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Title: Collected works of Padraic H. Pearse
political writings and speeches
Author: Padraic Pearse
Release date: July 4, 2026 [eBook #79022]
Language: English
Original publication: Dublin: Maunsel & Roberts Limited, 1922
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79022
Credits: Chris Hapka and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLLECTED WORKS OF PADRAIC H. PEARSE ***
COLLECTED WORKS OF
PADRAIC H. PEARSE
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[Illustration: Padraic Pearse.]
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COLLECTED WORKS OF
PADRAIC H. PEARSE
POLITICAL WRITINGS
AND SPEECHES
MAUNSEL & ROBERTS LIMITED
DUBLIN AND LONDON 1922
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Printed by Maunsel & Roberts Ltd., Dublin
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
DATE OF
PUBLICATION PAGE
THE MURDER MACHINE 1912 5
HOW DOES SHE STAND--
I. ORATION ON WOLFE TONE 1913 53
II. ORATION ON ROBERT EMMET 1914 64
III. SECOND ORATION ON EMMET 1914 76
THE COMING REVOLUTION Nov., 1913 89
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A VOLUNTEER Jan., 1914 101
TO THE BOYS OF IRELAND Feb., 1914 110
WHY WE WANT RECRUITS May, 1915 117
O’DONOVAN ROSSA--CHARACTER SKETCH Aug., 1915 125
O’DONOVAN ROSSA--GRAVESIDE ORATION Aug., 1915 133
FROM A HERMITAGE Re-Issued 1915 139
PEACE AND THE GAEL Dec., 1915 213
GHOSTS Xmas, 1915 219
THE SEPARATIST IDEA 1st Feb., 1916 251
THE SPIRITUAL NATION 13th Feb., 1916 295
THE SOVEREIGN PEOPLE 31st Mar., 1916 331
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THE MURDER MACHINE
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PREFACE
This pamphlet is not, as its name might seem to import, a penny
dreadful, at least in the ordinary sense. It consists of a series of
studies of the English education system in Ireland. The article entitled
“The Murder Machine” embodies an article which appeared in the _Irish
Review_ for February 1913. The article called “An Ideal in Education”
was printed in the _Irish Review_ for June 1914. The rest of the
pamphlet is a collation of notes made for a lecture which I delivered in
the Dublin Mansion House in December 1912.
P. H. PEARSE.
ST. ENDA’S COLLEGE,
RATHFARNHAM,
1st January 1916.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE MURDER MACHINE
I
THE BROAD-ARROW
A French writer has paid the English a very well-deserved compliment. He
says that they never commit a useless crime. When they hire a man to
assassinate an Irish patriot, when they blow a Sepoy from the mouth of a
cannon, when they produce a famine in one of their dependencies, they
have always an ulterior motive. They do not do it for fun. Humorous as
these crimes are, it is not the humour of them, but their utility, that
appeals to the English. Unlike Gilbert’s Mikado, they would see nothing
humorous in boiling oil. If they retained boiling oil in their penal
code, they would retain it, as they retain flogging before execution in
Egypt, strictly because it has been found useful.
This observation will help one to an understanding of some portions of
the English administration of Ireland. The English administration of
Ireland has not been marked by any unnecessary cruelty. Every crime that
the English have planned and carried out in Ireland has had a definite
end. Every absurdity that they have set up has had a grave purpose. The
Famine was not enacted merely from a love of horror. The Boards that
rule Ireland were not contrived in order to add to the gaiety of
nations. The Famine and the Boards are alike parts of a profound polity.
I have spent the greater part of my life in immediate contemplation of
the most grotesque and horrible of the English inventions for the
debasement of Ireland. I mean their education system. The English once
proposed in their Dublin Parliament a measure for the castration of all
Irish priests who refused to quit Ireland. The proposal was so filthy
that, although it duly passed the House and was transmitted to England
with the warm recommendation of the Viceroy, it was not eventually
adopted. But the English have actually carried out an even filthier
thing. They have planned and established an education system which more
wickedly does violence to the elementary human rights of Irish children
than would an edict for the general castration of Irish males. The
system has aimed at the substitution for men and women of mere Things.
It has not been an entire success. There are still a great many thousand
men and women in Ireland. But a great many thousand of what, by way of
courtesy, we call men and women, are simply Things. Men and women,
however depraved, have kindly human allegiances. But these Things have
no allegiance. Like other Things, they are for sale.
When one uses the term education system as the name of the system of
schools, colleges, universities, and what not which the English have
established in Ireland, one uses it as a convenient label, just as one
uses the term government as a convenient label for the system of
administration by police which obtains in Ireland instead of a
government. There is no education system in Ireland. The English have
established the simulacrum of an education system, but its object is the
precise contrary of the object of an education system. Education should
foster; this education is meant to repress. Education should inspire;
this education is meant to tame. Education should harden; this education
is meant to enervate. The English are too wise a people to attempt to
educate the Irish, in any worthy sense. As well expect them to arm us.
Professor Eoin MacNeill has compared the English education system in
Ireland to the systems of slave education which existed in the ancient
pagan republics side by side with the systems intended for the education
of freemen. To the children of the free were taught all noble and goodly
things which would tend to make them strong and proud and valiant; from
the children of the slaves all such dangerous knowledge was hidden. They
were taught not to be strong and proud and valiant, but to be sleek, to
be obsequious, to be dexterous: the object was not to make them good
men, but to make them good slaves. And so in Ireland. The education
system here was designed by our masters in order to make us willing or
at least manageable slaves. It has made of some Irishmen not slaves
merely, but very eunuchs, with the indifference and cruelty of eunuchs;
kinless beings, who serve for pay a master that they neither love nor
hate.
Ireland is not merely in servitude, but in a kind of penal servitude.
Certain of the slaves among us are appointed jailors over the common
herd of slaves. And they are trained from their youth for this degrading
office. The ordinary slaves are trained for their lowly tasks in dingy
places called schools; the buildings in which the higher slaves are
trained are called colleges and universities. If one may regard Ireland
as a nation in penal servitude, the schools and colleges and
universities may be looked upon as the symbol of her penal servitude.
They are, so to speak, the broad-arrow upon the back of Ireland.
II
THE MURDER MACHINE
A few years ago, when people still believed in the imminence of Home
Rule, there were numerous discussions as to the tasks awaiting a Home
Rule Parliament and the order in which they should be taken up. Mr. John
Dillon declared that one of the first of those tasks was the recasting
of the Irish education system, by which he meant the English education
system in Ireland. The declaration alarmed the Bishop of Limerick,
always suspicious of Mr. Dillon, and he told that statesman in effect
that the Irish education system did not need recasting--that all was
well there.
The positions seemed irreconcilable. Yet in the _Irish Review_ I
quixotically attempted to find common ground between the disputants, and
to state in such a way as to command the assent of both the duty of a
hypothetical Irish Parliament with regard to education. I put it that
what education in Ireland needed was less a reconstruction of its
machinery than a regeneration in spirit. The machinery, I said, has
doubtless its defects, but what is chiefly wrong with it is that it is
mere machinery, a lifeless thing without a soul. Dr. O’Dwyer was
probably concerned for the maintenance of a portion of the machinery,
valued by him as a Catholic Bishop, and not without reason; and I for
one was (and am) willing to leave that particular portion untouched, or
practically so. But the machine as a whole is no more capable of
fulfilling the function for which it is needed than would an automaton
be capable of fulfilling the function of a living teacher in a school. A
soulless thing cannot teach; but it can destroy. A machine cannot make
men; but it can break men.
One of the most terrible things about the English education system in
Ireland is its ruthlessness. I know no image for that ruthlessness in
the natural order. The ruthlessness of a wild beast has in it a certain
mercy--it slays. It has in it a certain grandeur of animal force. But
this ruthlessness is literally without pity and without passion. It is
cold and mechanical, like the ruthlessness of an immensely powerful
engine. A machine vast, complicated, with a multitude of far-reaching
arms, with many ponderous presses, carrying out mysterious and
long-drawn processes of shaping and moulding, is the true image of the
Irish education system. It grinds night and day; it obeys immutable and
predetermined laws; it is as devoid of understanding, of sympathy, of
imagination, as is any other piece of machinery that performs an
appointed task. Into it is fed all the raw human material in Ireland; it
seizes upon it inexorably and rends and compresses and re-moulds; and
what it cannot refashion after the regulation pattern it ejects with all
likeness of its former self crushed from it, a bruised and shapeless
thing, thereafter accounted waste.
Our common parlance has become impressed with the conception of
education as some sort of manufacturing process. Our children are the
“raw material”; we desiderate for their education “modern methods” which
must be “efficient” but “cheap”; we send them to Clongowes to be
“finished”; when “finished” they are “turned out”; specialists “grind”
them for the English Civil Service and the so-called liberal
professions; in each of our great colleges there is a department known
as the “scrap-heap,” though officially called the Fourth
Preparatory--the limbo to which the _débris_ ejected by the machine is
relegated. The stuff there is either too hard or too soft to be moulded
to the pattern required by the Civil Service Commissioners or the
Incorporated Law Society.
In our adoption of the standpoint here indicated there is involved a
primary blunder as to the nature and functions of education. For
education has not to do with the manufacture of things, but with
fostering the growth of things. And the conditions we should strive to
bring about in our education system are not the conditions favourable to
the rapid and cheap manufacture of readymades, but the conditions
favourable to the growth of living organisms--the liberty and the light
and the gladness of a ploughed field under the spring sunshine.
In particular I would urge that the Irish school system of the future
should give freedom--freedom to the individual school, freedom to the
individual teacher, freedom as far as may be to the individual pupil.
Without freedom there can be no right growth; and education is properly
the fostering of the right growth of a personality. Our school system
must bring, too, some gallant inspiration. And with the inspiration it
must bring a certain hardening. One scarcely knows whether modern
sentimentalism or modern utilitarianism is the more sure sign of modern
decadence. I would boldly preach the antique faith that fighting is the
only noble thing, and that he only is at peace with God who is at war
with the powers of evil.
In a true education system, religion, patriotism, literature, art and
science would be brought in such a way into the daily lives of boys and
girls as to affect their character and conduct. We may assume that
religion is a vital thing in Irish schools, but I know that the other
things, speaking broadly, do not exist. There are no ideas there, no
love of beauty, no love of books, no love of knowledge, no heroic
inspiration. And there is no room for such things either on the earth or
in the heavens, for the earth is cumbered and the heavens are darkened
by the monstrous bulk of the programme. Most of the educators detest the
programme. They are like the adherents of a dead creed who continue to
mumble formulas and to make obeisance before an idol which they have
found out to be a spurious divinity.
Mr. Dillon was to be sympathised with, even though pathetically
premature, in looking to the then anticipated advent of Home Rule for a
chance to make education what it should be. But I doubt if he and the
others who would have had power in a Home Rule Parliament realised that
what is needed here is not reform, not even a revolution, but a vastly
bigger thing--a creation. It is not a question of pulling machinery
asunder and piecing it together again; it is a question of breathing
into a dead thing a living soul.
III
“I DENY”
I postulate that there is no education in Ireland apart from the
voluntary efforts of a few people, mostly mad. Let us therefore not talk
of reform, or of reconstruction. You cannot reform that which is not;
you cannot by any process of reconstruction give organic life to a
negation. In a literal sense the work of the first Minister of Education
in a free Ireland will be a work of creation; for out of chaos he will
have to evolve order and into a dead mass he will have to breathe the
breath of life.
The English thing that is called education in Ireland is founded on a
denial of the Irish nation. No education can start with a Nego, any more
than a religion can. Everything that even pretends to be true begins
with its Credo. It is obvious that the savage who says “I believe in
Mumbo Jumbo” is nearer to true religion than the philosopher who says “I
deny God and the spiritual in man.” Now, to teach a child to deny is the
greatest crime a man or a State can commit. Certain schools in Ireland
teach children to deny their religion; nearly all the schools in Ireland
teach children to deny their nation. “I deny the spirituality of my
nation; I deny the lineage of my blood; I deny my rights and
responsibilities.” This Nego is their Credo, this evil their good.
To invent such a system of teaching and to persuade us that it is an
education system, an Irish education system to be defended by Irishmen
against attack, is the most wonderful thing the English have
accomplished in Ireland; and the most wicked.
IV
AGAINST MODERNISM
All the speculations one saw a few years ago as to the probable effect
of Home Rule on education in Ireland showed one how inadequately the
problem was grasped. To some the expected advent of Home Rule seemed to
promise as its main fruition in the field of education the raising of
their salaries; to others the supreme thing it was to bring in its train
was the abolition of Dr. Starkie; to some again it held out the
delightful prospect of Orange boys and Orange girls being forced to
learn Irish; to others it meant the dawn of an era of commonsense, the
ushering in of the reign of “a sound modern education,” suitable to the
needs of a progressive modern people.
I scandalised many people at the time by saying that the last was the
view that irritated me most. The first view was not so selfish as it
might appear, for between the salary offered to teachers and the
excellence of a country’s education system there is a vital connection.
And the second and third forecasts at any rate opened up picturesque
vistas. The passing of Dr. Starkie would have had something of the
pageantry of the banishment of Napoleon to St. Helena (an effect which
would have been heightened had he been accompanied into exile by Mr.
Bonaparte Wyse), and the prospect of the children of Sandy Row being
taught to curse the Pope in Irish was rich and soul-satisfying. These
things we might or might not have seen had Home Rule come. But I
expressed the hope that even Home Rule would not commit Ireland to an
ideal so low as the ideal underlying the phrase “a sound modern
education.”
It is a vile phrase, one of the vilest I know. Yet we find it in nearly
every school prospectus, and it comes pat to the lips of nearly everyone
that writes or talks about schools.
Now, there can be no such thing as “a sound modern education”--as well
talk about a “lively modern faith” or a “serviceable modern religion.”
It should be obvious that the more “modern” an education is the less
“sound,” for in education “modernism” is as much a heresy as in
religion. In both mediaevalism were a truer standard. We are too fond of
clapping ourselves upon the back because we live in modern times, and we
preen ourselves quite ridiculously (and unnecessarily) on our modern
progress. There is, of course, such a thing as modern progress, but it
has been won at how great a cost! How many precious things have we flung
from us to lighten ourselves for that race!
And in some directions we have progressed not at all, or we have
progressed in a circle; perhaps, indeed, all progress on this planet,
and on every planet, is in a circle, just as every line you draw on a
globe is a circle or part of one. Modern speculation is often a mere
groping where ancient men saw clearly. All the problems with which we
strive (I mean all the really important problems) were long ago solved
by our ancestors, only their solutions have been forgotten. There have
been States in which the rich did not grind the poor, although there are
no such States now; there have been free self-governing democracies,
although there are few such democracies now; there have been rich and
beautiful social organisations, with an art and a culture and a religion
in every man’s house, though for such a thing to-day we have to search
out some sequestered people living by a desolate sea-shore or in a high
forgotten valley among lonely hills--a hamlet of Iar-Connacht or a
village in the Austrian Alps. Mankind, I repeat, or some section of
mankind, has solved all its main problems somewhere and at some time. I
suppose no universal and permanent solution is possible as long as the
old Adam remains in us, the Adam that makes each one of us, and each
tribe of us, something of the rebel, of the freethinker, of the
adventurer, of the egoist. But the solutions are there, and it is
because we fail in clearness of vision or in boldness of heart or in
singleness of purpose that we cannot find them.
V
AN IDEAL IN EDUCATION
The words and phrases of a language are always to some extent
revelations of the mind of the race that has moulded the language. How
often does an Irish vocable light up as with a lantern some immemorial
Irish attitude, some whole phase of Irish thought! Thus, the words which
the old Irish employed when they spoke of education show that they had
gripped the very heart of that problem. To the old Irish the teacher was
_aite_, “fosterer,” the pupil was _dalta_, “foster-child,” the system
was _aiteachas_, “fosterage”; words which we still retain as _oide_,
_dalta_, _oideachas_.
And is it not the precise aim of education to “foster”? Not to inform,
to indoctrinate, to conduct through a course of studies (though these be
the dictionary meanings of the word), but, first and last, to “foster”
the elements of character native to a soul, to help to bring these to
their full perfection rather than to implant exotic excellences.
Fosterage implies a foster-father or foster-mother--a person--as its
centre and inspiration rather than a code of rules. Modern education
systems are elaborate pieces of machinery devised by highly-salaried
officials for the purpose of turning out citizens according to certain
approved patterns. The modern school is a State-controlled institution
designed to produce workers for the State, and is in the same category
with a dockyard or any other State-controlled institution which produces
articles necessary to the progress, well-being, and defence of the
State. We speak of the “efficiency,” the “cheapness,” and the
“up-to-dateness” of an education system just as we speak of the
“efficiency,” the “cheapness,” and the “up-to-dateness” of a system of
manufacturing coal-gas. We shall soon reach a stage when we shall speak
of the “efficiency,” the “cheapness,” and the “up-to-dateness” of our
systems of soul-saving. We shall hear it said “Salvation is very cheap
in England,” or “The Germans are wonderfully efficient in prayer,” or
“Gee, it takes a New York parson to hustle ginks into heaven.”
Now, education is as much concerned with souls as religion is. Religion
is a Way of Life, and education is a preparation of the soul to live its
life here and hereafter; to live it nobly and fully. And as we cannot
think of religion without a Person as its centre, as we cannot think of
a church without its Teacher, so we cannot think of a school without its
Master. A school, in fact, according to the conception of our wise
ancestors, was less a place than a little group of persons, a teacher
and his pupils. Its place might be poor, nay, it might have no local
habitation at all, it might be peripatetic: where the master went the
disciples followed. One may think of Our Lord and His friends as a sort
of school: was He not the Master, and were not they His disciples? That
gracious conception was not only the conception of the old Gael, pagan
and Christian, but it was the conception of Europe all through the
Middle Ages. Philosophy was not crammed out of text-books, but was
learned at the knee of some great philosopher; art was learned in the
studio of some master-artist, a craft in the workshop of some
master-craftsman. Always it was the personality of the master that made
the school, never the State that built it of brick and mortar, drew up a
code of rules to govern it, and sent hirelings into it to carry out its
decrees.
I do not know how far it is possible to revive the old ideal of fosterer
and foster-child. I know it were very desirable. One sees too clearly
that the modern system, under which the teacher tends more and more to
become a mere civil servant, is making for the degradation of education,
and will end in irreligion and anarchy. The modern child is coming to
regard his teacher as an official paid by the State to render him
certain services; services which it is in his interest to avail of,
since by doing so he will increase his earning capacity later on; but
services the rendering and acceptance of which no more imply a sacred
relationship than do the rendering and acceptance of the services of a
dentist or a chiropodist. There is thus coming about a complete reversal
of the relative positions of master and disciple, a tendency which is
increased by every statute that is placed on the statute book, by every
rule that is added to the education code of modern countries.
Against this trend I would oppose the ideal of those who shaped the
Gaelic polity nearly two thousand years ago. It is not merely that the
old Irish had a good education system; they had the best and noblest
that has ever been known among men. There has never been any human
institution more adequate to its purpose than that which, in pagan
times, produced Cuchulainn and the Boy-Corps of Eamhain Macha and, in
Christian times, produced Enda and the companions of his solitude in
Aran. The old Irish system, pagan and Christian, possessed in
pre-eminent degree the thing most needful in education: an adequate
inspiration. Colmcille suggested what that inspiration was when he said,
“If I die it shall be from the excess of the love that I bear the Gael.”
A love and a service so excessive as to annihilate all thought of self,
a recognition that one must give all, must be willing always to make the
ultimate sacrifice--this is the inspiration alike of the story of
Cuchulainn and of the story of Colmcille, the inspiration that made the
one a hero and the other a saint.
VI
MASTER AND DISCIPLES
In the Middle Ages there were everywhere little groups of persons
clustering round some beloved teacher, and thus it was that men learned
not only the humanities but all gracious and useful crafts. There were
no State art schools, no State technical schools: as I have said, men
became artists in the studio of some master-artist, men learned crafts
in the workshop of some master-craftsman. It was always the individual
inspiring, guiding, fostering other individuals; never the State
usurping the place of father or fosterer, dispensing education like a
universal provider of readymades, aiming at turning out all men and
women according to regulation patterns.
In Ireland the older and truer conception was never lost sight of. It
persisted into Christian times when a Kieran or an Enda or a Colmcille
gathered his little group of foster-children (the old word was still
used) around him; they were collectively his family, his household, his
_clann_--many sweet and endearing words were used to mark the intimacy
of that relationship. It seems to me that there has been nothing nobler
in the history of education than this development of the old Irish plan
of fosterage under a Christian rule, when to the pagan ideals of
strength and truth there were added the Christian ideals of love and
humility. And this, remember, was not the education system of an
aristocracy, but the education system of a people. It was more
democratic than any education system in the world to-day. Our very
divisions into primary, secondary, and university crystallize a
snobbishness partly intellectual and partly social. At Clonard Kieran,
the son of a carpenter, sat in the same class as Colmcille, the son of a
king. To Clonard or to Aran or to Clonmacnois went every man, rich or
poor, prince or peasant, who wanted to sit at Finnian’s or at Enda’s or
at Kieran’s feet and to learn of his wisdom.
Always it was the personality of the teacher that drew them there. And
so it was all through Irish history. A great poet or a great scholar had
his foster-children who lived at his house or fared with him through the
country. Even long after Kinsale the Munster poets had their little
groups of pupils; and the hedge schoolmasters of the nineteenth century
were the last repositories of a high tradition.
I dwell on the importance of the personal element in education. I would
have every child not merely a unit in a school attendance, but in some
intimate personal way the pupil of a teacher, or, to use more expressive
words, the disciple of a master. And here I nowise contradict another
position of mine, that the main object in education is to help the child
to be his own true and best self. What the teacher should bring to his
pupil is not a set of readymade opinions, or a stock of cut-and-dry
information, but an inspiration and an example; and his main
qualification should be, not such an overmastering will as shall impose
itself at all hazards upon all weaker wills that come under its
influence, but rather so infectious an enthusiasm as shall kindle new
enthusiasm. The Montessori system, so admirable in many ways, would seem
at first sight to attach insufficient importance to the function of the
teacher in the schoolroom. But this is not really so. True, it would
make the spontaneous efforts of the children the main motive power, as
against the dominating will of the teacher which is the main motive
power in the ordinary schoolroom. But the teacher must be there always
to inspire, to foster. If you would realise how true this is, how
important the personality of the teacher, even in a Montessori school,
try to imagine a Montessori school conducted by the average teacher of
your acquaintance, or try to imagine a Montessori school conducted by
yourself!
VII
OF FREEDOM IN EDUCATION
I have claimed elsewhere that the native Irish education system
possessed pre-eminently two characteristics: first, freedom for the
individual, and, secondly, an adequate inspiration. Without these two
things you cannot have education, no matter how you may elaborate
educational machinery, no matter how you may multiply educational
programmes. And because those two things are pre-eminently lacking in
what passes for education in Ireland, we have in Ireland strictly no
education system at all; nothing that by any extension of the meaning of
words can be called an education system. We have an elaborate machinery
for teaching persons certain subjects, and the teaching is done more or
less efficiently; more efficiently, I imagine, than such teaching is
done in England or in America. We have three universities and four
boards of education. We have some thousands of buildings, large and
small. We have an army of inspectors, mostly overpaid. We have a host of
teachers, mostly underpaid. We have a Compulsory Education Act. We have
the grave and bulky code of the Commissioners of National Education, and
the slim impertinent pamphlet which enshrines the wisdom of the
Commissioners of Intermediate Education. We have a vast deal more in the
shape of educational machinery and stage properties. But we have, I
repeat, no education system; and only in isolated places have we any
education. The essentials are lacking.
And first of freedom. The word freedom is no longer understood in
Ireland. We have no experience of the thing, and we have almost lost our
conception of the idea. So completely is this true that the very
organisations which exist in Ireland to champion freedom show no
disposition themselves to accord freedom: they challenge a great
tyranny, but they erect their little tyrannies. “Thou shalt not” is half
the law of Ireland, and the other half is “Thou must.”
Now, nowhere has the law of “Thou shalt not” and “Thou must” been so
rigorous as in the schoolroom. Surely the first essential of healthy
life there was freedom. But there has been and there is no freedom in
Irish education; no freedom for the child, no freedom for the teacher,
no freedom for the school. Where young souls, young minds, young bodies,
demanded the largest measure of individual freedom consistent with the
common good, freedom to move and grow on their natural lines, freedom to
live their own lives--for what is natural life but natural
growth?--freedom to bring themselves, as I have put it elsewhere, to
their own perfection, there was a sheer denial of the right of the
individual to grow in his own natural way, that is, in God’s way. He had
to develop not in God’s way, but in the Board’s way. The Board, National
or Intermediate as the case might be, bound him hand and foot, chained
him mind and soul, constricted him morally, mentally, and physically
with the involuted folds of its rules and regulations, its programmes,
its minutes, its reports and special reports, its pains and penalties. I
have often thought that the type of English education in Ireland was the
Laocoon: that agonising father and his sons seem to me like the teacher
and the pupils of an Irish school, the strong limbs of the man and the
slender limbs of the boys caught together and crushed together in the
grip of an awful fate. And English education in Ireland has seemed to
some like the bed of Procustes, the bed on which all men that passed
that way must lie, be it never so big for them, be it never so small for
them: the traveller for whom it was too large had his limbs stretched
until he filled it; the traveller for whom it was too small had his
limbs chopped off until he fitted into it--comfortably. It was a grim
jest to play upon travellers. The English have done it to Irish children
not by way of jest, but with a purpose. Our English-Irish systems took,
and take, absolutely no cognisance of the differences between
individuals, of the differences between localities, of the differences
between urban and rural communities, of the differences springing from a
different ancestry, Gaelic or Anglo-Saxon. Every school must conform to
a type--and what a type! Every individual must conform to a type--and
what a type! The teacher has not been at liberty, and in practice is not
yet at liberty, to seek to discover the individual bents of his pupils,
the hidden talent that is in every normal soul, to discover which and to
cherish which, that it may in the fullness of time be put to some
precious use, is the primary duty of the teacher. I knew one boy who
passed through several schools a dunce and a laughing-stock; the
National Board and the Intermediate Board had sat in judgment upon him
and had damned him as a failure before men and angels. Yet a friend and
fellow-worker of mine discovered that he was gifted with a wondrous
sympathy for nature, that he loved and understood the ways of plants,
that he had a strange minuteness and subtlety of observation--that, in
short, he was the sort of boy likely to become an accomplished botanist.
I knew another boy of whom his father said to me: “He is no good at
books, he is no good at work; he is good at nothing but playing a tin
whistle. What am I to do with him?” I shocked the worthy man by replying
(though really it was the obvious thing to reply): “Buy a tin whistle
for him.” Once a colleague of mine summed up the whole philosophy of
education in a maxim which startled a sober group of visitors: “If a boy
shows an aptitude for doing anything better than most people, he should
be encouraged to do that, and to do it as well as possible; I don’t care
what it is--scotch-hop, if you like.”
The idea of a compulsory programme imposed by an external authority upon
every child in every school in a country is the direct contrary of the
root idea involved in education. Yet this is what we have in Ireland. In
theory the primary schools have a certain amount of freedom; in practice
they have none. Neither in theory nor in practice is such a thing as
freedom dreamt of in the gloomy limbo whose presiding demon is the Board
of Intermediate Education for Ireland. Education, indeed, reaches its
nadir in the Irish Intermediate system. At the present moment there are
15,000 boys and girls pounding at a programme drawn up for them by
certain persons sitting round a table in Hume Street. Precisely the same
text-books are being read to-night in every secondary school and college
in Ireland. Two of Hawthorne’s _Tanglewood Tales_, with a few poems in
English, will constitute the whole literary pabulum of three-quarters of
the pupils of the Irish secondary schools during this twelvemonths.[1]
The teacher who seeks to give his pupils a wider horizon in literature
does so at his peril. He will, no doubt, benefit his pupils, but he will
infallibly reduce his results fees. As an intermediate teacher said to
me, “Culture is all very well in its way, but if you don’t stick to your
programme your boys won’t pass.” “Stick to your programme” is the
strange device on the banner of the Irish Intermediate system; and the
programme bulks so large that there is no room for education.
The first thing I plead for, therefore, is freedom: freedom for each
school to shape its own programme in conformity with the circumstances
of the school as to place, size, personnel, and so on; freedom again for
the individual teacher to impart something of his own personality to his
work, to bring his own peculiar gifts to the service of his pupils, to
be, in short, a teacher, a master, one having an intimate and permanent
relationship with his pupils, and not a mere part of the educational
machine, a mere cog in the wheel; freedom finally for the individual
pupil and scope for his development within the school and within the
system. And I would promote this idea of freedom by the very
organisation of the school itself, giving a certain autonomy not only to
the school, but to the particular parts of the school: to the staff, of
course, but also to the pupils, and, in a large school, to the various
sub-divisions of the pupils. I do not plead for anarchy. I plead for
freedom within the law, for liberty, not licence, for that true freedom
which can exist only where there is discipline, which exists in fact
because each, valuing his own freedom, respects also the freedom of
others.
