TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE O'CONNELL CENTENARY.
THE Fates, as usual, have been unkind to Ireland about this Centenary. It was to have been such a grand celebra- tion, and it came to so very little. Its managers had been in- spired with a great, not to say a grandiose idea, which, had the Fates and the national temperament been propitious, might have been worked out with a certain splendour, namely, to seize on the hundredth anniversary of the birthday of the one Irish hero who was successful—Ireland has had many heroes, but they have all been illustrious in misfortune—in order to hold a grand national ceremonial, to assert the place of Ireland among the nations, and to remind Europe and the world that Ireland is. There were many elements of hopefulness in the scheme. All Irish Catholics reverence O'Connell, and even the Protestants, though they will not praise him, are not altogether displeased to have such a name to quote, when men who agree with Mazzini in his definition of nationality ask what has Ireland contributed to the world. The leaders of Home-rule movements in Ireland have been as often Protestants as Catholics. There was reason to believe that the ceremonial would be national, and if national, why not world-wide ?—for let England boast her position as she may, England does not belong to the only cor- poration which claims to include mankind, the universal, all- embracing Church. Let England be proud of her colonies ; Ireland has bonds yet stronger to every country where men profess the Catholic faith. Cinderella of the nations, her pedigree is still unsmirched. Let the Lord Mayor of London boast that he has summoned the biggest Aldermen in the world to dine with him in the Guildhall. The Lord Mayor of Dublin can invite the Catholic prelates of earth, and be sure at least of courteous refusal. Had the plan been suc- cessfully carried out, and the leading prelates of the Catholic world attended to weep over and comfort their poor relation, and all Ireland assisted to honour O'Connell's memory, and the world stood at gaze to see how great was still the vitality of the Irish nation, the spectacle would have been imposing enough to attract attention and it may be respect from the remainder of the Empire. At all events, it would have been "a great day for Ireland," a day of gratification to her tearful pride and solace to her mourning dignity, a day about which songs might be sung, a day which could be quoted in Parlia- ment as a warning to a tyrannical majority,—and that would have been something gained out of a too monotonous life. Unhappily, as has so often happened in Ireland, the Fates were in an ironical mood. The majority of the prelates asked did not come, and the only effect of asking them was to annoy the Protestants and the Whigs whose adhesion was essential, while those who represented the Church from abroad knew no Irish, and talked so lengthily in outlandish tongues that the audi- ence got bored to frenzy, and would not put up with any more of it. At the grand banquet of Friday, which was to have been the culminating scene of the ceremonial, the diners hardly listened to the Bishop of Nantes, though he represented France, the old friend and betrayer of Ireland, and shouted down Prince Radzivil, perhaps the most influential lay Catholic in the German Empire. The dignity of internationality was quite forgotten, and we fear the comment of many among the foreign visitors must have been that Cinderella had lost, with her gowns, some of her manners in the kitchen. Then the selected occasion for display turned out a wrong selection. The secret of O'Connell's power in Ireland, apart from his per- sonal gifts, was that he, of all men, represented the double emotion which, ever since the Reformation, has swayed the majority there, the pride of creed and the pride of nationality. He was a devoted Catholic and a devoted Irishman. Whether he was as sincere an advocate of Independence as of Emanci- pation may be doubted, even by those who believe in him, for O'Connell was not by nature a Republican, and he had French proclivities ; but to Irishmen his fidelity to both their causes seems undeniable, and they hail him as at once the Liberator and the Patriot. That he was unsuccessful in one effort and successful in the other makes no difference; he made both efforts, and in both he might, had Irishmen been other than they were, have been triumphant. Ultramontane and Home- ruler, Priest and Nationalist, Cardinal Cullen and Mr. Butt could unite in laudation of the man who pleaded in the same breath the right of secession in politics and the criminality of secession in religion. The Fates, however, were adverse, and the double character of O'Connell, instead of
uniting all Irishmen, only increased the depth of the fissure which now once more divides the majority. The Catholics sought to suppress his character as Secessionist, the Nationalists were jealous of the boasts of his Catholicity. Each party wanted to appropriate him entire, and each as it saw the other's effort, pulled harder the other way. The Fenian Martyrs were lauded_ in opposition to Catholic Prelates. Mr. Butt was shouted for when the Lord Mayor wanted Prince Radzivil. There was an amnesty procession to rival the procession to the grave, and black banners, flaunted in pity for the Martyrs, oddly chequered the display of gilt flags waved in triumph and gratulation. The grand banquet which should have been the occasion for displaying the eloquence, and the unity, and the long memory of Ireland ended in a violent party row, termi- nated only by the retreat of the Lord Mayor and the extinction of the gas. The division of feeling was too great alike for decorum and for enjoyment. The people who in all Europe most admire eloquence would let no orator speak; the most hospitable of mankind groaned down their invited guests; and the only sensi- tive men in the United Kingdom risked becoming ridiculous rather than support an order they disapproved. A great idea, well con- ceived and boldly executed, ended in a great fiasco. Even in minute details, the irony of the Fates was manifest. Ireland hap- pens to have recently had a Lord Chancellor who was also a Catholic and a friend of O'Connell, and Lord O'Hagan was therefore asked to pronounce the Liberator's eulogy ; but a domestic misfortune intervened, and the eulogy left un- spoken was only published in the Times as the oration which, had circumstances favoured, would have been delivered. That characteristic Hibernicism was an accidental, but terrible blow for the Catholics ; and as for the Nationalists, the weather, from the days of the Armada always Protestant and English, once more put out its strength. No sooner were the National crowd and the National orators and the National speeches all ready to go off, than a torrent of rain—rain such as only Dublin and the tropics know—drove all in silence and soaking shivering to their homes. Nothing that could be unkind was kind to either side, and Cinderella, once more disenchanted, once more wept.
