IRELAND AFTER THE BATTLE, M R GLADSTONE'S "provision for the better
govern- ment of Ireland" has not yet become the law of the land, and it is not at all probable that it ever will ; but the very fact of an attempt, and a serious and determined attempt, to alter fundamentally the prevailing system of government, the prolonged agitation which preceded the production of the last Home-rule Bill, and, still more, the unrest and excitement which attended its passage through the House of Commons, have had, as might be expected, a great and visible influence on Irish life and society. We are not thinking only, or even chiefly, of the economic effects of the long period of unsettlement. The material loss which Ireland has suffered through Mr. Gladstone's policy is very serious, and could ill be afforded by so poor and struggling a country. But the moral consequences as they may be called—the effects on the political and social life of the country—are even more important, and perhaps are not so entirely a subject for regret. Mr. Gladstone's aim is to make a nation of the people of Ireland. That is a work far beyond the power of any single man, or even any single generation, and much less can it be accom- plished by a single Act of Parliament. But indirectly, and by the resistance which his Home-rule scheme has called forth, he has succeeded in making a united nation of the Protestant minority in Ireland. For the first time in Irish history since the flight of Janne II, we find the Protestants, rich and poor, landlords and tenants, Presby- terians and Anglicans, united like one man in a cause which appeals to them as really national. Only those who know something of the manifold divisions of Irish life can realise how much this means. The Presbyterians have almost as much cause as the Roman Catholics to hate the traditions of the ascendency, and to regard the party which is supposed to inherit them with distrust. But in the face of a common danger we see them over- coming their prejudices, and heartily co-operating with their old enemies the Tories in resistance to the new ascendency which an English party is trying to impose upon them. Irish landlords, again, have not often in their history been able to figure as popular leaders. Politically they have been a failure--whether through their misfortune or their fault it is at present unnecessary to inquire—and, ae a rule, they have not even enjoyed the con- fidence of the peasantry of their own race and religion. The danger which has enabled landlords and tenants to forget their agrarian quarrel — no less deep, be it remembered, though less violent, in the North than in the South — must seem to them very real. Yet so it is. A sentiment of common interest and c,oni.- mon duty has caused the postponement of merely selfish considerations. It is breaking down the social barriers between class and class, and between creed and creed, which were nowhere so strong as in Ireland, and is binding all together by ties which, though they may become weaker wiien the danger has passed away, are not likely again to be completely severed, And this struggle for the maintenance of the Union is helping to bridge another, and one of the most curious, of the many chasms which yawn in Irish social life. No one who has been in Ireland can fail to have noticed the singular want of sympathy, amounting almost to antipathy, between the Protestants of Ulster and those of the South, arising probably from the prevailingly Scotch origin of the former as contrasted with the prevailingly English origin of the latter. The past six months have done more to bring Ulster into touch with the South and to supersede the old feeling of dislike by a feeling of mutual sympathy and understanding, than any previous decade in Irish history. The Unionist clubs movement is spread- ing over both North and South, and the loyalty with which the Ulster people have fulfilled their pledge not to desert their brethren and bid for separate treatment for themselves, has given the Southern Unionists quite a new conception of their " ower canny" kinsfolk in the North. And what distinguishes the present feeling of unity and cohesion among the Protestants of Ireland from that which animated them at the time of the Revolution, or at any other epoch of Irish history, is that it is completely free from any taint of Protestant fanaticism. They arc fighting not for ascendency, but for equality, and they have the bulk of the cultivated Catholics of the country on their side. The attack on the Union has, indeed, given a new lease of life to the Orange Association, which had begun to dwindle away ; but the Orangemen have by no means played the most prominent part in the defensive movement, and, at all events, some of their leaders have shown quite a new capacity for tolerance and. moderation. The necessity of co- operating with their Catholic allies has had a most wholesome restraining influence, and a movement which might have been expected to narrow and intensify the Protestant prejudices of the minority in Ireland has had quite the contrary effect. If the opposition to Home- rule is purely factious, as the English Gladstonians profess to believe, it is strange that it should have had this unifying and conciliating tendency, and that it should have brought into existence a party on a broader basis than any, probably, which has previously been seen in Ireland.
When we turn to the side of the majority, do we find that the seemingly near approach of Home-rule has been equally powerful to evolve order out of confusion and substitute unity of aim and purpose for the divided counsels of the Nationalist camp ? Quite the contrary. The breach between the Clericals and the Jacobins is as wide as ever, and among the Clericals themselves there is a smouldering quarrel, only half suppressed, which seems destined sooner or later to split the party in two, according to what new principle of division we know not. At the present moment this quarrel is again becoming active, the bone of contention on this occasion being the proposals for the distribution of the Paris fund. We have never had any sym- pathy with the feeling which prompts some Unionists to found their case on the political incompetence of the great body of the Irish people, and to rejoice at every fresh sign of weakness and division that they show. If every Irishman were a born statesman, we should be no less strongly opposed to the disruption of the United Kingdom than we are at present. But it is at least fair to argue that if the prospect of Home-rule seems to provoke rather than to allay dissensions, and to accelerate rather than to retard the process of disintegration among the Nationalists who demand it, Home-rule itself can hardly be the profoundly healing and constructive measure which its advocates assert it to be. And if Irishmen will not allow the possibility of detriment to their cause to deter them from the prosecution of internal quarrels, it is only reasonable to conclude that they are not very earnest in their devotion to that cause. And, in fact, Irishmen have never, as some Gladstonians imagine, framed for themselves any settled and definite ideal of self-government, and devoted themselves steadily to its pursuit. O'Connell was able by his mere fiat to suspend the Repeal movement during the term of Drummond's administration, and a. leader of O'Connell's power could do the same to-day but for the Irish-Americans at his back. The Irish-Americans are filled with an extravagant hatred of England, and dream of an independent republic which should be a thorn in her side. But with the great body of the Irish people at home it is the discontent bred of the land question that has been really effective in induc- ing them to embark on a revolutionary movement, and the attractions of the Home-rule agitation have lain not in the satisfaction which it offered to the desire lain, self- government in the abstract, but in the wild and impos- sible dreams of a social millennium which, like all promised revolutions, it has been successful in evoking. A nearer view of Home-rule has had a wonderfully disenchanting effect. A measure which was expected to bring imme- diate and tangible advantages to every individual, and which had been surrounded with an atmosphere of romance by an imaginative people, is now seen to be only a complicated and prosaic scheme for setting up new legislative machinery, with the prospect of increased taxation as the result. That explains why the proceedings in the House of Commons, which might have been expected to produce a high state of tension and excitement among the majority in Ireland, have only been productive of apathy and indifference. From this point of view the Session has not been wasted. As it has taught the people of Great Britain how poor the grant of Home-rule would leave them, so it has to some extent enabled the people of Ireland to see how little they would be enriched by it.
Previous page
