the cleavage between
Nationalist and Unionist Ireland. The
Tenants' League lost its hold on North-East
Ulster when the demand for fair rents
and fixity of tenure got mixed up with
the demand for Home Rule. The County
Antrim farmer, faced with a choice, pre
ferred his party to his class. Almost
the same thing has happened again. Jim
Larkin was a power in Belfast. The
northern Labour Party was prepared to
join hands with Labour in Dublin and
Cork. From the Labour-Sinn Fein alliance
Belfast stands coldly aloof. The Orange
labourer, who has shown himself able and
willing to revolt against his party leaders,
has not hitherto revolted against his party.
Labour in Nationalist Ireland has isolated
itself by its union with Sinn Fem. It
cannot command the sympathy of Belfast,
where Labour is stronger than anywhere
else in Ireland. English Labour looks
68

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
askance at it because of its politics. We
see again, a further parallel, the apparent
subordination of the social reformers to
the politicians. Parnell's supporters in
Parliament were all elected as Home
Rulers, not as tenants' representatives.
Irish Labour put forward no candidates
of its own in the 1918 election. It was
content in every constituency to elect a
Sinn Feiner.
As in the days of the Land League, so
now there is an outbreak of sporadic
crime. Now as then the political leaders
are held responsible by public opinion for
outrages which perhaps they dare not
denounce, which perhaps seem to them
merely part of the price which a nation
must pay for its freedom. It is always a
temptation to those whose eyes are fixed
on a great political change to excuse,
even while they deplore, crimes which
make the way of the opponents of change
difficult or dangerous.
It would be easy to trace this curious
parallel further and even to pursue it
69

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
from the present into the future, basing
a prophecy on experience. The alliance
between Home Rulers and agrarian re
formers in Parnell's time ended in a success
for the farmers, who secured their end,
and a failure for the politicians, who
gained nothing. May we expect a similar
result now ?
Any such prophecy would be hazardous.
In spite of the close resemblance between
the position in 1880 and the position to
day, there are certain differences which
alter the whole situation. The Land
League, the force of social revolution
which drove the engine of Parnell's political
car, was purely Irish. The revolt was
against the conditions of land tenure in
Ireland. There was no such agrarian
discontent in England or elsewhere. The
Irish farmers' agitation was as narrowly
national, as purely Irish, as the efforts of
the politicians. The Irish labourers to-day
are in a different position. They are in
revolt against the present organisation
of society, not only in Ireland but every-
70

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
where in Europe. Their discontent and
rebellion are not simply Irish, and no
change in the Constitution of Ireland
would by itself redress one of their griev
ances or alter the pressure of economic
law. An Irish republic might be, according
to the doctrine of the earlier Sinn Feiners
who adopted the economic ideas of List
would be, a " capitalist State." Sinn Fein
has looked for allies, outside Ireland, in
the Peace Conference at Paris, whose
members are nominees of capitalist Govern
ments, in the League of Nations, nations
organised on the capitalist method, and
among the prosperous bourgeoisie of the
United States. These are not natural
friends, they are scarcely possible allies
for the Labour Party. The members of
the Transport Workers' Union are more
likely to seek sympathy from the parties
of international Labour and to find them
selves of one spirit with those who regard
national boundaries and race divisions as
obstacles to the brotherhood of man.
Can two parties so fundamentally different
71

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
in outlook walk together long, as those
walk together who are agreed ?
The difficulty has been felt and a very
interesting attempt has been made to
meet it. Irish Labour has been asked to
look back to Gaelic civilisation and the
Gaelic State. There — and not in the
Socialist or Syndicalist State of the eco
nomic revolutionaries — is to be found a
type of social organisation which may
replace capitalism. In seeking an Irish
republic the Sinn Feiners are seeking the
opportunity of re-establishing the Gaelic
State and so winning for the workers the
good they crave, not by way of going
forward, but by going back to an age,
golden perhaps, certainly remote. Ireland
is a land of dreams, and no man can say
of any Irish dream that it is too unreal
to survive in the world of hard facts and
loud voices. But the primitive com
munism of the clan system seems very
distant. It must surely be easier to
struggle forward a little than slip back
as far as that. 72

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
In 1880 it was easy to draw a sharp
dividing line between Unionist Ulster
and the Nationalist Ireland of the south
and west. Differences of religious belief
and differences of racial tradition made the
task of politicians on each side simple.
The Catholic, half Celtic Nationalists stood
naturally apart from the Protestant, half
Scottish Unionists in spite of the fact that
the material interests of farmers in both
parts of the country were identical. But
the spirit of the Labour movement has
shown itself a powerful solvent of race
consciousness and creed consciousness. For
a while it may be possible — at present it
certainly is possible — for Labour to be
Nationalist in Dublin and Unionist in
Belfast. But will it be possible for long ?
The withdrawal of the Irish repre
sentatives from Westminster is a striking
and picturesque part of the Sinn Fein
policy, the one feature of the " Hun
garian " policy which the Sinn Feiners of
to-day have taken over from the original
party. It is possible to see in this deliber-
73

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
ate contempt for Parliament an expression
of the feeling which seems to be growing
among advanced members of the Labour
Party that Parliament is becoming im
potent and that it may be ignored. But
Sinn Fein is not contemptuous of parlia
ments. It denies the right of the British
Parliament to legislate for Ireland and its
claim on the loyal obedience of Irishmen
to its laws. An Irish Parliament, freely
elected under a Republican Constitution,
would be a different matter altogether.
Sinn Fein is troubled with no doubts about
the value of representative government.
It is still believed in Nationalist Ireland
that elected men are capable of expressing
in the form of legislation the wishes of the
electors. The ballot boxes are still re
garded as the means by which the people
enforce their will, and the assembling of
elected men as the way to democracy.
But this is exactly what thoughtful mem
bers of Labour parties everywhere are
beginning to doubt. To them parlia
ments already seem anachronisms. Re-
74

IRISH POLITICS— THE NEW PARTIES
presentative government has no more
" divine " right than kings were once
supposed to have. Parliaments may sur
vive for a while, as the Monarchy survives ;
but it is felt that the real seat of power
is elsewhere, in the committee-rooms of
trade unions perhaps, or in workmen's
councils. This doubt, half expressed, not
yet very widely realised, is as different as
possible from Sinn Fein's plain denial of
the right of one particular parliament to
legislate for one particular country.
Ireland, it seems, is like Rebecca when
the Lord heard her prayer and she con
ceived. " The children struggled within her . . .
and the Lord said unto her : Two nations
are within thy womb and two manner of
people shall be separated from thy bowels."
Ought we to listen further to the oracle ?
" And the one people shall be stronger
than the other people. And the elder shall
serve the younger."
'Is Irish Nationalism Esau, red and hairy,
who came out first ? Is Irish Labour
75

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
Jacob, whose hand took hold upon his
brother's heel ? Long afterwards, accord
ing to the ancient story, Esau cried with
a great and exceeding bitter cry and he
said : " Is he not rightly called Jacob
(the supplanter), for he hath supplanted me
these two times ? "

76

CHAPTER III
THE ISLAND OF SAINTS — IRELAND'S
RELIGION
The sentimental Catholic — Roman or
Anglican— looks at Ireland with friendly
eyes. It is for him the one country in
Western Europe which has preserved the
faith, in which simple piety is still a great
power in shaping life, in which all sweet
observances are honoured, in which men as
well as women still kneel before altars and
still pray. Till quite lately Russia shared
with Ireland the affections of the Catholic-
minded. But Russia fell suddenly from
grace, and now Ireland alone remains, the
single land which has escaped the blight
of materialism, where the hard sun of
secular thinking has not dried the glistening
77

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
dewdrops from the gossamer threads of
faith. They come to Ireland sometimes, these
Anglo-Catholic priests and new English
converts to the Roman Church. Oftener
they content themselves with a distant
view of our country and its people. Either
way they are satisfied. Their souls,
troubled with much thought and many
questionings, discover among us that fra
grance of simplicity, that garden scent
which they have sought in vain to create
for themselves by burning in closed rooms
the pastilles of sophisticated piety. They
delight to find that we hold unaffectedly
the faith which they have reached by much
effort, to which they cling desperately.
In this they are not unlike the neo-Pagans
of literary sympathies who see in Ireland
the last home of the old fairy lore, a land
in which forgotten deities of air and earth
and sea are still honoured at holy wells
and under thorn trees, still preside over
the mysteries of childbirth and control the
coming of the butter when women churn.
78

IRELAND'S RELIGION
It is strange that Ireland should be
recognised as a spiritual home both by
neo-Catholics and neo-Pagans, people alike
only in this, that sentiment is dearer to
them than logic. For Ireland— so the plain
man supposes — can scarcely be faithful
both to the magic of Druidism and the
Gospel of Christ ; cannot well pay equal
honour to Dana and the Virgin Mother.
Yet Ireland's lovers, these souls which
gather to us from foreign lands, are con
scious of no discord. The same admirer
will sometimes himself be both Catholic
and Pagan. He will watch the wayfarer
on an Irish road bare his head and make
swift signings ofthe Cross when the Angelus
sounds from a church bell. Tears of thank
fulness will be very near his eyes, and —
if he happens to know them— he will
murmur the lines of Seumas O'Sullivan :
" I cannot pray as Christians used to pray,
For I have seen Lord Angus in the woods."
Curiously enough — and this is but one
example among many of how little logic
has to do with life — there is much to be
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
said for both views of Ireland. We have
retained more of the paganism of our
remote ancestors than most peoples. And
we are, whatever Church we belong to,
definitely and strongly Christian. The
evidence of our paganism must be sought
for a little below the surface of our life
and will be found, perhaps, only by those
who search with sympathy. The evidence
of our Christianity is plain and un
mistakable. We are, for instance, a church-going
people. Attendance at Mass or matins is
not indeed a proof of deep spirituality,
but it is evidence that religion has a
certain grip upon our lives. A few years
ago people in England, with a taste for
statistics, used occasionally to work out
an amateur census of church-going, count
ing in some particular locality the number
of people who passed through the doors
of the churches on a Sunday. Such reckon
ings were never made in Ireland. The
figures would not be worth the trouble
required to get them. No one would
80

IRELAND'S RELIGION
think of counting the number of people
who wear hats out of doors ; though there
are a few persons who prefer to go bare
headed. An Irishman once took a young footman
over to London with him. On Sunday
morning, being careful about the spiritual
interests of his servant, he asked the man
if he wished to go to Mass, offering to tell
him how to reach the Brompton Oratory.
The footman was quite confident that he
could find the way himself.
" I'll just step into the street," he said,
" and then follow the crowd."
In Ireland the policy of following the
crowd on a Sunday morning would cer
tainly bring the stranger safely to a place
of worship of some sort ; throughout three-
fourths of Ireland to a church in which
Mass is duly said. So far it is plain that
we are a religious, even a very religious,
people. It is often said, by the envious, that
Irish Roman Catholics only go to church
because they are threatened with dreadful
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
penalties if they stay away ; and I sup
pose that there are punishments attached
to the neglect of public worship. In the
same way it is said, by way of reproach,
that Mahomet propagated his religion
by the sword. That is, apparently, true.
But before you can propagate a religion
by a sword you must get a sword, several
swords, and several people who believe
your religion to use the swords. So,
before you can enforce church attendance
by threats of punishment hereafter you
must have persuaded people of the reality
of the punishment and your power to
inflict it. The important thing is that in
Ireland most people believe that it will be
uncomfortable for them hereafter if they
do not go to church now. And that is a
religious belief, a kind of faith ; for faith
is the substance of things not seen, and
none of us have seen what goes on in that
other world where the punishments will
be inflicted and the prizes awarded.
But Christianity, as taught by the
Apostles and many others besides the
82

IRELAND'S RELIGION
Apostles, requires something more than
formal acts of worship on Sundays and
holy days of obligation. According to
some teachers, it requires of a man that he
should not eat meat on Fridays. According
to other teachers, a minority, it requires
that he should never drink wine at all, on
Friday or any other day. According to
almost all teachers, it requires that if he
marries a wife he shall keep him only
unto her so long as they both shall live.
Thus Christianity imposes certain rules of
conduct and insists that a man shall live
his life after a certain pattern. Here again
Ireland responds to the test very well.
We do not, any of us, succeed in repro
ducing perfectly the pattern recognised as
set for us. If we did, Ireland would certainly
deserve the title " Island of Saints," and
would probably be a very unpleasant place
to live in. But — whether more than other
men or not I do not know — we do recognise
supernatural rules of conduct. Religion
is in our lives a formative power, a really
effective force. In some matters we are
83 G 2

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
astonishingly successful in keeping the rules
we recognise as binding. Those of us who
think it wrong to eat meat on Fridays
very seldom do eat it, without special
permission from a bishop. Those who
think that Christ damned alcohol — making
perhaps a kind of lemonade at Cana in
Galilee — are actually strict teetotalers, and
will not let even a bishop absolve them
from their vows. There is so little adultery
in Ireland, and Divorce Court proceedings
are so rare, that we are fully entitled to
boast of the distinctive purity of our
people. Even when we fail to live up to the rules
laid down for us, we still admit that the
rules are binding and that our transgres
sions are perilous. Profane swearing, for
instance, is reckoned to be wrong by, I
think, all Christian teachers. No one,
not even the most enthusiastic lover of
Ireland, will maintain that no Irishman
ever says the word " Damn " in a casual
manner without considering its proper
meaning. But the Irishman, differing here
84

IRELAND'S RELIGION
from the Englishman or the Scot, knows
that he is doing wrong when he is betrayed
into a sudden curse. Being religious he
realises that he is running a serious risk.
A small farmer was greatly troubled one
spring by the sheep of a neighbour who
would not keep his fences in proper repair.
The creatures, with their lambs behind
them, pushed their way into a garden and
devastated a plantation of young cabbages.
They trespassed on a meadow of first crop
hay and dragged up the growing grass by
the roots. All day long, for many con
secutive days, the sufferer found himself
obliged to leave his work and spend
valuable time in chasing the sheep from
his land. He swore from time to time.
Perhaps even Job might have cursed some
thing besides the day of his birth if he had
been so tormented. One evening this
farmer confided his grief and trouble to
a friend. " God forgive me," he said, " I have my
soul nearly damned, cursing them sheep."
That was the thing which vexed him
85

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
most ; worse than the depredations of the
sheep, worse than the loss of time, was the
fact that in his anger he had imperilled
his immortal soul.
That man was perhaps exceptional —
what the Scottish Puritans of the eigh
teenth century would have called " a
tender professor." But for almost all
Irishmen sin is still simply and un
mistakably sin. Right and wrong do not
melt off into each other, changing from
white to black through indistinguishable
shades of grey. They are things apart,
between which there is no reconciliation.
We see sin as it appeared to men like
Bunyan. We do not attach any meaning
to the saying that to understand all is to
excuse all.
We accept our rules of life from
authority. We want to be told plainly
what is right and what is wrong. We
prefer a categorical " Do " or " Do not "
to a vague large statement of guiding
principle. Catholic and Protestant are
alike in this. We require an infallible
86

IRELAND'S RELIGION
guide, whether it be Church or Bible. We
detest the trouble of seeking out ways for
ourselves and the uncertainty which haunts
such search. In civil and political life we
are all of us rebels. The very fact that
a law is a law is inducement enough to
break it, and a policeman, in other societies
a protecting friend, is for us a public enemy.
In religion our spirit is not at all of this
kind. There we like authority. The
sterner it is the more we love it, and we
ask nothing better than rules for the
regulation of the minutest details of our
lives. Our unfailing recognition of the Divine
interest in common things witnesses to
our sincere belief that the spiritual and
material worlds are very near to each
other. " With the help of God," a man
says, " I'll start in at digging the potatoes
to-morrow." Or " It's the mercy of God
that the rain held off till I had the hay in
cocks." And the man who uses such
phrases means them and is not ashamed
to let it be seen that he means them.
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
We attach enormous importance to
religious observances. A maid seeking a
situation will inquire how far the house
of her employer is from the nearest church.
She wants to be sure that she can go to
Mass regularly, that she will not be kept
at home by the fear of a long walk in wet
weather. A gardener or groom will accept
lower wages for the sake of getting near a
church which his children can attend and
a school where he can be sure that they will
be taught their catechism.
Yet, and this at first sight seems an odd
thing, Ireland is very little interested
in religion. Conversion from one faith to
another is extremely rare ; which may be
a sign of great faithfulness and loyalty,
but is much more likely to be the result of
general apathy. If any one does venture
to step across the boundary line and pass
from one church to another he is, very
naturally, regarded as a renegade by the
members of the community which he has
left. But, what seems unnatural, he is
very coldly received by the church he has
88

IRELAND'S RELIGION
joined. No one in Ireland even pretends
to regard converts as sheep once lost now
happily brought safe to fold ; prodigals
for whose sake we should make merry
and be glad. On the contrary, the poor
convert, who has perhaps gone through
much spiritual suffering, is looked upon as
a thoroughly untrustworthy person. A
man, so we feel, who would desert his
church — even to join our own — might do
anything, rob a widow or burn down an
orphanage. We decline to see any merit
in spiritual questioning, whatever answer
comes to light.
There have, indeed, always been some
enthusiasts in whom a missionary spirit
existed, who dreamed of an Ireland turned
Protestant, or an Ireland purely Catholic ;
but the common sense of both communities
is against them, and their efforts have been
singularly barren of results. The churches
have stood for centuries in sullen oppo
sition. They have possessed, turn about,
wealth and political power. They have
denounced each other and anathematised
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
each other's creeds. They have not made
converts. Census after census shows the
proportion of Catholics and Protestants
substantially unchanged. Neither the
pressure of the Penal Laws in the eigh
teenth century nor the efforts of Pro
testant propagandists in the nineteenth
were effectual in bribing or luring the
Roman Catholics from their faith. Neither
the spiritual isolation which is their lot
in many parts of Ireland nor the harassing
sense that they are in some ways strangers
in their own land has shaken the devotion
ofthe Irish Protestant to his Protestantism.
We have attained a religious stability
which would be simply impossible in a
people deeply interested in religion.
Our dislike of conversion is illustrated
by the fact that we have always been un
willing to persecute. Ireland is singular
among European nations in possessing no
martyr roll. Smithfield fires were never
lit among us. Neither Protestant nor
Catholic cherishes bitter memories of a
St. Bartholomew's day. It would be
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IRELAND'S RELIGION
pleasant to think that Irishmen always
understood what the rest of Europe has
only lately grasped, that persecution is
contrary to the spirit of the Gospel. But
we can scarcely claim so high an honour.
Irish history is barren in stories of religious
martyrdoms. It is singularly rich in
stories of the execution and slaughter of
political heretics. The party in power has
always believed in the forcible suppression
of dangerous opinion. Governments have
not hesitated to hang and shoot those
whom they regarded as rebels. Rebels,
when for a brief period they held power,
have believed no less wholeheartedly in
strong measures. The fact that the lines
of political and religious division in Ireland
are generally identical has led to a con
fusion in the popular mind. Political
persecution has looked like religious per
secution. In reality, while men in Ireland
have died in thousands for their politics
they have not died for their faith. They
have not been called upon to die for faith.
We have never much wanted to kill each
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
other for the greater glory of God, though
we have always been ready to slay piti
lessly for the sake of the glory and freedom
of Ireland, or England, or the Empire.
The spirit of the religious persecutor is not
in us. We do not persecute, just as we do
not proselytise ; because though we be
lieve in a superiority of our own faiths,
and hold them tenaciously, we are at heart
of opinion that other people's faiths are
quite good enough for them.
In Ireland religion has been a creed —
several creeds — with a call for loyal faith.
It has been a rule of life demanding
obedience and self-sacrifice. It has not,
for many centuries, been a region for
spiritual adventure, an unknown ocean
across which the soul has gone voyaging.
Since Scotus Erigena Ireland has produced
no heretic, that is to say no spiritual or
intellectual adventurer. It cannot boast
of any great or even second-rate religious
leader. Our race has passed through a
thousand years of patient faith, and no
Saint Francis of Assisi has appeared
92

IRELAND'S RELIGION
among us, no Luther, no Pascal, no Wesley,
no Newman, no Tolstoi. When, occa
sionally, we recognise a modernist Tyrrell
or an Anglo-Catholic Dolling as an Irish
man we stare in mild wonder at him.
They are not of us and they went out
from us. The fruit of their souls' travail
was gathered by other peoples. We neither
wanted them nor understood them, nor
their work. Great spiritual tides have
ebbed and flowed across Christendom,
renaissances, reformations, counter re
formations, Protestant awakenings,
Catholic revivals, critical destructions,
Modernist syncretisms. From all of them
we have remained aloof, never touched,
never startled, unmoved by either love or
hate, uninspired. Ireland's religious life has
been like a pool, near the sea but very high
up among the rocks, to which the waves
do not come. Lower down are other pools
which lie quiet, unruffled until the first
waves of a flowing tide reach them, which
a little while after are filled with foam
and swirling water, whose clinging sea
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
plants are dragged and torn, whose limpets,
loosing their grasp on the firm rocks, suck
in fresh life from the invading ocean.
Hours pass, and the tide, still raging, draws
slowly back again, leaving the long weeds
in peace and the red anemones to open
their flowers to the sun shining through
the tepid water. The pool high up remains
untroubled and untouched, save by the
chance splashing on its surface of stray
drops of driven spray, too few, too rare
to re-create or to refresh. The pool is fed
by the oozings of the rainwater through the
clefts of shoreward rocks. The film of
slow stagnation forms and spreads across
the surface. The changing seasons bring
no change, the flowing tide no foam. There
is quietness, untroubled.
It was not always so. Once, for a brief
period, the soul of Christian Ireland was
responsive to the high call of spiritual
adventure. The mind of Ireland was
eager to explore and to discover. Ireland
created a Church of her own, neither
Western nor Eastern, a Church with its
94

IRELAND'S RELIGION
own ritual, its own government, its own
monasticism. In its cycle of church seasons
it was unique. Its hymns and psalm
singing, its tonsure, its architecture, were
all its own, unlike those of any other church.
Its monks were neither Benedictine nor
Basilian. Its hermits learnt their lessons
neither from Nitria nor Mount Athos.
It had its schools and scholars, its saints
whose names we still revere, though we
have long ceased to understand their lives.
It sent its missionaries abroad, apostles
of an evangel and a culture strange in the
lands to which they went. About its
creed and doctrines we can but guess,
knowing little except that it was neither
Catholic nor Protestant.
That Church, immeasurably rich in
spiritual promise, failed and disappeared,
leaving no trace behind it save a few
ruined buildings to be gaped at by anti
quaries and a bundle of manuscripts for
the inspection of scholars and artists.
Neither Catholic nor Protestant can claim
to be the legitimate descendant, the spiri-
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
tual offspring of that Irish Church. The
accidents of history, like incalculably falling
stones, blocked the path of its advance.
The chance ravenings of pirates checked
its development. Men who were not of
its spirit sat down in its high places. And
now a Church which might have changed
the face of Christendom is scarcely even
a memory, is no more than a thing of
interest for curious minds.
Is it fanciful to see in the failure of that
native Church the explanation of Ireland's
singular religious position to-day ? Are
we faced with a simple case of arrested
development ? So a flower, whose early
bud has been cropped by some passing
sheep, lives on, but tries to flower no more.
So a young fir tree, whose leading shoot is
broken, grows and spreads, but does not
grow to its full height and fails to attain
the lofty symmetry for the sake of which
it was planted. So we sometimes see a boy
give every promise of a brilliant future.
His mind is bright and eager. He advances
swiftly, till suddenly there comes a stop.
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IRELAND'S RELIGION
His body remains healthy and his muscles
sound ; but an inexplicable dulness settles
down upon his spirit. He is last instead
of first, and in after years, when others
have grown, he, in form a man, remains in
mind a child.
I once knew an Englishwoman, much
interested in religion, a devout member
of her national Church. We fell to talk
one day about the Church of Ireland, the
modern Church of Ireland, that rigid,
somewhat arid branch of the Anglican
communion to which I belong. She quoted
a verse from the Song of Solomon : " We
have a little sister and she hath no breasts.
What shall we do for our sister in the day
when she shall be spoken for ? " Perhaps
if she had known Ireland better than she
did, that lady might have widened the
application of her words and used them of
all our churches, of religion itself in this
island of saints, which for more than a
thousand years has produced no saint.
For it seems as if our religion, sincere and
simple as it is, lacks that " superb abund-
97 h