Holding Ultramontanes and Home-rulers alike in low esteem —the former, for trusting so much to earthly means to win a prize which, if they are right, no material feebleness can forfeit ; the latter, for their failure to see that the result they seek can be attained only through independence ; and doubting the grandeur of O'Connell, whose great capacities seem to us tainted by an inherent vulgarity, and who is the representative man of the lower and not the higher Irish nature, which latter was far better typified in Sarsfield—we yet regret that an effort which interested a nation should have been thus foiled. Disappointment of this kind does not baffle it only embitters. The failure will not alter Ireland; it will only deepen the prejudice of England. The long quarrel will never end till the disputants understand one another, and Britain will never understand Ireland till the latter has done something, done something considerable, done something as Ireland by itself. An O'Connell Centenary is not something considerable, but still it is something distinctive, something Ireland should have managed thoroughly well, and the failure to manage it raises in all minds in this island that impression of in- competency which, justified to the full by the history of Irish- men at home, is shown to be so false by their history abroad. We forget what Englishman it was who said that the greatest misfortune for England in her dealings with Ireland was that no Irish rebellion had ever been so nearly successful as to call forth her whole power for its repression, and therefore arouse her foible of honouring success, but he was in a rough way right, as the history of Scotland shows. If Ireland were often successful, if she often achieved the end on which. she had set her mind, were it only to celebrate in grand or in melancholy style a great or a sorrowful anniversary, no bizarrerie in that end, no inconvenience consequent on its attainment, no danger to be apprehended from it would blind England to the qualities of her opponents. It is not because her servants mutiny that she will not comprehend their wishes, but because in that mutinous rush upstairs they always stumble, and sit swearing and rueful, but rather ridiculous, among the broken china. It is want of respect which such scenes as that of Friday se'nnight engender, and Englishmen are too Philistine, and for that matter too bigoted, to try to understand what they have not respected first. They concede sense to but one set of savages in the world—the Maoris—for ''--- it costs English lives to take a Maori stockade. Nor is it a trifling reason for regret, though it is an inferior one to this, that a whole people should have been annoyed and fretted and humiliated by a failure to accomplish an object which, whether we approve it or not, was very near to its impulsive heart. The Irish wanted to be obvious for one day, to seem as bright and eloquent and charming as they are, and the party ended, like a party in a shebeen, in a personal row ; and the banquet like a noisy meeting in a town hall in- turned-out gas. There is no one-legged race, and in Ireland as everywhere else glad friends are the pleasantest friends, and self-satisfied subjects the subjects who find it easiest to obey. We wish to the Irish as a nation more of the happy, satisfying self-conceit which Scotchmen would scold us for ascribing to them, did it not make the nation, happily for Britain and themselves, so imper- vious to satire ; and it is not on endless minute failures, unceasing ittIe mortifications, and perennial petty humiliations that self- conceit is fed. The English—and there are some—who rejoice because a banquet in honour of O'Connell ended in a Lord Mayor's flight, and a party row, and the gas turned down to avoid a shindy, are as silly as they are aggravating to Irishmen. A landlord might as well rejoice that a discontented tenant had a bad harvest. No matter for the crop, let it be full, if you want a contented farmer. We do not care much to do honour to O'Connell, hard as some of his successors try to make us all regret him, as one regrets the drum within hearing .of the railway whistle ; but if Ireland does—and Catholic Ireland justly does—we think England unwise as well as unkind to laugh, because, with the usual unluckiness of Irish fate, Irishmen hurried up to honour O'Connell, till in their haste the universal obeisance which was to have been so impressive was spoiled by all their heads knocking together.
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