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Created: By Sir Horace Curzon Plunkett. (1903)
Beatrix Färber (ed.)
Beatrix Färber (ed.)
Julianne Nyhan (ed.)
Peter Flynn (ed.)
Margaret Lantry (ed.)
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Audrey Murphy (ed.)
Whatever may be the ultimate verdict of history upon the long struggle of the majority of the Irish people for self-government, the picture of a small country with large aspirations giving of its best unstintingly to the world , while gaining for itself little beyond sympathy, will appeal to the imagination of future ages long after the Irish Question, as we know it has been buried. It may then, perhaps, be seen that the aspirations came to nought because they were opposed to the manifest destiny of the race, and that it should never have been expected or desired that the Dark Rosaleen should reign and reign alone. Nevertheless, the fidelity and fortitude with which the national ideal had been pursued would command admiration, even if the ideal itself were to be altogether abandoned, or if it were to be ultimately realised in a manner which showed that the methods by which its attainment had been sought were the cause of its long postponement. Whatever the future may have in store for the remnant of the Irish people at home, the continued pursuit of a separate national existence by a nation which is rapidly disappearing
The picture will be all the more remarkable when emphasised by a contrast which the historian will not fail to draw. Across a narrow streak of sea another people, during the same period, increased and multiplied and prospered mightily, spread their laws and institutions, and achieved in every portion of the globe material success which they can call their own. Yet, although Irishmen have done much to win that success for the English people to enjoy, and are to-day foremost in maintaining the great empire which their brain and muscle were ever ready to augment, Ireland makes no claim for herself in respect of the achievement. It is to her but a proof of what her sons will do for her in the coming time; it does not bring her nearer to her heart's desire.
Although the nineteenth century, with all its marvellous contributions to human progress, left Ireland with her hopes unfulfilled; although its sun went down upon the British people with their greatest failure still staring them in the face, its last decade witnessed at first a change in the attitude of England towards Ireland, and afterwards a profound revolution in the thoughts of Ireland about herself. The strangest and most interesting feature of these developments was that in practical England the Irish Question became the great political
In 1885 Gladstone, appealing to an electorate with a large accession of newly enfranchised voters, transferred the struggle over the Irish Question from Ireland to Great Britain. The position taken up by the average English Home Ruler was, it will be remembered, simple and intelligible. The Irish had stated in the proper constitutional way what they wanted, and that, in the first flush of a victorious democracy, when counting heads irrespective of contents was the popular method of arriving at political truth, was assumed to be precisely what they ought to have. A long but inconclusive contest ensued. At times it looked as if the Liberal-Irish alliance might snatch a victory for their policy. But when Gladstone was forced to break with the Irish Leader, and Parnellism without Parnell became obviously impossible, the English realised that the working of representative institutions in Ireland had produced not a democracy but a dictatorship, and they
The anti-climax to the Gladstone crusade was reached when Lord Rosebery in 1894 took over the premiership from the greatest English advocate of the 1rish cause. The position of the new leader was very simple. In effect, he told the Irish Nationalists that the English party he was about to lead had done its best for them. They must now regard themselves as partners in the United Kingdom, with the British as the predominant partner. Until the predominant partner could be brought to take the Irish view of the partnership, the relations between them must remain substantially as they were. And not only must the concession of Home Rule await the conversion of the British electorate, but before the demand could be effectively preferred, another leader must rise up among the Irish; and he, for all Lord Rosebery knew, was at the moment being wheeled in a perambulator. This apparently cynical avowal of the new premier's own attitude towards Home Rule accurately stated the facts of the situation, and fairly reflected the mind of the British electorate, after Irish obstruction had given them an
If the logic of events was thus making for the removal of Home Rule from the region of practical politics in England, an even more momentous change was taking place in Ireland. Whilst the Home Rule controversy was at its height in the 'eighties and early 'nineties, some Irish grievances were incidentally dealt withnot always under the best impulses or in the best way. The concentration of all the available thought and energy of Irish public men upon an appeal to the passions and prejudices of English parties had led to the further postponement of all Irish endeavour to deal rationally and practically with her own problems at home. But during the welter of contention which prevailed after the fall of Parnell, there grew up in Ireland a wholly new spirit, born of the bitter lesson which was at last being learned. The Irish still clung undaunted to their political ideal, but its pursuit to the exclusion of all other national aims had received a wholesome check. Thought upon the problems of national progress broadened and deepened, in a manner little understood by those who knew Ireland from without, and, indeed, by many of those accounted wise among the observers from within. Was the realisation of a distinctive national existence, many began to ask themselves, to be for ever dependent upon the fortunes of a political campaign? In any scheme of a reconstructed national life to which the
These questionings, though not generally heard on the platform or even in the street, were none the less working in the depths of the Irish mind, and found expression not so much in words as in deeds. Yet though the downfall of Parnell released many minds from the obsession of politics, the influence of that event was of a negative character, and it took time to produce a beneficial effect. That fruitful last decade of the nineteenth century saw the foundation of what will one day be recognised as a new philosophy of Irish progress. Certain new principles were then promulgated
For English readers, to whom this introductory chapter is chiefly addressed, I may here reiterate the opinion, which I have always held and often expressed, that there is no real conflict of interest between the two peoples and the two countries, and that the mutual misunderstanding which we may now hope to see removed is due to a wide difference of temperament and mental outlook. The English mind has never understood the Irish mindleast of all during the period of the Union of Hearts. It is equally true that the Irish have largely misunderstood both the English character and their own responsibility. The result has been that their leaders, despite the brilliant capacity they have shown in presenting the unhappy case of their country to the rest of the world, have rarely presented it in the right way to the English people. There have been many occasions during the last quarter of a century when a calm, well-reasoned statement of the economic disadvantages under which Ireland labours would, I am convinced, have successfully appealed to British public opinion. It could have been shown that the development of Irelandthe development not only of the resources of her soil but of the far greater wealth which lies in the
Here, indeed, is an untilled field for those to whom the Irish Question is yet a living one. If I could think that each country fully realised its own responsibility in the matter, if I could think that the long-continued misunderstanding was at an end, nothing would induce me to trouble the waters at this auspicious hour, when a better feeling towards Ireland prevails in Great Britain, and when the Irish people are fully appreciative of the obviously sincere desire of England to be generous to Ireland. But an examination of the events upon which the prevailing optimism is based will show that, unhappily, misunderstanding, though of another sort, still exists, and that Ireland is as much as ever a riddle to the English mind.
Now this new optimism in the English view of Ireland seems to be based, not upon a recognition of the development of what I have ventured to dignify with the title of a new philosophy of Irish progress, but upon a belief that the spirit of moderation and conciliation displayed by so many Irishmen in connection with the Land Act is due to the fact that my incomprehensible countrymen have, under a sudden emotion, put away childish things and learned to behave like grown-up Englishmen. Throughout the press comments upon the Dunraven Conference and in public speeches both inside and outside Parliament there has run a sense that a sort of
I feel some hesitation in asking the reader to believe that a great and lasting revolution in Irish thought has been brought about in such a moment in the life of a people as twelve short years. But a lesser number of months seemed to the English mind adequate for the accomplishment of the change. And what a change it was that they conceived! To them, less than a year ago, the Irish Question was not merely unsolved, but in its essential features appeared unaltered. After seven centuries of experimental state-craftso varied that the English could not believe any expedient had yet to be triedthe vast majority of the Irish people regarded the Government as alien, disputed the validity of its laws, and felt no responsibility for administration, no respect for the legislature, or for those who executed its decrees. And this in a country forming an integral part of the United Kingdom, where the fundamental basis of government is assumed to be the consent of the governed! Nor were any hopes entertained that the cloud would quickly pass. During the Boer war the prophets of evil, in predicting the calamity which was to fall upon the British Empire, took as their text the failure of English government in Ireland. When they wanted to paint in the darkest colours the coming heritage of woe, they wrote upon the wall, Another Ireland in South Africa; and if any exception was taken to the
I believe, quite as strongly as the most optimistic Englishman, that there has been a great change from this state of things in Irish sentiment, and my explanation of that change, if less dramatic than the transformation theory, affords more solid ground for optimism. This change in the sentiment of Irishmen towards England is due, not to a sudden emotion of the incomprehensible Celt, but really to the opinionrapidly growing for the last dozen yearsthat great as is the responsibility of England for the state of Ireland, still greater is the responsibility of Irishmen. The conviction has been more and more borne in upon the Irish mind that the most important part of the work of regenerating Ireland must necessarily be done by Irishmen in Ireland. The result has been that many Irishmen, both Unionists and Nationalists, without in any way abandoning their opposition to, or support of, the attempt to solve the political problem from without, have been tryingnot without successto solve some part of the Irish Question from within. The Report of the Recess Committee, on which I shall dwell later, was the first great fruit of this movement, and the Dunraven Treaty, which paved the way for Mr. Wyndham's Land Act, was a further fruit, and not the result of an inexplicable transformation scene.
The reason why I dwell on the true nature of the
I agree, then, with most Englishmen in thinking, though for a different reason, that the passing of the Land Act marked a new era in Ireland. They regard it
Whatever may have been the expectations upon which this great measure was based, I, in common with most Irish observers, watched its progress with unfeigned delight. The vast majority regarded the hundred millions of credit and the twelve millions of bonus as a generous concession to Ireland; and I sympathised with those who deprecated the mischievous suggestion, not infrequently heard in English political circles, that this munificence was the price of peace. On one point all were agreed: the Bill could never have become law had not Mr. Wyndham handled the Parliamentary situation with masterly tact, temper, and ability. To him is chiefly due the credit for the fact that the Land Question, in its old form at any rate, no longer blocks the way, and that the large problems which remain to be solved, and, above all, the spirit in which they will have to be approached by those who wish the existing peace to be the forerunner of material and social progress, can be freely and frankly discussed.
It is true, as I have said, that Ireland is becoming more and more practical, and that England is becoming more anxious than ever to do her substantial justice. But still the manner of the doing will continue to be as important
I am well acquainted with this sentiment because, in my practical work in Ireland, it has ever been the main current of the stream against which I have had to swim. Years spent in the United States had made me familiar with its full and true significance, for there it can be studied in an atmosphere not dominated by any present Irish controversies or struggles. I have found this sentiment of hatred deeply rooted in the minds of Irishmen who had themselves never known Ireland, who had no connection, other than a sentimental one, with that country, who were living quiet business lives in the United States, but who were ever ready to testify with their dollars, and genuinely believed that they only lacked opportunity to demonstrate in a more
[Footnote: My own experience confirms Mr. Lecky's view of the chief cause of this extraordinary feeling. It is probable, he writes, that the true source of the savage hatred of England that animates great bodies of Irishmen on either side of the Atlantic has very little connection with the penal laws, or the rebellion, or the Union. It far more due to the great clearances and the vast unaided emigrations that followed the famine. Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, Vol. II., p. 177.]
With such men I have reasoned, and sometimes not in vain, upon the injustice and unreason of their attitude. I have not attempted to controvert the main facts of Ireland's grievances, which they frequently told me they had gleaned from Froude and Lecky. I used to deprecate the unqualified application of modern standards to the policies of other days, and to protest against the injustice of punishing one set of persons for the misdoings of another set of persons, who have long since passed beyond the reach of any earthly tribunal. I have given them my reasons for believing that, even if such a course were morally admissible, the wit of man could not devise any means of inflicting a blow upon England which would not react injuriously with tenfold force upon Ireland. I have gone on to show that the sentiment itself, largely the accident of untoward circumstances, is alien to the character and temperament of the Irish people. In short, I have urged that the policy of revenge is un-Christian and unintelligent, and, that, as the Irish people are neither irreligious nor stupid, it is un-Irish. I well remember taking up this position in conversation with some very advanced Irish-Americans
I have chosen this incident from a long series of similar reminiscences of my study of Irish life, to illustrate an attitude of mind, the historical explanation of which would seem to the practical Englishman as academic as a psychological exposition of the effect of a red rag upon a bull. The English are not much to be blamed for resenting the survival of the feeling, but it appears to me to argue a singular lack of political imagination that they should still fail to appreciate the reality, the significance, and the abiding force of a sentiment which has so far successfully resisted the influence of those governing qualities which have played a foremost part in the civilisation of the modern world. The Spectator some time ago came out bluntly with a truth which an Irishman may, I presume, quote without offence from so high an English authority:The one blunder of average Englishmen in considering foreign questions is that with white men they make too little allowance for sentiment, and with coloured men they make none at all.
I am afraid it must be added that average Englishmen make exactly the same blunder in under-estimating the force of sentiment when considering Irish questions, with the not unnatural consequence[Footnote: Spectator, 6th September, 1902.]
There is one reason why this sentiment is not allowed to die which should always be remembered by those who wish to grasp the inner workings of the Irish mind. Briefly stated, the view prevails in Ireland that in dealing with questions affecting our material well-being, the government of our country by the English was, in the past, characterised by an unenlightened self-interest. Thoughtful Englishmen admit this charge, but they say that the past referred to is beyond living memory and should now be buried. The Irish mind replies that the life of a nation is not to be measured by the life of individuals, and that a wrong inflicted by a Government upon a community entitles those who inherit the consequences of the injury to claim reparation at the hands or those who inherit the government. With this attitude on the part of the Irish mind I am not only most heartily in sympathy, but I find every Englishman who understands the situation equally so. In the later portions of this book it will be shown that practical recognition, in no small measure, has been given by England to the righteousness of this part of the Irish case, and that if the effect thus produced has not found as full an outward expression as might have been expected, the Irish people have at any rate responded to the new treatment in a manner which must, in no distant future, bring about a better understanding.
The only historical causes of our present discontents to which I need now particularly refer, are the commercial restrictions and the land system of the past, which stand out from the long list of Irish grievances as those for which their victims were the least responsible. No one can be more anxious than I am that we should cease to be for ever seeking in the past excuses for our present failures. But it is essential to a correct estimation of Irish agricultural and industrial possibilities that we should notice the true bearings of these historical grievances upon existing conditions.
In this connection there arises a question which is very pertinent to the present inquiry and which must therefore be considered. I have seen it argued by English economists that the industrial revolution which took place at the end of the eighteenth and commencement of the nineteenth century would in any case have destroyed, by force of open competition, industries which, it is admitted, were previously legislated away. They point out that the change from the order of small scattered home industries to the factory system would have suited neither the temperament nor the industrial habits of the Irish. They tell us that with the industrial revolution the juxtaposition of coal and iron became an all-important factor in the problem, and they recall how the north and west of England captured the industrial supremacy from the south and east. Incidentally they point out that the people of the English counties which suffered by these
Much of this may be true, but this line of argument only shows that these English economists do not thoroughly understand the real grievance which the Irish people still harbour against the English for past misgovernment. The commercial restraints sapped the industrial instinct of the peoplean evil which was intensified in the case of the Catholics by the working of the penal laws. When these legislative restrictions upon industry had been removed, the Irish, not being trained in industrial habits, were unable to adapt themselves to the altered conditions produced by the Industrial Revolution, as did the people in England. And as for commerce, the restrictions, which had as little moral sanction as the penal laws, and which invested smuggling with a halo of patriotism, had prevented the development of commercial morality, without which there can be no commercial success. It is not, therefore, the destruction of specific industries, or even the sweeping of our commerce from the seas, about which most complaint is now made. The real grievance lies in the fact that something had been taken from our industrial character which could not be remedied by the mere removal of the
The English mind quite failed, until the very end of the nineteenth century, to grasp the real needs of the situation which had thus been created in Ireland. The industrial revolution, as I have indicated, found the Irish people fettered by an industrial past for which they themselves were not chiefly responsible. They needed exceptional treatment of a kind which was not conceded. They were, instead, still further handicapped, towards the middle of the century, by the adoption of Free Trade, which was imposed upon them when they were not only unable to take advantage of its benefits, but were so situated as to suffer to the utmost from its inconveniences.
I am convinced that the long-continued misunderstanding of the conditions and needs of this country, the withholding, for so long, of necessary concessions, was due not to heartlessness or contempt so much as to a lack of imagination, a defect for which the English cannot be blamed. They had, to use a modern term, standardised their qualities, and it was impossible to get out of their minds the belief that a divergence, in another race, from their standard of character was synonymous with inferiority. This attitude is not yet
When we pass from the domain of commerce, where we have seen that circumstances reduced to the minimum Ireland's participation in the industrial supremacy of England, and come to examine the historical development of Irish agrarian life, we find a situation closely related to, and indeed, largely created by, that which we have been discussing. Debarred from every other trade and industry, wrote the late Lord Dufferin, the entire nation flung itself back upon the land, with as fatal an impulse as when a river, whose current is suddenly impeded, rolls back and drowns the valley which it once fertilised. The energies, the hopes, nay, the very existence of the race, became thus intimately bound up with agriculture. This industry, their last resort and sole dependence, had to be conducted by a people who in every other avocation had been unfitted for material success. And this industry, too, was crippled from without, for a system of land tenure had
The Irish land system suffered from the same ills as we all know the political institutions to have suffered froma partial and intermittent conquest. Land holding in Ireland remained largely based on the tribal system of open fields and common tillage for nearly eight hundred years after collective ownership had begun to pass away in England. The sudden imposition upon the Irish, early in the seventeenth century, of a land system which was no part of the natural development of the country, ignored, though it could not destroy, the old feeling of communistic ownership, and, when this vanished, it did not vanish as it did in countries where more normal conditions prevailed. It did not perish like a piece of outworn tissue pushed off by a new growth from within: on the contrary, it was arbitrarily cut away while yet fresh and vital, with the result that where a bud should have been there was a scar.
This sudden change in the system of land-holding was followed by a century of reprisals and confiscations, and what war began the law continued. The Celtic race, for the most part impoverished in mind and estate by the penal laws, became rooted to the soil, for, as we have seen, they had, on account of the repression of industries, no alternative occupation, and so became, in fact, if not in law, adscripti glebae. Upon the productiveness
The wound produced by the original confiscation of the land was kept from healing by the way in which the tenants' improvements were somewhat similarly treated. I do not mean that they were systematically confiscatedthe Devon and Bessborough Commissions, as well as Gladstone, bore witness to the contrarybut the right and the occasional exercise of the right to confiscate operated in the same way. In the Irish tenant's mind dispossession was nine-tenths of the law.[Footnote: The title to the greater part of Irish land is based on confiscation. This is true of many other countries, but what was exceptional in the Irish confiscations was that the grantees for the most part did not settle on the lands themselves, drive away the dispossessed, or come to any rational working agreement with them.]
An enlightened system of land tenure might have made prosperity and contentment the lot of the native race, and, perhaps, have rendered possible such a solution of the Irish problem as was effected between England and Scotland two centuries ago. What was chiefly required for agrarian peace was a recognition of that sense of partnership in the landa relic of the tribal daysto which the Irish mind tenaciously adhered. But, like most English concessions, it was not granted until too late, and then granted in the wrong way. The natural result was that, when at last the recognition of partnership was enacted, it became a lever for a demand for complete ownership. But this was the aftermath, for in the meantime, from the seed
It would be altogether outside the scope or purpose of this chapter to present a complete history of the remedial legislation applied to Irish land tenure. That history, however, illustrates so vividly the English misunderstanding, that a short survey of one phase of it may help to point the moral. The English intellect at long last began to grasp the agrarian, though not the industrial side of the wrong that had been done to Ireland, and the English conscience was moved; there came the era of concessions to which I have alluded, and for over a quarter of a century attempts, often generous, if not very discriminating, were made to deal with the situation. In 1870, dispossession was made very costly to the landlord. In 1881, it became impossible, except on the tenant's default, and the partnership was fully recognised, the tenant's share being made his own to sell, and being preserved for his profitable use by a right to have the rent payable to his sleeping partner, the landlord, fixed by a judicial tribunal. These rights were the famous three F'sfixity of tenure, free sale, and fair rentof the Magna Charta of the Irish peasant. If these concessions had only been made in time,
Whatever may be said in disparagement of the great experiment commenced in 1881, there can be no doubt that it enormously improved the legal position of the
When Mr. Gladstone was attempting to settle the land question on the basis of dual ownership, the seed of a new kind of single ownershippeasant proprietorshipwas sown through the influence of John Bright. The operations of the land purchase clauses in the Church Disestablishment Act of 1869, and the Land Acts of 1870 and 1881, were enormously extended by the Land Purchase Acts introduced by the Conservative Party in 1885 and in 1891, and the success which attended these Acts accentuated the defects and sealed the fate of dual ownership, which all parties recently united to destroy. In other words, Parliament has been undoing a generation's legislative work upon the Irish land question.
This is all I need say about that stage of the Irish agrarian situation at which we have now arrived. What I wish my readers to bear in mind is that the effect of a bad system of land tenure upon the other aspects of the
I may now conclude my appeal to outside observers for a broader and more philosophic view of my country and my countrymen with a suggestion born of my own early mistakes, and with a word of warning which is called for by my later observation of the mistakes of others. The difficulty of the outside observer in understanding the Irish Question is, no doubt, largely due to the fact that those in intimate touch with the actual conditions are so dominated by vehement and passionate conviction that reason is not only at a discount but is fatal to the acquisition of popular influence. Of course the power of knowledge and thought, though kept in the background, is not really eliminated. But it is in the circumstances not unnatural that most of us should fall into the error of attributing to the influence of prominent individuals or organisations the events and conditions which the superficial observer regards as the creation of the hour, but which are in reality the outcome of a slow and continuous process of evolution. I remember as a boy being captivated by that charming corrective to this view of historical development, Buckle's History of Civilization, which in recent years has often recurred to my mind, despite the fact that many of his theories are now somewhat discredited. Buckle, if I remember right, almost eliminates the personal factor in the life of nations. According to his theory, it would not have made much difference to modern civilisation if Napoleon had happened, as was so near being the case, to be born
The warning I have to offer, I think, will be justified by a reflection upon the history of the panaceas which we have been offered, and upon our present state. To those of my British readers who honestly desire to understand the Irish Question, I would say, let them eschew the sweeping generalisations by which Irish intelligence is commonly outraged. I may pass by the explanation which rests upon the cheap attribution of racial inferiority with the simple reply that our inferior race has much of the superior blood in its veins; yet the Irish problem is just as acute in districts where the English blood predominates as where the people are mere Irish. If this view be disputed, the matter is not worth arguing about, because we cannot be born again. But there are three other common explanations of the Irish difficulty, any one of which taken by itself only leads away from the truth. I refer, I need hardly say, to the familiar assertions that the origin of the evil is political, that it is religious, or that it is neither one nor the
Whilst attributing the long continued failure of English rule in Ireland largely to a misunderstanding of the Irish mind, I have given Englandat least modern Englandcredit for good intentions towards us. I now come to the case of the misunderstood, and shall from henceforth be concerned with the immeasurably greater responsibility of the Irish people themselves for their own welfare. The most characteristic, and by far the most hopeful feature of the change in the Anglo-Irish situation which took place in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and upon the meaning of which I dwelt in the preceding chapter, is the growing sense amongst us that the English misunderstanding of Ireland is of far less importance, and perhaps less inexcusable, than our own misunderstanding of ourselves.
When I first came into practical touch with the extraordinarily complex problems of Irish life, nothing impressed me so much as the universal belief among my countrymen that Providence had endowed them with capacities of a high order, and their country with resources of unbounded richness, but that both the capacities and the resources remained undeveloped
It is not easy to account for the long continuance of this attitude of the Irish mind towards Irish problems, which seems unworthy of the native intelligence of the people. The truth probably is that while we have not allowed our intellectual gifts to decay, they have been of little use to us because we have neglected the second part of the old Scholastic rule of life, and have failed to develop the moral qualities in which we are deficient. Hence we have developed our critical faculties, not, unhappily, along constructive lines. We have been throughout alive to the muddling of our affairs by the English, and have accurately gauged the incapacity of our governors to appreciate our needs and possibilities. But we recognised their incapacity more readily than our own deficiencies, and we estimated the failure of the English far more justly than we apportioned the responsibility between our rulers and ourselves. The sense of
It is a peculiarity of destructive criticism that, unlike charity, it generally begins and ends abroad; and those who cultivate the gentle art are seldom given to morbid introspection. Our prodigious ignorance about ourselves has not been blissful. Mistaking self-assertion for self-knowledge, we have presented the pathetic spectacle of a people casting the blame for their shortcomings on another people, yet bearing the consequences themselves. The national habit of living in the past seems to give us a present without achievement, a future without hope. The conclusion was long ago forced upon me that whatever may have been true of the past, the chief responsibility for the remoulding of our national life rests now with ourselves, and that in the last analysis the problem of Irish ineffectiveness at home is in the main a problem of characterand of Irish character.