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
ance " of which Browning writes ; as if in
its austerity it were too virginal, so that
men, though faithful, have not loved it
passionately ; as if its babes were all bottle-
fed, cannot suck from their mother milk
which she has not to give, and so do not
grow lusty and strong as other babes,
who come in time to beat with chubby
fists the face of their mother in rough
rebellion, which she delights in though it
pains her because it is the evidence of
the fulness of life which they have drawn
from her.
The few among us who stand outside
our churches altogether, who view religion
with cool, dispassionate eyes, say that it
is well for us that we are as we are. To
them, as to Gibbon's philosopher, all
creeds are equally false, things of little
moment. But in the spirit of Gibbon's
statesman they hold that all churches are
equally useful, and see in our simple faith
and ready obedience a safeguard against
revolution and violent change. It is easy
to understand their position, even to
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IRELAND'S RELIGION
sympathise with their hope for continued
submission and stability. The great world,
the Europe east of our shores and the
America west of them, is once again, as
many times before, in the grip of great
ideas, is being spiritually ravished by
angels or devils, is God-possessed or demon-
ridden. Vast forces, incalculable, splendid,
terrible, rend and strive. The noise of the
conflict comes to us. The threat of it is
at our doors. Between us and many
strange perils stands our religion, on guard.
Perhaps we shall escape again, as we
escaped the formative tyranny of Roman
Law, the feudalism of Frankish chivalry,
the bursting spring of the Renaissance, the
inspired mutiny of the Reformation. Per
haps we shall remain alone, a little sister
with no breasts, unspoken for, secure in
our timid virginity. It is possible to hope
for such a continuation of our island
history. But it is possible also, it is surely per
missible also, to hope that from among us
will come some new Saint Brendan, who
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
for the sake of adventure, in expectation
of discovering at last the blessed islands,
will gladly leave security behind and
venture forth, divinely mad, across the
great ocean in his coracle.
Which, after all, is faith — the obstinate
muttering of old creeds in sheltered, sacred
places, or the conviction that somewhere
beyond the tossing perils there is God ?
For so many centuries we have been
patient and submissive, have believed
where others questioned, obeyed where
others rebelled, preserved our barren vir
ginity when others teemed with life. Is it
wrong to hope that at last there may come
from us, in time of need, the man who can
redeem the world ? He will be a heretic
of course ; but not a heretic after the old
fashion, challenging speculative dogmas
of theology. For the modern world there
is no new birth in the statements or the
contradictions or in the interpretations of
metaphysical truths about the Godhead
and humanity of the Saviour or His pre
sence here and there in rite and sacrament.
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IRELAND'S RELIGION
It seems that to-day men need not so much
assurance about a world to come as an
answer to the pressing riddle of the world
which now is, the key word which will
enable us to make sense out of the baffling
cryptogram of life. Perhaps, because in a
way we have been faithful to Him, some
Irishman may find that word among
those which the Master spoke. Such a one,
no doubt, will see suddenly illuminated an
old saying, long familiar, long disregarded,
and recognise in it the Gospel which we
want : " Blessed are ye poor." If he saw
that and believed it he would be a heretic
indeed. Churches timidly convinced of
the need for possessing would cast him out
straightway. A world, ravenous for wealth,
would laugh at him angrily. But he would
know. After a while some, trembling,
would begin to doubt. Then doubting and
fearing, would believe. Then, in the end,
know.

101

CHAPTER IV
AND SCHOLARS — IRELAND'S CULTURE

Ireland once possessed a culture of her
own. This is an article of faith and we cling
to it with affectionate fervour. It is,
perhaps, the only belief that is common to
all of us. Differing about everything else in
heaven or earth we agree in looking back
with pride to a great past.
There is something very pathetic in this
pride in ancient glory. I had a friend once,
a very old man, who was an inmate of a
workhouse. His plight was miserable
enough and he was lonely. But he re
tained a certain pride and self-respect.
He was not without a comfort which sus
tained him. He used to talk to me about
the old greatness of the family to which he
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IRELAND'S CULTURE
belonged, of which he was one of the last
survivors. He told me of the high place
his people occupied in the county, of
the grand houses they lived in, of how they
dined with noblemen, rode out to the
hunt on fine horses — the thought of that
prancing pleased him most of all, I think —
and sat as magistrates judging the affairs
of lesser men. In reality, so far as I ever
could discover, his family was not so great
as he supposed and had never been rich.
Its glory had grown in his mind and he
loved a vision of the past which was part
imaginary. In much the same way Ireland
goes back to her past for comfort and
pride. " Century following century, still at the heels of
the nations,
Poor, divided, derided, the witmark and sport of
the dull."
We have little enough now, have had little
enough for a long time, of which to be
proud. No wonder we claim the right to
look far back to a golden age and say
" Then, at least, we were great."
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
But Ireland is better justified in her
consoling faith than my old friend was in
his. Careful search into the dubious and
confusing records of the past does show
that we were possessed at least of the
beginnings of a great culture. It was our
own, as native as our Church. We were
teachers then, not learners in foreign
schools. In the advance of Europe towards
civilisation we were leaders, and the other
nations, scarcely nations then, were far
behind us. We had a literature, schools of
poetry and cycles of heroic legends. We
had a legal system which owed nothing to
Roman jurisprudence. We had music, and
art which in certain directions was already
so highly developed that its accomplish
ments have not since been surpassed.
Though originally we were no builders we
developed an architecture of our own. We
honoured scholarship. We were not afraid
of science.
It seemed for a short time as if the hope
of Europe lay in Ireland. Everywhere
else, from the seventh to the tenth century,
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IRELAND'S CULTURE
the darkness of the dark ages hung, un-
penetrated by any gleam of light, or
promise of dawn. In Ireland the day was
breaking. Everywhere else there were
ignorance, confusion, indifference to beauty,
no care for learning or for spiritual things.
Ireland alone was awake, her feet on the
way of civilisation along which she marched
with steps which seemed swift and sure.
If there had been in the world then a
philosopher with wide and detached mind,
one who saw and understood, he would
surely have foretold a great destiny for
Ireland. All the signs showed that we
were fit to lead, that our culture, the only
vital culture then, would impose itself
upon Western Christendom.
No such thing happened. In Europe
outside Ireland, our culture had so little
effect that the marks of it can only be
discerned to-day by the peering eyes of
antiquaries. For law Europe went back
to Rome and took nothing from our
Brehon system. Neither European art
nor architecture owes anything to us.
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
The literatures of England, France, and
Italy grew, but not from seeds of our
planting. Our tradition of scholarship
perished and no modern university traces
its descent from our schools. In Ireland
itself the promise failed and the advance
was stayed. There are among our fields
chapels and towers, ruins. There are
exquisitely illuminated manuscripts in
glass cases in our libraries. There are
collections of Irish airs into which musicians
of to-day dig for materials, trying not to
vulgarise what they take. There are
scholarly studies of our old literature and
our old laws. There are feverish attempts
at revival. But the old culture has not
lived and does not live.
The story of this native culture is very
like that of the native Church, a story
of arrested development. But at a certain
point the stories diverge. Religion sur
vived. It was flattened out to a dull
monotony, but it survived because we
were willing to accept from outside, from
Rome and Canterbury and Geneva, alien
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IRELAND'S CULTURE
order, discipline, and theology. But Ireland
never accepted any other culture. Her
own disappeared. No other took its place.
Our art vanished first, and next our
architecture, itself a later development.
And the artistic inspiration which failed
earliest failed most completely. Now and
then in later times Irishmen have been
minor artists. The work of our eighteenth
century silversmiths was admirable. The
Dublin cabinet-makers of the same period
were artists. So were the makers of
Waterford glass. And these arts were
recognisably Irish. They had a national
spirit. But we look in vain for the smallest
trace of inspiration from ancient Irish art.
These men were in no sense the spiritual
descendants of the makers of the Cross of
Cong or the scribes of the Book of Kells.
How could they be ? They worked for an
aristocracy which had no knowledge of
ancient Ireland, which was indeed genu
inely, even passionately, Irish, but too
newly Irish to have any tradition of the
great past. 107

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
The same story is to tell of our archi
tects. We built our Georgian houses
and some of our Dublin public buildings
in a style which was spacious, dignified,
and beautiful ; a style to which we gave a
national distinction. But there is not the
smallest trace in this architecture of any
Celtic feeling. That was so utterly lost
that when we began to build again in the
latter part of the nineteenth century we
were wholly unconscious of any native
tradition. We wandered helplessly among
the misleading byways of pseudo-
Puginesque pseudo-Gothic, piling together
churches as lamentable as the peasant
dwellings built by the Congested Districts
Board. The twentieth century opened with a
desire to recover our Irish artistic tra
dition. Unfortunately the impulse was
patriotic rather than artistic. We dis
covered the Book of Kells and rejoiced,
not so much because we felt the beauty of
the old work as because we had hit upon
a work admittedly good of which we could
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IRELAND'S CULTURE
boast that it was Irish. We began to copy
and imitate it without feeling. We illu
minated capital letters and twisted lines
into mazy knots and believed that we were
being Irish. Our ancient illuminating
became popular, and since in Ireland we
are inordinately fond of presenting each
other with congratulatory addresses, we
succeeded rapidly in vulgarising the art
of our old manuscripts ; so that now we
cannot even say good-bye to a retiring
police sergeant without paying some un
fortunate draughtsman to make facile
copies of great D's and T's from the Book
of Kells.
We awakened to the existence of the
Irish stone cross, a thing of grace and
dignity. Immediately every village stone
mason became busy filling our graveyards
with crosses which may be Irish but are
certainly neither dignified nor graceful.
Essays were written and lectures given
about interlacing lines and spirals of old
Irish ornament. Straightway the card
board boxes which contain our scented
109

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
soap were decked with spirals and displayed
aimlessly meandering ribbons of green
paint. No doubt it is right to sacrifice anything,
even art, on the altar of patriotism. But
we ought to be clear about what we are
doing. By imitating what we do not
understand we are vulgarising ancient
beauties. By reproducing, with the most
admirable motives but without feeling,
the work of artists we are guilty of the
sin of procreating without passion. It is
with actual relief that we turn from the
crudely imitated Gaelicism which has over
whelmed us to an industry like that of the
makers of Belleek cups and saucers who
are content to follow the designs which
delighted middle-class women in 1860.
We may be thankful that it has not hitherto
occurred to any one to weave Balbriggan
stockings or make bicycles of Celtic design.
The truth — surely obvious enough — is
that we cannot again become artists like
the ancient Irish by copying the things
they did. Since the tradition of their art
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IRELAND'S CULTURE
has failed, there is no way for us to get
back their spirit except by patient and
reverent study of their work. In some
arts, in the making of stained glass and in
embroidery — partly because stained glass
and fine needlework cannot be popular —
we have succeeded in feeling again the old
inspiration, and it is possible to discern the
beginnings of a national art.
In the failure of our ancient culture art
disappeared first. Literature survived
longest. External causes, harryings by
pirates and invasions of conquerors,
affected the poet less than the artist. It
does not indeed seem necessary that even
conquest should destroy literature, though
the intrusion of an alien aristocracy must
degrade the bard in a society where the
chieftain is the natural patron and pro
tector of the poet. Yet Irish literature and
to some extent Irish scholarship survived
the Anglo-Norman invasion, and there was
actually a poetical revival at the time of
the Elizabethan conquests. Irish poets
continued to write Jacobite songs and
ill

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
social or political satires far on into the
eighteenth century.
There was perhaps in Irish poetry itself,
even during its best periods, the canker
which would ultimately have destroyed
it, even had there been no conquests and
no aliens. The art of the poet very early
became highly elaborated. It consented
to be bound by rules, too strict for life.
Its forms were complicated and con
ventionalised. Irish poetry seems to have
been doomed to death in any event through
mere lack of freedom for development.
But what actually destroyed it was the
disappearance of the language in which it
expressed itself. Irish literature of the
old tradition became impossible when no
one except a few uneducated peasants
spoke the Irish language.
Some day, we may hope, the history of
the Irish poets will be written. It will
begin with the days when the poets held
high office in the courts of kings, when
honour and power were theirs beyond the
honour and power given to poets among
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IRELAND'S CULTURE
other peoples. The story will go on to tell
of poets the heirs of a great tradition, the
conservers of an ancient and peculiar art,
moving as guests among the houses of
chieftains. It will tell of the anxieties
and plottings of these chieftains, despe
rately pressed by the advance of a new
civilisation, yet giving attention to the
songs of the poets and paying for art in
honour readily conceded and gold given
from scanty stores. We shall read of
poets, later, in the camps of soldiers who
were fighting their last fight with little
hope of victory ; later still of poets wander
ing from one to another of the impoverished
homes of powerless and dispossessed gentry,
finding scanty rewards and small en
couragement among men whose spirit was
broken by defeat, whose hearts responded
best to very mournful songs :
" Sean O'Dwyer na Gleanna,
We're worsted in the game."
And after that we shall hear of poets by
the firesides of the peasants' cottages, men
embittered, making not poems but satires,
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
libels, witty or merely scurrilous, on the
ways of the new aristocracy which had
forgotten the ancient laws of hospitality
and the honour due to the men of art.
This is the last stage in the melancholy
story of the Irish poets who are gone, who
have left no descendants, whose art,
cherished and polished to conventionalised
perfection, has died.
It will not live again, for no inspiration
has come from these old poets. The poets
of our time are not their descendants.
Mangan made a few beautiful adaptations
of Irish poets. There has been a small
number of good translations. But these
have had little influence on our modern
poetry. No one has attempted to revive
the old complicated prosody. No one has
imitated the rhyme system. No one has
captured — perhaps no one has attempted
to capture — the singularly elusive literary
flavour of the old Gaelic verse.
It has been different with another part
of the literary heritage of Ireland. The
cycles of heroic legend, Homeric in their
114

IRELAND'S CULTURE
primitive diffuseness, have captured the
imaginations of many modern Irishmen
and have been a source of genuine inspira
tion. Sir Samuel Ferguson, himself a real
poet, discovered for us the literary value
of our old legends. But Sir Samuel lived
a little too soon. Ireland, absorbed and
excited by the politics of the third quarter
of the nineteenth century, was in no mood
to appreciate poetry. The country was too
fiercely interested in its own Fenians to
have any emotion to spare for the Fianna —
the militia of an earlier Ireland. Sir
Samuel appealed only to the few who
cared to dream about the past. Among
them was a man to whom Ireland owes
much in many ways, but chiefly this, that
he so dealt with our ancient legends as to
give them a place in the conscious mind
of modern Ireland. This was Standish
O'Grady. Those of us who remember the begin
nings of our brief period of literary flower
ing realise how much the discovery of the
old stories did in awakening the poetic
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
soul among us. The works of Mr. Yeats
are alone proof enough that modern Irish
literature was in the line of direct descent
from ancient Ireland. It seemed for a
moment as if Ireland were to have a dis
tinctive culture of her own again, were
about to develop once more a kind of
literature, perhaps afterwards a kind of
art, peculiarly Irish. The stirring of a
literary spirit in the country came at a
moment of political dullness. The passion
ate struggles of the Parnell period had
subsided into spasmodic personal bicker
ings. The passion of Sinn Fein had not yet
possessed us. There was a chance for the
gentler voices of poets and playwrights to
be heard.
But somehow the literary spirit missed
its way. Intensely national and believing
that nationality was the law of its being,
it failed. Modern Ireland, which never
really cared for literature or art, turned
again with relief to worship at the altars
of patriotism and to follow the ritual of
the priests of politics. 116

IRELAND'S CULTURE
" John Eglinton," the most suggestive
of Irish prose writers, has an interesting
theory that modern literature cannot
flourish in small nations. It is, he thinks,
wholly different from the literature of the
classical world in that it is not an affair
of oracles but of temperament. It may
be that he is right in thus explaining the
failure of our literary revival. For our
critics, those who understood or professed
to understand what our poets and drama
tists were doing, held firmly to the faith
that great literature is the work of small
nations. They constantly appealed to the
example of Athens with a confidence only
possible to men who did not read Greek.
If they were wrong, then "John Eglinton's "
analysis of the difference between classical
and modern literature may very well
contain the explanation of the decline of
our new poetry and drama.
But a much simpler explanation sug
gests itself. Ireland, in spite of its spring
time of promise, has failed to create a
national kind of literature because Ireland
117

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
does not want literature of any kind,
national or other. Men do not write
for Ireland because Ireland does not read.
I once heard a discussion conducted by
literary men in Dublin in which this
question was set : " Why have the books of
our literary revival no general circulation
outside Dublin ? " The talk meandered
on, as talk does on such occasions, among
such people. At last some one boldly
amended the original question and asked :
" Why have no books — those of our literary
revival or others — any general circulation
outside Dublin or inside it ? " He gave
an answer to his own question : " Because
every Irishman would rather have a race
horse than a library."
Irishmen dislike ideas, being, indeed, a
little afraid of them. Nothing is secure in
a country if ideas once get loose in it.
Not even churches and parties are really
safe. And, unfortunately, it is impossible
to have literature without ideas of some
kind. They are the food on which litera
ture lives. 118

IRELAND'S CULTURE
Irishmen also dislike erratic person
alities. We prefer men who are true to
type. We recognise without resentment
the existence of various types and we are
on the whole fairly tolerant. In Ireland
a man may be a Protestant or a Catholic,
a Nationalist or a Unionist, without suffer
ing any serious inconvenience. He may
choose his fold, but he must be a sheep.
We do not like wild animals. And, un
fortunately, the man of letters is usually,
the man of genius always, an eccentric
creature who cannot be kept in an en
closure. He insists on looking at things
from odd angles and seeing them not at all
as other people see them. He keeps on
describing things and drawing pictures of
them, not as we know they are, nice and
clear and flat, but as they appear to him
through distorted glasses of his absurd
temperament, all messed up with each
other. We do not want people of that
kind among us. It is far better for them
to go away somewhere else, to London
or to New York ; which, indeed, is what
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
such Irishmen generally do. That is one
of the reasons why we do not have and
cannot get an Irish literature.
Also— this is a brutal truth — literature
like everything else must be paid for.
The ancient kings and tribal chieftains
had their bards because they paid for
them with gifts of silver cups and such
things, which the bard, after chanting his
ode, thrust into his bosom, bowing low,
even adding, perhaps, a supplementary
stanza in praise of his patron if the cup
were a large one. Kings and chieftains
paid their fools with nice warm suits of
motley. Else the fools would have gone
out to dig in fields or herd swine, and the
supply of quips would have failed. But
Ireland to-day will not pay either bards or
fools. Homer, according to the ancient
epigram, begged his bread through twelve
fair cities of Greece. Apparently he got
bread enough that way. In Ireland the
literary man would scarcely fare so well
though he posed as a mendicant in Dublin,
Belfast, Limerick, Cork, and eight other
120

IRELAND'S CULTURE
fair cities. This is not because Ireland's
spirit is niggardly or because we dislike
paying for what we want. We pay —
heavily — for our politics and we do not
grudge the money. We pay — still more
heavily — for our churches and we do not
grumble. We pay — most heavily of all —
for our horse races and rejoice in the
expenditure. We want politics and churches
and horse races. We do not want books.
Why on earth should we buy them ?
But the writers of books — bards or fools
— cannot write books unless they are paid.
This is a sordid fact. To state it is to
degrade literature and to insult art. But
the fact remains. In order to write a man
must have paper, ink, and at least one pen.
In order to go on writing he must have
some food, and, for the sake of public
decency, a pair of trousers. If no one
will buy his books he cannot himself buy
paper, pens, ink, potatoes, or trousers.
He must either take to some other trade
or go away to a place where people do
buy books. 121

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
When we have finished all our dis
sertations about great literatures among
small peoples and exercised our active
minds over race cultures and national
arts, we come up against these blank,
material facts. Men get the thing they
want by paying for it, and if they don't
want a thing all the talk in the world will
not induce them to pay for it. Denmark
wants books, and the Dane will go so far
as to pay an English author for the right
to translate his works. Holland wants
books, and the editor of a Dutch paper
will pay to be allowed to publish day by
day a translation of an English novel.
Ireland — the island of saints and scholars
— does not want books and does not get
them.

