BRITISH RULE IN IRELAND.*
THE Irish question threatens to grow into a literary as well as a political nuisance. It not only stops the Parliamentary highway, but goes near to choking our libraries with cart-loads of worthless rubbish. Without the smallest pretensions to special knowledge of the subject, or to political capacity, or to literary skill, there is a class of persons, unpleasantly conspicuous just now, that con- sider themselves to have a call to speak their minds on the Irish question simply because it occupies the thoughts of all, and because there are few who can boast of understanding it. As a matter of course, writers of this sort convey no instruction whatever to their readers. On the contrary, governed, as they commonly are themselves, by the narrowest prejudices, and incapable of apprehending the conditions of a social life radically different from that of England, these writers tend to perpetuate and propagate those obstinate delusions as to the state of Ireland which have for ages hindered this country from doing justice to the sister kingdom. For example, is not such a book as that which Colonel Jervis has published likely to do some mischief, while it cannot possibly do any service ? The author complains, and with some justice, in his preface of the difficulties which beset the study of the Irish question, and of the ignorance which prevails respecting it. But we may ask how Colonel Jervis pro- poses to contribute to the removal of these difficulties and the dis- persion of this ignorance, by the publication of the portly and unattractive volume which he thinks this an opportune moment to give to the world. The difficulty of the Irish question in its his- torical aspect arises from the complex and repulsive exterior which Irish history presents to the student. Irish history in Colonel Jervis's book loses none of its obscurity and complexity, and yet it is exhibited in a meagre and imperfect narrative, not more accurate in contents or more attractive in style than the story of Irish subjugation as it is told in the most common-place of school books.
Colonel Jervis has epitomized in a volume of a little over three hundred pages of large type the history of Ireland from the Conquest to the present day. It is obvious that such treatment of a theme, comprehending the development of a nation during a period of seven centuries, cannot pretend to completeness or accuracy. Mr. Goldwin Smith, however, in his picturesque sketch of Irish History and Irish Character, has shown how, by artistic selection of prominent features, by bold and free drawing, and by warm colouring, a vivid, if not an absolutely correct, representa- tion of Ireland in its relation to conquering England and the colonizing English may be set before the reader. Colonel Jervis, however, approaching his work, by his own admission ,quite innocent of any knowledge of his subject, and regarding his writing rather as a beneficial exercise for himself than a means of instruction for others, could hardly hope to surpass Mr. Goldwin Smith, or indeed many inferior writers. Of a state of society, which even after long study one finds it difficult to represent in imagination, Colonel Jervis gives a dim, blurred, and distorted picture. A meagre and halting narrative is eked out with such political common- places as county members distil during the dinner-hour to the patient Speaker and deserted benches, with inept moral reflections, and, to give a flavour of solidity and research, long irrelevant quota- tions from collections of State papers and the more obsolete portion of the Statutes-at-large. And this entertainment is presented in a cumbrous, opaque style ; the grammar limps in nearly every page, and pronouns and antecedents stumble against each other in a fashion not uncommon in the works of military authors. A single specimen, taken from the opening lines of Colonel Jervis's book, will satisfy our readers that if this volume attains a public
Ireland under British Rule. By Lieutenant-Colonel H. J. W. Jervis, ILA., M.P. London : Chapman and Hall.
of its own, it will scarcely do so through the brilliancy of its writing :-
"Of Ireland previous to its occupation by the Anglo-Normans little is known. Iberian settlements appear to have been formed on its south coast at a very early period. In the north, the Scots established themselves much about the same time as other kindred tribes of the great Kymrian nation settled in Britain. History, however, does not record which of these two races, if either, were the aborigines. As they increased in numbers, and spread inland, a sanguinary struggle seems to have arisen between them for existence, on a soil which, covered with wood and bog, afforded sustenance to but a few. This cause likewise, when, in the course of ages, Scots and Iberians amalga- mated, created perpetual strife between their several tribes."
