by
Anna Parnell.
1907 Manuscript
Chapter Links
I Antecedents of the Land League page 02
II The Famine page 11
III The Land League page 12
IV The Working of the Land League page 18
V Rent at the Point of a Bayonet page 28
VI The Ladies’ Land League page 34
VII The Land Act page 41
VIII The No Rent Manifesto page 43
IX The End of the Land League page 57
X The Ballina and Phoenix Park Murders page 61
XI The End of the Ladies’ Land League page 72
XII Sequel of the Land League page 78
Conclusion page 87
I - Antecedents of the Land League
The Home Rule League was the immediate predecessor of the Land League.
It was established in 1873, and the fact that a large proportion of its founders were Protestants led to the circulation of an absurd legend that it was constructed out of ‘revenge’ for the disestablishment and disendowment of the English State Church in Ireland.
This palpable nonsense is repeated even to the present day, even by those who ought to know better than to suppose that men capable of resenting such a reform would express their resentment in the shape of an attempt to do any other good whatever for Ireland.
That the abolition of the English State Church in Ireland might have had an influence in producing the Home Rule League is, however, very likely, since it removed one of the obstacles to union between Irish Protestants and Catholics on the question of national independence, partial or entire. Formerly the Protestant episcopalians had feared losing the privilege of having their religious rites paid for by others, as a consequence of any form of Irish independence. Once they had lost this privilege by the hand of England, they could not fear its loss any more. Such a change might naturally have suggested the idea that the time was a favourable one for an attempt to turn the feet of this particular class onto the right path.
Up to about 1870 a Protestant State Church, richly endowed by charges on Irish land, had been kept up by law. When it was abolished, every clergyman was amply safeguarded by law from individual loss. The landlords had still to pay the tithes to the government after the church had ceased to exist, and the fund thus created was called the Irish Church Surplus. The government was supposed to use it for purposes advantageous to Ireland, but as a matter of fact, though Ireland could have easily absorbed the whole, so much was her need of advantagement, the government clung to the fund with both hands, and very little advantage trickled out of it for the country whose money it was. It is worthy of note, that of all Mr Gladstone’s reforms in Ireland, this one alone was real — was what it was supposed to be — and this one was done, not to please Ireland, but the English nonconformists, who hoped that he would subsequently abolish the English State Church also. The Irish cared very little about it. Gross as the outrage to them was to keep up a rich church for a few and support their own religion out of their private means, they had so many troubles of greater importance to think of, that they gave very scanty attention to this one.
The Ballot Act passed nearly about the same time, open voting having previously been the law, further encouraged the experiment of the Home Rule League, since its promoters could not expect to have it assisted by Irish members of parliament, whereas under the open voting system, most of the Irish voters were compelled to vote as their landlords pleased. The only choice they were generally permitted to exercise was between the candidates of the two great English parties, who competed with each other by bribery. Considering the extreme poverty of Ireland, sums that were fabulous were habitually spent there on this game of ‘Ins and Outs’, which the English employ for the conduct of their political business, and either pretend to take, or do take, with such comical seriousness.
The Home Rule plan was a proposal for something like federation between England and Ireland; that Irish members might be delegated to the imperial Parliament to take their share in what concerned both countries equally, while Ireland might have a separate parliament for her own affairs. Of course it would be a case for arrangement in many points as to what things might be considered imperial and what Irish. Mr Butt, the President of the League, was accused both of too great vagueness and too great particularisation in his programme. To the first charge his own answer was that if he had gone more into details, all the discussions would have turned on details, and the principle would have been lost sight of.
To the second charge I do not know what answer he was prepared to make, but certainly the more vague he had been the more danger he would have run of reproducing the state of affairs which Napoleon described after receiving an Irish deputation - ‘What one says, the other immediately contradicts,’ he complained. As it was, the Home Rule plans were nearly as numerous as the Home Rule members themselves. Home Rule wasof course merely the offering of a compromise by the weaker party to the stronger. How far the compromise would benefit the weaker party could only be settled by the conditions under which the stronger party might be induced to grant it.