122

CHAPTER V
EDUCATION — PRIMARY, INTERMEDIATE,
UNIVERSITY
I. " The object of the system of National
Education is to afford combined literary
and moral and separate religious instruc
tion to children of all persuasions, as far
as possible in the same school."
That is the statement of the Com
missioners of National Education in Ire
land. They and their predecessors have
been making it for more than three-quarters
of a century. They are still making it,
so far as I know without a sigh or a blush.
Yet no body of men has ever more com
pletely failed in achieving their object.
The idea of combined literary and moral
education in the same school is actually
further from realisation to-day than it was
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
in 1831. It can scarcely be supposed
that even the least practical of our Com
missioners has the smallest hope now of
being able to achieve the avowed object
of the system.
Yet it was an object worth working for.
If the thing could have been done, there
might have grown up among Irishmen
that sense of common citizenship which is
one of the most valuable possessions of
any nation, which Ireland painfully lacks.
The ideal of the Commissioners was admir
able. The actual working out of their
system has been a flat negation of the
ideal. The children of different religious
persuasions are separated in their earliest
years and rigorously kept apart. They
are not deliberately taught, but by the
working of the system they are educated
to regard themselves as members of
irreconcilable parties whose lot in life it
is to distrust and fear each other.
Life itself, that wider experience which
follows the school years, modifies the result
of the education. It becomes plain by
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EDUCATION
degrees that Irishmen of different religions
have some common interests. The influ
ence of the home, even during school
years, mitigates the education of the
school. Parents have generally a good deal
of common sense, and children will play
together even if they may not work
together. But the result of our system of
separate literary and moral instruction for
children of all persuasions as far as possible
in different schools has had a disastrous
effect upon us.
The Commissioners of National Educa
tion are not to be blamed. Their insistence
in proclaiming their object, even to-day
when such proclamations are pathetic,
is evidence of a certain faithfulness to
principle. It even seems that for some
time they actually tried to achieve their
object, though they have given up trying
now. They were beaten by the only
other people in Ireland who took the
smallest interest in primary education,
the clergy of the various churches. The
clergy were quite clear about it that com-
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
bined moral and literary instruction is
dangerous to faith.
The clergy became managers of most of
the schools in the country, quickly elbow
ing out the layman, who at first undertook
this work in many places. As managers
their power in the schools is very nearly
absolute. They appoint the teachers,
though they cannot appoint any one
whose qualifications are not recognised by
the Commissioners. Until quite lately
they had the right of dismissing teachers,
at their own will, with or without giving
reasons for their action. The teachers'
claims for salary must be signed by the
manager. Until lately the salary was sent
to the manager and by him handed to the
teacher. The manager must sign the pro
gramme of daily work, which cannot be
arranged by the teacher, the inspector, or
the Commissioners without the manager's
approval. The manager selects the books
to be used in the school, every one of which
must be submitted to him. In return for
these powers the manager submits to the
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EDUCATION
heckling of the Commissioners, who reserve
to themselves the right of asking questions
about unimportant matters and demanding
statistics for which the manager is re
sponsible, though the work of collecting
them is done by the teacher.
In this way the clergy in Ireland secured
control of primary education and were
able to guard the faith of the children.
Faith, such is the belief of our clergy, is a
plant of tender growth which requires
shelter from the faintest breath of fresh
air. The clergy may be perfectly right.
They are experts in faith and we ought to
accept their opinion.
It is just possible that the multiplication
table may be taught without religious bias.
Nothing else can. Writing, for instance, is
taught by means of copy-books, and the
headlines of copy-books might easily be
used as insidious poisons. In order to learn
to read a child must have a book to read
from, and once the " It-is-an-ox " stage is
passed the reading-book may be the means
of conveying most undesirable ideas to the
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
young mind. Even if the Commissioners of
Education, toiling painfully, had succeeded
in sterilising all the copy-books and all the
reading-books, the clergy would not have
been satisfied. They want, quite properly
from their point of view, the school books
to bear their part in building up the moral
character of the child. They want some
thing positive, a distinct colour and flavour,
in the instruments of education. And
above all they want atmosphere. It is
impossible to imagine a school without
atmosphere, Catholic, Protestant, Secu
larist, Socialist, or what Mr. Wells calls
" Bladesover " ; and if one atmosphere is,
as the clergy believe, wholesome, any
other is likely to be more or less injurious.
The clergy carried their point against
the Commissioners. The original " object "
disappeared, and Irish primary education
became an affair of strictly denominational
schools. Tne clergy, as managers, ap
pointed teachers whom they could trust,
chose books which they regarded as safe,
and created the atmosphere they wanted.
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EDUCATION
The last point gained was the right to
teach history. For a long time the Com
missioners held out, refusing to allow his
tory of any sort to be taught in Irish
schools. Now history is taught ; but it is
the managers, that is to say the clergy,
who decide what the history is to be. The
result is a reductio ad absurdum of the
position of the Commissioners. An in
spector, highly qualified and appointed to
keep the Commissioners informed of the
progress of education, visits a school in
the course of the morning. He discovers
that the children know all about King
William's battle at the Boyne and
thoroughly understand that the victory
won there was the foundation of the civil
and religious liberty of Ireland. He reports
that the teaching of history in this school
is very good. In the afternoon he visits
another school and discovers that the
children there know all about the battle of
the Boyne, thoroughly understanding that
the unfortunate defeat of King James
riveted the chains of the oppressor on the
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
limbs of Ireland and commenced an era of
savage persecution. He reports that the
teaching of history in this school is very
good. The Commissioners read the reports
with gratification and pay the salaries of
both the teachers.
For a long time everybody in Ireland
was entirely satisfied with this system.
It seemed natural and proper that the
Commissioners — who had access to the
coffers of the Treasury — should pay the
piper, and that the clergy, whom no one
wants to quarrel with, should call the tune.
While Parliament wrangled session after
session over English primary education,
passing and throwing out Bills of be
wildering variety, Irish primary education
remained unnoticed. Children did learn
to read, more or less, to the great advan
tage of local newspaper proprietors. Faith
remained unshaken. Commissioners were
nominated by the Lord Lieutenant, who
acted in accordance with the wishes of the
heads of the various churches. Teachers
were appointed, and dismissed, by the
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EDUCATION
clerical managers. There was no education
rate to be paid, and so nobody, except the
clergy, cared what happened in the schools.
Neither the parents of the children nor the
people generally had the smallest control
over education, nor did they wish to have
any control.
The Commissioners, once they under
stood that their original object was un
obtainable, set to work to make the best
of existing circumstances. They realised,
far sooner than any one else in Ireland, that
the system of formal examinations and
result fees wTas incurably bad. They
established instead a system of inspection
which is gradually coming to be a fair test
of the efficiency of schools. They under
stood, and they were the first people in
Ireland to understand, that teaching in its
narrowest sense, the conveying of informa
tion to the minds of children, is not
education. They set to work to educate.
It was an extraordinarily difficult business.
The existing teachers, many of them men
of long experience of the old system of
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formal grinding, found it very hard to
understand what the Commissioners
wanted and almost impossible to change
their methods. The inspectors were, at
first, hardly more adaptable. The Com
missioners themselves, in their enthusiasm
for new ideas, allowed themselves to be led
away by faddists. A whole school might
be seen solemnly making little boats out of
pink paper or twisting scraps of wire into
grotesque shapes. Even Irish parents,
usually quite apathetic about what hap
pened in school, became uneasy. The
managers were stolidly indifferent, neither
blessing nor cursing the new methods. For
a time something like chaos prevailed in
the schools. The old idea that the teacher's
business was to hammer the table of weights
and measures into the children's heads
was discredited. It was not easy to grasp
the fact that children ought to be able
to weigh things with actual scales. Time
and a certain mental alertness were re
quired to realise that geography is not
taught by making a child say over and
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EDUCATION
over again that Constantinople is the
capital of Turkey. The new insistence on
such things as physical drill and singing,
once regarded as fancy subjects, was
bewildering. The Commissioners persevered, learning
as they went, and confusion is now settling
down into order which gives hope for the
future. The difficulties in the way of
creating a satisfactory system of primary
education are still enormous. Our schools
are still starved and ill equipped. Our
teachers are still underpaid. The people,
deprived of any control over the schools,
are still uninterested in the education of
their children and still unaware that they
ought to be interested. But it may fairly
be said that the Commissioners, in spite of
much ridicule and almost ceaseless abuse,
have very greatly improved our primary
schools. Meanwhile the torpor which kept the
whole question of National Education in
a condition of placid stability has been
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
The teachers discovered that they were
insufficiently paid — which was quite true —
and that their status was singularly un
satisfactory — which was disgracefully true.
The agitation for better pay could be and
was carried out vigorously and openly.
The Commissioners were the paymasters
and nobody was in the least afraid of
attacking them. They had no friends.
The teachers formed a union, following the
example of men of other trades ; but they
were not conspicuously successful in
uniting. They, like the children, were
the product of our system of educational
separation, and it was not easy for men
who had come to regard themselves as
officers in hostile armies to join for any
purpose, even to secure better pay. They
did, however, manage to put such pressure
on the Commissioners, and through them
on the Treasury, that salaries have been
somewhat improved. The other question,
the status of the teachers, was much more
difficult to tackle. It was plainly unsatis
factory that the teacher should be liable
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EDUCATION
to dismissal by the school manager;
especially when dismissal meant, in most
cases, that no other appointment could be
secured. The managers held the power of
appointment as well as dismissal, and no
sane manager would appoint a teacher
who had proved unsatisfactory, for any
reason, to another manager. But attacking
this iniquity meant battering a corner ofthe
fortress known as the managerial system,
in other words an assault on the powers
and privileges of the clergy. The Pro
testant teachers scarcely dared, the Roman
Catholic teachers did not dare, to make
the assault openly. Nevertheless certain
changes were made. The power of dismissal
is no longer quite absolute, and the teacher
has some security so long as he does his
work efficiently.
The Irish public was very little inter
ested in these disputes. Our politicians
were even less interested. It was extremely
difficult to induce any one to examine the
grievances of the teachers, still more
difficult to get them remedied. Yet, from
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
the point of view of a statesman, the
position was and still is very serious. We
have in our National School teachers a body
of men and women better educated than
most of those around them and therefore
possessed of considerable influence. They
are in every town and country district,
intermarrying with the people among whom
they live, closely associated with the life
of the locality. They are, apart from the
actual instruction they convey, engaged in
forming the minds of the rising generation.
When men and women in such a position
are underpaid, insecure, and goaded into a
condition of profound discontent, they
are likely to become active agents of
revolution, none the less powerful because
they cannot act openly. It is impossible
to estimate, though it is interesting to
guess, how far the present condition of
Ireland is due to the influence of the
National School teachers. If we had been
governed by statesmen instead of poli
ticians during the last twenty-five years,
the teachers would long ago have been
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EDUCATION
treated with generosity and respect.
Justice demanded that men engaged in an
enormously important work should be
properly paid and placed in an honour
able position. Even if justice counts for
nothing, mere enlightened self-interest
should have led our Governments to remedy
the teachers' grievances before they were
forced to do so by threats of strikes.
The next attempt to alter our system
of primary education came from Belfast.
It is radical, but, so far, purely local.
Belfast has demanded power to levy an
education rate for the support and im
provement of its schools, and asks also
some right of control over the schools,
the necessary consequence of a rate. Here
we come on one of those odd paradoxes
which perplex the foreign student of Irish
affairs. Belfast is sternly and unalterably
Unionist in political faith, quite convinced
that Irishmen cannot manage their own
affairs and ought not to be allowed to try.
Yet in this most important and most
difficult of all affairs, the education of
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
children, Belfast demands Home Rule,
self-determination, independence and de
mocratic control. The rest of Ireland is
clamouring for independence and self-
determination in every other matter, but
sternly refuses to manage its own education,
preferring to leave that in the hands of a
Board and of a single class over which the
people have no control whatever. And
Nationalist Ireland not only declines to
claim educational independence for itself;
it is fully determined that Belfast shall not
have it either. In the matter of education
the Unionist says : "I want Home Rule
and mean to have it." The Home Ruler
replies : " I won't have Home Rule at
any price, and I won't let you have it if
I can help it."
The paradox jingles pleasantly and sug
gests the reflection that all Irishmen are
mad. In reality we are not nearly so mad
as we seem, even in this matter of educa
tion. The northern Unionist politician
sees in a demand for an education rate
and the consequent popular control of the
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EDUCATION
schools a means of making Home Rule
more difficult than it is at present. If he
can establish in Belfast, afterwards in
County Antrim and County Down, an
educational system very like that of Eng
land and utterly different from that of the
rest of Ireland, he will have placed a
fresh obstacle in the way of the establish
ment of an Irish Government. The
Nationalist sees in the suggested reform an
attempt to precipitate the struggle, ulti
mately inevitable, between the Church
and the people for the control of education.
To begin the fight now is to drag a red
herring right across the course ofthe hounds
in full cry after national independence.
Ireland would be divided, most incon
veniently, along totally new lines and
committed to a battle between clericals
and anti-clericals. Home Rule, Colonial
self-government, and even the idea of an
Irish Republic might very easily drop into
the background during a contest which
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
Meanwhile the educational reformers in
Belfast, much more interested in schools
than parliaments, have what seems to be
a very good case. Their teachers are ill
paid. Their schools are insufficient and
ill equipped. They wish to remedy these
evils and the remedy will cost money.
Instead of petitioning the Treasury for
fresh grants from the national exchequer,
they propose to meet the bill themselves
by a local rate. All they ask is permission
to spend Belfast money on Belfast children.
The thing sounds reasonable. It would be
plainly right, if it were not that the
children have souls as well as minds and
bodies and if it were not established beyond
dispute, in Ireland, that only the clergy
can be trusted to look after souls.
II. The State did not begin to take an
interest in Irish intermediate education
till 1878, nearly half a century after it
established its system of primary schools.
It had, perhaps, learned something during
those forty-seven years, for it started the
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EDUCATION
Board of Intermediate Education without
any flourish of trumpets about "united
moral and literary instruction." The new
Board was extremely modest. It claimed
no kind of control over intermediate
schools, insisted on no kind of quali
fications of the teachers employed, left
every one as free as air in the matter of
accommodation for the children, arrange
ments for holidays, hours of work and
equipment. It professed at first to be
nothing more than an examining body
which prescribed courses of study and paid
result fees.
The result fees were generous, which
led to one good result. Intermediate
education in Ireland became extremely
cheap, so cheap that a clever child could
be educated at a school without any ex
pense to the parents. Schoolmasters actu
ally competed for children likely to earn
good result fees. This cheapness was
probably the only good result of the early
system of intermediate examinations.
The very idea of education perished in
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
most Irish schools, which became cram
ming establishments of the worst possible
kind. There was open and shameless com
petition for places in the lists of successful
candidates which were published and
summarised by the newspapers. There
was actually a kind of " religious " com
petition, three passes and a scholarship
in mathematics won by the pupils of a
Protestant school in the north being set
over against two honours in Italian and a
first place in French won by a convent
school in the south. The assistant teachers
were underpaid and overworked, while the
owners of the schools grasped greedily
at the result fees. The children were
treated as machines out of which result
fees could be ground by skilful operators.
As if the examination competition were
not bad enough in itself, very limited
courses were set for study during the school
year. It did not pay to spend time over
books or subjects outside the course, so
children were kept going over and over
the same books until weariness gave place
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EDUCATION
to actual nausea. The unfortunate victims
of the system acquired a loathing, which
lasted far into later life, for the authors
whose work they studied for the inter
mediate examinations. A clever girl,
forced to read the First Book of the " Ex
cursion " every day of her life during the
whole of a school year, to study each line
minutely, to learn by heart all " likely "
passages, that is to say all passages which
could possibly be quoted in an examination
paper, is educated into a distaste for
Wordsworth and probably for all English
poetry. This may, from a highly patriotic
point of view, be an advantage to an Irish
woman, but it cannot be regarded as a
satisfactory result of teaching English
literature. The effects of the system of written
examination on the teaching of modern
languages were grotesque. I once met a
young woman of considerable intellectual
ability who had taken honours in French
three times in the intermediate examina
tions. She was an adept in the vagaries of
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
irregular verbs and it was scarcely possible
to puzzle her about the gender of a noun.
But she pronounced " nous " simply and
unaffectedly as if it rhymed with " grouse,"
and distinguished "parlait " from "parlez"
by making the one rhyme with " fate "
and the other very nearly rhyme with
" Charles." That was the way the lan
guage was taught in the school she attended,
and from the point of view of the school
mistress that was the best possible way of
teaching French for the purposes of a
written examination. A girl will not be
likely to misspell "bride" if she has been
taught to say it as she says " bride " in
English. She may easily blunder, on
paper, if she has been taught to sound the
French " i " like the English double " e."
Besides, it is waste of time and energy to
teach pronunciation when the object in
view is passing a written examination.
If it were not that the intellectual
deadness of our middle classes and the
low level of their culture require some
explanation, comment on the early system
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EDUCATION
of intermediate examinations would be
waste of time. Very great reforms have
lately been made. Examination is no
longer the sole test, is not even the chief
test, of a school's efficiency, and grants in
aid can no longer be earned in the old way.
The Board of Intermediate Education is
now able to inspect as well as examine.
It has secured the services of a body of
able men as inspectors. The heads of
schools are showing themselves willing to
adopt suggestions for the improvement of
their methods. Something is being done
in the face of great difficulties to improve
the pay and the prospects of assistant
teachers. It seems likely that the members
of the Board were all along conscious of
the defects of their original plan. The
teachers must have hated it from the first.
They knew that they could not educate
while they were tied to the old courses,
and had examinations hanging over their
heads — like swords of Damocles in every
respect except that they were certain to
fall at a fixed date. But reform was a
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
long time coming because there was no
general demand for it, and no consciousness
among the middle-class parents that the
education of their children was being very
badly done. Without some pressure of
public opinion it is very difficult for a
Board to get power to mend its ways ;
and the teachers, forced to earn money
in the only way open to them, were help
less. Our political leaders took no interest
in intermediate education. It was scarcely
possible for them to do so, for leaders in
Ireland, perhaps everywhere else, follow
and do not guide public opinion.
The intermediate schools, like the
primary schools, are now much better than
they were, and Irish parents have a fair
chance of securing a good education for
their children in their own country. But
ignorance of the meaning of education is
still general, and the Irish public is still
much more interested in politics than
schools. We might have better educa
tional systems than we have ; but it may
fairly be said to the credit of those re-
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EDUCATION
sponsible that we have very much better
education, both primary and intermediate,
than we deserve or have any right to
expect. III. Ireland might boast, though Ireland
very seldom does boast, of one successful
educational institution. Dublin University
with Trinity as its single constituent college
stands high in the world. She has pro
duced fine scholars, has encouraged learn
ing, has educated for more than three
hundred years generation after generation
of men fit to take great places in the world
and able to do great work. She has
marked these men as hers, giving them a
distinctive culture, forming in them a
particular kind of character, moulding
their ways of thought. Her degrees have
a value, but not merely because they are
guarantees of certain intellectual attain
ment. There are other universities whose
degrees guarantee as much and sometimes
more in the way of intellectual attainment.
The Dublin degree has a value beyond
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
that, because the University confers it on
men who have been formed and shaped
by the spirit of the University ; and it is
recognised that men so formed and shaped
are fit for many kinds of work. The
Trinity graduate is the peculiar product of
his own University. There is a flavour in
his culture, a note in his mental life, which
distinguishes him from men educated else
where. This is success. A university which has
accomplished so much has made itself a
place and a name which are not to be
denied. It is perhaps the existence of Trinity
College, a visible thing doing work which
it is impossible to ignore, which has con
vinced the Irish people of the value of
university education. For Ireland, pro
foundly indifferent about her schools, has
shown herself eager about universities.
If our primary and secondary schools had
ever in the past educated any one, we should
no doubt realise the value of such educa
tion and try to get more of it. Because
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EDUCATION
Trinity College did educate men and we
saw them, among us and everywhere
else, good fruit ofthe university education,
we grasped the fact that university educa
tion is a valuable thing, and then clamoured
to get it. If Trinity College had never
done anything for Ireland except demon
strate the fact that education is worth
something she would deserve well of the
nation. Trinity College is juxta Dubliniensem
according to her title, but in actual fact
stands in the very heart of the modern
city. Her buildings, her park, her lawns
and gardens, are surrounded with great
thoroughfares, through which traffic flows
noisily and ceaselessly. Shops, offices, and
dwelling-houses press against her walls.
The life of the city surges round the College.
Yet the College is aloof. The wayfarer who
goes through the great gates out of
College Green into the quadrangle passes
suddenly into a hushed place. The change
is curiously impressive and suggestive of
many things. Outside, the ears are as-
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
sailed with a tumult of noises, the shrieking
of tramway trolleys on electric wires, the
rattle of cart wheels, the trampling of
horses, the confused, indistinguishable beat
ing of men's boots on pavements, the
muttering sound of many voices. Inside,
twenty paces from the street, these sounds
are heard faintly as from an immense
distance. There is silence, almost. In
stead of hurrying men and women, who
jostle each other and press forward this
way or that, who watch for opportunities
to move amid the traffic, there are figures,
darkly draped, which pass quietly on
broad paths in and out of the shadows of
grey buildings among the lawns.
No doubt this contrast always must be
between a city and a university, between
life and scholarship. Men occupied in
business or politics, men stressed with toil,
necessarily dwell amid noise and some con
fusion. The student is apart and his
ways are hushed. It is the old contrast
between the market-place and the cloister.
But for Dublin, the city and the University,
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EDUCATION
there is something more, a deeper contrast
still. The University stands and always
has stood outside the life of the nation.
Understanding much, it has never been
given to Trinity College to understand
Ireland. The contrast between the silence
of the quadrangle and the tumult of the
streets is a sign of a deeper separation than
that which always exists between learning
and life. The University, calm and austere,
has not impressed her spirit on the nation.
Forming the souls of her own children she
has not formed the soul of Ireland. And
Ireland's passionate life has not inspired
the University. Ireland has won all kinds
of men to be her lovers, won them and
broken their hearts. She has not, for all
her appeals and all her pathetic charm,
won the heart of the University.
Yet nothing is more foolish, more con
tradictory of facts, than to speak of Dublin
University as an English institution, an
alien thing planted and maintained in
Ireland. Trinity College has never been
English and is to-day utterly unlike an
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
English university. A boy educated at an
English public school passes from his
school to Oxford or Cambridge and is
conscious of no great change. He is a
little freer, sees a little further ; but that
is all. He breathes the same air, conforms
to the working of the same spirit. But a
boy leaving Winchester or Harrow and
entering Trinity College, Dublin, begins a
new life. He changes his whole outlook.
He must learn to adapt himself to a new
environment. He ceases to move quietly
along the stream of one tradition and finds
himself caught in a current, strange to
him, which bears him through unfamiliar
country. Against it he struggles in vain.
Trinity College is Irish, not English ;
though she is not Irish as most of Ireland
is. Perhaps the herald who devised her
coat of arms foresaw what she was to be.
He gave her two square towers, battle-
mented, strong and unadorned. On them
are two flags, and the two flags blow
different ways.
It cannot be said of Trinity College that
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EDUCATION
she has been illiberal and selfish, or that
she has been unwilling to receive all Irish
men. Of her own will and even gladly she
has removed one after another all the
obstacles which made it difficult or im
possible for Irishmen of a faith different
from hers to enter her gates. For many
years now all her privileges, all her prizes,
all her honours, have been freely open to
any one able to win them. She has made
offer after offer to Roman Catholic Ireland
and has been puzzled by refusal after
refusal. Only she has declined to change
her spirit and to give away her soul even
for the sake of winning Ireland. Once,
in the course of the long controversy over
Irish university education, there was the
suggestion of a plan which would have
altered the very nature of Trinity College.
Immediately, from all over Ireland, from
England and Scotland, from remote parts
of the Empire, there was vehement oppo
sition from her graduates. Their protests
crystallised into a simple cry : " Hands off
Trinity. ' ' They were prepared to liberalise,
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
to concede, to change anything except the
essential spirit of the place. And they
were strong enough to prevail. Yet the
essential spirit, the rational, sceptical free
dom of the place, was exactly what Roman
Catholic Ireland dreaded.
The controversy over Irish university
education is settled now, so far as it can
be said that anything in Ireland is ever
settled. Three experiments were tried.
No one will want to tell again the story
of Newman's failure in Dublin, when a
fine tool was chosen for rough work
and broken in the using. The Queen's
Colleges failed. They were, accord
ing to the bishops assembled at Thurles,
" godless," and that damned them ; as
godlessness, according to the best theo
logical thought, damns men. The Royal
University never was anything but a
pretence, an examining body with no
chance of becoming a university. Now,
after much struggle, we have two new
universities in Ireland, rivals of the old
Elizabethan foundation in Dublin. They
154

EDUCATION
are, as Trinity College is, free to work and
develop along their own lines. The youth
of Ireland is eagerly pressing into them.
There seems no reason why they should not
complete the work which Trinity College
has been doing, and give education and
culture to that part of Ireland which
Trinity never reached. They ought to be,
and may be, the makers of a new kind of
Irishman, clearer-sighted, larger-hearted,
deeper-minded than their fathers.