VIII
BACK TO THE SAGAS
That freedom may be availed of to the noble ends of education there must
be, within the school system and within the school, an adequate
inspiration. The school must make such an appeal to the pupil as shall
resound throughout his after life, urging him always to be his best
self, never his second-best self. Such an inspiration will come most
adequately of all from religion. I do not think that there can be any
education of which spiritual religion does not form an integral part; as
it is the most important part of life, so it should be the most
important part of education, which some have defined as a preparation
for complete life. And inspiration will come also from the hero-stories
of the world, and especially of our own people; from science and art if
taught by people who are really scientists and artists, and not merely
persons with certificates from Mr. T. W. Russell; from literature
enjoyed as literature and not studied as “texts”; from the associations
of the school place; finally and chiefly from the humanity and
great-heartedness of the teacher.
A heroic tale is more essentially a factor in education than a
proposition in Euclid. The story of Joan of Arc or the story of the
young Napoleon means more for boys and girls than all the algebra in all
the books. What the modern world wants more than anything else, what
Ireland wants beyond all other modern countries, is a new birth of the
heroic spirit. If our schools would set themselves that task, the task
of fostering once again knightly courage and strength and truth--that
type of efficiency rather than the peculiar type of efficiency demanded
by the English Civil Service--we should have at least the beginning of
an educational system. And what an appeal an Irish school system might
have! What a rallying cry an Irish Minister of Education might give to
young Ireland! When we were starting St. Enda’s I said to my boys: “We
must re-create and perpetuate in Ireland the knightly tradition of
Cuchulainn, ‘better is short life with honour than long life with
dishonour’; ‘I care not though I were to live but one day and one night,
if only my fame and my deeds live after me’; the noble tradition of the
Fianna, ‘we, the Fianna, never told a lie, falsehood was never imputed
to us’; ‘strength in our hands, truth on our lips, and cleanness in our
hearts’; the Christ-like tradition of Colmcille, ‘if I die it shall be
from the excess of the love I bear the Gael.’” And to that antique
evangel should be added the evangels of later days: the stories of Red
Hugh and Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet and John Mitchel and O’Donovan
Rossa and Eoghan O’Growney. I have seen Irish boys and girls moved
inexpressibly by the story of Emmet or the story of Anne Devlin, and I
have always felt it to be legitimate to make use for educational
purposes of an exaltation so produced.
The value of the national factor in education would appear to rest
chiefly in this, that it addresses itself to the most generous side of
the child’s nature, urging him to live up to his finest self. If the
true work of the teacher be, as I have said, to help the child to
realise himself at his best and worthiest, the factor of nationality is
of prime importance, apart from any ulterior propagandist views the
teacher may cherish. The school system which neglects it commits, even
from the purely pedagogic point of view, a primary blunder. It neglects
one of the most powerful of educational resources.
It is because the English education system in Ireland has deliberately
eliminated the national factor that it has so terrifically succeeded.
For it has succeeded--succeeded in making slaves of us. And it has
succeeded so well that we no longer realise that we are slaves. Some of
us even think our chains ornamental, and are a little doubtful as to
whether we shall be quite as comfortable and quite as respectable when
they are hacked off.
It remains the crowning achievement of the “National” and Intermediate
systems that they have wrought such a change in this people that once
loved freedom so passionately. Three-quarters of a century ago there
still remained in Ireland a stubborn Irish thing which Cromwell had not
trampled out, which the Penal Laws had not crushed, which the horrors of
’98 had not daunted, which Pitt had not purchased: a national
consciousness enshrined mainly in a national language. After
three-quarters of a century’s education that thing is nearly lost.
A new education system in Ireland has to do more than restore a national
culture. It has to restore manhood to a race that has been deprived of
it. Along with its inspiration it must, therefore, bring a certain
hardening. It must lead Ireland back to her sagas.
Finally, I say, inspiration must come from the teacher. If we can no
longer send the children to the heroes and seers and scholars to be
fostered, we can at least bring some of the heroes and seers and
scholars to the schools. We can rise up against the system which
tolerates as teachers the rejected of all other professions rather than
demanding for so priest-like an office the highest souls and noblest
intellects of the race. I remember once going into a schoolroom in
Belgium and finding an old man talking quietly and beautifully about
literature to a silent class of boys; I was told that he was one of the
most distinguished of contemporary Flemish poets. Here was the sort of
personality, the sort of influence, one ought to see in a schoolroom.
Not, indeed, that every poet would make a good schoolmaster, or every
schoolmaster a good poet. But how seldom here has the teacher any
interest in literature at all; how seldom has he any horizon above his
time-table, any soul larger than his results fees!
The fact is that, with rare exceptions, the men and women who are
willing to work under the conditions as to personal dignity, freedom,
tenure, and emolument which obtain in Irish schools are not the sort of
men and women likely to make good educators. This part of the subject
has been so much discussed in public that one need not dwell upon it. We
are all alive to the truth that a teacher ought to be paid better than a
policeman, and to the scandal of the fact that many an able and cultured
man is working in Irish secondary schools at a salary less than that of
the Viceroy’s chauffeur.
IX
WHEN WE ARE FREE
In these chapters I have sufficiently indicated the general spirit in
which I would have Irish education re-created. I say little of
organisation, of mere machinery. That is the least important part of the
subject. We can all foresee that the first task of a free Ireland must
be destructive: that the lusty strokes of Gael and Gall, Ulster taking
its manful part, will hew away and cast adrift the rotten and worm-eaten
boards which support the grotesque fabric of the English education
system. We can all see that, when an Irish Government is constituted,
there will be an Irish Minister of Education responsible to the Irish
Parliament; that under him Irish education will be drawn into a
homogeneous whole--an organic unity will replace a composite freak in
which the various members are not only not directed by a single
intelligence but are often mutually antagonistic, and sometimes engaged
in open warfare one with the other, like the preposterous donkey in the
pantomime whose head is in perpetual strife with his heels because they
belong to different individuals. The individual entities that compose
the English-Irish educational donkey are four: the Commissioners of
National Education, the Commissioners of Intermediate Education, the
Commissioners of Education for certain Endowed Schools, and last, but
not least, the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction--the
modern Ioldanach which in this realm protects science, art, fishery,
needlework, poultry, foods and drugs, horse-breeding, etc., etc., etc.,
etc., and whose versatile chiefs can at a moment’s notice switch off
their attention from archæology in the Nile Valley to the Foot and Mouth
Disease in Mullingar. I must admit that the educational work of the
Department as far as it affects secondary schools is done efficiently;
but one will naturally expect this branch of its activity to be brought
into the general education scheme under the Minister of Education. In
addition to the four Boards I have enumerated I need hardly say that
Dublin Castle has its finger in the pie, as it has in every unsavoury
pie in Ireland. And behind Dublin Castle looms the master of Dublin
Castle, and the master of all the Boards, and the master of everything
in Ireland--the British Treasury--arrogating claims over the veriest
details of education in Ireland for which there is no parallel in any
other administration in the world and no sanction even in the British
Constitution. My scheme, of course, presupposes the getting rid not only
of the British Treasury, but of the British connection.
One perceives the need, too, of linking up the whole system and giving
it a common impulse. Under the Minister there might well be chiefs of
the various sub-divisions, elementary, secondary, higher, and technical;
but these should not be independent potentates, each entrenched in a
different stronghold in a different part of the city. I do not see why
they could not all occupy offices in the same corridor of the same
building. The whole government of the free kingdom of Belgium was
carried on in one small building. A Council of some sort, with
sub-committees, would doubtless be associated with the Minister, but I
think its function should be advisory rather than executive: that all
acts should be the acts of the Minister. As to the local organisation of
elementary schools, there will always be need of a local manager, and
personally I see no reason why the local management should be given to a
district council rather than left as it is at present to some individual
in the locality interested in education, but a thousand reasons why it
should not. I would, however, make the teachers, both primary and
secondary, a national service, guaranteeing an adequate salary, adequate
security of tenure, adequate promotion, and adequate pension: and all
this means adequate endowment, and freedom from the control of
parsimonious officials.
In the matter of language I would order things bilingually. But I would
not apply the Belgian system exactly as I have described it in _An
Claidheamh Soluis_. The _status quo_ in Ireland is different from that
in Belgium; the ideal to be aimed at in Ireland is different from that
in Belgium. Ireland is six-sevenths English-speaking with an
Irish-speaking seventh. Belgium is divided into two nearly equal halves,
one Flemish, the other French. Irish Nationalists would restore Irish as
a vernacular to the English-speaking six-sevenths, and would establish
Irish as the national language of a free Ireland: Belgian Nationalists
would simply preserve their “two national languages,” according them
equal rights and privileges. What then? Irish should be made the
language of instruction in districts where it is the home language, and
English the “second language,” taught as a school subject: I would not
at any stage use English as a medium of instruction in such districts,
anything that I have elsewhere said as to Belgian practice
notwithstanding. Where English is the home language it must of necessity
be the “first language” in the schools, but I would have a compulsory
“second language,” satisfied that this “second language” in five-sixths
of the schools would be Irish. And I would see that the “second
language” be utilised as a medium of instruction from the earliest
stages. In this way, and in no other way that I can imagine, can Irish
be restored as a vernacular to English-speaking Ireland.
But in all the details of their programmes the schools should have
autonomy. The function of the central authority should be to
co-ordinate, to maintain a standard, to advise, to inspire, to keep the
teachers in touch with educational thought in other lands. I would
transfer the centre of gravity of the system from the education office
to the teachers; the teachers in fact would be the system. Teachers, and
not clerks, would henceforth conduct the education of the country.
The inspectors, again, would be selected from the teachers, and the
chiefs of departments from the inspectors. And promoted teachers would
man the staffs of the training colleges, which, for the rest, would work
in close touch with the universities.
I need hardly say that the present Intermediate system must be
abolished. Good men will curse it in its passing. It is the most evil
thing that Ireland has ever known. Dr. Hyde once finely described the
National and Intermediate Boards as
“Death and the nightmare Death-in-Life
That thicks men’s blood with cold.”
Of the two Death-in-Life is the more hideous. It is sleeker than, but
equally as obscene as, its fellow-fiend. The thing has damned more souls
than the Drink Traffic or the White Slave Traffic. Down with it--down
among the dead men! Let it promote competitive examinations in the
under-world, if it will.
Well-trained and well-paid teachers, well-equipped and beautiful
schools, and a fund at the disposal of each school to enable it to award
prizes on its own tests based on its own programme--these would be among
the characteristics of a new secondary system. Manual work, both indoor
and outdoor, would, I hope, be part of the programme of every school.
And the internal organisation might well follow the models of the little
child-republics I have elsewhere described, with their own laws and
leaders, their fostering of individualities yet never at the expense of
the common wealth, their care for the body as well as for the mind,
their nobly-ordered games, their spacious outdoor life, their
intercourse with the wild things of the woods and wastes, their daily
adventure face to face with elemental Life and Force, with its moral
discipline, with its physical hardening.
And then, vivifying the whole, we need the divine breath that moves
through free peoples, the breath that no man of Ireland has felt in his
nostrils for so many centuries, the breath that once blew through the
streets of Athens and that kindled, as wine kindles, the hearts of those
who taught and learned in Clonmacnois.
-----
Footnote 1:
1912-13.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOW DOES SHE STAND?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOW DOES SHE STAND?
THREE ADDRESSES
I
THEOBALD WOLFE TONE[2]
We have come to the holiest place in Ireland; holier to us even than the
place where Patrick sleeps in Down. Patrick brought us life, but this
man died for us. And though many before him and some since have died in
testimony of the truth of Ireland’s claim to nationhood, Wolfe Tone was
the greatest of all that have made that testimony, the greatest of all
that have died for Ireland whether in old time or in new. He was the
greatest of Irish Nationalists; I believe he was the greatest of Irish
men. And if I am right in this I am right in saying that we stand in the
holiest place in Ireland, for it must be that the holiest sod of a
nation’s soil is the sod where the greatest of her dead lies buried.
I feel it difficult to speak to you to-day; difficult to speak in this
place. It is as if one had to speak by the graveside of some dear
friend, a brother in blood or a well-tried comrade in arms, and to say
aloud the things one would rather keep to oneself. But I am helped by
the knowledge that you who listen to me partake in my emotion: we are
none of us strangers, being all in a sense own brothers to Tone, sharing
in his faith, sharing in his hope, still unrealised, sharing in his
great love. I have, then, only to find expression for the thoughts and
emotions common to us all, and you will understand even if the
expression be a halting one.
We have come here not merely to salute this noble dust and to pay our
homage to the noble spirit of Tone. We have come to renew our adhesion
to the faith of Tone; to express once more our full acceptance of the
gospel of Irish Nationalism which he was the first to formulate in
worthy terms, giving clear definition and plenary meaning to all that
had been thought and taught before him by Irish-speaking and
English-speaking men; uttered half articulately by a Shane O’Neill in
some defiance flung at the Englishry, expressed under some passionate
metaphor by a Geoffrey Keating, hinted at by a Swift in some biting
gibe, but clearly and greatly stated by Wolfe Tone, and not needing now
ever to be stated anew for any new generation. He has spoken for all
time, and his voice resounds throughout Ireland, calling to us from this
grave when we wander astray following other voices that ring less true.
This, then, is the first part of Wolfe Tone’s achievement--he made
articulate the dumb voices of the centuries, he gave Ireland a clear and
precise and worthy concept of Nationality. But he did more than this:
not only did he define Irish Nationalism, but he armed his generation in
defence of it. Thinker and doer, dreamer of the immortal dream and doer
of the immortal deed--we owe to this dead man more than we can ever
repay him by making pilgrimages to his grave or by rearing to him the
stateliest monument in the streets of his city. To his teaching we owe
it that there is such a thing as Irish Nationalism, and to the memory of
the deed he nerved his generation to do, to the memory of ’98, we owe it
that there is any manhood left in Ireland.
I have called him the greatest of our dead. In mind he was great above
all the men of his time or of the after time; and he was greater still
in spirit. It was to that nobly-dowered mind of his that Kickham,
himself the most nobly-dowered of a later generation, paid reverence
when he said:
“Oh, knowledge is a wondrous power;
’Tis stronger than the wind.
* * * * *
And would to the kind heavens
That Wolfe Tone were here to-day.”
But greater than that full-orbed intelligence, that wide, gracious,
richly stored mind, was the mighty spirit of Tone. This man’s soul was a
burning flame, a flame so ardent, so generous, so pure, that to come
into communion with it is to come unto a new baptism, unto a new
regeneration and cleansing. If we who stand by this graveside could make
ourselves at one with the heroic spirit that once inbreathed this clay,
could in some way come into loving contact with it, possessing ourselves
of something of its ardour, its valour, its purity, its tenderness, its
gaiety, how good a thing it would be for us, how good a thing for
Ireland; with what joyousness and strength should we set our faces
towards the path that lies before us, bringing with us fresh life from
this place of death, a new resurrection of patriotic grace in our souls!
Try to get near the spirit of Tone, the gallant soldier spirit, the
spirit that dared and soared, the spirit that loved and served, the
spirit that laughed and sang with the gladness of a boy. I do not ask
you to venerate him as a saint; I ask you to love him as a man. For
myself, I would rather have known this man than any man of whom I have
ever heard or ever read. I have not read or heard of any who had more of
heroic stuff in him than he, any that went so gaily and so gallantly
about a great deed, any who loved so well, any who was so beloved. To
have been this man’s friend, what a privilege that would have been! To
have known him as Thomas Russell knew him! I have always loved the very
name of Thomas Russell because Tone so loved him.
I do not think there has ever been a more true and loyal man than Tone.
He had for his friends an immense tenderness and charity; and now and
then there breaks into what he is writing or saying a gust of passionate
love for his wife, for his children. “O my babies, my babies!” he
exclaims.... Yes, this man could love well; and it was from such love as
this he exiled himself; with such love as this crushed in his faithful
heart that he became a weary but indomitable ambassador to courts and
camps; with the memory of such love as this, with the little hands of
his children plucking at his heart-strings, that he lay down to die in
that cell on Arbour Hill.
Such is the high and sorrowful destiny of the heroes: to turn their
backs to the pleasant paths and their faces to the hard paths, to blind
their eyes to the fair things of life, to stifle all sweet music in the
heart, the low voices of women and the laughter of little children, and
to follow only the far, faint call that leads them into the battle or to
the harder death at the foot of a gibbet.
Think of Tone. Think of his boyhood and young manhood in Dublin and
Kildare, his adventurous spirit and plans, his early love and marriage,
his glorious failure at the bar, his healthy contempt for what he called
“a foolish wig and gown,” and then--the call of Ireland. Think of how he
put virility into the Catholic movement, how this heretic toiled to make
free men of Catholic helots, how, as he worked among them, he grew to
know and to love the real, the historic Irish people, and the great,
clear, sane conception came to him that in Ireland there must be, not
two nations or three nations, but one nation, that Protestant and
Dissenter must be brought into amity with Catholic, and that Catholic,
Protestant, and Dissenter must unite to achieve freedom for all.
Then came the United Irishmen, and those journeys through Ireland--to
Ulster and to Connacht--which, as described by him, read like epics
infused with a kindly human humour. Soon the Government realises that
this is the most dangerous man in Ireland--this man who preaches peace
among brother Irishmen. It does not suit the Government that peace and
goodwill between Catholic and Protestant should be preached in Ireland.
So Tone goes into exile, having first pledged himself to the cause of
Irish freedom on the Cave Hill above Belfast. From America to France:
one of the great implacable exiles of Irish history, a second and a
greater Fitzmaurice, one might say to him as the poet said to Sarsfield:
“Ag déanamh do ghearáin leis na ríghthibh
Is gur fhág tú Eire ’s Gaedhil bhocht’ claoidhte,
Och, ochón!”
But it was no “complaint” that Tone made to foreign rulers and foreign
senates, but wise and bold counsel that he gave them; wise because bold.
A French fleet ploughs the waves and enters Bantry Bay--Tone on board.
We know the sequel: how the fleet tossed about for days on the broad
bosom of the Bay, how the craven in command refused to make a landing
because his commander-in-chief had not come up, how Tone’s heart was
torn with impatience and yearning--he saw his beloved Ireland, could see
the houses and the people on shore--how the fleet set sail, that deed
undone that would have freed Ireland.
It is the supreme tribute to the greatness of this man that after that
cruel disappointment he set to work again, indomitable. Two more
expeditions, a French and a Dutch, were fitted out for Ireland, but
never reached Ireland. Then at last came Tone himself; he had said he
would come, if need be, with only a corporal’s guard: he came with very
little more.
Three small ships enter Lough Swilly. The English follow them. Tone’s
vessel fights: Tone commands one of the guns. For six hours she stood
alone against the whole English fleet. What a glorious six hours for
Tone! A battered hulk, the vessel struck; Tone, betrayed by a friend,
was dragged to Dublin and condemned to a traitor’s death. Then the last
scene in the Provost Prison, and Tone lies dead, the greatest of the men
of ’98. To this spot they bore him, and here he awaits the judgment; and
we stand at his graveside and remember that his work is still
unaccomplished after more than a hundred years.
When men come to a graveside they pray; and each of us prays here in his
heart. But we do not pray for Tone--men who die that their people may be
free “have no need of prayer.” We pray for Ireland that she may be free,
and for ourselves that we may free her. My brothers, were it not an
unspeakable privilege if to our generation it should be granted to
accomplish that which Tone’s generation, so much worthier than ours,
failed to accomplish! To complete the work of Tone!...
And let us make no mistake as to what Tone sought to do, what it remains
for us to do. We need not re-state our programme; Tone has stated it for
us:
“To break the connection with England, the never-failing source
of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my
country--these were my objects. To unite the whole people of
Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to
substitute the common name of Irishmen in place of the
denominations of Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter--these were
my means.”
I find here implicit all the philosophy of Irish Nationalism, all the
teaching of the Gaelic League and the later prophets. Ireland one and
Ireland free--is not this the definition of Ireland a Nation? To that
definition and to that programme we declare our adhesion anew; pledging
ourselves as Tone pledged himself--and in this sacred place, by this
graveside, let us not pledge ourselves unless we mean to keep our
pledge--we pledge ourselves to follow in the steps of Tone, never to
rest, either by day or by night, until his work be accomplished, deeming
it the proudest of all privileges to fight for freedom, to fight, not in
despondency, but in great joy, hoping for the victory in our day, but
fighting on whether victory seem near or far, never lowering our ideal,
never bartering one jot or tittle of our birthright, holding faith to
the memory and the inspiration of Tone, and accounting ourselves base as
long as we endure the evil thing against which he testified with his
blood.
-----
Footnote 2:
An Address delivered at the Grave of Wolfe Tone in Bodenstown
Churchyard, 22nd June, 1913.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II
ROBERT EMMET AND THE IRELAND OF TO-DAY
I[3]
You ask me to speak of the Ireland of to-day. What can I tell you of it
that is worthy of commemoration where we commemorate heroic faith and
the splendour of death? In that Ireland whose spokesmen have, in return
for the promise of a poor simulacrum of liberty, pledged to our ancient
enemy our loyalty and the loyalty of our children, is there, even though
that pledge has been spoken, any group of true men, any right striving,
any hope still cherished in virtue of which, lifting up our hearts, we
can cry across the years to him whom we remember to-night, “Brother, we
have kept the faith; comrade, we, too, stand ready to serve”?
For patriotism is at once a faith and a service. A faith which in some
of us has been in our flesh and bone since we were moulded in our
mothers’ wombs, and which in others of us has at some definite moment of
our later lives been kindled flaming as if by the miraculous word of
God; a faith which is of the same nature as religious faith and is one
of the eternal witnesses in the heart of man to the truth that we are of
divine kindred; a faith which, like religious faith, when true and
vital, is wonder-working, but, like religious faith, is dead without
good works even as the body without the spirit. So that patriotism needs
service as the condition of its authenticity, and it is not sufficient
to say “I believe” unless one can say also “I serve.”
And our patriotism is measured, not by the formula in which we declare
it, but by the service which we render. We owe to our country all fealty
and she asks always for our service; and there are times when she asks
of us not ordinary but some supreme service. There are in every
generation those who shrink from the ultimate sacrifice, but there are
in every generation those who make it with joy and laughter, and these
are the salt of the generations, the heroes who stand midway between God
and men. Patriotism is in large part a memory of heroic dead men and a
striving to accomplish some task left unfinished by them. Had they not
gone before, made their attempts and suffered the sorrow of their
failures, we should long ago have lost the tradition of faith and
service, having no memory in the heart nor any unaccomplished dream.
The generation that is now growing old in Ireland had almost forgotten
our heroes. We had learned the great art of parleying with our enemy and
achieving nationhood by negotiation. The heroes had trodden hard and
bloody ways: we should tread soft and flowering ways. The heroes had
given up all things: we had learned a way of gaining all things, land
and good living and the friendship of our foe. But the soil of Ireland,
yea, the very stones of our cities have cried out against an infidelity
that would barter an old tradition of nationhood even for a thing so
precious as peace. This the heroes have done for us; for their spirits
indwell in the place where they lived, and the hills of Ireland must be
rent and her cities levelled with the ground and all her children driven
out upon the seas of the world before those voices are silenced that bid
us be faithful still and to make no peace with England until Ireland is
ours.
I live in a place that is very full of heroic memories. In the room in
which I work at St. Enda’s College Robert Emmet is said often to have
sat; in our garden is a vine which they call Emmet’s Vine and from which
he is said to have plucked grapes; through our wood runs a path which is
called Emmet’s Walk--they say that he and Sarah Curran walked there; at
an angle of our boundary wall there is a little fortified lodge called
Emmet’s Fort. Across the road from us is a thatched cottage whose tenant
in 1803 was in Green Street Courthouse all the long day that Emmet stood
on trial, with a horse saddled without that he might bring news of the
end to Sarah Curran. Half a mile from us across the fields is
Butterfield House, where Emmet lived during the days preceding the
rising. It is easy to imagine his figure coming out along the Harold’s
Cross Road to Rathfarnham, tapping the ground with his cane, as they say
was his habit; a young, slight figure, with how noble a head bent a
little upon the breast, with how high a heroism sleeping underneath that
quietness and gravity! One thinks of his anxious nights in Butterfield
House; of his busy days in Marshalsea Lane or Patrick Street; of his
careful plans--the best plans that have yet been made for the capture of
Dublin; his inventions and devices, the jointed pikes, the rockets and
explosives upon which he counted so much; his ceaseless conferences, his
troubles with his associates, his disappointments, his disillusionments,
borne with such sweetness and serenity of temper, such a trust in human
nature, such a trust in Ireland! Then the hurried rising, the sally into
the streets, the failure at the Castle gates, the catastrophe in Thomas
Street, the retreat along the familiar Harold’s Cross Road to
Rathfarnham. At Butterfield House Anne Devlin, the faithful, keeps
watch. You remember her greeting to Emmet in the first pain of her
disappointment: “Musha, bad welcome to you! Is Ireland lost by you,
cowards that you are, to lead the people to destruction and then to
leave them?” And poor Emmet’s reply--no word of blame for the traitors
that had sold him, for the cravens that had abandoned him, for the fools
that had bungled; just a halting, heartbroken exculpation, the only one
he was to make for himself--“Don’t blame me, Anne; the fault is not
mine.” And her woman’s heart went out to him and she took him in and
cherished him; but the soldiery were on his track, and that was his last
night in Butterfield House. The bracken was his bed thenceforth, or a
precarious pillow in his old quarters at Harold’s Cross, until he lay
down in Kilmainham to await the summons of the executioner.
No failure, judged as the world judges these things, was ever more
complete, more pathetic than Emmet’s. And yet he has left us a prouder
memory than the memory of Brian victorious at Clontarf or of Owen Roe
victorious at Benburb. It is the memory of a sacrifice Christ-like in
its perfection. Dowered with all things splendid and sweet, he left all
things and elected to die. Face to face with England in the dock at
Green Street he uttered the most memorable words ever uttered by an
Irish man: words which, ringing clear above a century’s tumults, forbid
us ever to waver or grow weary until our country takes her place among
the nations of the earth. And his death was august. In the great space
of Thomas Street an immense silent crowd; in front of Saint Catherine’s
Church a gallows upon a platform; a young man climbs to it, quiet,
serene, almost smiling, they say--ah, he was very brave; there is no
cheer from the crowd, no groan; this man is to die for them, but no man
dares to say aloud “God bless you, Robert Emmet.” Dublin must one day
wash out in blood the shameful memory of that quiescence. Would Michael
Dwyer come from the Wicklow Hills? Up to the last moment Emmet seems to
have expected him. He was saying “Not yet” when the hangman kicked aside
the plank and his body was launched into the air. They say it swung for
half-an-hour, with terrible contortions, before he died. When he was
dead the comely head was severed from the body. A friend of mine knew an
old woman who told him how the blood flowed down upon the pavement, and
how she sickened with horror as she saw the dogs of the street lap up
that noble blood. Then the hangman showed the pale head to the people
and announced: “This is the head of a traitor, Robert Emmet.” A traitor?
No, but a true man. O my brothers, this was one of the truest men that
ever lived. This was one of the bravest spirits that Ireland has ever
nurtured. This man was faithful even unto the ignominy of the gallows,
dying that his people might live, even as Christ died.
Be assured that such a death always means a redemption. Emmet redeemed
Ireland from acquiescence in the Union. His attempt was not a failure,
but a triumph for that deathless thing we call Irish Nationality. It was
by Emmet that men remembered Ireland until Davis and Mitchel took up his
work again, and ’48 handed on the tradition to ’67, and from ’67 we
receive the tradition unbroken.
You ask me to speak of the Ireland of to-day. What need I say but that
to-day Ireland is turning her face once more to the old path? Nothing
seems more definitely to emerge when one looks at the movements that are
stirring both above the surface and beneath the surface in men’s minds
at home than the fact that the new generation is reaffirming the Fenian
faith, the faith of Emmet. It is because we know that this is so that we
can suffer in patience the things that are said and done in the name of
Irish Nationality by some of our leaders. What one may call the
Westminster phase is passing: the National movement is swinging back
again into its proper channel. A new junction has been made with the
past: into the movement that has never wholly died since ’67 have come
the young men of the Gaelic League. Having renewed communion with its
origins, Irish Nationalism is to-day a more virile thing than ever
before in our time. Of that be sure.
I have said again and again that when the Gaelic League was founded in
1893 the Irish Revolution began. The Gaelic League brought it a certain
distance upon its way; but the Gaelic League could not accomplish the
Revolution. For five or six years a new phase has been due, and lo! it
is with us now. To-day Ireland is once more organising, once more
learning the noble trade of arms. In our towns and country places
Volunteer companies are springing up. Dublin pointed the way, Galway has
followed Dublin, Cork has followed Galway, Wexford has followed Cork,
Limerick has followed Wexford, Monaghan has followed Limerick, Sligo has
followed Monaghan, Donegal has followed Sligo. There is again in Ireland
the murmur of a marching, and talk of guns and tactics. What this
movement may mean for our country no man can say. But it is plain to all
that the existence on Irish soil of an Irish army is the most portentous
fact that has appeared in Ireland for over a hundred years: a fact which
marks definitely the beginning of the second stage of the Revolution
which was commenced when the Gaelic League was founded. The inner
significance of the movement lies in this, that men of every rank and
class, of every section of Nationalist opinion, of every shade of
religious belief, have discovered that they share a common patriotism,
that their faith is one and that there is one service in which they can
come together at last: the service of their country in arms. We are
realising now how proud a thing it is to serve, and in the comradeship
and joy of the new service we are forgetting many ancient
misunderstandings. In the light of a re-discovered citizenship things
are plain to us that were before obscure:
“Lo, a clearness of vision has followed, lo, a purification of
sight;
Lo, the friend is discerned from the foeman, the wrong recognised
from the right.”
