THE FUTURE OF IRELAND.
THERE is a momentary lull in the storm of Irish debate, and we may take advantage of it to press an argument which is of importance, although it will neither be used nor answered by "practical politicians." It will not affect a vote, but it may influence those whose convictions are sooner or later sure to he represented in the decisive ballot. There is no theory more strongly believed by thoughtful historians than that a dynasty or a State once founded and solidified continues, often for centuries, to " obey the law of its being," to develop a certain continuousness of impulse sometimes apparently independent of its own will, but always bearing a visible relation to the circumstances of its origin and growth. A stamp appears to have been set from the first not only on its action, but on its fate, so clearly visible that it would seem unnatural if Venice had become a democracy, if Rome had fallen before anything but force, or if the Turkish dominion in Europe ended except in a cataclysm of blood and flame. Sedan is the natural end of the Napoleons, as the stone throne of Germany, with its feet of cannon-balls, is part of the befitting and to be expected destiny of the Hohenzollerne. Every State, in fact, receives an abiding impress from the men who founded it, as they also did from the circumstances amid which they rose to power. If that idea is true at all— and though it may be pushed much too far, it is justi- fied in part by all history, which else would be a series of disconnected phenomena—what would the observer take as the probable "notes," or governing tendencies, of a new Irish State, born, say, in 1888 I Clearly hatred of England, and the spirit best described as Jacobinism. Of the dominance of hatred in the present movement for Home-rule, proof is hardly required. Nothing is more remarkable than that with all social disabilities suddenly swept away, with a full career open to every man devoted to Home-rule, and with a policy in the ascendant which in theory repudiates Separation between the two islands, Ireland has sent no representative to the front who is really friendly to England, who pleads for Home-rule as the sure basis of perpetual alliance, and who is, if that is conceded, as proud of the Empire his countrymen have helped to build, and as devoted to it as if it were purely Irish. Such a leader was and is so demanded by the circumstances of the time, that his non-appearance is almost inexplicable. He would sweep away with a speech half the reluct- ance of the English people to recommence their history. He would be quoted everywhere as himself a proof that the two peoples might have separate Legislatures and yet be cordial friends. He, if he had, for instance, Mr. Parnell's position, would place his country before England in the light of Boot-
land, who, even when out of temper, is always a friend, and who, if she demanded Home-rule, might be refused on grounds of policy, but would be regarded without suspicion, and with full confidence that the reasons assigned for her desire were those which governed her action. It must be a strong reason
which ir the appearance of such a man at such a time, and it is not difficult to perceive what the reason is. Such a man would receive no trust from the section of his countrymen which approved his general objects. They would think him a secret agent of the enemy. They are so filled for the time with a passion of hate, with a desire that England should suffer and be humiliated, a crave for revenge as well as emancipation, that the man who did not entertain those feelings would seem to them untrustworthy, or even at heart a traitor. That the American Irishmen entertain these ideas, their own especial organs announce every day ; indeed, if they did not, the wild rancour of those organs would not be tolerated even by men who, like the Irish, see in exaggeration something at once of passion and of poetry. This, from the United Irishman, is of course a mere yell, not to be taken seriously ; but it would ruin any paper whose readers had not some sympathy with the sentiment which evokes such white-lipped passion:- " We have repeatedly stated in this paper our unalterable con- viotion that the English are a nation of scoundrels—the moat un- principled, dishonest, and rapaohme of the human race. No private assassination is too cruel, no public massacre too widespread, for this nation of incorrigible miscreants. The freedom of Ireland is incompatible with a good opinion of Englishmen. Their lower Masses are brutes, their middle classes are swindlers, their aristocracy are foal, loathsome, and degraded blackguards. If the Irish people thoroughly understood the profound depravity and abominable wickedness of the English character, they would never expect from Parliamentary agitation the concessions which guilty oppression will yield only to panic terror. Nothing will teach honesty to a nation of swindlers exceptlabject fear of a violent, bloody, and immediate death."