155

CHAPTER VI
EDUCATION — THE GAELIC LEAGUE AND
THE IRISH AGRICULTURAL ORGANISATION
SOCIETY
The most important educational work
in Ireland during the last twenty years
has been done independently of univer
sities or schools. It has been done by the
Gaelic League and the Irish Agricultural
Organisation Society.
Governments gave grants of public
money for education and established Boards
to control and direct the expenditure of
the money. Harassed statesmen with the
aid of professors devised schemes of educa
tion. Commissions and committees of
inquiry investigated the conditions of
education. Ireland submitted, not very
impatiently and not very hopefully ; much
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EDUCATION
in the mood of a little girl whose hair is
brushed and tied with ribbons by a careful
nurse. She supposes, because she has
always been told so, that her hair ought to
be brushed and tied. She stands still
while the nurse is at work ; but it seems
to her a tiresome business, of very little
value when finished.
I. The Gaelic League, started by a few
young men during the last decade of the
nineteenth century, had no grants of public
money. No Board of influential persons
controls it. It was given no detailed
scheme or plan. But it is not too much to
say that in the course of twenty-five years
it changed the whole mind of Ireland.
Douglas Hyde was the son of a Church
of Ireland clergyman, the rector of an
unimportant parish in an uninteresting
part of Connaught. He graduated with
credit, but without special distinction,
in Dublin University. At an early age,
while still a boy, he fell in love with the
Irish language. Father O'Growney was a
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
Meath man, taught in Maynooth, one of the
first of those Irish-minded priests from
that college whose influence in Ireland
has been profound. John MacNeill came
from County Antrim, was taught in a
Belfast school, and learned to know and
love Irish in the Aran Islands. These
three men were the real founders of the
Gaelic League. They started the crusade
for the revival of Irish as the spoken
language of the country.
There were students of Irish before
Douglas Hyde, O'Growney and MacNeill
were heard of. There was even a Society
for the Preservation of the Irish Language
before the Gaelic League was founded.
But nobody else had ever been mad
enough to suppose that Irish, the language
of a dwindling handful of illiterate peasants,
could possibly become the ordinary tongue
of middle-class men and women. No one
could have supposed in 1890 that fifteen
years later half Ireland would be sitting
with knitted brows over O'Growney
Part I, O'Growney Part II, and O'Growney
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EDUCATION
Part III, struggling desperately to grasp
the difference between is and td, deeply
gratified at the discovery that " my cow
died on me " is not a provincial vulgarism
after all, but a translation of the idiom
of a language rich in the possession of
prepositional pronouns, by means of which
simple thoughts can be expressed in the
most attractive manner.
Later on, when the Gaelic League was
forced to defend itself against hostile,
and entirely reasonable, criticism, its sup
porters found out that there had been
revivals of moribund languages elsewhere
in Europe. They philosophised, too, and
produced more or less intelligible theories
about the connection between the soul of a
nation and its speech. But just at first
the infant Gaelic League neither reasoned
nor philosophised. It was not obliged
to defend itself. Nobody attacked it for
the simple reason that it was not worth
attacking. If it had started with a theory
and begun with a philosophy, it would
probably have ended exactly where it
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
began, and nobody would have been any
the better or any the worse. But the
theories came later. The first thing was a
love, an attraction to a language, as in
explicable as any other love.
Later on the Gaelic League became
vehemently propagandist much as churches
and political parties are sometimes pro
pagandist, endeavouring to make things as
uncomfortable as possible for stupid and
obstinate people who will not accept
salvation when it is offered to them. But
at first, and for a long time, the League was
propagandist as we may suppose the Primi
tive Church was. Its members were con
scious of having discovered a source of
light, a way of joy. They were eagerly
desirous of sharing their treasure with
others. During its years of adolescence
the Gaelic League was frequently ridicu
lous—in the eyes of unsympathetic out
siders. No highly-developed sense of
humour was required to see the fun when
some young man from Dublin aired in an
Achill village a language painfully acquired
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EDUCATION
from text -books and found that the people,
Irish speakers from their cradles, could not
understand one word he said. The cynic
grinned with appreciation when an Urban
District Council declared that it would have
nothing but an Irish-speaking doctor,
although no single member of it could have
told the doctor in Irish that he had a pain
in his stomach if his life depended on it.
But at first the Gaelic League was not
ridiculous. No enthusiasm is, until it
comes out into the open and bumps against
things as they are. It is perhaps a proof
of the value of an enthusiasm that it
survives the stage of being ridiculous.
Many enthusiasms, strong enough to resist
persecution, wither when laughter blows
gustily across them. The Gaelic League
was laughed at and often deserved the
laughter, but it did not die. Later still,
the Gaelic League was hated. People
who began by regarding its love of Irish
as a harmless kind of silliness discovered
that the language, imperfectly and very
partially learned by most Gaelic Leaguers,
161 M

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
was in some inexplicable way changing
the whole spirit of the people. Then
accusations rained thick upon the League,
chief among them that it was a political
organisation, and that it was, in some
obscure way, " religious."
Nothing is more curious than the fact
that in Ireland " political " and " religious "
should be terms of reproach. We are all
politicians and we are all religious. We are
firmlv convinced that political action, of
the right sort of course, is the only cure for
human ills ; and that religion is essential
if we are to escape worse ills hereafter.
Yet each association, society, and club
which we found must first of all declare
itself non-political, and its enemies tri
umphantly score a point if they can dis
cover a tendency towards politics in it.
The only thing which damns a society
more decisively than an accusation of
politics is the suspicion that it is
" religious." It is even more necessary
to disclaim all interest in religion than to
assert political neutrality. 162

EDUCATION
The Gaelic League asserted, frequently
and vehemently, that it was neither
political nor religious. It did, I think,
successfully rebut the charge of " religion."
It offered proofs which could hardly be
ignored of its indifference to the creed of
its members. Its first President, Dr.
Douglas Hyde, was a Protestant. He
might be President still for all the ob
jection any one ever made to his religion.
In its determination to clear itself from
any suspicion of religious prejudice, it
occasionally elected Protestants to office
who were very ill qualified for the work
they had to do. It even had little skir
mishes with priests now and then, dis
playing the courage of men who have
quite made up their minds that they are
not going to be afraid — a very high kind
of courage, for nothing is more difficult
than to be brave when you are frightened.
Surprisingly little use was made of the
argument that the English language is
steeped in the spirit of Protestantism,
though that would have been quite a
163 _ 2

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
valuable argument to use. Perhaps the
League was conscious that such an argu
ment would commit it to a side in religious
controversy. Perhaps no one felt quite
equal to asserting that Irish, the alternative
to English, is steeped in the spirit of
Catholicism. In meeting the charge of
" politics " the League was not so success
ful. It always said, and meant, that a
Unionist, even an Orangeman, was free to
join it without forswearing his Unionism.
At one time it used to boast that Dr. R. R.
Kane had given some sort of blessing to
the Irish language, and no man was ever
more fervently Orange than Dr. R. R.
Kane. It received, with the warmest
blessing, members of the party generally
regarded as Unionist. But there never
were many, indeed it is doubtful whether
there ever were any, Unionists in the
Gaelic League ; not because Unionists
were refused recognition and were driven
out, but because they ceased to be
Unionists very soon after they joined.
No one in the League tried to persuade
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EDUCATION
them to become Home Rulers. Indeed
Gaelic Leaguers hardly ever talked politics
among themselves. So long as the choice
lay between the Nationalism of the Parlia
mentary party and the Unionism of Ulster
or Dublin University the Gaelic League
could quite sincerely repeat Mercutio's
scornful expression of neutrality : " A
plague on both your houses."
If Ireland had remained what Ireland
was in 1890, a country in which the
Montagues and the Capulets squabbled
and bit thumbs at each other over the
question of Home Rule, the Gaelic League
might have remained what it was at first,
what it honestly meant to be, politically
neutral. Its Nationalist members might
have remained Nationalists, though no
doubt they would have lost their extreme
eagerness for Home Rule as they became
more Gaelic. Its Unionist members might
have remained Unionists, though they
would have ceased to look on England as
the great example of all good things.
But Ireland changed. The Gaelic League
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
itself wrought the change. Its influence
spread far beyond the widening circles of
its membership, and Irishmen of all classes,
creeds, and parties learned to look at Ire
land in a new way. The belief that it is
possible to make us into Englishmen
disappeared. For a long time that belief
existed and lay at the back of our official
systems of education. The Gaelic League
killed it. The country awoke to the dis
covery that it never had been English and
never would be. Most Irishmen rejoiced.
A few grieved. No one any longer denied
the fact.
This is the great work, strictly an edu
cational work, which the Gaelic League
accomplished. It has not done what it
set out to do. Ireland is no nearer being
a bi-lingual country to-day than it was in
1890 ; though a surprisingly large number
of people know a little Irish, though the
names of the streets in some of our cities
are posted up in Irish characters, though
columns of Irish print appear in our
newspapers. Irish, in spite of all efforts,
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EDUCATION
is the mother tongue of a dwindling
number of people. Compulsion in school
and university has not revived it among
those small and scattered communities
who are losing the use of it. It is indeed
a fact, which should have given Gaelic
Leaguers matter for grave thought, that
their propaganda succeeded least or not
at all among those who spoke Irish as
their native language. They remain for
the most part indifferent to the value of
their possession, even a little ashamed of
it. Those who responded most eagerly
to the preaching of the League are young
men and women who scarcely so much as
knew that there was an Irish language
before the League taught them.
I once caught an interesting glimpse of
the different ways in which the language
revival was regarded by those who learned
the language and those who already spoke
it. A man and his wife, middle -class
people, middle-aged, educated according
to the ideas prevalent in their youth, were
seized by the enthusiasm of the Gaelic
167

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
League. They set themselves to learn
the Irish language. It was a task of
immense difficulty for them because they
had long passed the time of life when the
mind is plastic and receptive. They
worked hard, submitting themselves
evening after evening to a young man
who could talk Irish but could not teach
that or anything else. They endeavoured
to speak Irish to each other and to their
children. They even, such was their ex
treme enthusiasm, looked forward to the
day when their whole Household business
should be conducted in Irish. They had
a parlourmaid, a pleasant, intelligent girl,
to whom they tried to teach the few
phrases they themselves knew. Besides
being pleasant and intelligent this girl
was docile. She consented to learn that
" Dun an doras, ma 's e do thoil e,"
meant " Please shut the door." In the
end that parlourmaid left, to be married,
I think. Not till then did her master and
mistress discover that she had been brought
up in an Irish-speaking family, had spoken
168

EDUCATION
Irish before she spoke English, and still
found it the easier language to use. The
story is not without its comic side, and I
suspect that the parlourmaid must have
found it very difficult sometimes not to
laugh aloud. But it also illustrates the
strength and weakness of the Gaelic
League's attempt to revive the Irish lan
guage. The girl who spoke it from her
infancy could not be induced to admit the
fact. She preferred English as the more
' respectable " language of the two. The
man and woman who did not know it —
and never for all their efforts succeeded
in learning it — were proud of each pain
fully acquired sentence.
Sometimes those who, like my friends,
had never heard the language spoken in
their lives actually succeeded in learning
to speak and write Irish fluently. Some
times they never got beyond " Ta me,
ta tu, ta se or si." Always they, and others
who never even learnt " ta m6," came to
regard themselves as Irish in a new and
fuller way. 169

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
We look back now on the many years of
organisation and persuasion during which
enthusiastic men and women flung them
selves with all their might into the work
of reviving the Irish language. It almost
seems as if the spirit which presided over
the foundation of the Gaelic League were
like the father in the fable who bade his
sons dig for buried treasure in the field
which he bequeathed to them. They
toiled, expectant of a pot of gold. They
gained, what they did not expect, a
splendid harvest. So the League, though
it has not made its beloved language the
spoken tongue of Ireland, has done a
greater thing. It has awakened every
where the national soul of Ireland.
Speculation over the might-have-beens
of history are futile. Yet they have a
certain attraction, perhaps even a certain
use. The Gaelic League might have done
all that it has done without becoming the
political organisation which our rulers
denounce and proclaim to-day, as they
denounce Sinn Fein and the Volunteers.
170

EDUCATION
It is certainly possible to awaken national
consciousness without arousing at the same
time a desire for a separate national state.
The Scottish Highlander, a Gaelic speaker,
is national in spirit, a Scot, not a North
Briton ; but he does not, apparently, crave
for a Highland Republic. A Welshman,
speaking Welsh in church and home and
shop, is Welsh, not English ; but he is
content to remain a citizen of the Empire.
In Ireland the consciousness of Irishness,
the discovery of nationality, has resulted
in a fierce and extreme kind of political
nationalism. Was this inevitable all along ?
This is the old question in a new form,
the question argued with an enormous
expenditure of breath and ink : Was the
Gaelic League a political organisation ?
Were its professions of neutrality simply
a disguise, the sheep's clothing which
covered the skin and limbs of the detested
wolf ? The answer is suggested by the
fact that the Gaelic League did actually
stand apart from politics until all hope
vanished of persuading Unionist Ireland
171

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
to be Gaelic. If the Irish Unionist aris
tocracy had accepted the ideal of the
Gaelic League ten years ago they might
to-day occupy a position like that of the
Scottish Highland gentry. They might be
the leaders of a nationalism comparable
to that of the Highlands, a nationalism
independent of political party. The oppor
tunity was theirs. They might have
grasped it. They did not do so, judging
— rightly perhaps, or wrongly — who
knows '}¦ — that such nationalism required
of them the sacrifice of principle. Their
refusal made the end inevitable.
The League's nationalism developed —
or reverted ?— into the nationalism of a
political party. The revival of the Irish
spirit became a smaller thing than it might
have been, and — such are the cynical re
venges which destiny delights in — the Irish
aristocracy did not wholly escape the
essential spirit of the nationalism which it
dreaded. Who to-day will boast, as men
did twenty years ago, of belonging to " the
English garrison in Ireland " ? Who will
172

EDUCATION
call himself, as a great archbishop did at the
end of the last century, a " colonist " ?
II. The other important educational
work of our time has been done by the
Irish Agricultural Organisation Society.
Like the Gaelic League, the Society was
started by a small number of enthusiastic
men without official suggestion, sanction, or
help. Like the Gaelic League, it began
with a single, simple idea and developed
a philosophy as it went.
Sir Horace Plunkett, the founder of the
Society, was interested in Irish farmers,
primarily interested in the business
methods of the Irish farmers. The
agrarian struggle was drawing to its
end when he began to preach his gospel of
self-help and co-operation. Fixity of
tenure and fair rents had been secured.
The actual possession of the soil was already
passing from the landlords to their tenants.
It was a great opportunity. Much was
possible for farmers if they were wise.
Little real improvement could be looked
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
for unless they were prepared to make the
best of the chances which their success
against the landlords gave them.
The idea of Sir Horace Plunkett and his
friends was the improvement of the Irish
farmers' business methods by co-opera
tion. Nothing could be more practical;
nothing, apparently, more likely to appeal
to men bent, as nearly all men are, on
trying to better their position and grow
wealthy. There is the sharpest possible
contrast between the gospel of the Gaelic
League, purely spiritual, almost contemp
tuous of material gain, and this teaching of
better business for the sake of better
living. Yet the League and the Society
worked side by side in Ireland, animated
by a spirit of friendliness. Sir Horace
Plunkett was one of the first observers of
the work of the Gaelic League who recog
nised its importance and value. The
League everywhere supported and helped
to defend the Co-operative Societies.
The history of the two movements is up
to a certain point alike. Both began
174

EDUCATION
quietly, both made headway only after a
period of seemingly hopeless effort. Both
made enemies and had to fight for exist
ence. Both learned to philosophise — in
other words to understand themselves —
only after they had been at work for some
time. Just as the Gaelic League looked
abroad to what other people had done after
it had begun its own work at home, and
developed its theory of the relation be
tween nationality and language after it
had set people learning Irish, so the
Society learned from the methods of the
Danish farmers and worked out its theory
of the importance of rural life, not before
hand, but while it was actually teaching
the farmer to co-operate. Both ceased
after a time to depend on purely voluntary
support and carried on their work with the
help of public money, the Gaelic League
with grants for the teaching of Irish in
schools, the Society with money obtained
from the Development Commissioners.
The difference in the history of the two
movements is that once fairly started the
175

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
Gaelic League leaped suddenly into popu
lar favour and became at one bound an
important force in forming Irish public
opinion ; whereas the Irish Agricultural
Organisation Society gathered momentum
slowly and has never gripped the popular
imagination. Like the Gaelic League, the Society made
enemies ; but they were not the same
enemies. It was never seriously accused,
as the League was, of religious pre
judice. Dealing as it did at first very
largely with the handling of cream and the
making of butter, it was scarcely possible
to suspect it of an insidious kind of
religious proselytism. Even an expert in
controversy cannot distinguish the milk
of a Protestant from the milk of a Catholic
cow when once they are poured into a
separator. Besides, cows, which are
bought and sold, change their religion
with their owners, holding by the sixteenth
century maxim Cujus regio, ejus religio.
Politics, the cause of many attacks on the
Gaelic League, were no more than the excuse
i ;j 176 :¦¦ HIJ^P^llI!

EDUCATION
for attacks on this Society. It is true that
Irish Parliamentary Nationalists did their
utmost to hinder the work of the Society.
They professed to believe that the organ
isation of farmers was merely a cloak to
cover an attempt to undermine the disci
pline of their party. It is curious to think
that members of this party, certainly not
wanting in political intelligence, should
have spent so much time and energy in
attacking a society which was doing them
no harm, while they remained blind to the
forces really at work for their destruction.
They attached, or appeared to attach,
enormous importance to the influence of
the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society.
They regarded the influence of Sinn Fein
as entirely unimportant.
But in truth the accusation of political
propaganda was never more than an excuse
for the attack on the Society. The real
reason lay in the fears and jealousy of the
shopkeepers of the country towns. These
men were prospering, sometimes growing
rich in the most unexpected places by a
177 N

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
kind of business which is of course legiti
mate, but which is certainly not beneficial
to society. They gave extended credit,
kept running accounts which always went
on running, and worked up to a system of
tied customers. Besides supplying goods
on credit they actually lent money at
rates of interest which not even a chartered
accountant could calculate. The farmer
was in debt, so deeply in debt that he was
no longer free to buy where he chose. He
was forced to buy in the shop of his
creditor. Sometimes he could not even
sell where he chose, for the shopkeeper took
some of the produce of the land in part
satisfaction of debts which were never
wholly paid. Occasionally the shop
keeper held a mortgage on the farmer's
land. The system was an extremely bad one ;
but neither the shopkeepers nor the farmers
saw anything amiss with it. To the
farmers, I suppose, it seemed natural and
inevitable. They growled when they paid,
or promised to pay, high prices for bad
178

EDUCATION
seeds and ineffective manures. But they
saw no way of getting free to go elsewhere
for their supplies. The shopkeepers actu
ally regarded themselves as public bene
factors. They said — and they were not
conscious hypocrites' — that they supported
the farmers in lean years, that without
their benevolent credit their customers
would often have died of starvation. They
took credit for the fact that they never
pressed for the complete settlement of an
account, that accounts ran on for years,
ran on sometimes from one generation to
another. I once had the opportunity of
discussing the system with one of these
shopkeepers. I asked him what rate he
charged on long overdue debts, and how he
calculated it when small payments were
made on account at irregular intervals.
His reply revealed a curious kind of
finance. " I go over the books now and
again," he said, " and put on a pound
or ten shillings according as I think
the man ought to pay." The man, the
unfortunate customer, had no control
179 _ 2

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
whatever over these additions to his
debt. The men who profited by this system
very naturally objected to a society which
aimed at teaching the farmer better
business methods. They were able to
exercise great influence in the councils of
the Parliamentary party. They used their
influence to injure the Society and hamper
its work. There was a long and bitter
controversy, sometimes in the columns of
the Press, more often out of sight of the
public in those dim places where questions
of policy are really decided. The Society
was hampered and hindered, but it went
on with its work and has won a fair
measure of success.
The days of financial dependence on the
shopkeeper have passed. The farmer is no
longer a tied customer to be exploited.
He is a valuable patron of the shopkeeper
to be served as well as possible. He has
achieved financial independence, and when
he works with borrowed capital gets it
either from a joint stock bank, on terms
180

EDUCATION
which are neither ambiguous nor onerous,
or, more conveniently, from one of the
agricultural banks which he and his fellows
control. He is learning the lesson of co
operation in production.
Here again, as with the Gaelic League,
success is not to be measured only by the
accomplishment of avowed aims ; though
in this respect the Society has no reason to
be ashamed of its record. The number of
co-operative societies of one kind or
another was 947 when the last report was
issued. These societies contained more
than 113,000 members. Their business
involved a turnover of 7^ million pounds
during the year. The parent society re
ceived affiliation fees amounting to more
than £1,700. This is a great accomplish
ment ; but a still greater accomplishment
cannot be reckoned in figures or reduced to
statistics. The Irish farmer, whether he is
a member of a co-operative society or not,
is a far better business man than he was
twenty-five years ago. He owes much
to the Department of Agriculture, which
181

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
has shown him good ways of farming. He
owes even more to the Irish Agricultural
Organisation Society, whose persistent
teaching of good business methods has
shown the farmer how to win and keep
his markets, how to use to the fullest
advantage his position as a producer of
food. The educational work of the Society has
not stopped short at the improving of the
business side of farming. The founders of
the Society came to understand, very early
in their work, that man does not live by
bread alone, that something more is re
quired for happiness than a bank balance.
Rural life, not only in Ireland, but every
where, has suffered grievously from dull
ness. The young, the vigorous, and the
active are tolerant of anything rather than
monotony. The best men will face toil
and perhaps privation cheerfully enough.
They will not willingly resign themselves
to years of unrelieved stupidity, not even
for the sake of full bellies and warm backs.
182

EDUCATION
The city, with its promise of companion
ship, with its lights and sounds and varied
interests, lures men from the country
side. In Ireland the case is worse
than elsewhere because the cities which
called were not near at hand, but across
the Atlantic.
All this became plain to the leaders of
the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society,
and they attempted the Very difficult task
of making country life interesting and
attractive. They conceived the idea of the
rural co-operative community, a little
society with a village hall as the centre of
its life, knit together by common interests,
animated by a spirit of brotherhood, not
only careful of its material prosperity,
but taking thought also for its pleasure
and its intellectual needs. Clearly no such
organisation of life could be imposed on an
unwilling people, or a people unready, by
outsiders, however well fitted they might
be to play the part of benevolent provi
dence. Such a civilisation must be the
183

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
work of the community itself, growing
from a sense of need, arriving by way of
many experiments at the satisfaction of
the need. The leaders of the Society could
do no more than stimulate the desire for a
better life where such desire existed, and
suggest ways and plans.
Meanwhile, in the minds of men who are
thinking much about Irish life the vision
of great things grew and strengthened, far
outstripping the slow accomplishment.
Beyond the village community, itself no
where yet half realised, there rose " the
cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces"
of a co-operative state, a new kind of
social order, sweeter, tenderer, in every
way more beautiful than the old.
So, in Ireland, we move from the
material to the spiritual, and back from the
spiritual to the material again. Of these
two great movements of education, that
of the Gaelic League and that of the Irish
Agricultural Organisation Society, the one
began with a dream and by way of its
184

EDUCATION
dream came to business, the practical
business of establishing a politically in
dependent Irish Republic. The other
began with business, the business of selling
butter profitably, and arrived at a dream
in the end.

