Irish republicanism

“ They have taken the whole of the public affairs of Ireland into their charge. They have taken every public interest in the country under their protection. Whoever wants anything done or attended to, whether he be Catholic, Protestant, or dissenter, now looks to the Home-Rulers, and to them alone. Not the humblest peasant in the land but feels that, if a petty village tyrant has wronged him, the Irish party in the House of Commons will “know the reason why.” ”

“ Government in his hands was the enemy of the people, parliament a mockery, constitutional movements mere vanity. Law appeared only as an instrument of oppression; the Catholic Irish were put out of its protection, the government agents out of its control. The country gentry were alienated and demoralised—left to waste with "their inert property and their inert talents." Every reform was refused which might have allayed the fears of the people. ”

“ It is to me astonishing that so little weight is attached by many to the fact that Irish wishes of self-government were represented only by a small minority.
Now what voting power are the eighty members to have? Ireland is to be represented here fully; that is my first postulate. My second postulate is that Ireland is to be invested with separate powers, subject, no doubt, to imperial authority. Ireland is to be endowed with separate powers over Irish affairs. Then the question before us is: Is she or is she not to vote so strongly upon matters purely British? ”

“ For a principle to be fundamental in a country does not mean that it must be absolute. I hope society in Ireland will be organized that the idea of democratic control of its economic life will so pervade Irish thought that it will be in the body politic what the spinal column is to the body—the pillar on which it rests, the strongest single factor in the body. ”

“ The United Irishmen, whose aim was to establish a free and equal representation of all Irishmen irrespective of creed, despaired of obtaining their object by open agitation and, subjected to repressive enactments, transformed themselves into a secret association for the overthrow of the existing government and for complete separation from England as the only method of securing and maintaining the rights of Ireland. They were the first Irish Republican Party. ”

“ And yet Ireland, like the rest of the United Kingdom, is supposed to live under representative institutions! No doubt I may be reminded that the Nationalist Members are in touch with local opinion in Ireland, and that they are the informal allies of the Liberals; but the Nationalist attitude is concerned with little else but Home Rule, and it is just because, in existing circumstances, the Irish do not declare themselves, or perhaps even form an opinion, on ordinary political issues, that our representative system has broken down so much more severely in Ireland than in England or in Scotland. ”

“ If some large question or controversy in British affairs should then come up, causing a deep and vital severing of the two great parties in this House, and the members of those parties knew that they could bring over eighty members from Ireland to support their views, I am afraid a case like that would open a possible door to dangerous political intrigue. The whole subject is full of thorns and brambles, but our object is the autonomy and self-government of Ireland in all matters properly Irish. ”

“ To any one who looks behind the forms of the constitution to the realities of life, the voice of Irish wealth, of Irish intelligence, and of Irish loyalty is at least as important as the voice of Irish sedition or discontent. The eighty votes must in any case be reckoned morally at not more than sixty, for to this number they would be reduced by any fair and democratic scheme of representation. No one can be less tempted than myself to make light of Irish turbulence and Irish misery. ”

“ We have a Tory or a Liberal Government in office in consequence of the support of the Irish M.P.’s returned by illiterate voters under the rule of the Roman Catholic priest—who hates England, because it is a prosperous and Protestant nation. The Irish “praste,” as his people call him, p. 134creates all the bad blood that has done so much mischief in Ireland. If the Tories are in power, they can only maintain their position by pandering to the Irish members, and if the Liberals are in power they have to do just the same. ”

“ By all admissions we have made a mess of Ireland. With singular and unwonted perverseness we have refused for more than a hundred years to apply to Ireland the principles of self-government that have justified their application in every province of the Empire that is mainly inhabited by people of our own race. We have risked and we have incurred the disaffection of the Irish themselves; we have imposed on them and on ourselves untold suffering and expense; we have imperilled the whole fabric of our Parliamentary institutions. ”

“ The Union has failed absolutely to conciliate Ireland. Every generation there have been rebellions and shootings and agitations of a vehement and exhausting character carried continually to the point of lawlessness before Irish grievances could be redressed. A form of government which requires a succession of rebellions to secure reforms afterwards admitted to be reasonable cannot be a good form of government. These agitations have inflicted grave material and moral injury on Ireland. The instability of the political system has prejudiced natural economic development. ”

“ Is it not too monstrous to howl about English tyranny and suffering Ireland, and call for a Stephen’s Green Parliament to make the country quiet and the people industrious? The people are not politically worse treated than their neighbours in England. The priests and the landlords, if they chose to co-operate, might do more for the country now than any kings or laws could. What you want here is not a Catholic or Protestant party, but an Irish party. ”

“ Ireland will never be content with a system of self-government which lessens its representation in the Imperial Parliament, and still retains for that Parliament control over all-important matters like taxation and trade policy. Whoever controls these controls the character of an Irish civilization, and the demand of Ireland is not merely for administrative powers, but the power to fashion its own national policy, and to build up a civilization of its own with an economic character in keeping by self-devised and self-checked efforts. ”

“ These—all these things—we, people of Ireland, must know if we would be a free, strong nation. A mockery of Irish independence is not what we want. The bauble of a powerless parliament does not lure us. We are not children. The office of supplying England with recruits, artizans, and corn, under the benign interpositions of an Irish Grand Jury, shall not be our destiny. ”

