XII - Sequel of the Land League
As far as the land question is concerned, the sequel of the Land League can be easily summed up. Out of the batches of evicted tenants left on its hands, some were able to make a settlement, and return to their homes, and others were not. The National League made a great mistake, in my opinion, in not commuting with some, if not all, of the latter. After a reasonable time had elapsed, without a prospect of settlement, they should not have been left to depend on the chance of their periodical grants never failing, but should have been given a chance to make a fresh start in life. As it turned out, this course would have also proved most economical for the Land League. The grants were continued till the Nationalist split, some eight years later, and then, through the consequent squabble over the funds, they were stopped, at any rate for a time. What happened about them subsequently I do not know.
A few years later, rent-resisting was revived, the Land League having finally decided against its continuation while the proceedings described at the end of the preceding chapter were going on. This time it was not resisted at the Point of the Bayonet; that implement had at last consented to be buried. The methods of the Ladies’ Land League were followed, with two points of difference. One was that the tenants were required to deposit the amount of the rent they were willing to pay, in the hands of some informal trustee, as a guarantee of good faith on their part. This precaution was called the Plan of Campaign. It was not an entire protection against backsliding on the part of tenants whose eviction had caused enormous public expense.
If they chose to pinch, as they must have pinched if they had paid their rents, they would probably be able, in most cases, to save the amount of their debt from their grants. But it was better than no protection. The second difference was that the promoters of the plan included a town, Tipperary, in their operations. Both the Land Leagues had abstained from meddling with towns, as the expense of rent-resisting in towns would have been out of all proportion to the loss incurred by the landlord The towns, in Ireland, are unimportant. Their improvement would be most likely to follow automatically, if the country holdings were once put on a satisfactory basis. Whatever the motives were that induced anybody to incur the responsibility of more evicted tenants, they certainly ought to have been very urgent indeed.
For the Plan of Campaign came most emphatically ‘the day after the fair’. The country had accepted the Land Act, and only small gains were possible now, however successfully the plan might be worked. Besides its immense cost, much suffering was caused through the very long terms of imprisonment some men had to undergo for refusing to answer questions 1n the bankruptcy court, And such imprisonment was a great deal more arduous than that which the suspects had undergone during the Land League. The efforts made during the Plan of Campaign, tf they had been made during the Land League, might have completely changed the whole course of Irish history. But then Irishmen would have nothing to do with them.
Only when it was too late to accomplish anything in particular, were they willing to try. Success appears to be what they dread most. Land Acts galore, including Acts to enable tenants to purchase their holdings, have been passed since the Land League. That thev have done no good is proved by the present condition of the country. The population has always continued to diminish. This, however, is not an evil in itself, but only the sign of an evil. When the peuple of a country cannot take care of themselves, the fewer of them that are there the better, for then there are fewer to suffer That the diminishing population is also degenerating through want is an evil in itself, and the two together constitute the proof that neither legislation nor anything else, since 26 years, has been al any use so far.
With regard to the ‘purchase’ of their holdings by tenants, ! am not sure whether these purchases are really what they are represented to be. From some observations in newspapers that I have read it has seemed to me that the freehold rights thus purchased might be incomplete; that they were accompanied by restrictions that would mitigate their value. In this case the tenant acquiring his farm would make little difference to himself, and none at all to the country at large. In illustration of this, I will give one suppositious example: the west coast of Ireland is the poorest part of the country — perhaps the poorest part of the whole world. Notwithstanding this, this west coast is perhaps potentially the richest part of Ireland, or of the world. For on one side is the gulf stream, with its huge healing powers, and the uncontaminated air that has dropped its impurities during a journey of some 3,000 miles, while on the other side lie the great stretches of aseptic peat bog, and the air that cannot avoid being aseptic also after its passage through their atmosphere.