The writer of that outburst would mach rather have an English bill of exchange than any other promissory-note ; but that is his way of venting the passion which almost chokes his utterance. Mr. O'Brien knew that he would not offend his countrymen when he declared it abhorrent to him to sleep en British ground on the Queen's birthday ; and Mr. M. Devitt carried his audience with him when on Sunday, in County Mayo, according to the Freeman's Journal, he described the leaders of the British people thus :—" What has been the record of England's ruling classes in Ireland, India, Egypt, everywhere, but one of wholesale murder and crime? This hellish Power has murdered fifty times more of our people with the knife of landlordism during the present generation than perished in the Reign of Terror in France during the great Revolution ; and justice could. not be half vindicated against them even if the English masses were driven, as their French neighbours were a century ago, to teach the aristocracy that those who trample with impunity upon man's natural rights and liberties can be treated occasionally as human beasts of prey. It is characteristic of these bloodthirsty English aristocrats that they should try and tie our hands with Coercionist bonds behind our backs before they venture upon the task of cutting our throats. They are astounded that we should protest against a duel under such conditions, and the mere threat of Patrick Ford, or some other expatriated Irishman, to retaliate in England for England's atrocities in Ireland fills these wholesale assassins with virtuous indignation. They prate of crime and outrage here in Ireland at a time when their infernal laws are out- raging the moat cherished of social rights—the right of a people to live upon the land which God created for that pur- pose." Referring to the sentiment of hatred towards the English nation which he attributes to the Irish people, Mr. Devitt exclaims :—" Are not these vows of eternal hatred to the power which drives our people forth from their birth- land but the natural outcome of England's inhuman policy? For my part, I rejoice with all my heart that for every man driven out of Ireland by the operation of infamous laws, the deadly enemies of such injustice are multiplied and the forces of retaliation strengthened beyond the Atlantic. They may drive our people forth because we are a menace to their unjust government here ; but, thank God, our race is not weakened or disunited even by expatriation." There is hate, burning hate, in every line of that furious diatribe, and it matters little whether Mr. Davitt feels it, or only uses it to stir his audience to a white-heat. In either case, it is on their hatred of England that he, in some respects the most trusted and successful of Irish leaders, relies for sympathy and support ; and it is amidst such hatred, and from
parents so boiling with detestation, that the new Irish State would be born. Can we believe, in the teeth of history, that the impress would die away, that Ireland would cease, within any period it is worth while to think of, to rejoice in Eng- lish failures, or fail, whenever that indulgence was con- venient, to help to cause them. It seems to us, we confess, inevitable that the hatred should continue, as inevitable as that Frenchmen should desire military prestige, or that Englishmen should be jealous for their ascendency at sea. We are not, be it remembered, just now condemning, or even discussing, the hatred. It is, in fact, to us rather a saddening phenomenon, and a warning of the terrible difficulties before us, than a cause of either anger or annoyance ; but it exists, and if the English remain a political people, it should gravely influence their plans.
The other dominant influence on a new Irish State must be Jacobinism. We have not that horror of the insurrection against tenure which influences so many Englishmen, for we know how often and in how many lands 5 has from time to time burst out, and we can recognise no divine right in one tenure more than in another. Any way of holding land may be right, from English landlordism to Russian or Madrassee communism, provided only the land is honestly acquired. We would help in any change heartily desired by a people, even if we doubted its economic wisdom, if only it were accom- plished, as the Prussian change was, without violations of a higher law. But in Ireland the agrarian question has developed a passion of Jacobinism fatal, if it continues, to civilised society; a horror of law when it interferes with the interest of the people ; a hatred of all that is above, because it is above ; a readiness to hold the moral law worthless, if only society may be levelled ; above all, a readiness to employ terror as a means of social regeneration. The Irish, left to themselves, would transform their society at a blow by means as utterly condemned by their own creed—in which most of them still at bottom heartily believe—as by the experience of civilised mankind. They admit almost in words that they would do this, and it is clear from the utterances of every leader who speaks freely that the passion of Jacobinism has seized on them till they can hardly see in those exempt from it anything but oppressors. A landowner who will not surrender his property is in their eyes a villain. It is under the influence of that passion when it was at its very hottest, when a sordid Utopia seemed clear before the Irish tenantry if only the law could be defeated, that the Irish State would be born. Is it even conceivable that the influence of the impulse should not be felt on its career, as it has been on that of France for nearly a hundred years? It is useless to argue that Jacobinism is the product of discontent, and will die with poverty and oppression. Can men be more free than the Irish of America, or more completely relieved from the " circum- stances" which we are told generate social passion ? This passion alters the men who feel it, modifies their whole conception of the social ideal, changes their entire view even of natural right, and is therefore transmitted, like national hate or national loyalty, from generation to generation till, as we see in France, with the enormous majority owning the soil, holding the securi- ties which represent personalty, possessing all votes, and even wielding all bayonets, Jacobinism is still the impulse which continually shakes the State, and which excites all parties either to promote or to resist it. Why should it be otherwise in Ireland, if we seize a time when millions are intel- lectually distraught, and honestly regard a simple demand for en agreed-on rent as a mortal crime justifying an application of Lynch-law, as the moment for making of them the sovereign rulers of a new State so close to us, and so interwoven with our own lives, that its moral influence will be as great as if it were not divided by the sea? A new State, penetrated with hatred of England and saturated with Jacobin feeling, is hardly the neighbour English Liberals desire ; yet, if history be any guide, it is that which they are, partly, no doubt, out of a passion of self-sacrifice, but partly also out of pure unreason, endeavouring to create.
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