“ It is almost a commonplace of the political moralists that every failure on the part of England to satisfy the moderate and constitutional demands of the Irish people for reform has been followed invariably by a deplorable outbreak of “extremist” activities in Ireland. Unfortunately for the moral, that constitutional demands should therefore be promptly and fully conceded, the statement is almost exactly the reverse of the truth, if Irish history as a whole be taken as the field for induction. The Irish Nation cannot be said to have at any period abandoned its claim to independence. ”

“ You have a population as hostile to Irish rule as the rest of Ireland is to British rule, yea, and as ready to rebel against it as the rest of Ireland is against British rule—as alien in blood, in religious faith, in traditions, in outlook—as alien from the rest of Ireland in this respect as the inhabitants of Fife or Aberdeen. To place them under National rule against their will would be as glaring an outrage on the principles of liberty and self-government as the denial of self-government would be for the rest of Ireland. ”

“ The people of Ireland do not want an Irish Parliament, and the failure of the bill would not trouble them in the least. They do not care a brass farthing for the bill one way or the other. The great heart of the people is untouched. The masses know nothing of it, and will not feel its loss. They are in the hands of priests and agitators, these poor unlettered peasants, and their blind voting, their inarticulate voice, translated into menace and mock patriotism. Everybody admits that the people would be happy and content if only left alone. ”

“ State socialism, even in a nation which possesses the form of political democracy, is not a truly democratic system. The way in which it fails to be democratic may be made plain by an analogy from the political sphere. Every democrat recognizes that the Irish ought to have self-government for Irish affairs, and ought not to be told that they have no grievance because they share in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. ”

“ But there are others, inflamed not with a love of Ireland, but with a spirit of hostility to all governments, who would plunge their country into bloodshed in hope of themselves floating to the top. These men are infected with the spirit of the Commune. They are revolutionists—not in the sense in which Washington or Hampden or O’Connell were revolutionists—leaders of great movements for the liberties of peoples—but socialists, whose single incentive is the envy and hatred of all superior authority. Most of all, they desire to supplant the Irish priesthood as the guides of the people. ”

“ If we are to build a body for the soul of Ireland it ought not to be a matter of reckless estimates or jerry-building. We have been told, during my lifetime at least, not to criticize leaders, to trust leaders, and so intellectual discussion ceased and the high principles on which national action should be based became less and less understood, less and less common possessions. The nation was not conceived of as a democracy freely discussing its laws but as a secret society with political chiefs meeting in the dark and issuing orders. ”

“ But let it be recognized that under free institutions it is the right of the majority to rule, irrespective of their religious creed; and that to deny that right in Ireland is to establish a tyranny of the minority—an oligarchy in these days of Democracy! Nothing can exceed the sincerity of men, good but blinded by prejudice, when on Belfast platforms they declare their desire for equality and hatred of ascendency. But what a ludicrous fallacy they fall into when with the same breath they assert their resolve never to submit to the Government of the great majority of their fellow countrymen. ”

“ Ireland also had her advocates in the British senate; but whenever the people or the parliament gained a victory over the viceroy, some accident or blunder deprived the nation of reaping the fruits. The Commons became again corrupted, and the independence which Ireland obtained ceased to have a value. The corrupted Commons basely surrendered all that had been obtained. In vain the eloquence of Curran and Grattan. The Irish nation, without public virtue, a prey to faction, and a scene of corruption, became at last powerless and politically helpless. ”

“ The Irish detest the merit system, for they make politics a matter of friendship and favor. In their willingness to serve a friend they are apt to lose sight of the importance of preparation, fitness and efficiency in the public servant. Hence they warm to a reform movement only when it becomes a fight on law-breakers. Then the Hibernian district attorney goes after the "higher-ups" like a St. George. When the Irish do renounce machine politics, they become broad democrats rather than "good government" men. ”

“ We shall succeed or fail in Ireland as we succeed or fail to make democracy prevail in our economic life, and aristocratic ideals to prevail in our political and intellectual life.
In all things it is best for a people to obey the law of their own being. The lion can never become the ox, and "one law for the lion and the ox is oppression." ”

“ They are actuated by love of their country. They yield to no one in their patriotism and their desire for Ireland's welfare. They have always given their support to movements which have had for their objects the improvement of Irish conditions and the increase of Irish well-being. Their sympathies are with Irish social reform—and the sympathies of many of them with social reform of an advanced character. Contrast their attitude with that of the Irish Nationalist Party in respect of reforms which have proceeded from the Imperial Parliament and movements within Ireland herself. ”

“ And if the separatist theory has involved, as we have seen, such external dangers to the Empire, the case for the old Irish Parliament from the point of the "vital interests" of Ireland itself is even weaker. By it the bulk of the Irish people were treated for a century in a fashion described by an Irish Chief Secretary as "ingrafting absurdity on the wisdom of England and tyranny on the religion that professes humanity." ”

“ It is immaterial how [pg 409] far the Irish Nationalists have actually been able to get their own way in the House of Commons, for their efforts have usually been in vain until after a lawless agitation in Ireland, which, as a means of securing redress for grievances, is as demoralising to the legislator as to the elector. ”

“ She stands firmly by the same economic principles which have enabled her, in spite of persecution and natural disadvantages, to build up so great a prosperity. She knows well that the only chance for the rest of Ireland to attain to the standard of education, enlightenment and independence which she has reached, is to free itself from the sinister domination under which it lies, and to assert its right to political and religious liberty. Ulster sees in Irish Nationalism a dark conspiracy, buttressed upon crime and incitement to outrage, maintained by ignorance and pandering to superstition. ”