A district so conditioned ought to be enough to cure all the lungs and livers in Europe. Such districts may exist in other countries, but the crowning advantage of a temperature so even as that of Ireland, they cannot have. But this part of Ireland is more of a desert than even the rest of the country. It is no place for invalids, because not only are there next to no houses, but also none of the comforts that invalids require, which would only be procurable there by those to whom money was no object. The tenants on this coast were debarred, under the Land Act of 1881 from turning their holdings to account as health resorts. If any have since purchased their holdings, and the terms of their purchase prevent the erection of dwelling houses, as the judicial tenure did, or prevent the holdings being applied to any purposes except grazing or agriculture, or prevent sub-letting, then they cannot use them now for this purpose either. This case is one that lies on the surface.
It is one that most people cannot fail to see, once their attention is drawn to it. But for one surface case, there must be 20 others, showing the radical difference between tenancy and ownership, which do not lie on the surface, and require special knowledge to perceive. Peasant proprietorship — even if the purchasing price is not too high - must mean the same kind of tenure by which the Irish landlord holds his demesne, if peasant proprietorship is to do any good. To know what the law actually is on any question of land, is very difficult; it has, as I have already explained, been purposely made so by the government. Unless one has access to a legal library, it is necessary to buy a number of Acts in order to understand one, on account of the number of clauses which consist of nothing but references to previous Acts. It is not safe to trust to the interpretations of Acts by lawyers; they generally leave something out, often something of vital import.
They are only useful to the amateur who may be trying to make out what a congregation of English laws mean, by giving him, or her, a clue to meanings he, or she, could never have thought of without such help. To obtain knowledge of what the law in Ireland actually is now, by the tedious methods indicated, would not be worthwhile for me. It may, however, be worthwhile for others. It may seem inconsistent with other things I have said, that I should speak of a knowledge of English law in Ireland as one of the equipments advisable for those who wish to serve Ireland, seeing how I have repeatedly asserted that the law is completely disregarded by those who administer it. But the contradiction is only apparent. If the government were always to disregard the law, the people would, in course of time, cease to have recourse to it.
This would not pay, from the government’s point of view, because it would lead to a great diminution in the number of lawyers, a body which is bound to be favourable to English rule, since they know that in an independent country the occupation of most of them would be gone. In fact, almost the first task of a Home Rule administration, provided the Home Rule was genuine, would be to pass a Relief Act for lawyers. The money the Irish habitually waste on law, is also a reason for keeping some small spark of belief in it awake in the Irish breast. So up to a certain point, law may be resorted to as a defence. The corruptness of Irish lawyers, whose chief aim in life is to get ‘something from the government’ for doing jobs more or less unclean, is the greatest obstacle here to obtaining defence. This obstacle,in its turn, is somewhat discounted by the expediency some young lawyers find in making themselves worth buying as soon as possible.
By keeping the principle in view which must guide the government in deciding where they will allow their laws to count, and where they will entirely ignore them, one is largely helped to understand just when, where, and how, money may be profitably spent on legal proceedings or not. At present, it is only certain that a great deal too much money is spent on them, in Ireland, by the very persons whose interest it is to spend as little as possible,’ The Land Act of 1903 seems the only one that calls for special notice. Under its provisions, if the majority (two-thirds, I think) of the tenants on an estate on which the landlord is willing to sell to them, agree on a price with the landlord, the minority are made owners in spite of themselves, on the same terms.
If any of these peasant proprietors fail to pay their rents, (‘instalments’ is the legal term, but as they are to be paid for 70 years, I cannot see why the shorter and more familiar word should be dropped) the ratepayers have to make the loss good to the government. Thus, wherever this Act has taken effect, the whole population have been placed in the same position as the tenants, or peasant proprietors, in so far as they are all liable for the rent. And if they try to put a word in for themselves while these bargains are being made, for which they are ultimately responsible, then they are liable to imprisonment for intimidation, conspiracy, and a good many other offences as well. I believe, however, that the operations of this Act have come to a standstill for want of funds. Indeed the time for wholesale purchase by means of money lent by the government, seems to be gone by. The English had money in the 1880s and 1890s. Now they no longer have it. And now is the time when Irish landlords are becoming willing to sell.