After all, there are in Ireland but two parties: those who stand for the
English connection and those who stand against it. On what side, think
you, stand the Irish Volunteers? I cannot speak for the Volunteers; I am
not authorised to say when they will use their arms or where or how. I
can speak only for myself; and it is strictly a personal perception that
I am recording, but a perception that to me is very clear, when I say
that before this generation has passed the Volunteers will draw the
sword of Ireland. There is no truth but the old truth and no way but the
old way. Home Rule may come or may not come, but under Home Rule or in
its absence there remains for the Volunteers and for Ireland the
substantial business of achieving Irish nationhood. And I do not know
how nationhood is achieved except by armed men; I do not know how
nationhood is guarded except by armed men.
I ask you, then, to salute with me the Irish Volunteers. I ask you to
mark their advent as an augury that, no matter what pledges may be given
by men who do not know Ireland--the stubborn soul of Ireland--that
nation of ancient faith will never sell her birthright of freedom for a
mess of pottage; a mess of dubious pottage, at that. Ireland has been
guilty of many meannesses, of many shrinkings back when she should have
marched forward; but she will never be guilty of that immense
infidelity.
-----
Footnote 3:
An Address delivered at the Emmet Commemoration in the Academy of
Music, Brooklyn, New York, 2nd March, 1914.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III
ROBERT EMMET AND THE IRELAND OF TO-DAY
II[4]
We who speak here to-night are the voice of one of the ancient
indestructible things of the world. We are the voice of an idea which is
older than any empire and will outlast every empire. We and ours, the
inheritors of that idea, have been at age-long war with one of the most
powerful empires that have ever been built up upon the earth; and that
empire will pass before we pass. We are older than England and we are
stronger than England. In every generation we have renewed the struggle,
and so it shall be unto the end. When England thinks she has trampled
out our battle in blood, some brave man rises and rallies us again; when
England thinks she has purchased us with a bribe, some good man redeems
us by a sacrifice. Wherever England goes on her mission of empire we
meet her and we strike at her; yesterday it was on the South African
veldt, to-day it is in the Senate House at Washington, to-morrow it may
be in the streets of Dublin. We pursue her like a sleuth-hound; we lie
in wait for her and come upon her like a thief in the night; and some
day we will overwhelm her with the wrath of God.
It is not that we are apostles of hate. Who like us has carried Christ’s
word of charity about the earth? But the Christ that said “My peace I
leave you, My peace I give you,” is the same Christ that said “I bring
not peace, but a sword.” There can be no peace between right and wrong,
between truth and falsehood, between justice and oppression, between
freedom and tyranny. Between them it is eternal war until the wrong is
righted, until the true thing is established, until justice is
accomplished, until freedom is won.
So when England talks of peace we know our answer: “Peace with you?
Peace while your one hand is at our throat and your other hand is in our
pocket? Peace with a footpad? Peace with a pickpocket? Peace with the
leech that is sucking our body dry of blood? Peace with the many-armed
monster whose tentacles envelop us while its system emits an inky fluid
that shrouds its work of murder from the eyes of men? The time has not
yet come to talk of peace.”
But England, we are told, offers us terms. She holds out to us the hand
of friendship. She gives us a Parliament with an Executive responsible
to it. Within two years the Home Rule Senate meets in College Green and
King George comes to Dublin to declare its sessions open. In
anticipation of that happy event our leaders have proffered England our
loyalty. Mr. Redmond accepts Home Rule as a “final settlement between
the two nations”; Mr. O’Brien in the fulness of his heart cries “God
Save the King”; Colonel Lynch offers England his sword in case she is
attacked by a foreign power.
And so this settlement is to be a final settlement. Would Wolfe Tone
have accepted it as a final settlement? Would Robert Emmet have accepted
it as a final settlement? Either we are heirs to their principles or we
are not. If we are, we can accept no settlement as final which does not
“_break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our
political evils_”; if we are not, how dare we go in annual pilgrimage to
Bodenstown, how dare we gather here or anywhere to commemorate the faith
and sacrifice of Emmet? Did, then, these dead heroic men live in vain?
Has Ireland learned a truer philosophy than the philosophy of ’98, and a
nobler way of salvation than the way of 1803? Is Wolfe Tone’s definition
superseded, and do we discharge our duty to Emmet’s memory by according
him annually our pity?
To do the English justice, I do not think they are satisfied that
Ireland will accept Home Rule as a final settlement. I think they are a
little anxious to-day. If their minds were tranquil on the subject of
Irish loyalty they would hardly have proclaimed the importation of arms
into Ireland the moment the Irish Volunteers had begun to organise
themselves. They had given the Ulster faction which is used as a catspaw
by one of the English parties two years to organise and arm against that
Home Rule Bill which they profess themselves so anxious to pass: to the
Nationalists of Ireland they did not give two weeks. Of course, we can
arm in spite of them: to-day we are organising and training the men and
we have ways and means of getting arms when the men are ready for the
arms. The contention I make now, and I ask you to note it well, is that
England does not trust Ireland with guns; that under Home Rule or in the
absence of Home Rule England declares that we Irish must remain an
unarmed people; and England is right.
England is right in suspecting Irish loyalty, and those Irishmen who
promise Irish loyalty to England are wrong. I believe them honest; but
they have spent so much of their lives parleying with the English, they
have sat so often and so long at English feasts, that they have lost
communion with the ancient unpurchaseable faith of Ireland, the ancient
stubborn thing that forbids, as if with the voice of fate, any loyalty
from Ireland to England, any union between us and them, any surrender of
one jot or shred of our claim to freedom even in return for all the
blessings of the British peace.
I have called that old faith an indestructible thing. I have said that
it is more powerful than empires. If you would understand its might you
must consider how it has made all the generations of Ireland heroic.
Having its root in all gentleness, in a man’s love for the place where
his mother bore him, for the breast that gave him suck, for the voices
of children that sounded in a house now silent, for the faces that
glowed around a fireside now cold, for the story told by lips that will
not speak again, having its root, I say, in all gentleness, it is yet a
terrible thing urging the generations to perilous bloody attempts,
nerving men to give up life for the death-in-life of dungeons, teaching
little boys to die with laughing lips, giving courage to young girls to
bare their backs to the lashes of a soldiery.
It is easy to imagine how the spirit of Irish patriotism called to the
gallant and adventurous spirit of Tone or moved the wrathful spirit of
Mitchel. In them deep called unto deep: heroic effort claimed the heroic
man. But consider how the call was made to a spirit of different, yet
not less noble mould; and how it was answered. In Emmet it called to a
dreamer and he awoke a man of action; it called to a student and a
recluse and he stood forth a leader of men; it called to one who loved
the ways of peace and he became a revolutionary. I wish I could help you
to realise, I wish I could myself adequately realise, the humanity, the
gentle and grave humanity, of Emmet. We are so dominated by the memory
of that splendid death of his, by the memory of that young figure,
serene and smiling, climbing to the gallows above that sea of silent men
in Thomas Street, that we forget the life of which that death was only
the necessary completion; and the life has a nearer meaning for us than
the death. For Emmet, finely gifted though he was, was just a young man
with the same limitations, the same self-questionings, the same
falterings, the same kindly human emotions surging up sometimes in such
strength as almost to drown a heroic purpose, as many a young man we
have known. And his task was just such a task as many of us have
undertaken: he had to go through the same repellant routine of work, to
deal with the hard, uncongenial details of correspondence and committee
meetings; he had the same sordid difficulties that we have, yea, even
the vulgar difficulty of want of funds. And he had the same poor human
material to work with, men who misunderstood, men who bungled, men who
talked too much, men who failed at the last moment....
Yes, the task we take up again is just Emmet’s task of silent
unattractive work, the routine of correspondence and committees and
organising. We must face it as bravely and as quietly as he faced it,
working on in patience as he worked on, hoping as he hoped; cherishing
in our secret hearts the mighty hope that to us, though so unworthy, it
may be given to bring to accomplishment the thing he left
unaccomplished, but working on even when that hope dies within us.
I would ask you to consider now how the call I have spoken of was made
to the spirit of a woman, and how, equally, it was responded to.
Wherever Emmet is commemorated let Anne Devlin not be forgotten. Bryan
Devlin had a dairy farm in Butterfield Lane; his fields are still green
there. Five sons of his fought in ’98. Anne was his daughter, and she
went to keep house for Emmet when he moved into Butterfield House. You
know how she kept vigil there on the night of the rising. When all was
lost and Emmet came out in his hurried retreat through Rathfarnham to
the mountains, her greeting was--according to tradition it was spoken in
Irish, and Emmet must have replied in Irish--“Musha, bad welcome to you!
Is Ireland lost by you, cowards that you are, to lead the people to
destruction and then to leave them?” “Don’t blame me, Anne; the fault is
not mine,” said Emmet. And she was sorry for the pain her words had
inflicted, spoken in the pain of her own disappointment. She would have
tended him like a mother could he have tarried there, but his path lay
to Kilmashogue, and hers was to be a harder duty. When Sirr came out
with his soldiery she was still keeping her vigil. “Where is Emmet?” “I
have nothing to tell you.” To all their questions she had but one
answer: “I have nothing to say; I have nothing to tell you.” They swung
her up to a cart and half-hanged her several times; after each
half-hanging she was revived and questioned: still the same answer. They
pricked her breast with bayonets until the blood spurted out in their
faces. They dragged her to prison and tortured her for days. Not one
word did they extract from that steadfast woman. And when Emmet was
sold, he was sold, not by a woman, but by a man--by the friend that he
had trusted--by the counsel who, having sold him, was to go through the
ghastly mockery of defending him at the bar.
The fathers and mothers of Ireland should often tell their children that
story of Robert Emmet and that story of Anne Devlin. To the Irish
mothers who hear me I would say that when at night you kiss your
children and in your hearts call down a benediction, you could wish for
your boys no higher thing than that, should the need come, they may be
given the strength to make Emmet’s sacrifice, and for your girls no
greater gift from God than such fidelity as Anne Devlin’s.
It is more than a hundred years since these things were suffered; and
they were suffered in vain if nothing of the spirit of Emmet and Anne
Devlin survives in the young men and young women of Ireland. Does
anything of that spirit survive? I think I can speak for my own
generation. I think I can speak for my contemporaries in the Gaelic
League, an organisation which has not yet concerned itself with
politics, but whose younger spirits are accepting the full national idea
and are bringing into the national struggle the passion and the
practicalness which marked the early stages of the language movement. I
think I can speak for the young men of the Volunteers. So far, they have
no programme beyond learning the trade of arms: a trade which no man of
Ireland could learn for over a hundred years past unless he took the
English shilling. It is a good programme; and we may almost commit the
future of Ireland to the keeping of the Volunteers. I think I can speak
for a younger generation still: for some of the young men that are
entering the National University, for my own pupils at St. Enda’s
College, for the boys of Fianna Eireann. To the grey-haired men whom I
see on this platform, to John Devoy and Richard Burke, I bring, then,
this message from Ireland: that their seed-sowing of forty years ago has
not been without its harvest, that there are young men and little boys
in Ireland to-day who remember what they taught and who, with God’s
blessing, will one day take--or make--an opportunity of putting their
teaching into practice.
-----
Footnote 4:
An Address delivered at the Emmet Commemoration in the Aeolian Hall,
New York, 9th March, 1914.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AN ADDENDUM
(AUGUST 1914)
Since I spoke the words here reprinted there has been a quick movement
of events in Ireland. The young men of the nation stand organised and
disciplined, and are rapidly arming themselves; blood has flowed in
Dublin Streets, and the cause of the Volunteers has been consecrated by
a holocaust. A European war has brought about a crisis which may
contain, as yet hidden within it, the moment for which the generations
have been waiting. It remains to be seen whether, if that moment reveals
itself, we shall have the sight to see and the courage to do, or whether
it shall be written of this generation, alone of all the generations of
Ireland, that it had none among it who dared to make the ultimate
sacrifice.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE COMING REVOLUTION
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE COMING REVOLUTION
(NOVEMBER 1913)
I have come to the conclusion that the Gaelic League, as the Gaelic
League, is a spent force; and I am glad of it. I do not mean that no
work remains for the Gaelic League, or that the Gaelic League is no
longer equal to work; I mean that the vital work to be done in the new
Ireland will be done not so much by the Gaelic League itself as by men
and movements that have sprung from the Gaelic League or have received
from the Gaelic League a new baptism and a new life of grace. The Gaelic
League was no reed shaken by the wind, no mere _vox clamantis_: it was a
prophet and more than a prophet. But it was not the Messiah. I do not
know if the Messiah has yet come, and I am not sure that there will be
any visible and personal Messiah in this redemption: the people itself
will perhaps be its own Messiah, the people labouring, scourged, crowned
with thorns, agonising and dying, to rise again immortal and impassible.
For peoples are divine and are the only things that can properly be
spoken of under figures drawn from the divine epos.
If we do not believe in the divinity of our people we have had no
business, or very little, all these years in the Gaelic League. In fact,
if we had not believed in the divinity of our people, we should in all
probability not have gone into the Gaelic League at all. We should have
made our peace with the devil, and perhaps might have found him a very
decent sort; for he liberally rewards with attorney-generalships, bank
balances, villa residences, and so forth, the great and the little who
serve him well. Now, we did not turn our backs upon all these desirable
things for the sake of _is_ and _tá_. We did it for the sake of Ireland.
In other words, we had one and all of us (at least, I had, and I hope
that all you had) an ulterior motive in joining the Gaelic League. We
never meant to be Gaelic Leaguers and nothing more than Gaelic Leaguers.
We meant to do something for Ireland, each in his own way. Our Gaelic
League time was to be our tutelage: we had first to learn to know
Ireland, to read the lineaments of her face, to understand the accents
of her voice; to re-possess ourselves, disinherited as we were, of her
spirit and mind, re-enter into our mystical birthright. For this we went
to school to the Gaelic League. It was a good school, and we love its
name and will champion its fame throughout all the days of our later
fighting and striving. But we do not propose to remain schoolboys for
ever.
I have often said (quoting, I think, Herbert Spencer) that education
should be a preparation for complete living; and I say now that our
Gaelic League education ought to have been a preparation for our
complete living as Irish Nationalists. In proportion as we have been
faithful and diligent Gaelic Leaguers, our work as Irish Nationalists
(by which term I mean people who accept the ideal of, and work for, the
realisation of an Irish Nation, by whatever means) will be earnest and
thorough, a valiant and worthy fighting, not the mere carrying out of a
ritual. As to what your work as an Irish Nationalist is to be, I cannot
conjecture; I know what mine is to be, and would have you know yours and
buckle yourself to it. And it may be (nay, it is) that yours and mine
will lead us to a common meeting-place, and that on a certain day we
shall stand together, with many more beside us, ready for a greater
adventure than any of us has yet had, a trial and a triumph to be
endured and achieved in common.
This is what I meant when I said that our work henceforward must be done
less and less through the Gaelic League and more and more through the
groups and the individuals that have arisen, or are arising, out of the
Gaelic League. There will be in the Ireland of the next few years a
multitudinous activity of Freedom Clubs, Young Republican Parties,
Labour Organisations, Socialist Groups, and what not; bewildering
enterprises undertaken by sane persons and insane persons, by good men
and bad men, many of them seemingly contradictory, some mutually
destructive, yet all tending towards a common objective, and that
objective: the Irish Revolution.
For if there is one thing that has become plainer than another it is
that when the seven men met in O’Connell Street to found the Gaelic
League, they were commencing, had there been a Liancourt there to make
the epigram, not a revolt, but a revolution. The work of the Gaelic
League, its appointed work, was that: and the work is done. To every
generation its deed. The deed of the generation that has now reached
middle life was the Gaelic League: the beginning of the Irish
Revolution. Let our generation not shirk _its_ deed, which is to
accomplish the revolution.
I believe that the national movement of which the Gaelic League has been
the soul has reached the point which O’Connell’s movement had reached at
the close of the series of monster meetings. Indeed, I believe that our
movement reached that point a few years ago--say, at the conclusion of
the fight for Essential Irish; and I said so at the time. The moment was
ripe then for a new Young Ireland Party, with a forward policy; and we
have lost much by our hesitation. I propose in all seriousness that we
hesitate no longer--that we push on. I propose that we leave
Conciliation Hall behind us and go into the Irish Confederation.
Whenever Dr. Hyde, at a meeting at which I have had a chance of speaking
after him, has produced his dove of peace, I have always been careful to
produce my sword; and to tantalise him by saying that the Gaelic League
has brought into Ireland “Not Peace, but a Sword.” But this does not
show any fundamental difference of outlook between my leader and me; for
while he is thinking of peace between brother-Irishmen, I am thinking of
the sword-point between banded Irishmen and the foreign force that
occupies Ireland: and his peace is necessary to my war. It is evident
that there can be no peace between the body politic and a foreign
substance that has intruded itself into its system: between them war
only until the foreign substance is expelled or assimilated.
Whether Home Rule means a loosening or a tightening of England’s grip
upon Ireland remains yet to be seen. But the coming of Home Rule, if
come it does, will make no material difference in the nature of the work
that lies before us: it will affect only the means we are to employ, our
plan of campaign. There remains, under Home Rule as in its absence, the
substantial task of achieving the Irish Nation. I do not think it is
going to be achieved without stress and trial, without suffering and
bloodshed; at any rate, it is not going to be achieved without _work_.
Our business here and now is to get ourselves into harness for such work
as has to be done.
I hold that before we can do any work, any _men’s_ work, we must first
realise ourselves as men. Whatever comes to Ireland she needs men. And
we of this generation are not in any real sense men, for we suffer
things that men do not suffer, and we seek to redress grievances by
means which men do not employ. We have, for instance, allowed ourselves
to be disarmed; and, now that we have the chance of re-arming, we are
not seizing it. Professor Eoin Mac Neill pointed out last week that we
have at this moment an opportunity of rectifying the capital error we
made when we allowed ourselves to be disarmed; and such opportunities,
he reminds us, do not always come back to nations.
A thing that stands demonstrable is that nationhood is not achieved
otherwise than in arms: in one or two instances there may have been no
actual bloodshed, but the arms were there and the ability to use them.
Ireland unarmed will attain just as much freedom as it is convenient for
England to give her; Ireland armed will attain ultimately just as much
freedom as she wants. These are matters which may not concern the Gaelic
League, as a body; but they concern every member of the Gaelic League,
and every man and woman of Ireland. I urged much of this five or six
years ago in addresses to the Ard-Chraobh: but the League was too busy
with resolutions to think of revolution, and the only resolution that a
member of the League could not come to was the resolution to be a man.
My fellow-Leaguers had not (and have not) apprehended that the thing
which cannot defend itself, even though it may wear trousers, is no man.
I am glad, then, that the North has “begun.” I am glad that the
Orangemen have armed, for it is a goodly thing to see arms in Irish
hands. I should like to see the A. O. H. armed. I should like to see the
Transport Workers armed. I should like to see any and every body of
Irish citizens armed. We must accustom ourselves to the thought of arms,
to the sight of arms, to the use of arms. We may make mistakes in the
beginning and shoot the wrong people; but bloodshed is a cleansing and a
sanctifying thing, and the nation which regards it as the final horror
has lost its manhood. There are many things more horrible than
bloodshed; and slavery is one of them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A VOLUNTEER
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF A VOLUNTEER.
(JANUARY 1914)
“Mughdhorn” has challenged my psychology as un-Irish. At least, he has
challenged as un-Irish the psychology of any man that holds the view
that it has not been merely for the sake of saving the Irish language we
Leaguers have been working all these years. That is a view which I hold
and have promulgated. Hence I take it there is question here of my
psychology. It is a little embarrassing to a shy person to have his
psychology discussed in public. One feels inclined to protest
indignantly with the old lady whom the doctor suspected of appendicitis,
explaining to her that it meant inflammation of the appendix. “Why, I
haven’t _got_ such a thing!” She thought he meant a kind of tail. I
really shrink from a public investigation into my psychology. Let me see
how “Mughdhorn” will like a very tender examination of _his_.
I formally challenge as not only un-Irish, but as diseased, the
psychology of the man who holds that Parnell’s declaration to the people
of Connacht “that he would not have taken off his coat to the land
question but that he saw in it a means to rouse the people of Ireland to
assert their right to self-government,” betrayed the “Palesman
addressing the mere Gael,” and that it was “supercilious” at that. The
declaration in question was one of those four or five illuminating and
unforgettable sentences of Parnell’s which prove him to have been the
one really great Nationalist of his time: the true successor of Tone and
Mitchel, though working with such different means. The sentence betrays
not the Palesman (whatever that may mean) but the Irish Nationalist. I
hold its Nationalism to be authentic, and, further, that there is no
other Nationalism than the Nationalism therein implied, _i.e._, that the
nation is more important than any part of the nation. A national leader
in a struggle for self-government could not have turned aside from the
main issue in order to take up even temporarily any other issue, however
important, than the national one, except with the object of
strengthening his forces for the main fight--the fight for nationhood.
Parnell, as leader of the Irish in their struggle for nationhood, would
not have been justified in devoting one hour of his time or one penny of
his funds to the land war except as a means to an end. Had Parnell had
his way the land war would not have been fought out until the national
war had been won; and it is a pity that Parnell had not his way, as we
and our children may realise full soon.
I challenge again the Irish psychology of the man who sets up the Gael
and the Palesman as opposing forces, with conflicting outlooks. We are
all Irish, Leinster-reared or Connacht-reared; your native Irish speaker
of Iveragh or Erris is more fully in touch with the spiritual past of
Ireland than your Wexfordman or your Kildareman, but your Wexfordman or
your Kildareman has other Irish traditions which your Iveraghman or your
Errisman has lost. It is a great thing to have heard in childhood the
songs of a Tadhg Gaedhealach or to have seen a Raftery or a Colm
Wallace; it is an equally great thing to have known old men who fought
in Wexford in ’98, or to have been nursed by a woman who made bullets
for the Fenians. All such memories, old and new, are part of Irish
history, and he who would segregate Irish history and Irish men into two
sections--Irish-speaking and English-speaking--is not helping toward
achieving Ireland a Nation.
Am I a Palesman and is Lord O’Brien of Kilfenora a Gael? I propose that
in future we reserve the term Palesman for those who uphold the
domination of the English in Ireland. I propose also that we substitute
for the denominations Gael, Gall, and Gall-Gael the common name of
Irishman.
I do not know who among the Gaelic Leaguers that have joined the
Volunteers has been foolish enough to suggest that he “cares for the
language merely as a sort of stimulant in the fight for nationhood.”
Certainly not I: I have spent the best fifteen years of my life teaching
and working for the idea that the language is an essential part of the
nation. I have not modified my attitude in anything that I have recently
said or written; I have only confessed (and not for the first time) that
in the Gaelic League I have all along been working not for the language
merely, but for the nation. I now go further, and say that anyone who
has been working for the language merely (if there be any such) has
never had the true Gaelic League spirit at all, and though in the Gaelic
League has never really been of it. I protest that it was not philology,
not folklore, not literature, we went into the Gaelic League to serve,
but: Ireland a Nation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO THE BOYS OF IRELAND
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO THE BOYS OF IRELAND
(FEBRUARY 1914)
We of Na Fianna Eireann, at the beginning of this year 1914, a year
which is likely to be momentous in the history of our country, address
ourselves to the boys of Ireland and invite them to band themselves with
us in a knightly service. We believe that the highest thing anyone can
do is to SERVE well and truly, and we purpose to serve Ireland with all
our fealty and with all our strength. Two occasions are spoken of in
ancient Irish story upon which Irish boys marched to the rescue of their
country when it was sore beset--once when Cuchulainn and the boy-troop
of Ulster held the frontier until the Ulster heroes rose, and again when
the boys of Ireland kept the foreign invaders in check on the shores of
Ventry until Fionn had rallied the Fianna: it may be that a similar tale
shall be told of us, and that when men come to write the history of the
freeing of Ireland they shall have to record that the boys of Na Fianna
Eireann stood in the battle-gap until the Volunteers armed.
We believe, as every Irish boy whose heart has not been corrupted by
foreign influence must believe, that our country ought to be free. We do
not see why Ireland should allow England to govern her, either through
Englishmen, as at present, or through Irishmen under an appearance of
self-government. We believe that England has no business in this country
at all--that Ireland, from the centre to the zenith, belongs to the
Irish. Our forefathers believed this and fought for it: Hugh O’Donnell
and Hugh O’Neill and Rory O’More and Owen Roe O’Neill: Tone and Emmet
and Davis and Mitchel. What was true in their time is still true.
Nothing that has happened or that can ever happen can alter the truth of
it. Ireland belongs to the Irish. We believe, then, that it is the duty
of Irishmen to struggle always, never giving in or growing weary, until
they have won back their country again.
The object of Na Fianna Eireann is to train the boys of Ireland to fight
Ireland’s battle when they are men. In the past the Irish, heroically
though they have struggled, have always lost, for want of discipline,
for want of military knowledge, for want of plans, for want of leaders.
The brave Irish who rose in ’98, in ’48, and in ’67, went down because
they were not SOLDIERS: we hope to train Irish boys from their earliest
years to be soldiers, not only to know the trade of a soldier--drilling,
marching, camping, signalling, scouting, and (when they are old enough)
shooting--but also, what is far more important, to understand and prize
military discipline and to have a MILITARY SPIRIT. Centuries of
oppression and of unsuccessful effort have almost extinguished the
military spirit of Ireland: if that were once gone--if Ireland were to
become a land of contented slaves--it would be very hard, perhaps
impossible, ever to arouse her again. We believe that Na Fianna Eireann
have kept the military spirit alive in Ireland during the past four
years, and that if the Fianna had not been founded in 1909, the
Volunteers of 1913 would never have arisen. In a sense, then, the Fianna
have been the pioneers of the Volunteers; and it is from the ranks of
the Fianna that the Volunteers must be recruited. This is a special
reason why we should be active during 1914. The Fianna will constitute
what the old Irish called the MACRADH, or boy-troop, of the Volunteers,
and will correspond to what is called in France an Ecole Polytechnique
or Military School. As the man who was to lead the armies of France to
such glorious victories came forth from the Military School of Brienne,
so may the man who shall lead the Irish Volunteers to victory come forth
from Na Fianna Eireann.
Our programme includes every element of a military training. We are not
mere “Boy Scouts,” although we teach and practise the art of scouting.
Physical culture, infantry drill, marching, the routine of camp life,
semaphore and Morse signalling, scouting in all its branches, elementary
tactics, ambulance and first aid, swimming, hurling, and football, are
all included in our scheme of training; and opportunity is given to the
older boys for bayonet and rifle practice. This does not exhaust our
programme, for we believe that mental culture should go hand in hand
with physical culture, and we provide instruction in Irish and in Irish
history, lectures on historical and literary subjects, and musical and
social entertainments as opportunities permit.
Finally, we believe with Thomas Davis that “RIGHTEOUS men” must “make
our land a Nation Once Again.” Hence we endeavour to train our boys to
be pure, truthful, honest, sober, kindly; clean in heart as well as in
body; generous in their service to their parents and companions now as
we would have them generous in their service to their country hereafter.
We bear a very noble name and inherit very noble traditions, for we are
called after the Fianna of Fionn, that heroic companionship which,
according to legend, flourished in Ireland in the second and third
centuries of the Christian era.
“We, the Fianna, never told a lie,
Falsehood was never imputed to us,”
said Oisín to Saint Patrick; and again when Patrick asked Caoilte Mac
Ronain how it came that the Fianna won all their battles, Caoilte
replied: “Strength that was in our hands, truth that was on our lips,
and purity that was in our hearts.”
Is it too much to hope that after so many centuries the old ideals are
still quick in the heart of Irish youth, and that this year we shall get
many hundred Irish boys to come forward and help us to build up a
brotherhood of young Irishmen strong of limb, true and pure in tongue
and heart, chivalrous, cultured in a really Irish sense, and ready to
spend themselves in the service of their country?
SINNE,
NA FIANNA EIREANN.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHY WE WANT RECRUITS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHY WE WANT RECRUITS
(MAY 1915)
We want recruits because we have undertaken a service which we believe
to be of vital importance to our country, and because that service needs
whatever there is of manly stuff in Ireland in order to its effective
rendering.
We want recruits because we have a standard to rally them to. It is not
a new standard raised for the first time by the men of a new generation.
It is an old standard which has been borne by many generations of Irish
men, which has gone into many battles, which has looked down upon much
glory and upon much sorrow; which has been a sign to be contradicted,
but which shall yet shine as a star. There is no other standard in the
world so august as the standard we bear; and it is the only standard
which the men of Ireland may bear without abandoning their ancient
allegiance. Individual Irishmen have sometimes fought under other
standards: Ireland as a whole has never fought under any other.
We want recruits because we have a faith to give them and a hope with
which to inspire them. They are a faith and a hope which have been
handed down from generation to generation of Irish men and women unto
this last. The faith is that Ireland is one, that Ireland is inviolate,
that Ireland is worthy of all love and all homage and all service that
may lawfully be paid to any earthly thing; and the hope is that Ireland
may be free. In a human sense, we have no desire, no ambition but the
integrity, the honour, and the freedom of our native land.
