THE " ELEMENT OF HATE." T HE Times of Monday, in
an article on the anniversary of Mr. Parnell's death, unintentionally gave away part of the Unionist case. It attributed the great demon- stration made by the lower population of Dublin in honour of their hero to their "unchangeable passion of hate for England," and intimated that this hatred would never be extinguished in Ireland by anything short of in- dependence. That implies that independence would, or at least might, extinguish it; and, if so, any concession of partial independence must operate in the same direction, which is precisely what the sincere Gladstonians say. We -do not believe a word of it, holding that, so far as the national hatred of Irishmen for England is a factor in the situation, it would continue undiminished by Home-rule, or even by independence. That such hatred always exists among Home-rulers we should deny, for we have known many of them, and those among the keenest, in whom it had died away ; but unquestion- ably it is still living among the masses, and perhaps a majority of their leaders. Their literature is full of it, their greatest orators .constantly allude to it, their greatest man ruled them, and ruled them haughtily, because, though Englishman by blood, they felt sure that this spirit was in him " unchangeable." Indeed, except upon English hustings sometimes, they do not take the trouble to deny the hatred, only alleging that it sprang from ancient wrongs, and, on the extinction of the power to com- mit those wrongs again, would instantly disappear. Would it ? That depends upon the origin of the hate, the kind of fuel which feeds the fire, the degree of pleasure which the hatred affords. If the hatred of the Irish people sprang from wrongs only, their disappearance might, at least, alleviate it, but clearly it does not. The wrongs of Ireland were once, as we have always admitted, so great as fully to explain, if not to justify, hate ; but with the removal of those wrongs, the hatred has in no degree disappeared. There is still the same longing that England should be defeated or humiliated, the same conviction that England's misfortune is Ireland's opportunity, the same bitter lan- guage whenever England is mentioned in her corporate action. The sentiment is even stronger among Irish- Americans, who are far outside the possibility of wrong, and is just as strong among the Anglo-Irish, who share in all the privileges and advantages of the assumed " oppressor." " Cursed be England !" is the sentiment of them all, irrespective of liability to wrong. A feeling so deep and so lasting must arise from other springs than mere revenge, and we believe it arises from three sources, not one of which can be removed by Home-rule, or independence either. One is the in- fluence of tradition, which, quite powerless among English- men, is part of the very life of all Celts, as strong among Welshmen as among men of Kerry, as effective among Bretons as among the lower Hebrideans. That is a sentiment born with the people, fostered by their nurses, fed by their popular literature, and it would no more end with independence than it ended with the acqui- sition of the English language, which so many wise men once thought would terminate it for ever. They forgot that, when the hatred has once been born, a common language, like a common kinship, is but a stronger bond of enmity. You hate your cousins as you can- not hate strangers, and feel insults in your own tongue which are lost in the obscurity of another speech. The second cause is the disagreeableness of the English, which is felt by all races of all colours, except, perhaps, the Italians, and which has its root in the sense of that cold disdain which even the Americans denounce as the " superciliousness of the Britisher." How is that to be removed by Home-rule or independence ? The two sets of islanders will be just as much in contact, for the Ulstermen, by whom the Southerners judge us, will remain on the spot, and the friction between the two peoples in our own cities will rather be exasperated, the English resenting the interference of men who have become, either in fact or theory, foreigners. We see the working of that friction between Frenchmen and Belgians, Provencals and Italians, and it certainly does not help to extinguish original dislike. If Ireland independent were ruled by Southerners only, she would try to injure us when she could, and in a few years outraged patriotism in either land would have deepened existing hatred into a mortal antipathy, such as makes some Frenchmen unable to listen to German music, though, as the history of Alsace shows, the " race hatred," pure and simple, between Germans and Frenchmen, was of the feeblest quality. And the third cause is envy ; the anger of Irishmen, as it was once described, because Ireland is not England. Neither Home-rule nor in- dependence will alter that by so much as a hair's-breadth. Ireland will remain the smaller of the two countries, the poorer, the less populated, while craving even more