HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES

ULSTER

"Violent measures have been threatened. I think the best compliment I can pay to those who have threatened us is to take no notice whatever of the threats, but to treat them as momentary ebullitions, which will pa.s.s away with the fears from which they spring, and at the same time to adopt on our part every reasonable measure for disarming those fears."

"Sir, I cannot allow it to be said that a Protestant minority in Ulster or elsewhere is to rule the question for Ireland. I am aware of no const.i.tutional doctrine on which such a conclusion could be adopted or justified. But I think that the Protestant minority should have its wishes considered to the utmost practicable extent in any form which they may a.s.sume."

GLADSTONE (1893).

CHAPTER V.

HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES

"Sooner or later," said a wise man to me the other day, "always sooner or later in the Home Rule question you b.u.mp up against religion." That is, unhappily, still true, though not so true to-day as in 1886 or in 1893. No one who visits Ireland to-day can doubt that the religious hatreds of the past are being softened; but, unhappily, this process, as recent events have vividly shown us, is still fiercely resisted by a small minority.

It may almost be said that in Ireland religious intolerance is a political vested interest. It would indeed be impossible to justify the immense preponderance of salaried power and place still given at the centre to the Protestant minority[47] unless you could maintain the idea that the Catholic is a dangerous man when in a place of power.

That consideration, doubtless largely unconscious, may yet partly explain the immense amount of energy devoted in the north-east of Ireland to the encouragement of religious prejudice--honest in many of the rank-and-file, artificial, I fear, in many of the organisers.

BELFAST

Belfast, so like a great modern city in its magnificent outward aspect, is still largely mediaeval at heart. Its chief social energies are thrown into that vast and powerful organisation known as the "Orange Society"--still wearing the badges of the seventeenth century, still uttering its war-cries, and still feeding on its pa.s.sions. This immense religious club has to support in the modern age that theory of religious incompatibility which nearly every other community has long ago abandoned. It has to justify itself in excluding from the munic.i.p.al honours of Belfast almost every Roman Catholic. It has to justify the majority of 300,000 Belfast Protestants in giving a small and inadequate representation among the rulers of this great wealthy town to the minority of 100,000 Catholics. To maintain this policy of Ulster ascendancy the Orange chiefs watch every doc.u.ment that comes from Rome with a lynx eye, and try to catch a glimpse of the "Scarlet Woman" behind every Latin rescript.

All this may appear to some good politics; but surely it is past tolerance when these manufacturers of intolerance talk of the intolerance of others.

In all these respects Belfast stands almost alone in Ireland. A canon of the Catholic Church--a man of winning manners and charming personality, who lives on quite friendly terms with his Protestant neighbours in the South of Ireland--told me that on the only occasion when he visited Belfast he was spat at in the streets. The story is quite credible to those who have watched the deliberate manipulation of the worst religious pa.s.sions by the party organisers of Ulster, not always una.s.sisted by their colleagues in London.

One result is that if you ask any question as to the character of a man in the city of Belfast, the answer will always come to you in terms of religion. In the South the reply will be, "He is a Nationalist," or "He is a Unionist." But in Belfast it will be, "He is a Catholic," or "He is a Protestant."

So fierce is this feeling in Belfast that until recently all political and social differences were submerged by it, and every fresh effort towards local progress was broken up by the revival of religious prejudice. Things have been somewhat changed by the wonderful social and political crusade, quite independent of all religious differences, carried on by that remarkable young citizen of Belfast, Mr. Joseph Devlin, who captured the const.i.tuency of West Belfast in 1906 and retained it in 1910 largely on a social reform policy. He has for the first time given Ulster a glimpse of something better than religious fanaticism--a social policy based on the unions of religions for the good of all.[48]

This break in the dark clouds must surely spread until a better spirit prevails.

For Belfast, perhaps, has more to gain than any other great Irish city by a policy that would pacify Ireland. If Belfast could once shake off the memory of her immigrant origin, and look to Ireland rather than Great Britain as her native country, she would perceive that the gain of Catholic Ireland must be her gain also. Her prosperity can never be sure or certain as long as it stands out against a background of Irish poverty. The linen industry can never rest secure as long as there are so few industries to support it. The linen merchants cannot really gain by their isolation. Belfast at present has a great export trade. She clothes Great Britain in fine linen. But what about her home trade?

Would not Belfast be even more prosperous if she could clothe Ireland too?--if Ireland could afford to put aside her rags and replace them with "purple and fine linen" from the factories of the North?

Might not Belfast, in that case, be able not merely to enrich her merchants but to raise the social conditions of her own people? For it is unhappily the case that the researches of the Women's Trade Unions have disclosed in Belfast conditions of sweated labour that have surprised and alarmed even the most hardened investigators. The lofty buildings and humming mills of Belfast are revealed to be resting on a swamp of social misery. Nor is this at all remarkable, for the ma.s.s of the people are kept helpless and divided by their religious divisions, which are too often used as a weapon to prevent them from combining for higher wages and shorter hours. Religious fanaticism is not quite so self-sacrificing in its commercial results as superficial observers might suppose.