At that time there was no reason whatever for the stronger party assenting to any change or compromise. The principal argument in its favour was that it would benefit Ireland but nobody stated any reason why England should wish to benefit Ireland. But the most important objection advanced against Home Rule was that a scheme which contemplated any connection with England whatever was in itself mischievous. I was never quite able to understand exactly what this class of objectors meant; I did not know whether they meant that Home Rule if obtained, would be inimical to the full realisation of Ireland's national rights or whether the mere act of asking for it, would have undesirable results.
As to the first interpretation of the objection, it is certain that if a proper measure of Home Rule (not the absurdity which Gladstone presented for admiration in the eighties) had been passed within a reasonable term, say within fifteen years at most from the first time of asking, Ireland would have advanced very rapidly in material prosperity, have increased in population, and improved the physique of that population also to a considerable extent, if not quite as much as it needed improving. Had such changes taken place, she would naturally, by this time, have had a much better chance of saving herself, in case of England’s getting into trouble, than she now has.
On the other hand, that the connection between England and Ireland is a necessity imposed by nature could only be proved, after Ireland had attained a fair average of material prosperity, because Ireland is too large a country to be held permanently by force by a country no bigger than Great Britain. Only the English, who pretend to believe the present position natural, take care to allow no chance of their pretence ever being put to the proof.
But those who know that Ireland can only be held by England through artificially caused starvation and weakness, and believe that any legal tie between them, if Ireland had her proper strength, would be impossible except for a short time, the terms prosperity and independence appear practically synonymous. Either of the two, if maintained, must lead to the other. If Ireland had never been conquered, some alliance might have been formed between these two small islands lying so close together on the extreme west of Europe. Now, however, such a thing is forever impossible, England and Ireland will both have fulfilled their destinies by sinking under the Atlantic, before the works of the English in Ireland can be forgotten. Thus any Irish who raised this objection with the first possible meaning, seem to have been in some agreement with the opinions the English themselves profess to hold on the Anglo-Irish question.
If the second meaning was the real one, time would seem to have justified the objectors, since 33 years of Home Rule propaganda, real and pretended both, have resulted in a voluntary and deliberate surrender all along the line, to the whole of England's claims and pretensions regarding Ireland, and in a virtual repudiation of her claim to independence as a right. But I think I shall be able to show that these developments were due to causes with which neither the Home Rule League nor the Home Rule scheme had anything whatever to do, and for which they could in no way be held responsible.
The time was a favourable one for introducing a new national programme, as the country had been enjoying a spell of comparative prosperity, which means, in Ireland, mitigated misery, and was therefore, a little stronger, a little healthier in mind, and a little more fit for doing any good political work. The Fenian rebellion in 1867, had made it impossible for anyone to speak of armed rebellion without seeming ridiculous, and the Home Rule League, being something so different from the Fenian Republic, came as a relief to those who wanted to do something, and yet felt that the last thing done had left them in a very bad position for any more ‘doing’.
Now they could hope that the secrecy of the Fenian organisation, which made it impossible to estimate how far the Irish people, as a whole, were responsible for its ineffectiveness, would serve to diminish the weight of the event in which it had culminated; and that the mere impossibility of going to war with a country, without having any place except the air to commence operations from, would prevent the general public seeing too much connection between them and the Fenians, or expecting failure for them because the Fenians had failed. The absence of visible ways and means of getting Home Rule naturally caused some appearance of languor in the League, and this languor, in jts turn, tended to produce an impression that the desire and the demand for Home Rule were not serious. But except by the assumption of their seriousness, it is difficult to explain what took place at the General Election in 1874.
This was the first General Election under the Ballot Act. This Act did not diminish bribery in England, but if anything, increased it. Its effect was very different in Ireland. Bribery there was practically swept away as if by magic. The candidates of the two powerful and wealthy English parties backed by their hundreds of thousands in ready money, saw themselves ignored and rejected wholesale for the sake of almost penniless men, who had nothing but a bare profession of Nationalism to offer. And this took place with a franchise so restricted that it was unfavourable, not only to Irish Nationalism, but to most Irish interests of any sort, while the electors could have nothing but the vaguest hope of their desires being forwarded by this expression of them in the ballot box.