185

CHAPTER VII
THE IRISH ARISTOCRACY
The Sinn Feiner of to-day never quotes
and rarely refers to Mr. Arthur Griffith's
" Resurrection of Hungary," though that
pamphlet was the earliest manifesto of the
party. Perhaps he does not read it any
more. Perhaps he has read it carefully
enough to discover that there is no re
semblance whatever between the Irish
Irelander and the Magyar. The Magyars
are — perhaps we should say were — members
of a dominant aristocracy, a governing race
which was not native to Hungary. They
are — or were — fighters and men of affairs.
They had the virtues and vices of a class
accustomed to rule. During their struggle
for independence they made it clear that
they did not mean to be bullied by the
186

THE IRISH ARISTOCRACY
Austrians. Ever since they got the power
they wanted they have been making it
clear that they meant to hold in subjection
the unfortunate Slav. If Mr. Griffith's
pamphlet suggests any lesson for Ireland,
it is certainly not one of encouragement
for our insurgent Gaels. If we must find
resemblances between ourselves and the
Hungarians — which seems to me unneces
sary — the Magyars seem to correspond
most nearly to our Anglo-Irish aristocracy,
which once asserted itself successfully
against England, as the Magyars did against
Austria ; and then, unlike the Magyars,
gave up again the political independence
it had gained.
It is the fashion among Nationalists to
regard the Anglo-Irish gentry as England's
garrison in Ireland. The gentry have
sometimes, though not often and not for
long, thought and spoken of themselves
in this way ; which is perhaps not very
odd, since one of the characteristics of this
class is that it has forgotten its own history.
Nationalists, on the other hand, remember
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
history very well, perhaps too well, and
must know that the Irish gentry never
were an English garrison. England always
disliked them and never trusted them.
This class was the flower of the Anglo-
Irish race, a race of mixed blood, but quite
as distinct from the English as it is from
the Gaelic Irish. It was formed by a
series of waves of immigrants, Normans,
Elizabethan Englishmen, Scots of the time
of James I, Cromwellian soldiers, William-
ite soldiers, French Huguenots. But the
race, and the aristocracy which best ex
hibits its peculiar spirit, is neither Norman,
English, Scottish, Dutch, nor French. It
became something different from all these.
It became Irish.
Scarcely a book is ever written about
Ireland in which the phrase is not quoted
about the strangers, the settlers, who
became Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores. Much
is usually said about Ireland's wonderful
power of absorbing those who come to her
as aliens, of spiritually conquering her
conquerors. I suppose there is some truth
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THE IRISH ARISTOCRACY
in it all, or it would not be said so often
and so confidently. But if by Irish we
mean Gaelic, then Irelandjtiever did absorb
this aristocracy or conquer its soul. When
the Anglo-Irish race emerges, its character
formed, at the beginning of the eighteenth
century, it is no more Gaelic than it is
English. So far from being absorbed, this
race displayed the power of absorbing the
remains of that older Gaelic aristocracy
which it displaced. The O'Briens, the
Kavanaghs, and the others whose names
appear in the pages of Burke's books of
Nobility and Gentry were of Gaelic origin.
But they are Anglo-Irishmen to-day in
character, in mind, and by tradition. They
did not assert a spiritual supremacy by
absorbing the newcomers. They were
absorbed, re-formed by a spirit stronger
than their own.
The history of the eighteenth century
shows us this race governing Ireland, not
in the least as a garrison in the interests
of England, but, after the fashion of
aristocracies in those days, in its own
189

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
interests. So far from regarding itself
as an English garrison, this aristocracy con
ceived the highly patriotic idea of an Irish
nation, holding that it was itself the Irish
nation ; therein bettering the arrogance
of Louis XIV, who only went so far as to
say that he was the State. Its efforts to
govern Ireland were continually hampered
by the enactments of the English Parlia
ment and the intrigues of English officials.
The " Irish nation," our aristocracy,
resented and resisted English interference,
not at all in the spirit of a faithful garrison.
England was under no delusions about these
men. Every one of those eighteenth cen
tury measures of commercial restriction
which we still resent was directed against
the Anglo-Irish, and especially against
the aristocracy. All the acts of political
oppression, all the schemes and intrigues,
were meant to curb the power, not of the
Gaelic Irish who had no power, but of the
Irish gentry. Towards the end of the
century the aristocracy successfully as
serted itself, became independent of Eng-
190

THE IRISH ARISTOCRACY
land, and faced the task of governing
Ireland. It was a difficult time for aristocracies
and governing classes because Europe was
full of the ferment of French revolutionary
ideas. But the Irish aristocracy did not do
badly. It might have actually done well
if it had not suffered, for the first and only
time in its historv, from self-distrust. It
ml ~
was not quite sure of its own ability to
deal with the United Irishmen. It allowed
itself to be frightened, persuaded, cajoled
and bribed into sacrificing its independence
by passing the Act of Union. England
wanted the Union, not because she loved
the Anglo-Irish lords and gentlemen, but
because she disliked and rather dreaded
them. With the prospect of a long and
desperate war before them, English states
men saw the necessity for tightening their
grip on Ireland.
Since then England has steadily sacri
ficed the Irish aristocracy whenever it
was in her interest to do so. It made no
matter what the England of the moment
191

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
might be. The England of the Whig and
Tory landowners, the England of the
Liberals of commerce, the England of the
later democracy were all alike in their
treatment of Anglo-Irishmen. Attempts
have been made of late to win the affec
tions of Irish Irelanders, generally by giving
them doles and grants of money. The
money came, directly or indirectly, out
of the pockets of the Anglo-Irish. To-day
England professes to be ready to give
anything to Ireland — except of course what
Ireland asks — but she cynically refuses to
pay the money she owes to those dis
inherited members of the Irish aristocracy
who parted with their property at her
request. If this class is an English garrison in
Ireland, it has behaved as no other garrison
ever did and has been very ill-supported
by those for whom it held its fort.
Yet there is some excuse for Ireland when
she makes this reproach. The Irish aris
tocracy has never been sympathetic with
the " mere " Irish. It has now and again —
192

THE IRISH ARISTOCRACY
indeed often — supplied leaders of Irish
Nationalism. But as a class it has stood
aloof from every popular movement, coolly,
even cynically, indifferent to every en
thusiasm. During the nineteenth century
it fought a long-drawn-out battle for its
powers, its privileges, and its property.
It was gradually but disastrously beaten,
driven from post to post till no refuge was
left to it anywhere. But it never made
terms with Irish Ireland, never sacrificed
its principles by compromise.
Such a history left its marks upon a
class which succeeded in preserving its
class consciousness. The Irish gentry are
not to-day what their great-grandfathers
were at the end of the eighteenth century.
They have lost that capacity for
enthusiasm and abandon which made
Grattan's Parliament a great school of
oratory. They have become distrustful
of ideas ; for political ideas have been
rampant in Ireland for a century, and
little good seems to have come
of them. A long apprenticeship in
193 o

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
the Imperial service has widened their
outlook. It would be impossible for them
to-day to think of themselves as " the
Irish Nation."- They have fought the
Empire's battles in every corner of the
world and ruled for the Empire every land
except their own. They have become,
more than any other men perhaps, cos
mopolitan in spirit, as their ancestors never
were. The Gaelic aristocracy which pre
ceded them was driven into exile, and
crossed the seas, a long flight of " Wild
Geese." This aristocracy is no less exiled,
though they linger in their houses and
demesnes in Ireland. They are spiritual
exiles who have gone forth or have been
driven forth from the life of the community.
They are men without a country, servants
of an Empire to which they are able to give
a loyalty unconfused by the mixture of any
narrower patriotism.
Yet many of the old characteristics of
the race remain. We see in them to-day
that same cool sanity which gave their
terrible force to the writings of Swift,
194

THE IRISH ARISTOCRACY
which turned him into a madman at last,
if men can be made mad by excess of
sanity. They remain, what they always
were, devoted to sport, understanding all
life as a kind of sport, more dangerous
than the pursuit of foxes or the competitive
" poundings " of the Connaught gentry
fifty years ago, and therefore more de
lightful ; more thrilling than horse-racing
because the stakes are greater ; but to be
lived in the spirit of sportsmen, according
to the rules which govern sport. They
have courage, not only that physical
courage which has set them in the front of
every battle ofthe Empire, but the courage,
far rarer in Ireland, of the men who will
stand apart from the crowd and smile at
either the shouting or the hooting. They
have that capacity for affairs and rulership
which enabled their ancestors to govern
Ireland for those few years at the end of
the eighteenth century when Ireland
flowered. They have proved their capacity
and their instinct for leadership in the
service of the Empire everywhere, as their
195 o 2

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
ancestors used the same powers in Ireland.
But in one quality, most necessary in the
management of a nation's affairs, our
Irish aristocracy is lacking. The bitter
history of the last century has left them
almost without hope. They have no belief
in the future of a self-governing Ireland.
They have no confidence in the Union, to
which nevertheless they cling as to the
lesser of two evils. If it were possible to
convince them that the future, either way,
holds any chance of good, they might do
much for Ireland and might save them
selves. But they have too much ex
perience to trust the prophecies of en
thusiasts and are too sane to see visions
themselves. Standish O'Grady, who used to write
singularly illuminating articles about Ire
land, lamented the fall of this aristocracy
and deplored the manner of the fall because
no brave words were spoken and no great
deeds were done. From the point of view
of the amateur of the picturesque in history
it must seem that there has been a lack of
196

THE IRISH ARISTOCRACY
heroic incident, and, I suppose, no poet
will ever sing of these gentlemen as poets
did of the Jacobite " Wild Geese." But
they have not been without dignity in the
way they have met misfortune. They
became involved in a fight which was none
of theirs, the nineteenth century struggle
between England and Ireland. Their
wounds, dealt by both combatants, were
not " as deep as a well or as wide as a
church door," but sufficient. They have
taken them with a half-smile on their lips,
as if slightly amused at the perverse
stupidity of the combatants, as if slightly
contemptuous of both. The almost com
plete detachment, the absence of prejudice
which enabled him to view even his own
ruin without passionate resentment, gives
the Irish gentleman his singular position
in European society to-day. He is the
only spiritual descendant of the cool, purely
sceptical gentlemen of the eighteenth
century. Perhaps even now this aristocracy might
lead Ireland, discover a new kind of
197

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
nationality, invent, as they invented before
and created, an Irish nation ; perhaps — if
only — and if— and if  But what is the
use of saying " if " ? If tides would cease
to flow at our bidding or if storms would
cease to rage !

198

CHAPTER VIII
THE FARMERS
There is a story which used to be told
very often about an Irish farmer. He was
a Limerick farmer sometimes, a Ros
common farmer sometimes. Sometimes
he belonged to Galway. Asked what he
did in his lonely home during the long
winter evenings he replied :
" Sometimes I sits and thinks. Some
times I simply sits."
It is a well-invented story, and does
credit to the wit of the author, who was
almost certainly a city dweller.
It expresses very neatly the contempt
which town-people have for the intelligence
of countrymen. This contempt is not a
peculiar product of our time. It is as old,
at least, as the Greek classical civilisation.
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
It turns up in the literature of every
country and of every age since then.
Perhaps it is a well-deserved contempt,
founded upon observation of some real
dullness, some intellectual sluggishness in
country -people. If so the Irish farmer must
be an exceptional person. Judged by the
rough and ready but very trustworthy
standard of his achievements, the Irish
farmer must be a great deal more in
telligent than most other people and much
readier to grip opportunity by that front
part of its head which is not bald. If it
is true of him that he spends his winter
evenings simply sitting, it must be ad
mitted that he has got more by it than
townspeople have by fussing about and
thinking hard.
In the middle of the nineteenth century
the position of the Irish farmer was in
some parts of the country miserable in the
extreme, in all parts of the country singu
larly unsatisfactory. His standard of com
fort was very low. He had no security of
tenure. He suffered from every kind of
200

THE FARMERS
uncertainty. He might at any time be
turned out of his holding. His rent might
be increased. Legislation aimed at keeping
the price of his produce as low as possible
in the interests of the urban population.
The house in which he lived was un
comfortable and inconvenient. He and
the class to which he belonged were only
slowly emerging from the consequences of
a desolating famine. Experimenters in
rural economics were completing the work
of the famine by turning great tracts of
inhabited country into cattle ranches.
The prospects were so hopeless that the
young and adventurous refused to face
them. They fled to America in thousands.
In little more than half a century the
position of the farmer has completely
changed and rural Ireland has been trans
formed. The farmer in 1850 was an
agricultural proletarian. To-day he is a
capitalist. In 1850 he was politically
powerless. To-day he shares with the
urban publican the control of the local
government of the country. His standard
201

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
of living has improved and is steadily
improving. He has achieved a security
unknown to the worker for wages. His
progress, slow at first, has gathered speed
and momentum. The last twenty years
have seen greater changes for the better in
rural Ireland than the forty years which
went before them.
The sixty years of the farmer's progress
have been a period of unceasing political
agitation and struggle. During that time
Ireland has never been peaceful, has never
achieved the kind of settled security which
would tempt the cautious capitalist to
invest his money there. The rest of the
country has got very little by its exertions.
Home Rule, for which men have struggled
so persistently, has remained a phantom,
eluding eagerly grasping hands. The
poverty of the slums of Dublin and of the
still worse slums of some of our country
towns has been very little mitigated or
relieved. Industries, through the greater
part of Ireland, have steadily decayed, and
mills once busy have been shut down.
202

THE FARMERS
Not even the politicians have gained any
thing substantial for themselves. The
pay they received for their services was
scanty. Their other rewards were little
but disappointments and broken hearts.
The farmers alone succeeded in drawing
good, large, wholesome fish out of the
troubled waters.
The town dweller must revise his judg
ment. Whatever farmers may be else
where, the Irish farmer is not stupid. He
has displayed political intelligence and
business ability of a high order. In a
community and during a period when
agricultural interests were considered en
tirely unimportant he has secured benefits
which place him in a position of security,
beyond the buffetings of any chance,
except of course bad weather. He has
talked very little, being quite content to
leave speechmaking to others. He has
not expressed himself in writing at all.
He has never been particularly generous
in his subscriptions to the parties which
fought his battles for him. He has not
203

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
been distinguished by loyalty to his leaders,
whom he was always ready to desert.
But he has steadily, and very intelligently,
pursued his own advantage. The results
are visible in the improvement of Irish
rural life, improvement so great that
Irishmen returning to their native land
after an absence of twenty to thirty years
stand amazed. The conditions they see
to-day are almost incredibly different from
those with which they were familiar before
they went into their voluntary exile.
Michael Davitt and Devoy, the founders
of the Land League, were revolutionaries of
a kind familiar in Irish history. After the
failureof the Fenian movement they realised
that driving force for the political revolu
tion they desired could only be secured
by linking their cause with that of economic
change and putting themselves at the head
of an agrarian agitation. Parnell, after
some hesitation, adopted their policy,
though it cost him the support of some of
the most influential followers of his pre
decessor, Isaac Butt. In the histories and
204

THE FARMERS
biographies which deal with the period of
the Land League and Parnell's Home Rule
struggle the politicians and revolutionaries
are given credit for the great sagacity
of their " New Departure," the policy
which secured for their movement a mass
of enthusiastic supporters. The credit is
deserved and justly bestowed. But no one
seems to recognise that the Irish farmers
showed equal sagacity in hitching their
horses to the Home Rule waggon and
allowing the politicians to drive. Yet
what Devoy, Davitt, and Parnell did
deliberately, arriving at their policy by a
process of reasoning, is exactly like what
the farmers did, apparently without cal
culation, acting in obedience to a kind of
class instinct.
The result of this alliance was curious
and interesting. The revolutionaries of
the Fenian type wanted an independent
Ireland and accepted the help of the
farmers. The farmers wanted an agrarian
revolution and accepted the leadership of
the politicians. The farmers got what
205

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
they wanted. The politicians did not.
The two objects were at the time so inex
tricably mixed that no distinction was
made between them. The cause of Home
Rule was, apparently, the cause of the
Land League, and the cause of the Land
League was the cause of Home Rule.
A Land Leaguer was a Home Ruler, and
a Home Ruler, almost inevitably, was a
Land Leaguer. Yet, as we see now, there
was a real distinction, and the farmers
were all along more or less conscious of it.
I remember a singularly illuminating
conversation which I had with a supporter
of the farmers' cause. It was during the
latter stages of the land struggle, after
the passing of the Land Acts of the 'eighties.
My friend was one of those leaders of
local opinion who never appear in Parlia
ment, whose names are totally unknown
to the English public. His energy, en
thusiasm, and ability formed opinion in his
own neighbourhood. He was content to
leave more prominent men to express it in
speeches at Westminster and elsewhere,
206

THE FARMERS
always on the understanding that it was the
opinion he created, not their own, which
they expressed. Men like this were to be
found then, and are still to be found, in
every village in Ireland ; priests some
times, schoolmasters occasionally, editors
of local papers sometimes, occasionally
shopkeepers. They control the local
branches of the leagues, " orders," and
societies popular at the moment. They
count for more in Irish politics than the
nominal leaders of parties.
My friend was anxious, if possible, to
enlist my sympathies for a new league
which had lately been established and was
rapidly gaining strength in his neighbour
hood. If I refused to sympathise he was
still very kindly anxious to allay my fears
and misgivings. He knew, of course, that
I was a Protestant and assumed, quite
naturally, that I was a Unionist, nervous
about what might happen to me and men
like me under a Home Rule Parliament.
He knew too that I was not a landlord and
assumed, very naturally, that the issue of
207

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
the agrarian struggle was a matter of
indifference to me.
" Why are you and your people out
against us ? " he said. " What does it
matter to you who owns the land ? "
" It matters to us," I replied, " who
governs the country. Do you think we
want to be ruled by a glorified Dublin
Corporation ? "
That is a stock Unionist argument, and
quite a good one. I used it because I
wanted to see what line my friend would
take in reply. I confess he startled me.
" Oh, Home Rule ! " he said. " Damn
Home Rule. What we're out for is the
land. The land matters. All the rest is
tall talk."
My friend was quite properly regarded
as a leading Nationalist, but he was plainly
not a Nationalist in the sense in which
Parnell, Davitt, and John Redmond were
Nationalists ; in the sense in which Mr. De
Valera and the Sinn Feiners are National
ists now. He was an agrarian reformer
and may, for all I know, be a social re-
208

THE FARMERS
former to-day with a wider programme.
But he was singularly clear-headed. Very
few men saw the real point at issue in the
struggle as distinctly as he did, or realised
the high political intelligence — perhaps
we should say the astonishing political
instinct — ofthe Irish farmers who consented
to shout for Home Rule in order that the
Home Rulers might get the land for
them. The rest of the community displayed far
less intelligence than the farmers during
the agrarian struggle. " The Land for
the People " was an excellent rallying cry.
The artisan, the farm labourer, the shop
keeper, and many members of the profes
sional classes were quite aware that they
were landless, and " the Land for the
People," so far as it meant anything
definite at all, seemed to mean that they
would become in some sense possessors of
land ; that if actual acres were not fenced
off and handed over to them, they would
at all events as members of the community
be the real owners of the soil of the
209 p

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
country in which they lived. The farmers
meant nothing of the sort. The idea of
land nationalisation— a dream of Michael
Davitt's— was utterly abhorrent to them.
Private property in land was to them a
sacred principle which it would have been
impious to dispute. The debatable matter,
the thing to be fought over, was the much
simpler question, Who are to be the
private proprietors ? To the farmers
" the Land for the People " meant the
land for certain persons who happened,
just at that moment, to be occupying and
cultivating it.
The farmer, because he has more political
intelligence than anybody else, got what
he wanted. The passing of the Land Acts
which gave him security of tenure gave him
something which he could sell, his interest
in his farm. He became a capitalist by the
operation of an Act of Parliament. The
landlord ceased to own his estate in the old
complete sense. He was part owner only,
and after a few years not even part owner.
Neither the State nor the community
210

THE FARMERS
nor " the People " received what the
landlord was obliged to part with. The
farmer was the beneficiary. The net result
of a great national agitation carried on for
years with vigour, enthusiasm, and self-
sacrifice was to take a great deal of money
out of the pockets of some individuals and
put it into the pockets of other individuals.
The landlords saw that they were being
injured. The farmers saw that they were
gaining. For the rest of the community
the whole business was wrapped in a golden
mist of fine phrases through which the
sun of Home Rule seemed to be rising, red
and huge, with promise of a glorious day.
But that sun has not yet actually risen to
noontide height. The politicians who hailed
the day as " not far distant " have fallen
from their high estate and ceased to be
national leaders. The rest of the com
munity is beginning to realise that the
struggle of the last half of the nineteenth
century has brought little of what was
promised to any one except the farmers.
They alone secured tangible good out of
211 p 2

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
the welter of contending interests and dis
interested dreams.
We catch another glimpse of the in
stinctive political sagacity of the Irish
farmers when we observe their dealings
with the Congested Districts Board. The
Board had a limited sphere of work. It
was concerned only with those parts of the
west and middle west of Ireland where the
agricultural population was too dense,
where the holdings of land were so small
and so inconveniently arranged that their
occupiers could not live in decency and
comfort. The people for whom this Board
worked were the poorest, the least pro
gressive, presumably the least educated
and intelligent of Irish farmers. The
Board had no mission among the graziers
of Meath or the solid farmers of Kildare
and Wexford, men who might be supposed
to know their own interests and be capable
of attending to them. But although the
Board was strictly limited as to the locality
of its operations it had almost complete
freedom as to the form which its work took.
212

THE FARMERS
It held a commission for roving philan
thropy. It might do very nearly anything.
It actually did try very nearly everything
which could possibly benefit the people
of the congested districts.
The people, the smallest of small farmers,
living under the shadow of a perpetual
menace of famine, watched the early
experiments of the Board with a slightly
amused, not wholly unfriendly, interest.
The introduction of prize bulls and boars,
of the latest and most fashionable breeds
of poultry, did no actual harm to a locality.
The starting of crochet classes, the sub
sidising of small woollen mills, and such like
attempts at the establishment of local
industries were, from the point of view of
these small farmers, amiable futilities.
They did not really care whether their
daughters made crochet collars or not,
nor whether their wives kept flocks
of " them congested ducks." They
knew exactly what they wanted, land ;
and they saw in the Board, whose
intentions were so plainly beneficent,
213

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
a means by which land might be got. By
a process of silent pressure they gradually
diverted the Board's energy from diffuse
philanthropy and got it concentrated on
the business of buying and reselling land
in parcels of convenient size. The Board,
moulded into shape by the intelligence of
the class for which it set out to play provi
dence, became at last an independent and
unco-ordinated part of the machinery
established for the transference of the
ownership of the Irish soil from the land
lord to the tenant. In only one important
particular does the work of the Board
differ from that which the Estates Com
missioners are doing for the rest of Ireland.
The Congested Districts Board builds
houses for its clients. They are exceedingly
ugly houses and have done as much as any
work of man can do to spoil the charm of
the Irish landscape. And they are not
popular. The people would very much
rather have built their own houses. But
even an Irish farmer cannot get all he
wants in this world exactly as he wants it,
214

THE FARMERS
and the possession of land in sufficient
quantity was the main thing. It is a small
matter, when you have got the land, that
you have to live in a house that you do not
like, planned and built by some one who
does not know that it is convenient to be
near water when clothes have to be washed,
who thinks that the top of a shelterless
hill is a suitable place for human habitation
in a land swept by the gales of the Atlantic
Ocean. Having got what he wanted by political
action, the Irish farmer has shown himself
capable of making good use of his oppor
tunities. The magic of property has
proved a stimulus to exertion. Everywhere
in Ireland the standard of comfort has
risen and is still rising among the farmers.
They are making their houses more com
fortable. They are furnishing them better.
They are planting fruit trees, are develop
ing a taste for flower gardens, are learning
to grow, use and appreciate vegetables
unknown in rural Ireland twenty-five years
ago except in the gardens of the rich. And
215

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
they are devoting intelligence to their own
proper business of farming. Labour-saving
devices, often co-operatively owned, are be
coming more and more common . The value
of milk records, as guides in the weeding out
of unprofitable cows from herds, is getting
to be understood. Faced by the emergency
of the food shortage during the latter
part of the war the Irish farmer showed
himself capable of a rapid change in his
method of farming. He tilled, and tilled
successfully, where he had been accustomed
to graze. Not even the panic-stricken
meddling of officials, caged in city offices,
threw the Irish farmer out of his stride.
When the regulations made for his guidance
were transparently idiotic he managed to
ignore them. He supplied food, saved
the country from a total lack of milk and
butter, and kept his head while prices,
controlled or uncontrolled, bounded about
like balls on an uneven tennis court.
In the management of local public
business the farmer has made wise use of
the powers that came into his hands at the
216

THE FARMERS
passing of the Local Government Act.
The County and District Councils of rural
Ireland occasionally make themselves
ridiculous by passing flamboyant resolu
tions. But resolutions are well understood
in Ireland, and the passing of them is
recognised as a harmless way of placating
troublesome enthusiasts. When it comes
to things which matter, the rates for in
stance which must be paid, the farmers
and their representatives are strictly busi
nesslike. Urban and city corporations are
sometimes wildly extravagant, sometimes
grossly careless, in their use of public
money. The farmer realises that public
money is his own money, since in the end
he has to supply a good deal of it, and his
fault is not extravagance. He is even
inclined to be penurious, scrutinising ex
penditure on public work too minutely and
paring down the salaries of his servants.
If we compare the emoluments of the
officials of the Dublin Corporation with
the incomes allotted in rural Ireland to
dispensary doctors we understand why the
217