It is impossible, indeed, that Belfast can continue for ever in a prosperity isolated and aloof from the country in which she is situated. Either she must throw in her lot with Ireland or Ireland must drag Ireland down into one common pit of adversity. Lord Pirrie, the enterprising and fearless director of the great shipbuilding works on Queen's Island--works which maintained their pre-eminence and continued their output through the dark days of the shipbuilding trade on the Clyde and the Thames--has been converted to Home Rule. Other business men will follow his example, for Belfast, as much as any other town in Ireland, suffers in Private Bill legislation from the remoteness of the Legislature and the Administration. She, too, has too often to endure a financial policy not suited to her needs. She, like the rest of Ireland, has everything to gain and nothing to lose by a policy that will enable Ireland to obtain legislation better fitted to the needs of the Irish people.

In spite, indeed, of her outcries, Ulster has already gained more from the policy of the Nationalists at Westminster than from that of the Orange reactionaries who represent half the province at Westminster.

Those Orangemen have identified the robust Radicalism and Presbyterianism of Ulster with the narrowest demands of the Anglican landlords and Tories of England. Happily for Ulster, they have been defeated. The farmers of Ulster are at present buying their farms under the policy of Land Purchase which the Orange Ulstermen resisted. These farmers have freely used the Land Courts which their representatives denounced as revolution and the "end of all things." They are profiting by the triumphs of Nationalist policy even while they denounce the Nationalists in terms which are reserved by other people for criminals and wild beasts.

The best men in Ulster will probably think twice before prolonging a campaign of rebellion. We have heard of late threats of refusal to pay taxes or rents to the Irish Parliament. But what could be more dangerous to a city like Belfast than a no-rent campaign under the guidance of English lawyers? If the farmers are advised not to pay their rents to Dublin, is it not likely that the working-cla.s.s tenants of Belfast may refuse to pay their rents to their own landlords? At their own peril, indeed, will a cla.s.s which largely lives on rent and interest strike a blow at the habits and customs which enforce such payments. The kid-glove revolution of linen merchants might suddenly and swiftly turn into something nearer to the real, red thing. It is dangerous to set examples in revolution.

As Ulster gradually swings round to the inevitable, she will discover that there is a very bright silver lining to what seems to her so black a cloud. Ulster, while still represented at Westminster, will send 59 members to Dublin under the 1912 Bill. Thus she will have no small or mean representation in the future Irish Parliament. She may have far more power than she imagines, if she uses it with wisdom. A strong Progressive section from the industrial North may hold the balance between the parties of the South and centre. It would be rash to predict the future. But there are many causes--education, Free Trade, enlightened local government, to take a few--in which Ireland will gain immensely by a strong, clear progressive lead. "The best is yet to be." Why should not Belfast--Belfast Protestant united with Belfast Catholic--have in these matters a greater and n.o.bler part to play under Home Rule than under the present system of distant, ignorant, absent-minded, rule?

As for religious persecution, the thing would be absurdly impossible under any Home Rule Bill that possessed the guarantees and safeguards of the 1912 Bill. But, beyond those safeguards, Ulster will always have, in any such extreme and improbable event, an appeal to all the forces of the Empire--an appeal which would certainly not be in vain.

The conviction of these truths will gradually penetrate the shrewd brain of Ulster and save her from the madness of rebellion or secession. The patience and moderation of the Government will gradually disarm these men. Who knows whether in the end the majority in Belfast, as in Ulster, as a whole may not voluntarily prefer to join rather than hold aloof from a great national restoration?

In one of his 1893 Home Rule speeches, Mr. Gladstone reminded the House of Commons, with impressive power, of the splendid reception given in 1793 to the Protestant delegates from Grattan's Parliament at Dublin, who had come to plead for the concession of their rights to the Catholics of Ireland.

It was the Act of Union that destroyed all that generous feeling, and revived again the pa.s.sions of ascendancy and fanaticism among the Orangemen of North-east Ulster.

But the old, generous feelings may yet return again.

SOUTHERN ULSTER

The great majority of the Protestants in Ireland stand outside this ring. They have no more share in the good things than the average Catholic. Those men, Irishmen first and Protestants afterwards, are now taking their part in public life and earning their proper share in the rewards of public zeal.

The delegates of the Eighty Club made a special public appeal for information as to cases of religious intolerance. They received a great many responses to this appeal, but it is hardly any exaggeration to say that they found no genuine cases of religious intolerance outside the North-east corner of Ulster, where they received some conspicuous examples of the religious persecution of Liberal Protestants by their Orange co-religionists.[49]

Journeying southwards, however, the Eighty Club delegates pa.s.sed with every mile into a serener atmosphere. They received deputations at every wayside station from the public bodies in the south of Ulster.