The failure of the Land League left nothing to look to except what might be done in parliament. By this time it had become certain that only a handful of members could be got to give sufficient attention to parliamentary duties under the existing system of their paying their own expenses. Payment of election expenses and an allowance for maintenance while parliament was sitting would have to be tried. The National League turned its attention to this, and a separate fund was raised for parliamentary purposes. But the prospects of a parliamentary policy were not the same as they had been before the Land League. At the most, the strength of the new parliamentary departure depends more on what it might imply than on anything it could accomplish by itself. As the outward and visible sign of a spirit in the Irish people, which would lead to their using all opportunities of any sort in a way as different from previous ways as the new parliamentary policy was different from the policies of Irish representatives in the past, the change was formidable.
Through the advent of the famine, which brought the fraudulent Land League into being, the question whether it did constitute such a sign or not, was soon put to the test, and a positive answer in the negative was the result. So, almost before it had received a trial, the new departure in parliament was shorn of almost all its strength. It now stood for the most, instead of the least, that Ireland could do. Besides this, there was still another way in which its prospects were likely to be impaired by the Land League fiasco. Such an event could not fail to make a great impression on those from whose ranks future parliamentary candidates must be drawn. However long I might live, I knew that it would never again be possible for me to believe that any body of irishmen meant a word of anything they said. It is true that I had been inside the Land League. Allowing, however, for the utmost difference between the views of insiders and outsiders, a feeling must have been created amongst the latter that something had been very wrong in the Land League, for so much cry to have ended in so little wool.
Seeing that the something very wrong had existed in fact, it followed that the most discerning would be precisely those in whom this feeling would be strongest, and as such a feeling is plainly calculated to deter its possessors from taking part in Nationalist politics, it would therefore have the effect of making the most desirable persons hold back from offering themselves as candidates for vacant seats. This result was all the more likely because there was so much in common between the Land League and the parliamentary party. Some of the most responsible members of the one were also among the most responsible members of the other, and the one drew its strength almost exactly from the same people as the other. Thus there was every room to fear that the cause or causes, whatever they might be, of weakness in the one, would also operate in the other. Moreover, while such an expectation would lead one kind of character to hold back, it would act as a positive inducement to a different kind — or perhaps two different kinds — to come forward; those who like playing at politics for amusement, and are in their element in a humbug, and those who only seek to further their own private interests.
So, while the potential achievements of the Irish party, however good its composition might be, were definitely smaller for the Land League, the future quality of its composition was pretty sure to be impaired from the same cause. It turned out that no prognostications based on such considerations could be too gloomy. Mr Gladstone revelled in one great final orgy of persecution for about three years. There was no reason why he should not so indulge himself as much as he pleased. At any moment he chose, he had only to wreathe his face in a smile, to have Ireland fawning at his feet again, and no doubt he knew this perfectly well.
Before this parliament was dissolved, a new Franchise Act was passed for both England and Ireland, greatly enlarging the electorate, and making the franchise identical for both countries, as it had not been previously. The number of Irish members was reduced proportionately by this measure, because the members for Great Britain were slightly increased in number. On the other hand, it made the franchise of the smaller island more representative than that of the larger, because the large nomad population of Great Britain, chiefly due to the prevalence of big towns, where so many of the working people never stay long enough in one dwelling to qualify themselves for a vote, does not exist, to any appreciable extent in Ireland. It is, therefore, probable that manhood suffrage in Ireland would not now make much difference in the results of parliamentary Elections.
At the first election under the new conditions, 85 Home Rulers were returned for Ireland, with one for England, while Mr Gladstone’s majority was so much reduced that the Irish party held the balance of power — they could put the government in a minority by voting with the opposition. Then Mr Gladstone had to fall back on his armoury of smiles. The smile he donned this time was the biggest he had ever sported. He was not merely going to cut down branches of the Upas Tree now, but the Upas Tree itself. He was going to ‘give’ Home Rule. There was only one drawback to the pleasure such an announcement was calculated to cause. It was the insignificant circumstance that it did not lie in Mr Gladstone's power to ‘give’, or ‘grant’ Home Rule. The consent of the English people to Home Rule was necessary before it could become a fact, and there was no reason to think their consent should be forthcoming.