I am quite aware that such a diagnosis of our mind diseasefrom which Ireland is, in my belief, slowly but surely recoveringwill not pass unchallenged, but I would ask any reader who dissents from this view to take a glance at the picture of our national life as it might unfold itself to an unprejudiced but sympathetic outsider who came to Ireland not on a political tour but with a sincere desire to get at the truth of the Irish Question, and to inquire into the conditions about which all the controversy continues to rage.
This hypothetical traveller would discover that our resources are but half developed, and yet hundreds of thousands of our workers have gone, and are still going, to produce wealth where it is less urgently needed. The remnant of the race who still cling to the old country are not only numerically weak, but in many other ways they show the physical and moral effects of the drain which emigration has made on the youth, strength, and energy of the community. Our four and a quarter millions of people, mainly agricultural, have, speaking generally, a very low standard of comfort, which they like to attribute to some five or six millions sterling paid as agricultural rent, and three millions of alleged over-taxation. They face the situation bravelyand, incidentally, swell the over-taxationwith the help of the thirteen or fourteen millions worth of alcoholic stimulants which they annually consume. The still larger consumption in Great Britain may seem to lend at least a respectability to this apparent over-indulgence, but it looks odd. The people are endowed with intellectual capacities of a high order. They have literary gifts and an artistic sense. Yet, with a few brilliant exceptions, they contribute nothing to invention and create nothing in literature or in art. One would say that there must be something wrong with the education of the country; and most people declare that is too literary, though the Census returns show that there are still large numbers who escape the tyranny of books. The people have an extraordinary belief in political remedies for economic ills;
These, though only a few of the strange ironies of Irish life, are so paradoxical and so anomalous that they are not unnaturally attributed to the intrusion of an alien and unfriendly power; and this furnishes the reason why everything which goes wrong is used to nourish the anti-English sentiment. At the same time they give emphasis to the growing doubt as to the wisdom of those to whom the Irish Question presents itself only as a single and simple issuenamely, whether the laws which are to put all these things right shall be made at St. Stephen's by the collective wisdom of the United Kingdom, aided
It is obviously necessary that, in presenting a comprehensive scheme for dealing with the conditions I have roughly indicated, I should make some reference to the attitude towards Home Rule of both the Nationalists and the Unionists who have joined in work which, whatever be its irregularity from the standpoint of party discipline as enforced in Ireland, has succeeded in some degree in directing the energies of our countrymen to the development of the resources of our country. Many of my fellow-workers were Nationalists who, while stoutly adhering to the prime necessity for constitutional changes, took the broad view, which was unpopular among the Irish Party, that much could be done, even under present conditions, to build up our national life on its social, intellectual, and economic sides. The well-known constitutional changes which were advocated in the political party to which they belonged would then, they believed, be more effectively demanded by Ireland, and more readily conceded by England. Unionists who worked with me were similarly affected by the changing mental outlook of the country. They, too, had to break loose from the traditions of an Irish party, for they felt that the exclusively political opposition to Home Rule was not less demoralising than the exclusively political pursuit of Home Rule. Just as the Nationalists who joined the movement believed that all progress must make for self-government,
If I have fairly stated the attitude towards each other of the workers to whose coming together must be attributed as much of the change in the Irish situation as is due to Irish initiation, it will be seen that what had so long kept them apart in public affairs, outside politics, was a difference of opinion, not so much as to the conditions to be dealt with, nor, indeed, as to the end to be sought, but rather as to the means most effective for the attainment of that end. I naturally regard the view which I am putting forward as being broader than that which has hitherto prevailed. Some Nationalists may, however, contend that it is essential to progress that the thoughts and energies of the nation should be focussed upon a single movement, and not dissipated in the pursuit of a multiplicity of ideals. I quite admit the importance of concentration. But I strongly hold that any movement which is closely related to the main currents of the people's life and subservient to their urgent economic necessities, and which gives free play to
It is a commonplace that there are two Irelands, differing in race, in creed, in political aspiration, and in what I regard as a more potent factor than all the others put togethereconomic interest and industrial pursuit. In the mutual misunderstanding of these two Irelands, still more than in the misunderstanding of Ireland by England, is to be found the chief cause of the still unsettled state of the Irish Question. I shall not seek to apportion the blame between the two sections of the population; but as the mists clear away and we can begin to construct a united and contented Ireland, it is not only legitimate, but helpful in the extreme, to assign to the two sections of our wealth-producers their respective parts in repairing the fortunes of their country. In such a discussion of future developments chief prominence must necessarily be given to the problems affecting the life of the majority of the people, who depend directly on the land, and conduct the industry which produces by far the greater portion of the wealth of the country. It is, of course, essential to the prosperity of the whole community that the North should pursue
; and if they do not receive, vitally important as is their solution to the welfare of Ireland, any large share of attention in this book, it is because they are no part of what is ordinarily understood by the Irish Question.[Footnote: I speak from personal knowledge when I say that the leaders of Irish industry and commerce are fully alive to the practical consideration which they have now to denote to the new conditions by which they are surrounded They recognise that the intensified foreign competition which harasses them is due chiefly to German education and American enterprise. They are deep in the consideration of the form which technical education should take to meet their peculiar needs; and I am confident that Ulster will make a sound and useful contribution to the solution of the commercial and industrial problems which confront the manufacturers of the United Kingdom.]
Nevertheless, the interest of the manufacturing population of Ulster in the welfare of the Roman Catholic agricultural majority is not merely that of an onlooker, nor even that of the other parts of the United Kingdom, but something more. It is obvious that the internal trade of the country depends mainly upon the demand of the rural population for the output of the manufacturing towns, and that this demand must depend on the volume of agricultural production. I think the importance of developing the home market has not been sufficiently appreciated, even by Belfast. The best contribution the Ulster Protestant population can make to the solution of this question is to do what they can to bring about cordial co-operation between the two
The Irish Question is, then, in that aspect which must be to Irishmen of paramount importance, the problem of a national existence, chiefly an agricultural existence, in Ireland. To outside observers it is the question of rural life, a question which is assuming a social and economic importance and interest of the most intense character, not only for Ireland North and South, but for almost the whole civilised world. It is becoming increasingly difficult in many parts of the world to keep the people on the land, owing to the enormously improved industrial opportunities and enhanced social and intellectual advantages of urban life. The problem can be better examined in Ireland than elsewhere, for with us it can, to a large extent, be isolated, since we have little highly developed town life. Our rural exodus takes our people, for the most part, not into Irish or even into British towns, but into those of the United States. What is migration in other countries is emigration with us, and the mind of the country, brooding over
We cannot exercise much direct influence upon the desire to emigrate beyond spreading knowledge as to the real conditions of life in America, for which home life in Ireland is often ignorantly bartered.
We cannot isolate the phenomenon of emigration and find a cure for it apart from the rest of the Irish Question. We must recognise that emigration is but the chief symptom of a low national vitality, and that the first result of our efforts to stay the tide may increase the outflow. We cannot fit the people to stay without fitting them to go. Before we can keep the people at home we have got to construct a national life with, in the first place, a secure basis of physical comfort and decency. This life must have a character, a dignity, an outlook of its own. A comfortable Boeotia will never develop into a real Hibernia Pacata. The standard of living may in some ways be lower than the English standard: in some ways it may be higher. But even if statesmanship and all the forces of philanthropy and patriotism combined can construct a contented rural Ireland for the people, it can only be[Footnote: That such a knowledge is still required, though the need is becoming less urgent, is shown by an incident which illustrates the pathos of the Irish exodus. A poor woman once asked me to help her son to emigrate to America, and I agreed to pay his passage. Early in the negotiations, finding that she was somewhat vague as to her boy's prospects, I asked her whether he wanted to go to North or South America. This detail she seemed to consider immaterial. Ach, glory be to God I lave that to yer honner. Why wouldn't I? Had I shipped him to Peru she would have been quite satisfied. Why wouldn't she?]
The task which we have to face is, then, a two-sided one, but its economic and its purely practical aspects first demand consideration. Many even of the agrarian aspects of the question have, so far, been somewhat neglected in Ireland owing to a cause which is not far to seek. It has often been asserted that the Irish Question is, at bottom, the Land Question. There is a great deal of truth in this view, but almost all those who hold it have fallen into the grave error of tacitly identifying the land question with the tenure questionan error which vitiates a great deal of current theorising about Ireland. It was, indeed, inevitable that Irish agriculturists, with such an economic history behind them as I have outlined in the previous chapter, should have concentrated their attention during the latter half of the nineteenth century upon obtaining a legislative cure for the ills produced by
The main features of the depressing outlook of rural life in the United Kingdom are well known. The land steadily passes from under the plough and is given over to stock raising. As the kine increase the men decay. In Ireland the rural exodus takes, as I have already said, the shape, mainly, not of migration to Irish urban centres, but rather the uglier form of an emigration which not
The reason generally given for the widespread resort to the lotus-eating occupation of opening and shutting gates, in preference to tilling the soil, is that in the existing state of agricultural organisation, and while urban life is ever drawing away labour from the fields, the substitution of pasturage for tillage is the readiest way to meet the ruinous competition of Eastern Europe, the Western hemisphere, and Australasia. Yet upon the economic merits of this process I have heard the most diverse opinions stated with equal conviction by men thoroughly well informed as to the conditions. One of the largest graziers in Ireland recently gave me a picture of what he considered to be an ideal economic state for the country. If two more Belfasts could be established on the east coast, and the rest of the country divided into five hundred acre farms, grazing being adopted wherever permanent grass would grow, the limits of Irish productivity would be reached. On the other hand, Dr. O'Donnell, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Raphoe, who may be taken as all authoritative exponent of the trend of popular thought in the country, not long ago advocated ploughing the grazing lands of Leinster right up to the slopes of Tara.
Moreover, many theories have been[Footnote: Yet another view which seems to uproot most agrarian ideas in Ireland has been put forward by Dr. O'Gara in The Green Republic (Fisher Unwin, 1902). His main conclusion is that the present disastrous state of our rural economy is due to our treating land as an object of property and not of industry. He advocates the cultivation of the land by syndicates holding farms of 20,000 acres and tilling them by the lavish application of modern machinery as the only way to meet American competition. His book is able and suggestive, but it is perhaps, a work of supererogation to discuss a theory the whole moral of which is the expediency of absolutely divorcing the functions of the proprietor and the manager of land at a time when the consensus of opinion in Ireland is in favour of uniting them, and in view of the fact that under the new Land Act the future of the country seems inevitably to lie for a long time in the hands of a peasant proprietary.]
The solution of all such problems largely depends upon certain developments which, for many reasons, I regard as absolutely essential to the success of the new agrarian order. One of these developments is the spread of agricultural co-operation through voluntary associations. Without this agency of social and economic progress, small landholders in Ireland will be but a body of isolated units, having all the drawbacks of individualism, and none of its virtues, unorganised and singularly ill-equipped for that great international struggle of our time, which we know as agricultural competition. Moreover, there is another equally important, if less obvious, consideration which renders urgent the organisation of our rural communities. From Russia, with its half-communistic Mir to France with its modern village commune, there is no country in Europe except the United Kingdom where the peasant land-holders have not some form of corporate existence. In Ireland the transition from landlordism to a peasant proprietary not only does not create any corporate existence among the
The organisation of the peasantry by an extension of voluntary associations, which is a condition precedent of social and economic progress, will not, however, suffice to enable them to face and solve the problems with which they are confronted, and whose solution has now become a matter of very serious concern to the British taxpayer. The condition of our agrarian life clearly indicates the necessity for supplementing voluntary effort with a sound system of State aid to agriculture and industrya necessity fully recognised by the governments of every progressive continental country and of our own colonies. An altogether hopeful beginning of combined self-help and State assistance has been already made. Those who have been studying these problems, and practically preparing the way for the proper care of a peasant proprietary, have overcome the chief obstacles which lay in their path. They have gained popular acceptance for the principle that State aid should not be resorted to until organised voluntary effort has first been set in motion, and that any departure from this principle would be an unwarrantable interference with the business of the people, a fatal blow to private enterprise.
[Footnote: The reader may wonder why I touch so lightly upon a fact of such profound significance as the Irishman's acceptance of self-help as a condition precedent of State aid in the development of agriculture and industry. But such a cursory treatment, in the early chapters, of this and of other equally important aspects of the Irish situation is necessitated by the plan I have adopted. I am attempting to give in the first part of the book a philosophic insight into the chief Irish problems, and then, in the second part of the book, to present the facts which appear to me to illustrate these problems in process of solution.]
These 200,000 holdings, the homes of nearly a million persons, threaten to prove the greatest danger to the future of agricultural Ireland. As the majority of them, as at present constituted, do not provide the physical basis of a decent standard of living, the question arises, how are they to be improved? Putting aside emigration, which at one period was necessary and ought to have been aided and controlled by the State, but which is now no longer a statesman's remedy, there is obviously no solution except by the migration of a portion of the occupiers, and the utilisation of the vacated holdings in order to enable the peasants who remain to prosper much as a forest is thinned to promote the growth of trees. In typical congested districts this operation will have to be carried out on a much larger scale than is generally realised, for a considerable majority of families will have to be removed, in order to allow a sufficient margin for the provision of adequate holdings for those who remain. In some cases, there are large grazing tracts in close proximity to the congested area which might be utilised for the re-settlement, but where this is not so and the occupiers of the vacated holdings have to migrate a considerable distance, the problem becomes far more difficult. I need not dwell upon the administrative difficulties of the operation, which are not light. I may assume, also, that there will be no difficulty in obtaining suitable land somewhere. I do
Under the Land Act of 1903 much has been done to facilitate the transfer of peasants to new farms, but it is obvious that land cannot be handed over as a gift from the State to the families which migrate. They will become debtors for the value of the land itself, less perhaps a small sum which may be credited to them in respect of the tenant's interest in the holdings they have abandoned. This deduction will, however, be lost in the expenditure required upon houses, buildings, fences, and other improvements which would have to be effected before the land could be profitably occupied. Speaking generally they will have no money or agricultural implements, and their live stock will in many cases be mortgaged to the local shopkeeper who has always
I have touched upon this question of migration from uneconomic to economic holdings because it signally illustrates the importance of the human, in contra-distinction to the merely material considerations involved in the solution of the many-sided Irish Question. I must now return to the wider question of the relation of population to area in rural Ireland, as it affects the general scheme of agricultural and industrial development.
It is obvious that there must be a limit to the number of individuals that the land can support. Allowing an average of five members for each family, and allowing for a considerable number of landless labourers, it seems that the land at present directly supports about 2,500,000 personsa view which, I may add, is fully borne out by the figures of the recent census; and it is hard to see how a population living by agriculture can be much increased beyond this number. Even if all the land in Ireland were available for re-distribution in equal shares, the higher standard of comfort to which it is essential that the condition of our people should be raised would forbid the existence of much more than half a million peasant proprietors.
Hence the evergreen query, What shall we do with our boys? remains to be answered; for while the abolition of dual ownership will enable the present generation to bring up their children according to a higher standard of living, the change will not of itself provide a career for the children when they have been brought up. The next generation will have to face this problem:the average farm can support only one of the children and his family, what is to become of the others? The law forbids sub-division for two generations, and after that, ex hypothesi, the then prevailing conditions of life will also prevent such partition. A few of the next generation may become[Footnote: The best expert agricultural opinion tells me that under present conditions a family cannot live in any decent standard of comfortsuch as I hope to see prevail in Irelandon less than 30 acres of Irish land, taking the bad land with the good.]
Against this view I know it is pointed out that in the earlier part of the nineteenth century the agricultural population of Ireland was as large as is the total population of to-day; but we know the sequel. Instances are also cited of peasant proprietaries in foreign countries which maintain a high standard of living upon small, sometimes diminutive, and highly-rented holdings. We must remember, however, that in these foreign countries State intervention has undoubtedly done much to render possible a prosperous peasant proprietary by, for example, the dissemination of useful information, admirable systems of technical education in agriculture, cheap and expeditious transport, and even State attention to the distribution of agricultural produce in distant markets. Again, in many of these countries rural life is balanced by a highly industrial town life, as, for instance, in the case of Belgium; or is itself highly industrialised by the existence of rural industries, as in the case of Switzerland; while in one notable instancethat of Württembergboth these conditions prevail.
The true lesson to be drawn from these foreign analogies is that not by agriculture alone is Ireland to be saved. The solution of the rural problem embraces many spheres of national activity. It involves, as I have already said, the further development of manufactures
So far the rural industry problem, and the direction in which its solution is to be found, are fairly clear. But there is one disadvantage with which we have to reckon, and which for many other reasons besides the one I am now immediately concerned with, we must seek to remove. A community does not naturally or easily produce for export that for which it has itself no use, taste, or desire. Whatever latent capacity for artistic handicrafts the Irish peasant may possess, it is very rarely that one finds any spontaneous attempt to give outward expression to the inward aesthetic sense. And this brings me to a strange aspect of Irish life to which I have often wished, on the proper occasion, to draw public attention. The matter arises now in the form of a peculiar difficulty which lies in the path of those who endeavour to solve the problem of rural life in Ireland, and which, in my belief, has profoundly affected the fortunes of the race both at home and abroad.
To a sympathetic insight there is a singular and significant void in the Irish conception of a homeI mean the lack of appreciation for the comforts of a home, which might never have been apparent to me had it not obtruded itself in the form of a hindrance to social and economic progress.
In the Irish love of home, as in[Footnote: It is, of course, unnecessary for me to dwell upon the part played by the home in the standard of living, especially amongst a rural community. But it may not be irrelevant to note that M. Desmolins, who, in his remarkable book, A quoi tient la superiorité des Anglo-saxons? hands over the future of civilisation to the Anglo-Saxons, ascribes to the English rural home much of the success of the race.]
What the Irishman is really attached to in Ireland is not a home but a social order. The pleasant amenities, the courtesies, the leisureliness, the associations of religion, and the familiar faces of the neighbours, whose ways and minds are like his and very unlike those of any other people; these are the things to which he clings in Ireland and which he
The peculiar Irish conception of a home has probably a good deal to do with the history of the Irish in the United States. It is well known that whatever measure of success the Irish emigrant has there achieved is pre-eminently in the American city, and not where, according to all the usual commonplaces about the Irish race, they ought to have succeeded, in American rural life. There they were afforded, and there they missed, the greatest opportunity which ever fell to the lot of a people agriculturally inclined. During the days of the great emigrations from Ireland, a veritable Promised Land, rich beyond the dreams of agricultural avarice, was gradually opened up between the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains, which the Irish had only to occupy in order to possess. Making all allowances for
Recently a daughter of a small farmer in County Galway with a family too long for the means of subsistence available, was offered a comfortable home on a farm owned by some better-off relatives, only thirty miles away, though probably twenty miles beyond the limits of her utmost peregrinations. She elected in preference to go to New York, and being asked her reason by a friend of mine, replied in so many words, because it is nearer. She felt she would be less of a stranger in a New York tenement house, among her relatives and friends who had already emigrated, than in another part of County Galway. Educational science in Ireland has always ignored the life history of the subject with which it dealt. In no respect has this neglect been so unconsciously cruel as in its failure to implant in the Irish mind that appreciation of the material aspects of the home which the people so badly need both in Ireland and in America. If the Irishman abroad became a rootless colonist of alien earth, the lot of the Irishman
There are, as I have said, historic reasons for the Celtic view of home to which my personal observation and experience has induced me to devote so much space. The Irish people have never had the opportunity of developing that strong and salutary individualism which, amongst other things, imperiously demands, as a condition of its growth, a home that shall be a man's castle as well as his abiding place. In this, as in so much else, a healthy evolution was constantly thwarted by the clash of two peoples and two civilisations. The Irish had hardly emerged from the nomad pastoral stage, when the first of that series of invasions, which had all the ferocity, without the finality of conquest, made settled life impossible over the greater part of the island. An old chronicle throws some vivid light upon the way in which the idea of home life presented itself to the mind of the clan chiefs as late as the days of the Tudors. Con O'Neal, we are told, was so right Irish that he cursed all his posterity in case they either learnt English, sowed wheat or built them houses; lest the first should breed conversation, the second commerce, and with the last they should speed as the crow that buildeth her nest to be beaten out by the hawk.
The penal laws, again, acted as a disintegrant[Footnote: Speed's Chronicle, quoted in Calendar of State Papers, Ireland, 1611-14, p. 19.]
If I have dwelt at what may appear to be a disproportionate length upon the Irishman's peculiar conception of a home, it is because this difficulty, which Irish social and economic reformers still encounter, and with which they must deal sympathetically if they are to succeed in the work of national regeneration, strikingly illustrates the two-sided character of the Irish Question and the neverto-be-forgotten inter-dependence of the sentimental and the practical in Ireland. I admit that this condition which adds to the interest of the problem, and perhaps makes it more amenable to rapid solution, is an indication of a weakness of moral fibre to which must be largely attributed our failure to be master of our circumstances. Indeed, as I come into closer touch with the efforts which are now being made to raise the material condition of the people, the more convinced I become, much
With this enunciation of the main proposition of my book, I may now indicate the order in which I shall endeavour to establish its truth. I have said enough to show that I do not ignore the historical causes of our present state; but with so many facts with which we can deal confronting us, I propose to review the chief living influences to which the Irish mind and character are still subjected. These influences fall naturally into three distinct categories and will be treated in the three succeeding chapters. The first will show the effect upon the Irish mind of its obsession by politics. The next will deal with the influence of religious systems upon the secular life of the people. I shall then show how education, which should not only have been the most potent of all the three influences in bringing our national life into line with the progress of the age, but should also have modified the operation of the other two causes, has aggravated rather than cured the malady.
Whatever impression I may succeed in making upon others, I may here state that, as the result of observation and reflection, the conclusion has been forced upon me that the Irish mind is suffering from considerable functional derangement, but not, so far as I can discern, from any organic disease. This is the basis of my
Among the humours of the Home Rule struggle, the story was current in England that a peasant in Connemara ceased planting his potatoes when the news of the introduction of the Home Rule Bill in 1886 seemed to bring the millenium into the region of practical politics. Those who used the story were not slow to suggest that, had the Bill become law, the failure of spontaneous generation in the Connemara potato patch might have been typical of much analogous disillusionment elsewhere. Even to those who are familiar with our history, the faith of the Irish people in the potentialities of government, which this little tale illustrates by caricature, will give cause for reflection of another and more serious kind. The moral to be drawn by Irish politicians is that we in Ireland have yet to free ourselves from one of the worst legacies of past misgovernment, the belief that any legislation or any legislature can provide an escape from the physical and mental toil imposed through our first parents upon all nations for all time.
The more business in politics, and the less politics in business, the better for both, is a maxim which I brought
In such an examination of Irish politics as thus becomes necessary I shall have to devote the greater part of my criticism to the influence of the Nationalist party upon the Irish mind. But it will be seen that this course is not taken with a view to making party capital for my own side. As I read Irish history, neither party need expect very much credit for more than good intentions. Whichever proves to be right in its main contention, each will have to bear its share of the responsibility for the long continuance of the barren controversy. Each has neglected to concern itself with the settlement of vitally important questions the consideration of which need not have been postponed because the constitutional question still remained in dispute. Therefore, though I seem to throw upon the Nationalist party the chief blame for our present political backwardness, and, so far as politics affect other spheres of national activity, for our industrial depression, candour compels me to admit that Irish Unionism has failed to recognise its obligationan
To my own party in Ireland then, I would first direct the reader's attention. I have already referred to the deplorable effects produced upon national life by the exclusion of representatives of the landlord and the industrial classes from positions of leadership and trust over four-fifths of the country. I cannot conceive of a prosperous Ireland in which the influence of these leaders is restricted within its present bounds. It has been so restricted because the Irish Unionist party has failed to produce a policy which could attract, at any rate, moderate men from the other side, and we have, therefore, to consider why we have so failed. Until this is done, we shall continue to share the blame for the miserable state of our political life which, at the end of the nineteenth century, appeared to have made but little advance from the time when Bishop Berkeley asked Whether our parties are not a burlesque upon politics.