We want recruits because we are sure of the rightness of our cause. We
have no misgivings, no self-questionings. While others have been
doubting, timorous, ill at ease, we have been serenely at peace with our
consciences. The recent time of soul-searching had no terrors for us. We
saw our path with absolute clearness; we took it with absolute
deliberateness. “We could no other.” We called upon the names of the
great confessors of our national faith, and all was well with us.
Whatever soul-searchings there may be among Irish political parties now
or hereafter, we go on in the calm certitude of having done the clear,
clean, sheer thing. We have the strength and the peace of mind of those
who never compromise.
We want recruits because we believe that events are about to place the
destinies of Ireland definitely in our hands, and because we want as
much help as possible to enable us to bear the burden. The political
leadership of Ireland is passing to us--not, perhaps, to us as
individuals, for none of us are ambitious for leadership and few of us
fit for leadership; but to our party, to men of our way of thinking:
that is, to the party and to the men that stand _by Ireland only_, to
the party and to the men that stand by the nation, to the party and to
the men of one allegiance.
We want recruits because we have work for them to do. We do not propose
to keep our men idle. We propose to give them work--hard work, plenty of
work. We would band together all men capable of working for Ireland and
give them men’s work.
We want recruits because we are able to train them. The great majority
of our officers are now fully competent to undertake the training of
Irish Volunteers for active service under the conditions imposed by the
natural and military facts of the map of Ireland. Those officers who are
not so competent will be made competent in our training camps during the
next few months.
We want recruits because we are able to arm them. In a rough way of
speaking, we have succeeded already in placing a gun and ammunition
therefor in the hands of every Irish Volunteer that has undertaken to
endeavour to pay for them. We are in a position to do as much for every
man that joins us. We may not always have the popular pattern of gun,
but we undertake to produce a gun of some sort for every genuine Irish
Volunteer; with some ammunition to boot. Finally:
We want recruits because we are absolutely determined to take action the
moment action becomes a duty. If a moment comes--as a moment seemed on
the point of coming at least twice during the past eighteen months--when
the Irish Volunteers will be justified to their consciences in taking
definite military action, such action will be taken. We do not
anticipate such a moment in the very near future; but we live at a time
when it may come swiftly and terribly. What if Conscription be forced
upon Ireland? What if a Unionist or a Coalition British Ministry
repudiate the Home Rule Act? What if it be determined to dismember
Ireland? What if it be attempted to disarm Ireland? The future is big
with these and other possibilities.
And these are among the reasons why we want recruits.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
O’DONOVAN ROSSA
------------------------------------------------------------------------
O’DONOVAN ROSSA
A CHARACTER STUDY
O’Donovan Rossa was not the greatest man of the Fenian generation, but
he was its most typical man. He was the man that to the masses of his
countrymen then and since stood most starkly and plainly for the Fenian
idea. More lovable and understandable than the cold and enigmatic
Stephens, better known than the shy and sensitive Kickham, more human
than the scholarly and chivalrous O’Leary, more picturesque than the
able and urbane Luby, older and more prominent than the man who, when
the time comes to write his biography, will be recognised as the
greatest of the Fenians--John Devoy--Rossa held a unique place in the
hearts of Irish men and Irish women. They made songs about him, his very
name passed into a proverb. To avow oneself a friend of O’Donovan Rossa
meant in the days of our fathers to avow oneself a friend of Ireland; it
meant more: it meant to avow oneself a “mere” Irishman, an “Irish
enemy,” an “Irish savage,” if you will, naked and unashamed. Rossa was
not only “extreme,” but he represented the left wing of the
“extremists.” Not only would he have Ireland free, but he would have
Ireland Gaelic.
And here we have the secret of Rossa’s magic, of Rossa’s power: he came
out of the Gaelic tradition. He was of the Gael; he thought in a Gaelic
way; he spoke in Gaelic accents. He was the spiritual and intellectual
descendant of Colm Cille and of Seán an Díomais. With Colm Cille he
might have said, “If I die it shall be from the love I bear the Gael”;
with Shane O’Neill he held it debasing to “twist his mouth with
English.” To him the Gael and the Gaelic ways were splendid and holy,
worthy of all homage and all service; for the English he had a hatred
that was tinctured with contempt. He looked upon them as an inferior
race, morally and intellectually; he despised their civilisation; he
mocked at their institutions and made them look ridiculous.
And this again explains why the English hated him above all the Fenians.
They hated him as they hated Shane O’Neill, and as they hated Parnell;
but more. For the same “crime” against English law as his associates he
was sentenced to a more terrible penalty; and they pursued him into his
prison and tried to break his spirit by mean and petty cruelty. He stood
up to them and fought them: he made their whole penal system odious and
despicable in the eyes of Europe and America. So the English found Rossa
in prison a more terrible foe than Rossa at large; and they were glad at
last when they had to let him go. Without any literary pretensions, his
story of his prison life remains one of the sombre epics of the earthly
inferno.
O’Donovan Rossa was not intellectually broad, but he had great
intellectual intensity. His mind was like a hot flame. It seared and
burned what was base and mean; it bored its way through falsehoods and
conventions; it shot upwards, unerringly, to truth and principle. And
this man had one of the toughest and most stubborn souls that have ever
been. No man, no government, could either break or bend him. Literally
he was incapable of compromise. He could not even parley with
compromisers. Nay, he could not act, even for the furtherance of objects
held in common, with those who did not hold and avow all his objects. It
was characteristic of him that he refused to associate himself with the
“new departure” by which John Devoy threw the support of the Fenians
into the land struggle behind Parnell and Davitt; even though the
Fenians compromised nothing and even though their support were to mean
(and did mean) the winning of the land war. Parnell and Davitt he
distrusted; Home Rulers he always regarded as either foolish or
dishonest. He knew only one way; and suspected all those who thought
there might be two.
And while Rossa was thus unbending, unbending to the point of
impracticability, there was no acerbity in his nature. He was full of a
kindly Gaelic glee. The olden life of Munster, in which the
_seanchaidhe_ told tales in the firelight and songs were made at the
autumn harvesting and at the winter spinning, was very dear to him. He
saw that life crushed out, or nearly crushed out, in squalor and famine
during ’47 and ’48; but it always lived in his heart. In English prisons
and in American cities he remembered the humour and the lore of Carbery.
He jested when he was before his judges; he jested when he was tortured
by his jailors; sometimes he startled the silence of the prison
corridors by laughing aloud and by singing Irish songs in his cell: they
thought he was going mad, but he was only trying to keep himself sane.
I have heard from John Devoy the story of his first meeting with Rossa
in prison. Rossa was being marched into the governor’s office as Devoy
was being marched out. In the gaunt man that passed him Devoy did not
recognise at first the splendid Rossa he had known. Rossa stopped and
said, “John.” “Who are you?” said Devoy: “I don’t know you.” “I’m
Rossa.” Then the warders came between them. Devoy has described another
meeting with Rossa, and this time it was Rossa who did not know Devoy.
One of the last issues of _The Gaelic American_ that the British
Government allowed to enter Ireland contained Devoy’s account of a
recent visit to Rossa in a hospital in Staten Island. It took a little
time to make him realise who it was that stood beside his bed. “And are
you John Devoy?” he said at last. During his long illness he constantly
imagined that he was still in an English prison; and there was
difficulty in preventing him from trying to make his escape through the
window. I have not yet seen any account of his last hours: the cabling
of such things would imperil the Defence of the Realm.
Enough to know that that valiant soldier of Ireland is dead; that that
unconquered spirit is free.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GRAVESIDE PANEGYRIC
A GHAEDHEALA,
Do hiarradh orm-sa labhairt indiu ar son a bhfuil cruinnighthe ar an
láthair so agus ar son a bhfuil beo de Chlannaibh Gaedheal, ag moladh an
leomhain do leagamar i gcré annso agus ag gríosadh meanman na gcarad atá
go brónach ina dhiaidh.
A cháirde, ná bíodh brón ar éinne atá ina sheasamh ag an uaigh so, acht
bíodh buidheachas againn inar gcroidhthibh do Dhia na ngrás do
chruthuigh anam uasal áluinn Dhiarmuda Uí Dhonnabháin Rosa agus thug ré
fhada dhó ar an saoghal so.
Ba chalma an fear thu, a Dhiarmuid. Is tréan d’fhearais cath ar son cirt
do chine, is ní beag ar fhuilingis; agus ní dhéanfaidh Gaedhil dearmad
ort go bráth na breithe.
Acht, a cháirde, ná bíodh brón orainn, acht bíodh misneach inar
gcroidhthibh agus bíodh neart inar gcuisleannaibh, óir cuimhnighimís
nach mbíonn aon bhás ann nach mbíonn aiséirghe ina dhiaidh, agus gurab
as an uaigh so agus as na huaghannaibh atá inar dtimcheall éireochas
saoirse Ghaedheal.
It has seemed right, before we turn away from this place in which we
have laid the mortal remains of O’Donovan Rossa, that one among us
should, in the name of all, speak the praise of that valiant man, and
endeavour to formulate the thought and the hope that are in us as we
stand around his grave. And if there is anything that makes it fitting
that I, rather than some other, I rather than one of the grey-haired men
who were young with him and shared in his labour and in his suffering,
should speak here, it is perhaps that I may be taken as speaking on
behalf of a new generation that has been re-baptised in the Fenian
faith, and that has accepted the responsibility of carrying out the
Fenian programme. I propose to you then that, here by the grave of this
unrepentant Fenian, we renew our baptismal vows; that, here by the grave
of this unconquered and unconquerable man, we ask of God, each one for
himself, such unshakable purpose, such high and gallant courage, such
unbreakable strength of soul as belonged to O’Donovan Rossa.
Deliberately here we avow ourselves, as he avowed himself in the dock,
Irishmen of one allegiance only. We of the Irish Volunteers, and you
others who are associated with us in to-day’s task and duty, are bound
together and must stand together henceforth in brotherly union for the
achievement of the freedom of Ireland. And we know only one definition
of freedom: it is Tone’s definition, it is Mitchel’s definition, it is
Rossa’s definition. Let no man blaspheme the cause that the dead
generations of Ireland served by giving it any other name and definition
than their name and their definition.
We stand at Rossa’s grave not in sadness but rather in exaltation of
spirit that it has been given to us to come thus into so close a
communion with that brave and splendid Gael. Splendid and holy causes
are served by men who are themselves splendid and holy. O’Donovan Rossa
was splendid in the proud manhood of him, splendid in the heroic grace
of him, splendid in the Gaelic strength and clarity and truth of him.
And all that splendour and pride and strength was compatible with a
humility and a simplicity of devotion to Ireland, to all that was olden
and beautiful and Gaelic in Ireland, the holiness and simplicity of
patriotism of a Michael O’Clery or of an Eoghan O’Growney. The clear
true eyes of this man almost alone in his day visioned Ireland as we of
to-day would surely have her: not free merely, but Gaelic as well; not
Gaelic merely, but free as well.
In a closer spiritual communion with him now than ever before or perhaps
ever again, in a spiritual communion with those of his day, living and
dead, who suffered with him in English prisons, in communion of spirit
too with our own dear comrades who suffer in English prisons to-day, and
speaking on their behalf as well as our own, we pledge to Ireland our
love, and we pledge to English rule in Ireland our hate. This is a place
of peace, sacred to the dead, where men should speak with all charity
and with all restraint; but I hold it a Christian thing, as O’Donovan
Rossa held it, to hate evil, to hate untruth, to hate oppression, and,
hating them, to strive to overthrow them. Our foes are strong and wise
and wary; but, strong and wise and wary as they are, they cannot undo
the miracles of God who ripens in the hearts of young men the seeds sown
by the young men of a former generation. And the seeds sown by the young
men of ’65 and ’67 are coming to their miraculous ripening to-day.
Rulers and Defenders of Realms had need to be wary if they would guard
against such processes. Life springs from death; and from the graves of
patriot men and women spring living nations. The Defenders of this Realm
have worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they have
pacified Ireland. They think that they have purchased half of us and
intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen
everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the
fools, the fools, the fools!--they have left us our Fenian dead, and
while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at
peace.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
FROM A HERMITAGE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
The articles which follow were contributed by me to _Irish Freedom_
during the eight months extending from June 1913 to January 1914. They
thus form a contemporary commentary on the period immediately preceding
and covering the rise of the Irish Volunteers: a period which, when
things assume their proper perspective, will probably be regarded as the
most important in recent Irish history. I commenced the series with the
deliberate intention, by argument, invective, and satire, of goading
those who shared my political views to commit themselves definitely to
an armed movement. I felt quite sure that the hour was ripe for such a
movement, but did not in the beginning foresee the precise form it was
to assume. When I wrote the article for November 1913 a group of
Nationalists with whom I was in touch had decided to found the Irish
Volunteers, and we were looking about for a leader who would command the
adhesion of men less “advanced” than we were known to be: of our own
followers we were sure. When I wrote the article for December 1913, Eoin
MacNeill had (quite unexpectedly) published his article “The North
Began” in _An Claidheamh Soluis_, and we had agreed to invite him to put
himself at our head. The rest is a part of Irish history.
In the article for August 1913, I have omitted part of the Open Letter
to Douglas Hyde; and I have made one or two verbal changes in a few of
the other articles.
P. H. PEARSE.
ST. ENDA’S COLLEGE,
THE HERMITAGE, RATHFARNHAM,
1st June, 1915.
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FROM A HERMITAGE
I
(JUNE 1913)
Not everyone that lives in a hermitage is a hermit. And not every hermit
is hermit-hearted. As for me, I have only two qualities in common with
the real (or imaginary) hermit who once lived (or did not live) in this
place: I am poor and I am merry. Now, all hermits are poor, and all
hermits, unless they are frauds, are merry. I am visibly poor, but am
merry only in an esoteric or secret sense, exhibiting to the outer world
an austerity of look and speech more befitting my habitation than my
heart. Understand that, however harshly I may express myself in the
comments and proposals I shall from time to time make here, I am in
reality a genial and large-hearted person, and that if I chasten my
fellows it is only because I love them.
* * * * *
I have, as I have suggested, some proposals to make. The first is that
we who are determined to rehabilitate this nation should commence
working towards that end instead of arguing. The Nationalist movement in
Ireland has degenerated into a debating society. In all our national or
quasi-national organs we argue as to what a nation is, what nationality,
what a Nationalist. As if definitions mattered! Our love of disputation
sometimes makes us indecent, as when we argue over a dead man’s coffin
as to whether he was a Nationalist or not, and sometimes makes us
ridiculous, as when we prove by a mathematical formula that the poet who
has most finely voiced Irish nationalism in our time is no Nationalist.
As if a man’s opinions were more important than his work! I propose that
we take _service_ as our touchstone, and reject all other touchstones;
and that, without bothering our heads about sorting out, segregating,
and labelling Irishmen and Irishwomen according to their opinions, we
agree to accept as fellow-Nationalists all who specifically or virtually
recognise this Irish nation as an entity and, being part of it, owe it
and give it their service. This will save endless discussion, and make
it wholly unnecessary to inquire, before giving a fellow-Irishman one’s
hand, what is his attitude towards bimetallism or what his opinion of
“The Playboy of the Western World.”
* * * * *
This thing of service merits to be dwelt upon. Ireland, in our day as in
the past, has excommunicated some of those who have served her best, and
has canonised some of those who have served her worst. We damn a man for
an unpopular phrase; we deify a man who does a mean thing gracefully.
The word to us is ever more significant than the deed. When a man like
Synge, a man in whose sad heart there glowed a true love of Ireland, one
of the two or three men who have in our time made Ireland considerable
in the eyes of the world, uses strange symbols which we do not
understand, we cry out that he has blasphemed and we proceed to crucify
him. When a sleek lawyer, rising step by step through the most ignoble
of all professions, attains to a Lord Chancellorship or to an
Attorney-Generalship, we confer upon him the freedom of our cities. This
is really a very terrible symptom in contemporary Ireland. It is not for
me to judge the Redmond Barrys and the Ignatius O’Briens and the Thomas
F. Moloneys, and I say no word in condemnation of them here: I merely
point out that they have not in any way served Ireland--they have served
themselves and they have served England; and when England rewards them
for their service there is absolutely no reason why Ireland should
rejoice. A bargain has been completed. Servants of England have done
their day’s work and been paid their price. It is a commercial
transaction, not a matter of public rejoicing. It is a business between
England and these men. Ireland has nothing to do with it.
* * * * *
When such commercial transactions are concluded I think the less said
about them the better. I would not pursue these men as traitors, for I
do not think they were ever with us. But I do think that an effort
should be made to prevent “rebel” cities like Cork from honouring their
mean success. Is it too late, even now, to expunge their names from the
roll of freemen? Let someone in Cork look to it.
* * * * *
This generation of Irishmen will be called upon in the near future to
make a very passionate assertion of nationality. The form in which that
assertion shall be made must depend upon many things, more especially
upon the passage or non-passage of the present Home Rule Bill. In the
meantime there is need to be vigilant. Yet, every day we allow insults
to the nation to pass, forgetting that every fresh stripe endured by a
slave makes him so much more a slave. There comes to a slave, as there
comes to a tortured child or to a tortured animal, a time when stripes
seem normal and it is easier to endure than to protest. Any underling of
British government can now lay hands on Ireland with impunity; only now
it is no longer necessary to deal heavy stripes--a delicate and
facetious slap in the face is a sufficient symbol of over-lordship. One
Mr. Justice Boyd sneered at the Irish language from the Bench in Belfast
a few weeks ago; one would have thought that there were enough Gaels in
Belfast to prevent the fellow from being heard in his own court the next
day until he had apologised. The National Council of Sinn Féin recently
sent an anti-enlisting car through the streets of Dublin. It was seized
by the police and the posters defaced. Afterwards the excuse was
tendered that the cart exceeded the size allowed by the Corporation for
advertisement vans. The National Council promptly sent another
anti-enlisting car, of regulation size, into the streets, and at present
it parades unmolested. But there should have been enough spirit in
Dublin to enable the National Council to send a whole procession of
anti-enlisting cars into the streets. And, had these been seized, a
hundred sandwich men should have appeared with anti-enlisting posters.
And, had these been interfered with, Nationalist citizens should have
set out for business the next morning with anti-enlisting badges in
their buttonholes. Should the police have disliked the aesthetic effect
of this decoration, neat anti-enlisting flags might have appeared in
citizens’ hat-bands. Should all sartorial eccentricities have been
objected to, Nationalist Dublin could have started whistling some tune
agreed upon and recognised to mean “anti-enlisting.” There are countless
ways in which such an agitation might be carried on, for the glory of
God and the honour of Ireland. Once for all, if there is to be an
anti-enlisting movement, let there be an anti-enlisting movement.
Opinions may differ as to the advisability of such a movement, but there
can be no two opinions as to the inadvisability of playing at such a
movement.
* * * * *
I am aware that some of the courses I recommend are open to the
objection that they would land some people in gaol. But gaol would do
some people good.
II
(JULY 1913)
Symbols are very important. The symbol of a true thing, of a beneficent
thing, is worthy of all homage; the symbol of a false thing, of a cruel
thing, is worthy of all reprobation. A gibbet has come to be the noblest
symbol in the world, because it symbolises the noblest thing that has
ever been done among men. The red coat of a soldier, a gallant thing in
itself, has come to be a symbol of unspeakably evil import, because such
unspeakable things have been done by the empire for which the red-coated
soldiers fight, such murders perpetrated, such tyrannies upheld for
centuries. Thus, a shameful thing may come to have a glorious
significance, a ridiculous thing may achieve venerability, while a
goodly thing may become so degraded that the stomach of a strong man
heaves when he looks upon it. Consider this: if a man were to walk down
O’Connell Street wearing a double-pointed conical hat a full foot high
and of a glaring yellow colour, we should laugh; yet when a man mounts
the steps of an altar with a hat of that precise pattern on his head we
are dumb and reverent, for we see in the preposterous headgear the awful
symbol of apostolic succession. This matter of symbols came into my mind
to-day as I watched a Bishop administer Confirmation. The Church to
which I belong, the wise Church that has called into her service all the
arts, knows better than any other institution, human or divine, the
immense potency of symbols: with symbols she exorcises evil spirits,
with symbols she calls into play for beneficent purposes the infinite
powers of omnipotence. And those of her children who honour not her
symbols she pronounces anathema.
* * * * *
A nation should exact similar respect for its symbols. Free nations do.
They salute their flags with bared heads; they hail with thundering
cannon the nincompoops that happen to be their kings. A man with whom
you would not sit at meat if he were a private individual, whom you
would cut every time you saw him approaching you in the street, receives
your homage, and justly receives your homage, when he symbolises the
majesty of your nation. A man whom, as an individual, you would consider
too insignificant to be an object of your dislike, becomes an object of
holy hatred when he symbolises some evil thing that oppresses you or
yours. No one in Ireland either likes or dislikes George Wettin; yet
every true man of Ireland hates, or should hate, to see his not very
intellectual features on a coin or on a stamp, for they symbolise there
the foreign tyranny that holds us. A good Irishman should blush every
time he sees a penny. A good Irishman should tingle with shame every
time he sees a red coat.
* * * * *
I know an old woman who never passes a soldier without railing at him.
As a girl she made bullets for the Fenians, moulding them out of the
leaden lining of tea cases. During the half century that has gone by,
while our fathers and we have been parleying with the English, she has
cherished in her heart an enduring hate. I saw her a few weeks ago as
she went by the Wellington Barracks on her way to the Wolfe Tone
Aeridheacht, and as she passed the sentry at the gate she paused and
said something bitter to him. I would not have done that. I could not
even if I would. Neither could you. A strong man would regard it as
futile; a man with a sense of humour would regard it as ridiculous, just
as most men regard the demonstrations of the Suffragettes. Yet I think
the women are right and not we. At the root of that old woman’s
demonstration against the stolid sentry was an instinct profoundly true.
She is in revolt against the evil thing that holds her country, and of
that evil thing the sentry is the symbol. She is an unconquered soul,
one of the few unconquered souls in Ireland. She has not made peace, and
will never make peace. She has never even parleyed. It were wrong to
laugh at her little feeble demonstration against the soldier. I do not
call for demonstrations against soldiers until we are able to do more
than demonstrate; but the fact that we pass them by every day, every
hour, without grinding our teeth is symptomatic of our loss of manhood.
We no longer feel their presence here a reproach.
* * * * *
Of the nation’s symbols the most august is her language, and it is a
measure of Ireland’s degradation that she can endure to see her language
derided by a Mr. Justice Boyd and that she can discuss the propriety of
selling it for £10,000 a year to a Mr. Secretary Birrell. Ireland has
lost the sense of shame. Her inner sanctities are no longer sacred to
her. Keating (whom I take to be the greatest of Irish Nationalist poets)
used a terrific phrase of the Ireland of his day: he called her “the
harlot of England.” Yet Keating’s Ireland was the magnificent Ireland in
which Rory O’More planned and Owen Roe battled. What would he say of
this Ireland? His phrase if used to-day would no longer be a terrible
metaphor, but would be a more terrible truth; a truth literal and exact.
For is not Ireland’s body given up to the pleasure of another, and is
not Ireland’s honour for sale in the market-places?
* * * * *
As long as Ireland is unfree the only honourable attitude for Irishmen
and Irishwomen is an attitude of revolt. It is base of us to be
quiescent. It is base not only for the nation, but for each individual
in the nation: each of us is guilty of a personal baseness, each of us
suffers a personal stigma, as long as this thing endures. When we go to
Wolfe Tone’s grave next Sunday we should remember with bitterness that
we suffer the ignominy which he died rather than endure. If we mean to
go on suffering it, we have no business going in pilgrimage to that dead
man’s grave. If we do not really mean to carry on his work, why disturb
the quiet of Bodenstown with protestations?
* * * * *
I said last month that this generation of Irishmen will be called upon
in the near future to make a very passionate assertion of nationality,
and that the form which that assertion shall take must depend largely
upon the passage or non-passage of the present Home Rule Bill. If the
Home Rule Bill passes I imagine that the assertion I speak of will be
made by the creation of what we may call a Gaelic party within the Home
Rule Parliament, with a strong following behind it in the country; a
party which shall determinedly set about the rehabilitation of this
nation, resting not until it has eliminated every vestige of foreign
interference with its concerns. If the Home Rule Bill does not pass (and
those who are offering an instalment of liberty to Ireland are proving
such bad guardians of liberty in their own country that it is doubtful
whether their own countrymen will retain them in office sufficiently
long to allow them to pass Home Rule), the assertion must be made in
other ways: I believe that if we who hold the full national faith have
but the courage to step forward we shall succeed more easily than most
people suppose in gaining the people’s adhesion to our ideals and our
methods--lesser ideals having proved unattainable and wiser methods more
foolish.
III
(AUGUST 1913)
Once I knew a Bishop who used to devote the greater part of his spare
time to writing Limericks in competition for prizes offered by
newspapers. You will find it difficult to imagine a Bishop writing
Limericks. One imagines a Bishop in his spare hours writing biblical
commentaries or cultivating a neat garden in which the characteristic
flower is lily-of-the-valley. And yet my Bishop was a saint. The not
very apostolic occupation of his leisure had its origin in an apostolic
simplicity and charity. The Bishop had a little niece of whom he was
very fond, and the ambition of the little niece’s life was to win one of
the large prizes offered by London newspapers for clever Limericks. The
good Bishop sent in a vast number of Limericks in his niece’s name, and
if he or she won a prize (which, I am sorry to say, neither of them ever
did), half the money was to be spent in sending the little niece on a
pilgrimage to Lourdes and the other half to be given to the Society of
St. Vincent de Paul. If I had not learned all this from a friend of the
little niece’s I might have set down the Limerick writing (for some of
the Limericks were very bad) as a reprehensible eccentricity on the part
of an otherwise excellently behaved Bishop.
* * * * *
At that time I was not a hermit, and was not versed in the wise
foolishness of saints. From the Bishop’s and from other instances I have
since elaborated this piece of wisdom: when a good man does an
inexplicable thing there is always a motive creditable to his goodness.
Men’s follies are often more symptomatic of their virtues than of their
vices. Apply this to those round about you, in your home, in your
office, in your organisation: apply it to the busy-bodies and the fools
who appear to be making a mess of everything you are interested in, from
your breakfast to your country, and you will come to respect them for
their very blunders, to love them for their lunacy. You prefer your eggs
well boiled. Your wife insists on serving them to you half raw. This is
not perverseness on her part: she knows that the albumen of eggs when
solidified is highly indigestible and when swallowed hastily every
morning, and washed down with tea, will assuredly induce appendicitis.
You hate to sit in a draught. The man whose stool is next you in your
office insists on keeping a window open from which an atmospheric stream
constantly impinges upon your thinly-thatched cranium. This is not
cruelty on his part: he knows (being a reader of Lady Aberdeen’s
_Slainte_) that you are tubercular, and that fresh air is the only thing
that will kill the germs. You are a member of the Gaelic League. A
friend and colleague writes to the press to point out that you are
selling the League to the Liberals and that your reward will be a title.
This is not a damned lie: it is his way of hinting that you ought to be
a little more strenuous, to smite a little harder and a little oftener,
to keep up perpetually a sort of Berserker rage or _riastral_ in the way
of the old heroes. It is his crude, inartistic, modern notion of playing
Laegh to your Cuchulainn. The bravest hero of the Gael had to endure
being called “a little fairy phantom” by his charioteer. Were he
fighting at the Ford to-day he would be called a “Do-Nothing.” When
Cuchulainn was reviled by Laegh he did not turn round and fell him. He
fought on the harder against the foe of his country.
* * * * *
I love and honour Douglas Hyde. I have served under him since I was a
boy. I am willing to serve under him until he can lead and I can serve
no longer. I have never failed him. He has never failed me. I am only
one of many who could write thus, who at this moment are thinking thus.
But probably my service has been longer than that of most, for it began
when I was only sixteen; and perhaps it has been more intimate than that
of all but a very few, for I have been in posts that required constant
communication with him for fifteen years. It has, too, been my privilege
to be the first fosterer of many who are now serving under him--pupils
of mine, now pupils of his in the National University or young workers
in the Gaelic League; and these form a new bond between him and me. Thus
by service given and service received I have earned the right to say
here the things I am about to say. I can speak to him at once as friend
to friend and as loyal soldier to loyal captain.
* * * * *
Or rather, since it has become the fashion to write Open Letters to
Douglas Hyde, I will write him an Open Letter. I will commence: “My dear
Hyde,--Among God’s gracious gifts to you, perhaps the most gracious, at
any rate the most useful, is your gift of humour. You have always had a
great Homeric laugh. I call upon you to laugh it now. I could show you
much matter for laughter in these noises and irrelevancies that disturb
you.... Laugh, my dear Craoibhin. Laugh your great genial laugh. It will
ease the situation. Bulfin used to say that O’Daly’s smile would split
the ceiling at 24 Upper O’Connell Street. Let your laughter shake the
Clock Tower in Earlsfort Terrace.”[5]
* * * * *
To be quite serious, laughter is what is required just now. A shout of
laughter that will roll out from the Ard-Fheis at Galway till it
re-echoes from the cliffs of Aran and reverberates through the stony
solitudes of Burren. Why all this passion of invective when laughter
will solve the difficulty? Let us laugh. Laughter is the one gift that
God has given to men but denied to brutes and angels. Laughter is the
crowning grace of the heroes. The epic tells how the dying Cuchulainn
noticed that a raven which had stooped to drink his blood, becoming
entangled in the clotted gore, was ludicrously upset. “Then Cuchulainn,
knowing that it was his last laugh, laughed aloud.” I think that Emmet,
I am quite sure that Tone, would have laughed in similar circumstances.