These presented doc.u.ments stating the bare facts as to the representation of these two forms of the Christian religion--so often, alas! belying the doctrine of Christian love by the practice of mutual hatred--on their public bodies. They found, for instance, in Monaghan, a predominantly Catholic town, that seven seats on the local Council went to the Unionist and Protestant Party, a considerable concession from a majority large enough in numbers to pack the whole of the council if they so desired. That little town might give a good lesson to some of the boroughs of our great county of London, where it is an almost universal practice for either party to seize the whole of the seats if they are capable of doing so.

Take one more instance in that district--out of the many--in the town of Cavan, a preponderantly Catholic borough. There, out of twenty-three candidates at the last election standing for eighteen seats, four Unionists were elected by a similar method of compromise. Where is the evidence of the Orangemen in their strongholds meting out similar measure to the Catholics?

Pa.s.sing further south they found that although the great majority of the public bodies was naturally Nationalist and Catholic, there was no sign of that spirit of rigid exclusiveness extended towards the Catholics by the Protestants in the city of Belfast. Of course, a large number of the Protestant officials found so frequently in the service of these public bodies are appointed in Ireland by the Crown, and not, as in England, by the local authorities. But the Protestants are not confined to those offices. Dublin has several times freely elected a Protestant to the Lord Mayoralty of that city. In other parts of southern Ireland the Eighty Club found Protestants as masters in the county schools, surveyors of taxes, local registrars, clerks of the works, rate collectors, and public librarians. The Catholics on the local bodies recognise that the Protestants in the south possess, owing to their superior advantages in education, a great proportion of the brains, and they are not slow to do justice to this fact in filling public posts.

In regard to elections, let us be quite candid. It is not to be expected that an Irish elector will return at the head of the poll men who hurl abuse and calumny at the Irish race and at the religion held by the great majority of the Irish race. Treachery to one's cause and one's faith is not required by any proper doctrine of tolerance.

Surrender is not the same thing as compromise. We do not, for instance, expect in England that a Unionist const.i.tuency should return a Liberal, or a Liberal const.i.tuency should return a Tory. We expect men to live up to their faith, and even admire them for doing so. In Ireland, similarly, Nationalist voters, as a whole, prefer Nationalist members, and will continue to do so until this great issue of Home Rule is settled.

CHANCES OF PEACE

But when a Unionist or a Protestant comes forward with a single eye to the public good, and displays in public affairs a broad and generous spirit, he finds no difficulty in securing his place in public life. In county Cork and Tipperary we found Protestant landlords who had sold their estates. Having ceased to be rent collectors, they are becoming real leaders of their people. These landlords are reorganising co-operative societies, encouraging agricultural experiments, looking after schools, and helping generally in the regrowth of Ireland with a real good will. Many of these men are Devolutionists. Take, for instance, Sir Nugent Everard, the public-spirited squire who, with great enterprise, enthusiasm, and perseverance, is reviving that old Irish tobacco industry which once played so big a part in the prosperity of Ireland. Sir Nugent Everard is a Protestant, but he has been elected to his county council. On that council, too, he has been appointed chairman of several committees by his Catholic fellow county councillors.

There is, indeed, at the present moment throughout the south of Ireland a new spirit of willingness, amounting almost to eagerness, to accept the services of all distinguished Protestants who will work for the common good of Ireland. That is not at all surprising when we remember that the Irish Party have, in the past, numbered among their leaders at least three distinguished Protestants--Grattan, b.u.t.t, and Parnell--and at the present day always return a steady percentage of Protestant representatives to the Imperial Parliament.[50]

The plain fact is that, except in the north-east corner, religious intolerance is a dying cause in Ireland, and even in Belfast it is mainly kept alive by artificial respiration frequently administered by English Unionist leaders.

Every phase of Irish life is expressed in Irish humour. Two Irish stories commonly related to-day in the south really throw some light on the change of feeling in Ireland. One is that of a Protestant parson in the south who found that the Bishop was about to visit his parish for a confirmation. But, unhappily, it so happened that there were no young people to confirm. The parson was in despair. After long reflection, he took a great decision. He went across to the Catholic priest and described his unhappy plight. "Indeed," he said, "I shall be a ruined man." "Sure," said the priest sympathetically, "I will lend you a congregation." "How will you do that?" said the parson. "Faith! I'll tell the boys and girls to go across." And the story relates that when the Bishop came down he actually found the church full of "boys and girls" who, for the moment, figured as Protestants.

The second story comes from Ulster, and seems to show that there is some softening even in the rigour of that climate. It is said that "once upon a time," when July 11th came round one of the Orange drummers found that on the last occasion he had broken his drum, and could not get it mended. Finding himself faced with disgrace, he wandered through the town after a drum, and finally found himself looking at a very beautiful specimen of its kind standing in a Catholic schoolroom. After much heart-searching, the Orangeman at last went in, and timidly told the Catholic priest the extremity of his Protestant need. "You shall have the drum," said the priest; "but you must not break it this time." And so, on that condition, the drum was handed over.