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
rates in Irish cities are sometimes very
high and in rural districts surprisingly low.
Niggardliness in private life is generally
reckoned the besetting sin of the peasant
proprietor and of the small yeomen class.
The Irish farmer seems to be escaping it.
He has not yet learnt to give money,
though he will give almost anything else ;
and charitable institutions, if they are to
be dependent in the future on the
generosity of the farmers, are likely to
suffer. But the farmer is learning to spend.
The money he has made through his
ability and energy in meeting the emer
gency of the war is not being entirely
hoarded. The accounts ofthe great drapery
companies show largely increased expen
diture by some sections of the community
on women's clothes, and often on women's
clothes of the finer kind. It is the farmers'
wives who are buying. Jewellers and
silversmiths, though the expenditure of
their old patrons has been severely cur
tailed, yet find that their business is in
creasing, It is, they say, the farmers who
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THE FARMERS
are buying. At country auctions articles
of furniture of fine and valuable kinds are
eagerly bought by farmers. So are pianos,
mechanical piano players, and even pic
tures. The demand for such things shows
not only a willingness to spend money
freely, but an intelligent desire for a more
cultured and fully developed life than that
lived by farmers in the past.
We have been assured, by newspapers
and public speakers, that there has been
an orgy of extravagant expenditure in
England, and that certain classes, suddenly
possessed of considerable sums of money,
have been reckless and foolish in their
buying. The munition worker's fur coat
has passed into a kind of proverb. This
may be so in England, or the statements
made may be merely another example of
the curious fables which pass for facts in
times of excitement. There is certainly
no wild extravagance among Irish farmers.
There has been and is free expenditure,
but it has been, on the whole, reasonable,
and is certainly justified by the position of
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
those who spend. Some time ago at an
unimportant country auction an oil paint
ing was offered for sale. The auctioneer
could give no account of it and there was
no way of discovering the artist's name.
There were present at the auction two men
who might be supposed to know something
about art. They bid against each other
for the picture, and no one else seemed
interested in the sale until the price rose to
£30. At that point a farmer joined in the
bidding and finally secured the picture,
offering more than either of the original
competitors. In speaking of the purchase
afterwards he said that he wanted a picture
to hang on the wall of his parlour. He
wanted a good picture, a picture by a real
artist. He felt convinced that what he had
bought must be a good picture, for other
wise Mr. A. and Mr. B., his competitors
at the auction would not have tried to
buy it.
The incident is exceptional, perhaps
singular, but the story is a very good illus
tration of three things — the farmer's
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THE FARMERS
ability to buy, his reasoned cautiousness in
buying, and his appreciation of the fact
that there are certain desirable things to be
bought about which he ought not to trust
his own judgment.
Will the Irish farmer be able to retain
the power and keep or improve the position
he has gained ? As owner, or prospective
owner, of land, the one solid, irremovable
thing, he seems secure. As a skilful and
intelligent master of an indispensable busi
ness, the production of food, he is in a very
strong position. As a hard worker — and
he does work hard — he escapes the reproach
of living on the fruits of other men's labour,
a reproach which in the modern world
weakens the position of the idle capitalist.
He has considerable political power, and
in an Irish Parliament — if such a thing ever
comes into existence — would have more
power than men of any other class. But
he is threatened. His property and the
profits he has made out of it are looked at
enviously by the agricultural labourer, and
in Ireland the agricultural labourer is
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
efficiently organised, well led, and not in
the least afraid to strike. The farmer's
political sagacity and his class solidarity
won him his victory over the landlords.
Will he prove as able in defence as he was
in attack ? Repeated demands have lately
been made by the labourers for increased
wages and shorter hours of work. Hitherto
the farmer has been content to com
promise. Under the present conditions
he can afford to pay almost any wages
and still be sure of a substantial profit.
But the present conditions are abnormal.
Very soon the farmer will have to face the
competition of foreign countries sending
their produce to the hungry markets of
Great Britain. There will be a limit to
the possible profits of farming, a limit
enforced by competition against which no
tariff barriers are likely to be an efficient
protection. Then the farmer will have to fight it out
with the labourer, and the labourer is sure
of a great deal of public sympathy. His
organisation is no trade union limited to
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THE FARMERS
men of his own profession. It is part of a
union which includes most of the poorer
labourers of the cities. He will have them
at his back in his struggle against the
farmer, very much as the farmer had the
support of the town shopkeepers and minor
professional men in his struggle against the
landlords. And there will be a general
feeling that it will do the farmers no harm
to be bullied a little. They have done well
for themselves and they have not cared
much what happened to any one else.
There is always a certain joy, an unholy
joy, in seeing an engineer " hoist with his
own petard." And the tactics with which
the labourer will fight the farmer are likely
to be very much the same as those with
which the farmer fought the landlords.
The struggle will be a particularly inter
esting one for the dispassionate and de
tached observer to watch — if indeed there
is in Ireland such a thing as a dispassionate
and a detached observer. For the matter at
issue between the farmer and the labourer
is purely economic. It is scarcely possible
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
for either one side or the other to confuse
the issue and embitter tempers by an appeal
to religion. Behind the obvious economics
of the agrarian struggle there was always
the feeling that the landlords represented
a Protestant aristocracy, the farmers a
Catholic democracy. The politics of the
Home Rule and Union contest were white
hot because religion, or what in Ireland
goes by the name of religion, inflamed the
combatants. But there is no discernible
difference between the religion of the
farmer and that of the labourer. In
Ireland, though we have fought each other
for centuries, we have never yet fought
without the inspiration of our own par
ticular kind of religion. If we do so now it
will be a new thing in our history and
therefore of extreme interest. But it is
rash to prophesy that such a purely
secular controversy will take place. Per
haps — though it seems impossible— we shall
drag religion into the business somehow.
Perhaps, lacking the religious impulse, we
shall in the end decline to fight at all.
224

THE FARMERS
After all a fight for wages and hours of
work, indeed any fight, is a poor thing,
unsatisfying to the spiritual nature of man,
when you cannot denounce your opponent
as a bigot in this world or cherish a
comforting belief that he will have a hot
time of it in the next.

225

CHAPTER IX
THE MIDDLE CLASSES — DUBLIN
If I were compelled to live in a city —
from which fate may Heaven defend me !
— I should choose Dublin rather than any
other I have known. This is the judgment
of mature years, arrived at slowly, after
some experience. I began with a strong
prejudice against Dublin. I went there
first when I was eighteen years of age, and
I was sure then that it was wholly con
temptible. It was, so I believed, a place
where people talked a great deal, for the
most part very foolishly, where people did
very little, because they were lazy and
hated work. It was therefore a place
which could not be rich and prosperous.
Nothing useful was made there. No ships,
no linen, no rope. It was, besides, a city
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— DUBLIN
with pretensions, posing as the capital of
the country ; whereas Ireland, then for a
long time happily made one with England,
had no capital of its own. London seemed
to me to be our capital, just as London is
the capital of his country to a Yorkshire-
man, though Leeds and Sheffield are im
portant towns. Dublin scarcely seemed to
me even important.
I do not remember that any one ever
taught me these things or said them to me
in plain words. I was born and brought
up in Belfast. There is no need to tell a
Belfast boy things like those about Dublin.
I breathed them in with the air of County
Antrim. I absorbed them through the
pores of my skin in Donegall Place.
Arriving in Dublin at Amiens Street
Station, as all strangers from the north do
and must, I added to my prejudices a
distinct impression. Dublin was shabby.
Belfast does not give the stranger this
impression however he arrives there. The
Belfast terminus of the Great Northern
Railway stands in a wide thoroughfare,
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
and the buildings which the traveller sees
first are ugly, perhaps, but not shabby.
York Street Station is set in a large space
redeemed by mere size from shabbiness.
The County Down Railway disgorges its
passengers near the riverside and the
clamourof Harland and Wolff's shipbuilding
yard is in their ears. There is nothing
worn out or shabby about Harland and
Wolff's shipbuilding yard. But the sur
roundings of Amiens Street Station are
very shabby. I drove, I suppose, across
the swivel bridge and through Tara Street.
I passed close to the Custom House indeed,
but too close. It is not possible to see a
building when you are just underneath it.
And all that coiner of Dublin was even
shabbier then than it is now.
Nothing that I have seen of Dublin
since has altered that first impression. It
is vividly renewed every time I visit the
city after a sojourn elsewhere. I once spent
some weeks in New York, and when I came
back the shabbiness of Dublin was a
shock to me. After Londonlfeel it acutely.
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— DUBLIN
And it is not simply a matter of com
parison with other cities, newer perhaps, or
richer. I got the same impression when
I walked the streets of Dublin after months
spent among the stony fields of Mayo,
than which no places I have ever seen look
older and poorer. I get it now when I go
to Dublin from the pleasant pastures of
Kildare. But my opinion of shabbiness has
changed. It used to seem to me merely
contemptible ; as a pair of boots, never
stretched on trees, much wrinkled and
patched, seems contemptible to a well-
dressed woman. I know now that there is
something to be said for old boots, even if
they are so old that they let in a little
water on wet days. There is a sense of
ease in wearing them. They press no corn.
They have adapted themselves to ill-
shaped toe joints, and after all there are
few of us — few at all events who have
reached even middle age — whose toe joints
are not distorted a little. And it is not
only Tara Street and the swivel bridge, or
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
Baggot Street and St. Stephen's Green, and
glorious Grafton Street itself, all of them in
their way very shabby, which suggest old
boots. The life of the city has the same
quality. No man's feet are pinched in
Dublin. No man's corns need trouble
him. There is a tolerance, an easiness,.
a sense of general forbearance.
Perhaps shabbiness and good-humour
are necessarily connected so that we cannot
have the one without the other. Dublin
might very well be cleaner than it is, and
smarter, more punctual in its business ways,
more exact, more prompt. But if it were,
it would almost certainly be less pleasant
to live in. Did any one ever know a woman
who kept her house spotless and shining
who did not also keep her family somewhat
in terror of her sharp tongue and her
temper? Dublin may be a slattern. It
cannot be said of her that she is a shrew.
As it is with my first impression of
Dublin's shabbiness, so it is with my still
earlier prejudices. They were fairly right
about the facts. They were all wrong in
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— DUBLIN
their estimate of values. Dublin is, for
instance, inordinately fond of talking, and
this is specially true of intellectual Dublin.
St. Luke — if indeed St. Luke wrote the
Acts of the Apostles — noted that the
Athenians spent their time in nothing else
but either to tell or to hear some new
thing. Dublin even preserves the Athenian
order, putting telling first and hearing
second. It desires to tell, that is to talk,
and only consents to hear because life is
necessarily an affair of give and take.
Unless a man occasionally listens to other
people he cannot expect other people to
listen to him. Yet Dublin's capacity for
listening is admirable and very wonderful
considering that it has to listen to the same
things over and over again. For Dublin
has improved upon Athens and its way of
living. It is by no means necessary in
Dublin that the thing told should be new.
Indeed if the talking of intellectual Dublin
were limited in subject to new things there
would be much less of it than there is.
There are not nearly enough new ideas in
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
the world to furnish forth the intellectual
feasts of all Dublin's clever men. They,
very wisely, use old ideas, making " great
argument about them and about."
Dublin is naturally, instinctively, hos
pitable. Nowhere else, not even in New
York, are strangers better treated. They
are dined and wined, feasted and feted day
after day. And Dublin hospitality is as
spontaneous as it is generous. A stranger
there is not a burden laid on his enter
tainers, but a prize to be snatched at and
even scrambled for, because a stranger is
willing to listen. Indeed he must listen,
for he is very seldom allowed to talk. I
remember a dinner-party given in honour
of an Englishman of great eminence, a
man who ranks among the very first of our
contemporary writers. He did not, I
think, make one remark during the whole
meal. But he heard, perhaps with interest,
many things very well said. At such a
dinner given elsewhere the other guests
would have sat round and waited for the
lion to roar — and this was a veritable lion.
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— DUBLIN
There, the lion's mouth was closed, as
tightly as if Daniel had been in the den
with him. The others did the roaring.
And this, I daresay, was very good for the
lion. The abundance and excellence of Dublin's
talk are in sharp contrast with the very
moderate amount of Dublin's accomplish
ment. The city contains a large number of
thinkers who have worked out theories of
government and are prepared to expound
to audiences of any kind how Ireland ought
to be governed, or England, or Russia, or
any other country. But they have not
succeeded in actually governing Dublin in
any tolerable way. There are men in
Dublin, not only in public offices where
they might be expected, but in all sorts
of odd places, who know exactly how
commercial and business success is to be
attained, who will teach the farmer how to
farm, the banker how to bank, every one
everywhere in Ireland how to become
prosperous and rich. But they remain
quite poor themselves. There are critics
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
of literature in Dublin of extraordinary
acuteness and delicacy of feeling who will
talk about "tendencies" and "notes"
and " movements " for hours at a time
until the brain of the plain man swims,
until he grovels admiring and abased
before the feet of those who know so
much and talk so well. But Dublin pro
duces very few books which any one
can read.
I remember talking to a man, a citizen
of Dublin, about the number of brilliant
intellectuals who captivate strangers when
they visit our shores. I mentioned, with
all due reverence and sincere admiration,
the names of some of the deepest thinkers
in Ireland.
" Before I settle a man's reputation,"
said my friend acidly, " I like to see him
succeed in a competitive profession. None
of these fellows ever do."
The Belfast man in me assented cordially.
Another part of me, a nobler part I trust,
revolted against the judgment. Success in
a competitive profession is not the only
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— DUBLIN
success or the best. The pursuit of an
idea — even if you never catch the elusive
thing — is a nobler sport than the pursuit
of material wealth. We may perhaps
compare the life of intellectual Dublin
to the activities of an enthusiastic ento
mologist on a summer day. Equipped
with a green gauze net he chases butterflies
about a garden, bright winged insects
which shine pleasantly in the sunlight and
rival the flowers themselves in colour.
In the same garden there is a man who
digs. His shoulders are bent. His eyes
are on the dull brown earth. In the end,
if he perseveres, that man will have
potatoes to eat, good satisfying stuff which
will fill his belly. But the entomologist,
if he succeeds, will have a butterfly,
stretched out and pinned down on a board,
labelled and classified, a lasting addition,
I suppose, to human knowledge. He will
have made a step forward on the long road
of science. Even if he fails — and fluttering
ideas are very difficult to catch — his will
be the glory of having tried. Besides,
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
chasing butterflies is far pleasanter than
digging. But not even an entomologist is wholly
indifferent to bread and butter, and Dublin,
though it does not want to make a fortune,
does want, if possible, to be paid a salary.
Elsewhere men will toil early and late,
struggle, strive, deny themselves and im
peril their immortal souls in the hope of
establishing great businesses, seeing bank
balances grow, piling up gilt-edged securi
ties, building in the end huge gaunt man
sions in bare fields and giving orders to
Maple & Co. to furnish them regardless
of expense. In Dublin this kind of am
bition is extremely rare. Success in Dublin,
the success which is valued and sought, is
not measured in accumulated property,
but in the size of a salary, paid quarterly
or half-yearly from a secure source. And
success is not the prize of ceaseless toil.
It is the fruit of influence, wisely used.
In the suburbs of London there are men
who live comfortably in villas of moderate
size. Every morning at a fixed hour they
236

THE MIDDLE CLASSES— DUBLIN
disappear from their houses and do not
return again till the evening. Their neigh
bours, even their wives, do not know
where they go or what they do. In speak
ing of one of them we say : " Oh, So-and-
so is something in the City." The descrip
tion is vague but sufficient. We know that
the man is engaged in business of some sort,
selling carpets perhaps, or discounting
bills. He is — so the phrase goes — " making
money." In Dublin there are men living
in a similar way in similar villas, who also
leave their houses for some hours every
day, and their neighbours do not know
exactly where they go or what they do.
In speaking of them we say : " Oh, So-
and-so is something in the Four Courts,"
or " He has a job in the Castle." Again
the description, though vague, is sufficient.
We know that the man is serving the State
in an office. He is drawing a salary.
Dublin is a fortunate place for those who
prefer earning salaries to the chance of
making fortunes. It is the seat of the
Government of the country, a Government
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
which does not indeed possess the power of
governing, but, while all or almost all else
has been lost, retains its power of patron
age. Dublin Castle cannot make laws or
even enforce those which are made else
where, but it can appoint secretaries and
clerks — and pay them. I am sometimes
inclined to think that the " Irish Question,"
that despair of philosophers, historians, and
statesmen, might, so far as middle-class
Dublin is concerned, be boiled down to a
struggle for the power of patronage. Given
a community in which the highest ambition
of most men is a well-salaried post, and
you get a society which is intensely, even
passionately, concerned about the power of
patronage. Patronage is important everywhere, but
far more important in Dublin than in most
other places. The number of salaried posts
there is very great in proportion to the
population. A few years ago some one
wrote a pamphlet about the Government
Boards in Ireland and called them " The
Forty Thieves." His wit betrayed him
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— DUBLIN
into an exaggeration and an understate
ment. Our public offices are not so dis
honest as to deserve the name of thieves.
That is the exaggeration. There must be
far more than forty of them. That is
where the author, with the Arabian Nights
fresh in his mind, understated his case.
Dublin is also the centre of the legal
system in Ireland, and the greatest prizes
in the lottery of salaries fall to lawyers.
It is better to be a judge than the head of
a State Department. Even a county
court judge has a very comfortable
position. And there are all sorts of offices,
more or less well paid, which lawyers get
as a matter of course, often as a matter of
professional right. A man of great ability
may prefer to earn a very large income as
a lawyer by his own exertion. Two or
three men in every generation aim at and
achieve this kind of success. But for most
lawyers success means securing a salaried
post, something in which a fixed amount of
work is done, during a fixed number of
hours, for a fixed salary. 289