The Irish Unionist party is supposed to unite all who, like the author, are opposed to the plunge into what is called Home Rule. But its propagandist activities in Ireland are confined to preaching the doctrine of the status quo, and preaching it only to its own side. From the beginning the party has been intimately connected with the landlord class; yet even upon
Two main causes appear to me to account for the failure of the Irish Unionist party to make itself an effective force in Irish national life. The great misunderstanding to which I have attributed the unhappy state of Anglo-Irish relations kept the country in a condition of turmoil which enabled the Unionist party to declare itself the party of law and order. Adopting Lord Salisbury's famous prescription, twenty years of resolute government, they made it what its author would have been the last man to consider it, a sufficient justification for a purely negative and repressive policy. Such an attitude was open to somewhat obvious objections. No one will dispute the proposition that the government of Ireland, or of any other country, should be resolute, but twenty years of resolute government, in the narrow sense in which it came to be interpreted, needed for its success, what cannot be had under
The second cause which determined the character of Irish Unionism was the linking of the agrarian with the political question; the one being, in effect, a practical, the other a sentimental issue. The same thing happened in the Nationalist party; but on their side it was intentional and led to an immense accession of strength, while on the Unionist side it made for weakness. If the influence of Irish Unionists was to be even maintained, it was of vital importance that the interest of a class should not be allowed to dominate the policy of the party. But the organisation which ought to have rallied every force that Ireland could contribute to the cause of imperial unity came to be too closely identified with the landlord class. That class is admittedly essential to the construction of any real national life. But there is another element equally essential, to which the political leaders of Irish
It will be remembered that when the Home Rule controversy was at its height, the chief strength of the Irish opposition to Mr. Gladstone's policy, and the consideration which most weighed with the British electorate, lay in the business objection of the industrial population of Ulster; though on the platform religious and political arguments were more often heard. The intensely practical nature of the objection which came from the commercial and industrial classes of the North who opposed Home Rule was never properly recognised in Ireland. It was, and is still unanswered. Briefly stated, the position taken up by their spokesmen was as follows:We have come, they said in effect, into Ireland, and not the richest portion
[Footnote: This view of the case was powerfully stated by the deputation from the Belfast Chamber of Commerce which waited on Mr. Gladstone in the spring of 1893. They pointed out inter alia that the members of the deputation were poorer by thousands of pounds owing to the fall in Irish stocks consequent upon the introduction of the Home Rule Bill in that year.]
My sole criticism of those leaders of commerce and industry in Belfast, who, whenever they turn their attention from their various pre-occupations, import into Irish politics the valuable qualities which they display in the conduct of their private affairs, is that they do not go further and take the necessary steps to give practical effect to their views outside the ranks of their immediate associates and followers. Had the industrial section made its voice heard in the councils of the Irish Unionist
I cannot, therefore, escape from the conclusion that whilst the Irish section of the party to which I belong is, in my opinion, right on the main political question, its influence is now for the most part negative. Hence I direct attention mainly to the Home Rule party, as the
In examining the policy of the Nationalist party my chief concern will be to arrive at a correct estimate of the effect which is produced upon the thought and action of the Irish people by the methods employed for the attainment of Home Rule. I propose to show that these methods have been in the past, and must, so long as they are employed, continue to be injurious to the political and industrial character of the people, and consequently a barrier to progress. I know that most of the Nationalist leaders justify the employment of these methods on the ground that, in their opinion, the constitutional reforms they advocate are a condition precedent to industrial progress. I believe, on the contrary, and I shall give my reasons for believing, that their tactics have been not only a hindrance to industrial progress, but destructive even to the ulterior purpose they were intended to fulfil.
It is commonly believeda belief very naturally fostered by their leadersthat, if there is one thing the Irish do understand, it is politics. Politics is a term obviously capable of wide interpretation, and I fear that those who say that my countrymen are pre-eminently politicians use the term in a sense more applicable to
The assumption that Irishmen are singularly good politicians seems to stand seriously in the way of their becoming so; and yet it is a matter of the greatest importance that they should become good politicians in a real sense, for in no country would sound political thought exercise a more beneficial influence upon the life of the people than in Ireland. Indeed I would go further and give it as my strong conviction that, properly developed and freed from the narrowing influences of the party squabbles by which it has been warped and sterilised, the political thought of the Irish people would contribute a factor of vital importance to the life of the British empire. But at the moment I am dealing only with the influence of politics on Irish social and economic life.
I am aware that any political deficiencies which the Irish may display at home, are commonly attributed to the political system which has been imposed upon Ireland from without. If you want to see Irish genius in its highest political manifestation, it must be studied, we are told, in the United States, the
[Footnote: The term Scotch-Irish does not mean an amalgam of Scotch and Irish, but a race of Scottish immigrants who settled in northeast Ireland, I may point out that in these criticisms of Irish-American politics I refer, of course, mainly to the Irish-born immigrants and not to the Irish, Scotch-Irish or other, who are American-born. Nobody can have a higher appreciation than I of the great part played by the American-Irish once they have assimilated the full spirit of American Institutions.]
Leaving, then, out of consideration the political achievements of the Scotch-Irish, it appears to me that the part played in politics by the Irish in America does not testify to any high political genius. They have shown there an extraordinary aptitude for political organisation, which, if it had been guided by anything approaching to political thought, would have placed them in a far higher position in American public life than that
The fallacious views about the nature and sphere of politics, which the Irish bring with them from Ireland, and which are perpetuated in America, have the effect not only of debarring the Irish from real political progress, but also, as at home, from gaining success in industrial pursuits which their talents would otherwise win for them. They succeed as journalists owing to their quick intelligence and versatility, and as contractors mainly owing to their capacity for organising gangs of workmena faculty which seems to be the only good thing resulting from their political education. They are as brilliant soldiers in the service of the United States as they are in that of Britainmore it would be impossible to sayand they have produced types of daring, endurance, and shrewdness like the Silver Kings of Nevada which testify to the exceptional powers always developed by the Irish in exceptional circumstances. But in the humdrum business of everyday life in the United States they suffer from defects which are the outcome of their devotion to mistaken political ideals and of their subordination of industry to politics, which are not always purely
The only reason why I have examined the assumption that Irishmen display marked political capacity in the United States is to make it clear that the political deficiencies
The fact is that the difficulties of English government in Ireland, until a complete military conquest had been effected, were of a peculiarly complex character. Before the English could impose upon Ireland their own political organisationand the idea that any other system could work better among the Irish never entered the English mindit was obviously necessary that the very antithesis of that organisation, the clan system, should be abolished. But there were military and financial objections to carrying out this policy. Irish campaigns were very costly, and England was in those days by no means wealthy. English armies in Ireland, after a short period spent in desultory warfare with light armed kernes in the fever-stricken Munster forests, began to melt away. For many generations, therefore, England, adopting a policy of divide et impera, set clan against clan. Later on, statecraft may be said to have supervened upon military tactics. It consisted of attempts made by alternate threats and bribes to induce the chiefs to transform the clan organisation by the acceptance of English institutions. But any systematic endeavours to complete the transformation were soon
The inevitable result of these methods was that it was not until a comparatively late date that a political conception of an Irish nation first began to emerge out of the congeries of clans. In the State Papers of the sixteenth century the clans are frequently spoken of as nations. Even as late as the eighteenth century a Gaelic poet, in a typical lament, thus identifies his country with the fortunes of her great families:
- 1] The O'Doherty is not holding sway, nor his noble race;
2] The O'Moores are not strong, that once were brave
3] O'Flaherty is not in power, nor his kinsfolk;
4] And sooth to say, the O'Briens have long since become English.- 1] Of O'Rourke there is no mentionmy sharp wounding!
2] Nor yet of O'Donnell in Erin;
3] The Geraldines they are without vigourwithout a nod,
4] And the Burkes, the Barrys the Walshes of the slender ships.
[Footnote: Poems of Egan O'Rahilly. Edited, with translation, by the Rev. P. S. Dinneen, M.A., for the Irish Texts Society, p. 2. O'Rahilly's charge against Cromwell is that he gave plenty to the man with the flail, but beggared the great lords, p. 167.]
The modern political idea of Irish nationality at length asserted itself as the result of three main causes. The bond of a common grievance against the English foe was created by the gradual abandonment of the policy of setting clan against clan in favour of impartial
The political backwardness of the Irish people revealed itself characteristically when, in 1884, the English and Irish democracies were simultaneously endowed with a greatly extended franchise. In theory this concession should have developed political thought in the people and should have enhanced their sense of political responsibility. In England no doubt this theory was proved by the event to be based on fact; but in Ireland it was otherwise. Parnell was at the zenith of his power. The Irish had the man, what mattered the principles? The new suffrages simply became the figures upon the cheques handed over to the Chief by each constituency, with the request that he would fill in the name of the payee. On one or two occasions a constituency did protest against the payee, but all that was required to settle the matter was a personal visit from the Chief. Generally speaking, the electorate were quite docile, and instances were not wanting of men discovering that they had found favour with electors to whom their faces and even their names were previously unknown.
No doubt, the one-man system had a tactical
I sometimes wonder whether the leaders of the Nationalist party really understand the full effect of their tactics upon the political character of the Irish people, and whether their vision is not as much obscured by a too near, as is the vision of the Unionist leaders by a too distant, view of the people's life. Everyone who seeks to provide practical opportunities for Irish intellect to express itself worthily in active lifeand this, I take it, is part of what the Nationalist leaders wish to achievemeets with the same difficulty. The lack of initiative and shrinking from responsibility, the moral timidity in glaring contrast with the physical couragewhich has its worst manifestation in the intense dread of public opinion, especially when the unknown terrors of editorial power lurk behind an unfavourable mention on the
It is quite clear that education should have been the remedy for the defects of character upon which I am forced to dwell so much; and I cannot absolve any body of Irishmen, possessed of actual or potential influence, of failure to recognise this truth. But here I am dealing only with the political leaders, and trying to bring home to them the responsibility which their power imposes upon them, not only for the political development but also for the industrial progress of their followers. They ought to have known that the weakness of character which renders the task of political leadership in Ireland comparatively easy is in reality the quicksand of Irish life, and that neither self-government nor any other institution can be enduringly built upon it.
The leaders of the Nationalist party are, of course, entitled to hold that, in existing political conditions, any non-political movement towards national advancement, which in its nature cannot be linked, as the land question was linked, to the Home Rule movement constitutes an unwarrantable sacrifice of ends to means. And
This view of things has sunk very deep into the Irish mind. The policy of giving trouble to the Government is looked upon as the one road to reform and is believed in so fervently that, except for religion, which sometimes conflicts with it, there is scarcely any capacity left for belief in anything else. I am far from denying that the past offers much justification for the belief that nothing can be gained by Ireland from England except through violent agitation. Until recently, I admit, Ireland's opportunity had to wait for England's difficulty. But, as practised in the present day, I believe this doctrine to be mischievous and false. For one thing, there is a new England to deal with. The England which, certainly not in deference to violent agitation, established the Congested Districts Board, gave Local Government to Ireland, and accepted the recommendations
If Irish politicians had at all realised this truth; it is difficult to believe that the popular movement of the last quarter of a century would not have been conducted in a manner far less injurious to the soul of[Footnote: Prose Writings of Thomas Davis, p. 284. The writers of The Nation wrote Davis in another place, have never concealed the defects or flattered the good qualities of their countrymen. They told them in good faith that they wanted many an attribute of a free people, and that the true way to command happiness and liberty was by learning the arts and practising the culture that fitted men for their enjoyment (p.176). The thing that especially distinguished Davis among Nationalist politicians was the essentially constructive mind which he brought to bear on Irish questions, as illustrated in the passage I have italicised. It is, I am afraid, the part of his legacy of thought which has been least regarded by his admirers.]
Now, modern Nationalism in Ireland is open to damaging criticism not only from my Unionist point of view, which was also, in many respects, the view of so strong a Nationalist as Thomas Davis; it is also open to grave objection from the point of view of the effectiveness of the tactics employed for the attainment of its endthe winning of Home Rule.
Before examining the effect of these tactics I may point out that this conception of Nationalist policy, even if justifiable from a practical point of view, does not relieve the leaders from the obligation of giving some assurance that they are ready with a consistent scheme of re-construction, and are prepared to build when the ground has been cleared. In this connection I might make a good deal of Unionist capital, and some points in support of my condemnation of the political absorption of the Irish mind, out of the total failure of the Nationalist party to solve certain all-important constitutional and financial problems which months of Parliamentary debate in 1893 tended rather to obscure than to elucidate. I am, however, willing for argument's sake to postpone all such questions, vital as they are, to the time when they can be practically dealt with. I am ready to assume that the wit of man can devise a settlement of many points which seemed insoluble in Mr. Gladstone's day. But even granting all this, I think it can easily be shown that the means which the political
Tactics form but a part of generalship, and half the success of generalship lies in making a correct estimate of the opposing forces. This is as true of political as it is of military operations. Now, of what do the forces opposed to Home Rule consist? The Unionists, it may be admitted, are numerically but a small minority of the population of Irelandprobably not more than one-fourth. But what do they represent? First, there are the landed gentry. Let us again make a concession for the sake of argument and accept the view that this class so wantonly kept itself aloof from the life of the majority of the people that the Nationalists could not be expected to count them among the elements of a Home Rule Ireland. I note, in passing, with extreme gratification that at the recent Land Conference it was declared by the tenants' representatives that it was desirable, in the interests of Ireland, that the present owners of land should not be expatriated, and that inducements should be afforded to selling owners to continue to reside in the country.
But I may ignore this as I wish here to recall attention to that other element, which was, as I have already said, the real force which turned the British democracy against Home RuleI mean the commercial and industrial community in Belfast and other hives of industry in the north-east corner of the country, and in scattered localities elsewhere. I have already admitted that the political importance of the industrial element was not appreciated in Irish Unionist circles. No less remarkable is the way in which it has been ignored by the Nationalists. The question which the Nationalists had to answer in 1886 and 1893, and which they have to answer to-day, is this :In the Ireland of their conception is the Unionist part of Ulster to be coerced or persuaded to come under the new regime? To those who adopt the former alternative my reply is simply that, if England is to do the coercion, the idea is politically absurd. If we were left to fight it out among ourselves, it is physically absurd. The task of the Empire in South Africa was light compared with that which the Nationalists would have on hands. I am aware that, at the time when we were all talking at concert pitch on the Irish Question, a good deal was said about dying in the last ditch by men who at the threat of any real trouble would be found more discreetly perched upon the first fence. But those who know the temper and fighting qualities of the working-men opponents of Home Rule in the North are under no illusion as to the account they would give of
The difficulties in the way of producing this conviction are very obvious. The North has prospered under the Act of Unionwhy should it be ready to enter upon a new variety of untried being? What that state of being will be like, it naturally gauges from the forces which are working for Home Rule at present. Looking at these simply from the industrial standpoint and leaving out of account all the powerful elements of religious and race prejudice, the man of the North sees two salient facts which have dominated all the political activity of the Nationalist campaign. One is a voluble and aggressive disloyalty, not merely to England and to the present system of government, but to the Crown which represents the unity of the three kingdoms, and the other is the introduction of politics into business in the very virulent and destructive form known as boycotting.
Now, hostility to the Crown, if it means anything, means a struggle for separation as soon as Home Rule has given to the Irish people the power to organise and arm. And (still keeping to the sternly practical point of view) that would, for the time being at least, spell absolute ruin to the industrial North. The practice of
Again, the democratisation of local government which gave the Nationalist leaders a unique opportunity of showing the value, has but served to demonstrate the ineffectiveness, of their political tactics. North of Ireland opinion was deeply interested in this reform, and appreciated its far-reaching importance. Elsewhere, I think it will be safe to say, people generally were indifferent to it until it came, and the leaders seemed to see in it only a weapon to be used for political purposes. To the great vista of useful and patriotic work opened out by the Act of 1898, to the impression that a proper use of that Act might make on Northern opinion, they were blind. It is true that the Councils when left to themselves did admirably, and fully justified the trust reposed in them. But at the inauguration of local government
It is true, of course, that many thoughtful men among the Nationalist party repudiate the idea that the methods of to-day would be continued in a self-governed Ireland. I fail to see any reason why they should not. Under any system of limited Home Rule questions would arise which would afford much the same sort of justification for the employment of such methods, and they could hardly be worse for the welfare of the country then than they are now. There is abundant need and abundant work in the present day for thoughtful and far-seeing men in a party constitutionally so strong as that of the Irish Nationalists. If those among them who possess, or at any rate can make effective use of qualities of constructive statesmanship are as few as the history of recent years would lead us to suppose, what assurance can Ulster Unionists feel that such men would spring up spontaneously in an Ireland under Home Rule? I admit, indeed, that a considerable measure of such assurance might be derived from the attitude of the leaders of the party at and since the Land Conference. But this adoption of statesmanlike methods which cannot be too widely understood or too warmly commended is a matter of very recent history; and though we may hope that the success attending it will help materially in the political education of the Irish people, that will not, by itself, undo the effect of a quarter of a century of
I have thought it necessary to examine at some length the defence on the ground of tactics which is often made for Nationalist politics, because it is the only defence ever made by those apologists who admit the disturbing influence upon our economic and social life of Nationalist methods. A broader and saner view of political tactics than prevailed ten years ago is now possible, for circumstances are becoming friendly and helpful to the development of political thought. Though the United Irish League apparently restored unity to the ranks of the Nationalists, the country is, I believe, getting restless under the political bondage, and is seething with a wholesome discontent. In this very matter of political education, the stir of corporate life, the sense of corporate responsibility which in every parish of Ireland are now being fostered by the reformed system of local government, must make their influence felt in wider spheres. Even now I believe that the field is ready for the work of those who would bid the old leader-following habit, the product partly of the dead clan system, partly of dying national animosities, depart as a thing that has had its day, and who would endeavour to train up a race of free, self-reliant, and independent citizens in a free state.
In this work the very men whose mistaken conception of a united Ireland I have criticised will, I doubt not, take a leading part. In many respects,
- 1] War-battered dogs are we,
2] Fighters in every clime,
3] Fillers of trench and of grave,
4] Mockers, bemocked by Time;
5] War-dogs, hungry and grey,
6] Gnawing a naked bone,
7] Fighting in every clime
8] Every cause but our own.
[Footnote: With the Wild Geese. Poems by the Hon. Emily Lawless. I have never read a better portrayal of the historic Irish sentiment than is set forth in this little volume. By the way, there is a preface by Mr. Stopford Brooke, which is singularly interesting and informing.]
Irishmen have been long in realising that the days of the Wild Geese are over, and that there are battles for Ireland to be fought and won in Irelandbattles in which England is not the enemy she was in the days of
In the preceding chapter I attempted to estimate the influence of our political leaders as a potential and as an actual force. I come now to the second great influence upon the thought and action of the Irish people, the influence of religion, especially the power exercised by the priests and by the unrivalled organisation of the Roman Catholic Church. I do not share the pessimism which sees in this potent influence nothing but the shackles of mediaevalism restraining its adherents from falling into line with the progress of the age. I shall, indeed, have to admit much of what is charged against the clerical leaders of popular thought in Ireland, but I shall be able to show, I hope, that these leaders are largely the product of a situation which they themselves did not create, and that not only are they as susceptible as are the political leaders to the influences of progressive movements, but that they can be more readily induced to take part in their promotion. In no other country in the world, probably, is religion so dominant an element in the daily life of the people as in Ireland, and certainly
But before I can discuss what I may call the religious situation, there is one fundamental questiona question which will appear somewhat strange to anyone not in touch with Irish lifewhich I must, with a view to a general agreement on essentials, submit to some of my co-religionists. In all seriousness I would ask, whether in their opinion the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland is to be tolerated. If the answer be in the negative, I can only reply that any efforts to stamp out the Roman Catholic faith would fail as they did in the past; and the practical minds among those I am now addressing must admit that in toleration alone is to be found the solution of that part of the Irish difficulty which is due to sectarian animosities.
This brings us face to face with the question. What is religious tolerationI do not mean as a pious sentiment which we are all conscious of ourselves possessing in a truer sense than that in which it is possessed by others, but rather toleration as an essential of the liberty which we Protestants enjoy under the British Constitution, and boast that all other creeds equally
Now, however, comes a less obvious, but, as I think, no less essential condition of toleration in the sense above indicated. The Roman Catholic Hierarchy claim the right to exercise such supervision and control over the education of their flock as will enable them to safeguard faith and morals as preached and practised by their Church. I concede this second claim as a necessary corollary of the first. Having lived most of my life among Roman Catholicstwo branches of my own family belonging to that religionI am aware that this control is an essential part of the whole fabric of Roman Catholicism. Whether the basis of authority upon which that system is founded be in its origin divine or human is beside the point. If we profess to tolerate the faith and religious system of the majority of our countrymen we must at least concede the conditions essential to the maintenance of both the one and the other, unless our tolerance is to be a sham.
So far all liberal-minded Protestants, who know what Roman Catholicism is, will be with me; and for the main purposes of the argument contained in this chapter it is not necessary to interpret toleration in any wider sense than that which I have indicated. Many Protestants, among whom I am one, do, it is true, make a further concession to the claim of our Roman Catholic fellow countrymen. We would give them in Ireland facilities for higher education which we would not give them in England, and we would advocate liberal endowment by the State to this end. But this attitude is, I admit, based upon something more than tolerance, and those who would withhold this concession need not be accused of bigotry or intolerance for so doing. They may be, and often are, actuated by the most liberal motives, by a perfectly legitimate conception of educational principles, or by other considerations which are neither of a narrow nor sectarian character.
I need hardly say that in criticising religious systems and their ministers I have not the faintest intention of entering on the discussion of doctrinal issues. I am, of course, here concerned with only those aspects of the religious situation which bear directly on secular life. I am endeavouring, it must be remembered, to arrive at a comprehensive and accurate appreciation of the chief influences which mould the character, guide the thought, and, therefore, direct the action of the Irish people as citizens of this world and of their own country. From this standpoint let us try to make a dispassionate survey
Protestantism has its stronghold in the great industrial centres of the North and among the Presbyterian farmers of five or six Ulster counties. These communities, it is significant to note, have developed the essentially strenuous qualities which, no doubt, they brought from England and Scotland. In city life their thrift, industry, and enterprise, unsurpassed in the United Kingdom, have built up a world-wide commerce. In rural life they have drawn the largest yield from relatively infertile soil. Such, in brief, is the achievement of Ulster Protestantism in the realm of industry. It is a story of which, when a united Ireland becomes more than a dream, all Irishmen will be proud.
But there is, unhappily, another side to the picture. This industrial life, otherwise so worthily cultivated, is disturbed by manifestations of religious bigotry which sadly tarnish the glory of the really heroic deeds they are intended to commemorate. It is impossible for any close observer of these deplorable exhibitions to avoid the conclusion that the embers of the old
Many causes have recently contributed to the unhappy continuance of sectarian animosities in Ireland. The Ritualistic movement and the struggle over the Education Bill in England, the renewed controversy on the University Question in Ireland, instances of bigotry towards Protestants displayed by County, District, and Urban Councils in the three southern provinces of Ireland, the formation of the Catholic Association, the question of the form of the King's oath, and, more remotely, the protest against clericalism in such Roman Catholic countries as France and Austria, have one and all helped to keep alive the flame of anti-Roman feeling among Irish Protestants.
[Footnote: The reproach which is brought upon Irish Christianity mainly by the extravagances of a section of my co-religionists, to which I have been obliged to refer, came home to me not long ago in a very forcible way. I happened to remark to a friend that it was a disgrace to Christianity that Mussulman soldiery were employed at the Holy Sepulchre to keep the peace between the Latin and Greek Christians. He reminded me that the prosperous and progressive municipality of Belfast, with a population eminently industrious, and predominantly Protestant, has to be policed by an Imperial force in order to restrain two sections of Irish Christians from assaulting each other in the name of religion.]