* * * * *
For my own part, I have found the need of laughter in order to preserve
my sanity. And you, Craoibhin, have counselled sanity. There is one
piece of sanity that I have learned from being a schoolmaster. Always
remember that in a school you have to deal with boys, not cherubim. An
enthusiastic teacher often makes the mistake of forming an ideal picture
of schoolboy virtue, and is shocked and disheartened when he finds that
his actual pupils fall far below his ideal. You have, for instance, a
little pupil with a virginal face. You say to yourself, “This boy will
surely never buy cigarettes in the forbidden shop at the corner, or
steal into the garden when the apples are ripe.” You come upon him some
day in the walk through the wood, and as you approach he hastily
conceals a cigarette; you enter the garden in autumn time, and you
notice a slight figure with the face of a saint making a dash from the
place where the apple-trees are. You are angry with the boy, but it is
with yourself you should be angry, or rather you should laugh at
yourself for a blunderer. The boy has only proved himself a boy, whereas
you have proved yourself a goose. Instead of taking down the boy’s
trousers, you ought to take down the impossible image you had so
foolishly erected.
* * * * *
I wonder whether this schoolmaster’s wisdom might not be of service to
Dr. Hyde. He must try to remember that those around him are men, not
archangels. They are men with all the little lovable and unlovable
weaknesses of men, and without any of the vision and strength of angels.
And he must try to forgive them and to imagine that they mean well even
when they act badly; that sometimes at the bottom of their blundering
there may be a grain of sense; and that often their fury is only a
slightly diseased love of the cause we all serve. And perhaps human
causes are best served by men with human strength and human weaknesses.
Archangels are fitted to go upon the mighty embassies of God, not to do
the little paltry tasks of human life. Archangels are at home in the
shining spaces of heaven, not in the habitations and committee rooms of
earth. Curious as it seems, we ridiculous men, with all our faults and
all our follies, are very capable where angels might fail. Angelic
attributes might hinder us in our humble and humdrum but necessary
little careers. The inconveniences of being angels on earth would be
dreadful. As we sat on our office stools, as we gathered round the table
of our committee room, where, for instance, should we tuck in our wings?
The buildings would have to be enlarged. In point of fact, a heaven
would be necessary to our comfort. But this is earth. And so we are back
at our first position that we must put up with our human world and with
the human material we have got, until we are all translated and become
members of the eternal committee and delegates to the Ard-Fheis of God.
* * * * *
Thus much to Dr. Hyde. To those on whose behalf I appeal to his
magnanimity I say only this: O ye of little sense, know ye not when ye
have got a good captain for a good cause? And know ye not that it is the
duty of the soldier to follow his captain, unfaltering, unquestioning,
“seeing obedience in the bond of rule”? If ye know not this, ye know not
the first thing that a fighting man should know.
-----
Footnote 5:
The Clock Tower, I observe, has since collapsed.
IV
(SEPTEMBER 1913)
I have been considering the ways of chafers and dragon-flies. During the
long summer they are my only entertainment in this wilderness. The
dragon-flies make a pageant for me in the noontide splendour: the
chafers are my orchestra in the dusky evening. Marbhén before me was
similarly attended:
“Swarms of bees and chafers, the little musicians of the world,
A gentle chorus.”
Your beetle has in him many of the contradictions of the artist. In
seemly black, he appeals to you as shy and retiring; suddenly, while you
are sympathetically examining him, he splits up the middle, shocking you
at first with the indecency of the act, but soon displays hidden wings
as though he were an angel in disguise, and then, waving wild arms (like
a Yeats making a speech), whirls into ecstasies, and is gone with
multitudinous and iridescent whirr of wings and wing-cases. This is
nature’s symbolling forth of the _divina insania_ of the poets. It were
perhaps too curious to assign certain beetles to certain poets and
dramatists as their types and figures, associating for instance the
_Necydalis Major_, long and graceful, with Mr. Yeats, the familiar
_Coccinella_, pleasant and comfortable-looking, with Lady Gregory, the
_Creophilus Maxillosus_, a creature which haunts drains and feeds on
garbage (and which I take to be the beetle celebrated in a well-known
passage of Keating), with Mr. George Moore.
* * * * *
Upon the dragon-fly a literature might be written. The dragon-fly is one
of the most beautiful and terrible things in nature. It flashes by you
like a winged emerald or ruby or turquoise. Scrutinise it at close
quarters and you will find yourself comparing its bulky little round
head, with its wonderful eyes and cruel jaws, to the beautiful, cruel
head of a tiger. The dragon-fly among insects is in fact as the tiger
among beasts, as the hawk among birds, as the shark among fish, as the
lawyer among men, as England among the nations. It is the destroyer, the
eater-up, the cannibal. Two dragon-flies will fight until nothing
remains but two heads. So ferocious an eater-up is the dragon-fly that
it is said that, in the absence of other bodies to eat up, it will eat
up its own body until nothing is left but the head, and it would
doubtless eat its own head if it could; a feat which would be as
remarkable as the feat of the saint, recorded by Carlyle and recalled by
Mitchel, who swam across the Channel carrying his decapitated head in
his teeth. The dragon-fly is the type of greedy ascendancy--a sinister
head preying upon its own vitals. The largest and most wonderful
dragon-flies I have seen in Ireland haunt the lovely woods that fringe
the shore of Lough Corrib, near Cong. And at Cong, I remember, there is
a great lord who has pulled down many homes in order that no ascending
smoke may mar the sylvan beauty of his landscape.
* * * * *
Of the doings of men only rumours reach me in this solitude. I have
heard faint echoes of laughter at Galway, and am pleased to think that
the Gael has not entirely lost his sense of humour: a catastrophe which
I had feared, for Dr. Hyde had been talking about his aunt’s will and
Mr. Griffith had been advising Dr. Hyde as to how to conduct a movement
to success. The Irish-speaking crowd surging around the brake in Galway
square recalls one to the realities of the movement, and to the field
that is lying fallow. I want a missionary, a herald, an Irish-speaking
John the Baptist, one who would go through the Irish West and speak
trumpet-toned of nationality to the people in the villages. I would not
have him speak of Gaelic Leagues, or of Fees for Irish, or of Bilingual
Programmes, or of Essential Irish in Universities: I would have him
speak of Tone and Mitchel and the Hawk of the Hill and of men dead or in
exile for love of the Gael; all in Irish. In the meantime I welcome
Eamonn Ceannt and “Bean an Fhir Ruaidh.”
* * * * *
Books sometimes find their way to this remote place, and fortunately
books, even very profane books, are not forbidden by my rule. This month
I have received a good book and a bad book. The good book is indeed one
of the holy books of Ireland: no other than John Mitchel’s _Jail
Journal_, the last gospel of the New Testament of Irish Nationality, as
Wolfe Tone’s Autobiography is the first; John Mitchel’s _Jail Journal_
nobly presented, supplemented by an additional chapter of his _Out of
Jail Journal_, enriched with good notes and portraits, and introduced by
Arthur Griffith in a finely-written preface. Mr. Griffith speaks of the
“haughty manhood” of Mitchel. A Man is so rare a phenomenon in Ireland
that the appearance of one takes his generation by surprise and he dies
broken-hearted or is hanged or transported before his people have made
up their minds whether to crown him or to stone him--or simply to ignore
him. Mitchel brought reality into a national movement busy with
discussions as our own movement is busy with discussions to-day. He
admits that he miscalculated: underestimating both “the vigour and zeal”
of the enemy and “the much-enduring patience and perseverance” of the
Irish. It comes to this: a Man cannot save his people unless the people
themselves have some manhood. A Man, even if he be a Man-God, will live
and die in vain for all who are voluntary slaves. Christ cannot save you
if you want to be damned: much less can any earthly hero.
* * * * *
I agree with one who holds that John Mitchel is Ireland’s greatest
literary figure--that is, of those who have written in English. But I
place Tone above him both as a man and as a leader of men. Tone’s was a
broader humanity with as intense a nationality; Tone’s was a sunnier
nature with as stubborn a soul. But Mitchel stands next to Tone: and
these two shall teach you and lead you, O Ireland, if you hearken unto
them, and not otherwise than as they teach and lead shall you come unto
the path of national salvation. For this I will answer on the Judgment
Day.
* * * * *
I was wrong in speaking of my second book as a bad book. It is a good
book, lovingly written, but it is spoiled by a profane preface. I am
speaking of Maurice Moore’s life of his father and of George Moore’s
preface thereto. The soldier has told the facts of his father’s life (I
wish he had not called him “an Irish Gentleman”) simply and well, and
the novelist has tried to suggest that his father was not an “Irish
gentleman” but an Irish blackguard. Many Irish gentlemen have indeed
been blackguards, but I do not think George Henry Moore was one. In a
mean and difficult time he worked manfully for Ireland; and towards the
end of his life he was willing to become a Fenian. Blackguards do not
generally work manfully for their country or become Fenians. But it is
absurd and unnecessary to defend George Henry Moore, even against his
son. A man’s life really speaks for itself, and requires only such
faithful record as George Henry Moore’s has received here from Maurice
Moore. No man’s life needs a _Defensio_ or an _Apologia_, and I am often
sorry to see men really great and simple go to such pains to explain
themselves: as if your explanation could make your deeds more eloquent!
George Henry Moore was no wrathful and haughty Mitchel, no gay and
heroic Tone; but he was a very worthy and gallant figure in his time,
and might have served Ireland well if he had learned to know her sooner.
V
(OCTOBER 1913)
It is not amusing to be hungry; at least (for I desire to be moderate in
my language), it is not very amusing. Though hunger be proverbially good
sauce, one may have too much of it, as of most good things; and, while
meat without sauce is tolerable, sauce without meat is apt to pall.
Yorkshire Relish (I am told) is delicious, but one would not care to
dine upon it. Hunger Sauce must be still less sustaining. Indeed, the
only advantage that Hunger Sauce seems to possess over other brands is
its extreme cheapness. The very poorest can enjoy it, and it is one of
the few luxuries that the rich will not grudge them. But, as far as
nutritious properties are concerned, the cakes recommended by Marie
Antoinette to the starving peasants of France, in lieu of bread, were
preferable. “Why are the people crying?” “Your Majesty, they have no
bread.” “But why not eat cake?” asked the Queen.
* * * * *
Poor Marie Antoinette did not quite grasp the situation in France. In
the end they grasped her and hurried her to the guillotine. If Marie
Antoinette could have got at the peasant’s point of view there might
have been no French Revolution. There are only two ways of righting
wrongs: reform and revolution. Reform is possible when those who inflict
the wrong can be got to see things from the point of view of those who
suffer the wrong. Some men can see from other men’s points of view by
sympathy; most men cannot until you actually put them in the other men’s
shoes. I would like to put some of our well-fed citizens in the shoes of
our hungry citizens, just for an experiment. I would try the hunger cure
upon them. It is known that hunger is a good sauce; it is also known
that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. It is further
known that a pound a week is sufficient to sustain a Dublin family in
honest hunger--at least very rich men tell us so, and very rich men know
all about everything, from art galleries to the domestic economy of the
tenement room. I would ask those who know that a man can live and
thrive, can house, feed, clothe, and educate a large family on a pound a
week to try the experiment themselves. Let them show us how the thing is
done. We will allow them a pound a week for the sustenance of themselves
and their families, and will require them to hand over their surplus
income, over and above a pound a week, to some benevolent object. I am
quite certain that they will enjoy their poverty and their hunger. They
will go about with beaming faces; they will wear spruce and well-brushed
clothes; they will drink their black tea with gusto and masticate their
dry bread scientifically (Lady Aberdeen will tell them the proper number
of bites per slice); they will write books on “How to be Happy though
Hungry”; when their children cry for more food they will smile; when
their landlord calls for the rent they will embrace him; when their
house falls upon them they will thank God; when policemen smash in their
skulls they will kiss the chastening baton. They will do all these
things--perhaps; in the alternative they may come to see that there is
something to be said for the hungry man’s hazy idea that there is
something wrong somewhere.
* * * * *
It is, of course, easy for me, a well-fed hermit, to write with
detachment about hunger. It is always easy for well-fed persons to take
detached views of such things; indeed, sometimes the views of the
well-fed on these matters are so detached from their subject as to have
no relation to it at all. If I were hungry, I should probably write with
a little more passion than I am displaying. Indeed, if I were as hungry
at this moment as many equally good men of Ireland undoubtedly are, it
is probable that I should not be sitting here wielding this pen;
possibly I should be in the streets wielding a paving-stone. I frankly
admit that I am well-fed; but you must not imagine me a sybarite. Being
a hermit, I limit myself to four square meals a day, except on
feast-days when, for the greater glory of God, I allow myself five. If I
were not thus explicit my views on economic questions might be
discounted; I should be described as belonging to the “lowest stratum”
of society, and therefore not in any real sense a member of society, or
indeed of the human race, at all; it would be hinted that I am a
“loafer,” that I frequent “street corners,” that I am a “socialist,” a
“syndicalist,” and other weird things. I once took a modest part in
breaking up a meeting in the Antient Concert Rooms. The next day the
_Independent_ called me an “unwashed youth.” A youth I certainly was,
but I had washed myself with scrupulous care that blessed morning;
indeed, it is my habit to wash myself in the mornings. A distinguished
scholar (now a Professor of the National University) and a distinguished
woman of letters (now prominent in the counsels of the United
Irishwomen) were beside me on that occasion, and they, too, were
described as “unwashed youths”: the words “of both sexes” were added,
lest it might be left open to inference that even the ladies who
disagree with the _Independent_ are so virtuous as to wash themselves.
When, therefore, you differ in opinion from a newspaper it is always
well to let it be known that you wash yourself regularly, that you take
the normal number of meals, that you pay your rent and taxes, that you
go to church or chapel, and that, in short, you conform in all
particulars to the lofty standard of conduct set up by such an eminent
fellow-citizen of yours as Mr. William M. Murphy.
* * * * *
Personally, I am in a position to protest my respectability. I do all
the orthodox things. My wild oats were sown and reaped years ago. I am
nothing so new-fangled as a socialist or a syndicalist. I am
old-fashioned enough to be both a Catholic and a Nationalist. I am not
smarting under any burning personal wrong--except the personal wrong I
endure in being a member of an enslaved nation. I am at peace with all
the men of Ireland. It becomes both my character and my profession to be
at peace with my fellow-slaves, whether capitalist or worker, whether
rich or poor, whether fed or hungry. God knows that we, poor remnant of
a gallant nation, endure enough shame in common to make us brothers. And
yet here is a matter in which I cannot rest neutral. My instinct is with
the landless man against the lord of lands, and with the breadless man
against the master of millions. I may be wrong, but I do hold it a most
terrible sin that there should be landless men in this island of waste
yet fertile valleys, and that there should be breadless men in this city
where great fortunes are made and enjoyed.
* * * * *
I calculate that one-third of the people of Dublin are underfed; that
half the children attending Irish primary schools are ill-nourished.
Inspectors of the National Board will tell you that there is no use in
visiting primary schools in Ireland after one or two in the afternoon:
the children are too weak and drowsy with hunger to be capable of
answering intelligently. I suppose there are twenty thousand families in
Dublin in whose domestic economy milk and butter are all but unknown:
black tea and dry bread are their staple articles of diet. There are
many thousand fireless hearth-places in Dublin on the bitterest days of
winter; there would be many thousand more only for such bodies as the
Society of St. Vincent de Paul. Twenty thousand Dublin families live in
one-room tenements. It is common to find two or three families occupying
the same room; and sometimes one of the families will have a lodger!
There are tenement rooms in Dublin in which over a dozen persons live,
eat, and sleep. High rents are paid for these rooms, rents which in
cities like Birmingham would command neat four-roomed cottages with
gardens. The tenement houses of Dublin are so rotten that they
periodically collapse upon their inhabitants, and if the inhabitants
collect in the streets to discuss matters the police baton them to
death.
* * * * *
These are among the grievances against which men in Dublin are beginning
to protest. Can you wonder that protest is at last made? Can you wonder
that the protest is crude and bloody? I do not know whether the methods
of Mr. James Larkin are wise methods or unwise methods (unwise, I think,
in some respects), but this I know, that here is a most hideous wrong to
be righted, and that the man who attempts honestly to right it is a good
man and a brave man.
* * * * *
Poverty, starvation, social unrest, crime, are incidental to the
civilisation of such states as England and America, where immense masses
of people are herded into great Christless cities and the bodies and
souls of men are exploited in the interests of wealth. But these
conditions do not to any extent exist in Ireland. We have not great
cities; we have not dense industrial populations; we have hardly any
ruthless capitalists exploiting immense masses of men. Yet in Ireland we
have dire and desperate poverty; we have starvation; we have social
unrest. Ireland is capable of feeding twenty million people; we are
barely four million. Why do so many of us starve?
* * * * *
Before God, I believe that the root of the matter lies in foreign
domination. A free Ireland would not, and could not, have hunger in her
fertile vales and squalor in her cities. Ireland has resources to feed
five times her population: a free Ireland would make those resources
available. A free Ireland would drain the bogs, would harness the
rivers, would plant the wastes, would nationalise the railways and
waterways, would improve agriculture, would protect fisheries, would
foster industries, would promote commerce, would diminish extravagant
expenditure (as on needless judges and policemen), would beautify the
cities, would educate the workers (and also the non-workers, who stand
in direr need of it), would, in short, govern herself as no external
power--nay, not even a government of angels and archangels--could govern
her. For freedom is the condition of sane life, and in slavery, if we
have not death, we have the more evil thing which the poet has named
Death-in-Life. The most awful wars are the wars that take place in dead
or quasi-dead bodies when the fearsome things that death breeds go forth
to prey upon one another and upon the body that is their parent.
VI
(NOVEMBER 1913)
There are incongruities which are humorous, and there are incongruities
which are disgusting. All humour has its source in incongruity, but so
has all sin. Sometimes the humour of an incongruity is so great that we
overlook the fact of its wickedness; sometimes the wickedness of an
incongruity is so apparent that only a saint can laugh at its humour
(for your saint laughs at things whereat your man of less sanctity,
which means of less charity and less humility, is scandalised). There
are obvious incongruities at which everyone, from a saint to a
solicitor, will at least smile. Thus, when one hears a noble air of
Gounod’s sung to such words as “My wife stole a hell of a lump of beef”;
when one meets an archbishop in gaiters wheeling a perambulator
containing his offspring, when one comes upon a bull in a china shop or
upon a member of the Chamber of Commerce in an art gallery, one smiles
no matter how respectable one is. No question of ethics enters into
these cases. It is a pity that a Gounod march should be sung to profane
words; but Gounod would suffer no diminution of just fame if all the
kleptomaniac exploits of all the wives of the world were chanted to his
music. One may have rigid ideas as to the impropriety of archbishops
wheeling their offspring in perambulators--and it is certainly going too
far to wear gaiters while doing so unarchiepiscopal a thing; but it is
not a very serious sin, if sin at all. A bull in a china shop may break
a good deal of crockery, but he can hardly break any of the
Commandments; and a member of the Chamber of Commerce in an art gallery
will not do the pictures any harm, nor, unless he be as sensitive as
some Gaelic Leaguers I have known (and that is impossible), will the
pictures do him any harm. In these instances nothing suffers but the Law
of Congruity; and laws have made so many people suffer that one can well
tolerate the notion of a law suffering once in a way.
* * * * *
But there are incongruities which disgust, or at any rate ought to
disgust. A millionaire promoting Universal Peace is such an incongruity;
an employer who accepts the aid of foreign bayonets to enforce a
lock-out of his workmen and accuses the workmen of national dereliction
because they accept foreign alms for their starving wives and children,
is such an incongruity; a public body in an enslaved country which
passes a resolution congratulating a citizen upon selling himself to the
enemies of that country, and upon making a good bargain of it, is such
an incongruity; an Irish Nationalist, unable to pull the trigger of a
gun himself, who sneers at the drillings and rifle-practices of
Orangemen, is such an incongruity. The Eastern and the Western Worlds
are indeed full of incongruities of this sort; each of them matter for a
play by a Synge.
* * * * *
To dilate a little on one of them. It is now the creed of Irish
nationalism (or at least of that Irish nationalism which is vocal on
platforms and in the press) that the possession of arms and a knowledge
of the use of arms is a fit subject for satire. To have a rifle is as
ridiculous as to have a pimple at the end of your nose, or a bailiff
waiting for you round the corner. To be able to use a rifle is an
accomplishment as futile as to be able to stand on your head to be able
to wag your ears. This is not the creed of any other nationalism that
exists or has ever existed in any community, civilised or uncivilised,
that has ever inhabited the globe. It has never been the creed of Irish
nationalism until this our day. Mitchel and the great confessors of
Irish nationalism would have laughed it to scorn. Mitchel, indeed, did
laugh to scorn a similar but much less foolish doctrine of O’Connell’s;
and the generation that came after O’Connell rejected his doctrine and
accepted Mitchel’s. The present generation of Irish Nationalists is not
only unfamiliar with arms but despises all who are familiar with arms.
Irish Nationalists share with certain millionaires the distinction of
being the only people who believe in Universal Peace--here and now. Even
the Socialists who want Universal Peace propose to reach it by Universal
War; and so far they are sensible.
* * * * *
It is symptomatic of the attitude of the Irish Nationalist that when he
ridicules the Orangeman he ridicules him not for his numerous foolish
beliefs, but for his readiness to fight in defence of those beliefs. But
this is exactly wrong. The Orangeman is ridiculous in so far as he
believes incredible things; he is estimable in so far as he is willing
and able to fight in defence of what he believes. It is foolish of an
Orangeman to believe that his personal liberty is threatened by Home
Rule; but, granting that he believes that, it is not only in the highest
degree common sense but it is his clear duty to arm in defence of his
threatened liberty. Personally, I think the Orangeman with a rifle a
much less ridiculous figure than the Nationalist without a rifle; and
the Orangeman who can fire a gun will certainly count for more in the
end than the Nationalist who can do nothing cleverer than make a pun.
The superseded Italian rifles which the Orangemen have imported may not
be very dangerous weapons; but at least they are more dangerous than
epigrams. When the Orangemen “line the last ditch” they may make a very
sorry show; but we shall make an even sorrier show, for we shall have to
get Gordon Highlanders to line the ditch for us.
* * * * *
I am not defending the Orangeman; I am only showing that his
condemnation does not lie in the mouth of an unarmed Nationalist. The
Orangeman is a sufficiently funny person; and he is funny mainly because
he is so serious. He has no sense of incongruity; in his mind’s eye he
sees without smiling Cardinal Logue sending Protestant worthies to the
stake and Sir Edward Carson undergoing the fatigues of a
campaign--things which will never be. At least, I think not; for
Cardinal Logue is kindly and humorous, and Sir Edward Carson is a lawyer
with a price. The Orangeman’s lack of a sense of the incongruous is
sometimes painful. In Belfast they are selling chair cushions with Sir
Edward Carson’s head embroidered upon them; which is pretty much as if a
man were to emblazon the arms of his country upon the seat of his
trousers. One should not put a sacred emblem where it is certain to be
sat upon and liable to be kicked; and only Orangemen would think of
honouring their chief by sitting on his head.
* * * * *
But the rifles of the Orangemen give dignity even to their folly. The
rifles are bound to be useful some day. At the worst they may hasten Sir
Edward Carson’s final exit from Ulster; at the best they may crack
outside Dublin Castle. The Editor of _Sinn Féin_ wrote the other day
that when the Orangemen fire upon the King of England’s troops it will
become the duty of every Nationalist in Ireland to join them: there is a
deal of wisdom in the thought as well as a deal of humour. Or
negotiations might be opened with the Orangemen on these lines: You are
erecting a Provisional Government of Ulster--make it a Provisional
Government of Ireland and we will recognise and obey it. O’Connell said
long ago that he would rather be ruled by the old Protestant Ascendancy
Irish Parliament than by the Union Parliament; “and O’Connell was
right,” said Mitchel. He certainly was. It is unquestionable that Sir
Edward Carson’s Provisional Government would govern Ireland better than
she has been governed by the English Cabinet; at any rate, it could not
well govern her worse. Any six Irishmen would be a better Government of
Ireland than the English Cabinet has been: any six criminals from
Mountjoy Prison, any six lunatics from the Richmond Asylum, any six
Orangemen from Portadown. The Irishmen would at least try to govern
Ireland in the interests of Irish criminals, lunatics, or Orangemen, as
the case might be: the English have governed her in the interests of
England. Better exploit Ireland for the benefit of Belfast than exploit
her for the benefit of Westminster. Better wipe out Ireland in one
year’s civil war than let England slowly bleed her to death.
* * * * *
A rapprochement between Orangemen and Nationalists would be difficult.
The chief obstacles are the Orangeman’s lack of humour and the
Nationalist’s lack of guns: each would be at a disadvantage in a
conference. But a sense of humour can be cultivated, and guns can be
purchased. One great source of misunderstanding has now disappeared: it
has become clear within the last few years that the Orangeman is no more
loyal to England than we are. He wants the Union because he imagines
that it secures his prosperity; but he is ready to fire on the Union
flag the moment it threatens his prosperity. The position is perfectly
plain and understandable. Foolish notions of loyalty to England being
eliminated, it is a matter for business-like negotiation. A Nationalist
mission to North-East Ulster would possibly effect some good. The case
might be put thus: Hitherto England has governed Ireland through the
Orange Lodges; she now proposes to govern Ireland through the A. O. H.
You object: so do we. Why not unite and get rid of the English? They are
the real difficulty; their presence here the real incongruity.
VII
(DECEMBER 1913)
I was once stranded on a desert island with a single companion. When two
people are stranded on a desert island they naturally converse. We
conversed. We sat on a stony beach and talked for hours. When we had
exhausted all the unimportant subjects either of us could think of, we
commenced to talk about important subjects. (I have observed that even
on a desert island it is not considered good form to talk of important
things while unimportant things remain to be discussed.) We had very
different points of views, and very different temperaments. I was a boy;
my companion was an old man. I was about to enter the most wicked of all
professions; my companion was a priest. Being young, I was serious and
conceited; being old, my companion was gay and humble. In some respects
I was more learned than he: he was trying to spell his way through
Keating’s _Trí Bior-Ghaoithe an Bháis_, and I was able to help him. But
in every respect he was wiser beyond telling than I, for his life had
been stormy and sorrowful, and withal very saintly, so that he had
garnered much of the wisdom both of heaven and of earth; and I had
garnered only the wisdom of the Board of Intermediate Education. We were
thus as singularly ill-assorted a pair as ever sat down together on the
beach of a desert island.
* * * * *
Yet we had one interest in common. There was at the bottom of my heart a
memory which a course of Intermediate education (by some miracle of
God’s) had not altogether obliterated. I had heard in childhood of the
Fenians from one who, although a woman, had shared their hopes and
disappointment. The names of Stephens and O’Donovan Rossa were familiar
to me, and they seemed to me the most gallant of all names: names which
should be put into songs and sung proudly to tramping music. Indeed, my
mother (although she was not old enough to remember the Fenians) used to
sing of them in words learned, I daresay, from that other who had known
them; one of her songs had the lines--
“Because I was O’Donovan Rossa,
And a son of Gráinne Mhaol”;
and although I did not quite know who O’Donovan Rossa was or what his
deed had been, I felt that he must have been a gallant and kingly man
and his deed a man’s deed. Alice Milligan had not yet made the ballad of
“Owen Who Died,” which was to give these heroic names a place in
literature--
“You have heard of O’Donovan Rossa
From nigh Skibbereen;
You have heard o’ the Hawk o’ the Hill-top,
If you have not seen;
You have heard of the Reaper whose reaping
Was of grain half green:
Such were the men among us
In the days that have been.”
None of my school-fellows had ever heard of those names; and if our
masters had heard them they never mentioned them. O’Connell we heard
about; and one day that stands out in my memory, Parnell’s name was
mentioned, for a master came into the room and said: “Well, boys, they
say Parnell is dead--the dirty fellow.” We all grew very still, for we
were all Parnellites; and we wondered why he should be called a dirty
fellow, and thought it a cruel thing. That was before the Juggernaut car
of the Intermediate had rolled over us, and we still retained most of
the decent kindly instincts with which we had been born. Had it happened
four years later we should probably have applauded the master’s
announcement as rather neatly put.
* * * * *
But behold me on the beach of my desert island with my priest beside me.
And my priest, as I found out when we began to talk about serious
things, had known the Fenians, had made something of a stir in Fenian
times, had even been called the Fenian priest! I do not know whether he
had ever been a Fenian; but I know that all the Fenians of a countryside
used to go to confession to him in preference to their own parish
priests; and it was said that he had a Sodality of the Sacred Heart
composed to a man of sworn Fenians: probably an exaggeration. But this I
can vouch for, that he loved the name and fame of the Fenians, and he
spoke to me, till his voice grew husky and his eyes filled with tears,
of their courage, of their loyalty, of their enthusiasm, of their hope,
of their failure. “Stephens should have given the word,” he said; “we’ll
never be as ready as we were the night he escaped from Richmond Prison.
