IRISH HATRED OF ENGLAND.
[To THE EDITOR OP TER "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—Will you allow me to state some grounds for believing that the Irish hatred of England, which you lament in your last number, is more restricted to particular classes, and more likely to yield to causes already in operation, but which have not yet had time to produce their natural effects, than might at first sight be supposed?
During the troubled years that followed the Irish famine and the death of O'Connell, hatred and defiance of England were quite as much as now the staple of all popular oratory and of all writers in newspapers on the popular side in Ireland. The Orange or Conservative papers, on their part, habitually exag- gerated the extent of this feeling, as enabling them to claim a monopoly of loyalty, and to throw blame on Lord John Russell's Government for not adopting severe enough measures of re- pression, just as they have thrown blame on Mr. Gladstone's Government for the same thing. So far, then, as the state of feeling in Ireland could be learnt from the Press on either side, Irish hatred of England appeared both wide-spread and in- tense. Yet I can testify, as the result of frequent visits during this period, both to Dublin and several country districts in Ireland, and a fair amount of intercourse with middle- class Irishmen, commercial, agricultural, and professional (mostly, I may add, Catholics in religion, and professing to be more or less on the popular side in politics), that it was only occasionally that any earnest hatred of England was to be met with amongst the middle-classes. Indifference to all political controversy was much more common. I was much struck likewise with the mistrust almost universally expressed of the Irish popular Members and platform orators of the day. It seemed to be assumed, as a matter of course, that they were all (excepting, perhaps, Smith O'Brien) place-hunters or self- seekers of some sort. The subsequent careers of these men proved, indeed, that they were judged with even less than justice ; for while some of them did, in fact, turn out to have had for their goal all along well-paid office, home or colonial, under the Government which they would have any day de- nounced as capable of spitting Irish babies upon Saxon bayonets, there were others who remained consistent and distinterested to the end.
Even in Leinster, Connaught, and Munster, it was necessary at that time, and many things combine to prove that it is no less necessary now, to go below the fairly educated middle-class, to find much genuine hatred of England, or much appre- ciation of the men who labour to aggravate that unhappy feeling. It is, in truth, amongst the tenant-farmers and cottiers, and the classes closely connected with them, that this hatred has become really and deeply rooted. However much we may lament this feeling, it is difficult for any one who will study the history of this class for many generations past to wonder at it. Notwithstanding all that has been said and written, I believe the English public has even now but little idea of the hopeless lot of a very large proportion of Irish tenants under the system superseded by the Land Act. In bad seasons, there were eemi- starvation, arrears of rent accumulating, evictions, and the in- describable miseries of crowds of men, women, and children turned out, often in winter, absolutely destitute, upon the road- side. In good seasons every appearance of comfort, everything that maight raise a suspicion that a tenant was thriving or putting by money, had to be at any sacrifice avoided, lest it should be inferred that he could afford to pay a better rent. Good landlords, indeed, there were, but what could that avail the tenants of bad landlords ? Moreover, however good the land- lord, he often had debts, and mortgagees must have their interest, be the landlord's wishes or the tenant's sufferings what they may. And there was not a tenant in Ireland who did not identify this cruel system of land-tenure with English rule, or who believed it could last a day, if English rule were put an end to.
The Land Act, it is tree, has now overthrown this system. As explained by Mr. Forster, in an instructive speech at Devon- port, not even the very substantial reductions in present rents are more valuable than the absolute security against inequit- able increases of rent in the future which the Act confers. Tenants may henceforward fearlessly bring forth their savings (stealthily hidden away, unproductive hitherto), and may ex- pend them in whatever improvements, or stock, or implements they think will yield them the best return. Mr. Forster indeed, states that many tenants are already beginning to do this.
The passing of the Land Act was an act of justice, but it was also something more. It was the first, as well as, with such a Legislature as ours, the most difficult step in a policy which makes the reconciliation of England and Ireland for the first time possible. As long as the old system of land-tenure endured. in Ireland, no subsidence of Irish hatred of England could be for a moment hoped for. Bat even the passing of the Land Act could do no more than make reconciliation possible. The Act is coming into operation slowly, and the unhappy circum- stance that the Commissioners' decisions take effect from the time they are pronounced, and not from the institution of pro. ceedings, is seriously retarding its progress. Even where the Act is in operation, it will be much if five or ten years suffice to. develope the prosperity which must undoubtedly result from it. But as comfort diffuses itself amongst the masses who cultivate the soil, and the memory of the old system of land-tenure dies away, the removal of other causes of national estrangement will become a task which even ordinary statesmen may well prove-
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