There are, happily, other influences now at work in a contrary direction. Among the industrial leaders a better spirit prevails. A well-known Ulster manufacturer told me recently that only a few years ago, when an applicant for employment appeared at certain Northern factories, which my friend named, the first question always put was, Are you a Protestant or Roman Catholic? Now, he said, it is not what a man believes, but what he can do, which is considered when engaging workers. And outside the cities there are most gratifying signs of better relations between the two creeds. We are on the eve of the creation of a peasant proprietary, involving the rehabilitation of rural life, and one essential condition of the successful inauguration of the new agrarian order is the elimination of anything, approaching to sectarian bitterness in communities which will require every advantage derivable from joint deliberation and common effort to enable them to hold their own against foreign competition. I recall a trivial but significant incident in the course of my Irish work which left a deep impression on my mind. After attending a meeting of farmers in a very backward district in the extreme west of Mayo, I arrived one winter's
It is, however, with the religion of the majority of the Irish people and with its influence upon the industrial character of its adherents that I am chiefly concerned. Roman Catholicism strikes an outsider as being in some of its tendencies non-economic, if not actually anti-economic. These tendencies have, of course, much fuller play when they act on a people whose education has (through no fault of their own) been retarded or stunted. The fact is not in dispute, but the difficulty arises when we come to apportion the blame between ignorance on the part of the people and a somewhat one-sided religious zeal on the part of large numbers of their clergy. I do not seek to do so with any precision here. I am simply adverting to what has appeared to me, in the course of my experience in Ireland, to be a defect in the industrial
It is true that one cannot expect of any church or religion, as a condition of its acceptance, that it will furnish an economic theory; and it is also true that Roman Catholicism has, at different periods of history advantageously affected economic conditions, even if it did not act from distinctively economic motivesfor example, by its direct influence in the suppression of slavery
and its creation of the mediaeval craft guilds. It may, too, be admitted that during the Middle Ages, when Roman Catholicism was freer than now to manifest its influence in many directions, owing to its practically unchallenged supremacy, it favoured, when it did not originate, many forms of sound economic activity, and was, to say the least, abreast of the time in its conception of the working of economic causes. But from the[Footnote: Pro salute animae meae was, I am reminded, the consideration usually expressed in the old charters of manumission.]
What I have just been saying with regard to Roman Catholicism generally, in relation to economic doctrines and industrial progress, applies, of course, with a hundred fold pertinence to the case of Ireland. Between the enactment of the first Penal Laws and the date of Roman Catholic Emancipation, Irish Roman Catholics were, to put it mildly, afforded scant opportunity, in their own country, of developing economic virtues or achieving industrial success. Ruthlessly deprived of education, are they to be blamed if they did not use the newly acquired facilities to the best advantage? With their religion looked on as the badge of legal and social inferiority, was it any wonder that priests and people alike, while clinging with unexampled fidelity to their creed, remained altogether cut off from the current of material prosperity? Excluded, as they were, not merely from social and political privileges, but from the most ordinary civil rights, denied altogether the right of ownership of
But I must now pass on to a more definite consideration of the present action and attitude of the Irish Roman Catholic clergy towards the economic, educational, and other issues discussed in this book. The reasons which render such a consideration necessary are obvious. Even if we include Ulster, three quarters of the Irish people are Roman Catholics, while, excluding the Northern province, quite nine-tenths of the population belong to that religion. Again, the three thousand clergymen of that denomination exercise an influence over their flocks not merely in regard to religious matters, but in almost every phase of their lives and conduct, which is, in its extent and character, quite unique, even, I should say, amongst Roman Catholic communities. To a Protestant, this authority seems to be carried very far beyond what the legitimate
From such study as I have been able to give to the history of their Church, I have come to the conclusion that the immense power of the Irish Roman Catholic clergy has been singularly little abused. I think it must be admitted that they have not exhibited in any marked degree bigotry towards Protestants. They have not put obstacles in the way of the Roman Catholic majority choosing Protestants for political leaders, and it is significant that refugees, such as the Palatines, from Catholic persecutions in Europe, found at different times a home amongst the Roman Catholic people of Ireland. My own experience, too, if I may again refer to that, distinctly proves that it is no disadvantage to a man to be a Protestant in Irish political life, and that where opposition is shown to him by Roman Catholics it is almost invariably on political, social, or agrarian, but not on religious grounds.
A charge of another kind has of late been often brought against the Roman Catholic clergy, which has a direct bearing upon the economic aspect of this question.
[Footnote: One of the unfortunate effects of this passion for building costly churches is the importation of quantities of foreign art-work in the shape of woodcarvings, stained glass, mosaics, and metal work. To good foreign art, indeed, one could not, within certain limits, object. It might prove a valuable example and stimulus. But the articles which have actually been imported, in the impulse to get everything finished as soon as possible, generally consist of the stock pieces produced in a spirit of mere commercialism in the workshops of Continental firms which make it their business to cater for a public who do not know the difference between good art and bad. Much of the decoration of ecclesiastical buildings, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, might fittingly be postponed until religion in Ireland has got into closer relation with the native artistic sense and industrial spirit now beginning to seek creative expression.]
But it is not alone extravagant church building which in a country so backward as Ireland, shocks the economic sense. The multiplicationin inverse ratio to a declining populationof costly and elaborate monastic and conventual institutions, involving what in the aggregate must be an enormous annual expenditure for maintenance, is difficult to reconcile with the known conditions of the country. Most of these institutions, it is true, carry on educational work, often, as in the case of the Christian Brothers and some colleges and convents, of an excellent kind. Many of them render great services to the poor, and especially to the sick poor. But, none the less, it seems to me, their growth in number and size is anomalous. I cannot believe that so large an addition to the unproductive classes is economically sound, and I have no doubt at all that the competition with lay teachers of celibates living in community is excessive and educationally injurious. Strongly as I hold the importance of religion in education, I personally
If they now fully respond to the spirit of the new movements and meet the demand for technical education by the employment of the most approved methods and equipment, and by the thorough training on sound lines of[Footnote: The following extract from a statement of the Most Rev. Dr. O'Dea, the newly elected Bishop of Clonfert, is pertinent:There is another cause alsoi.e. in addition to the absence of university education for Roman Catholic laymenwhich has hindered the employment of the laity in the past. Till very recently, the secondary Catholic schools received no assistance whatever from the State, and their endowment from private sources was utterly inadequate to supply suitable remuneration for lay teachers. It is evident that a celibate clergy can live on a lower wage than the laity, and they are now charged with having monopolized the schools, because they chose to work for a minimum allowance rather than suffer the country to remain without any secondary education whatever. Two causes, then, operated in the past, and in a large measure still operate, to exclude the laity from the secondary schools,first, these schools were so poverty-stricken that they could not afford to pay lay teachers at such a rate as would attract them to the teaching profession, and, next, the Catholic laity as a body were uneducated, and, therefore, unfit to teach in the schools. Maynooth and the University Question, p. 109 (footnote).]
But, after all, these criticisms are, for the purposes of my argument, of minor relevance and importance. The real matter in which the direct and personal responsibility of the Roman Catholic clergy seems to me to be involved, is the character and morale of the people of this country. No reader of this book will accuse me of attaching too little weight to the influence of historical causes on the present state, social, economic and political, of Ireland, but even when I have given full consideration to all such influences I still think that, with their unquestioned authority in religion, and their almost equally undisputed influence in education, the Roman Catholic clergy cannot be exonerated from some responsibility in regard to Irish character as we find it to-day. Are they, I would ask, satisfied with that character? I cannot think so. The impartial observer will, I fear, find amongst a majority of our people a striking absence of self-reliance and moral courage; an entire lack of serious thought on public questions; a listlessness and apathy in regard to economic improvement which amount to a form of fatalism; and, in backward districts, a survival of superstition, which saps all strength of will and purposeand all this, too, amongst a people singularly gifted by nature with good qualities of mind and heart.
Nor can the Roman Catholic clergy altogether console themselves with the thought that religious faith, even
[Footnote: See, inter alia, an article Ireland and America, by Rev. Mr. Shinnors, O.M., in the Irish Ecclesiastical Record, February, 1902. Has the Church, asks Father Shinnors, increased her membership in the ratio that the population of the United States has increased? No. There are many converts, but there are many more apostates. Large numbers lapse into indifferentism and irreligion. There should be in America about 20,000,000 Catholics; there are scarcely 10,000,000. There are reasons to fear that the great majority of the apostates are of Irish extraction, and not a few of them of Irish birth.]
It is not, of course, to the causes of the defections from a creed to which I do not subscribe that my criticism is directed. I refer to the matter only in order to emphasise the large share of responsibility which belongs to the Roman Catholic clergy for what I strongly believe to be the chief part in the work of national regeneration, the part compared with which all legislative, administrative, educational or industrial achievements are of minor importance. Holding, as I do, that the building of character is the condition precedent to material, social and intellectual advancement, indeed to
Among temperance advocatesthe most earnest of all reformersthe Roman Catholic clergy have an honourable record. An Irish priest was the greatest, and, for a brief spell, the most successful temperance apostle of the last century, and statistics, it is only fair to say, show that we Irish drink rather less than people in other parts of the United Kingdom. But the real question is whether we more often drink to intoxication, and police statistics as well as common experience seem to disclose that we do. Many a temperate man drinks more in his life than many a village drunkard. Again, the test of the average consumption of man, woman and child is somewhat misleading, especially in Ireland where, owing to the excessive emigration of adults, there is a disproportionately large number of very young and old. Moreover, we Irish drink more in proportion to our means than the English, Scotch, and Welsh, whose consumption is absolutely larger. Anyone who attempts to deal practically with the problems of industrial development in Ireland realises what a terribly depressing influence the drink evil exercises upon the industrial capacity of the people. Ireland sober is Ireland free, is nearer the truth than
The indiscriminate granting of licences in Ireland, which has resulted in the provision of liquor shops in a proportion to the population larger than is found in any other country, is in itself due mainly to the moral cowardice of magistrates, who do not care to incur local unpopularity by refusing licences for which there is no pretence of any need beyond that of the applicant and his relatives. Not long ago the magistrates of Ireland met in Dublin in order to inaugurate common action in
I do not think it unfair to insist upon the large responsibility of the clergy for the state of public opinion in this matter, to which the few facts I have cited bear testimony. But I attribute their failure to deal with a moral evil of which they are fully cognisant to the fact that they do not recognise the chief defect in the character of the people, and to a misunderstanding of the means by which that character can be strengthened. There are, however, exceptions to this general statement. It is of happy augury for the future of Ireland that many of the clergy are now leading a temperance movement which shows a real knowledge of the causa causans of Irish intemperance. The Anti-Treating League, as it is called, administers a novel pledge which must have been conceived in a very understanding mind. Those enlisted undertake neither to treat nor to be treated. They may drink, so far as the pledge is concerned, as
The methods by which clerical influence is wielded in the inculcation of chastity may be criticised from exactly the same standpoint as that from which I have found it necessary to deal with the question of temperance. Here the success of the Irish priesthood is, considering the conditions of peasant life, and the fire of the Celtic temperament, absolutely unique. No one can deny that almost the entire credit of this moral achievement belongs to the Roman Catholic clergy. It may be said that the practice of a virtue, even if the motive be of an emotional kind, becomes a habit, and that habit proverbially develops into a second nature. With this view of moral evolution I am in entire accord; but I would ask whether the evolution has not reached a stage where a gradual relaxation of the disciplinary measures by which chastity is insured might be safely allowed without any danger of lowering the high standard of continence which is general in Ireland and which of course it is of supreme importance to maintain.
There are, however, many parishes where in this matter the strictest discipline is rigorously enforced. Amusements, not necessarily or even often vicious, are objected to as being fraught with dangers which would never occur to any but the rigidly ascetic or the puritanical mind. In many parishes the Sunday cyclist will observe the strange phenomenon of a normally lighthearted peasantry marshalled in male and female groups along the road, eyeing one another in dull wonderment across the forbidden space through the long summer day. This kind of discipline, unless when really necessary, is open to the objection that it eliminates from the education of life, especially during the formative years, an essential of culturethe mutual understanding of the sexes. The evil of grafting upon secular life a quasi-monasticism which, not being voluntary, has no real effect upon the character, may perhaps involve moral consequences little dreamed of by the spiritual guardians of the people. A study of the pathology of the emotions might throw doubt upon the safety of enforced asceticism when unaccompanied by the training which the Church wisely prescribes for those who take the vow of celibacy. But of my own knowledge I can speak only of another aspect of the effect upon our national life of the restrictions to which I refer. No Irishmen are more sincerely desirous of staying the tide of emigration than the Roman Catholic clergy, and while, wisely as I think, they do not dream of a wealthy Ireland, they earnestly work for the physical and material as well as the spiritual well-being
To go more fully into these subjects might carry me beyond the proper limits of lay criticism. But, clearly, large questions of clerical training must suggest themselves to those to whom their discussion properly belongswhether, for example, there is not in the instances which I have cited evidence of a failure to understand that mere authority in the regions of moral conduct cannot have any abiding effect, except in the rarest combination of circumstances, and with a very primitive people. Do not many of these clergy ignore the vast difference between the ephemeral nature of moral compulsion and the enduring force of a real moral training?
I have dealt with the exercise of clerical influence in these matters as being, at any rate in relation to the subject matter of this book, far more important than the evil commonly described as The Priest in Politics. That evil is, in my opinion, greatly misrepresented. The cases of priests who take an improper part in politics are cited without reference to the vastly greater number who take no part at all, except when genuinely assured that a definite moral issue is at stake. I also have in my mind the question of how we should have fared if the control of the different Irish agitations had been confined to laymen, and if the clergy had not consistently
[Footnote: This view seems to be taken by the most influential spokesmen of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy. See Evidence, Royal Commission on University Education in Ireland, vol. 3., p. 238, Questions 8702 6.]
One has only to turn to the spirit and temper of such representative Roman Catholics as Archbishop Healy and Dr. Kelly, Bishop of Rossto their words and to their deedsin order to catch the inspiration of a new movement amongst our Roman Catholic fellow-countrymen at once religious and patriotic. And if my optimism ever wavers, I have but to think of the noble work that many
[Footnote: I may mention that of the co-operative societies organised by the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society there are no fewer than 331 societies of which the local priests are the Chairmen, while to my own knowledge during the summer and autumn of 1902, as many as 50,000 persons from all parts of Ireland were personally conducted over the exhibit of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction at the Cork Exhibition by their local clergy. The educational purpose of these visits is explained in Chap. 10. Again, in a great number of cases the village libraries which have been recently started in Ireland with the assistance of the Department (the books consisting largely of industrial, economic, and technical works on agriculture), have been organised and assisted by the Roman Catholic clergy.]
My position, then, towards the influence of the Roman Catholic clergyand this influence is a matter of vital importance to the understanding of Irish problemsmay now be clearly defined. While recognising to the full that large numbers of the Irish Roman Catholic clergy have in the past exercised undue influence in purely political questions, and, in many other matters, social, educational, and economic, have not, as I see things, been on the side of progress, I hold that their influence is now, more than ever before, essential for improving the condition of the most backward section of the population. Therefore I feel it to be both the duty and the strong interest of my Protestant fellow-countrymen
To sum up the influence of religion and religious controversy in Ireland, as it presents itself from the only standpoint from which I have approached the matter in this chapter, namely, that of material, social, and intellectual progress, I find that while the Protestants have given, and continue to give, a fine example of thrift and industry to the rest of the nation, the attitude of a section of them towards the majority of their fellow-countrymen has been a bigoted and unintelligent one. On the other hand, I have learned from practical experience amongst the Roman Catholic people of Ireland that, while more free from bigotry, in the sense
A little learning, we are told, is a dangerous thing; and in their dealings with Irish education the English should have discovered that this danger is accentuated when the little learning is combined with much native wit. In the days when religious persecution was universalonly, be it remembered, a few generations agoit was the policy of England to avert this danger by prohibiting, as far as possible, the acquisition by Irish Roman Catholics of any learning at all. After the Union, Englishmen began to feel their responsibility for the state of Ireland, a state of poverty and distress which culminated in the Famine. Knowledge was then no longer withheld: indeed the English sincerely desired to dispel our darkness and enable us to share in the wisdom, and so in the prosperity, of the predominant partner. In their attempts to educate us they dealt with what they saw on the surface, and moulded their educational principles upon what they knew; but they did not know Ireland. Even if we excuse them for paying scant attention to what they were told by Irishmen, they should have given more heed to the reports of their own Royal Commissions.
We have so far seen that the Irish mind has been in
Now this is exactly what was denied to Ireland. Not merely has all educational legislation come from England, in the sense of being based on English models and thought out by Englishmen largely out of touch and sympathy with the peculiar needs of Ireland, but whenever there has been genuine native thought on Irish educational problems, it has been either ignored altogether or distorted till its value and significance were lost. And in this matter we can claim for Ireland that there was in the country during the first half of the nineteenth century, when England was trying her best to provide us with a sound English education, a comparatively advanced stage of home-grown Irish thought upon the educational needs of the people. Take, for example, the Society for Promoting Elementary Education among the Irish Poor, know as the Kildare Street Society, which was founded as early as the year 1811. The first resolution passed by this body, which was composed of
(1.) ResolvedThat promoting the education of the poor of Ireland is a grand object which every Irishman anxious for the welfare and prosperity of his country ought to have in view as the basis upon which the morals and true happiness of the country can be best secured.
This Society, it is true, did not see or foresee that any system of mixed religious education was doomed to failure in Ireland, but they took a wide view of the place of education in a nation's development, and the character of the education which their schools actually dispensed was admirable. This hopeful and enterprising educational movement is described by Mr. Lecky in a passage from which I take a few extracts:
The Kildare Street Society which received an endowment from Government, and directed National education from 1812 to 1831, was not proselytising, and it was for some time largely patronized by Roman Catholics. It is certainly by no means deserving of the contempt which some writers have bestowed on it, and if measured by the spirit of the time in which it was founded it will appear both liberal and useful.... The object of the schools was stated to be united education, taking common Christian ground for the foundation, and excluding all sectarian distinctions from every part of the arrangement; drawing the attention of both denominations to the many leading truths of Christianity in which they agree. To carry out this principle it was a fundamental rule that the Bible must be read without note or
[Footnote: Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland, 2., 122 4.]
Take, again, as an evidence of the progressive spirit of the Irish thinkers on education, the remarkable scheme of national education which, after the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act, was formulated by Mr. Thomas Wyse, of Waterford. In addition to elementary schools, Mr. Wyse proposed to establish in every county, an academy for the education of the middle class of society in those departments of knowledge most necessary to those classes, and over those a College in each of the four provinces, managed by a Committee representative of the interests of the several counties of the provinces. It is a matter of importance, wrote Mr. Wyse, for the simple and efficient working of the whole system of national education, that each part should as much as possible be brought into co-operation and accord with the others. He foresaw, too, that one of the needs of the Irish temperament was a training in science which would cultivate the habits of education, observation, and reasoning, and he pointed
the present Resident Commissioner of the Board, the more important part of the scheme, dealing with a university and secondary education, was shelved, in spite of Mr. Wyse's warnings that it was imprudent, dangerous, and pernicious to the social condition of the country, and to its future tranquillity, that so much encouragement should be given to the education of the lower classes, without at the same time due provision being made for the education of the middle and upper classes.[Footnote: Recent Reforms in Irish Education, p. 7.]
As still another evidence of the sound thought on educational problems which came from Irishmen who knew the actual conditions of their own country and people, the case of the agricultural instruction administered by the National Board is pertinent. The late Sir Patrick Keenan has told us that landlords and others who on political and religious grounds distrusted the National system, turned to this feature of the operations of the National Board with the greatest fervour. A scheme of itinerant instruction in agriculture, which had a curious resemblance to that which the Department of Agriculture is now organising, was developed, and was likely to have worked with the
I now come to a brief consideration of some facts of the present educational situation, and I shall indicate, for those readers who are not familiar with current events in Ireland, the significant evolution, or revolution, through which Irish education is passing. Within the last eight years we have had in Ireland three very remarkable reportsin themselves symptoms of a wide
I am told by competent authorities that there is not a single educational principle laid down in either the report on Manual Instruction or on Intermediate Education, which was not known and applied at least half a century ago in continental countries. In fact, in the Recess Committee investigations, as any reader of the report of that body can see for himself, the Committee, guided by foreign experience, foreshadowed practically every reform now being put into operation. It is better, of course, that we should reform late than never, but it is well to bear in mind also, so far as the problems of this book are concerned, how far the education of the country has fallen short of any sound standard, and how little could have been expected from the working of our system. The curve of Irish illiteracy has indeed fallen continuously with each succeeding census, but true education as opposed to mere instruction has languished sadly.
Together with my friends and fellow-workers in the self-help movement, I believe that the problem of Irish education, like all other Irish problems, must be reconsidered
This attempt touches, of course, only one department of the whole educational problem, much of which it would be quite outside my present purpose to discuss. But I must guard against the supposition that in our insistence upon the importance of the practical side of
To sum up the educational situation in Ireland, it is not too much to say that all our forms of education, technical and general, hang loose. We lack a body of trained teachers; we have no alert and informed public opinion on education and its function in regard to life; and there is no proper provision for research work in all branches, a deficiency, which, I am told by those who have given deep thought and long study to these problems, inevitably reacts most disastrously on the general educational system of the country. This state of things appears not unnatural when we remember that the Penal Laws were not repealed till almost the close of the eighteenth century, and that a large majority of the Irish people had not full and free access to even primary and secondary education until the passing of the Emancipation Act in 1829. At the present day, the absence of any provision for higher education of which Roman Catholics will avail themselves is not merely an enormous loss in itself, but it reacts most adversely upon the whole educational machinery, and consequently upon the whole public life and thought of that section of the nation.
One of the very first things I had to learn when I came into direct touch with educational problems, was that the education of a country cannot be divided into water-tight compartments, and each part legislated for or discussed solely on its merits and without reference to the other parts. I see now very clearly that the
It was not on purely pedagogic grounds that I added to my other political irregularities the earnest advocacy of such a provision for higher education as Roman Catholics will avail themselves of. This great need was revealed to me in my study of the Irish mind and of the direction in which it could look for its higher development. My belief is based on practical experience; my point of view is that of the economist. When the new economic mission in Ireland began now fourteen years ago, we had to undertake, in addition to our practical programme, a kind of University extension work with the important omission of the University. We had to bring home to adult farmers whose general education was singularly poor, though their native intelligence was keen and receptive, a large number of general ideas bearing on the productive and distributive side of their industry. Our chief obstacles arose from the lack of trained economic thought among all classes, and especially among those to whom the majority looked for guidance. The air was thick with economic fallacies or
I hardly know how to describe the mental atmosphere in which we were working. It would be no libel upon the public opinion upon which we sought to make an impression to say that it really allowed no question to be discussed on its merits. Public opinion on social and economic questions is changing now, but I cannot associate the change with any influence emanating from institutions of higher education. In other countries, so far as my investigations have extended, the universities do guide economic thought and have a distinct though wholly unofficial function as a court of appeal upon questions relating to the material progress of the communities amongst which they are situated. Of such institutions there are in Ireland only two which could be expected to direct in any large way the thought of the country upon economic and other important national questionsMaynooth, and Trinity College, Dublin. Whether in their widely different spheres of influence these two institutions could, under
The influence of Maynooth, actual and potential, can hardly be exaggerated, but it is exercised indirectly upon the secular thought of the country. It is not its function to make a direct impression. It is in fact only a professionalI had almost said a technicalschool. It trains its students, most admirably I am told, in theology, philosophy, and the studies subsidiary to these sciences, but always, for the vast majority of its students, with a distinctly practical and definite missionary end in view. There is, I believe, an arts course of modest scope, designed rather to meet the deficiencies of students whose general education has been neglected than to serve as anything in the nature of a university arts course. I am quite aware of the value of a sound training in mental science if given in connection with a full university course, but I am equally convinced that the Maynooth education, on the whole, is no substitute for a university course, and that while its chief end of turning out a large number of trained priests has been fulfilled, it has not given, and could not be expected to have given, that broader and more humane culture which only
Moreover, under the Maynooth system young clerics are constantly called upon to take a part in the life of a lay community, towards which, when they entered college, they were in no position of responsibility, and upon which, so far as secular matters are concerned, when they emerge from their theological training, they are no better adapted to exercise a helpful influence. In my experience of priests I have met with many in whom I recognised a sincere desire to attend to the material and social well-being of their flocks, but who certainly had not that breadth of view and understanding of human nature which perhaps contact with the laity during the years in which they were passing from discipline to authority might have given to them. However this may be, it is clear and it is admitted that education as opposed to professional training of a high order is still, generally speaking, a want among the priests of Ireland, and I look forward to no greater boon from a University or University College for Roman Catholics than its influence, direct and indirect, on a body of men whose prestige and authority are necessarily so unique.