We’ve lost our manhood since.” It was the first year of the Boer War.
“Look at the chance we have now,” he exclaimed: “the British army at the
other end of the earth, and one blow would give us Ireland; but we’ve
neither men nor guns. GOD ALMIGHTY WON’T GO ON GIVING US CHANCES if we
let every chance slip. You can’t expect He’ll give us more chances than
He gave the Jews. He’ll turn His back on us.... And why,” he added,
“should a lot of old women be free, anyhow?” The worthy man had not
considered the Suffragist claim; or perhaps he would have allowed
freedom to _bona fide_ old women and denied it to old-womanlike young
men--in which he would have been right.
* * * * *
For, after all, may it not be said with entire truth that the reason why
Ireland is not free is that Ireland has not deserved to be free? Men who
have ceased to be men cannot claim the rights of men; and men who have
suffered themselves to be deprived of their manhood have suffered the
greatest of all indignities and deserved the most shameful of all
penalties. It has been sung in savage and exultant verse of a fierce
Western clan that its men allowed themselves to be deprived of their
sight by a triumphant foe rather than be deprived of their manhood; and
it was a man’s choice. But modern Irishmen with eyes open have allowed
themselves to be deprived of their manhood; and many of them have
reached the terrible depth of degradation in which a man will boast of
his unmanliness. For in suffering ourselves to be disarmed, in
acquiescing in a perpetual disarmament, in neglecting every chance of
arming, in sneering (as all Nationalists do now) at those who have taken
arms, we in effect abnegate our manhood. Unable to exercise men’s
rights, we do not deserve men’s privileges. We are, in a strict sense,
not fit for freedom; and freedom we shall never attain.
* * * * *
It is not reasonable to expect that the Almighty will repeal all the
laws of His universe in our behalf. The condition on which freedom is
given to men is that they are able to make good their claim to it; and
unarmed men cannot make good their claim to anything which armed men
choose to deny them. One of the sins against faith is presumption, which
is defined as a foolish expectation of salvation without making use of
the necessary means to obtain it: surely it is a sin against national
faith to expect national freedom without adopting the necessary means to
win and keep it. And I know of no other way than the way of the sword:
history records no other, reason and experience suggest no other. When I
say the sword I do not mean necessarily the actual use of the sword: I
mean readiness and ability to use the sword. Which, translated into
terms of modern life, means readiness and ability to shoot.
* * * * *
I regard the armed Orangemen of North-East Ulster as potentially the
most useful body of citizens Ireland possesses. In fact, they are the
only citizens Ireland does possess at this moment: the rest of us for
the most part do not count. A citizen who cannot vindicate his
citizenship is a contradiction in terms. A citizen without arms is like
a priest without religion, like a woman without chastity, like a man
without manhood. The very conception of an unarmed citizen is a purely
modern one, and even in modern times it is chiefly confined to the
populations of the (so-called) British Islands. Most other peoples,
civilised and uncivilised, are armed. This is a truth which we of
Ireland must grasp. We must try to realise that we are collectively and
individually living in a state of degradation as long as we remain
unarmed. I do not content myself with saying in general terms that the
Irish should arm. I say to each one of you who read this that it is YOUR
duty to arm. Until you have armed yourself and made yourself skilful in
the use of your arms you have no right to a voice in any concern of the
Irish Nation, no right to consider yourself a member of the Irish Nation
or of any nation; no right to raise your head among any body of decent
men. Arm. If you cannot arm otherwise than by joining Carson’s
Volunteers, join Carson’s Volunteers. But you can, for instance, start
Volunteers of your own.
* * * * *
My priest on my desert island spoke to me glowingly about the Three who
died at Manchester. He spoke to me, too, of the rescue of Kelly and
Deasy from the prison van and of the ring of armed Fenians keeping the
Englishry at bay. I have often thought that that was the most memorable
moment in recent Irish history: and that that ring of Irishmen spitting
fire from revolver barrels, while an English mob cowered out of range,
might well serve as a symbol of the Ireland that should be; of the
Ireland that shall be. Next Sunday we shall pay homage to them and to
their deed; were it not a fitting day for each of us to resolve that we,
too, will be men.
VIII
(JANUARY 1914)
It has penetrated to this quiet place that some of the young men of
Ireland have banded themselves together under the noble name of Irish
Volunteers with intent to arm in their country’s service. I am inclined
to doubt the rumour. It has an air of inherent improbability. I could
have believed such a report of any generation of young Irishmen of which
I have read; but of the generation that I have known I hesitate to
believe it. It is not like what they would do. Previous generations of
young Irishmen (if what our fathers have told us be true) were foolish
and hot-headed, not to say wicked and irreligious. Of course, they had
not been properly instructed. Intermediate Boards and National
Universities were yet in the womb of the British Government. The
expansive power of gunpowder and the immense momentum which can be
acquired by a bullet discharged from a gun were not generally known
until Natural Philosophy became a subject for Matriculation, and Kennedy
published a one-and-sixpenny text-book on the subject: hence our
forefathers did not realise how dangerous it is to let off firearms--how
could they be expected to? This fact, not hitherto adverted to by
historians, goes far to explain the otherwise inexplicable action of the
Volunteers of 1778, of the insurgents of 1798, of the Fenians of 1867;
men, apparently sane, who expended quite a lot of money on buying or
manufacturing deadly arms. Had they realised that the weapons might kill
the poor soldiers who were guarding their country, it is unquestionable
that they would not have been so inhumane as to procure them. Again,
former generations of young Irishmen had no sound notions as to what is
proper and gentlemanly. They always failed to recognise that it is not
respectable to get yourself hanged, and could never be got to see that
prison clothes, no matter how well-made, are not becoming. Robert Emmet
was actually guilty of the impropriety of smiling on the scaffold; and
surely it was very near blasphemy for three Irish murderers, with
manacled hands uplifted from an English dock, to call upon God to “save
Ireland”--as if that were not the job of the British Government.
* * * * *
Fortunately, we live in a more cultured as well as in a more religious
age. We have studied Dynamics and know that firearms are dangerous; we
have studied Political Economy and know that it is bad economy to expend
money upon a national armament, seeing that we already pay the British
Army to fight for us; we have studied Ethics and know that it is
unlawful to rise against an established government. We have also
cultivated a sense of decorum and a sense of humour. We see that
militarism is not only wrong but, what is worse, ridiculous; and we
should (very properly) hesitate to go out drilling lest they might put a
caricature of us in _Punch_.
* * * * *
My knowledge that all this is so makes me doubt the rumour that a
considerable number of young Irishmen have resolved to take arms and to
train themselves in the use of arms. The improbability is increased when
I come to examine the details of the report. Thus, a Provisional
Committee including university professors, schoolmasters, solicitors,
barristers, journalists, aldermen, public servants, commercial men, and
gentlemen of leisure, is spoken of. I have never known persons of that
sort to do anything more exciting than talk over tea and scones in the
D. B. C. There are among those classes in Dublin many who are quite
fearless--in debate; many who are extraordinarily prompt--in retort; a
few who are really able and vigorous--in smashing their opponents’
arguments. That such men would turn aside from the realities of
dialectics to the theatricalities of military preparation seems highly
improbable. When it is added that the Provisional Committee includes
United Irish Leaguers, Hibernians, Sinn Féiners, Gaelic Leaguers, and
even a few who call themselves simply Separatists, the untruth of the
whole story becomes almost manifest; for it is well known that there
never has been and that there never can be anything like cordial
co-operation between such widely-differing sections of politicians and
non-politicians in Ireland. I dismiss therefore the tale of a huge
tumultuous meeting of seven or eight thousand people in the largest hall
in Dublin, with immense overflow meetings in neighbouring buildings and
gardens; the detailed accounts of nightly drillings in various halls;
the absurd rumour that Galway (well known to have no other interest than
racing, fishing, and British tourists) and Cork (which is prepared to
fight all Ireland on the question of conciliation) have flung themselves
into the movement; and finally the grotesque fable that young men who
are eating their way to the bar or preparing to purchase dispensary
appointments from Boards of Guardians have paused in their honourable
careers in order to learn how to shoot. These things have happened in
other countries and in other times; but surely not in our own country
and in our own time.
* * * * *
Consider the dislocating effect of such a movement. In the first place,
it would make Home Rule, now about to be abandoned in deference to armed
Ulster, almost a certainty; in a second place, should Home Rule
miscarry, it would give us a policy to fall back upon. Again, it would
make men and citizens of us, whereas we are quite comfortable as old
women and slaves. Furthermore, it would unite us in one all-Ireland
movement of brotherly co-operation, whereas we derive infinite pleasure
from quarrelling with one another. The comfortable feeling that we are
safe behind the guns of the British Army, like an infant in its mother’s
arms, the precious liberty of confuting one another before the British
public and thus gaining empire-wide reputations for caustic Celtic
humour and brilliant Celtic repartee--these are things that we will not
lightly sacrifice. For these privileges have we not cheerfully allowed
our population to be halved and our taxation to be quadrupled? Enough
said. Volunteering is undesirable. Volunteering is impossible.
Volunteering is dangerous.
IX
(JANUARY 1914)
It would appear that the impossible has happened (as, indeed, when one
comes to think of the matter, it nearly always does), and that the young
men of Ireland are learning again the noble trade of arms. They had
almost forgotten that it _was_ a noble trade; and when the young men of
a nation have reached so terrible a depth as to be unconscious of the
dignity of arms, one will naturally doubt their capacity for any virile
thought, let alone any virile action. Hence my scepticism of last month.
I who am as a babe, believing all things and hoping all things, felt it
difficult to believe this. One is disillusioned so often. Once when I
was a boy a ballad-singer came to the farmhouse in which I was living
for a time in a glen of the Dublin hills. He had ballads of “Bold Robert
Emmet” and “Here’s a Song for Young Wolfe Tone”; and he told me that in
secret places of the hills Fenians had drilled and, for all he knew,
were drilling still. So I fared forth in quest of them, trudging along
mountain roads at night, full of the faith that in some moonlit glen I
should come upon the Fenians drilling. But I never found them. Nowhere
beneath the moon were there armed men wheeling and marching. The
mountains were lonely. When I came home I said to my grandfather (who
had himself been a Fenian, albeit I knew it not), “The Fenians are all
dead.” “Oh, be the!” said he (his oaths never got further than “be
the”), “how do you know that?” “I have gone through all the glens,” I
answered, “and there were none drilling: they must be dead.”
* * * * *
And my naive deduction was very nearly right. If the Fenians were not
all dead, the Fenian spirit was dead, or almost dead. By the Fenian
spirit I mean not so much the spirit of a particular generation as that
virile fighting faith which has been the salt of all the generations in
Ireland unto this last. And is it here even in this last? Yea, its seeds
are here, and behold they are kindling: it is for you and me to fan them
into such a flame as shall consume everything that is mean and
compromising and insincere in Ireland and in each man of Ireland--for in
every one of us there is much that is mean and compromising and
insincere, much that were better burned out. When we stand armed as
Volunteers we shall at least be men, and so shall be able to come into
communion of thought and action with the virile generations of Ireland:
to our betterment, be sure.
* * * * *
The only question that need trouble us now is this: Will the young men
of Ireland rise to the opportunity that is given them? They have a year
before them: the momentous year of 1914. The fate of the Irish movement
in our time will very likely be determined during the coming twelve
months, and it will be determined largely by the way in which the
Volunteer movement develops. In other words, it will depend upon the
young men who have volunteered, for they have the making of the movement
in their hands. This is a problem in which the British Government is not
a factor; in which the Irish leaders--Parliamentarian, Sinn Féin,
Separatist, Gaelic League--are not factors; the young men of the towns
and countrysides are the only factors; they and whatever manly stuff is
in them. It is a great opportunity for the young men of a people to get.
A year is theirs in which to make history.
* * * * *
A former generation of Irishmen got such a year and used it well. An
army of 100,000 drilled and equipped men was its glorious fruit. Can we
of the twentieth century work to similar purpose and with similar result
during the year that has been given to us? I believe we can. There are
circumstances which seem to me to make our task easier than theirs.
* * * * *
In the first place, we are poorer than they were. Therefore we shall be
more generous. There were many men of money among the Volunteers of
1778-83: it was one of the weaknesses of the movement. Those who have
are always inclined to hold; always afraid to risk. No good cause in
Ireland appeals for help in vain, provided those to whom it appeals are
sufficiently poor. The young men who, I imagine, are volunteering to-day
are for the most part poor: being poor, they will know how to save and
pinch and scrape until each man of them has a rifle and a uniform. There
are those among them who will give up tobacco for a spell, or at any
rate reduce their consumption of tobacco; who will become total
abstainers for a while; who will renounce betting; who will go less
frequently to theatres, to music-halls, to picture-houses; who will
dispense with all their little luxuries and rise above all their little
follies, to the sole end that they may have, each man of them, before
the year is out, a Volunteer rifle on his shoulder and a Volunteer coat
on his back. Note well the companies: I prophesy that it is not the
companies which draw their recruits from the most prosperous quarters
that will be soonest equipped; not the sleekest-looking men that will
first shoulder rifles. When you are starting upon any noble enterprise,
it is a great thing to start poor. Wolfe Tone, reaching France with a
hundred guineas in his pocket, sent three fleets against England. James
Stephens with ninety pounds in hand embarked upon the organisation of
the Fenians.
* * * * *
In the second place, this is a movement of the people, not of the
“leaders.” The leaders in Ireland have nearly always left the people at
the critical moment; have sometimes sold them. The former Volunteer
movement was abandoned by its leaders; hence its ultimate failure.
Grattan “led the van” of the Volunteers, but he also led the retreat of
the leaders; O’Connell recoiled before the cannon at Clontarf; twice the
hour of the Irish Revolution struck during Young Ireland days, and twice
it struck in vain, for Meagher hesitated in Waterford, Duffy and McGee
hesitated in Dublin. Stephens refused to “give the word” in ’65; he
never came in ’66 or ’67. I do not blame these men: you or I might have
done the same. It is a terrible responsibility to be cast upon a man,
that of bidding the cannon speak and the grapeshot pour. But in this
Volunteer movement, as I understand it, the people are to be master; and
it will be for the people to say when and against whom the Volunteers
shall draw the sword and point the rifle. Now, my reading of Irish
history is that, however the leaders may have failed, _the instinct of
the people has always been unerring_. The Volunteers themselves, the
people themselves, must keep control of this movement. Any man or any
group of men that seeks to establish an ascendancy should be dealt with
summarily: such traitors to the Volunteer spirit would deserve to be
shot, but it will be sufficient if they be shot _out_.
* * * * *
In the third place, the young men of Ireland have been to school to the
Gaelic League. Herein it seems to me lies the fact which chiefly
distinguishes this generation from the other revolutionary generations
of the last century and a half: from the Volunteer generation of 1778,
from the United Irish generation of 1798, from the Young Ireland
generation of 1848, from the Fenian generation of 1867. We have known
the Gaelic League, and
“Lo, a clearness of vision has followed, lo, a purification of
sight.”
I do not think we shall be as liable to make blunders, to pursue side
issues, to mistake shadows for substance, to overlook essentials, to
neglect details on the one hand or to get lost in them on the other, as
were previous generations of perhaps better men. It is not merely (or at
all) that we have now a theory of nationality by which to correct our
instinct: indeed, I doubt if a theory of nationality be a very great
gain, and plainly the instinct of the Fenian artisan was a finer thing
than the soundest theory of the Gaelic League professor. It is rather
that we have got into a fuller communion with what is most racy in our
past: our ancestors have spoken to us anew. In a deeper sense than
before we realise that Ireland is ours and that we are Ireland’s. Our
country wears to us a new aspect, and yet she is her most ancient self.
We are as men who, having wandered long through the devious ways of a
forest, see again the familiar hills and fields bathed in the light of
heaven, ancient yet ever-new. And we rejoice in our hearts, and bless
the goodly sun.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PEACE AND THE GAEL
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PEACE AND THE GAEL
(DECEMBER 1915)
When we are old (those of us who live to be old) we shall tell our
grandchildren of the Christmas of 1915 as the second Christmas which saw
the nations at war for the freedom of the seas; as the last Christmas,
it may be, which saw Ireland, the gate of the seas, in the keeping of
the English. For that is the thing for which men are bleeding to-day in
France and Serbia, in Poland and Mesopotamia. The many fight to uphold a
tyranny three centuries old, the most arrogant tyranny that there has
ever been in the world; and the few fight to break that tyranny. Always
it is the many who fight for the evil thing, and the few who fight for
the good thing; and always it is the few who win. For God fights with
the small battalions. If sometimes it has seemed otherwise, it is
because the few who have fought for the good cause have been guilty of
some secret faltering, some infidelity to their best selves, some
shrinking back in the face of a tremendous duty.
The last sixteen months have been the most glorious in the history of
Europe. Heroism has come back to the earth. On whichever side the men
who rule the peoples have marshalled them, whether with England to
uphold her tyranny of the seas, or with Germany to break that tyranny,
the people themselves have gone into battle because to each the old
voice that speaks out of the soil of a nation has spoken anew. Each
fights for the fatherland. It is policy that moves the governments; it
is patriotism that stirs the peoples. Belgium defending her soil is
heroic, and so is Turkey fighting with her back to Constantinople.
It is good for the world that such things should be done. The old heart
of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields.
Such august homage was never before offered to God as this, the homage
of millions of lives given gladly for love of country.
War is a terrible thing, and this is the most terrible of wars. But this
war is not more terrible than the evils which it will end or help to
end. It is not more terrible than the exploitation of the English masses
by cruel plutocrats; it is not more terrible than the infidelity of the
French masses to their old spiritual ideals; it is not more terrible
than the enslavement of the Poles by Russia, than the enslavement of the
Irish by England. What if the war kindles in the slow breasts of English
toilers a wrath like the wrath of the French in 1789? What if the war
brings France back to her altars, as sorrow brings back broken men and
women to God? What if the war sets Poland and Ireland free? If the war
does these things, will not the war have been worth while?
War is a terrible thing, but war is not an evil thing. It is the things
that make war necessary that are evil. The tyrannies that wars break,
the lying formulae that wars overthrow, the hypocrisies that wars strip
naked, are evil. Many people in Ireland dread war because they do not
know it. Ireland has not known the exhilaration of war for over a
hundred years. Yet who will say that she has known the blessings of
peace? When war comes to Ireland, she must welcome it as she would
welcome the Angel of God. And she will.
It is because peace is so precious a boon that war is so sacred a duty.
Ireland will not find Christ’s peace until she has taken Christ’s sword.
What peace she has known in these latter days has been the devil’s
peace, peace with sin, peace with dishonour. It is a foul thing, dear
only to men of foul breeds. Christ’s peace is lovely in its coming,
beautiful are its feet on the mountains. But it is heralded by terrific
messengers; seraphim and cherubim blow trumpets of war before it. We
must not flinch when we are passing through that uproar; we must not
faint at the sight of blood. Winning through it, we (or those of us who
survive) shall come unto great joy. We and our fathers have known the
Pax Britannica. To our sons we must bequeath the Peace of the Gael.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GHOSTS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
Here be ghosts that I have raised this Christmastide, ghosts of dead men
that have bequeathed a trust to us living men. Ghosts are troublesome
things in a house or in a family, as we knew even before Ibsen taught
us. There is only one way to appease a ghost. You must do the thing it
asks you. The ghosts of a nation sometimes ask very big things; and they
must be appeased, whatever the cost.
Of the shade of the Norwegian dramatist I beg forgiveness for a
plagiaristic, but inevitable title.
P. H. PEARSE.
ST. ENDA’S COLLEGE,
RATHFARNHAM,
Christmas Day, 1915.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
GHOSTS
I
There has been nothing more terrible in Irish history than the failure
of the last generation. Other generations have failed in Ireland, but
they have failed nobly; or, failing ignobly, some man among them has
redeemed them from infamy by the splendour of his protest. But the
failure of the last generation has been mean and shameful, and no man
has arisen from it to say or do a splendid thing in virtue of which it
shall be forgiven. The whole episode is squalid. It will remain the one
sickening chapter in a story which, gallant or sorrowful, has everywhere
else some exaltation of pride.
“Is mairg do ghní go holc agus bhíos bocht ina dhiaidh,” says the Irish
proverb. “Woe to him that doeth evil and is poor after it.” The men who
have led Ireland for twenty-five years have done evil, and they are
bankrupt. They are bankrupt in policy, bankrupt in credit, bankrupt now
even in words. They have nothing to propose to Ireland, no way of
wisdom, no counsel of courage. When they speak they speak only untruth
and blasphemy. Their utterances are no longer the utterances of men.
They are the mumblings and the gibberings of lost souls.
One finds oneself wondering what sin these men have been guilty of that
so great a shame should come upon them. Is it that they are punished
with loss of manhood because in their youth they committed a crime
against manhood?... Does the ghost of Parnell hunt them to their
damnation?
Even had the men themselves been less base, their failure would have
been inevitable. When one thinks over the matter for a little one sees
that they have built upon an untruth. They have conceived of nationality
as a material thing, whereas it is a spiritual thing. They have made the
same mistake that a man would make if he were to forget that he has an
immortal soul. They have not recognised in their people the image and
likeness of God. Hence, the nation to them is not all holy, a thing
inviolate and inviolable, a thing that a man dare not sell or dishonour
on pain of eternal perdition. They have thought of nationality as a
thing to be negotiated about as men negotiate about a tariff or about a
trade route, rather than as an immediate jewel to be preserved at all
peril, a thing so sacred that it may not be brought into the market
places at all or spoken of where men traffic.
He who builds on lies rears only lies. The untruth that nationality is
corporeal, a thing defined by statutes and guaranteed by mutual
interests, is at the base of the untruth that freedom, which is the
condition of a hale nationality, is a status to be conceded rather than
a glory to be achieved; and of the other untruth that it can ever be
lawful in the interest of empire, in the interest of wealth, in the
interest of quiet living, to forego the right to freedom. The contrary
is the truth. Freedom, being a spiritual necessity, transcends all
corporeal necessities, and when freedom is being considered interests
should not be spoken of. Or, if the terms of the countinghouse be the
ones that are best understood, let us put it that it is the highest
interest of a nation to be free.
Like a divine religion, national freedom bears the marks of unity, of
sanctity, of catholicity, of apostolic succession. Of unity, for it
contemplates the nation as one; of sanctity, for it is holy in itself
and in those who serve it; of catholicity, for it embraces all the men
and women of the nation; of apostolic succession, for it, or the
aspiration after it, passes down from generation to generation from the
nation’s fathers. A nation’s fundamental idea of freedom is not affected
by the accidents of time and circumstance. It does not vary with the
centuries, or with the comings and goings of men or of empires. The
substance of truth does not change, nor does the substance of freedom.
Yesterday’s definition of both the one and the other is to-day’s
definition and will be to-morrow’s. As the body of truth which a true
church teaches can neither be increased nor diminished--though truths
implicit in the first definition may be made explicit in later
definitions--so a true definition of freedom remains constant; it cannot
be added to or subtracted from or varied in its essentials, though
things implicit in it may be made explicit by a later definition. If the
definition can be varied in its essentials, or added to, or subtracted
from, it was not a true definition in the first instance.
To be concrete, if we to-day are fighting for something either greater
than or less than the thing our fathers fought for, either our fathers
did not fight for freedom at all, or we are not fighting for freedom. If
I do not hold the faith of Tone, and if Tone was not a heretic, then I
am. If Tone said “BREAK the connection with England,” and if I say
“MAINTAIN the connection with England,” I may be preaching a saner (as I
am certainly preaching a safer) gospel than his, but I am obviously not
preaching the same gospel.
Now what Tone taught, and the fathers of our national faith before and
after Tone, is ascertainable. It stands recorded. It has fulness, it has
clarity, the sufficiency and the definiteness of dogma. It lives in
great and memorable phrases, a grandiose national faith. They, too, have
left us their Credo.
The Irish mind is the clearest mind that has ever applied itself to the
consideration of nationality and of national freedom. A chance phrase of
Keating’s might almost stand as a definition. He spoke of Ireland as
“domhan beag innti féin,” a little world in herself. It was
characteristic of Irish-speaking men that when they thought of the Irish
nation they thought less of its outer forms and pomps than of the inner
thing which was its soul. They recognised that the Irish life was the
thing that mattered, and that, the Irish life dead, the Irish nation was
dead. But they recognised that freedom was the essential condition of a
vigorous Irish life. And for freedom they raised their ranns; for
freedom they stood in battle through five bloody centuries.
II
Irish nationality is an ancient spiritual tradition, one of the oldest
and most august traditions in the world. Politically, Ireland’s claim
has been for freedom in order to the full and perpetual life of that
tradition. The generations of Ireland have gone into battle for no other
thing. To the Irish mind for more than a thousand years freedom has had
but one definition. It has meant not a limited freedom, a freedom
conditioned by the interests of another nation, a freedom compatible
with the suzerain authority of a foreign parliament, but absolute
freedom, the sovereign control of Irish destinies. It has meant not the
freedom of a class, but the freedom of a people. It has meant not the
freedom of a geographical fragment of Ireland, but the freedom of all
Ireland, of every sod of Ireland.
And the freedom thus defined has seemed to the Irish the most desirable
of all earthly things. They have valued it more than land, more than
wealth, more than ease, more than empire.
“Fearr bheith i mbarraibh fuairbheann
I bhfeitheamh shuainghearr ghrinnmhear,
Ag seilg troda ar fhéinn eachtrann
’Gá bhfuil fearann bhur sinnsear,”
said Angus Mac Daighre O’Daly. “Better to be on the tops of the old bens
keeping watch, short of sleep yet gladsome, urging fight against the
foreign soldiery that hold your fathers’ land.” And Fearflatha O’Gnive
spoke for the generations that preferred exile to slavery:
“Má thug an deonughadh dhi
Sacsa nua darbh’ ainm Eire
Bheith re a linn-si i láimh bíodhbhadh,
Do’n inse is cáir ceileabhradh.”
“If thou hast consented (O God) that there be a new England named
Ireland, to be ever in the grip of a foe then to this isle we must bid
farewell.”
I make the contention that the national demand of Ireland is fixed and
determined; that that demand has been made by every generation; that we
of this generation receive it as a trust from our fathers; that we are
bound by it; that we have not the right to alter it or to abate it by
one jot or tittle; and that any undertaking made in the name of Ireland
to accept in full satisfaction of Ireland’s claim anything less than the
generations of Ireland have stood for is null and void, binding on
Ireland neither by the law of God nor by the law of nations.
A nation can bind itself by treaty to do or to forego specific things,
as a man can bind himself by contract; but no treaty which places a
nation’s body and soul in the power of another nation, no treaty which
abnegates a nation’s nationhood, is binding on that nation, any more
than a contract of perpetual slavery is binding on an individual. If in
a drunken frolic or in mere abject unmanliness I sell myself and my
posterity to a slaveholder to have and to hold as a chattel property to
himself and his heirs, am I bound by the contract? Are my children bound
by it? Can any legal contract make a wrong thing binding? And if not,
can a contract executed in my name, but without my express or implied
authority, make a wrong thing binding on me and on my children’s
children?
Ireland’s historic claim is for Separation. Ireland has authorised no
man to abate that claim. The man who, in the name of Ireland, accepts as
“a final settlement” anything less by one fraction of an iota than
Separation from England will be repudiated by the new generation as
surely as O’Connell was repudiated by the generation that came after
him. The man who, in return for the promise of a thing which is not
merely less than Separation, but which denies Separation and proclaims
the Union perpetual, the man who, in return for this, declares peace
between Ireland and England and sacrifices to England as a
peace-holocaust the blood of fifty thousand Irishmen, is guilty of so
immense an infidelity, so immense a crime against the Irish nation, that
one can only say of him that it were better for that man (as it were
certainly better for his country) that he had not been born.
I have proved this terrible infidelity against a living Irishman,
against all who have supported him, against the majority of Irishmen who
are now past middle life, if I can establish that the historic claim of
Ireland has been for Separation. And I proceed to establish this.
III
It will be conceded to me that the Irish who opposed the landing of the
English in 1169 were Separatists. Else why oppose those who came to
annex? It will be conceded that the twelve generations of the Irish
nation, the “mere Irish” of the English state-papers, who maintained a
winning fight against English domination in Ireland from 1169 to 1509
(roughly speaking), were Separatist generations. The Irish princes who
brought over Edward Bruce and made him King of Ireland were plainly
Separatists. The Mac Murrough who hammered the English for fifty years
and twice out-generalled and out-fought an English king was obviously a
Separatist. The turbulence of Shane O’Neill becomes understandable when
it is realised that he was a Separatist; Separatists are apt, from of
old, to be cranky and sore-headed. The Fitzmaurice who brought the
Spaniards to Smerwick Harbour was a mere Separatist: he was one of the
pro-Spaniards of those days--Separatists are always pro-Something of
which the English disapprove. That proud dissembling O’Neill and that
fiery O’Donnell who banded the Irish and the Anglo-Irish against the
English, who brought the Spaniards to Kinsale, who fought the war that,
but for a guide losing his way, would have been known as the Irish War
of Separation, were, it will be granted, Separatists. Rory O’More was
uncommonly like a Separatist. Owen Roe O’Neill was admittedly a
Separatist, the leader of the Separatist Party in the Confederation of
Kilkenny. When O’Neill sent his veterans into the battle-gap at Benburb
with the words “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, charge
for Ireland!” the word “Ireland” had for him a very definite meaning. If
Sarsfield fought technically for an English king, the popular literature
of the day leaves no doubt that in the people’s mind he stood for
Separation, and that it was not an English faction but the Irish nation
that rallied behind the walls of Limerick. So, up to 1691 Ireland was
Separatist.