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
Outside Government circles and the
legal profession the same kind of ambition
prevails everywhere in Dublin. The Cor
poration provides salaried posts. The
Poor Law Guardians provide salaried posts.
Friendly societies — now heavily subsidised
by the Government — provide salaried posts.
And everybody wants such posts. A girl,
applying for the position of sewing maid,
described herself in a letter as " compelled
by family misfortune to try and make an
honest living." The man who through
lack of family connections or political
influence cannot hope for a salaried post
is in the position of that girl. He may
make things, bicycles or motor-cars. He
may sell stocks or shares, or cure the sick,
but, if he is a true Dubliner, he feels that
he has been unjustly treated by fate in
being compelled to make a living instead of
having one provided for him by a benevo
lent providence.
All this helps to make Dublin a very
pleasant place to live in. Elsewhere the
successful man is often most offensive.
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— DUBLIN
He is inclined to be arrogant and self-
assertive. It is by his own industry, his
own ability, and his own daring that he has
succeeded. He cannot help saying so on
every possible occasion, and a society in
which people say such things is not nice
to live in. The beauty of most success
in Dublin is that, like the Order of the
Garter, there is no damned merit about it.
The successful man knows this and does
not boast. His manners remain suave and
friendly. He can be hospitable without
embittering the souls of his guests by
pointing to his great possessions, without
saying—by look if not by word — " There,
my boy, you might be drinking wine
like that every night, or sitting oppo
site that genuine Sheraton sideboard,
if you had worked as hard all your life
as I have."
The successful Dublin man neither says
nor thinks such things. He owes his well-
salaried security to the fact that his wife's
uncle had influence somewhere. There is
nothing to boast about in that. It might
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
have been somebody else's wife's uncle
who had the influence, or the other
political party might have been in power
at the time. The chess player will rejoice
and may swagger when he wins. He
who throws dice successfully will rejoice
but not swagger.
There are, of course, great manufac
turing and commercial companies inDublin.
There is Guinness's Brewery for instance,
and the Bank of Ireland. But they remain
of subordinate importance and are affected
in their methods by the spirit of the city.
A clerkship in Guinness's is not regarded
as an opportunity for commercial energy
or enterprise. It is like the " something
in the Castle," a provision for life, a
salaried post from which a man starts on
no adventures after fortune, but at which
he rests in security, looking for increments
of pay as the years flow softly by. A
clerkship in the Bank of Ireland is, I am
told, slightly less desirable than a clerkship
in the Brewery. But it is essentially the
same kind of thing. Both fall to those who
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— DUBLIN
have influence, whose friends know some
one who knows some one else, who is in a
position to ask for a nomination with some
prospect of securing it.
I do not wish to discuss the abstract
question of the wisdom of this method of
appointment by influence. I know that
a strong case can be made against it, that
the voices of honest reformers are loud in
wrath when they denounce it.
It is no doubt an abuse, but like many
abuses it has certain practical advantages.
The great thing, of course, is to have
influence, but that is necessarily the happy
position of Very few, of a small minority
even in a city like Dublin where there is an
immense amount of influence going. Next
to having influence oneself the best thing
is to be on terms of friendship with those
who have it. " To quarrel with your bread
and butter " is recognised as foolish all the
world over. In a society where influence
is, if not almighty, certainly very powerful
it is just as foolish to quarrel with those
who are able to provide your bread and
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
butter, or the bread and butter of your
son, or the bread and butter of your
daughter's husband. There are some people
so highly placed that they plainly possess
great influence. Every one is friendly with
them. But quite obscure, apparently
insignificant people sometimes have in
fluence too. It is never possible to say
even of a lonely old maid that she has no
influence. The wise man keeps on good
terms with every one, quarrels with no one
if he can possibly help it. Since wisdom
is, after all, far commoner in the world
than folly, a society in which it is foolish
to quarrel with any one becomes a very
pleasant society to live in. In Dublin
friendliness has become a habit ; and life
is easier, smoother, far less irritating there
than in other parts of the United Kingdom.
Thus does the abuse of advancement by
interest and influence yet wear a precious
jewel in its head. Who will say that the
evil of the system outweighs the good ?
Who will hurry to perpetrate an unneces
sary and certainly unpopular reform ?
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— DUBLIN
The friendliness which is characteristic
of Dublin does not exist only among the
classes which earn salaries and inhabit
suburban houses. It prevails in all classes
and, a more striking thing, between all
classes. Indeed class distinctions seem to
matter less in Dublin than they do else
where. There is a hymn which I have
heard sung in England. One of the verses
runs thus :
"The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them high and lowly
And ordered their estate."
That hymn was written by an Irish
woman, but I never heard it sung in
Ireland. I cannot imagine it sung in a
Dublin church with any appearance of
solemnity. Dublin does not look at life
in that way. The English do. They may
like that view of things or they may hate
it. They are probably happier when they
like it ; better men when they hate it.
But neither by liking it nor hating it do
they get away from it. They accept the
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
fact that God ordered their estate such
as it is. They may think He did wisely,
or they may think He did wrong. But it
is a solemn fact that He did. Dublin does
not think so.
There are, no doubt, in Dublin men who
have the appearance of being rich, and a
good many who are undoubtedly poor.
But there is no recognition of an impassable
gulf between the two. God made them
both men and women. The hawker who
calls with a basket full of fish is friendly,
and spends a pleasant twenty minutes dis
cussing the effect of the Vartry water upon
children's teeth. In England he would be
conscious that some superior divinity had
ordered his estate. He would touch his
hat, name his price, deposit a herring, and
go. He might as well be a penny in the slot
machine for all the interest he takes in his
customer or suffers his customer to take in
him. The Dublin tram conductor — when
he gets away from the congestion of Nel
son's Pillar somewhere at the end of a long
line — does not merely puncture tickets for a
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— DUBLIN
passenger. He gives his views, sound sen
sible views, on the misleading nature of
the headlines printed in the evening papers.
An English tram conductor, angrily con
scious that God had ordered his estate,
would maintain his attitude of tram-con
ducting if he and his passenger were
marooned together on a desert island
without hope or prospect of getting away
for years.
Dublin — the fact strikes every visitor —
is singularly infested with beggars. In
New York there are no beggars. In London
it is only after dark and in lonely streets
that anybody begs. They say that begging
is an illegal practice, and that the police
in London, New York, Paris and elsewhere,
put a stop to it by arresting the beggars.
But that is not the real reason for the decay
of mendicancy everywhere except in Dublin
and Oporto. There are police enough in
Dublin to arrest every beggar in the city
in less than a week. Man for man the police
are far more than a match, physically,
for the beggars, who are indeed mostly
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
women and children. Begging must be
just as much against the law in Dublin
as anywhere else. If it were a matter of
police and law there would be no beggars
in Dublin. But neither the law nor the
police are nearly as important as they
look. Dublin has found that out and
Dublin does not want its beggars arrested.
The law may say what it likes and the
police may grow to any height, but if a
city wants beggars it will have them. And
Dublin does. It is part of the prevailing
friendliness of the place.
It is not possible to do business in Dublin
without being struck by the fact that even
commercial life is deeply affected by this
same spirit of friendliness. Dublin — there
is no use denying the fact — has not a high
reputation in the business world. Talk
to a Belfast business man about Dublin
and hear his opinion. If he is a very kindly
Belfast man he will say that Dublin is
incurably slack. But what is the matter
with Dublin as a business city is not
slackness but friendliness, that tolerant
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— DUBLIN
" live and let live " spirit which oils the
wheels of affairs so that they run smoothly
even if they do not run very fast.
There is a story told by Miss Somerville
and Miss Ross about a man who started
a fish shop in a small south of Ireland town.
He went out of business almost at once
because people kept bothering the life out
of him for fish. His philosophy was not
that of a commercially-minded business
man. He wanted, not to make a fortune,
but to live quietly. He would have been
willing to supply fish in moderate quan
tities to a few people once a week or so.
He saw no sense in becoming a slave to a
clamorous population which demanded fish
in unreasonable quantities. Dublin shares
his feeling. Business is business of course,
an unpleasant necessity for many people.
But it is foolish to run into extremes.
There are a certain number of people
who want to take houses in Dublin every
year, and Dublin is abundantly supplied
with house agents. Every one of them is
an agreeable and friendly man. They have
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
long printed lists of possible habitations
on which the number of rooms, acres of
land, rental and other details are plainly
set forth. The aspiring tenant takes the
list and sets out to view the houses. He
goes at some expense of time and money
to Howth and searches out a house which
seems as if it ought to be the thing he
wants. He is met at the door by a smiling
parlourmaid, who tells him that it was,
she believes, to be let once, but was taken
on a long lease six months ago. Still
hopeful the searcher goes to Rathfarnham
and finds another house. It is indubitably
to be let. There are bills to that effect
in the windows. But there is no possible
way of getting inside it. The key is,
perhaps, somewhere. Perhaps there is no
key. The stranger from England or Bel
fast goes back to the house agent, after
five or six of these experiments, in a furious
temper and complains that his time has
been wasted. The house agent is perfectly
agreeable and friendly.
" Do you tell me that now ? " he says,
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— DUBLIN
when he hears that the house at Howth
has been let. " Maybe then I'd better
scratch it off the list."
But he does not scratch it off. After
all it may be vacant again some day. And
if it ever is trouble will be saved by having
it on the list.
Faced with the fact that the house at
Rathfarnham is inaccessible he expresses
astonishment. " Well now," he says, " aren't some
people the very devil ? You'll hardly
believe it, but it was only yesterday the
owner of that house was asking me was
there any chance of getting it let. And
how is a gentleman to take a house if he
can't see the inside of it ? Tell me that."
The stranger of course cannot tell him
that. He is asking the same question
himself. But his bad temper is oozing
away. He is beginning to realise that
business in Dublin is a matter of give and
take. A house agent must not be pinned
down to the printed statements of his
lists. It is unfriendly to treat him in that
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
way. As for the loss of time ! Man has
an immortal soul. All eternity lies before
him. It is a supremely silly thing to fuss
about a day or two.
There ought to be a statue of Epictetus
somewhere in Dublin. It is his philosophy
which rules. He enumerates, I recollect,
certain troubles which make fools angry,
and he exhorts his disciples to bear them
quietly. " For so much peace is bought,"
he says. " This is the price of tranquillity."
Such is the Dublin spirit. It makes no
fetish of efficiency. Man does not live in
order to get things done. He is forced to
get things done, more or less, in order to
live. If he can succeed in living comfort
ably and peacefully without getting much
done or troubling a great deal in the doing,
then he has mastered destiny and achieved
the highest wisdom. Dublin is far advanced
towards this beatitude.
The friendliness of Dublin is something
more than mere good-humour. It is the
result of a deep philosophy, of a wide and
tolerant outlook upon life. Very few things,
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— DUBLIN
perhaps no things at all, are really im
portant enough to worry about. Ireland
is — I quote popularly accepted opinion —
the most religious country in the world,
and Dublin is the capital of Ireland. Yet
Dublin is, broadly speaking, a city
of sceptics. I am far from suggesting
that there is any considerable number
of people in Dublin who express
out loud doubts about the chief
articles of the Christian creed. I
am sure that the proportion of Dublin
people who go to church regularly is un
usually large. Yet Dublin's attitude to
wards most things is that of a detached,
slightly amused spectator. Dublin is very
rarely stirred to enthusiasm about any
thing. No doubt this scepticism is to some
extent due to the fact that the city is full
of officials. An official cannot be a fanatic.
He must not take sides or feel anything
very strongly. The perfect official, if such a
thing existed, would believe nothing firmly
except that most men are fools. Dublin's
officials have undoubtedly modified the
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
Dublin spirit. But I do not think that the
whole credit for the sceptical sanity of
Dublin can be given to the official class.
Trinity College has had its influence.
There are people who affect to regard
Trinity as an alien institution. But it has
succeeded in inspiring Dublin with some
of its own spirit. Trinity lives upon
Butler's Analogy. There are, I believe,
some men with Trinity degrees who have
not studied Butler. But they have not
therefore escaped his spirit. Trinity is
soaked in him. Nowhere else in the world
has that great book, the perfect expression
of pure common sense, been so highly
honoured as in Trinity. " Probability,"
says Butler, " is the very guide of life."
Precisely. Trinity lives and Dublin, with
the Trinity influence continually modifying
it, also lives with probability for guide.
But certainty is the source of all en
thusiasm, all fanaticism, all passion. No
man raves or wants to slay his fellow -man
for the sake of a greater or less degree of
probability. Nothing less than a certainty
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— DUBLIN
will make him either a persecutor or a
martyr. Friendliness, detachment, sanity,
these are the rewards of a life guided by
probability, the fruits of the Butler spirit.
Dublin reached the zenith of its career
as a city at the end of the eighteenth cen
tury. It is to that period or thereabouts
that its most beautiful buildings belong.
Since then the world has progressed, so
they say, or gone mad. There is a cartoon
by Max Beerbohm which shows " the grave
misgivings of the nineteenth century and
the wicked amusement of the eighteenth
in watching the progress (or whatever it
is) of the twentieth." The eighteenth
century in the picture is represented by
a beau, appropriately dressed, in the act
of taking a pinch of snuff. Every line of
his lean face expresses a cynical apprecia
tion of the extreme folly of the twentieth
century, who is rushing along with his
motor goggles pushed back on his forehead.
I am far from suggesting that Dublin is as
cynical as that old gentleman. It is much
too kindly to be cynical. Nor is Dublin's
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
amusement at the world's progress in the
least wicked. But Dublin watches the
progress (or whatever it is) with a certain
detachment. The motor cyclist, bent
double and heralded on his way by a
series of rapid explosions, speeds by.
Dublin looks at him and wonders where
he wants to get to ; doubts whether it is
worth while getting there at all ; is almost
certain — Dublin is never quite certain—
that there is no use getting there so
quickly.

256

CHAPTER X
THE MIDDLE CLASSES— BELFAST
Belfast has the largest flax spinning
mill in the world, the largest rope works,
the largest tobacco factory, the largest
shipbuilding yard, and, I daresay, several
other largest things. She contributes,
through her Custom House, more to the
Imperial Treasury than any other city in
Ireland. I am not sure — statistics never
stay long in my head — that she does not
pay more in this way than all the rest of
Ireland put together. She is progressive,
far more progressive than Dublin or Cork,
cleaner, better lighted and — much, much
else. All these facts — if they are facts, I
may have got some of them wrong — are
impressive, especially when conveyed to
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
the world in shouts. They would be even
more impressive if they were shouted by
anybody except Belfast herself.
It is always wiser for a man, a city, or a
nation to get an outsider toactas trumpeter.
He who sounds his own praises seldom gets
the credit which is his due. That goes to
the man or community which sits still,
smirks modestly and blushes, if possible,
while somebody else, not a near relation,
sings "the glorious day's renown." Per
haps Belfast is too honest for such a trick.
Perhaps there has been a difficulty in
getting a disinterested stranger to say what
ought to be said about Belfast. So Belfast
says it herself, all of it, several times over,
very loud.
Yet we ought not to allow this little
failure in modesty, this trifling aggressive
ness of manner, to blind us to the fact that
what Belfast says about herself is true.
The York Street spinning mill really is
very large. So is Gallaher's tobacco
factory. Harland and Wolff 's men did build
the Titanic. Belfast does possess a fierce
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— BELFAST
kind of energy in work which is not to be
found elsewhere in Ireland.
I paid a visit a few days ago to the little
apiary in which I keep a hive or two of bees.
I had, a few days before, housed a great
swarm in their new home. I found them
intensely, feverishly busy. There were no
drones among them, for drones are not
wanted in these new communities. Each
worker was possessed with a very demon
of energy. Not for one instant did the
returning adventurer linger on the alighting
board. No clusters hung, sunning them
selves on the porch. I could hear the
restless hum of the workers inside, desper
ately intent on forming wax cells. Near
at hand was another hive, the home of the
parent community from which the swarm
came forth. I knew that inside it there
were great combs, well stored with honey,
heavy with maturing brood. Here the
workers went in and out quietly, gathered
in groups round the porch and enjoyed the
sun. Great drones, glossy, well-favoured
fellows, went buzzing to and fro. Life
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
was a leisurely business. Summer days
were long. The world was a pleasant
place. Why seek an early grave by un
remitting toil ? We can scarcely suppose
that each bee reasons and acts as an
individual, convinced of the necessity for
breathless work, or of the pleasantness of
leisure. Rather it seems as if there were
a kind of community spirit which possesses
the society, against which the individual
bee is powerless. The members of the
newly-hived swarm must work, must wear
themselves out with working, dare not
pause for an instant. The community spirit
compels them. Belfast, a city of restless
energy, is a newly -hived swarm.
Visitors to Belfast complain that people
walk too fast along the streets, that the
greetings of passing friends are of the
briefest, and nods of recognition curt. The
Belfast man takes such criticisms as com
pliments, tributes paid unwillingly to the
spirit of his city. " In Dublin," he says,
— Dublin is always the antithesis of Belfast —
" men walk about, up and down Grafton
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— BELFAST
Street, as if they wanted to air their clothes.
When we walk along Donegall Place it is
because we want to get to the other end of
it, and the sooner the better, for we've
something to do." Then perhaps he men
tions the size of the York Street spinning
mill and the number of riveters that work
in the shipyards, and adds — for the matter
is seldom far from his thoughts — that
Belfast will not be governed by a Dublin
Parliament. He is perfectly right. In
Belfast people do walk as if they wanted
to get there, and I doubt whether a Dublin
Parliament will ever govern Belfast. It
seems much more likely that Belfast will
bully a Dublin Parliament, if there ever
is a Dublin Parliament ; but curiously
enough, the Belfast man does not think
so. I had occasion once to travel from a
midland town to Belfast by way of Dublin.
I arrived at the Dublin terminus of my
first railway and beckoned to a porter.
He smiled pleasantly at me and then
suggested to another porter that he should
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
undertake the task of carrying my luggage.
The second porter did it with the air of a
man of abundant leisure, who out of the
kindness of his heart assists a fellow in
distress. I daresay I did not look as if I
were good for much in the way of a tip.
Yet I had ready in my pocket a modest
coin which I gave apologetically to the
second porter. Later on I arrived in
Belfast. I had not bought a fur-lined
overcoat or a new hat on the way. I
looked neither more nor less opulent than
when I reached Dublin. A discerning
porter with a knowledge of travellers must
have been able to gauge to a halfpenny the
size of the tip I should give. Yet long
before the train stopped a Belfast porter
was running alongside the carriage in
which I was, eager to carry my luggage.
Unfortunately for him, there was another
porter, equally eager and much stronger.
Just as the train stopped he reached the
first porter and struck him a heavy blow
on the chest. While the stricken man
reeled back, this second porter secured my
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— BELFAST
belongings and in the end pocketed my tip.
This story, though true, is a parable.
Belfast is pervaded by a spirit of intense
and serious earnestness. Dublin is more
suave. I do not mean that the Dublin
man when he makes a speech in public
is any less terrific than the Belfast man.
Both thunder, and no one living can do
more than that. But when the Dublin
man has finished his speech he relaxes.
The Belfast man goes on thundering in
private life. At midnight, when the meet
ing is over and the cheering done, your
Dublin orator will even smile over his
pipe. The humorous side of his own en
thusiasm is quite visible to him. The
Belfast orator does not know that there is
a humorous side to enthusiasm. No quan
tity of tobacco will lure him off the plat
form. I should not be surprised to hear
that he continues in a condition of deadly
earnestness even after he has gone to bed.
Far be it from me to argue about the
comparative moral worth of intermittent
and perennial earnestness. I think I
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
admire the Belfast kind more, but the
Dublin kind is pleasanter to live with.
Yet if any one disagrees with me about
this I give in to him at once. I will not
quarrel about the point. What interests
me far more than the value of either earnest
ness is the question about how there comes
to be this difference between the two cities.
They are very little more than a hundred
miles apart, yet I suppose that Manchester
and Bombay are not more separated in
spirit. Difference of race is, I suppose, part of
the explanation we seek. It is, at all
events, often insisted on, and there seems
to be some reality in it. The Belfast man
is near akin to the Lowland Scot. There
is, and for centuries has been, much going
to and fro between Scotland and this
part of Ireland, and much intermingling
of Scottish and Irish blood. But it is
very easy to exaggerate the importance of
race in determining character, at all events
in Ireland. Neither in Belfast nor any
where else in Ireland do we find racial
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— BELFAST
purity. We are all of mixed blood, and
the predominance of the Scottish over the
Irish in the north is not sufficient to
account for the difference between Belfast's
pushfulness and Dublin's suavity. Besides,
we observe exactly the same kind of
differences, though not perhaps so deeply
marked, in other places where no differ
ence of race exists. The Englishman of
Hampshire differs from the Englishman of
Lancashire very much as the southern
Irishman does from the northern. There
is the same difference between the northern
and southern Italians and between French
men in different parts of France. Yet no
one supposes that any insuperable race
barrier separates these peoples from each
other. The bond of common nationality
is stronger than the variations of tempera
ment and the differences of race, if there
are differences of race.
Religion is sometimes quoted as the real
cause of the difference in spirit between
Belfast and Dublin. It is vehemently
asserted and quite as vehemently denied
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
that there is something in Protestantism
which favours the growth of energy, while
Roman Catholicism tends to produce a
certain passiveness. It seems, certainly,
as if Protestantism, which is founded on
the self-assertion of the inoividual and
always holds individual effort a supreme
virtue, is likely to develop that kind of
relentless energy which is characteristic
of Belfast. But here again our speculations
are brought up short by the fact that the
same differences of temperament exist
where there are no discernible religious
differences, in Belgium, for instance, and
in England.
We may allow that race and religion
count for something in determining the
differences of character between Belfast
and Dublin. But behind them lies the
fact that Dublin is an old city, and Belfast
is new. There is in visible personal
accomplishment an intense stimulus to
effort. When Nebuchadnezzar looked
round him at his palaces, his walls and his
gardens, he said : " Is not this Great
266

THE MIDDLE CLASSES— BELFAST
Babylon that I have built ? " Then, so
we read, his heart was lifted up within
him. He felt the call to do still greater
things. He did not do them, it seems,
because God, Who will not let men build
their towers right up to Heaven, drove him
forth to eat grass in the fields like an ox.
But the energy, the breathless desire of
effort, were in him stimulated by the
sight of all that he had done. Men who
find less to do because more has been
done for them by those who went before
are not so forced into ambitious effort.
Belfast can scarcely escape the Nebu
chadnezzar spirit. It is plain and well
within the memory of the middle-aged
that this is the great city which we have
built. It is not so long ago since old St.
Ann's, the Presbyterian church in Fisher-
wick Place and the Linen Hall were the
most impressive buildings in the city ;
since the stretch of land between the
Botanic Gardens and the Ormeau Road was
" the Plains," a barren, uninhabited tract ;
since the Black Staff flowed visible and
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
evil-smelling under bridges ; since the
wayfarer passed straight into the country
when he left the Queen's College behind
him, and St. John's, Malone, a tiny church,
stood among fields where cattle grazed.
In less than the passing of a single genera
tion the old buildings have disappeared.
A cathedral rises where St. Ann's stood.
The sordid slums behind it have become
orderly rows of warehouses. A great
municipal building has taken the place
of the modestly respectable Linen Hall.
" The Plains" are thickly-populated streets.
The houses of prosperous business men
stand one beside the other, in the middle
of trim grounds, out to Shaw's Bridge.
Living men have seen the foundation
stones laid, have watched the walls grow,
the streets widen, the tentacles of traffic
routes stretch and extend their grasp.
A sense of restlessness exists when rapid
change challenges the attention, and rest
lessness is readily transmutable into energy.
The beekeeper knows that his swarm,
newly hived, will work deliriously because
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— BELFAST
it has everything to do, because it is new,
is at its beginnings. He knows that it
will go on working even after it has accom
plished much, will cover fresh combs with
brood and store crates full of honey beyond
its needs, because the spirit of work has
possessed it, because the sight of all it
has done drives it on to do still more.
Whatever may be the causes of the
energy of Belfast, there can be no question
of its value. There is a story — probably
quite untrue — told about an English states
man who was questioned about Ireland at
a time when the war was passing through
one of its critical stages. " I don't care,"
he said, or is supposed to have said, " if
the whole of the rest of Ireland is swallowed
up by the sea so long as Belfast is left to
build ships and make linen." If the
singular energy and force of Belfast were,
as the story suggests, of vital importance
to the Empire and to England, it is not
difficult to understand that Ireland would
be poor without this wayward northern
city of hers. England and the Empire
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
have energy and force in abundance.
Ireland — the Ireland outside the Belfast
sphere of influence — lacks just this capacity
for savage toil.
And Ireland is instinctively conscious
of her need. The southern Nationalist,
even the southern Unionist, often speak
harshly and angrily about Belfast. The
Nationalist at least is not without excuse.
Belfast — it may almost be said Belfast
alone — has stood between him and his
hopes ; and this is very hard to forgive.
Belfast has the defects of her fine qualities,
is arrogant, and contemptuous of much that
she does not understand. Belfast, with
blunt rudeness, refuses to discuss or to
reason. She states her will aggressively,
provocatively. It is scarcely to be ex
pected that Belfast should be much loved.
It would not be surprising if the rest of
Ireland, in a fit of petulance, were to
disown Belfast and bid her go her own
way, make her own bed and lie in it.
But Ireland has never yielded to such a
temptation. She claims Belfast as part of
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— BELFAST
her body and will listen to no scheme of
settlement which lops off the northern
limb of the nation. In this the rest of
Ireland has shown herself as obstinate as
Belfast herself.
There are, no doubt, many reasons
which make the idea of partition hateful
to Ireland. If Ireland is to be a nation
at all she must preserve her geographical
unity. She is an island. Within the bounds
of her four seas there are no natural
divisions. No range of mountains, no
river system, cuts her in two. There is no
separation of highlands and lowlands.
Any division of Irish soil would be arti
ficial and the boundaries would correspond
to no geographical facts. It is possible
to conceive two politically divided States
in Scotland. In that country there might
be a nation or two nations. In Ireland
there is no such alternative. There may
be a nation or there may be a couple of
provinces. There cannot be a nation and
a province, or a nation with an English
county cut out of it. If Ireland is to have
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
national existence of any real kind, Belfast
must be part of Ireland.
There is the feeling that to desert the
Nationalists of Belfast, to leave the
minority there helpless under the rule ofthe
majority, would be a betrayal. Belfast
has the same feeling about the Unionists
of the south and west of Ireland ; but
Belfast, narrowly self-centred, does not
shrink from the sacrifice as the rest of
Ireland does. She is prepared, unwillingly
indeed and as a last resort, to leave the
friends of the Union elsewhere in Ireland
to their fate, a fate so evil, according to
her belief, as to be intolerable. Nationalist
Ireland thinks otherwise and will not leave
her friends to the tender mercies of Belfast.
But behind the reasoned Nationalism
and the party loyalty lies the sense,
instinctive and trustworthy, that Ireland
cannot afford to do without Belfast ; not
only because Belfast is a source of financial
strength, a very taxable city, but because
Belfast possesses certain qualities, energy,
the spirit of commercial adventure, hard-
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— BELFAST
ness, which the rest of Ireland lacks. It
is for the sake of these that Ireland, wise
at heart even when she seems fanatical,
will not let Belfast break away from her.
Belfast has not yet understood that she
cannot do without Ireland. Convinced
that she possesses the great qualities which
she does possess, she supposes that these
are sufficient. They are not. The experi
ment of Free Cities, denationalised centres
of pure commerce, was tried in Europe,
and the cities failed to survive. Napoleon
found some of them impossible. Those
which survived his conquests were gradu
ally drawn into unions, Zollvereins, em
pires. They could not continue their
independent existence because there is
something stronger than the cash nexus
and the bonds of credit. Man does not
live by bread alone, even though the bread
be won abundantly by building ships and
making linen. One by one the Free Cities
of eighteenth century Europe felt the
drawing of the spirit of nationality and
became one with their kin. Belfast can no
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
more stand apart from Ireland than Ham
burg could stand apart from Germany.
Something greater than politics, deeper
than creeds, decides these things in the end.
Men and communities cannot in the long
run successfully defy the law of Him Who
made them what they are and placed them
where they are.