It is, therefore, to Trinity College, or the University of Dublin, that one would naturally turn as to a great centre of thought in Ireland for help in the theoretic aspects, at least, of the practical problems upon whose successful solution our national well-being depends. Judged
From this point of view I am bound to say that Trinity College, so far as I have seen, has had but little influence upon the minds or the lives of the people. Nor can I find that at any period of the extraordinarily interesting economic and social revolution, which has been in progress in Ireland since the great catastrophe of the Famine period, Dublin University has departed from its academic isolation and its aloofness from the great national problems that were being worked out. The more one thinks of it, indeed, and the more one realises the opportunities of an institution like Trinity College in a country like Ireland, the more one must recognise how small, in recent times, has been its positive influence on the mind of the country, and how little it has contributed towards the solution of any of those problems, educational, economic, or social, that were clamant for solution, and which in any other country would have naturally secured the attention of men who ought to have been leaders of thought.
Whatever the causes, and many may be assigned, this unfortunate lack of influence on the part of Trinity College, has always seemed to me a strong supplementary argument for the creation of another University or University College on a more popular basis, to which the Roman Catholic people of Ireland would have recourse. From the fact that Maynooth by its constitution could never have developed into a great national
and that Trinity College has never, as a matter of fact, done so, and has thus, in my opinion, missed a unique opportunity, it has come about that Ireland has been without any great centre of thought whose influence would have tended to leaven the mass of mental inactivity or random-thinking so prevalent in Ireland, and would have created a body of educated public opinion sufficiently informed and potent to secure the study and discussion on their merits of questions of vital interest to the country. The demoralising atmosphere of partisanship which hangs over Ireland would, I am convinced, gradually give way before an organised system of education with a thoroughly democratic University at its head, which would diffuse amongst the people at large a sense of the value of a balanced judgment on, and a true appreciation of, the real forces with which Ireland has to deal in building up her fortunes.[Footnote: It was not authorised to give degrees to lay students, and even the admission of lay students to an Arts course was prohibited by Government, lest Catholic students should be drawn away from Trinity College. See Cornwallis Correspondence, 3., 3668.]
To discuss the merits of the different solutions which have been proposed for the vexed problem of higher education in Ireland would be beyond the scope of this book. The question will have to be faced, and all I need do here is to state the conditions which the solution will have to fulfil if it is to deal with the aspects of the Irish Question with which the new movement is practically concerned. What is most needed is a University that will
Unfortunately, however, in Ireland, and indeed in England too, there is a tendency to regard educational institutions almost solely as they will affect religion. At least it is difficult to arouse any serious interest in them except from this point of view. I welcome, therefore, the striking answers given to the queries of Lord Robertson, Chairman of the University Commission, by Dr. O'Dwyer, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Limerick, who boldly and wisely placed the question before the country in the light in which cleric and layman should alike regard it:
The Chairman.(413): I suppose you believe a
Catholic University, such as you propose, will strengthen Roman Catholicism in Ireland?It is not easy to answer that; not so easy as it looks. (414):But it won't weaken it, or you would not be here?It would educate Catholics in Ireland very largely, and, of course, a religious denomination composed of a body of educated men is stronger than a religious denomination composed of ignorant men. In that sense it would strengthen Roman Catholicism. (415):Is there any sense in which it won't?As far as religion is concerned, I do not know how a University would work out. If you ask me now whether I think that that University in a certain number of years would become a centre of thought, strengthening the Catholic faith in Ireland, I cannot tell you. It is a leap in the dark. (416):But it is in the hope that it will strengthen your own Church that you propose it?No, it is not, by any means. We are Bishops, but we are Irishmen, also, and we want to serve our country.[Footnote: Appendix to First Report, p. 37.]
Equally significant were the statements of Dr. O'Dea, the official spokesman of Maynooth, when he said,
I regard the interest of the laity in the settlement of the University Question as supreme. The clergy are but a small, however important, part of the nation, and the laity have never had an institution of higher education comparable to Maynooth in magnitude or resources. I recognise, therefore, that the educational grievances of the laity are much more pressing than those of the clergy... It is generally admitted that Irish priests hold a position of exceptional influence, due to historical causes, the intensely religious character of the people, and the want of Catholic laymen qualified by education and position for social and political leadership. What Bishop Berkeley said of them in 1749, in his letter, A Word to the Wise, still holds true, That no set of men on earth have it in
their power to do good on easier terms, with more advantage to others and less pains or loss to themselves. It would be folly to expect that in a mixed community the State should do anything to strengthen or perpetuate this power; but this result will certainly not follow from the more liberal education of the clergy, provided equal advantages are extended to the laity. On the contrary, I am convinced that if the void in the lay leadership of the country be filled up by higher education of the better classes among the Catholic laity, the power of the priests, so far as it is abnormal or unnecessary will pass away; and, further, if I believed, with many who are opposed to the better education of the priesthood that their power is based on falsehood or superstition, I would unhesitatingly advocate the spread of higher education among the laity and clergy alike, as the best means of effectually sapping and disintegrating it.[Footnote: Appendix to Third Report, pp. 283, 296.]
I had for long indulged a hope that a university of the type which Ireland requires would have been the outcome of a great national educational movement emanating from Trinity College, which might, at this auspicious hour, have surpassed all the proud achievements of its three hundred years. That hope was dispelled when the cry of Hands off Trinity was applied to the profane hands of the Royal Commission. Perhaps that attitude may be reconsidered yet. There is one hopeful sentiment which is often heard coming from that institution. An opinion has been strongly expressed that nothing ought to be done to separate in secular life two sections of Irishmen who happen to belong to different creeds. Whatever may be the logical outcome of the position taken up towards the University problem by
I do not concern myself as to the exact form which the new institution or institutions which are to give us the absolutely essential advantage of higher education should
When I was beginning to write this chapter I chanced to pick up the Chesterfield Letters. I opened the book at the two hundredth epistle, and, curiously enough, almost the first sentence which caught my eye ran: Education more than nature is the cause of that difference you see in the character of men. I felt myself at first in strong disagreement with this aphorism. But when I came to reflect how much the nature of one generation must be the outcome of the education of those which went before it, I gradually came to see the truth in Lord Chesterfield's words. I must leave it to
I have now completed my survey of the main conditions which, in my opinion, must be taken into account by anyone who would understand the Irish mind, and still more by those who seek to work with it in rebuilding the fortunes of the country. The task has been one of great difficulty, as it was necessary to tell, not only the truthfor that even an official person may be excusedbut also the whole truth, which, unless made compulsory by the kissing of the book, is regarded as a gratuitous kissing of the rod. From the frying pan of political dispute, I have passed into the fire of sectarian controversy. I have not hesitated to poach on the preserves of historians and economists, and have even bearded the pedagogues in their dens. Before my stock of metaphors is exhausted, let me say that I have one hope of escape from the cross-fire of denunciation which independent speaking about Ireland is apt to provoke. I once witnessed a football match between two villages, one of which favoured a political party called by the name of a leader, with an ism added to indicate a policy, the other adopting the same name, still further elongated by the prefix anti. When I arrived on the scene the game had begun in deadly earnest, but I noticed the ball lying unmolested in another quarter of
To my friendly critics a word of explanation is due. The opinions to which I have given expression are based upon personal observation and experience extending over a quarter of a century during which I have been in close touch with Irish life at home, and not unfamiliar with it abroad. I have referred to history only when I could not otherwise account for social and economic conditions with which I came into contact, or with which I desired practically to deal. Whether looking back over the dreary wastes of Anglo-Irish history, or studying the men and things of to-day, I came to conclusions which differed widely from what I had been taught to believe by those whose theories of Irish development had not been subjected to any practical test. Deeply as I have felt for the past sufferings of the Irish people and their heritage of disability and distress, I could not bring myself to believe that, where misgovernment had continued so long, and in such an immense variety of circumstances and conditions, the governors could have been alone to blame. I envied those leaders of popular thought whose confidence in themselves and in their followers was shaken by no such reflections. But the more I listened to them the more the conviction was borne in upon me that they were seeking to build an impossible future upon an imaginary past.
Those who know Ireland from within are aware that Irish thought upon Irish problems has been undergoing a silent, and therefore too lightly regarded revolution. The surface of Irish life, often so inexplicably ruffled, and sometimes so inexplicably calm, has just now become smooth to a degree which has led to hasty conclusions as to the real cause and the inward significance of the change. To chime in with the thoughtless optimism of the hour will do no good; but a real understanding of the forces which have created the existing situation will reveal an unprecedented opportunity for those who would give to the Irish mind that full and free development which has been so long and, as I have tried to show, so unnaturally delayed.
Among these new forces in Irish life there is one which has been greatly misunderstood; and yet to its influence during the last few years much of the transformation scene in the drama of the Irish Question is really due. It deserves more than a passing notice here, because, while its aims as formulated appear somewhat restricted, it unquestionably tends in practice towards that national object of paramount importance, the strengthening of character. I refer to the movement known as the Gaelic Revival. Of this movement I am myself but an outside observer, having been forced to devote nearly all my time and energies to a variety of attempts which aim at the doing in the industrial sphere of very much the same work as that which the Gaelic movement attempts in the intellectual spherethe re
The Irish Agricultural Organisation Society
exerts its influencea now established and rapidly-growing influencemainly through the medium of associations. The Gaelic movement, on the other hand, acts more directly upon the individual and the two forces are therefore in a sense complementary to each other. Both will be seen to be playing an important partI should say a necessary partin the reconstruction of our national life. At any rate, I feel that it is necessary to my argument that I should explain to those who are as ill-informed[Footnote: This body is fully described in the next chapter.]
The Gaelic League, which defines its objects as The preservation of Irish as the national language of Ireland and the extension of its use as a spoken tongue; the study and publication of existing Irish literature and the cultivation of a modern literature in Irish, was formed in 1893. Like the Agricultural Organisation Society, the Gaelic League is declared by its constitution to be strictly non-political and non-sectarian, and, like it, has been the object of much suspicion, because severance from politics in Ireland has always seemed to the politician the most active form of enmity. Its constitution, too, is somewhat similar, being democratically guided in its policy by the elected representatives of its affiliated branches. It is interesting to note that the funds with which it carries on an extensive propaganda are mainly supplied from the small contributions of the poor. It publishes two periodicals one weekly and another monthly. It administers an income of some £6,000 a year, not reckoning what is spent by local branches, and has a paid staff of eleven officers, a secretary, treasurer, and nine organisers, together with a large number of voluntary workers. It resembled the agricultural movement also in the fact that it made very little headway during the first few years of its existence. But it had a nucleus of workers with new ideas for the intellectual
The declared objects of the Leaguethe popularising of the national language and literaturedo not convey, perhaps, an adequate conception of its actual work, or of the causes of its popularity. It seeks to develop the intellectual, moral, and social life of the Irish people from within, and it is doing excellent work in the cause of temperance. Its president, Dr. Douglas Hyde, in his evidence given before the University Commission,
[Footnote: See Appendix to Third Report, p. 311.]
The Gaelic movement has brought to the surface sentiments and thoughts which had been developed in Gaelic Ireland through hundreds of years, and which no repression had been able to obliterate altogether, but which still remained as a latent spiritual inheritance in the mind. And now this stream, which has long run underground, has again emerged even stronger than before, because an element of national self-consciousness has been added at its re-emergence. A passionate conviction is gaining ground that if Irish traditions, literature, language, art, music, and culture are allowed to disappear, it will mean the disappearance of the race; and that the education of the country must be nationalised if our social, intellectual, or even our economic position is to be permanently improved.
With this view of the Gaelic movement my own thoughts are in complete accord. It is undeniable that the pride in country justly felt by Englishmen, a pride developed by education and a knowledge of their history, has had much to do with the industrial pre-eminence of England; for the pioneers of its commerce have been often actuated as much by patriotic motives as by the
It is this expansion of the sentiment of nationality outside the domain of party politicsthe distinction, so to speak, between nationality and nationalismwhich is the chief characteristic of the Gaelic movement. Nationality had come to have no meaning other than a political one, any broader national sentiment having had little or nothing to feed upon. During the last century the spirit of nationality has found no unworthy expression in literature, in the writings of Ferguson, Standish O'Grady and Yeats, which, however, have not been even remotely comparable in popularity with the political journalism in prose and rhyme in which the age has been so fruitful. It has never expressed itself in the arts, and not only has Ireland no representative names in the higher regions of art, but the national deficiency has been felt in every department of industry into which design enters, and where national art-characteristics have a commercial value. The national customs, culture, and recreations which made the country a pleasant place to live in, have almost disappeared, and with them one of the strongest ties which bind people to the country of their birth. The Gaelic revival, as I understand it, is an
Thus it is that the elevating influence upon the individual is exerted. Politics have never awakened initiative among the mass of the people, because there was no programme of action for the individual. Perhaps it is as well for Ireland that such should have been the case, for, as it has been shown, we have had little of the political thought which should be at the back of political action. Political action under present conditions must necessarily be deputed to a few representatives, and after the vote is given, or the cheering at a meeting has ceased, the individual can do nothing but wait, and his lethargy tends to become still deeper. In the Gaelic revival there is a programme of work for the individual; his mind is engaged, thought begets energy, and this energy vitalises every part of his nature. This makes for the strengthening of character, and so far from any harm being done to the practical movement, to which I have so often referred, the testimony of my fellow-workers, as well as my own observation, is unanimous in affirming that the influence of the branches of the Gaelic League is distinctly useful whenever it is sought to move the people to industrial or commercial activity.
Many of my political friends cannot believeand I am afraid that nothing that I can say will make them
But undoubtedly we strike here on a danger to the Gaelic movement, so far at least as that movement is bound up with the future of the Gaelic League; a danger which cannot be left out of account in any estimate of this new force in Irish life. The continuance of the League as a beneficent force, or indeed a force at all, seems to me, as in the case of the co-operative organisation to which I have compared it, to be vitally dependent on a scrupulous observance of that part of its constitution which keeps the door open to Irishmen of every creed or political party. Only thus can the League remain a truly national body, and attract from all classes Irishmen
Of minor importance are certain extravagances in the
The position which I have given to the Gaelic Revival among the new influences at work and making for progress in Ireland will hardly be understood by those who have never embraced the idea of combining all such forces in a constructive and comprehensive scheme of national advancement. One instance of the potential utility of the Gaelic League will appeal to those of my readers who attach as much importance as I do to the improvement of the peasant home. Concerted action to this end is being planned while I write. It is proposed to take a few districts where the peasants are members of one of the new co-operative societies, and where the clergy have taken a keen interest in the economic and social advancement of the members of the Society, but where the cottages are in the normal condition. The new Department will lend the services of its domestic economy teachers. The Organisation Society, the clergy, and the Department thus working together will, I hope, be able to get the people of the selected districts to effect an improvement in their domestic surroundings which will act as an invaluable example for other districts to follow. But in order that this much needed contribution to the well-being of the peasant proprietary, upon which all our thoughts are just now concentrated, may be assisted with the enthusiasm which belongs in Ireland to a consciously national effort, it is hoped that common action with the Gaelic League may be possible, so that this force also may be enlisted in the solution of this part of our central problem, the rehabilitation of rural life in Ireland.
It is, however, on more general grounds that I have, albeit as an outside observer, watched with some anxiety and much gratification the progress of the Gaelic Revival. In the historical evolution of the Irish mind we find certain qualities atrophied, so to speak, by disuse; and to this cause I attribute the past failures of the race in practical life at home. I have shown how politics, religion, and our systems of education have all, in their respective influences upon the people, missed to a large extent, the effect upon character which they should have made it their paramount duty to produce. Nevertheless, whenever the intellect of the people is appealed to by those who know its past, a recuperative power is manifested which shows that its vitality has not been irredeemably impaired. It is because I believe that, on the whole, a right appeal has been made by the Gaelic League that I have borne testimony to its patriotic endeavours.
The question of the Gaelic Revival seems to be really a form of the eternal question of the interdependence of the practical and the ideal in Ireland. Their true relation to each other is one of the hardest lessons the student of our problems has to learn. I recall an incident in the course of my own studies which I will here recount, as it appears to me to furnish an admirable illustration of this difficulty as it presented itself to a very interesting mind. During the years covering the rise and fall of Parnell, when interest in the Irish Question was at its zenith, the newspapers of the United States kept in
What chiefly interested me in Harold Frederic's philosophy of the Irish Question was that he had arrived at a diagnosis of the Irish mind not substantially different from my own. Since that evening I have come across a passage in one of his novels, which clothes in delightful language his view of the chaotic psychology of the Irish Celt:
There, in Ireland, you get a strange mixture of
[Footnote: The Damnation of Theron Ware. This was the title of the book I read in the United States. I am told he published it in England under the title of Illuminationa nice discrimination!]
In our conversation what struck me most was the influence which politics had exercised even on his philosophic mind, notwithstanding a low estimate of our political leaders. In one of a series of three notable articles upon the Irish Question, which appeared anonymously in the Fortnightly Review
in the winter of 1893-4, and of which he told me he was the writer, he had given a character sketch of what he called The Rhetoricians. Their performances since the Union were summarised in the phrase a century of unremitting gabble, and he regarded it as a sad commentary on Irish life that such brilliant talents so largely ran to waste in destructive criticism. I naturally turned the conversation on to my own line[Footnote: They appeared under the signature of X. in Nov. and Dec., 1893, and Jan., 1894.]
But I was disappointed when he bade me his first and last good-bye that I had not convinced him that there was any way out of the Irish difficulty other than political changes, for which, at the same time, he appeared to think the people singularly unfitted.[Footnote: Fortnightly Review, Jan. 1894, pp. 2, 12.]
The fact is we had arrived at the point where the student of Irish life usually finds himself in a cul de sac. If he has accurately observed the conditions, he is face to face with a problem which appears to be in its nature insoluble. For at every turn he finds things being done wrong which might so easily be done right, only that
He probably comes to the main conclusion adopted in these pages, and realises that the Irish Question is a problem of character. And as Irish character is the product of Irish history, which cannot be re-enacted, he leaves the problem there. Harold Frederic left it there, and there it has been taken up by those whose endeavour forms the story which I have to tell.[Footnote: The difficulties of the writer who is not a writer are great. I sent this chapter to two literary friends, one of whom, with the help of a globe, disputed my accuracy in a learned ethnological disquisition with which he favoured me. The other warned me to be even more obscure and sent me the following verses, addressed by Cynicus (J.K. Stephen) to Shakespeare,
]
- 1] You wrote a line too much, my sage
2] Of seers the first, the first of sayers;
3] For only half the world's a stage,
4] And only all the women players."
I now come to the principles which, it appears to me, must underlie the solution of this problem. The narrative
The practical form which our work took was the launching upon Irish life of a movement of organised self-help, and the subsequent grafting upon this movement of a system of State-aid to the agriculture and industries of the country. I need not here further elaborate this programme, for the steps by which it has been and is being adopted will be presently described in detail. But there is one aspect of the new movement in Ireland which must be understood by those who would grasp the true significance and the human interest of an evolution in our national life, the only recent parallel for which, as far as I am aware, is to be found in Japan: though to my mind the conscious attempt of the Irish
The problem of mind and character with which we had to deal in Ireland presented this central and somewhat discouraging fact. In practical life the Irish had failed where the English had succeeded, and this was attributed to the lack of certain English qualities which have been undoubtedly essential to success in commerce and in industry from the days of the industrial revolution until a comparatively recent date. It was the individualism of the English economic system during this period which made these qualities indispensable. The lack of these qualities in Irishmen to-day may be admitted, and the cause of the deficiency has been adequately explained. But those who regard the Irish situation as industrially hopeless probably ignore the fact that there are other qualities, of great and growing importance under modern economic conditions, which can be developed in Irishmen and may form the basis of an industrial system. I refer to the range of qualities which come into play rather in association than in the individual, and to which the term associative is applied.
[Footnote: These qualities, as will be explained later, happen to have a special economic value in the farming industry, and so are available for the elevation of rural life, with whose problems we are now so deeply concerned in Ireland. Their applicability to urban life need not be discussed here. But my study of the co-operative movement in England has convinced me that, if the English had the associative instincts of the Irish, that movement would play a part in English life more commensurate with its numerical strength and the volume of its commercial transactions, than can be claimed for it so far.]
There is, too, as we have learned, in the association a strange influence which develops qualities and capacities that one would not expect on a mere consideration of the character of its members. This psychological phenomenon has been admirably and most entertainingly discussed by the French psychologist, Le Bon,
who, in the attractive pursuit of paradox, almost goes to the length of the proposition that the association inherently[Footnote: La Psychologie de la Foule.]
Associations of the kind we had in our minds, which were to be primarily for purely business purposes, were bound to have many collateral effects. They would open up outside of politics and religion, but not in conflict with either, a sphere of action where an independence new to the country would have to be exercised. In Ireland public opinion is under an obsession which, whether political, religious, historical, or all three combined, is probably unique among civilised peoples. Until the last few years, for example, it was our habitone which immensely weakened the influence of Ireland in the Imperial Parliamentto form extravagant estimates of men, exalting and abasing them with irrational caprice, not according to their qualities so much as by their attitude towards the passion of the hour. The ups and downs of the reputations of Lord Spencer and Mr. Arthur Balfour in Ireland are a sufficient illustration of our disregard of the old Latin proverb which tells us that no man ever became suddenly altogether bad. Even now public opinion is too prone to attach excessive value to projects of vague and visionary development, and to underrate
I have now accomplished one long stage of my journey towards the conclusion of this discussion of the needs of modern Ireland. Were I to stop here, probably most of those who had been induced to open yet another book upon the Irish Question would accuse me, and not without justice, of being responsible for a barren graft upon a barren controversy. I fear no such criticism, whatever other shortcomings may be detected, from those who have the patience to read on. For when I pass from my own reflections to record the work to which many thousands of my countrymen have addressed themselves in building up the Ireland of the twentieth century, I shall have a story to tell which must inspire hope in all who can be persuaded that Ireland in the past has not often been treated fairly and has never been understood. I have shownand it was necessary to show, if a repetition of misunderstanding was to be avoidedthat the Irish people themselves are gravely responsible for the ills of their country, and that the forces which have
The great experiment which I am about to relate is, in its own province, one of the many applications which we see around us of the conception here put forward. And I believe that a few more years of quiet work by those who are taking part in this movement, with its appeal to Irish[Footnote: July 27th, 1903,His Majesty thus confirmed the striking utterance of imperial policy contained in Lord Dudley's speech to the incorporated Law Society, on the 20th of November, 1902. His Excellency, after protesting against the conception of empire as a huge regiment in which each nation was to lose its individuality, saidLasting strength, lasting loyalty, are not to be secured by any attempt to force into one system or to remould into one type those special characteristics which are the outcome of a nation's history and of her religious and social conditions, but rather by a full recognition of the fact that these very characteristics form an essential part of a nation's life; and that under wise guidance and under sympathetic treatment they will enable her to provide her own contribution and to play her own special part in the life of the empire to which she belongs.]
The movement for the reorganisation of Irish agricultural and industrial life, to which I have already frequently referred, must now be described in practical operation. Before I do this, however, there are two lines of criticism which the very mention of a new movement may suggest, and which I must anticipate. Every year has its tale of new movements, launched by estimable persons whose philanthropic zeal is not balanced by the judgment required to discriminate between schemes which possess the elements of permanence, and those which depend upon the enthusiasm or financial support of their promoters, and are in their nature ephemeral. There is, consequently, a widespread and well justified mistrust of novel schemes for the industrial regeneration of Ireland. I confess to having had my ingenuity severely taxed on some occasions to find a sympathetic circumlocution wherewith to show cause for declining to join a new movement, my real reason being an inward conviction that nothing except resolutions would be moved. In the complex problem of building up the economic and social life of a people
The other criticism which I think it necessary to anticipate would, if ignored, leave room for a wrong impression
The story of the new movement, which must now be told, begins in the year 1889, when a few Irishmen, the writer of these pages among them, set themselves the task of bringing home to the rural population of Ireland the fact that their prosperity was in their own hands much more than they were generally led to believe. I have already pointed out that in order to direct the Irish mind towards practical affairs and in order effectively to arouse and apply the latent capacities of the Irish people to their chief industry, agriculture, we must rely upon associative, as distinct from individual effort; or, in other words, we must get the people to do their
While the opening up of what the economists call the world market, has necessitated, as a condition of successful competition, improved methods of production for, and carriage to, the market a third and less obvious force has effected an important change in the method of distribution in the market. The swarming populations, which the factory system has brought together in industrial centres, have to be supplied with food by a system of distribution which must above all things be expeditious. This requirement can only be met by the regular consignment of food in large quantities, of such uniform quality that the sample can be relied upon to be truly indicative of the quality of the bulk. Thus the rapid distribution of produce in the markets becomes as important a factor in agricultural economy as improved methods of production or cheap and expeditious carriage.