There seems to be only one factor capable of inducing the English to relax their murderous grip of Ireland, and that would be a belief that to refuse some relaxation would result in the total loss of the country. Had a conviction existed in England that a spirit prevailed in Ireland which would probably ensure its people taking, not Home Rule, but independence, at the first opportunity, then Mr Gladstone could have passed Home Rule, To produce such a conviction would need something rather strong in the way of argument. Yet the Land League, if it had been very different from what it was, might have furnished such an argument. What it had done, however, was only to supply evidence that no need existed, from the English point of view, for any change in the attitude of the stronger country towards the weaker.
Perhaps the thistledown quality of that substance which we are obliged, by courtesy, to call the English brain, may have generated a belief that the political parties are in turn omnipotent with the English people, and can manipulate them as they like. This is true in most matters, but Ireland is one of the exceptions. The feeling of the English towards this victim constitutes one of the most stable elements in their character, as hypocrisy and a love of bloodshed also do. Whatever else may change with them, these three characteristics remain, and must always be reckoned with. Even if the question had only rested with the party, no reason existed why either Mr Gladstone or his party should want to carry Home Rule, though there were plenty of reasons why they should pretend to want it. When goods are paid for before delivery, not once, but just as often as the manufacturer asks for payment, why should the manufacturer ever deliver them at all? In fact, would he not be a great fool if he ever did, seeing that he can command perpetual payments for stock that he never parts with, and perhaps never possessed?
We have no evidence that Mr Gladstone meant to pass Home Rule, but, on the contrary, much ground for suspecting that he knew he could not pass it. Both the Lord Lieutenant and his secretary were changed for the staging of the Home Rule comedy. Lord Aberdeen came as one, and Mr Morley as the other. Like all his predecessors the latter assisted evictions. When the inconsistency of such proceedings with a Home Ruling spirit was pointed out to him, he replied that he would be liable to impeachment if he refrained from them. Now there have been very few Irish Viceroys or their secretaries who have not rendered themselves liable to impeachment, since such personages came into existence, for few, if any, have not broken the law for purposes of oppression. However much they might break it for this purpose, they knew themselves perfectly safe, because they were certain of support from the English people. That Mr. Morley did not feel himself safe from impeachment only showed his consciousness that he could not count on the support of the English people, and therefore could not feel that the government of which he was a member would be strong enough to pass Home Rule.
When the scheme itself was introduced, two of its features at least were clear. The first was that it would not mean Home Rule if it were passed, in the sense of giving control over the country to its people sufficient to ensure its ceasing to be the bye-word it was then, and is now. The most anyone could say for it was that it might lead to better things — with good luck. The other striking feature about it was the immediate gift of salvation it offered to the whole body of the Irish landlords and their creditors. I don’t suppose such an offer has ever been made before to any set of people who have made a hopeless mess of their finances. It proposed to buy out all the landlords with money borrowed on English credit, then .the best in the world, on a valuation that was certainly not unfavourable to them. The encumbrancers on landed estates, whether annuitants or mortgagees, to be paid something less than their nominal claims, and the bargain for them was perhaps even better than for the landlords. .
It meant something certain instead of a certain nothing for a large number, and for the rest, with few exceptions, something certain instead of something decidedly uncertain. As security for the repayment of the money thus advanced, as well as for Ireland’s contribution to imperial purposes, the whole revenue of the country, practically, was to be appropriated by England. The Home Rule government was to find the wherewith to pay its own expenses, without the power, as far as the Bill seemed to disclose, of increasing the productive capacity of the country. Paying a heavy tribute to England for the sake of a free hand in Ireland, would be well worthwhile to the Irish. They could scarcely expect a voluntary surrender of power by England without this condition. But this Bill secured the tribute, without a free hand. The great bid Mr Gladstone made for the support of the Irish landlords and their appendages, seems evidence, of a sort, that he did contemplate passing his Home Rule Bill, instead of merely being anxious to secure the services of the Irish party by saying he wanted to pass it.