IV
During the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century a miracle
wrought itself. So does the germ of Separation inhere in the soil of
Ireland that the very Cromwellians and Williamites were infected with
it. The Palesmen began to realise themselves as part of the Irish
nation, and in the fulness of time they declared themselves Separatists.
While this process was slowly accomplishing itself, the authentic voice
of Ireland is to be sought in her literature. And that literature is a
Separatist literature. The “secret songs” of the dispossessed Irish are
the most fiercely Separatist utterances in any literature. Not until
Mitchel did Anglo-Irish literature catch up that Irish vehemence. The
poet of the “Roman Vision” sang of the Ireland that was to be:
“No man shall be bound unto England
Nor hold friendship with dour Scotsmen,
There shall be no place in Ireland for outlanders,
Nor any recognition for the English speech.”
The prophetic voice of Mitchel seems to ring in this:
“The world hath conquered, the wind hath scattered like dust
Alexander, Cæsar, and all that shared their sway,
Tara is grass, and behold how Troy lieth low,--
And even the English, perchance their hour will come!”
An unknown poet, seeing the corpse of an Englishman hanging on a tree,
sings:
“Good is thy fruit, O tree!
The luck of thy fruit on every bough!
Would that the trees of Inisfail
Were full of thy fruit every day!”
The poet of the “Druimfhionn Donn Dílis” cries:
“The English I’d rend as I’d rend an old brogue,
And that’s how I’d win me the Druimfhionn Donn Og!”
I do not defend this blood-thirstiness any more than I apologise for it.
I simply point it out as the note of a literature.
Finally, when the poet of the “Róisín Dubh” declares that
“The Erne shall rise in rude torrents, hills shall be rent,
The sea shall roll in red waves, and blood be poured out,
Every mountain glen in Ireland, and the bogs shall quake,”
is it to be supposed that these apocalyptic disturbances are to usher in
merely a statutory legislation subordinate to the imperial parliament at
Westminster whose supreme authority over Ireland shall remain unimpaired
“anything in this Act notwithstanding”?
The student of Irish affairs who does not know Irish literature is
ignorant of the awful intensity of the Irish desire for Separation as he
is ignorant of one of the chief forces which make Separation inevitable.
V
The first man who spoke, or seemed to speak, for Ireland and who was not
a Separatist was Henry Grattan. And it was against Henry Grattan’s
Constitution that Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen rose. Thus the Pale
made common cause with the Gael and declared itself Separatist. It will
be conceded that Wolfe Tone was a Separatist: he is _The_ Separatist. It
will be conceded that Robert Emmet was a Separatist. O’Connell was not a
Separatist: but, as the United Irishmen revolted against Grattan, Young
Ireland revolted against O’Connell. And Young Ireland, in its final
development, was Separatist. To Young Ireland belong three of the great
Separatist voices. After Young Ireland the Fenians; and it will be
admitted that the Fenians were Separatists. They guarded themselves
against future misrepresentation by calling themselves the Irish
Republican Brotherhood.
It thus appears that Ireland has been Separatist up to the beginning of
the generation that is now growing old. Separatism, in fact, is the
national position. Whenever an Irish leader has taken up a position
different from the national position he has been repudiated by the next
generation. The United Irishmen repudiated Grattan. The Young Irelanders
repudiated O’Connell. The Irish Volunteers have repudiated Mr. Redmond.
The chain of the Separatist tradition has never once snapped during the
centuries. Veterans of Kinsale were in the ’41; veterans of Benburb
followed Sarsfield. The poets kept the fires of the nation burning from
Limerick to Dungannon. Napper Tandy of the Volunteers was Napper Tandy
of the United Irishmen. The Russell of 1803 was the Russell of 1798. The
Robert Holmes of ’98 and 1803 lived to be a Young Irelander. Three Young
Irelanders were the founders of Fenianism. The veterans of Fenianism
stand to-day with the Irish Volunteers. So the end of the Separatist
tradition is not yet.
VI
It would be very instructive to examine in its breadth and depth, in its
connotations as well as in its denotations, the Irish definition of
freedom; and I propose to do this in a sequel to the present essay. For
my immediate purpose it is sufficient to state that definition merely as
a principle involving essentially the idea of Independence, Separation,
a distinct and unfettered national existence.
The conception of an Irish nation has been developed in modern times
chiefly by four great minds. On a little reflection one comes to see
that what has been contributed by other minds has been almost entirely
by way of explanation and illustration of what has been laid down by the
four master minds; that the four have been the Fathers, and that the
others are just their commentarists. Accordingly, when I have named the
four names, there will be hardly any need to name any other names.
Indeed, it will be difficult to think of names that can be named in the
same breath with these, difficult to think of men who have reached
anything like the same stature or who have stretched out even half as
far.
The names are those of Theobald Wolfe Tone, Thomas Davis, James Fintan
Lalor, and John Mitchel.
It is a question here of political teachers, not of mere political
leaders. O’Connell was a more effective political leader than either
Lalor or Mitchel, but no one gives O’Connell a place in the history of
political thought. He did not propound, he did not even attempt to
propound, any body of political truths. He was a political strategist of
extraordinary ability, a rhetorician of almost superhuman power. But we
owe no political doctrine to O’Connell except the obviously untrue
doctrine that liberty is too dearly purchased at the price of a single
drop of blood. The political position of O’Connell--his falling back on
the treaty of 1782-3--was not the statement of any national principle,
the embodiment of any political truth--it was an able, though as it
happened unsuccessful, strategical move.
Parnell must be considered. If one had to add a fifth to the four I have
named, the fifth would inevitably be Parnell. Now, Parnell was less a
political thinker than an embodied conviction; a flame that seared, a
sword that stabbed. He deliberately disclaimed political theories,
deliberately confined himself to political action. He did the thing that
lay nearest to his hand, struck at the English with such weapons as were
available. His instinct was a Separatist instinct; and, far from being
prepared to accept Home Rule as a “final settlement between the two
nations,” he was always careful to make it clear that, whether Home Rule
came or did not come, the way must be left open for the achievement of
the greater thing. In 1885 he said:
“It is given to none of us to forecast the future, and just as
it is impossible for us to say in what way or by what means the
national question may be settled--in what way full justice may
be done to Ireland--so it is impossible for us to say to what
extent that justice should be done. We cannot ask for less than
the restitution of Grattan’s Parliament, with its important
privileges and wide and far-reaching constitution. We cannot,
under the British constitution, ask for more than the
restitution of Grattan’s Parliament, but no man has a right to
fix the boundary of the march of a nation. No man has a right to
say ‘Thus far shalt thou go, and no further’; and we have never
attempted to fix the _ne plus ultra_ to the progress of
Ireland’s nationhood, and we never shall. But, gentlemen, while
we leave these things to time, circumstances, and the future, we
must each one of us resolve in our own hearts that we shall at
all times do everything that within us lies to obtain for
Ireland the fullest measure of her rights. In this way we shall
avoid difficulties and contentions amongst each other. In this
way we shall not give up anything which the future may put in
favour of our country; and while we struggle to-day for that
which may seem possible for us without combination, we must
struggle for it with the proud consciousness that we shall not
do anything to hinder or prevent better men who may come after
us from gaining better things than those for which we now
contend.”
And again, in the same year:
“Ireland a nation! Ireland has been a nation: she is a nation;
and she shall be a nation.... England will respect you in
proportion as you and we respect ourselves. They will not give
anything to Ireland out of justice or righteousness. They will
concede you your liberties and your rights when they must and no
sooner.... We can none of us do more than strive for that which
may seem attainable to-day; but we ought at the same time to
recollect that we should not impede or hamper the march of our
nation; and although our programme may be limited and small, it
should be such a one as shall not prevent hereafter the fullest
realisation of the hopes of Ireland; and we shall, at least if
we keep this principle in mind, have this consolation that,
while we may have done something to enable Ireland in some
measure to retain her position as a nation, to strengthen her
position as a nation, we shall have done nothing to hinder
others who may come after us from taking up the work with
perhaps greater strength, ability, power, and advantages than we
possess, and from pushing to that glorious and happy conclusion
which is embodied in the words of the toast which I now ask you
to drink--‘Ireland a nation’!”
These words justify me in summoning the pale and angry ghost of Parnell
to stand beside the ghosts of Tone and Davis and Lalor and Mitchel. If
words mean anything, these mean that to Parnell the final and inevitable
and infinitely desirable goal of Ireland was Separation; and that those
who thought it prudent and feasible, as he did, to proceed to Separation
by Home Rule must above all things do nothing that might impair the
Separatist position or render the future task of the Separatists more
difficult. Of Parnell it may be said with absolute truth that he never
surrendered the national position. His successors have surrendered it.
They have written on his monument in Dublin those noble words of his,
that no man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation;
and then they have accepted the Home Rule Act as a “final settlement”
between Ireland and England. It is as if a man were to write on a
monument “I believe in God and in Life Everlasting” and then to sell his
chance of Heaven to the Evil One for a purse, not of gold, but of
I.O.U.’s.
If I could think of any other name that, with due regard for proportion,
could be named with the great names, I should name it and proceed to
examine its claims. But I can think of no other name. I can think of
heroic leaders like Emmet; I can think of brilliant rhetoricians like
Meagher; I can think of able and powerful publicists like Duffy; I can
think of secret organisers like Stephens: and all these were Separatist.
But I cannot think of anyone who has left behind him a _body of
teaching_ that requires to be examined. Emmet’s mind was as great as any
of the four minds except Tone’s, but we have not its fruits; only an
indication of its riches in his speech from the dock, and of its
strength and sanity in the draft proclamation for his Provisional
Government.
I can think, again, of three great political thinkers of Anglo-Ireland
before Tone: Berkeley, Swift, and Burke. And from the writings of these
three I could construct the case for Irish Separatism. But this would be
irrelevant to my purpose. I am seeking to find, not those who have
thought most wisely about Ireland, but those who have thought most
authentically for Ireland, the voices that have come out of the Irish
struggle itself. And those voices, subject to what I have said as to
Parnell, are the voices of Tone, of Davis, of Lalor, of Mitchel.
Let us see what they have said.
VII
First, Tone. Of 1790:
“I made speedily what was to me a great discovery, though I
might have found it in Swift and Molyneux, that the influence of
England was the radical vice of our Government, and consequently
that Ireland would never be either free, prosperous, or happy
until she was independent, and that independence was
unattainable whilst the connection with England lasted.”
Of 1791:
“It [a communication from Russell] immediately set me thinking
more seriously than I had yet done upon the state of Ireland. I
soon formed my theory, and on that theory I have invariably
acted ever since.
“To subvert the tyranny of our execrable Government, to break
the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our
political evils, and to assert the independence of my
country--these were my objects. To unite the whole people of
Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to
substitute the common name of Irishman in the place of the
denominations of Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter--these were
my means.”
I hold all Irish nationalism to be implicit in these words. Davis was to
make explicit certain things here implicit, Lalor certain other things;
Mitchel was to thunder the whole in words of apocalyptic wrath and
splendour. But the Credo is here: “I believe in One Irish Nation and
that Free.”
And before his judges Tone thus testified:
“I mean not to give you the trouble of bringing judicial proof
to convict me, legally, of having acted in hostility to the
Government of his Britannic Majesty in Ireland. I admit the
fact. From my earliest youth I have regarded the connection
between Ireland and Great Britain as the curse of the Irish
nation, and felt convinced that, while it lasted, this country
could never be free nor happy. My mind has been confirmed in
this opinion by the experience of every succeeding year, and the
conclusions which I have drawn from every fact before my eyes.
In consequence, I determined to apply all the powers which my
individual efforts could move in order to separate the two
countries.”
Next, Davis:
“... Will she [England] allow us, for good or ill, to govern
ourselves, and see if we cannot redress our own griefs. ‘No,
never, never,’ she says, ‘though all Ireland cried for
it--never! Her fields shall be manured with the shattered limbs
of her sons, and her hearths quenched in their blood; but never,
while England has a ship or a soldier, shall Ireland be free.’
“And this is your answer? We shall see--we shall see!
“And now, Englishmen, listen to us! Though you were to-morrow to
give us the best tenures on earth--though you were to equalise
Presbyterian, Catholic, and Episcopalian--though you were to
give us the amplest representation in your Senate--though you
were to restore our absentees, disencumber us of your debt, and
redress every one of our fiscal wrongs--and though, in addition
to all this, you plundered the treasuries of the world to lay
gold at our feet, and exhausted the resources of your genius to
do us worship and honour--still we tell you--we tell you, in the
names of liberty and country--we tell you, in the name of
enthusiastic hearts, thoughtful souls, and fearless spirits--we
tell you, by the past, the present, and the future, we would
spurn your gifts, if the condition were that Ireland should
remain a province. We tell you, and all whom it may concern,
come what may--bribery or deceit, justice, policy, or war--we
tell you, in the name of Ireland, that Ireland shall be a
Nation!”
Lest it may be pretended (as it has been pretended) that the nationhood
thus claimed in the name of Ireland by this passionate nationalist was a
mere statutory “nationhood,” federalism or something less, I quote a
passage which makes it clear that Davis (loyally though he supported the
official policy of the _Nation_, which at that stage did not go beyond
Repeal) was thinking all the time of a sovereign independent Ireland.
Urging the need of foreign alliances for Ireland, he writes (the italics
are Davis’s):
“When Ireland is a nation she will not, with her vast
population[6] and her military character, require such alliances
as a _security_ against an English _re-conquest_; but they will
be useful in banishing any _dreams of invasion_ which might
_otherwise_ haunt the brain of our old enemy.”
Elsewhere Davis sums up the national position in a sentence worthy of
Tone:
“Ireland’s aspiration is for unbounded nationality.”
Next, Lalor:
“Repeal, in its vulgar meaning, I look on as utterly
impracticable by any mode of action whatever; and the
constitution of ’82 was absurd, worthless, and worse than
worthless. The English Government will never concede or
surrender to any species of moral force whatsoever; and the
country-peasantry will never arm and fight for it--neither will
I. If I am to stake life and fame it must assuredly be for
something better and greater, more likely to last, more likely
to succeed, and better worth success. And a stronger passion, a
higher purpose, a nobler and more needful enterprise is
fermenting in the hearts of the people. A mightier question
moves Ireland to-day than that of merely repealing the Act of
Union. Not the constitution that Wolfe Tone died to abolish, but
the constitution that Tone died to obtain--independence; full
and absolute independence for this island, and for every man
within this island. Into no movement that would leave an enemy’s
garrison in possession of all our lands, masters of our
liberties, our lives, and all our means of life and
happiness--into no such movement will a single man of the
greycoats enter with an armed hand, whatever the town population
may do. On a wider fighting field, with stronger positions and
greater resources than are afforded by the paltry question of
Repeal, must we close for our final struggle with England, or
sink and surrender.
“Ireland her own--Ireland her own, and all therein, from the sod
to the sky. The soil of Ireland for the people of Ireland, to
have and hold from God alone who gave it--to have and to hold to
them and to their heirs for ever, without suit or service, faith
or fealty, rent or render, to any power under Heaven.”
And again:
“Not to repeal the Union, then, but the conquest--not to disturb
or dismantle the Empire, but to abolish it utterly for ever--not
to fall back on ’82, but to act up to ’48--not to resume or
restore an old constitution, but to found a new nation and raise
up a free people, and strong as well as free, and secure as well
as strong, based on a peasantry rooted like rocks in the soil of
the land--this is my object, as I hope it is yours; and this,
you may be assured, is the easier as it is the nobler and more
pressing enterprise.”
And yet again:
“In the case of Ireland now there is but _one fact_ to deal
with, and _one question_ to be considered. The fact is
this--that there are at present in occupation of our country
some 40,000 armed men, in the livery and service of England; and
the _question_ is--how best and soonest to kill and capture
those 40,000 men.”
Lastly Mitchel takes up his hymn of hate against the Empire:
“_The Ego._--And do you read Ireland’s mind in the canting of
O’Connell’s son? or in the sullen silence of a gagged and
disarmed people? Tell me not of O’Connell’s son. His father
begat him in moral force, and in patience and perseverance did
his mother conceive him. I swear to you there are blood and
brain in Ireland yet, as the world one day shall know. God! let
me live to see it. On that great day of the Lord, when the
kindreds and tongues and nations of the old earth shall give
their banners to the wind, let this poor carcase have but breath
and strength enough to stand under Ireland’s immortal Green!
“_Doppelganger._--Do you allude to the battle of Armageddon? I
know you have been reading the Old Testament of late.
“_The Ego._--Yes. ‘Who is this that cometh from Edom; with dyed
garments from Bozrah? This that is glorious in his apparel
travelling in the garments of his strength? Wherefore art thou
red in thine apparel, and thy garments like him that treadeth in
the wine vat? I have trodden the wine press alone, and of the
people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine
anger and trample them in my fury, and their blood shall be
sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment. For
the day of vengeance is in my heart.’ Also an aspiration of King
David haunts my memory when I think on Ireland and her wrongs:
‘_That thy foot may be dipped in the blood of thine enemies, and
that the tongue of thy dogs may be red through the same._’”
Thus Tone, thus Davis, thus Lalor, thus Mitchel, thus Parnell. Methinks
I have raised some ghosts that will take a little laying.
-----
Footnote 6:
Nearly 9,000,000 then.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SEPARATIST IDEA
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
This is the first of three pamphlets in which I propose to develop the
contention put forward in “Ghosts,” the whole forming a continuous
argument. The further pamphlets of the series will be entitled “The
Spiritual Nation” and “The Sovereign People,” respectively.
P. H. PEARSE.
ST. ENDA’S COLLEGE,
RATHFARNHAM,
1st February, 1916.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SEPARATIST IDEA
I
In stating a little while ago the Irish definition of freedom, I said
that it would be well worth while to examine that definition in its
breadth and depth, in its connotations as well as in its denotations,
contenting myself for the moment with making clear its essential idea of
Independence, Separation, a distinct and unfettered national existence.
And I said that I proposed to do this in a sequel. Such a sequel is
necessary, for, while the statement that national freedom means a
distinct and unfettered national existence is a true and complete
statement of the nature of national freedom, it is not a sufficient
revelation of the minds that have developed the conception of freedom
among us Irish, not sufficiently quick with their thought nor
sufficiently passionate with their desire. Freedom is so splendid a
thing that one cannot worthily state it in the terms of a definition;
one has to write it in some flaming symbol or to sing it in music
riotous with the uproar of heaven. A Danton and a Mitchel can speak more
adequately of freedom than a Voltaire and a Burke, for they have drunk
more deeply of that wine with which God inebriates the votaries of
vision. But even the sublimest things, the Trinity and the Incarnation,
can be stated in terms of philosophy, and it is needful to do this now
and then, though such a statement in no wise affects the spiritual fact
which one either feels or does not feel. So, it is sometimes necessary
to state what nationality is, what freedom, though one’s statement may
not reveal the awful beauty of his nation’s soul to a single man or move
a single village to put up its barricade.
The purpose, then, of such statements? At least they define the truth,
and enable men to see who holds the truth and who hugs the falsehood.
For there is an absolute truth in such matters, and the truth is
ascertainable. The truth is old, and it has been handed down to us by
our fathers. It is not a new thing, devised to meet the exigencies of a
situation. That is the definition of an expedient.
Now, the truth as to what a nation’s nationality is, what a nation’s
freedom, is not to be found in the statute-book of the nation’s enemy.
It is to be found in the books of the nation’s fathers.
II
I have named Tone and Davis and Lalor and Mitchel as the four among us
moderns who have chiefly developed the conception of an Irish nation.
Others, I have said, have for the most part only interpreted and
illustrated what has been taught by these; these are the Fathers and the
rest are just their commentarists. And I need not repeat here my reasons
for naming no other with these unless the other be Parnell, whom I name
tentatively as the man who saw most deeply and who spoke most splendidly
for the Irish nation since the great seers and speakers. I go on to
examine what these have taught of Irish freedom. And first as to Tone.
He stands first in point of time, and first in point of greatness.
Indeed, he is, as I believe, the greatest man of our nation; the
greatest-hearted and the greatest-minded.
We have to consider here Tone the thinker rather than Tone the man of
action. The greatest of our men of action since Hugh O’Neill, he is the
greatest of all our political thinkers. His greatness, both as a man and
as a thinker, consists in his sheer reality. There is no froth of
rhetoric, no dilution of sentimentality in Tone; he has none even of the
noble oratoric quality of a Mitchel. A man of extraordinarily deep
emotion, he nevertheless thought with relentless logic, and his
expression in exposition or argument is always the due and inevitable
garb of his thought. He was a great visionary; but, like all the great
visionaries, he had a firm grip upon realities, he was fundamentally
sane.
It is necessary at times to insist on Tone’s intellectual austerity,
because the man’s humanity was so gracious that his human side
constantly overshadows, for us as for his contemporaries, his grave
intellectual side. Most men of his greatness are loved at best by a few,
feared or disliked or mistrusted by the many. Tone was one of the
extremely rare great men whose greatness is crowned by those gifts of
humility and sweetness that compel affection. Some men are misunderstood
because they are disliked; a few men are in danger of being
misunderstood because they are loved. If the greatest thing in Tone was
his heroic soul, the soul that was gay in death and defeat, the second
greatest thing was his austere and piercing intellect. That intellect
has dominated Irish political thought for over a century. It has given
us our political definitions and values. Constantly we refer doctrines
and leaders and policies to its standards, measuring them by the mind of
Tone as an American measures men and policies by the minds that shaped
the Declaration of Independence. Tone’s mind was in a very true sense a
revolutionary mind. The spokesmen of the French Revolution itself did
not base things more fundamentally on essential right and justice than
Tone did, did not pierce through outer strata to a firmer bedrock than
he found. And it was an original mind. Influenced no doubt by
contemporary minds, and responsive to every thought-wave that vibrated
in either hemisphere, Tone for the most part worked out his own
political system in his own way. He did not inherit or merely accept his
principles; he thought himself into them.
Tone’s first political utterance was a pamphlet in defence of the Whig
Club, entitled “A Review of the last Session of Parliament” (1790). Of
this pamphlet he writes in his Autobiography:
“... Though I was very far from entirely approving the system of
the Whig Club, and much less their principles and motives, yet,
seeing them at the time the best constituted political body
which the country afforded, and agreeing with most of their
positions, though my own private opinions went infinitely
farther, I thought I could venture on their defence without
violating my consistency.”
The pamphlet contains no definitely Separatist teaching. Before the end
of the year, however, Tone had found his voice. It is a Separatist that
speaks in “The Spanish War” (1790), but a cautious Separatist, one who
is feeling his way. Tone himself describes the expansion of his views
which had taken place between the publication of his first and his
second pamphlets:
“A closer examination into the history of my native country had
very considerably extended my views, and, as I was sincerely and
honestly attached to her interests, I soon found reason not to
regret that the Whigs had not thought me an object worthy of
their cultivation. I made speedily what was to me a great
discovery, though I might have found it in Swift and Molyneux,
that the influence of England was the radical vice of our
Government, and consequently that Ireland would never be either
free, prosperous, or happy until she was independent, and that
independence was unattainable whilst the connection with England
existed.”
Accordingly:
“On the appearance of a rupture with Spain, I wrote a pamphlet
to prove that Ireland was not bound by the declaration of war,
but might, and ought, as an independent nation, to stipulate for
a neutrality. In examining this question, I advanced the
question of separation, with scarcely any reserve, much less
disguise; but the public mind was by no means so far advanced as
I was, and my pamphlet made not the slightest impression.”
The pamphlet, in fact, tended to prove the impossibility of Grattan’s
constitution, _i.e._, of the co-existence of a British connection with a
sovereign Irish Parliament. It did not propound this in so many words,
but the logical conclusion from its extraordinarily able and subtle
argument is that no “half-way house” is possible as a permanent solution
of the issue between Ireland and England. There were and are only two
alternatives: an enslaved Ireland and a free Ireland. A “dual monarchy”
is, in the nature of things, only a temporary expedient.
In 1790 Tone met Thomas Russell. Theirs was the most memorable of Irish
friendships. It was in conversations and correspondence with Russell
that Tone’s political ideas reached their maturity. When he next speaks
it is with plenary meaning and clear definition. Towards the end of 1790
he made his first attempt in political organisation. He founded a club
of seven or eight members “eminent for their talents and patriotism and
who had already more or less distinguished themselves by their literary
productions.” It was a failure, and the failure satisfied Tone that “men
of genius, to be of use, must not be collected in numbers.” In 1791
Russell went to Belfast. An attempt of Russell’s to induce the Belfast
Volunteers to adopt a declaration in favour of Catholic emancipation,
which Tone had prepared at his request, was unsuccessful. Russell wrote
to Tone an account of the discussion, and, says Tone:
“It immediately set me thinking more seriously than I had yet
done upon the state of Ireland. I soon formed my theory, and on
that theory I have invariably acted ever since.
“To subvert the tyranny of our execrable Government, to break
the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our
political evils, and to assert the independence of my
country--these were my objects. To unite the whole people of
Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to
substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the
denominations of Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter--these were
my means.”
I have said that I hold all Irish nationalism to be implicit in these
words. Davis was to make explicit certain things here implicit, Lalor
certain other things. But the Credo is here: “I believe in One Irish
Nation and that Free.”
Tone had convinced himself as to the end and the means. And now for
work:
“I sat down accordingly, and wrote a pamphlet addressed to the
Dissenters, and which I entitled ‘An Argument on behalf of the
Catholics of Ireland,’ the object of which was to convince them
that they and the Catholics had but one common interest and one
common enemy; that the depression and slavery of Ireland was
produced and perpetuated by the divisions existing between them,
and that, consequently, to assert the independence of their
country, and their own individual liberties, it was necessary to
forget all former feuds, to consolidate the entire strength of
the whole nation, and to form for the future but one people.”
This pamphlet, signed “A Northern Whig,” gave Tone his place in Irish
politics. The Catholic leaders approached him and commenced the
connection which led ultimately to his selection as their agent; the
Volunteers of Belfast elected him an honorary member of their corps. He
was soon afterwards invited to Belfast, where he founded, with Russell,
Neilson, the Simmses, Sinclair, and MacCabe, the first club of United
Irishmen. Tone wrote for the United Irishmen the following declaration:
“In the present great era of reform when unjust governments are
falling in every quarter of Europe; when religious persecution
is compelled to abjure her tyranny over conscience; when the
Rights of Man are ascertained in Theory and that Theory
substantiated by Practice; when antiquity can no longer defend
absurd and oppressive forms against the common sense and common
interests of mankind; when all government is acknowledged to
originate from the people, and to be so far only obligatory as
it protects their rights and promotes their welfare; we think it
our duty as Irishmen to come forward and state what we feel to
be our heavy grievance, and what we know to be its effectual
remedy.
“We have no National Government; we are ruled by Englishmen and
the servants of Englishmen, whose object is the interest of
another country; whose instrument is corruption; whose strength
is the weakness of Ireland; and these men have the whole of the
power and patronage of the country as means to seduce and subdue
the honesty and the spirit of her representatives in the
legislature. Such an extrinsic power, acting with uniform force
in a direction too frequently opposite to the true line of our
obvious interests, can be resisted with effect solely by
unanimity, decision, and spirit in the people, qualities which
may be exerted most legally, constitutionally, and efficaciously
by that great measure essential to the prosperity and freedom of
Ireland--an equal Representation of all the People in
Parliament....”
The declaration was not openly Separatist. Tone, however, avows that,
while not yet definitely a republican, his ultimate goal even as early
as 1791 was Separation: the union of Irishmen was to be but a means to
an end. Commenting on the foundation (9th November, 1791) of the Dublin
Club of United Irishmen, in which the republican Tandy co-operated with
him, Tone writes:
“For my own part, I think it right to mention that, at this time
the establishment of a Republic was not the immediate object of
my speculations. My object was to secure the independence of my
country under any form of government, to which I was led by a
hatred of England so deeply rooted in my nature that it was
rather an instinct than a principle. I left to others, better
qualified for the inquiry, the investigation and merits of the
different forms of government, and I contented myself with
labouring on my own system, which was luckily in perfect
coincidence as to its operation with that of those men who
viewed the question on a broader and juster scale than I did at
the time I mention.”
Thus, Tone in November 1791 had not yet settled his views on abstract
theories of government, but on the practical business of separating
Ireland from England his resolve was fixed and unshakable.
In June 1791 there had been issued a secret Manifesto to the Friends of
Freedom in Ireland which is attributed to Tone in collaboration with
Neilson and others. Tone himself makes no reference to this document in
his Autobiography. If it is really his it is the nearest approach to a
formulation of the theory of freedom which we have from the mind of this
essentially practical statesman. Whether it be Tone’s or another’s, it
is one of the noblest utterances of the age and it is a document of
primary importance in the history of Ireland. It may be described as the
first manifesto of modern Irish democracy. It bases the Irish claim to
freedom on the bedrock foundation of human rights:
“This society is likely to be a means the most powerful for the
promotion of a great end. What end? _The Rights of Man in
Ireland._ The greatest happiness of the greatest numbers in this
island, the inherent and indefeasible claims of every free
nation to rest in this nation--the will and the power to be
happy, to pursue the common weal as an individual pursues his
private welfare, and to stand in insulated independence, an
imperatorial people.
