CHANGING IRELAND
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
Slit,—Your correspondent Mr. R. Y. Keers propounds for us the well-known Unionist theory that in Ireland the " North " and " South " are " two distinct races which have no more in common with each other than the air they breathe." That there is a difference between the two parts of the country no one will deny, but this theory of complete incompatibility, so comfortable and necessary for Unionist and Ascendancy policy, will not stand up for one moment to the facts of Irish History.
If it were really so, perhaps Mr. Keers will explain why it was the Protestant and Northern Volunteers took the famous oath in Dungannon Church which led to Grattan's Constitution. That the leader of the United Irishmen was himself a Protestant, that the first United Irish Lodge was formed in Belfast, and that it is the Cave Hill, Belfast, which is for ever associated with Wolfe Tone, may perhaps be dis- regarded. But that very many of the " Sturdy Covenanting Stock," including a large number of Presbyterians, were to be found on the National side in 1798 is not to be disputed. The names of Robert Orr and Henry Joy Mackracken are scarcely names Of the more Celtic South. To take only one instance, a personal one. In my own ancestry, " Sturdy Covenanting Stock," two members of the family were under arms in '98, one a loyalist Volunteer, and the other a United Irish. Pikeman.
These facts cannot be disputed, but they can be forgotten, as indeed they have been by deliberate policy extending now over more than a century. Or they can be smothered by vague phrases about the " disloyal and disruptive South." But these phrases are themselves the greatest proof of the hollowness of Mr. Keers' contention. There is perhaps no country in the world where the people are so at the mercy of empty phrases, and in this very national characteristic the " North " and the " South " are alike. For what do Mr. Keers' words, repeated ad nauseam as they are every July 12th, really mean ?
" Disloyal." One need not have any particular admiration for the present regime in the Free State to see that it can scarcely be called disloyal to stand first for one's own country, people and culture, or to follow the views of the vast majority in that country. For an Irishman to be opposed to the Government of England or the Empire may be called wrong, but only by a torture of words can it be called " Disloyal."
" Disruptive." This, we may suppose, must be read in conjunction with Kipling's verse quoted : " our own, flag and throne." Well; well. Memories are conveniently short. Was it not a Unionist politician at the time of the First Honie Rule Bill who said : " We kicked one King's Crown into the Boyne, and we can kick another's " Is 1914 and the gun-running all forgotten, the Provisional Government that, had it functioned, must have been in opposition to the Government of His Majesty ?
One other point, though it is a side issue : " the absence of an opposition may surely be interpreted as an expression of the wishes of the people." With the Special Powers Act in force ? When any criticism might, in defiance of all previous conceptions of justice, land one in prison without warrant or trial ? No. Many of us have heard too often the ideas which Mr. Keers puts forth ; we have had them dinned into us so much that we began to suspect them, and have now found them out for what they were : Ascendancy Propaganda designed to make a people forget its own past.
If your original correspondent is right—and let us hope that he is—then the changing condition of Ireland or of " Ulster " is nothing new. It is but a return to older and happier conditions, a recognition of the basic facts, and a move away from the terrible' hypnotism of the meaningless
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