Robert Buckley - Ireland as It Is, and as It Would Be Under Home Rule

All the Tralee folks are shy of political talk. They eye you for a long time before they commit themselves, but when once started they can hardly stop, so warm are they, so intensely interested in the great question. Running down the line, a Cork merchant said "The Kerry folks are decent, quiet folks by nature. Do not believe that these simple villagers are the determined murderers they would seem to be. No brighter intellects in Ireland, no better hearts, no more hospitable hosts in the Emerald Isle. They are very superstitious. There you have it all. 'Tis their beautiful ingenuousness that makes them so easily led astray. What do these simple country folks, living on their farms, without books, without newspapers, without communication with large centres – what do they know about intricate State affairs? What can they do but listen to the priest, regarded as the great scholar of the district, reverenced as almost – nay, quite infallible, and credited with the power to give or withhold eternal life? For while in England the people only respect a parson according to the esteem he deserves as a man, in Ireland the priestly office invests the man with a character entirely different from his own, and covers everything. These poor folks felt the pinch of hard times, and the agitators, backed by their Church, saw their opportunity and commenced to use it. Hence the Kerry moonlighters, poor fellows, fighting in their rude and uncouth way for what they believed to be patriotism and freedom. They should be pitied rather than blamed, for they were assuredly acting up to their light, and upon the advice of men they had from childhood been taught to regard as wise, sincere, and disinterested counsellors.

"Ah me, what terrible times we had in Cork! Belfast may boast, but Belfast is not in it. We were in the centre of the fire. The shopkeepers of Patrick Street deserve the fullest recognition from the British nation. They had to furnish juries to well and truly try the moonlighters of Kerry, Clare, and several other counties. They sat for eight months, had to adjourn over Christmas, and those men returned true bills at the peril of their lives. The venue was changed to Cork for all these counties, and every man jack of the jury knew full well that any day some fanatic friend of the convicted men might shoot or stab him in the street. The loyalty of Belfast is all the talk, but it has never undergone so severe a test. There the Loyalists have it all their own way. Here the Loyalists, instead of being three to one, are only one to three. The Ulstermen are the entrenched army; the Cork Unionists are the advanced picket. More judges got promotion from Cork than elsewhere. We changed the barristers' silk to ermine, too. All this shows what we went through. Everything is quiet now; Balfour terrified the life out of them, and Captain Moonlight at the mention of that name would skip like spring-heeled Jack."

The Kerry folks turned out bright as their reputation. It was hard to believe that these simple, kindly peasants had ever stained their beautiful pastoral country with the bloodiest, cruellest deeds of recent times. They have a polite, deferential manner without servility, and a pious way of interpolating prayer and thanksgiving with their ordinary conversation.

"Good morning, Sir."

"Good mornin', an' God save ye, Sorr."

"Fine weather."

"'Tis indeed foine weather, glory be to God."

"Nice country."

"Troth, it is a splindid country. The Lord keep us in it."

A prosperous-looking shop with a portly personage at the door looked so uncommonly Unionistic that I ventured to make a few inquiries re the antiquities of the district. The inevitable topic soon turned up, and to my surprise my friend avowed himself a Home Ruler and a Protectionist. His opinions and illustrations struck me as remarkable, and with his permission I record them here.

"Yes, I am a Home Ruler – in theory. I think Home Rule would be best for both. Best for you and best for me, as the song says; but mark me well – Not Yet.

"You are surprised that I should say Not Yet so emphatically, but the fact is I love my country, and, besides, all my interests and those of my children are bound up with the prosperity of the country. This ought to sharpen a man's wits, if anything could do it, and I have for many years been engaged in thinking out the matter, and my mind is now made up.

"Home Rule from Gladstone will ruin us altogether. We must have Home Rule from Balfour. We must have Home Rule, but we must have it from a Conservative Government. You smile. Is that new to you? It is? Just because Home Rulers in this country cannot afford to express their views at this moment. But the hope is entertained by all, I will say all, the most advanced Irish Home Rulers. By advanced I mean educated, enlightened. Let me give you an illustration which I heard from a friend in Cork.

"Here is Ireland, a delicate plant requiring untold watching and careful training. Around it on the ground are a number of slugs and snails. Or call them hireling agitators if you like. I sprinkle salt around the roots to kill off the brutes and save my darling plant. That salt is Conservatism. It is furnished by people of property, by men who have interests to guard. Salt is a grand thing, let me tell you! Balfour is the man to sprinkle salt. Home Rule from him would be safe. He is the greatest man that ever governed Ireland, but that must be stale to you. You must have heard that everywhere. He put his foot on rebellion and crushed it out of existence. On the other hand the poor folks of the West coast would lie down and let him walk over them. They hold him in such esteem that they would regard it a favour if he would honour them by wiping his feet on them. He might walk unarmed and unattended through Ireland from end to end with perfect safety. But which of the Nationalist members could do that? Not one. The city scum, the criminal, irreclaimable class, shout 'Hell to Balfour,' but these poor readers of the Freeman's Journal and such-like prints, prepared for their special use and written down to their level, must not be classed with the people of Ireland at all. Every country has its ruffian element, every country has its poisonous press. Ireland is no worse than other countries in these respects."

My Irish Conservative Home Ruler would have gone on indefinitely, furnishing excellent matter, for he improved as he warmed up, but unhappily a priest called on him to make some purchase, and he had to leave me without much notice. "Over the way," he said. "Trip across to the opposite shop, and you'll find another Tory Home Ruler."

As I "tripped" across I thought of the Pills and Ointment man who amassed a colossal fortune by fifty years' advertising of the fact that wonders never will cease. Mr. Overtheway was not quite so Tory as might be supposed, after all. He said: —

"I have no objection to Home Rule, but, although a Catholic, I have the greatest objection to Rome Rule, which is precisely what it means. I object to this great Empire being ruled from Rome. The greatest Empire that the world ever saw to be bossed by a party of priests! Do the English know what they are now submitting to?

"Let me put the thing logically, and controvert me if you can.

"If Mr. Gladstone wished to go to war to-morrow, is he not at the mercy of the Irish Nationalist party? Could he get votes of supply without their aid? In the event of any sudden, or grave emergency, any serious and critical contingency, would they not hold the key of the position, would they not have the power to make or mar the Empire? Surely they would. And are not these men in the hands of the priests? Surely they are. That is a matter of common knowledge, as sure as that water will drown and fire will burn. A pretty position for a sensible man like John Bull to be placed in by a blethering idiot, who can argue with equal volubility on either side, but with more conviction when in the wrong. Bull must have been drunk, and drunk on stupid beer, when he placed his heart strings between the finger and thumb of a quack like that, who, whatever the result, whether we get Home Rule or not, has ruined the country for five-and-twenty years.