Now, this new market condition is being met in two ways. In the United States, and, in a less marked degree, at home, an army of middlemen between the producer and the consumer attends to this business for a share of the profits accruing from it, whilst in many parts of the Continent the farmers themselves attend, partially at any rate, to the business side of their industry instead of paying others to do it all for them. I say all, for middlemen are necessary at the distributive end: but it is absolutely essential, in a
Here, then, was a definite practical problem to the solution of which the promoters of the new movement could apply their principle of co-operative effort. The more we studied the question the more apparent it became that the enormous advantage which the Continental farmers had over the Irish farmers, both in production and in distribution, was due to superior organisation combined with better education. State-aid had no doubt done a great deal abroad, but in every case it was manifest that it had been preceded, or at least accompanied, by the organised voluntary effort without which the interference of the Government with the business of the people is simply demoralising.
Generally speaking, the task before us in Ireland was the adaptation to the special circumstances of our country of methods successfully pursued by communities similarly situated in foreign countries. We had to urge upon farmers that combination was just as necessary to their economic salvation as it was recognised to be by their own class, and by those engaged in other industries, elsewhere. They must combine, so we urged on them,
This brief statement of our general aims will furnish a rough idea of the economic propaganda which we initiated, and if I give a few illustrations of the practical application of the new principle to the farming industry, I
When we arrived at the conclusion that the introduction of the principle of agricultural co-operation was a vital necessity, the first practical question which had to be decided was how the industrial army, which was to do battle for Ireland's position in the world market, should be organised and disciplined for the task. It is evident that before a body of men who have never worked together can form a successful commercial combination, they must be provided with a constitution and set of rules and regulations for the conduct of their business. These must be so skilfully contrived that they will harmonise all the interests involved. And when an arrangement has been come to which is, not only in fact but also obviously, equitable, it remains as part of the process of organisation to teach the participants in the new project the meaning, and to imbue them with the spirit, of the
So Lord Monteagle and Mr. R. A. Anderson, my first two associates in the New Movement, joined me as regular attendants at the annual Co-operative congresses. We were assiduous seekers after information at the head-quarters of the Co-operative Union in Manchester. We had the good fortune to fall in with Vansittart Neale, and Tom Hughes, both of whom have passed away, and with Mr. Holyoake, who, with the exception of Mr. Ludlow, is now the sole survivor of that noble group of practical philanthropists, the Christian Socialists. Mr. J. C. Gray, who succeeded Mr. Vansittart Neale as the General Secretary of the Co-operative Union, gave us invaluable help and continues to do so to this day. The leaders of the English movement[Footnote: The story of the conversion of some of the tenants on the Vandeleur estate into a co-operative community in 1831 by Mr. E. T. Craig, a Scotchman who took up the agency of the property, told in the History of Ralahine (London, Trübner & Co., 1893) is worth reading. The experiment, most hopeful as far as it went, was only two years in existence when the landlord gambled away his property at cards in a Dublin club and the Utopia was sold up. But in the co-operative world Mr. Craig, who died as recently as 1894, is revered as the author of the most advanced experiment in the realisation of co-operative ideals. The economic significance of the narrative is obviously not important, and I doubt whether joint ownership of land, except for the purpose of common grazing, is a practical ideal. The ready response, however, of the Irish peasants to Mr. Craig's enthusiasm and the way in which they took up the idea form an interesting study of the Irish character.]
It must be admitted that the outlook was not altogether rosy. Agricultural co-operation had never succeeded in England, where it seemed to be accepted as one of the disappointing limitations of the co-operative movement that it did not apply to rural communities in these islands. There were also in Ireland the peculiar difficulties arising from ceaseless political and agrarian agitation. It was naturally askeddid Irish farmers possess the qualities out of which co-operators are made? Had they commercial experience or business education? Had they business capacity? Would they display that confidence in each other which is essential to successful association, or indeed that confidence in themselves without which there can be no business enterprise? Could they ever be induced to form themselves into societies, and to adopt, and loyally adhere to those rules and regulations by which alone equitable distribution of the responsibility and profit among the participants in the joint undertaking can be assured, and harmony and
On the other hand there were some favouring conditions, the importance of which our studies of the human problems already discussed will have made my readers realise. Isolated, the Irish farmer is conservative, sceptical of innovations, a believer in routine and tradition. In union with his fellows, he is progressive, open to ideas, and wonderfully keen at grasping the essential features of any new proposal for his advancement. He was, then, himself eminently a subject for co operative treatment, and his circumstances were equally so. The smallness of his holding, the lack of capital, and the backwardness of his methods made him helpless in competition with his rivals abroad. The process of organisation was also, to some extent, facilitated by the insight the people had been given by the Land League into the power of combination, and by the education they had
Though the economic conditions of the Irish farmer clearly indicated a need for the application of co-operative effort to all branches of his industry, it was necessary at the beginning to embrace a more limited aim. It happened at the time we commenced our Irish work that one branch of farming, the dairying industry, presented features admirably adapted to our methods. This industry was, so to speak, ripe for its industrial development, for its change from a home to a factory industry. New machinery, costly but highly efficient, had enabled the factory product, notably that of Denmark and Sweden, to compete successfully with the home-made article, both in quality and cost of production. Here, it will be observed, was an opportunity for an experiment in co-operative production, under modern industrial conditions, which would put the associative qualities of the Irish farmer to a test which the British artisan had not stood quite as well as the founders of the co-operative movement had anticipated. To add to the interest of the situation, capitalists had seized upon
The economic position was ideal for our purpose, and we had no difficulty in explaining it to the farmers themselves. The social problem was the real difficulty. To all suggestions of co-operative action they at first opposed a hopeless non possumus. Their objections may be summed up thus:They had never combined for any business purpose. How could they trust the Committee they were asked to elect from amongst themselves to expend their money and conduct their business? It was all very well for the proprietor with his ample capital, free hand, and business experience, to work with complicated machinery and to consign his butter out of the reach of the local butter buyer, and to save
[Footnote: The late Canon Bagot had done good service in explaining the value of the new machinery; but unhappily the vital importance of co-operative organisation was not then understood. He formed some joint stock companies with the result that, having no co-operative spirit to offset their commercial inexperience, they all proved, instead of co-operative successes, competitive failures. This fact added to our early difficulties.]
There was nothing in this attitude of mind which we had not fully anticipated. We were confident that, as we were on sound economic ground, no matter what difficulties might confront us it was only a question of time for the attainment of our ends. All that was required was that we should keep pegging away. My own experience was not encouraging at first. I was, and am, a poor speaker, and in Ireland a man who cannot express his thoughts with facility, whether he has got them or not, accentuates the difficulties under which a prophet labours in his own country. I made up for my deficiencies in the first essential of Irish public life by engaging a very eloquent political speaker, the late Mr. Mulhallen Marum, M.P., to stump the country. He gave to the propaganda a relish which my prosaic economics altogether lacked. The nationalist band sometimes came out to meet him. We all know the efficiency of the drum in politics and religion, but it seemed to me a little out of place in economics. However, he created an excellent impression, but unhappily
Mr. Anderson, who sometimes accompanied me and sometimes went his rounds alone, had similar experiences. I may quote a passage from some of his reminiscences, recently published in the Irish Homestead, the organ of the co-operative movement in Ireland.
It was hard and thankless work. There was the apathy of the people and the active opposition of the Press and the politicians. It would be hard to say now whether the abuse of the Conservative Cork Constitution or that of the Nationalist Eagle, of Skibbereen, was the louder. We were killing the calves, we were forcing the young women to emigrate, we were destroying the industry. Mr. Plunkett was described as a monster in human shape, and was adjured to cease his hellish work. I was described as his Man Friday and as Roughrider Anderson. Once, when I thought I had planted a Creamery within the precincts of the town of Rathkeale, my co-operative apple-cart was upset by a local solicitor
On another occasion a similar project was abandoned because the flow of water to the disused mill which it was proposed to convert into a creamery, passed through a conduit lined with cement originally purchased from a man who now occupied a farm from which another had been evicted. To some minds these little complications would have spelled failure. To my associates they but accentuated the need for the movement which they had so laboriously thought out, and the very nature of the difficulties confirmed them in their belief that the economic doctrine they were preaching was adapted to meet the requirements of the case. And so the event proved.
In the year 1894 the movement had gathered volume to such an extentalthough the societies then numbered but one for every twenty that are in existence to-daythat it became beyond the power of a few individuals to direct its further progress. In April of that year a meeting was held in Dublin to inaugurate the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, Ltd. (now commonly known as the I.A.O.S.), which was to be the analogue
The growth of the movement in the last nine years under the fostering care of the I.A.O.S. is highly satisfactory. By the autumn of this year (1903) considerably over eight hundred societies had been established, and the number is ever growing; of these 360 were dairy, and 140 agricultural societies, nearly 200 agricultural banks, 50 home industries societies, 40 poultry societies, while there were 40 others with miscellaneous objects. The membership may be estimatedI am writing towards the end of the Society's statistical yearat about 80,000, representing some 400,000 persons. The combined trade turnover of these societies during the present year will reach approximately £2,000,000, a figure the
These societies consist, as has been explained, of groups of farmers who have been taught by organisers that certain branches of their business can be more profitably conducted in association than by individuals acting separately. The principle of agricultural cooperation with its economic advantages will, as time goes on, be further extended by the combined action of societies. With this end in view federations are constantly being formed with a constitution similar to that of the societies, the only difference being that the members of the federation are not individuals but societies, the government of the central body being carried on by delegates from its constituent associations. The two largest of these federations, one for the sale of butter, and another for the combined purchase by societies of their agricultural requirements, have been working successfully for several years. Federations, too, are being formed, as societies find that their business can be conducted more economically, for example, in dairying by centralising the manufacture of butter, or in the egg export trade by the alliance of many districts to enable large contracts to be undertaken. In the near future a further development of federation will be required to complete a scheme now under consideration for the mutual insurance of live stock. Such a scheme
In all such enterprises and economic changes the Organisation Society is either the initiator, or is called in for advice, and its continued existence in a purely advisory capacity as a link between the societies where concerted action is required, will be necessary even when the organisation of farmers into societies is completed. The economic life of rural communities is in continual need of adjustment. Now it is an invention like a steam separator which revolutionises an industry. At another time the crisis created by a change in the tariff of a foreign country forces the producer either to find a new outlet for his wares, or to abandon a hitherto profitable employment. A striking instance of the value of organisation and connection with a central advisory body occurred in 1887, when swine fever broke out in Denmark, and the exports of live swine fell from 230,000 in one year to 16,000 in the next. The organisation of the farmers, however, enabled them easily to consult together how best to meet the emergency, and their decision to start co-operative bacon-curing factories was the foundation of their present great export trade in manufactured bacon.
I must not overburden with details a narrative intended for readers to whom I merely wish to give a deeper and wider understanding of Irish life than most of them probably possess. But there is just one form of
The exact purpose of these organisations is to create credit as a means of introducing capital into the agricultural industry. They perform the apparent miracle of giving solvency to a community composed almost entirely of insolvent individuals. The constitution of these bodies, which can, of course, be described only in broad outline here, is somewhat startling. They have no subscribed capital, but every member is liable for the entire debts of the association. Consequently the association takes good care to admit men of approved character and capacity only. It starts by borrowing a sum of money on the joint and several security of its members. A member wishing to borrow from the association is not required to give tangible
Raiffeisen held, and our experience in Ireland has fully confirmed his opinion, that in the poorest communities there is a perfectly safe basis of security in the honesty and industry of its members. This security is not valuable to the ordinary commercial lender, such as the local joint stock bank. Even if such lenders had the intimate knowledge possessed by the committee of one of these associations as to the character and capacity of the borrower, they would not be able to satisfy themselves that the loan was required for a really productive purpose, nor would they be able to see that it was properly applied to the stipulated object. One of the rules of the co-operative banks provides for the expulsion of a member who does not apply the money to the agreed productive purpose. But although these Banks are almost invariably situated in very poor districts, there has been no necessity to put this rule in force in a single instance. Social influences seem to be quite sufficient to secure obedience to the association's laws.
Another advantage conferred by the association is that the term for which money is advanced is a matter of agreement between the borrower and the bank. The hard and fast term of three months which prevails in Ireland for small loans is unsuited to the requirements of the agricultural industryas for instance, when a man borrows money to sow a crop, and has to repay it before harvest. The society borrows at four or five per cent. and lends at five or six per cent. In some cases the Congested Districts Board or the Department of Agriculture have made loans to these banks at three per cent. This enables the societies to lend at the popular rate of one penny for the use of one pound for a month. The expenses of administration are very small. As the credit of these associations develops, they will become a depository for the savings of the community, to the great advantage of both lender and borrower. The latter generally makes an enormous profit out of these loans, which have accordingly gained the name of the lucky money, and we find, in practice, that he always repays the association and almost invariably with punctuality.
The sketch I have given of the agricultural banks will, perhaps, be sufficient to show what an immense educational and economic benefit they are likely to confer when they are widely extended throughout Ireland, as I hope they will be in the near future. Under this system, which, to quote the report of the Indian Famine Commission, 1901, separates the working bees from the
[Footnote: It should be noted that this form of association for credit purposes, owing to its peculiar constitution, applies only to a grade of the community whose members all live on about the same scale and that a fairly low one. It is obvious that unlimited liability would lose its efficacy in developing the sense of responsibility if some members of the association were so substantial that its creditors would make them primarily responsible in the event of failure. The fact, however, that the scheme has worked with unvarying success among the poorest of the poor and the most Irish of the Irish, renders it as good an illustration as can be found of what may be done by sympathetic and intelligent treatment of Irish economic problems. Mr. Henry W. Wolff, the foremost authority on People's Banks in these islands, and Mr. R. A. Yerburgh, M. P., a generous subscriber to the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, have taken great interest in this part of the movement and have rendered much assistance.]
One other sphere of activity worked by the cooperative associations needs a passing notice. The desire that, together with material amelioration, there should be a corresponding intellectual advancement and a greater beauty in life has prompted many of the farmers' societies to use their organisation for higher ends. A considerable number of them have started Village Libraries, and by an admirable selection of books have brought to their members, not only the means of educating themselves in the more difficult technical problems of their industry, but also a means of access to that enchanted world of Irish thought which inspires the Gaelic Revival to which I have already referred. Social gatherings of every kind, dances, lectures, concerts, and such like entertainments, which have the two-fold effect of brightening rural life and increasing the attachment of the members to their society, are becoming a common feature in the movement, and this more human aspect has attracted to it the attention of many who do not understand its economic side. We have gratifying evidence from many of the clergy that the movement thus developed has kept at home young people who would otherwise have fled from the continued hardship and intellectual emptiness of rural life at home.
These results are in no small measure due to the zeal and devotion of the governing body and staff of the I.A.O.S. The general policy of the society is guided by a committee of twenty-four members, one-half of whom are elected by the individual subscribers and the other half by the afilliated societies. It is representative in the best sense and influential accordingly. The success of the Committee is no doubt mainly due to the wisdom which they have displayed in the selection of the staff. In the most important post, that of Secretary, they have kept on my chief fellow-worker in the early struggle, Mr. R. A. Anderson, who has devoted himself to the cause with all the energy of a nature at once enthusiastic, unselfish, and practical, and who has succeeded in inspiring his staff of organisers and experts with his own spirit. Among these, two deserve special mention, Mr. George W. Russell, one of the Assistant Secretaries, who has under the nom de plume A. E., attained fame for a poetry of rare distinction of thought and diction, and Mr. P. J. Hannon, the other Assistant Secretary, who has proved himself a splendid propagandist. Each of these gentlemen has brought to the movement a zeal and ability which could only come of a devotion to high ideals of patriotism, curiously combined with a shrewd practical instinct for carrying on varied and responsible business undertakings.
With the growing work the staff has been repeatedly augmented to enable the central society to keep pace with the demand made by groups of farmers to be
[Footnote: Those who wish to go more fully into the details of the co-operative agricultural movement in Ireland should write to the Secretary Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, 22 Lincoln-place, Dublin. The publications of the Society are somewhat voluminous, and the inquirer should intimate any particular branches of the subject in which he is especially interested. Those wishing to keep au courant with the further development of the movement would do well to take in the Irish Homestead, post free 6s. 6d. per annum.]
One of the difficulties incidental to a movement of this kind, which, for the reasons already set forth, had to be rapidly and widely extended, was the enormous cost to its supporters. It is needless to say that such a staff as I have described could not be kept continuously travelling by rail and road for so many years without the provision of a large fund. These officers must obviously be men with exceptional qualifications, if they are not only to impress the thought of their agricultural
It is not to be wondered at that the greater part of the necessary funds should have been drawn from a very limited circle of public-spirited men capable of grasping
The difficulty of a successful appeal to a wider public has been the impossibility of giving in brief form an adequate explanation, such as that which it is hoped these pages will afford, of the part the movement was to play in Irish life. We were asked whether our scheme was business or philanthropy. If philanthropy, it would probably do more harm than good. If business, why was it not self-supporting? I remember hearing the movement ridiculed in the House of Commons by a prominent Irish member on the ground that the accounts of the I.A.O.S. showed that £20,000 (£40,000 would be nearer the mark now) had been put into the business, and that this large capital had been entirely lost! When we proved that agricultural co-operation brought a large profit to the members of the societies we formed, it was suggested that a small part of this profit would give us all we required for our organising work. So it will in time, but if instead of merely refusing financial assistance to our converts, we were, on the other hand, to demand it from them, we certainly should not lessen the difficulty of launching our movement among the farmers of Ireland. Some of our critics denounced the expenditure of so much money for which, in their opinion, there was nothing to[Footnote: The chief donors belong to the class of philanthropists who do not care to advertise their beneficence. I, therefore, respect their wishes and withhold their names.]
The movement has survived all these criticisms. The lack of moral and of financial support which retarded its progress in the early years, has been so far surmounted. The movement may now, I think, appeal for further help as one that has justified its existence. The opinion that it has done so is not held only by those who are engaged in promoting it, nor by Irish observers alone. The efforts of the Irish farmers so to reorganise their industry that they may hopefully approach the solution of the problems of rural life are being watched by economists and administrators abroad. Enquirers have come to Ireland during the last two years from Germany, France, Canada, the United States, India, South Africa, Cyprus and the West Indies, having been drawn here by the desire to understand the combination of economic and human reform. It was not alone the economic advantages of the movement which interested them, but the way in which the organisation at the same time acted upon the character and awoke those forces of self-help and comradeship in which lies the surety of any enduring national prosperity. A native governor from a famine district in the Madras Presidency, who, perhaps, better
It is not surprising that the facts which I have cited should be interesting to the honest inquirer. A summary of actual achievement will show that this movement has spread all over Ireland, that its principle of organised self-help has been universally accepted, and that nothing but time and the necessary funds are required by its promoters to give it, within the range of its applicability, general effect. It is no exaggeration to say that there
I would further give it as my opinion, whatever it may
[Footnote: I recall an occasion when the Vice-President of the I.A.O.S. (a Nationalist in politics and a Jesuit priest), who has been ever ready to lend a hand as volunteer organiser when the prior claims of his religious and educational duties allowed, found himself before an audience which he was informed, when he came to the meeting, consisted mainly of Orangemen. He began his address by referring to the new and somewhat strange environment into which he had drifted. He did not, however, see why this circumstance should lead to any misunderstanding between himself and his audience. He had never been able to understand what a battle fought upon a famous Irish river two centuries ago had got to do with the practical issues of to-day which he had come to discuss. The dispute in question was, after all, between a Scotchman and a Dutchman, and if it had not yet been decided, they might be left to settle it themselvesthat is if too great a gulf did not separate them !]
I cannot conclude the story of this movement without paying a brief tribute of respect and gratitude to those true patriots who have borne the daily burden of the
The new movement, six years after its initiation, had succeeded beyond the most sanguine expectations of its promoters. All over the country the idea of self-help was taking firm hold of the imagination of the people. Co-operation had got, so to speak, into the air to such an extent that, whereas at the beginning, as I well remember, our chief difficulty had been to popularise a principle to which one section of the community was strongly opposed, and in which no section believed, it was now no longer necessary to explain or support the theory, but only to show how it could be advantageously applied to some branch of the farmer's industry. It was not, strange to say, the economic advantage which had chiefly appealed to the quick intelligence of the Irish farmer, but rather the novel sensation that he was thinking for himself, and that while improving his own condition he was working for others. This attitude was essential to the success of the movement, because had it not been for a vein of altruism, the strong farmers would have held aloof, and the small men would have been discouraged by the abstention of the better-off and presumably more enlightened of their class.
Perhaps, too, we owed something to the recognition on the part of the working farmers of Ireland that they were showing a capacity to grasp an idea which had so far failed to penetrate the bucolic intelligence of the predominant partner. Whatever the causes to which the success of the movement was attributable, those who were responsible for its promotion felt in the year 1895 that it had reached a stage in its development when it was but a question of time to complete the projected revolution in the farming industry, the substitution of combined for isolated methods of production and distribution. It was then further brought home to them that the principle of self-help was destined to obtain general acceptance in rural Ireland, and that the time had come when a sound system of State aid to agriculture might be fruitfully grafted on to this native growth of local effort and self-reliance.
From time to time our public men had included in the list of Irish grievances the fact that England enjoyed a Board of Agriculture while Ireland had no similar institution. As a matter of fact a mere replica of the English Board would not have fulfilled a tithe of the objects we had in view. That much at least we knew, but beyond that our information was vague. What, having regard to Irish rural conditions, should be the character and constitution of any Department called into being to administer the aid required? Here indeed was a vital and difficult problem. Even those of us who had given the closest thought to the matter did not know exactly
I have accepted the common characterisation of the Irish as a leader-following people. When we come to analyse the human material out of which a strong national life may be constructed, we find that there are in Irelandin this connection I exclude the influence of the clergy, with which I have dealt specifically in another chaptertwo elements of leadership, the political and the industrial. The political leaders are seen to enjoy an influence over the great majority of the people which is probably as powerful as that of any political leaders in ancient or modern times; but as a class they certainly do not take a prominent, or even an active part in business life. This fact is not introduced with any controversial purpose, and I freely acknowledge can be interpreted
The idea underlying this project was the combination of these two forces of leadershipthe force with political influence and that of proved industrial and commercial capacityin order to concentrate public opinion, which was believed to be inclining in this direction, on the material needs of the country. The General Election of 1895 had, by universal admission, postponed, for some years at any rate, any possibility of Home Rule, and the cessation of the bitter feelings aroused when Home Rule seemed imminent provided the opportunity for an appeal to the Irish people in behalf of the views which I have adumbrated. The appeal took the form of a letter, dated August 27th, 1895, by the author to the Irish Press, under the quite sincere, if somewhat grandiloquent, title, A proposal affecting the general welfare of Ireland.
The letter proceeded to indicate economic legislation which, though sorely needed by Ireland, was hopelessly unattainable unless it could be resolved from the region of controversy. The modus co-operandi suggested was as follows:a committee sitting in the Parliamentary recess, whence it came to be known as the Recess Committee, was to be formed, consisting in the first instance, of Irish Members of Parliament nominated by the leaders of the different sections. These nominees were to invite to join them any Irishmen whose capacity, knowledge, or experience might be of service to the Committee, irrespective of the political party or religious persuasion to which they might belong. The day had come, the letter went on to say, when we Unionists without abating one jot of our Unionism, and Nationalists, without abating one jot of their Nationalism, can each show our faith in the cause for which we have fought so bitterly and so long, by sinking our party differences for our country's good, and leaving our respective policies for the justification of time.