It is not, however, conclusive evidence, because it was so much his habit to shape his measures to meet all possible contingencies as far as he could. If anything could have passed this legislation, it would have been the landlords joining in the chorus of joyful approbation with which the Nationalists received it. But the eyes of the landlords were fast shut. The surgical operation needful for opening them could only have been performed by the Land League, and the Land League had not performed it. This wretched body, following the lead of men like the Marquis of Hartington and Lord Fitzwilliam, whose interests had nothing in common with their own, denounced the measure that was so obviously designed for their advantage, with the same energy as those for whom its benefits were but doubtful, rejoiced over it.
So it was defeated in the House of Commons by defections from Mr Gladstone’s English followers. He dissolved parliament, and the General Election resulted in an anti-Home Rule majority being returned in Great Britain sufficiently large to be independent of the Irish vote. Anyone who doubted the quality of the Home Rule to be provided if the General Election had turned out differently, could find plenty of confirmation for such doubts in the Election speeches of the English Home Rulers, who systematically took the line of apologising for anything of Home Rule that the Home Rule Bill contained, which was very little. After the return of the new parliament, of course Lord Aberdeen had to leave. The citizens of Dublin arranged a sort of triumphal send-off for him, although Lord Aberdeen had done nothing to show a single sign of genuine repentance on behalf of the government whose official he was, or on behalf of the chief he was serving under, though both of them stood in dire need of repentance.
It was in Lord Aberdeen’s power to furnish a sign that would have given some air of reality to the changed spirit he was supposed to represent. He might have liberated the victims of packed juries and impossible evidence, of whom so many were lying in the earthly hell of penal servitude. The dead he could not recall, but to the living there was some reparation possible. This he did not do, and the people who combined to do him honour were thereby tacitly endorsing his attitude towards these victims. The new government stayed until 1893. It passed Mr Gladstone's last Persecution Act, which had lapsed for a short interval, in a permanent form, and ‘governed’ Ireland in the same way as Mr Gladstone had governed it.
The union between Mr Gladstone's party and the majority of the Irish members, which had been broken up in 1874, by the Ballot Act, was now fully cemented again, and was only more ardent and firm for the twelve years it had been in abeyance. It was now Called ‘The Union of Hearts’. That the men who had lost office were exceedingly wrath with the men who had gained it, for plagiarising from their system of ‘governing’ Ireland, was a prominent, but not a new feature in the alliance.
It is questionable however, whether the Irish section of that alliance did not contrive to furnish it with a new feature in the adulation they heaped on their partners. Allegiance to the doctrine that English politicians are to be judged, not by what they do when they have power, but by what they say they wish to do when they have it not, is old and well established in Ireland. But the manner of proclaiming allegiance to it seemed different this time. The first Irish representatives freely elected by anything like a democratic franchise, went to lengths in the way of servility towards, and servile flattery of, the men from whose spite every nerve in Ireland had been quivering since 1880, that can scarcely ever have been equalled before, and certainly never can have been surpassed. The next General Election placed Mr Gladstone in power again, but still without a majority independent of the Irish members. So another Home Rule Bill was brought in. I do not know what its provisions were — only that it differed from the first one, and that no offer of salvation was held out to Irish landlords now.