than at present for equal visibleness, equal luxury, equal weight in the settlement of the world's affairs. Envy of that kind; not being born wholly of evil, but part of an evil jealousy, part of a worthy patriotism, is inextinguishable by any- thing except a change in the conditions of comparison. If English-America became poor and feeble, Spanish- America would cease to loathe her; and if England died away into a great park, protected mainly by the Powers' jealousy of each other, Irishmen would like her well enough. The bitterest antipathy ever felt by Englishmen universally —the antipathy for Spain—died away with the Spanish deca- dence ; and if Spanish finance were a little straighter, would be replaced by a hearty liking for one of the strongest- natured peoples in the world. Nothing of the kind will occur here, for any grand misfortune to England, her only cus- tomer, would necessarily include Ireland ; and consequently the hatred, one-aided as it is—for the English hate nobody. only disdaining their foes—will survive any form of ad- ministrative or even actual separation. How far it will go it is impossible to predict, for Englishmen and Irish- men do not understand one another sufficiently for either to form an opinion on such a subject. The one conceals his feelings too habitually, the other too habitu- ally exaggerates all his enmities as well as his loves by his form of expression. It is as difficult for us to understand where Irish hate begins and ends as where Irish love does, and we no more comprehend why hatred for England ebbs and flows, but never dies, than why the worshippers of Mr. Parnell became, all in one hour, his most malignant foes. All we pretend to affirm is that, whatever the degree of hate, it would survive either Home-rule or Separation.
Is there, then, no hope of the extinction of the sentiment which, at least as much as their historic relation, divides the English from the Southerners of Ireland ? We should say none whatever, certainly none in any removal of wrongs or grant of separate Administration or concession of independence. The dividing element, so far as it exists, springs from causes which man did not create, and man cannot remove. The Slav and the German of Bohemia have dwelt together for nearly four hundred years, and hate each other as they did in the beginning of their union. To the Basque, the Spaniard is still a sort of enemy ; and the Breton neither loves, nor pretends to love, the French- man of the South. What might happen—will happen, we hope—is that the hate will fade away into a keen and recognised dislike, upon which, in the affairs of life, neither party intends to act. There is a tendency just now to exaggerate the value of what is called " love," as a working quality, to a preposterous extent. Neighbours and nations alike, if they have only common interests, and are con- trolled when they quarrel by a common and superior force, get along without "love" very well indeed. Civilisation will make us all decent by-and-bye, and decent men do not cheat those they dislike, or fly at their throats, or even traduce them, any more than they do their most intimate acquaintance. Neither sharp criticism nor avoidance break any bones ; and it is into sharp criticism or avoidance that national enmity, if controlled by circum- stances, dies away. Jew and Gentile get along as citizens, whenever the laws are equal, very fairly well, working to- gether hard even in the same regiments ; and the mutual 4. love " of Jews and Gentiles is quite a measurable quantity. It is not love, we presume, which holds the Irish Constabu- lary together; but a more efficient force does not exist in the world. A city like Liverpool or Glasgow gets on well enough, though the opinion of part of its population is unfavourable to another part ; and with a little more training in savoir-vivre, which comes gradually, and is not perfect even in Switzerland, they will get along still better. The ideal is not the situation supposed to exist in most Utopias, where everybody hugs his brother, but the situation as it exists in Vienna. Nobody in that capital of contending races pretends to have a good opinion of all his neighbours, or refrains when so moved from sharp criticism of national peculiarities, rising pretty often into expressions of strong contempt and dislike. A Viennese Czech thinks of a Viennese German very much as Hurrish was taught to think of the English ; a Magyar looks down on both; and a Slovack or Transylvanian or Dalmatian would rather all were hanged on the same tree ; but they do not fight, they all intermarry, they all do business together ; and the total entity called Vienna becomes a finer city for habitation every day. The United Kingdom would flourish very well without any artificial " Union of Hearts," if only its external union were assured, and if irresistible power, resting, as in Vienna, on the acquiescence of all, secured the necessary conditions of amicable and civilised life.
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