Needless to say, few were sanguine enough to hope that such a committee would ever be brought together. If that were accomplished some prophesied that its members would but emulate the fame of the Kilkenny cats. A severe blow was dealt to the project at the outset by the refusal of Mr. Justin McCarthy, who then spoke for the largest section of the Nationalist representatives,
I had not much hope that I could influence Mr. McCarthy's decision; but it was so serious an obstacle to further action that I made one more appeal. I wrote to my respected and courteous correspondent, pointing out the misconception of my proposal, which had arisen from the use made of the six words quoted by him, which were hardly intelligible without the context. I asked him to reconsider his refusal to join in the proposal for promoting the material improvement of our country, on account of a contingency which he confidently declared could notMY DEAR MR. PLUNKETT,
I am sure I need not say that any effort to promote the general welfare of Ireland has my fullest sympathy. I readily acknowledge and entirely believe in the sincerity and good purpose of your effort, but I cannot see my way to associate myself with it. Your frank avowal in your letter of August 27th is the expression of a belief that if your policy could be successfully carried out the Irish people would cease to desire Home Rule. Now, I do not believe that anything in the way of material improvement conferred by the Parliament at Westminster, or by Dublin Castle, could extinguish the national desire for Home Rule. Still, I do not feel that I could possibly take part in any organisation which had for its object the seeking of a substitute for that which I believe to be Ireland's greatest needHome Rule. Yours very truly, JUSTIN MCCARTHY.
October 22nd, 1895.
73, Eaton-terrace, S.W.,
The position was rendered still more difficult by the action of Colonel Saunderson, the leader of the Irish Unionist party, who wrote to the newspapers declaring that he would not sit on a Committee with Mr. John Redmond. On the other hand, Mr. Redmond, speaking then for the Independent party, consisting of less than a dozen members, but containing some men who agreed with Mr. Field's admission in the House of Commons that man cannot live on politics alone, joined the Committee and acted throughout in a manner which was broad, statesmanlike, conciliatory, and as generous as it was courageous. His letter of acceptance ran as follows:
DEAR MR. PLUNKETT,
I received your letter, in which you ask me to cooperate with you in bringing together a small Committee of Members of Parliament to discuss certain measures to be proposed next Session for the benefit of Ireland. While I cannot take as sanguine a view as you do of the benefits likely to flow from such a proceeding, I am unwilling to take the responsibility of declining to aid in any effort to promote useful legislation for Ireland.
I will, under the circumstances, co-operate with you in bringing such a Committee as you suggest together.
Very truly yours, J.E. REDMOND.
October 21st, 1895.
Before these decisions were officially announced the idea had caught on. Public bodies throughout the country endorsed the scheme. The parliamentarians,
Truly, it was a strange council over which I had the honour to preside. All shades of politics were thereLords Mayo and Monteagle, Mr. Dane and Sir Thomas Lea (Tories and Liberal Unionist Peers and Members of Parliament) sitting down beside Mr. John Redmond and his parliamentary followers. It was found possible, in framing proposals fraught with moral, social, and educational results, to secure the cordial agreement of the late Rev. Dr. Kane, Grand Master of the Belfast Orangemen, and of the eminent Jesuit educationist, Father Thomas Finlay, of the Royal University. The O'Conor Don, the able Chairman of the Financial Relations Commission, and Mr. John Ross, M.P., now one of His Majesty's Judges, both Unionists, were balanced by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, and Mr. T. C. Harrington, M.P., who now occupies that post, both Nationalists. The late Sir John Arnott fitly represented the commercial enterprise of the South, while such men as Mr. Thomas Sinclair, universally regarded as one of the wisest of Irish public men, Sir William Ewart, head of the leading linen concern in the North, Sir Daniel Dixon, now Lord Mayor of Belfast, Sir James Musgrave, Chairman of the Belfast
The story of our deliberations and ultimate conclusions cannot be set forth here except in the barest outline. We instituted an inquiry into the means by which the Government could best promote the development of our agricultural and industrial resources, and despatched commissioners to countries of Europe whose conditions and progress might afford some lessons for Ireland. Most of this work was done for us by the late eminent statistician, Mr. Michael Mulhall. Our funds did not admit of an inquiry in the United States or the Colonies. However, we obtained invaluable information as to the methods by which countries which were our chief rivals in agricultural and industrial production have been enabled to compete successfully with our producers even in our own markets. Our commissioners were instructed in each case to collect the facts necessary to enable us to differentiate between the parts played respectively by State aid and the efforts of the people themselves in producing these results. With this information before us, after long and earnest deliberation
The substance of our recommendations was that a Department of Government should be specially created, with a minister directly responsible to Parliament at its head. The central body was to be assisted by a Consultative Council representative of the interests concerned. The Department was to be adequately endowed from the Imperial Treasury, and was to administer State aid to agriculture and industries in Ireland upon principles which were fully described. The proposal to amalgamate agriculture and industries under one Department was adopted largely on account of the opinion expressed by M. Tisserand, late Director-General of Agriculture in France, one of the highest authorities in Europe upon the administration of State aid to agriculture.
The creation of a new minister directly responsible to Parliament was considered a necessary provision. Ireland is governed by a number of Boards, all, with the exception of the Board of Works (which is really a branch of the Treasury), responsible to the Chief Secretary practicallya whole cabinet under one hatwho is supposed to be responsible for them to Parliament and to the Lord Lieutenant. The bearers of this burden are generally men of great ability. But no Chief Secretary could[Footnote: The memorandum which he kindly contributed to the Recess Committee was copied into the Annual Report of the United States Department of Agriculture for 1896.]
On August 1st, 1896, less than a year from the issue of the invitation to the political leaders, the Report was forwarded to the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant for Ireland, with a covering letter, setting out the considerations upon which the Committee relied for the justification of its course of action. Attention was drawn to the terms of the original proposal, its exceptional nature and essential informality, the political conditions which appeared to make it opportune, the spirit in which it was responded to by those who were invited to join, and the degree of public approval which had been accorded to our action. We were able to claim for the Committee that it was thoroughly representative of those agricultural and industrial interests, North and South, with which the Report was concerned.
There were two special features in the brief history of this unique coming together of Irishmen which will strike any man familiar with the conditions of Irish public life. The first was the way in which the business element, consisting of men already deeply engaged in their various callingsand, indeed, selected for that very reasondevoted time and labour to the service of their country. Still more significant was the
It is interesting to note that the Committee claimed favourable consideration for their proposals on the ground that they sought to act as a channel of communication between the Irish Government and Irish public opinion. Little interest, they pointed out, had been hitherto aroused in those economic problems for which the Report suggested some solution. They expressed the hope that their action would do something to remedy this defect, especially in view of the importance which foreign Governments had found it necessary to
I fear those most intimately connected with the above occurrences will regard this chapter as a very inadequate description of events so unprecedented and so full of hope for the future. My purpose is, however, to limit myself, in dealing with the past, to such details as are necessary to enable the reader to understand the present facts of Irish life, and to build upon them his own conclusions as to the most hopeful line of future development. I shall, therefore, pass rapidly in review the events which led to the fruition of the labours of the Recess Committee.
Public opinion in favour of the new proposals grew rapidly. Before the end of the year (1896) a deputation, representing all the leading agricultural
I cannot conclude this chapter without a word upon the extraordinary misunderstanding of Mr. Gerald Balfour's policy to which the obscuring atmosphere sur
The new movement had thus completed the first and second stages of its mission. The idea of self-help had become a growing reality, and upon this foundation an edifice of State aid had been erected. When a Nationalist
To the average English Member of Parliament, the passing of an Act for establishing a Department of Agriculture and other Industries and Technical Instruction in Ireland and for other purposes connected therewith, probably signified little more than the removal of another Irish grievance, which might not be imaginary, by the concession to Ireland of an equivalent to the Board of Agriculture in England. In reality the difference between the two institutions is as wide as the difference between the two islands. The chief interest of the new Department consists in the free play which it gives to the pent-up forces of a re-awakening life. A new institution is at best but a new opportunity, but the Department starts with the unique advantage that, unlike most Irish institutions, it is one which we Irishmen planned ourselves and for which we have worked. For this reason the opportunity is one to which we may hope to rise.
Before I can convey any clear impression of the part which the Department is, I believe, destined to play on the stage of Irish public life, it will be necessary for me to give a somewhat detailed description of its functions and constitution. The subject is perhaps dull
To accomplish the first object, two distinct Government departments, the Veterinary Department of the Privy Council and the Office of the Inspectors of Irish Fisheries, were merged in the new Department. The importance to the economic life of the country of having the laws for safeguarding our flocks and herds from disease, our crops from insect pests, our farmers from fraud in the supply of fertilisers and feeding stuffs and in the adulteration of foods (which compete with their products), administered by a Department generally concerned for the farming industry need not be laboured. Similarly, it was well that the laws for the protection of both sea and inland fisheries should be administered by the authority whose function it was to develop these industries. There was also transferred from South Kensington the administration of the Science and Arts grants and the grant in aid of technical instruction, together with the control of several national institutions,
The desirability of bringing order and simplicity into these branches of administration, where co-related action was not provided for before, was obvious. A few years ago, to take a somewhat extreme case, when a virulent attack of potato disease broke out which demanded prompt and active Governmental intervention, the task of instructing farmers how to spray their potatoes was shared by no fewer than six official or semiofficial bodies. The consolidation of administration effected by the Act, in addition to being a real step towards efficiency and economy, relieved the Chief Secretary of an immense amount of detailed work to which he could not possibly give adequate personal attention, and made it possible for him to devote a greater share of his time to the larger problems of general Irish legislation and finance.
The newly created powers of the Department, which were added to and co-ordinated with the various preexisting functions of the several departments whose consolidation I have mentioned above, fairly fulfilled the
For all the administrative functions transferred to the new Department moneys are, as before, annually voted by Parliament. Towards the fulfilment of the second purpose mentioned abovethe development of the resources of the country upon the principles of the Recess Committeean annual income of£166,000, which was derived in about equal parts from Irish and imperial sources, and is called the Department's Endowment, together with a capital sum of about £200,000, were provided.
It will be seen that a very wide sphere of usefulness was thus opened out for the new Department in two distinct ways. The consolidation, under one authority, of many scattered but co-related functions was clearly
The very nature of the work which the Department was called into existence to accomplish made it absolutely essential that it should keep in touch with the classes whom its work would most immediately affect, and without whose active co-operation no lasting good could be achieved. The machinery for this purpose was provided by the establishment of a Council of Agriculture and two Boards, one of the latter being concerned with agriculture, rural industries, and inland fisheries, the other with technical instruction. These representative bodies, whose constitution is interesting as a new departure in administration, were adapted from similar continental councils which have been found by experience, in those foreign countries which are Ireland's economic rivals, to be the most valuable of all means whereby the administration keeps in touch with the
The Council of Agriculture consists of two members appointed by each County Council (Cork being regarded as two counties and returning four members), making in all sixty-eight persons. The Department also appoint one half this number of persons, observing in their nomination the same provincial proportions as obtained in the appointments by the popular bodies. This adds thirty-four members, and makes in all one hundred and two Councillors, in addition to the President and VicePresident of the Department, who are ex-officio members. Thus, if all the members attended a Council meeting, the Vice-President would find himself presiding over a body as truly representative of the interests concerned as could be brought together, consisting, by a strange coincidence, of exactly the same number as the Irish representatives in Parliament.
The Council, which is appointed for a term of three years, the first term dating from the 1st April, 1900, has a two-fold function. It is, in the first place, a deliberative assembly which must be convened by the Department at least once a year. The domain over which its deliberations may travel is certainly not restricted, as the Act defines its function as that of discussing matters of public interest in connection with any of the purposes of this Act. The view Mr. Gerald Balfour took was that nothing but the new spirit he laboured to evoke would make his machine work. Although he
The second function of the Council is exercised only its first meeting, and consequently but once in three years. At this first triennial meeting it becomes an Electoral College. It divides itself into four Provincial Committees, each of which elects two members to represent its province on the Agricultural Board and one member to represent it on the Board of Technical Instruction. The Agricultural Board, which controls a sum of over £100,000 a year, consists of twelve members, and as eight out of the twelve are elected by the four Provincial Committeesthe remaining four being appointed by the Department, one from each provinceit will be seen that the Council of Agriculture exercises an influence upon the administration commensurate with its own representative character. The Board of Technical Instruction, consisting of twenty-one members, together with the President and Vice-President of the Department, has a less simple constitution, owing to the fact that it is concerned with the more complex life of the urban districts of the country. As I have said, the
The two Boards have to advise upon all matters submitted to them by the Department in connection, in the one case, with agriculture and other rural industries and inland fisheries, and, in the other case, in connection with Technical Instruction. The advisory powers of the Boards are very real, for the expenditure of all moneys out of the Endowment funds is subject to their concurrence. Hence, while they have not specific administrative powers and apparently have only the right of veto, it is obvious that, if they wished, they might largely force their own views upon the Department by refusing to sanction the expenditure of money upon any of the Department's proposals, until these were so modified as practically to be their own proposals. It is, therefore, clear that the machinery can only work harmoniously and efficiently so long as it is moved by a right spirit. Above all it is necessary that the central administrative body should gain such a measure of popular confidence as to enable it, without loss of influence, to resist proposals
The other statutory body attached to the Department has a significance and potential importance in strange contrast to the humble place it occupies in the statute book. The Agriculture and Technical Instruction (Ireland) Act, 1899, has, like many other Acts, a part entitled Miscellaneous, in which the draughtsman's skill has attended to multifarious practical details, and made provision for all manner of contingencies, many of which the layman might never have thought of or foreseen. Travelling expenses for Council, Boards and Committees, casual vacancies thereon, a short title for the Act, and a seal for the Department, definitions, which show how little we know of our own language, and a host of kindred matters are included. In this miscellany appears the following little clause: For the purpose of co-ordinating educational administration
Now the real value of this clause, and in this I think it shows a consumate statesmanship, lies not in what it says, but in what it suggests. The Committee, it will be observed, has an immensely important function, but no power beyond such authority as its representative character may afford. Any attempt to deal with a large educational problem by a clause in a measure of this kind would have alarmed the whole force of unco-ordinated pedagogy, and perhaps have wrecked the Bill. The clause as it stands is in harmony with the whole spirit of the new movement and of the legislation provided for its advancement. The Committee may be very useful in suggesting improvements in educational administration which will prevent unnecessary overlapping and lead to co-operation between the systems concerned. Indeed it has already made suggestions of far-reaching importance, which have been acted upon by the educational authorities represented upon it. As I have said in an earlier
There remains to be explained only one feature of the new administrative machinery, and it is a very important one. The Recess Committee had recommended the adaptation to Ireland of a type of central institution which it had found in successful operation on the Continent wherever it had pursued its investigations. So far as schemes applicable to the whole country were concerned, the central Department, assuming that it gained the confidence of the Council and Boards, might easily justify its existence. But the greater part of its work, the Recess Committee saw, would relate to special localities, and could not succeed without the cordial co-operation of the people immediately concerned. This fact brought Mr. Gerald Balfour face to face with a problem which the Recess Committee could not solve in its day, because, when it sat, there still existed the old grand jury system, though its early abolition had been promised. It was extremely fortunate that to the same minister fell the task of framing both the Act of 1898, which revolutionised local government, and the Act of 1899, now under review. The success with which these two Acts were linked together by the provisions of the latter forms an
The local authorities created by the Act of 1898 provided the machinery for enabling the representatives of the people to decide themselves, to a large extent, upon the nature of the particular measures to be adopted in each locality and to carry out the schemes when formulated. The Act creating the new Department empowered the council of any county or of any urban district, or any two or more public bodies jointly, to appoint committees, composed partly of members of the local bodies and partly of co-opted persons, for the purpose of carrying out such of the Department's schemes as are of local, and not of general importance. True to the underlying principle of the new movementthe principle of self-reliance and local effortthe Act lays it down that the Department shall not, in the absence of any special considerations, apply or approve of the application of money . . . to schemes in respect of which aid is not given out of money provided by local authorities or from other local sources. To meet this requirement the local authorities are given the power of raising a limited rate for the purposes of the Act. By these two simple provisions for local administration and local combination, the people of each district were made voluntarily contributory both in effort and in money, towards the new practical
and refers mainly to the transaction of the fiscal business of the new local authorities. From a different point of observation I shall presently bear witness to a display of administrative capacity on the part of the many statutory committees, appointed by County, Borough, and District Councils to co-operate with the Department, which is most creditable to the thought and feeling of the people.[Footnote: See Report of the Local Government Board, 1901 2.]
It would be quite unfair to a large body of farmers in
Both for the sake of efficiency in its educational work, and of economy in administration, the Department would be obliged to lay stress on the value of organisation.
But there are other reasons for its doing so: industrial, moral, and social. In an able critique upon Bodley's France Madame Darmesteter, writing in the Contemporary Review, July, 1898, points out that even so well informed an observer of French life as the author of that remarkable book failed to appreciate the steadying influence exercised upon the French body politic by the network of voluntary associations, the syndicats agricoles, which are the analogues and, to some extent, the prototypes, in France of our agricultural societies in Ireland. The late Mr. Hanbury, during his too brief career as President of the Board of Agriculture, frequently dwelt upon the importance of organising similar associations in England as a necessary step in the development of the new agricultural policy which he foreshadowed. His successor, Lord Onslow, has fully endorsed his views, and in his speeches is to be found the same appreciation of the exemplary self-reliance of the Irish farmers. I have already referred to the keen interest which both agricultural reformers and English and Welsh County Councils have been taking in the unexpectedly progressive efforts of the Irish farmers to reorganise their industry and place themselves in a position to take advantage of State assistance. I believe that our farmers are going to the[Footnote: See Annual General Report of the Department 1900-1901, pp. 25 27.]
And it is not only for its foundation upon self-reliance that the latest development of Irish Government will have a living interest for economists and students of political philosophy. They will see in the facts under review a rapid and altogether healthy evolution of the Irish policy so honourably associated with the name of Mr. Arthur Balfour. His Chief Secretaryship, when all its storm and stress have been forgotten, will be remembered for the opening up of the desolate, poverty-stricken western seaboard by light railways, and for the creation of the Congested Districts Board. The latter institution has gained so wide and, as I think, well merited popularity, that many thought its extension to other parts of Ireland would have been a simpler and safer method of procedure than that actually recommended by the Recess Committee, and adopted by Mr. Gerald Balfour. The Land Act of 1891 applied a treatment to the problem of the congested districtsa problem of economic depression and industrial backwardness, differing rather in degree than in kind from the economic problem of the greater part of rural Irelandas simple as it was new. A large capital sum of Irish moneys was handed over to an unpaid commission consisting of Irishmen who were
I agree with those who hold that Mr. Arthur Balfour's plan was the best that could be adopted at the moment. But events have marched rapidly since 1891, and wholly new possibilities in the sphere of Irish economic legislation and administration have been revealed. A new Irish mind has now to be taken into account, and to be made part of any ameliorative Irish policy. Hence it was not only possible, but desirable, to administer State help more democratically in 1899 than in 1891. The policy of the Congested Districts Board was a notable advance upon the inaction of the State in the pre-famine times, and upon the system of doles and somewhat objectless relief works of the latter half of the nineteenth century; but the policy of the new departure now under review was no less notable a departure from the paternalism of the Congested Districts Board. When that body was called into existence it was thought necessary to rely on persons nominated by the Government. When the Department was created eight years later it was found possible, owing to the broadening of the basis of local
The two departments are in constant consultation as to the co-ordination of their work, so as to avoid conflict of administrative system and sociological principle in adjoining districts; and much has already been done in this direction. My own experience has not only made me a firm believer in the principle of self-help, but I carry my belief to the extreme length of holding that the poorer a community is the more essential is it to throw it as much as possible on its own resources, in order to develop self-reliance. I recognise, however, the undesirability of too sudden changes of system in these matters. Meanwhile, I may add in this connection that the Wyndham Land Act enormously increases the importance of the Congested Districts Board in regard to its main functionthat of dealing directly with congestion, by the purchase and resettlement of estates, the migration of families, and the enlargement of holdings.
[Footnote: Cf. ante, pp. 46-49.]
I have now said enough about the aims and objects, the constitution and powers, and the relations with other Governmental institutions, of the new Department, to enable the reader to form a fairly accurate estimate of its general character, scope and purpose. From what it is I shall pass in the next chapter to what it does, and there I must describe its everyday work in some detail. But I wish I could also give the reader an adequate
When in Upper Merrion-street, Dublin, opposite to the Land Commission, big brass plates appeared upon the doors of a row of houses announcing that there was domiciled the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, the average man in the street might have been expected to murmur, Another Castle Board, and pass on. It was not long, however, before our visiting list became somewhat embarrassing. We have since got down, as I have said, to a more humdrum, though no less interesting, official life inside the Department. But let the reader imagine himself to have been concealed behind a screen in my office on a day when some event, like the Dublin Horse Show, brought crowds in from the country to the Irish capital. Such an experience would certainly have given him a new understanding of some then neglected men and things. While I was opening the morning's letters and dealing with Files marked urgent, he would see nothing to distinguish my day's work from that of other ministers, who act as a link between the permanent officials of a spending Department and the Government of the day. But presently a stream of callers would set in, and he would begin to realise that the minister is, in this case, a human link of another kinda link between the people and the Government. A courteous and discreet Private Secretary, having attended to those who have come to the wrong department, and to those who are satisfied with an interview with him or with the officer who would have to attend to their particular business,
First comes a visitor, who turns out to be a man with an idea, just home from an unpronounceable address in Scandinavia. He has come to tell me that we have in Ireland a perfect gold mine, if we only knew itin extent never was there such a gold fieldno illusory pocketsgood payable stuff in sight for centuries to comeand so on for five precious minutes, which seem like half a day, during which I have realised that he is an inventor, and that it is no good asking him to come to the point. But I keep my eye riveted on his leather bag which is filled to bursting point, and manifest an intelligent interest and burning curiosity. The suggestion works, and out of the bag come black bars and balls, samples of fabrics ranging from sack-cloth to fine linen, buttons, combs, papers for packing and for polite correspondence, bottles of queer black fluid, and a host of other miscellaneous wares. I realise that the particular solution of the Irish Question which is about to be un
The next visitor, who brings with him a son and a daughter, is himself the product of an Irish bog in the wildest of the wilds. His Parish Priest had sent him to me. A little awkwardness, which is soon dispelled, and the point is reached. This fine specimen of the bone and sinew has had a hard struggle to bring up his long family; but, with a capable wife, who makes the most of the res angusta domiof the pig, the poultry, and even of the butter from the little black cows on the mountainhe has risen to the extent of his opportunities. The children are all doing something. Lace and crochet come out of the cabin, the yarn from the wool of the mountainy sheep, carded and spun at home, is feeding the latest type of hosiery knitting machine and the hereditary handloom. The story of this man's life which was written to me by the priest cannot
And now enters a sporting friend of mine, a practical angler, who comes with a very familiar tale of woe. The state of the salmon fisheries is deplorable: if the Department does not fulfil its obvious duties there will not be a salmon in Ireland outside a museum in ten years more. He has lived for forty-five years on the banks of a salmon river, and he knows that I don't fish. But this much the conversation reveals: his own knowledge of the subject is confined to the piece of river he happens to own, the gossip he hears at his club, and the ideas of the particular poacher he employs as his gillie. His suggested remedy is the abolition of all netting. But I have
At the end of this interview a messenger brings a telegram for himself from a stockowner in a remote district.
My pigs, runs one of the most business-like[Footnote: No fiction about this, nor about the following letter to the Secretary: The Scratatory, Vitny Dept. Honord Sir, I want to let ye know the terible state we're in now. Al the pigs about here is dyin in showers. Send down a Vit at oncet.
]
So far it has been an interesting morning bright with the activities out of which the future is to be made. The element of hope has predominated, but now comes a visitor who wishes to see me upon the one part of my duties and responsibilities which is distasteful to methe exercise of patronage. He has been unloaded upon me by an influential person, upon whom he has more legitimate claims than upon the Department. He has prepared the way for a favourable reception by getting his friends to write to my friends, many of whom have already fulfilled a promise to interview me in his behalf. His mother and two maiden aunts have written letters which have drawn from my poor Private Secretary, who has to read them all, the dry quotation, there's such
One more typea Nationalist Member of Parliament! He does not often darken the door of a Government officethey all have the same structural defect, no front stairshe never has asked and never thought he would ask anything from the Government. But he is interested in some poor fishermen of County Clare who pursue their calling under cruel disadvantages for want of the protection from the Atlantic rollers which a small breakwater would afford. It is true that they were the worst constituents he hadwent against him in The Split,but if I saw how they lived, and so on. I knew all about the case. A breakwater to be of any use would cost a very large sum, and the local authority, though sympathetic, did not see their way to contribute their proportion, and without a local contribution, I explained, the Department could not, consistently with its principles, unless in most exceptionalHere he breaks in: Oh! that red tape. You're as bad as the restexceptional, indeed! Why, everything is exceptional in my constituency. I am a bit that way myself. But, seriously, the condition of these poor people would move even a Government official. Besides, you remember the night I made thirteen speeches on the Naval Estimatesthe Government wanted a little matter of twenty millionsand you met me in the Lobby and told me you wished to go to bed,
Well, I would go into the matter again very carefullyfor I thought we might help these fishermen in some other wayand write to him. He leaves me; and, while outside the door he travels over the main points with my Private Secretary, the lights and shades in the picture which this strange personality has left on my mind throw me back behind the practical things of to-day. In Parliament facing the Sassanach, in Ireland facing their police, he has for yearsthe best years of his lifedisplayed the same love of fighting for fighting's sake. In the riots he has provoked, and they are not a few, he is ever regardless of his own skin, and would be truly miserable if he indicted any serious bodily harm on a human beingeven a landlord. It is impossible not to like this very human anachronism, who, within the limitations imposed by the convenience of a citizenship to which he unwillingly belongs, does battle For Faith, and Fame, and Honour, and the ruined hearths of Clare.