A Home Rule measure of any kind must create a large number of new places, and it may be that Mr Gladstone, by means of this attraction, hoped to secure from the Irish party an acceptance of some Home Rule legislation that would have nothing of Home Rule about it except the provision of those places. In this case he stood to gain the eclat of having carried another great reform for Ireland, and a much bigger one than any of the others, which would be practically as useless as all those others had been, Whether the Irish party were prepared to act in the way suggested, or not, was not put to the test. It is only certain that they did act as they might have been expected to act if they were so prepared. And in so acting they overdid their part so much that by the time the second Home Rule Bill was introduced, they had made themselves far too cheap for it to have any chance of being made law in any form.
it passed through the Commons and was thrown out by the Lords. Though Home Rule was impossible, some legislation for the benefit of Ireland was still within the power of the Irish party to insist on. The government had two measures — one of them being of the greatest importance — for England. Without the help of the Irish Nationalists it could not be carried in that parliament. They were the ‘Death Duties’ and, I think, the ‘Parish Councils’. Neither of them, as far as I can see, were any use to Ireland. Over these measures the Irish party could have struck a bargain with the ministry, by threatening to vote against them at the last stage, if something for Ireland had not first been secured, in fact, and not merely in theory. The House of Lords would not have dared to throw out every Bill needed for Ireland, once it had been made plain that such action on their part would be equivalent to throwing out the two measures the English desired, simply because they did not dare to throw out these Bills themselves, though they admitted frankly that they would have liked to do so, and were only restrained from following their inclinations by the fear of losing their power altogether, as a consequence.
Here occurred an instance where it actually and literally lay in the power of the Irish members to prevent legislation for England unless they received the price they thought fit to demand for permitting it, and they made no use of the position. Such opportunities cannot, in reason, be expected to occur often, so that it is all the more important to keep in mind how they are treated when they do present themselves. In the meantime, something more important than any neglect of parliamentary opportunities had happened — something more important than anything I can recollect in my lifetime, and more important than anything since the acceptance of the union by the Irish parliament — perhaps even more important than that. For the action of the Irish parliament was not ratified by the Irish people. That which was done now had their full approbation. At the General Election of 1892, the only question before the majority of the Nationalist constituencies was whether Irish public men ought to be bound by any public undertaking or declaration they might make, however publicly and solemnly it were made, however serious the situation dealt with, and however grave a position they had thereby created for one, or many individuals.
To those who have followed this narrative so far, it should not seem surprising that the manhood of Ireland, in answer to this question, said, ‘Certainly not.’ This was only the definite assertion and public recognition of a principle that had hitherto been acknowledged and acted on by the Irish for the conduct of their national affairs, in privacy or semi-privacy. By this action they settled the Irish question for a generation, as far as ‘national’ movements were concerned. For a reasonable expectation of good faith is an indispensable condition in all enterprises in which more than one person is engaged. Henceforth, no one could entertain such an expectation where the Irish, as a whole, or even in any great numbers, were concerned, and the persons attracted to Irish politics could be only those who either did not wish to accomplish anything of benefit to Ireland, or who thought that it could be accomplished without good faith, or the expectation thereof. Such an opinion is within everyone’s right to hold, but I do not think it worthwhile discussing what those who hold it are doing, or going to do.
While registering their conviction as to methods, the Irish people, incidentally, repudiated their right to nationality, as a right. No one can study the history of that epoch without perceiving this consequence to be the only logical interpretation of much [?what] they said and did then. But such repudiation, under the circumstances, cannot signify in the least, because the men who made it must be nearly all dead before the acquisition of nationality can again become a possibility. It is a question, indeed, whether the evils of the course they chose may not really be counterbalanced by its compensatory results. The only difference between the Irish ship of state as she has now become, and what she had been before, is that the colours under which she had previously sailed in secret, are now nailed to the mast. Anybody who does not like the flag need no longer have anything to do with it
Those to whom it was invisible once, can see it now, and no victims need waste their time, strength, money and lives, under a misapprehension as to its real nature. This gain is surely a set-off to the infinitesimally small chance, which is all that has been lost, of a minority being able to seize some unexpectedly magnificent opportunity, and by its aid turn the national rudder against the dead weight of the majority, whose characters would have been the same, whether their owners had happened to publish them in giant type or not. A minor compensation lies in the fact that during the interval that must elapse before the conditions established in the 1890s can be changed, nothing else that those who established them can do will matter. They can do nothing worse, and so no worse consequences can follow than have already happened, or are already of necessity in train.