How much sacrifice on the part of the Irish electors this first Home Rule party must have involved, only those who realise the poverty of the Irish people can understand. It is a pity not to be able to say that these sacrifices were justified in the acts of the party itself. Unhappily there could not be a greater contrast than that between the energy of the leaders, and the apathy of the elected, except where the elected proceeded to renounce Home Rule at the first opportunity. At first Mr Butt’s party numbered about 60, but these desertions reduced it so much that it soon only had a bare majority over the other Irish members. That all the Home Rule party would range itself under the English Whig banner had actually been predicted by old and experienced hands, but they did not fulfil this prediction. They managed to maintain themselves as a distinct party, even with a fair amount of dignity, but their merits began and ended there.
They brought in a number of Bills and proposed a certain number of resolutions, always being voted down without a hearing, and then applied themselves contentedly and tranquilly to doing nothing. They did not even ‘keep a House’ for each other, which their members enable them to do, the quorum of the House being only 40, with the result that they were obliged to depend on the assistance of the Scotch members in this respect, whg tendered it in return for the assistance of some Irish members in ‘keeping a House’ for Scotch business, the Scotch membership not being large enough to enable either of the Scotch parties to do it for themselves. But, as both Scotch parties were against the Home Rule party, this service ought not to have been rendered them by Home Rule members, who thus lost, by their extreme indolence, the most obvious means of making some part of their Opponents feel that the business of oppressing Ireland was not all pure gain.
Occasionally, reference was made to the time when the Irish members might ‘hold the balance of power’, through such a distribution of numbers in the two great English parties as would enable the Irish party to put either of them in a minority by throwing its weight in with the other side. An idea seemed to prevail that then the Home Rule party would necessarily accomplish something very important, though what it would be or how it would be done was never explained.
As a matter of fact this state of parties has come about twice in the 32 years that have elapsed since. In the first instance, something that seemed very important was accomplished, for Mr Gladstone gave his professed adhesion to the principle of Home Rule in consequence. But as this brought about his defeat by a combination of both English parties against him, he was compelled to appeal to the electorate, who removed the ‘balance of power’ from the hands of the Irish party by increasing the numbers of the Conservative party to the point of making it independent of other parties. Not a single advantage did Ireland derive from the situation practically, although there were some things which the government could have granted without the consent of parliament.
On the second occasion the Irish party held the ‘balance of power for years, and again without obtaining the least advantage for their own country from it. On the contrary they increased the taxation of Ireland, which for some time no government had felt itself strong enough to do, and which probably no government would have accomplished yet, but for the efforts of the Irish representatives, backed by the Irish people. The excuse for making this use of their ‘power’, legislating exclusively for the benefit of England, and against Ireland, was that if they did not do so, the English electorate would once more rearrange the parties so that they would lose their ‘power’, and they wanted to keep the Liberal government in until the new appointments of sub-Commissioners under the Land Act of 1881, were made, when a great number of comfortable places would be available for some people.
This end they failed, however, to accomplish. But at the time of the first Home Rule party, neither it nor the people were so corrupt as they afterwards became; it was only too apathetic to look for means of furthering the interests it was supposed to have at heart, or even to make use of such means as, to their minds, were too obvious to need looking for, though these last were certainly not very numerous, and generally speaking, Irish interests of all sorts were left to languish, because there seemed no practical method of furthering them much.
Notwithstanding, there were still many people who believed there ought to be something which the Irish party might profitably do, and their view eventually proved to be the correct one.
Before the next General Election, six years afterwards, it had been demonstrated that the oppression of the Irish people could not be carried on as it was, smoothly, easily, and without any cost whatever to the oppressors, except by the complicity and connivance, both active and passive, of the Irish parliamentary representatives, which, since the last alteration in the franchise, implies the complicity and connivance — in short — the consent of the Irish people. That is to say, of the only portion of the people that counts, the adult males.