The reader may take all this as fiction. I am sure no one will annoy me by trying on any of the caps I have
In the preceding chapter I attempted to give to the reader a rough impression of the general purpose and miscellaneous functions of the new Department. I described in some detail the constitution and powers of the Council of Agriculturea sort of Business Parliamentwhich criticises our doings and elects representatives on our Boards; and of the two Boards which, in addition to their advisory functions, possess the power of the purse. I laid special stress upon the important part these instruments of the popular will were intended to play as a link between the people and the Department. I gave a similar description and explanation of the Committees of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, appointed by local representative bodies, by means of which the people were brought into touch with the local as distinct from the central work, and made responsible for its success. The details were necessarily dull; and so also must be those which will now be required in order to indicate the general nature and scope of the work for the accomplishment of which all this machinery was designed. Yet I am not without
The Department has at the time of writing been in existence for three years, the term of office, it will be remembered, of the Council of Agriculture and of the two Boards. It would be unreasonable to expect in so short a time any great achievement; but the understanding critic will attach importance rather to the spirit in which the work was approached than to the actual amount of work which was accomplished. He may say that no true estimate of its value can be formed until the enthusiasm aroused by its novelty has had time to wear off. Those of us who know the real character of the work are quite satisfied that the interest which it aroused during the period in which the people had yet to grasp its meaning and utility is not likely to become less real as the blossom fades and the fruit begins to swell. The attitude of the Irish people towards the Department and its work has not been that of a child towards a new toy, but of a full-grown man towards a piece of his life's work, upon which he feels that he entered all too late. Indeed, so quickly have the people grasped the significance of the new opportunities for material advancement now placed within their reach, that the Department has had to carry out, and to assist the statutory local committees in carrying out, a number and variety of schemes which, at any rate, proved that
I shall deal as mercifully as I can with my readers in helping them towards an understanding of what has been actually done in the three years under review. I am aware that if I were to attempt a description of all the schemes which the variety of local needs suggested, and in the execution of which the assistance of the many-sided Department was sought and obtained, I should lose the patient readers, who have not already fainted by the way, in a jungle where they could not see the wood for the trees. These things can be studied by those interested,and they I hope, in Ireland at any rate, are not fewin the Annual Reports and other official publications of the Department. For the general reader I must try to indicate in
I think the best way of giving the information which is required for an understanding of our somewhat complicated scheme for agricultural and industrial development under democratic control is first to explain the line of demarcation which we have drawn between the respective functions of the Department and the people's committees throughout the country; and then I must give a rapid description of some of the most important features of the Department's policy and programme. I shall add a sufficiency of detail from the actual work accomplished in these organising and experimental years, to illustrate both the difficulties which are incidental to such a policy, and the manner in which these difficulties may be surmounted.
When it became manifest that both the country
Although harmony now usually exists between the local and central authorities to the advantage and comfort of both, a considerable amount of friction was inevitable until they got to understand each other. The occasional over-riding of local desires by the autocratic Department, which in the first rush of its work had to act in a somewhat peremptory fashion, was, no doubt, irritating. Now, however, it is generally recognised that the central body, having not only the advice of its experts and access to information from similar Departments in other
Passing now from the conditions under which the Department's work is done, we come to review some typical portions of the work itself so far as it has proceeded. This falls naturally, both as regards that which is done by the central authority for the country at large and that which is locally administered, into two divisions. The first consists of direct aid to agriculture and other rural industries, and to sea and inland fisheries. The second consists of indirect aid given to these objects, and also to town manufactures and commerce, through educationa term which must be interpreted in its widest sense. Needless to say, direct aids, being tangible and immediately beneficial, are the more popular: a bull, a boat, or a hand-loom is more readily appreciated than a lecture, a leaflet, or an idea. Yet in the Department we all realiseand, what is more important, the people are coming to realisethat by far the most important work we have to do is that which belongs to the sphere of education, especially education which has a distinctly practical aim. To this branch of the subject I shall, therefore, first direct the reader's attention.
It must be remembered that, for reasons fully set out in the earlier portions of the book, I am treating the Irish Question as being, in its most important economic and social aspects, the problem of rural life. The Department's scheme of technical instruction, therefore, need not here be detailed in its application to the needs of our few manufacturing towns, but only in its application to agriculture and the subsidiary industries. I do not suggest that the questions relating to the revival of industry in our large manufacturing centres and provincial towns are not of the first importance. The local authorities in these places have eagerly come into the movement, and the Department has already taken part in founding, in our cities and larger towns, comprehensive schemes of technical education, as to the outcome of which we have every reason to be hopeful. Not only that, but it is highly necessary for the Department to consider these schemes in close relation to its work upon the more specially rural problems, for, as I have said elsewhere,
the interdependence of town and country, and the establishment of proper relations between their systems of industry and education, is a prime factor in Irish prosperity. But the rural problem, as I have so often reiterated, is the core of the Irish Question; and to deal at all adequately with technical education, so far as we carry it on upon lines common both to Great Britain and Ireland, would lead us too far afield on the present occasion. I must, therefore, content[Footnote: Pages 38, 39.]
In the case of agriculture our task is perfectly plain. We know pretty well what we want to do, for we are dealing with an existing industry, and with known conditions. The productivity of the soil, the demand of the market, the means of transport from the one to the other, are all easily ascertainable. What most needs to be provided in Ireland is a much higher technical skill, a more advanced scientific and commercial knowledge, as applied to agricultural production and distribution.
This, in our belief, depends, more than upon any other agency, upon the soundness of the education which is provided to develop the capacities of those in charge of these operations. Our chief difficulty is that of co-ordinating our teaching of technical agriculture with the general educational systems of the countrya difficulty which the other educational authorities are all united with us in seeking to remove.[Footnote: It must be borne in mind that the Department is not officially concerned with the question of the economic distribution of land referred to on pp. 46 49.]
When, on the other hand, educationagain, I believe, the chief agency for the purposeis considered as a means for the creation of new industries, we come face to face with a wholly different problem. We have no
The natural trend of our educational policy will now be clear. Leaving out of account large towns, where our problem is, as I have said, the same as that which confronts the industrial classes in the manufacturing centres of Great Britain, we are chiefly concerned with the application of science to the cultivation of the soil and
We early came to the conclusion that we could not expect to find a system which we could simply transplant from some other country. The system adopted in Great Britain, where each county or group of counties maintains an agricultural college and an experimental farm, and many more elaborate systems on the continent, were all found on examination to be inapplicable to our own rural conditions, unsuitable to the national character, and unrelated to the history of our agriculture. Many of these schemes might have turned out a few highly qualified authorities on the theory of agriculture, and even good practical directors for those who farm on a large scale. But we are dealing with a country with great possibilities from an agricultural point of view, but where, nevertheless, agriculture in many parts is in a very backward condition, and where it is probably safe to say that three-fifths of the farms are crowded on one-fourth of the land. We are dealing with a community with whom the systems of elementary secondary and higher education have not tended to prepare the student for agricultural pursuits. A system
We were met at the outset by the difficulty which would apply to any systemthat of finding trained teachers. This deficiency was felt in two directionsfirst, in the secondary school, in which the preliminary scientific studies should be undertaken, which are necessary to enable a lad to profit by more advanced instruction later on; and, secondly, in the special training of technical agriculture. It would not have been desirable to overcome these difficulties by any very extensive importation of teachers from without. I certainly hold the occasional importation of teachers with outside experience to be most desirable, but these should not form more than a leaven of the pedagogic lump; for it is a serious hindrance when to the task of familiarising
The manner in which the teacher difficulty was surmounted may be briefly stated, first, as regards the school, and, secondly, as regards the teaching of agriculture. Those already engaged in the teaching profession could not be relegated again to the status pupillaris. There was only one way in which they could assist us to overcome the difficulty, and that involved a great sacrifice on their part, the sacrifice of their well-earned vacation, but a sacrifice which they willingly made. The teachers most urgently needed were those of practical science, with knowledge of experimental work; and about five hundred teachers from secondary schools, in order to qualify themselves, have attended summer courses specially organised by the Department at several centres in Ireland, while about four hundred have availed themselves of special summer courses in such subjects as drawing, manual instruction, domestic economy, building construction, wood-carving and modelling.
For the provision of a future supply of thoroughly trained teachers of science and of technology, including agriculture, the Royal College of Science has been reorganised. Although this institution was brought under the new conditions little more than three years ago, it will be seen that no time has been lost when I state that the first batch of men who have received a three
In regard to agricultural instruction we had to begin by carefully considering what, among many alternative plans, should be our immediate as well as our more remote aims. The Department's officers had studied Continental systems, and some of them had taken part in establishing systems of agricultural education in Great Britain. But it was not until the summer of 1901 that we had sufficiently studied the question in Ireland itself, with direct reference to the history, the environment, and the ideals of the people, to justify us in initiating a policy or formulating a definite programme for its execution.
The main object was to secure for the youth of the present generation who will later be concerned with agriculture, sound and thorough instruction in its principles and practice. Everyone who has given any thought to the subject knows how difficult it is to teach technical agriculture unless provision has been made in the general education of the country for instruction in those fundamental principles of science which, recognised or unrecognised, lie at the root of, and profoundly influence agricultural practice. This foundation, as I have shown, is now being[Footnote: For a full description of the Department's scheme of agricultural education I may refer to a Memorandum on Agricultural Education in Ireland, written by the author and published by the Department, July, 1903.]
The teacher difficulty, experienced on all sides of our work, was probably felt more acutely in regard to the specialised teachers of agriculture than in any other connection. Here it was necessary to take the young men brought up upon farms and possessed of the normal qualifications of the Irish practical farmer. We then had to make them into teachers by adding to their inherited and home-manufactured capacities a scientific training. In the training of agricultural teachers the Albert
Partly by these methods, partly by the temporary engagement of lecturers on special subjects, and partly by the appointment of trained teachers from England or Scotland, the system of itinerant instruction has been brought into operation as fully as could be expected in the time. Already half the County Committees have been provided with County instructors, while the remainder have nearly all drafted schemes and allocated funds for a similar purpose, ready to go to work as soon as more teachers have been trained.
The Itinerant Instruction scheme, it may be pointed out, besides one obvious, has another less immediately recognisable purpose. The direct business of the itinerant instructor is, by the aid of experimental plots, simple lectures, and demonstrations, to teach the farmers of his district as much as they can take in without the scientific preparation in which, as adults who have grown up under the old system of education, they are still lacking. But he does more than that. He not only conducts a school for adults, but in the very process of instruction he necessarily makes them aware of the vital necessity of a school for the young; and they begin, as parents, to understand and to desire the kind of instruction in the
This preparation is provided for as follows. To the Department, as has already been explained, was handed over the administration of the Science and Art Grants formerly administered by South Kensington. The Department accordingly drew up a programme of experimental science and drawing, carrying capitation grants, for day secondary schools. The Intermediate Education Board, acting on the suggestion of the Consultative Committee for Co-ordinating Education,
adopted this programme and at the same time undertook to accept the reports of the Department's inspectors as the basis of their awards in the new subject. These steps insured the rapid and general introduction of this practical teaching in secondary schools, and, owing particularly to the spirit in which their authorities and teaching staffs accepted the innovation, the work has been carried out with the happiest results.[Footnote: See ante, pp. 236 238.]
I now come to the subjects grouped together under the classification of domestic economy. These differ only in detail in their application to town and country. To these subjects the Department attaches great importance. In the industrial life of manufacturing towns I am persuaded that far too little thought has been given to this element of industrial efficiency. From a purely economic point of view a
The establishment of such a system and the task of making it operative and effective in the country is beset with difficulties. The teacher difficulty confronts us again, and also that of making pupils and their parents understand that there are other objects in domestic training than that of qualifying for domestic service. A corps of instructresses in domestic economy is, however, already abroad throughout the country, nearly all the County Councils having already appointed them. Some of these teachers, who have made the best contributions towards the as yet only partially determined question of the ultimate aim and present possibilities of a course of instruction in hygiene, laundry work, cookery, the management of children, sewing, and so forth, have told me that the demand
Women teachers of poultry-keeping, dairying, domestic science and kindred subjects are trained at the Munster Institute, Cork, and the School of Domestic Economy, Kildare Street, Dublin, both of which have been equipped to meet the needs of the new programme. The want of teachers, and not any lack of interest on the part of the country, has alone prevented all the counties from adopting schemes for encouraging improvement in all these branches of work. I may add that more than hundred and fifty of these qualified teachers are now at work under County Committees.
I have already, in this chapter, indicated that outside large industrial centres, our educational policy is, broadly speaking, twofold. We seek, in the first place, through our programme in Experimental Science and its allied subjects, now so generally adopted by secondary schools in Ireland, to give that fundamental training in science and scientific method which, most thinkers are agreed, constitutes a condition precedent to sound specialised
I do not ignore the argument that such home industries must in time give way before the competition of highly-organised factory industries. The simple answer is that it is desirable, and indeed necessary, to employ the energy now running to waste in our rural districtsenergy which cannot in the nature of things be employed in highly-organised industries. To the small farmer and his family, time is a realisable, though too often unrealised, asset, and it is part of our aim to aid the family income by employing their waste time. Even if we can only cause them to do at home what they now pay someone else to do, we shall not only have improved their budget but shall have contributed to the elevation of the standard of home life, and thus, in no small measure, to the solution of the difficult problem of rural life in Ireland.
I think the reader will now understand the general character of the problem with which we were confronted and the means by which its solution is being sought. Our policy was not one which was likely to commend itself to the man in the street. Indeed, to be quite candid, it was a little disappointing even to myself that I could not immortalise my appointment by erecting monuments both to my constructive ability and to my educational zeal in the shape of stately edifices at convenient railway centres, preferably along the tourist routes. We have had to stand the fire of the critic fresh from his holiday on the Continent where he had seen agricultural and technological institutions, magnificently housed and lavishly equipped, fitting generations of young men and young women for competition with our less fortunate countrymen. It is hard to prevail in argument against the man who has gone and seen for himself. It is useless to point out to the man with a kodak that the Corinthian façade and the marble columns of the aula maxima which aroused his patriotic envy are but a small part of the educational structure which he saw and thought he understood. If he would read the history of the systems and trace the successive stages by which the need for these great institutions was established, he would have a little more sympathy with the difficulties of the Department, a little more patience with its Fabian policy.
I must not, however, utter a word which suggests that the Department has any ground of complaint against the
Already we have had some gratifying evidences that the country is with us in the paramount importance we attach to education as the real need of the hour. Most readers will be surprised to hear that in the short time the Department has been at work it has aided in the equipment of nearly two hundred science laboratories and of about fifty manual instruction workshops, while the many-sided programme involved in the movement as a whole is in operation in some four hundred schools attended by thirty-six thousand pupils.
Nothing can be more gratifying than the unanimous testimony of the officers of the Department to the increasing practical intelligence and reasonableness of the numerous Committees responsible for the local administration of the schemes which the Department has to approve of and supervise. The demand for visible money's worth has largely given place to a genuine desire for schemes having a practical educational value for the industry of the district. County
Under the heading of direct aids to agriculture, rural industries, and sea and inland fisheries, there is much important and useful work which the Department has set in motion, partly by the use of its funds and partly by suggestion and the organisation of local effort. The most obvious, popular and easily understood schemes were those directed to the improvement of live stock. The Department exercised its supervision and control with the help of advisory committees composed of the best experts it could get to volunteer advice upon the various classes of live stock. It is unnecessary to give any details of these schemes. The Department profited by the experience of, and received considerable assistance from the Royal Dublin Society, which had for many years administered a Government grant for the improvement of horses and cattle. The broad principle adopted by the Department was that its efforts and its available resources should be devoted rather to improving the quality, than to increasing the quantity, of the stock in the country, the latter function being regarded as belonging to the region of private enterprise.
It is impossible to over-estimate the importance to the country of having a widespread interest aroused and discussion stimulated on problems of breeding which affect a trade of vast importance to the economic standing of the countrya trade which now reaches in horned cattle alone an annual export of nearly three quarters of a million animals. All manner of practical discussions were set on foot, ranging from the production of the ideal, the general purposes cow, to that controversy which competes, in the virulence with which it is waged, with the political, the educational, and the fiscal questionsthe question whether the hackney strain will bring a new era of prosperity to Ireland, or whether it will irretrievably destroy the reputation of the Irish hunter. The discussion of these problems has been accompanied by much practical work which, in due time, cannot fail to produce a considerable improvement upon the breed of different classes of live stock. In one year over one thousand sires have been selected by the experts of the Department for admission to the stock improvement schemes. Probably an equal number of breeding animals offered for inspection have been rejected. Many a cause célèbre has not unnaturally arisen over the decisions of the equestrian tribunal, and there have not been wanting threats that the attention of Parliament should be called to the gross partiality of the Department which has cast a reflection upon the form of stallion A or upon the constitutional soundness of stallion B. On the whole, as far as I can gather, the best authorities in the country
Again for details I must refer the reader to official documents. There he will find as much information as he can digest about the vast variety of agricultural activities which originate sometimes with the Department's officers or with its Journal and leaflets, the circulation of which has no longer to be stimulated from our Statistics and Intelligence bureau, and sometimes emanate from the local committees, whose growing interest in the work naturally leads to the discovery of fresh needs and hitherto unthought of possibilities of agricultural and industrial improvement. I may, however, indicate a few of the subjects which have been gone into even in these years while the new Department has been trying so far as it might, without sacrifice of efficiency and sound economic principle, to keep pace with the feverish anxiety of a genuinely interested people to get to work upon schemes which they believe to be practical, sound, and of permanent utility.
A question which has troubled administrators of State aid to every progressive agricultural community, and which each country must settle for itself, is by what form of object lesson in ordinary agriculture intelligent local interest can best be aroused. We have advocated widely diffused small experimental plots, and they have done much good. Probably the most useful
The branch of the Department's work which deals with the Sea-fisheries can only be very briefly touched on. It falls into two main heads which may roughly be termed the administrative and the scientific; the latter, of course, having economic developments as its ultimate object. The issue of loans to fishermen for the purchase of boats and gear, contributing to the cost of fishery
On the more directly scientific side, the Department has undertaken the survey of the trawling grounds around the coast to obtain an exact knowledge of the movements of the marketable fish at different times of their life, so that we may be guided in making by-laws and regulations by a full knowledge of the times and places at which protection is necessary. The biological and physical conditions of the western seas are also being studied in special reference to the mackerel fishery, with the object of correlating certain readily observable phenomena with the movements of the fish, and so of
While these various practical projects have been in operation, we have done our best to keep abreast of the times by sending missions to other countries, consisting of an expert accompanied by practical Irishmen who would bring home information which was applicable to the conditions of our own country. The first batch of itinerant instructors in agriculture, whose training for the important work of laying the foundations for our whole scheme of agricultural instruction I have referred to, were taken on a continental tour by the Professor of Agriculture at the Royal College of Science, in order to give special advantages to a portion of our outdoor staff upon the success of whose work the rate of our progress in agricultural development might largely depend. And not only have we in our first three years gleaned as much information as possible by sending qualified Irishmen to study abroad the industries in which we were particularly interested, but we also took steps to give the mass of our people at home an opportunity of studying these industries for themselves. With the somewhat unique experiment carried out for this object, I will conclude the story of the new Department's activities in its early years.
The part we took at the Cork Exhibition of 1902 was well understood in Ireland, but not perhaps elsewhere. We secured a large space both in the main Industrial Hall and in the grounds, and gave an illustration not of what Ireland had done, but of what, in our opinion, the country might achieve in the way of agricultural and industrial development in the near future. Exhibiting on the one hand our available resources in the way of raw material, we gave, on the other hand, demonstrations of a large number of industries in actual operation. These exhibits, imported with their workers, machinery and tools, from several European countries and from Great Britain, all belonged to some class of industry which, in our belief, was capable of successful development in Ireland. In the indoor part of the exhibit there was nothing very original, except perhaps in its close relation to the work of a government department. But what attracted by far the greatest interest and attention was a series of object lessons in many phases of farm activities, where, in our opinion, great and immediate improvements might be made. Here were to be seen varieties of crops under various systems of treatment, demonstrations of sheep-dipping, calf-rearing on different foods, illustrations of the different breeds of fowl and systems of poultry management, model buildings and gardens for farmer and labourer; while in separate buildings the drying and pressing of fruit and vegetables, the manufacture of butter and cheese, and a very comprehensive
We kept at the Exhibition, for six months, a staff of competent experts, whose instructions were to give to all comers this simple lesson. They were to bring home to our people that, here in Ireland before their very eyes, there were industries being carried on by foreigners, by English men, by Scotchmen, and in some instances by Irishmen but in all cases by men and women who had no advantage over our workers except that they had the technical training which it was the desire of the Department to give to the workers of Ireland. The officials of the Department entered into the spirit of this scheme enthusiastically and cheerfully, some of them, in addition to their ordinary work, turning the office into a tourist agency for these busy months. With the generous help of the railway companies they organised parties of farmers, artisans, school teachers, members of the statutory committees, and, in fact, of all to whom it was of importance to give this object lesson upon the relations between practical education and the promotion of industry. Nearly 100,000 persons were thus moved to Cork and back before the Exhibition closedan achievement largely due to the assistance given by the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society and the clergy throughout the country.
This experiment, both in its conception and in its
An American visitor who, as I afterwards learned, takes an active part in the discussion of the rural problems of his own country, disembarked at Queenstown in order to take in the Cork Exhibition. In his rush through Dublin he took in the Department and the writer. Mr. Vice-President, he said, before the handshaking was completed, I have visited all the great Expositions held in my time. I have been to the Cork Exposition. I often saw more things, but never more idees.
With this characteristically rapid appreciation of a movement which seeks to turn Irish thought to action, my strange visitor vanished as suddenly as he came.
Those whose sympathy with Ireland has induced them to persevere through the mass of details with which this story of small beginnings is pieced together may wonder why the bearing of hopeful efforts for bringing prosperity and contentment to Ireland upon the mental attitude of millions of Irishmen scattered throughout the British
Such is the purpose of this book. I do not wish to attach any exaggerated importance to the scheme of social and economic reform of which I have attempted to give a faithful account; nor is it in their practical achievement, be it great or small, that the initiators
Let me summarise in a few words what has been, so far, actually accomplished. Those who did the work of which I have written first launched upon Irish life a scheme of organised self-help which, perhaps more by good luck than design, proved to be in accordance with the inherited instincts of the people, and, therefore, moved them to action. Next they called for, and in due season obtained, a department of government with adequate powers and means to aid in developing the resources of the country, so far as this end could be attained without transgressing the limits of beneficial State interference with the business of the people. In its constitution this department was so linked with the representative insti
That a movement thus conceived should so rapidly have overcome its initial difficulties and should, I might almost add, have passed beyond the experimental stage, will suggest to any thoughtful reader that above and beyond the removal by legislation of obstacles to progressand much has been accomplished in this way of recent yearsthere must have been new, positive influences at work upon the national mind. These will be found in the growing recognition of the fact that the path of progress lies along distinctively Irish lines, and that otherwise it will not be trodden by the Irish people. Much good in the same direction has been done, too, by the generous and authoritative admission by England that the future development of Ireland should be assisted and promoted with a full and constant regard to the special traditions of the country.
But[Footnote: Speech of the Lord Lieutenant to the Incorporated Law Society November, 20th, 1902. See also p. 170.]
THE END.