IRELAND IN 1872.*
WHATEVER complaints Ireland may have to make as to the attention paid her by British legislators, she has no complaint to make as to the attention paid her by British travellers. From the days of Spenser and Fynes Moryson to our own, she has had, in every generation, ample acknowledgment from the Saxon pen. She has been viewed and reviewed, walked round and toured through, sketched and jotted about, in the most generous and • Ireland is '72. By James Macaulay, BA., M.D., Edinburgh. London : Henry B. Yang and Co
neighbourly fashion. And this, we surmise, has arisen from the well-known literary disposition to one of the most charming of human virtues. For a little better than seven hundred years Ireland has been, unhappily, the one sick member, the sole permanent
invalid of the Imperial family ; and every man in the Imperial household, with or without a degree, provided only he could write, has, out of pure family affection, indited a
prescription for the ailing sister. During the illness, last year, of the Prince of Wales, very many people besides Mrs.
Brown proffered unprofessional advice as to the proper treatment for his Royal Highness ; and many a time had Messrs. Jenner and Gull and Low to wonder at the vast resources of medical science which had escaped the ken of the Medical faculty. For three or four hundred years something similar has been perpetually occurring in the case of Ireland. Her malady puzzles the highest art of the political profession, and the political professors are daily assisted by the wise opiniona of charitable and disinterested observers. That has been the case, more especially of late years, and very naturally, too. Until very lately—until, we may say, the Premiership of Mr. Gladstone—it was a very generally received doctrine that the only recipe for Ireland was the simple one of blood-letting ; and though authorities, professional and unpro- fessional, differed (as doctors always do), still the difference was only as to the artery to be opened or the quantity of blood to be drawn. But now it is a fact, recognised by all but Mr. Froude, that the good old system is neither salutary nor safe. And accord- ingly, we have now a vast variety of new suggestions. In fact,
the vastness of the variety makes it puzzling to choose. The systems of healing threaten to be as numerous as were the systems of hurt that made healing necessary. In the book before us we have, quite a propos, some remarks on the patient from the pen of a real Doctor of Medicine.
Dr. Macaulay's book, we may say at once, is no worse and no better than the average book of its kind. The author has, we think, tried conscientiously to master the topics of which he treats ; and in some cases and to some extent he has succeeded. But as a rule, he has failed. His failure is, howevers somewhat excusable. It is-due to his ignorance of the Irish character, and manners, and religion, and to that profound conviction of personal inerrancy which is a quality of all men who, for the sake of their native land, volunteer to write about benighted strangers. Besides, Dr. Macaulay has-allowed himself a somewhat extensive range, and it is scarcely to be expected that a solitary person would be able to report of all its parts with the correctness and completeness which would be desirable. We have the O'Keeffe Case, the Keogh Judgment, National Education, the University Question, the Irish Press, Irish Ballad Poetry, the Irish Exhibition, Irish Trade and Manufactures, Home Rule, and a dozen other theories, descanted on with the dauntless bravery of a Special Correspondent. We are, iu fact, somewhat perplexed to know why some of these themes are introduced at all ; and why, being introduced, they are spoken of with such prolixity. Take, for in- stance, the affair of the Rev. Robert O'Keeffe. We could well afford to be ignorant of that gentleman's existence, and still have a knowledge of Ireland in 1872 ; but when the ecclesias- tical faction-fight of Callan has had devoted to it one of our author's longest chapters, we not only take no interest in the narrative, but we begin to doubt very gravely whether Dr. Macaulay possesses any sense of literary proportion. Perhaps; however, he attended rather to the dimensions of his entire book than to the dimensions of its several parts ; and with many people, that will excuse him.
It is curious, however, that Dr. Macaulay's handling of the O'Keeffe case is about the fairest specimen of his ability to treat Irish questions. It brings out pretty clearly the lines in which he may succeed, and the lines in which he is sure to fail. He is rather a prolix writer, and therefore we have a lengthy biography of Mr. O'Keeffe. He is occasionally a violent writer, and accordingly he administers some very severe punishment to Cardinal Cullen. He is a really industrious writer, and therefore we have a very large and very accurate statement of the bald facts of the case. But be is a writer very ignorant of the religious principles which the case involves, and so we have the most ludicrous blunders about Ultramontanism, and other Mesopotamian terms of vast mean- ing with all people who do not understand them. Dr. Macaulay is much more in his element when be is narrating his conversations with Mr. Bianconi, the once famous proprietor of Irish cars. But his conversations with Mr. Bianconi have only a very shadowy bearing upon the Ireland of 1872. Mr. Bianconi and Mr. Bianconi's cars belong to a generation practically as far distant from us as was the good old pillion period from the era of
Mr. Bianconi. Yet it is a very interesting thing to hear how a penniless Italian lad rose in Ireland to be one of the wealthiest and one of the worthiest of its employers of labour, and how when his fortune was made he did not run off with it to Nice or Como, but settled down in Tipperary, fearless of blunderbusses and Rorys of the Hills. Nor is Dr. Macaulay less interesting when he quotes and criticises the poetry of Thomas Davis and Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, though here, again, we have grave reasons for think- ing that strictures on " The Muster of the North " are not pointedly relevant to the subject of Ireland in '72. On Home Rule, the Education question, the Keogh judgment, &c., Dr. Macaulay is very much what he is everywhere else. His collec- tion of facts is always creditable ; his handling of facts, both from want of literary power and from want of knowledge of Ireland, is nearly always quite the reverse.
But what is Dr. Macaulay's recipe for Irish illness ? Get rid of the priests. To his eyes, the sacerdotal incubus is what keeps Ireland for ever down and degraded. But if what he calls the Ultramontane party can only be defeated, and if the Irish Roman Catholic laity will only join hands with the Orangemen in secur- ing its defeat, Ireland will become a happy land. We are very ranch afraid that Dr. Macaulay is mistaken. Only Mr. Whalley and Mr. Newdegate wish to see the Roman priesthood lose its power in Ireland just now. It, and it alone, has saved the Government from much trouble in recent years. And a sad day will it be for Ireland if her young men listen to the folly of Fenians,—which they would do at present, but for the priests. A Romish despotism is very bad, but a rebellious Commune is much worse ; and it is our impression that if Ireland, just at pre- sent at all events, gives up the Pope, she may be too likely to take, not to Protestantism, but to petroleum and Mr. Pagan O'Leary.
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