The Active Policy, or the Policy of Obstruction, as it was styled in England, was composed of two distinct sections. I will describe the one which seems to me the least important first, as it was that which first received a trial, and first introduced the new policy to public notice. Its essence was a tender to the English of their own coin, a very small portion of it in truth, but enough to prove conclusively that they considered it a thing far more blessed to give than to receive. It would be superfluous for me to describe the intense sympathy the English always feel for oppressed nations. They have taken too much care to do it themselves, and to such good purpose that they have not only persuaded themselves of its genuineness, but perhaps even a few others as well. To those who are not acquainted with their intellectual resources, this sympathy would appear to be rather an inconvenient property for a people who hold a larger portion of the earth in bondage than any other country in the world.
But what might prove embarrassing to less spacious intellects serves only as a stimulant to the English mind, which revels in such simple exercises as proving its own black to be white, and accordingly it has at this time an answer all cut and dry, ready for anyone who might hint that English theory and practice were a little inconsistent where Ireland was concerned. Ireland was not a country kept in forcible subjection by another country, because no such country as Ireland existed. The name was but a geographical expression applied to one portion of a country which did exist, generally known as England, or ‘Britain’. That there was any difference between Cork and York, except their first letters, was pure delusion. If the people who called themselves, mistakenly, Irish, were not satisfied with the laws, or no laws, under which they lived, or died, that was not because they were a small country ruled by a bigger one, but because they were a minority in their own country.
And the principle of democratic government, such as they had the privilege to possess, was that minorities must yield to majorities. So far from England governing Ireland, the truth was rather the other way, for Ireland sent a larger number of members to Westminster in proportion to population than Great Britain did. If the minority in a country is not satisfied by the government which the majority thinks best, that is a pity, but Dublin had no more cause for complaint than Durham, or Limerick than Leeds. Of course, when the cleavage of English parties chanced to give the Irish representatives a determining power in the House of Commons, the English promptly forgot all about England and Ireland being one country, but the time for that to happen was then far off, and no one foresaw that English professions in this matter were to be tested in another way and immediately.
A few Irish members treated the ‘one country’ theory as if it were meant to be taken seriously, and proceeded to exercise this right of governing England, as far as the rules made by the majority permitted, in the way they thought best. That such action, especially considering the small number never reaching more than seven by whom it was taken, should constitute an intolerable grievance seems strange. Yet so it was. Sauce for the goose was not meant to be sauce for the gander in the House of Commons – not one teaspoonful out of the whole hogshead in which she had perpetually to float could he endure for himself. Cork might be the same as York, but for Irish members to interest themselves in the latter place, would be intolerable, though it was quite right that Englishmen should settle all the affairs of the former.
Like all false pretences, this one broke down the moment chance permitted the testing of it. The House of Commons had not time enough to let its own one-nation prattle be treated literally even by one man. It was ‘obstruction’ for him to do it. The second section of the new policy, which was not developed till some time later, was by far the most important, though even simpler in its nature. It consisted merely in pressing the evils from which Ireland suffers under English government on the attention of the legislature which was so profuse in its assertions both of willingness and ability to govern Ireland well, and pressing them in such a fashion that the bulk of the Irish members must have adopted them instinctively, had their desire to remedy those evils been as genuine as it ought to have been and as it will have to be on the part of Ireland’s representatives, in parliament or anywhere else, before the condition of the country can be mended.
It was ominous that the bulk of the Irish members viewed both parts of the new policy with extreme disfavour. Mr Butt, the leader, attacked it savagely. In his case it was a necessity that he should do something of the sort, because he himself was in a position which made it impossible to do anything which might rouse the hostility of the House of Commons towards himself. He was very deeply in debt, and anybody with a sufficient motion could easily have made him a bankrupt, which would have excluded him from the House of Commons, the payment of his debts being an impossibility, though money was collected to keep him going.
He was obliged therefore to adopt what he himself called a Policy of Conciliation.” The rest of the party was under no such obligation. They liked ‘conciliation’ for its own sake . But more ominous still was the attitude of the Irish people, who kept almost entire silence while the little group of reformers were obliged to fight both sides at once. They eventually decided in favour of the new policy, but not until it had proved its capacity for success without their support.'* Of course the new policy had an artificial appearance on account of the small number practising it, and its effect was much less than it would have been if it had come about as it should have come, automatically, through the spontaneous earnestness and energy of the Irish members.
