THE FRENCH VISITORS IN IRELAND.
THE English people has no traditions, and has a difficulty in understanding the inveteracy alike of traditional hatreds and traditional friendships, and consequently miscon- ceives the import of the reception given in Ireland to the visitors from France. No more disagreeable incident could be imagined than the farewell at Dublin, with its scores of thousands of men mad with enthusiasm for a foreign State, but it is as well not to exaggerate or misrepresent its meaning. It furnishes no proof whatever that our recent legislation has failed in removing the sources of Irish dis- affection, and very little of the existence of any serious dis- affection. That legislation was not intended to affect, and indeed could not reach, the populace of the cities, who neither own land nor pay tithes, and beyond the populace no demon- stration was made but such as was due to the envoys of a friendly people arriving on an errand of courtesy. Had the re- ception, however, included the whole Catholic population of Ire- land, Great Britain need neither have been surprised nor vexed. Tradition, usually ill-founded and always exaggerated, is still powerful in Ireland, and the strongest of all traditions among the lower class is the friendship of France. Had Ireland been an independent State last year she would have declared war on Germany out of mere sympathy with Prance, and have sent a dozen regiments to aid the weaker side ; and as it was, it was all the Government could do to keep the people within the limits of neutrality. Nor is that unnatural. During the two hundred years of the struggle against English power, a struggle all the more bitter, because it was only occasionally conducted in the field, the Irish were sedulously taught that help would ultimately come from France. It never did come in any sufficient shape, nor did France ever attempt to make terms for her Irish allies ; but still it was always promised, and the people, quivering under the most irritating of all forms of oppression, oppression for religion's sake, clung to their only friend. Irish exiles received in France an honorific, if not a
fructuous welcome, and to men maddened with daily insult honourable consideration appeared the most enchanting of boons. When no Irish Catholic could hold an English com- mission, Irish officers were welcomed into the service of France, and might rise, if not to the top, at least as high as any other foreigners. While at home they were treated as serfs, re- fused all employment, declared unworthy to sit on juries, and endangered in their estates because of their creed, the Irish were treated in France as gentlemen and equals,—used no doubt very often and then flung away, but still held to be gentle- men by the cavaliers of the first nation in the world. This was
the secret of the charm of France. Her Government never paid or promoted their Irish servants fairly. They broke their pro- mises to the Irish people again and again. They excited them to insurrection, and landed no troops, or landing them, grew disgusted with the country and retired. But through it all they treated the Irish as to this hour they treat the Poles, as gentlemen of the European family, entitled to, consideration for themselves, and specially worthy of regard because they might one day be useful allies in an expedition against the hereditary enemy. We never conceded this social equality, never allowed that we were dealing with enemies, but only with " rebels," never for ages admitted that an Irishman might be a gentleman. The Irishman with traditions, but without a history, proud, poetic, and given to social vanity, resented that demeanour as the Rajpoot resents it now, as the most oppressive of all oppressions—the oppression of the scorner—and felt to the Frenchman who restored his self-respect more grateful than if he had restored his independence. To this hour a man like the O'Donoghue feels in Paris as if his caste were acknow- ledged, as if he were a different being from himself in Dublin. The good-will thus generated has deepened rather than departed, till strong Irishmen turned sick and white as they heard of Sedan, and Protestant newspaper offices were mobbed for publishing exasperating news. The wretched populace of the cities in particular, the men who in Dublin and Cork swarm out of dens to which a Neapolitan hut is light- some, would perish of soul-rot if it were not for their imagi- nations, for the faculty given to them, and not to us, which enables them to escape their sordid surroundings, and live in a dreamland where Ireland is the cynosure of civilization, the envy of the world, and the comrade of the only country which resembles her in origin, creed, and external peculiarities of temperament. It is very annoying that Count de Flavigny should return home convinced that le peuple Irlandais longs to be French, is so hostile to Britain that half the attraction of the French reception was due to the insult it might involve to the British Princes ; but still in the annoyance is this compensation, that it does not arise from the dullness, but the imaginativeness, of that crowd in rags which danced with enthusiasm because nearly two hundred years ago a favourite leader had found in France an honourable refuge. It is better, after all, to have discontented subjects who are noble than contented subjects who are base, for that nobleness may yet be enlisted on our side.
We wish we saw how to enlist it, but we are dull Saxons, and accomplish much when we can rise to the level of doing justice without expecting gratitude. We must keep on doing that, so far as we see, until some day the opportunity opens out, visible even to men of our race, of doing somewhat more. It is of no use, as far as conciliation is concerned, to grant Home Rule, for that would but make the chasm wider, and our object is to close it up. All we can do at present is that which we steadily neglect, to show Ireland that she is re- garded as a kinswoman, and not as a poor relation. Every career is open to the Irishman as subject of the Empire, and why not as Irishman also ? Why should we be annoyed in- stead of proud when Irishmen embellish their national history with glowing fictions, while we listen with un- affected sympathy to the falsest stories about our old
enemy, the brigand William Wallace ? Why not Bars- field, whom we defeated, as well as Bruce, who defeated us,? Sixty thousand Irishmen exulted last Sunday in wearing the green, why should they not see it floating over the Castle, in every street, in the front of every field we may have to fight ? If Irishmen won Fontenoy, that is to our credit as much as if they had come from Wales. What Englishman grieves over Bannockburn ? It may be beyond us just now—we do not say it is not—but till we can reach this level, till we can attract the imagination of this people, till they can think of our flag as they think of the French, as the emblem of something that wakes up pride in them, till they are made visible as our allies, instead
of being lost in general phrases about British feats, we shall never remove the "disaffection " which prompted M. de Flevigny's splendid though ragged welcome. Of course we can make the discontent quiescent, as we do in Bengal, by securing prosperity and order and some opportunity of careers. Money is the most certain of opiates. But we want all this wasted power of enthusiasm, this capacity of idealizing, this ability of self-sacrifice, to be attracted to our side, till the " kerne's " eyes flash as the Highland shepherd's flash when he hears of a British victory. We are far from that yet, but we do not even now despair, for justice is all-powerful, and a million Catholic Celts in Canada, rebels but one generation ago, are willing to die in arms sooner than be torn from out of the line of the red. Let us advance steadily by such light as we have, doing jus- tice in all honour and kindliness, and seine day yet—we cannot predict why or when—we may find in that Spanish fury of demeanour, that black-eyed hate for all that is ours, that ragged rage for a patriotic idea, a power which we ourselves have lacked. The eons of our enemies wearing the dress we proscrihesl, and under the emblem we held in such scorn, have charged for us on a hundred fields.
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