274

CHAPTER XI
THE MIDDLE CLASSES — THE COUNTRY TOWN
It was about three o'clock in the after
noon. I met the Resident Magistrate in
the street. He had left the Court House
and was on his way home to luncheon. I
knew him for a kindly, easy -tempered man,
usually cheerful. That day he was not
cheerful. He had scarcely a smile for me,
though we were good friends.
There were several excuses for a ruffled
temper. The Court where his work lay
had sat for an unusually long time and he
was no doubt hungry. The day was very
wet and the streets of the town were in a
condition of indescribable filth. There
had been a fair the day before, and the
smell of it still lingered, rising in a vapour
which could be seen as well as smelt, from
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
the slime which the fair had left. The soft
warm rain encouraged the smell and kept
the filth liquid. My friend was one of those
men who take a pleasure in being well-
dressed. He hated splashing his trousers
with evil mud, trousers which he regarded
with pride and affection. That was another
excuse for ill-temper.
But I knew him well enough to give him
credit for a buoyancy of spirit sufficient
to float him off the shoals of depression
in spite of hunger, wet and mud. I greeted
him and began to feel about sympathetic
ally for the cause of his mood.
" Troublesome Court to-day ? " I asked.
Petty Sessions Courts in Irish country
towns are not very tioublesome as a rule.
The casual drunkard is easily dealt with.
Cases of assault and wilful trespass are
often quite amusing, and no magistrate of
any experience allows himself to be per
plexed by the curiously contradictory
evidence of reputable and thoroughly
credible witnesses. He gets at the truth
without troubling himself overmuch about
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— COUNTRY TOWN
sworn statements. But sometimes Petty
Sessions Courts are very troublesome, and
a magistrate has to be careful what he
says and does. When offences of political
or semi-political complexion are con
sidered a lawyer is often brought down from
Dublin, met at the station with a band,
well fee'd and well fed. His business, in
return for welcome, food and fee, is to
harry the Resident Magistrate as much as
he can. He does this thoroughly and
with skill. But there had been no such
case in the Court that day. If there had
been I should have seen the crowds in the
streets and heard the cheering and the
band. " Licensing sessions to-day," said my
friend the magistrate.
Licensing sessions are held once a year
and are of enormous importance. They
are, in the commercial life of an Irish
country town, the most important events
there are. At them it is decided which
shops are to have the privilege of selling
porter and whisky. It is a very valuable
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
privilege, for the sale of porter and whisky
is the surest way, indeed almost the only
way, of making money in an Irish country
town. " We did well to-day, anyhow," the
magistrate went on. " We licensed every
house in the whole damned place, except
mine and the Rectory. I told them they
might as well make a clean job of it and
license them too."
The statement was a gross exaggeration,
excusable only in a man who had been
much tried. I looked up and down the
long street. I could see three drapers'
shops and a watchmaker's, which were
none of them licensed and were not likely
to be. There were also several labourers'
cottages, built by the Uiban District
Council, in which nothing was sold. There
were the houses of two doctors and  1
did not mean to argue with my friend, or
to press my instances of unlicensed houses
on him. He would not have listened to
me if I had.
" Look at this town," he said. " What
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— COUNTRY TOWN
is there in it ? A church, a great huge
church, two churches in fact, both far too
big. Both built out of the profits of
selling drink. What else ? An enormous
staring workhouse, bigger even than the
churches, filled with the people who bought
the drink. Beautiful, isn't it ? The way
things work in with each other. Drink
damns the people's souls and destroys their
bodies, so drink erects churches to save
the souls and workhouses to keep the bodies
alive. Come home and have lunch with
me." I did, and we each had a whisky and
soda. After that we felt better and my
friend was able to talk calmly. We agreed
that common report, and he himself follow
ing it, had wronged the Irish people.
They do not in fact drink more than any
one else. There are comparatively few
habitual and hopeless drunkards. Our
country towns are, indeed, so full of public-
houses that their number strikes the most
unobservant stranger very unpleasantly.
But there are fewer inns and drinking
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
places along the country roads than there
are in England. The drink traffic in
Ireland is centralised and the drinking is
all done on market days and fair days.
The Irish farmer or farm labourer has his
drink when he comes into the town, once
a week for a market, once a month for a
fair. On the other days he does not drink
at all. The numerous public -houses of
the country town, which stand side by side
the whole length of the street, are busy
once a week and very busy once a montn.
All the rest of their time they are almost
empty. The grotesque statement about
the workhouses and the churches is simply
not true. There are all sorts of people in
workhouses and workhouse hospitals be
sides broken drunkards, and churches are
not built entirely out of whisky money.
If ecclesiastics succeed in skimming the
cream off the drink traffic by way of sub
scriptions, dues and " dowries " of nuns, is
not this a victory for religion and morality ?
If the devil has no right, as Wesley thought,
to the best tunes, it is surely meritorious
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— COUNTRY TOWN
to despoil him also of his other gains ; even
granting that whisky is the devil, which
has never been absolutely proved.
The problem of the public-houses which
fill the streets of Irish country towns is,
in reality, more economic than either
religious or moral. A town, even an Irish
town, ought to be something more than a
distributing centre. It can scarcely justify
its existence or expect to exist very long
if it only distributes, or mainly distributes,
drink. Yet this is the position to which
our smaller towns are rapidly sinking. A
hundred years ago they were centres of
productive industry. They have now
almost ceased to produce. Railway facili
ties, the enterprise of large advertising
firms, and the growth of co-operative
societies are undermining their position
even as distributing centres of most kinds
of goods. If the farmer can buy his seeds
better from a co-operative society, and
the farmer's wife can buy her dairy
requisites cheaper in Dublin, and the
farmer's daughter can obtain a wider
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
choice of blouses and stays by writing to
Manchester for a price list, the shops of
the small towns will be left with nothing
which can be sold profitably except whisky
and porter. The future seems far from
hopeful. The workhouses will soon become
the real centres of the town's life. The
churches will perhaps grow larger. The
public-houses can scarcely be more numer
ous than they are. An intolerable dullness,
like mildew, will settle on these places,
and the grass growing in the streets will
be the freshest and pleasantest thing about
them, unless 
Once these towns were productive. I
came across evidence of this fact quite
accidentally. I was sitting one winter
afternoon in the housekeeper's room of a
" great house " which dominated and had
owned a small country town. I was having
tea with the housekeeper, an old lady whose
charming manners made me think better
of the " Bladesover System " than Mr.
Wells does. We were friends before that
afternoon, the housekeeper and I. We
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— COUNTRY TOWN
became confidential and intimate over our
tea. Afterwards she opened for me some
large store cupboards and showed me an
immense hoard of linen. Some of it was
nearly a hundred years old. So she
assured me, and added :
" You couldn't buy linen like that now,
whatever you paid for it."
I fingered the venerable fabric. It was
still sound and strong.
" It was made here," she told me.
" The flax was grown here and the linen
made here, in the town."
I was astonished. Linen, so I had
always supposed, is the peculiar treasure of
Belfast, one of the chief sources of that
great city's wealth. Could it be that this
decayed, shabby, and remote little town
had ever challenged Belfast and made
linen ? I remembered an old spinning
wheel in a cottage, unlike the wheels on
which women in those days spun their
balls of grey wool. An old, old woman,
the owner of the wheel, told me that her
mother had used it for spinning linen
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AN TRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
thread from flax. I remembered a kind of
arcade in the town, used when I knew it as
a housing place for vehicles, which had
once been known as the linen market.
The town had certainly, at one time, made
linen. The fact set me searching, wandering
through those unexciting pages of history
which do not record battles or remote
antiquities, but the domestic doings of
our great-grandfathers. I found out about
that town that it was once, not a hundred
years ago, a hive of most varied in
dustrial life It had a distillery, a large
affair which made 60,000 gallons of whisky
in the year. It had two breweries, two
salt works (whatever salt works are),
and a tannery. It had two flour mills
worked by water wheels of thirty horse
power, two cotton mills and a bleach green,
as well as its linen manufactory and
market. It imported immense quantities
of flax seed and timber from America and
the Baltic. It exported grain, flour, and
meal. Of all these industries not a single
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— COUNTRY TOWN
one remained. One of the breweries was
the last survivor and it perished some years
ago ; killed, I think, by legislation made
in the interests of temperance. It was
probably legislation which killed the whisky
distillery too, causing a thirsty people to
obtain their 60,000 gallons of whisky
elsewhere, from some company large and
rich enough to survive the blows of Acts
of Parliament.
For the failure of the cotton factories,
the linen making, the salt works and the
tannery we should not, I suppose, blame the
malignant jealousy of an alien Parliament ;
though we do blame it, for our own com
fort and satisfaction. These industries
perished because, under modern conditions,
such work must be done on a large scale ;
and factories have gathered into great
centres. That town might, perhaps, have
become the great centre of linen manu
facturing. It did not. Belfast beat it in
the race.
Is there any hope for the future of these
small Irish towns ? Will they ever again
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
justify their existence by producing
things ?
Of late years many efforts have been
been made to start industries here and
there. Sometimes a precarious existence
is secured for a woollen mill or a bacon-
curing establishment. But there is always
a feeling that any promise of real success
would be the signal for some of the long-
established and mighty competitors of the
new industry to rise and slay it. Often
no slaying is required. The infant struggles
a little, cries plaintively, and then dies
quietly. There are several reasons for
such failure. Ireland is not rich in coal.
The people of our small country towns have
lost the industrial habit. But chiefly, I
suppose, we must blame the fact that
nobody really believes in these new in
dustries. Capital is subscribed, scantily,
by patriotic and philanthropic people who
do not look for and therefore do not get a
return for their money. The workers have
a dim belief that their wages will be paid
by some one, probably a Government
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THE MIDDLE CLASSES— COUNTRY TOWN
Board, whether the industry succeeds or
fails. Nobody who merely wants to make
money ever dreams of starting any kind
of factory in an Irish country town. And,
unfortunately, success in industry is a
prize reserved only for those who want
to make money and want to make it very
much. Patriots and philanthropists look
for — will no doubt get — other rewards.
I have heard it argued that the in
dustries of our Irish towns might be re
established by a system of protection and
bounty, such as would perhaps commend
itself to an Irish Parliament independent
enough and powerful enough to control the
country's fiscal policy. The thing is, no
doubt, theoretically possible. The in
dustrial success of Germany seems to have
been fostered by tariffs, the German econo
mist List is as great a favourite with Irish
Nationalists as Karl Marx is with English
Socialists. But an Irish Parliament with
the power of imposing tariffs at will seems
a long way off, and even if it existed it is
very doubtful whether it would be of use
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
to our smaller towns. As long as the con
ditions which destroyed their industries
continue the most rigid and wisely con
sidered system of tariffs could do nothing
but increase the industrial efficiency of
our few great towns. The small towns lost
their industries because the growth of the
factory system centralised manufacture.
Protection against English competition
might re-establish certain industries in
Ireland, cotton spinning, for instance, and
tanning. There is no reason to suppose
that it would re-establish them in the small
towns which lost them, not through free
trade, or any other legislative changes, but
through the pressure of economic conditions
which made it necessary to work in large
centres and destroyed the life of small
factories. All that can be said is that the present
system of industrial organisation is not
eternal and already shows signs of giving
way to some other system. A few me
chanical inventions and the recognition of
the power of coal made the nineteenth
288

THE MIDDLE CLASSES— COUNTRY TOWN
century factory system inevitable. A few
more inventions and the development of
the power of electricity may make the
factory system impossible, and substitute
for our present great centres of specialised
production a number of small factories
scattered over the country. Such a change
would give our Irish country towns a
chance of regaining their lost position as
centres of production as well as distri
bution. Meanwhile our Irish country towns are
not only poverty-stricken, they are for the
most part incurably ugly. A small English
town, one of those which have escaped
the prosperity of the industrial revival,
may be sleepy and half dead ; but very
often it has a singular charm. There is an
air of brooding peacefulness about it. The
eye rests with content on the pitch of the
roofs of the houses, their timbered fronts,
their dormer windows. The square-towered
church seems to be soaked with the lives
of quiet-living people. The market square
is spacious. The main street delights us
289 u

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
with its picturesque irregularities. I sup
pose that these English towns have suffered
during the nineteenth century much as
small towns have in Ireland. But in
England the town has retained its self-
respect. It is an old maid, a little prim,
far past her prime, unfruitful ; but gentle,
sweet, and decked with delicate old fineries.
The Irish country town is a woman who
has lost her self-respect, has become a
slattern with draggled petticoats and boots
with gaping holes in them. The older
buildings in these towns have neither
beauty nor dignity ; but at least they
escape being offensive. The newer build
ings — churches and convents are almost
the only new buildings in these Irish towns
— are, as a rule, not only undistinguished.
They have a positive quality of ugliness.
There are exceptions, of course, new
churches here and there which are as good
as any one is likely to build anywhere ;
but the traveller passes through many
towns before his eyes are gladdened by the
sight of one of them. It used to be the
290

THE MIDDLE CLASSES— COUNTRY TOWN
fashion some years ago to blame the Roman
Catholic Church for spending too much
money on ecclesiastical buildings. " To
what purpose," said the critic, quoting
Judas Iscariot, " to what purpose is this
waste ? " The complaint was unfair. A
Church ought to spend money freely to the
glory of God, and, from the Church's point
of view, money is better spent on cathe
drals than on drains. But very ugly
churches are not a glory to God, and the
more money that is spent on them the
more the angels must feel inclined to weep.
That, however, is a matter to be settled
between the ecclesiastical authorities and
the angels. The outsider has no right to
meddle in the controversy — if indeed there
is a controversy, a matter about which we
cannot feel sure, for angels may actually
like ugly churches.
The point of the ordinary Irishman's
complaint, one on which he may fairly
claim to be heard, is the effect of the
erection of very ugly buildings on the life
of the people of our towns. The spiritual
291 u*

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
development of men and women must be
checked if they grow up among old build
ings which are sordid and new buildings
which are both pretentious and vulgar.
Life in these towns is very much what
we might expect, grey and a little bleak.
They are forcing hotbeds of the worst
kinds of snobbishness. If Milton were
alive to-day and were engaged now in
writing " Paradise Lost " he might be
tempted to depose Mammon from his
position as " Least erect of spirits that
fell," and put Snobbishness in his place.
Mammon, base as he is, at least demands
some fine qualities from his worshippers,
perseverance for instance, and capacity
for toil, without which the smiles of the
money god can scarcely be won. Snobbish
ness — a fallen angel who once companied
with feudal chivalry — is served acceptably
only by the mean. In purely country
places where class distinctions are very
sharply marked snobbishness scarcely
exists. In great cities inequalities of
wealth create class divisions which at
292

THE MIDDLE CLASSES— COUNTRY TOWN
least have the merit of being real. The
poor, whatever their pretensions to gentle
birth, cannot share the life of the well-to-
do, because they cannot afford to live it.
The well-to-do, though they may trace
their descent right back to Adam, or, better
still, may belong to some county family,
cannot associate intimately with the very
rich, because their incomes do not allow
them to keep yachts, polo ponies, and Rolls-
Royce motor-cars. But in small Irish
towns no obvious inequalities of wealth
exist. Every one is equally poor — most
people indeed are equally in debt — except
the successful money-lending shopkeeper,
and he makes no display of his wealth.
Nor are social distinctions clearly and
naturally marked as in the country, where
the lord of the manor belongs to one class,
the farmer to another, and neither of them
disputes or wishes to emphasise the fact.
In the small town one class shades off into
another and there is no rational excuse for
social divisions. Yet the divisions exist,
as acute as they are unreasonable. Men
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
and women, of equal wealth, of similar
education, with identical tastes, indis
tinguishable in culture and manners, firmly
and decisively refuse to associate with
each other on no grounds whatever except
that a clerk in a bank and his wife " do not
know " a clerk in a land agent's office ;
while the clerk in the land agent's office
" does not know " a shop assistant, even
though the latter asserts his quality by
calling himself " a young gentleman in a
business house."
The existence of this spirit of snoobish-
ness would be deplorable if it did no more
than spoil the social life of our towns,
making it duller and greyer than it need be.
Unfortunately, owing to the peculiar con
ditions of Irish life snobbishness adds an
unnecessary bitterness to every one of the
real divisions which exist among us. It is
a deplorable fact that it is, socially, rather
more " respectable " to be a Unionist
than to be a Nationalist, because the
landed gentry are for the most part
Unionists. It is slightly more " respect-
294

THE MIDDLE CLASSES— COUNTRY TOWN
able " to be a Constitutional Nationalist
than a Sinn Feiner, because the wealthier
Nationalists are not enthusiastic about an
Irish Republic. In the same way a curious
aroma of social superiority clings to the
profession of the Protestantism of the
Church of Ireland, because, I suppose, most
of the gentry who used to be " landed "
are members of that Church. Irishmen of
different religions and different political
views get on very well together if they
happen to belong, unmistakably, to the
same class. They do not at all events
quarrel oftener or dislike each other more
than men of different religions and different
politics in other countries. What creates
the singular bitterness which marks our
Irish religious and political differences,
what does more than almost anything
else to make the Irish question the in
soluble conundrum it has become, is the
unfortunate fact that class divisions to
some extent run along the lines of political
and religious cleavage ; and seem to do so
more than they actually do. It is com-
295

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
paratively easy to forgive a man for being
a Roman Catholic or for being a Protestant.
It is not actually impossible for a National
ist to recognise the honesty and patriotism
of a Unionist. What is extraordinarily
difficult is to see any good in a man
who claims social superiority for no con
ceivable reason, or threatens to intrude
into the sacred circle of social exclusive-
ness. Next to its snobbishness the worst
feature of life in small Irish towns is the
prevailing intellectual apathy. Carnegie
Libraries, though plentiful, have done very
little to create an interest in books or their
writers. I have heard it maintained by a
man who rather prided himself on his
general intellectual superiority that Mrs.
Humphry Ward wrote the fashion columns
in a popular weekly paper. He was
certain about this, and was even prepared
to bet on it, because his aunt had told him
so. Most of us believed him, and no
actual harm came to any one through the
mistake. But it was evidence of a general
296

THE MIDDLE CLASSES— COUNTRY TOWN
ignorance which was a little startling. I
have heard Thackeray mentioned as the
author of " The Adventures of an Irish
R.M.," though the speaker lived in a town
not a hundred miles away from the home
of the two ladies who created Major Yates
and Flurry Knox.
Pictures are totally unknown, even by
reproductions. A stranger, settling in an
Irish country town, once hung up some
reproductions of Fra Angelico angels in
her drawing-room. They were seen there
and carefully studied by a lady, one of the
social leaders of the place.
" Yes," she said, " I know that kind of
church picture is quite fashionable at
present, but I don't care for it myself."
Our Irish literary revival has had little
or no influence on the life of our country
towns. The intellectual interest of the
people is politics — if politics can be called
intellectual. And even politics are not
popular except in the form of speeches,
if possible speeches about some event of
local interest. A crowd can be gathered
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
on market day in almost any town by an
orator who will denounce the conviction
of a local cattle driver. The brilliant
articles and pamphlets in which Mr. Arthur
Griffith outlines his Sinn Fein policy— in
days long before speeches were made about
Sinn Fem— were read, at most, by half a
dozen people in a country town.
I happened to be living near a small
town when Mr. Asquith's ill-fated Home
Rule Bill was first introduced. The morn
ing papers did not reach that town till
noonday. We depended for our earliest
parliamentary news on the evening papers
of the day before, which came to us by a
night train, arriving at 2 a.m. or some such
unhallowed hour. I was anxious to learn
what Mr. Asquith's plan of Home Rule
was. I went into the town immediately
after breakfast, arriving there about 9.30
a.m. I hastened to the shop of the prin
cipal newsagent.
"Have you got a copy of one of last
night's evening papers left ? " I asked
eagerly. 298

THE MIDDLE CLASSES— COUNTRY TOWN
The man pointed to a pile of papers on
his counter.
" You can have as many as you like,"
he said. " Nobody else wants one."
" Do you mean to say  ? " I began.
" I ordered two dozen of them papers
specially," he said, " on account of that
Home Rule Bill that was brought into
Parliament yesterday, and I haven't been
asked for one this morning except by
yourself." Ireland had been demanding Home Rule,
or denouncing Home Rule, with enormous
vigour and persistency for upwards of
half a century. Yet when a Home Rule
Bill was actually introduced into Parlia
ment and seemed likely to pass, the people
of that town cared so little about it that
no single individual among them wanted
to spend a halfpenny on an evening paper
to find out what an English Premier, con
vinced at last of the need of a measure of
some kind, intended to do with our
country. Yet this condition of mental apathy is
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
neither inevitable nor natural to the people
of our small towns. I have written in
another chapter something about what
the Gaelic League did in awakening interest
in the Irish language and the history and
customs of our country. I have seen other
experiments tried on a much smaller scale,
which go to show that the people in these
towns, in spite of their depressing sur
roundings and the prevailing snobbishness,
are capable of intellectual effort and might
find a richer and fuller kind of life than any
they have hitherto known.
At present the one redeeming feature in
the life of these small towns is the general
interest in sport. This alone seems to
have the power of obliterating, for a time,
at all events, class distinctions, and rousing
people from apathy.

300

CHAPTER XII
CONCLUSION
A writer is over-sanguine who expects
that his book will be read ; but he can
comfort himself with the reflection that it
will certainly be criticised if he has been
fool enough to write about Ireland. He
may say with the prophet Isaiah, " I have
offered my back to the smiter, my cheeks
to them that pluck off the hairs ; and not
hid my face from shame and spitting."
The plain man, a sane and kindly critic,
speaks impatiently. He takes a book,
reads a page or two here and there, skipping
the pages in between, and then — if the
book is about Ireland — demands of the
author a plan, a policy, a scheme for the
settlement of the Irish question. " It's
all very well writing like that," he says,
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
" and if things weren't in the perfectly
beastly state they are I'd read your stuff.
But just now— Ireland is a damned nui
sance and you Irishmen are  Why
can't you tell me straight in a few words
what you want ? If it isn't absolutely
insane I'll do it. I'll do anything to keep
you quiet for a decade or two." Alas !
I understand the feelings of the plain man.
Being a plain man myself, one of the very
plainest, I sympathise. If I had, or could
compound, a solution of the Irish problem,
I should — how gladly ! — roll it into a pill,
easy to take at bedtime with a glass of
water, and present it to the plain man, or
to our Ministers of State, or to the American
public, or to any one else whose stomach is
sick with undigested Ireland.
The earnest reformer speaks to the
same effect, but sadly rather than im
patiently. He is as solemn as a judge, or,
since judges very seldom are solemn, as
solemn as a judge's robes. He is oppressed
with a sense of the world's great need of
constructive thought. He looks at me
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CONCLUSION
with sorrowful reproach, as one of the
Apostles might have looked at Nero fiddling
while Rome burned, though I am not an
Emperor and did not set the place on fire.
" Is this a time," he says, " for barren
talk, when all that is best in Ireland is
earnestly engaged in reconstructive effort ?
What is your plan ? Where is your answer
to the sphinx riddle which we must answer
lest we die ? " I feel the justice of the
reproach, and if I could construct, or re
construct, or even instruct, I should " for
swear sack, live cleanly," and never smile
again. Indeed I am more interested in Ireland
than in anything else and I love every sod
of it. But for a solution to the problem,
an answer to the riddle, a scheme of settle
ment — I have no such thing to offer. I
think that all the solutions, answers, and
schemes there are have been proposed
already. It is unreasonable to expect me
to invent a new one. There can be, we
are told, just so many permutations and
combinations among any series of figures
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AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
or letters, so many and no more. There is
no use trying to devise an extra one. So
with plans for the government of Ireland.
There are perhaps two hundred different
ways of governing Ireland. They have not
all been tried. Indeed, I doubt if any one
of them has been tried. But they have all
been proposed and recommended. I can
not invent another, because there is no
other to be invented. Nor am I so arrogant
as to suppose that I can advocate any of
them more eloquently and persuasively
than its inventor.
And why should I try ? It is the
business of statesmen and politicians to
arrange constitutions and set them work
ing. That is their job. We pay them to
do it. My business is to live, as best I
can, under the governments which they
devise. I do not attempt to teach the
plumber how to plumb or the carpenter
how to saw when I hire them to mend my
house. They would resent my impertinence
if I did such a thing. Why should I
teach the politicians how to do their work ?
804

CONCLUSION
There are plenty of them and they are all
very clever men. Our ancestors were
surely right when they made their proverb
about the foolishness of keeping a dog
and barking oneself.
It is just possible that constitutions and
politics and revolutions and constructions
and reconstructions matter Very much less
than we think they do ; and that govern
ments, even if very bad or very good,
affect men's lives only slightly. Alexander
Pope was of this opinion and expressed it
very neatly in one of his carefully con
structed lines :
" For forms of government let fools contest."
But Alexander Pope lived a long time ago
and his political wisdom is out of date.
I am far from suggesting that it is foolish
to try to preserve the Union or establish
a republic. But we are inclined, in Ireland
we are very much inclined, to hold ex
aggerated views about the importance of
constitutions. A man may work hard and
speak the truth under almost any form of
305

AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD
government ; and a nation is great, even
free, if most of her citizens work hard and
speak the truth. This is, I know, an un
popular doctrine, and any one who preaches
it deserves to be burnt at the stake for
heresy. Yet it is worth considering whether
it is the State that makes the man or men
who make the State. For this is what it
comes to in the end. If it is really true
that we can make good citizens, diligent,
courageous men, by setting up a good
kind of government, then there can be no
nobler occupation than politics, and we are
right to struggle hard to establish — what
ever it is we want to establish. For
having got our perfect State we shall
have perfect men in it. But if it is true
that only good men can have a good State,
then the work of the priest and the school
master is more important than the work
of the politician, professional or amateur,
and the work of the mother and father is
more important still ; for these are en
gaged in making men what they are
and so, in the end, are making the State
306

CONCLUSION
what it is. If this is true — and it may be —
then we Irishmen, all of us, are spending
most energy on what matters least, the
form of the State ; and far too little
energy on what matters most, the making
of men, that education which goes on con
tinuously from the cradle to the grave.

307

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