But the weak point of the House of Commons, that it had not time enough even for its English work, let alone all the rest that it professed to do, had been accidentally struck. By the criminal collusion of English parties and the criminal inertia of the Irish, it had seemed to be working when it was not. And this radical defect made parliament helpless. Whatever rules it might make would certainly be injurious to England, for they must consist in giving more power to ministers and reducing the too-few safeguards already existing against the exclusion of the public eye from public business. If forced to adopt the closure, as it afterwards was, the majority would not confine themselves always to using it on Irish members; they would use it against each other, and eventually, the estimates would be closured. And when the estimates came to be closured in the House of Commons, the fall of England would be very near.
Every reason seemed in favour of the new policy and none against it. It could not hurt Ireland, though it might help her, but its hurting England was certain. Of course, England was then already on the downgrade, and her parliament was inefficient and in decay, without any help from any policy anybody might adopt, but both England and her parliament received a severe blow in this way from Ireland, which has probably served to hasten her fall. Under the new rules made necessary by the increased activity of Irish members of the next parliament, rules which were always having to be added to, the character of English members has fallen so low that they have even come to fisticuffs with each other on the floor of the House of Commons, while that sacred institution was ‘sitting’, with the scandalized spectators in the strangers gallery hissing them. It illustrates the class of men the English choose to represent them that one member explained his striking another by saying: ‘I thought he was going to sit in my seat!’
It is true that rows in other representative assemblies sometimes occur, but in other countries, where this happens, parliament by no means holds the position in the life of the nation that it holds in England. This is one of the few instances in which England has been harmed by the Irish, consciously, or where their enmity has left its mark. For the most part it has been their friendship for England, their weakness and their servility, that have harmed her; so much indeed that Ireland probably has been, as in justice she should be, the chief factor in causing the ruin of England that is now so near. But the new party did not have to wait for these far-reaching results to win their spurs. The party of seven showed that this policy was a winning one, and could get concessions which the party of between 50 and 60 members could not get, or did not get.
The government made small concessions to propitiate the new party. The chief of these was a grant from the Irish Church Surplus, the fund left in the hands of the government after the disestablishment of the State Church to be applied to the furthering of intermediate education in Ireland. It worked by payments to schools for results of examinations conducted by the Commissioners of Education who were appointed by the government. I have described this as a small concession, though it was thought a very big one at the time, and it is a fair illustration of the condition of Ireland that a moderate grant from a fund, indisputedly her own, towards education, (though the administration thereof is all in the hands of the government nominees, the people to whom the money belongs and whose children it is intended to benefit having no voice in its management), should be hailed as a great concession or indeed, any concession at all.
Whether it has been worked well or ill I do not know, but I have seen faults found with its working by the English press, and seen that the responsibility for such faults have been invariably blamed on the Irish people, which is an illustration of the kind of reasoning about Ireland which is cultivated by the English public, because it is the kind they desire, and disseminate amongst all other foreigners, who mostly take their ideas of Ireland from the English press.' The next most important achievement was the release of the Fenian prisoners. The new party also got clauses for the better treatment of untried prisoners, and other reforms inserted into new Acts for the regulation of prisons generally which the government was passing at this time.
Although no one foresaw then how soon these reforms would be needed personally by the men who obtained them, of course anything to do with prisons must always be interesting to people who have such a government as ours.
The new party opposed flogging in the army, and succeeded in reducing the number of lashes given to 25, the highest number previously allowed being 50. There had for a long time been an English party devoted to abolishing military flogging, but they were ineffective, from want of earnestness. The noise of the long-protracted debates, which the new policy involved, when its exponents were refused what they wanted, seemed to have the effect of reaching the dull ears of the English constituencies, who began to discover that they wanted flogging in the army abolished, and had wanted it all along, only it had never occurred to them to take any steps towards getting it abolished. But now they began to realise that their representatives were voting the wrong way, and a dim idea of what voters were for began to creep into their minds.