Through the early chapters of the book, down, in fact, to the point where he enters the domain of contemporary politics, Colonel Jervis evidently writes under a painful and laborious sense of the darkness and dreariness of his theme, and of his own unfitness to illumine it. Nothing can be more depressing, soporific, and useless reading than the chapter on the quarrels and alliances, the genea- logies and transmutations of the Anglo-Irish. The struggles of the O'Connors and O'Neils against the English supremacy, the feuds of the Barons of the Pale with each other, the intrigues of English politicians in Ireland,—on all these, which have little bearing upon the main stream of Irish history, Colonel Jervis dwells prosily enough. On the salient points of difference between the social order of a Celtic nation and the social order of an Anglo- Saxon nation, he does not touch, or at least, he does not bring them, as they should be brought, into relief, and separate them from the mass of trivial and accidental circum- stances in which they have been hidden in chronicles and State papers. He does not attempt to show, he scarcely appre- hends, we should rather say, how alien to the traditions and character of the Celt was the system of representative govern- ment which grew up naturally in England. He omits to notice how completely this separation between the English aristocracy and the Celtic peasantry, which from the time of the Conquest had existed more or less markedly, and at the date of the Reformation was embittered and invigorated, rendered futile all attempts to introduce into Ireland that scheme of local adminis- tration which by the intertexture of ranks has been possible in England. Again, the conditions under which the Church of England was introduced into Ireland, and the manner in which it was received by the people, as Dr. Maziere Brady has proved in his useful works, rendered the conversion of the Irish by any method short of miracle a thing not to be hoped for. Colonel Jervis slurs over this important crisis in Irish history also. He gives us a rude and hasty sketch of the purely political faction fights to which it afforded a pretext for quarrel ; and no more. It was not to be expected that, with the prepossessions of an English Tory, Colonel Jervis could appreciate the great fact in the social history of Ireland which, next to the fact that Ireland is a conquered country, is the most significant of all. Yet many times in the course of his studies and his writing, Colonel Jervis must have had occasion to note the fact that under the clan system of the Celts the right of the members of the clan to a part-proprietorship in the land of the clan, the ager publicu.s, was a recognized and fundamental maxim of public policy. Of course Irishmen of the present generation know nothing of clanship, or of "the land that was of public right," but though the words have lost their significance, the ideas remain, and it is vain to hope for a settlement of the Irish question till we have taken into account ideal as well as material facts.
We have no desire to speak harshly of Colonel Jervis, who appears to have .undertaken a task far above his knowledge and powers from very commendable motives ; but we must pro- test against the useless and annoying accumulation of worthless books on the condition of Ireland. There is not a single fresh idea in Colonel Jervis's big volume, not a single obscurity cleared up, not a single difficult and complicated point set in a new light. The writer treads a well-beaten path leading to nothing, and travels his mill-round contentedly, in the happy faith that he has made progress. In the two last chapters of Colonel Jervis's work we find ample evidence that all the trouble he has taken has resulted in little benefit to himself, much less to those whom he offers to teach. He set out, we suppose, with the true, unteachable Tory principle that the best thing to do to Ireland is to let her alone. And he retains this conviction to the end, and does his best to inculcate it. The title of his concluding chapter, a resund of the Irish politics of the day, indicates its spirit and drift. "The Irish demagogue" is taken as a representative of Irish political feeling and action for forty years past. Unhappily we cannot deny that there have existed and still exist some specimens
of the Irish demagogue in Ireland, but they are neither more numer- ous nor more offensive than the English demagogues that are not yet extinct in England. We protest, however, against Colonel Jervis's identification of all Irish politicians with the empty, self-interested brawlers whom his imagination has multiplied. Of Colonel Jervis's capacity to estimate the relative import- ance and significance of Irish political questions we have an example in his comments on the state of feeling in Ireland after the enactment of the Church Temporalities' Act, a measure, be it remembered, which simply redistributed within the Establishment the revenue gained by the abolition of the ten Sees :— "In fact whatever could be asked by the Irish in reason was cheer- fully granted. No concessions or benefits, however, could gain the hearts of the people of Ireland. In vain were large sums expended in making roads through mountainous districts, in reclaiming bogs, in improving harbours, or canal navigation, Eminent English statesmen were, however, as much to blame for this as the most ignorant of the. Irish peasantry. The Iri.h question had become a stalking-horse to power, and the Roman Catholics of Ireland were soon taught by English ministers, as well as by their own demagogues, how, having obtained their rights, their next duty was to endeavour to deprive their former opponents of theirs."
Colonel Jervis's opinions on the Land and Church questions are not materially different from those accepted by the majority of the Tory Members. "Land," he says, "is property. In civilized countries the rights of property are recognized ; in uncivilized ones they are always in jeopardy. Is there any reason why the rights. of landowners in Ireland should differ from those of any other country ?" Is Euclid more severely logical than this writer ? The question, we see, is settled "with a turn of the wrist." In the same dashing style Colonel Jervis disposes of the Church question. "Will the sacrifice of the Establishment," he asks, "benefit the people of the country ? The Roman Church will not accept any of its revenues. In that case, what benefit will accrue to the Irish people by confiscating any portion of it?" Apparently, Colonel Jervis cannot realize a national aspiration after any such chimera as equality or justice, after anything else, in fact, than cash, the Englishman's unvarying " parmaceti for an inward bruise." Fortunately, all our legislators do not think pre- cisely as Colonel Jervis thinks.
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