LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which fill treble the space.]
CHRISTIANITY AND CRIME IN IRELAND.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
Snt.—Your correspondent " Z." has put his finger on the blot that defaces the escutcheon of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. There is no considerable body of agnostics or atheists in Ireland such as exists in every other Roman Catholic country in Europe. With the exception of a few scattered Protest- ants the masses outside Ulster are "good Catholics" almost to a man. Yet in the taking of human life Roman Catholic Ireland has a worse record and a lower standard than any civilized State in Western Europe. This is, no doubt, due to the history of the country. Under the old tribal polity every man kept his own head, and though intertribal warfare was almost continuous, more prominent men fell in private brawl or by the assassin's hand than on the field of battle. English law put an end to this, but English law was identified with foreign conquest and religious oppression. Thus the detesta- tion of murder, which has become so ingrained a sentiment in England, Scotland, Wales, and Protestant Ulster, has never grown up in Roman Catholic Ireland at all. If a murder is committed anywhere else in the British Isles a thrill of horror runs through the whole community and everyone is eager to help to arrest the murderer; if it takes place in Southern Ire- land it produces a thrill of awe not unmixed with admiration, and everyone is on the alert to cover up tho murderer's tracks. That this is so is well known to everyone who has lived in Southern Ireland; and it has left unmistakable traces in Anglo-Irish literature. An amusing instance is provided by Synge's famous play, The Play-boy of the Western World. A lad runs away from home thinking he has killed his father, whom he has knocked down with a spade in the course of a quarrel; at the first place he comes to he is hailed as a hero directly his story is known, and for a short time carries all before him; but presently his father, who had only been stunned, appears in pursuit of the fugitive, and his reputation collapses like a house of cards. This play has been denounced as a libellous outrage on a virtuous peasantry, and, taken literally, it is a libel. No Irish Roman Catholic community would acclaim a parricide. The picture is, of course, a carica- ture; but every caricature must have something behind it, and iii this case the something behind it is the practical certainty that he would have been hailed as a hero if he had killed anyone else. No humorist would dream of laying the scene of such an episode in England, Scotland, Wales, or Protestant Ulster, be- cause there it would have no point. Now, Synge was a great artist, and one who understood and appreciated the finer quali- ties of the native Irish character. To suppose that he would have written this play had the feeling towards murder in Southern Ireland been the same as in the other parts of these islands is to suppose that he hated his fellow countrymen so bitterly that in his eagerness to defame them he was willing to produce a play that would be fatal to his reputation as an artist.
Doubtless the best spiritual leaders of the Roman Church in Ireland would have changed this if they could, and would have brought about the same horror of murder as exists in other Roman Catholic countries, e.g., France, Belgium, and the Rhineland; but they have always been hampered by the Jesuit legacy from the Wars of Religion. During the life and death struggle against the Reformation the Jesuits developed the doctrine of the lawfulness of killing "tyrants" which had come down from classical antiquity : assassination was freely used against Protestant leaders like William the Silent and Coligny, and even Catholic monarchs like Henri IV., whose secular policy was considered dangerous to the power of the Church, did not escape. The body of casuistical divinity (case- law in matters of conscience) on which the administration of the confessional is based was largely created by Jesuit Fathers. Thus it has come about that it is a " probable opinion," that is an opinion which a confessor is authorized to act upon in dealing with a penitent, that the killing of a " tyrant " is not murder, and we have seen this developed and extended by a professor of the new Roman Catholic University in Ireland to cover the assassination of unarmed policemen, and that in
an article published in Dublin in an official organ of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The term "tyrant" again is now used very loosely. It is often applied to a man who behaves in an arbitrary and overbearing way in private life. It is easy to see what a. terrible extension of " killing no murder " is thereby provided. An Irish peasant has but to convince himself that someone has behaved to him like a " tyrant," and to find a father confessor who takes the same view, which is not difficult among a priesthood recruited from his own class with all its traditions and prejudices, and he can take his life without incurring the guilt of "murder."
In this connexion it is remarkable how closely the murder, of Sir Henry Wilson followed the precedent of that of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke in the 'eighties. Both were committed by men belonging to a special guild for the frequent reception of the Blessed Sacrament; both were repu- diated by the Nationalist papers of the day as " un-Irish crimes "; and in both cases the murderers were added by the popular voice to the roll of national martyrs. In the case of Cavendish and Burke all the Nationalist papers published in Dublin appeared the following morning with a mourning border. The sincerity of this profession may be judged from the sequel. A few weeks later Carey, the one of the party who was accepted as Queen's evidence, was shot in Capetown by an emissary of the secret society that planned the original murder, named O'Donnell. One of the papers which had appeared in mourning published in its next issue a two-page cartoon. On one side was the scene in the Dublin court-house, Carey giving evidence, with the heading in capitals, THE CRIME; on the other, headed in similar type, THE PUNISH- MENT, O'Donnell was depicted shooting Carey in the Cape Town restaurant. —I am, Sir, &c., HARRY IL REICHEL‘ Hotel de Lyon, Iloyat, Puy-de-Dome.
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