A good party man who had been walking through lobbies all night and most of the morning, in support of his government, might find a friendly warning awaiting him when he reached home foot-sore and bilious, to the effect that his conduct might lose him his seat at the next election. A distinguished victim to some accident of this sort was the Marquis of Hartington, the leader of the Liberal party while it was out of office, though not allowed to be its leader when it returned to power, Mr Gladstone playing him a very characteristic trick. When he had lost office in 1874 through the return of a Conservative majority, superior to all other parties combined, Mr Gladstone announced his intention of retiring from politics. When the prospect appeared of a Liberal party being returned again, he came back to politics and stepped into the shoes the out-of-office leader had been expecting during his long wait in the cold.
This unhappy man upheld the government strongly, and changed his mind, voting for the reduction of lashes quite suddenly after opposing the same with all his might the day before, the inference being that someone had been ‘talking to him’ during the interval. At this desertion the government gave way. The process of rousing the dull English brain was not one they liked. The record of this contest demonstrates that the rules which at that time enabled a few members to hold up business for a long time at Westminster were necessary to England. They gave the jnterval that such slow-witted people as the English need, to interfere if parliament should chance to go against their wishes. But as they insisted on having a party of aliens in their parliament who were not responsible to them, but to the people of another country, these saving rules became impossible and no one can now stand between them and any ruinous legislation the ministry of the day may choose to rush on them.
The abolition of flogging in the army was a thing the English wanted, but were unable to get for themselves; the Irish did it for them. The question naturally arises: Why should the Irish improve the English army? Experience has since shown that it could bear a great deal more improvement without any danger of its being made effective; again the question arises why should the Irish wish to make it effective? The English Factories and Workshops Act, another government measure in which the new party interested itself, concerned the interests of the Irish poor who live in Great Britain, who certainly gave the Irish members at least as much help as they received from them. Nothing of all this, therefore, can be construed into a justification of the constant system of working for the English people pursued by the Irish members of parliament, and being happy in taking injuries to the Irish people for payment.
The help, if any, they receive from the English radicals is no use, and therefore not fit tender in payment of real services. It is not possible to lay down a hard and fast line in the matter, and say the Irish should never support measures to benefit the English people, nor never call attention to their ‘wrongs’, each case should be judged by itself. But it certainly cannot be right or necessary, and must be entirely contrary to Ireland's welfare that her representatives, since the time of O'Connell at least, have alway been returning good for evil after this fashion. And the reason for such action can only be found in corruption, servility, and weakness of character on the part of the Irish members of parliament and those who return them.
The English voter is free to vote for the squire and the parson, or for whoever pays him best, or for the richest man, (the after-election toll levied on English MPs being something amazing), while he can rest content with the assurance that any political reforms he may require will be obtained for him by the thoughtful care of the Irish members, now paid for by the Irish people. Bad as the result has been for Ireland, it has been incalculably worse for England. Through it the English people have lost the power of controlling their own legislature. Votes are no good to them, as they do not know how to use them. It is like telling a paralytic to get up and clean his house to tell English people it is their business to effect the removal of any evils in their system of government or of society, no matter how much they may complain of them, for their political instinct has been atrophied by want of use.
Even if they knew what to do, they are incapable of choosing the people to do it, for that delicate power of the masses in choosing the right agents, which is essential to good government by representation, they have never acquired, and cannot acquire it now. They can only wait, helpless and open-mouthed, and let the parties do as they please, till the end comes. Only that they are not warriors, one might compare them to the warrior ants, who have lost the power to feed themselves through always having other ants to perform that necessary function for them. Such a state of affairs is all very well amongst ants, for the warriors give protection in return for the services of their weaker comrades. But the English give nothing in return for the services they have discovered how to extort from the Irish, and their long dependence on the latter has not been well for them. The time may never come when Irishmen will not try to save England; the time when they will not be able to save her is certain to come. Here, at least, crime has worked out its own punishment, and the prophecy made by Grattan, a little more than a 100 years ago, now stands fulfilled, that the English would find their own parliament destroyed by the quality of the men whom Ireland would send to it.
Link to Chapter II - The Famine