“The greatest happiness of the Greatest Number.--On the rock of
this principle let this society rest; by this let it judge and
determine every political question, and whatever is necessary
for this end let it not be accounted hazardous, but rather our
interest, our duty, our glory, and our common religion: The
Rights of Man are the Rights of God, and to vindicate the one is
to maintain the other. We must be free in order to serve Him
whose service is perfect freedom....
“‘Dieu et mon Droit’ (God and my right) is the motto of kings.
‘Dieu et la liberté’ (God and liberty), exclaimed Voltaire when
he beheld Franklin, his fellow-citizen of the world. ‘Dieu et
nos Droits’ (God and our rights)--let every Irishman cry aloud
to each other the cry of mercy, of justice, and of victory.”
_The Rights of Man in Ireland_ is almost an adequate definition of Irish
freedom. And the historic claim of Ireland has never been more worthily
stated than in these words: “_The inherent and indefeasible claims of
every free nation to rest in this nation--the will and the power to be
happy, to pursue the common weal as an individual pursues his private
welfare, and to stand in insulated independence, an imperatorial
people._”
The deep and radical nature of Tone’s revolutionary work, the subtlety
and power of the man himself, cannot be grasped unless it is clearly
remembered that _this_ is the secret manifesto of the movement of which
the carefully constitutional declaration of the United Irishmen is the
public manifesto. Tone himself, in a letter to Russell at the beginning
of 1792, admits his ulterior designs while at the same time laying
stress on the necessity of caution in public utterances. Referring to
the declaration of the United Irishmen, he says:
“The foregoing contains my true and sincere opinion of the state
of this country, _so far as in the present juncture it may be
advisable to publish it_. They certainly fall short of the
truth, but truth itself must sometimes condescend to temporise.
My unalterable opinion is that the bane of Irish prosperity is
in the influence of England: I believe that influence will ever
be extended while the connection between the countries
continues; nevertheless, as I know that opinion is, _for the
present_, too hardy, though a very little time may establish it
universally, I have not made it a part of the resolutions, I
have only proposed to set up a reformed parliament, as a barrier
against that mischief which every honest man that will open his
eyes must see in every instance overbears the interest of
Ireland: I have not said one word that looks like a wish for
_separation_, though I give it to you and your friends as my
most decided opinion that such an event would be a regeneration
to this country.”
In 1792 Tone became agent to the General Committee of the Catholics.
Before the end of the year his dream of a union between the Catholics
and the Dissenters was an accomplished fact. In December the Catholic
Convention met. Catching Tone’s spirit, it demanded complete
emancipation. The Government proposed a compromise to the leaders. Tone
was against any compromise, but the Catholic leaders yielded.
“Merchants, I see, make bad revolutionists,” commented Tone. The Act of
1793, admitting Catholics to the Parliamentary franchise, marks the end
of Tone’s “constitutional” period. He pressed on towards Separation,
adopting revolutionary methods. The United Irishmen were reorganised as
a secret association, with “a Republican Government and Separation from
England” as its aims. In 1795 Tone, compromised by his relations with
Jackson, left Ireland for America. It was out of settled policy that at
this stage he chose exile rather than a contest with the Government. He
had already conceived the idea of appealing for help to the French
Republic. Shortly before he left Dublin he went out with Russell to
Rathfarnham, to see Thomas Addis Emmet.
“As we walked together into town I opened my plan to them both.
I told them that I considered my compromise with Government to
extend no further than the banks of the Delaware, and that the
moment I landed I was free to follow any plan which might
suggest itself to me, for the emancipation of my country.... I
then proceeded to tell them that my intention was, immediately
on my arrival in Philadelphia, to wait on the French Minister,
to detail to him, fully, the situation of affairs in Ireland, to
endeavour to obtain a recommendation to the French Government,
and, if I succeeded so far, to leave my family in America, and
to set off instantly for Paris, and apply, in the name of my
country, for the assistance of France to enable us to assert our
independence.”
To the fulfilment of this purpose Tone devoted the three years of life
that remained to him. He landed in France in 1796. The notes in his
Journal of his conferences with the representatives of the French
Government and the two masterly memorials which he submitted to the
Executive Directory remain the fullest and most practical statement, not
only of the necessity of Separation, but of the means by which
Separation is to be attained, that has been made by any Irishman. In the
concluding passage of his second memorial Tone sums up as follows:
“I submit to the wisdom of the French Government that England is
the implacable, inveterate, irreconcilable enemy of the
Republic, which never can be in perfect security while that
nation retains the dominion of the sea; that, in consequence,
every possible effort should be made to humble her pride and to
reduce her power; that it is in Ireland, _and in Ireland only_,
that she is vulnerable--a fact of the truth of which the French
Government cannot be too strongly impressed; that by
establishing a free Republic in Ireland they attach to France a
grateful ally whose cordial assistance, in peace and war, she
might command, and who, from situation and produce, could most
essentially serve her: that at the same time they cut off from
England her most firm support, in losing which she is laid under
insuperable difficulties in recruiting her army, and especially
in equipping, victualling, and manning her navy, which, unless
for the resources she drew from Ireland, she would be absolutely
unable to do; that by these means--and, suffer me to add, _by
these means only_--her arrogance can be effectually humbled, and
her enormous and increasing power at sea reduced within due
bounds--an object essential, not only to France, but to all
Europe; that it is at least possible, by the measures mentioned,
that not only her future resources, as to her navy, may be
intercepted and cut off at the fountain head, but that a part of
her fleet may be actually transferred to the Republic of
Ireland; that the Irish people are united and prepared, and want
but the means to begin: that, not to speak of the policy or the
pleasure of revenge in humbling a haughty and implacable rival,
it is in itself a great and splendid act of generosity, worthy
of the Republic, to rescue a whole nation from a slavery under
which they have groaned for six hundred years; that it is for
the glory of France, after emancipating Holland and receiving
Belgium into her bosom, to establish one more free Republic in
Europe; that it is for her interest to cut off for ever, as she
now may do, one-half of the resources of England, and lay her
under extreme difficulties in the employment of the other. For
all these reasons, in the name of justice, of humanity, of
freedom, of my own country, and of France herself, I supplicate
the Directory to take into consideration the state of Ireland;
and by granting her the powerful aid and protection of the
Republic, to enable her at once to vindicate her liberty, to
humble her tyrant, and to assume that independent station among
the nations of the earth for which her soil, her productions and
her position, her population and her spirit have designed her.”
Finally--after Bantry Bay, the Texel, and Lough Swilly--Tone before his
judges thus testified to his faith as a Separatist:
“I mean not to give you the trouble of bringing judicial proof
to convict me, legally, of having acted in hostility to the
Government of his Britannic Majesty in Ireland. I admit the
fact. From my earliest youth I have regarded the connection
between Ireland and Great Britain as the curse of the Irish
nation, and felt convinced that, whilst it lasted, this country
could never be free nor happy. My mind has been confirmed in
this opinion by the experience of every succeeding year, and the
conclusions which I have drawn from every fact before my eyes.
In consequence, I determined to apply all the powers which my
individual efforts could move in order to separate the two
countries.
“That Ireland was not able, of herself, to throw off the yoke, I
knew. I therefore sought for aid wherever it was to be found. In
honourable poverty I rejected offers which, to a man in my
circumstances, might be considered highly advantageous. I
remained faithful to what I thought the cause of my country, and
sought in the French Republic an ally to rescue three millions
of my countrymen from....”
Here the prisoner was interrupted by the President of the Court-Martial.
III
In order to complete this brief study of Tone’s teaching it is necessary
to consider him as a democrat. And Tone, the greatest of modern Irish
Separatists, is the first and greatest of modern Irish democrats. It was
Tone that said:
“Our independence must be had at all hazards. If the men of
property will not support us, they must fall: we can support
ourselves by the aid of that numerous and respectable class of
the community--_the men of no property_.”
In this glorious appeal to Cæsar modern Irish democracy has its origin.
I have already quoted the secret Manifesto to the Friends of Freedom,
attributed to Tone, in which the right to national freedom is made to
rest on its true basis, the right to individual freedom. The abstract
theory of freedom was not further developed by Tone, who devoted his
life to the pursuit of a practical object rather than to the working out
of a philosophy. When, however, any question arose which involved the
relations of a democracy and an aristocracy, of the people and the
gentry (“as they affect to call themselves”), of the “men of no
property” and the “men of property,” Tone’s decision was instant and
unerring. The people must rule; if the aristocracy make common cause
with the people, so much the better; if not, woe to the aristocracy. One
passage from his Journal, under date April 27th, 1798, says all that
need be said as to the practical question of dealing with a hostile
aristocracy in a national revolution:
“What miserable slaves are the gentry of Ireland! The only
accusation brought against the United Irishmen by their enemies,
is that they wish to break the connection with England, or, in
other words, to establish the independence of their country--an
object in which surely the men of property are most interested.
Yet the very sound of independence seems to have terrified them
out of all sense, spirit, or honesty. If they had one drop of
Irish blood in their veins, one grain of true courage or genuine
patriotism in their hearts, they should have been the first to
support this great object; the People would have supported them;
the English government would never have dared to attempt the
measures they have since triumphantly pursued, and continue to
pursue; our Revolution would have been accomplished without a
shock, or perhaps one drop of blood spilled; which now can
succeed, if it does succeed, only by all the calamities of a
most furious and sanguinary contest: for the war in Ireland,
whenever it does take place, will not be an ordinary one. The
armies will regard each other not as soldiers, but as deadly
enemies. Who, then, are to blame for this? The United Irishmen,
who set the question afloat, or the English government and their
partisans, the Irish gentry, who resist it? If independence be
good for a country as liberty for an individual, the question
will be soon decided. Why does England so pertinaciously resist
our independence? Is it for love of us--is it because _she_
thinks _we_ are better as we are? That single argument, if it
stood alone, should determine every honest Irishman.
“But, it will be said, the United Irishmen extend their views
farther; they go now to a distribution of property, and an
agrarian law. I know not whether they do or no. I am sure in
June 1795 when I was forced to leave the country, they
entertained no such ideas. If they have since taken root among
them, the Irish gentry may accuse themselves. Even then they
made themselves parties to the business: not content with
disdaining to hold communications with the United Irishmen, they
were among the foremost of their persecutors; even those who
were pleased to denominate themselves patriots were more eager
to vilify, and, if they could, to degrade them, than the most
devoted and submissive slaves of the English Government. What
wonder if the leaders of the United Irishmen, finding themselves
not only deserted, but attacked by those who, for every reason,
should have been their supporters and fellow-labourers, felt
themselves no longer called upon to observe any measures with
men only distinguished by the superior virulence of their
persecuting spirit? If such men, in the issue, lose their
property, they are themselves alone to blame, by deserting the
first and most sacred of duties--the duty to their country. They
have incurred a wilful forfeiture by disdaining to occupy the
station they might have held among the People, and which the
People would have been glad to see them fill; they left a
vacancy to be seized by those who had more courage, more sense,
and more honesty; and not only so, but by this base and
interested desertion they furnished their enemies with every
argument of justice, policy, and interest, to enforce the system
of confiscation.
* * * * *
“The best that can be said in palliation of the conduct of the
English party, is that they are content to sacrifice the liberty
and independence of their country to the pleasure of revenge,
and their own personal security. They see Ireland only in their
rent rolls, their places, their patronage, and their pensions.
There is not a man among them who, in the bottom of his soul,
does not feel that he is a degraded being in comparison of those
whom he brands with the names of incendiaries and traitors. It
is this stinging reflection which, among other powerful motives,
is one of the most active in spurring them on to revenge. Their
dearest interests, their warmest passions, are equally engaged.
Who can forgive the man that forces him to confess that he is a
voluntary slave, and that he has sold for money everything that
should be most precious to an honourable heart? that he has
trafficked in the liberties of his children and his own, and
that he is hired and paid to commit a daily parricide on his
country? Yet these are the charges which not a man of that
infamous caste can deny to himself before the sacred tribunal of
his own conscience. At least the United Irishmen, as I have
already said, have a grand, a sublime object in view. Their
enemies have not as yet ventured, in the long catalogue of their
accusations, to insert the charge of interested motives. Whilst
that is the case they may be feared and abhorred, but they can
never be despised; and I believe there are few men who do not
look upon contempt as the most insufferable of all human evils.
Can the English faction say as much? In vain do they crowd
together, and think by their numbers to disguise or lessen their
infamy. The public sentiment, the secret voice of their own
corrupt hearts, has already condemned them. They see their
destruction rapidly approaching, and they have the consciousness
that when they fall no honest man will pity them. _They shall
perish like their own dung; those who have seen them shall say,
Where are they?_”
Tone did not propose any general confiscation of private property other
than the property of Englishmen in Ireland, and this only after
proclamation to the English people, as distinct from the English
Government, stating the grounds of the action of the Irish nation and
declaring their earnest desire to avoid the effusion of blood; if, after
such proclamation, the English people supported the English Government
in war upon Ireland, Tone held that the confiscation of English property
“would then be an act of strict justice, as the English people would
have made themselves parties to the war.” Emmet’s proposals in 1803 are
a fuller and more detailed expression of the mind of revolutionary
Ireland on the subject of property. The first decree drafted by Emmet
for his Provisional Government was that “tithes are forever abolished,
and church lands are the property of the nation”; the second laid down
that “from this date all transfers of landed property are prohibited,
each person paying his rent until the National Government is
established, the national will declared, and the courts of justice be
organised”; the third made a like provision with regard to the transfer
of bonds and securities; and the fifth decreed the confiscation of the
property of Irishmen in the Militia, Yeomanry, or Volunteer corps who,
after fourteen days, should be found in arms against the Republic. When
we speak of men like Tone and Emmet as “visionaries” and “idealists” we
regard only one side of their minds. Both were extraordinarily able men
of affairs, masters of all the details of the national, social, and
economic positions in their day; and both would have been ruthless in
revolution, shedding exactly as much blood as would have been necessary
to their purpose. Both, however, were Nationalists first, and
revolutionists only in so far as revolution was essential to the
establishment of the nation. “We war not against property,” said Emmet
in his proclamation, “we war against no religious sect, we war not
against past opinions or prejudices--we war against English dominion.”
One is now in a position to sum up Tone’s teaching in a series of
propositions:
1. The Irish Nation is One.
2. The Irish Nation, like all Nations, has an indefeasible right
to Freedom.
3. Freedom denotes Separation and Sovereignty.
4. The right to National Freedom rests upon the right to Personal
Freedom, and true National Freedom guarantees true Personal
Freedom.
5. The object of Freedom is the pursuit of the happiness of the
Nation and of the individuals that compose the Nation.
6. Freedom is necessary to the happiness and prosperity of the
Nation. In the particular case of Ireland, Separation from
England is necessary not only to the happiness and prosperity
but almost to the continued existence of Ireland, inasmuch as
the interests of Ireland and England are fundamentally at
variance, and while the two nations are connected England must
necessarily predominate.
7. The National Sovereignty implied in National Freedom holds good
both externally and internally, _i.e._, the sovereign rights of
the Nation are good as against all other nations and good as
against all parts of the Nation. Hence--
8. The Nation has jurisdiction over lives and property within the
Nation.
9. The People are the Nation.
All this Tone taught, not in the dull pages of a treatise, but in the
living phrases that dropped from him in his conversation, in his
correspondence, in his diaries, in his impassioned pleas for his nation
to the Executive Directory of France. Some of the greatest teachers have
been literary men only incidentally; but their teaching has none the
less the splendour of great literary utterance. The masters of
literature do not always label themselves. When a great soul utters a
great truth have we not always great literature? That is why the true
gospels of the world are always true literature. Those who have preached
the divine worth of faith and justice and charity and freedom have done
so in glorious and imperishable words: and the reason is that God speaks
through them.
That God spoke to Ireland through Tone and through those who, after
Tone, have taken up his testimony, that Tone’s teaching and theirs is
true and great and that no other teaching as to Ireland has any truth or
worthiness at all, is a thing upon which I stake all my mortal and all
my immortal hopes. And I ask the men and women of my generation to stake
their mortal and immortal hopes with me.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SPIRITUAL NATION
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
This Tract continues and develops the argument commenced in “Ghosts,”
and pursued in “The Separatist Idea,” and should be read in connection
with those Tracts (which form Nos. 10 and 11 of this series). It is not
to be taken as an attempt to represent the whole of Davis’s mind or to
summarise the whole of his teaching. I consider him here chiefly as one
of the Separatist voices.
P. H. PEARSE.
ST. ENDA’S COLLEGE,
RATHFARNHAM,
13th February, 1916.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SPIRITUAL NATION
I
I have said that all Irish nationality is implicit in the definition of
Tone, and that later teachers have simply made one or other of its
truths explicit. It was characteristic of Tone that he stated his case
in terms of practical politics. But the statement was none the less a
complete statement. To claim independence as the indefeasible right of
Ireland is to claim everything for Ireland, all spiritual exaltation and
all worldly pomp to which she is entitled. Independence one must
understand to include spiritual and intellectual independence as well as
political independence; or rather, true political independence requires
spiritual and intellectual independence as its basis, or it tends to
become unstable, a thing resting merely on interests which change with
time and circumstance.
I make a distinction between spiritual and intellectual independence
corresponding to the distinction which exists between the spiritual and
the intellectual parts in man. The distinction is not easy to express,
but it is a real distinction. The soul is not the mind, though it acts
by way of the mind, and it is through the mind one gets such glimpses of
the soul as are possible. Obviously, a great and beautiful soul may
sometimes have to express itself through a very ordinary mind, and a
mean or a wicked soul may sometimes express itself through a regal mind;
and these possibilities are full of confusion for us, so that when we
think we know a man, it is sometimes only his intellect we know, the
dialectician or the rhetorician or the idiot in him, and not the strange
immortal thing behind. We can learn to know a man’s mind, but we can
rarely be quite sure that we know his soul. That is a book which only
God reads plainly.
Now I think that one may speak of a national soul and of a national
mind, and distinguish one from the other, and that this is not merely
figurative speaking. When I was a child I believed that there was
actually a woman called Erin, and had Mr. Yeats’ “Kathleen Ni Houlihan”
been then written and had I seen it, I should have taken it not as an
allegory, but as a representation of a thing that might happen any day
in any house. This I no longer believe as a physical possibility, nor
can I convince myself that a friend of mine is right in thinking that
there is actually a mystical entity which is the soul of Ireland, and
which expresses itself through the mind of Ireland. But I believe that
there is really a spiritual tradition which is the soul of Ireland, the
thing which makes Ireland a living nation, and that there is such a
spiritual tradition corresponding to every true nationality. This
spiritual thing is distinct from the intellectual facts in which chiefly
it makes its revelation, and it is distinct from them in a way analogous
to that in which a man’s soul is distinct from his mind. Like other
spiritual things, it is independent of the material, whereas the mind is
to a large extent dependent upon the material.
I have sometimes thought (but I do not put this forward as a settled
belief which I am prepared to defend) that spiritually England and the
United States are one nation, while intellectually they are apart. I am
sure that spiritually the Walloons of Belgium are one nation with the
French, and that spiritually the Austrians are one nation with the
Germans. The spiritual thing which is the essential thing in nationality
would seem to reside chiefly in language (if by language we understand
literature and folklore as well as sounds and idioms), and to be
preserved chiefly by language; but it reveals itself in all the arts,
all the institutions, all the inner life, all the actions and goings
forth of the nation. It expresses itself fully and magnificently in a
great free nation like ancient Greece or modern Germany; it expresses
itself only partially and unworthily in an enslaved nation like Ireland.
But the soul of the enslaved and broken nation may conceivably be a more
splendid thing than the soul of the great free nation; and that is one
reason why the enslavements of old and glorious nations that have taken
place so often in history are the most terrible things that have ever
happened in the world.
If nationality be regarded as the sum of the facts, spiritual and
intellectual, which mark off one nation from another, and freedom as the
condition which allows those facts full scope and development, it will
be seen that both the spiritual and intellectual fact, nationality, and
the physical condition, freedom, enter into a proper definition of
independence or nationhood. Freedom is a condition which can be lost and
won and lost again; nationality is a life which, if once lost, can never
be recovered. A nation is a stubborn thing, very hard to kill; but a
dead nation does not come back to life, any more than a dead man. There
will never again be a Ligurian nation, nor an Aztec nation, nor a
Cornish nation.
Irish nationality is an ancient spiritual tradition, and the Irish
nation could not die as long as that tradition lived in the heart of one
faithful man or woman. But had the last repositor of the Gaelic
tradition, the last unconquered Gael, died, the Irish nation was no
more. Any free state that might thereafter be erected in Ireland,
whatever it might call itself, would certainly not be the historic Irish
nation.
Davis was the first of modern Irishmen to make explicit the truth that a
nationality is a spirituality. Tone had postulated the great primal
truth that Ireland must be free. Davis, accepting that and developing
it, stated the truth in its spiritual aspect, that Ireland must be
herself; not merely a free self-governing state, but authentically the
Irish nation, bearing all the majestic marks of her nationhood. That the
nation may live, the Irish life, both the inner life and the outer life,
must be conserved. Hence the language, which is the main repository of
the Irish life, the folklore, the literature, the music, the art, the
social customs, must be conserved. Davis fully realised, with the Gaelic
poets, that a nationality connotes a civilisation, and that a
civilisation is a body of traditions. He is thus the lineal ancestor of
the spiritual movement embodied in our day in the Gaelic League. Tone
had set the feet of Ireland on a steep; Davis bade her in her journey
remember her old honour and her old sanctity, the fame of Tara and of
Clonmacnois. Tone is the Irish nation in action, gay and heroic and
terrible; Davis stands by the nation’s hearthside, a faithful sentinel.
Ireland is one. Tone had insisted upon the political unity of Ireland.
Davis thought of Ireland as a spiritual unity. He recognised that the
thing which makes her one is her history, that all her men and women are
the heirs of a common past, a past full of spiritual, emotional, and
intellectual experiences, which knits them together indissolubly. The
nation is thus not a mere agglomeration of individuals, but a living,
organic thing, with a body and a soul; twofold in nature, like man, yet
one.
Davis’s teaching on this head is resumed thus in one of his most lyric
paragraphs:
“This country of ours is no sand bank, thrown up by some recent
caprice of earth. It is an ancient land, honoured in the
archives of civilisation, traceable into antiquity by its piety,
its valour, and its sufferings. Every great European race has
sent its stream to the river of Irish mind. Long wars, vast
organisations, subtle codes, beacon crimes, leading virtues, and
self-mighty men were here. If we live influenced by wind and sun
and tree, and not by the passions and deeds of the past, we are
a thriftless and a hopeless people.”
And in another passage he gives the Gaelic League its watchwords:
“Men are ever valued most for peculiar and original qualities. A
man who can only talk commonplace, and act according to routine,
has little weight. To speak, look, and do what your own soul
from its depths orders you are credentials of greatness which
all men understand and acknowledge. Such a man’s dictum has more
influence than the reasoning of an imitative or common-place
man. He fills his circle with confidence. He is self-possessed,
firm, accurate, and daring. Such men are the pioneers of
civilisation and the rulers of the human heart.
“Why should not nations be judged thus? Is not a full indulgence
of its natural tendencies essential to a _people’s_
greatness?...
“The language which grows up with a people is conformed to their
organs, descriptive of their climate, constitution, and manners,
mingled inseparably with their history and their soil, fitted
beyond any other language to express their prevalent thoughts in
the most natural and efficient way.
“To impose another language on such a people is to send their
history adrift among the accidents of translation--’tis to tear
their identity from all places--’tis to substitute arbitrary
signs for picturesque and suggestive names--’tis to cut off the
entail of feeling, and separate the people from their
forefathers by a deep gulf--’tis to corrupt their very organs,
and abridge their power of expression.
“The language of a nation’s youth is the only easy and full
speech for its manhood and for its age. And when the language of
its cradle goes, itself craves a tomb....
“A people without a language of its own is only half a nation. A
nation should guard its language more than its territories--’tis
a surer barrier, and more important frontier, than fortress or
river.”
The insistence on the spiritual fact of nationality is Davis’s
distinctive contribution to political thought in Ireland, but it is not
the whole of Davis. It has become common to regard him as the type of
the “intellectual Nationalist,” who is distinguished from that other and
more troublesome person, the political irreconcilable. And there is a
passage of Gavan Duffy’s which lends countenance to this. But the view
is a false one as regards Davis and a false one as regards the
irreconcilables. Davis accepts the political doctrine of the
irreconcilables, and the irreconcilables accept the spiritual teaching
of Davis. The two teachings are facets of one truth. And Davis saw the
whole truth. He saw that Ireland must be independent of England. It is
necessary for me to prove this.
II
First to brush away a cobweb. It has been maintained that Davis would
have been satisfied with what is called a Federal settlement. The only
authority for this view seems to be the following passage in Gavan
Duffy’s _Young Ireland_: “Some of them [the “moderate men” who are
always with us] came to the conclusion that an Irish Legislature for
purely Irish purposes, as a sort of chapel of ease to the Imperial
Parliament, ought to be demanded. Mr. Sharman Crawford, on behalf of
himself and others unnamed, but understood to include members of both
Houses, announced that he desired the establishment of a Federal Union
between England and Ireland. He wished to see a ‘local body for the
purpose of local legislation, combined with an Imperial representation
for Imperial purposes’; and he considered that no ‘Act of the Imperial
Parliament having a separate action as regards Ireland should be a law
in Ireland unless passed or confirmed by her own legislative body.’ It
is a fact worthy to be pondered on that Davis was favourable to this
experiment. He desired and would have fought for independence, but he
was so little of what in later times has been called ‘an
irreconcilable,’ that such an alternative was not the first, but the
last, resource he contemplated. He desired to unite and elevate the
whole nation, and he would have accepted Federation as the scheme most
likely to accustom and reconcile Protestants to self-government, and as
a sure step towards legislative independence in the end.”
Thus Duffy on Davis. In a moment we shall let Davis speak for himself.
When Davis, in 1842, leaped into his place in Irish politics as the
chief influence on the staff of the _Nation_, all Ireland was organised
in the greatest constitutional movement and under the greatest
constitutional leader known to history. The demand of that movement was
for Repeal of the Union. Separatism was only an inarticulate faith of
the common people, remembered for the rest by a few noble old men like
Robert Holmes, by a few fiery exiles like Miles Byrne. The _Nation_
ranged itself under O’Connell’s banner, though from the beginning its
writers descried a wider horizon than O’Connell ever did or could. In
1843 O’Connell made what Duffy calls the “portentous” announcement that
he felt “a preference for the Federative plan, as tending more to the
utility of Ireland and the maintenance of the connection with England
than the proposal of simple Repeal.” Davis was away from Dublin, but
Duffy, in a personal letter to O’Connell, which he printed as a leading
article in the _Nation_, objected to the change of policy foreshadowed,
and insisted that “the Repeal Association had no more right to alter the
constitution on which its members were recruited than the Irish
Parliament had to surrender its functions without consulting its
constituents.” When Davis returned to town he “cordially accepted,” says
Duffy, the policy of resistance.
Davis soon spoke in the _Nation_. He welcomed the overtures of the
Federalists, but as to his own position and the _Nation’s_ position he
had no doubt. He settled it in one sentence:
“Let the Federalists be an independent and respected party, the
repealers an unbroken league--our stand is with the latter.”
So that, as between Federalism and Repeal, Davis defined himself a
Repealer. But was he not something more?
Davis died before Young Ireland had reached its full political stature
or found its full political voice. Just as the United Irishmen spoke
first the language of constitutionalism, so did the Young Irelanders.
Davis, as their spokesman, spoke their official language, but he hinted,
and more than hinted, at a fuller utterance. Mitchel, who took up
Davis’s post in 1845, spoke the fuller utterance, but at his fullest he
said nothing that had not been just as fully implied by Davis. For Davis
was a Separatist.
Davis wrote of Tone that he was “the wisest ... of our last generation.”
And he applied the adjective “wise” to Tone in contradistinction to
Grattan, whom in the same sentence he called “the most sublime” of the
last generation. Now, Tone was the Separatist and Grattan was the
British-Connectionist. When Davis wrote of Tone that he was wiser than
Grattan he did not mean that he was more worldly-wise, that he was an
abler business man; for Tone died a pauper and Grattan died wealthy;
Tone died in a dungeon and his body with difficulty obtained Christian
burial, Grattan was buried with pomp in Westminster Abbey. Davis meant
that Tone was a wiser statesman than Grattan, that Separation was a
wiser policy for Ireland than British-Connectionism. And he meant that
he, Davis, was a disciple of Tone.
In the light of this recognition such a passage as the following, which
were otherwise mere froth and foam, becomes full of substance:
“This is the history of two years never surpassed in importance
and honour. This is a history which our sons shall pant over and
envy. This is a history which pledges us to perseverance. This
is a history which guarantees success.
“Energy, patience, generosity, skill, tolerance, enthusiasm,
created and decked the agitation. The world attended us with its
thoughts and prayers. The graceful genius of Italy and the
profound intellect of Germany paused to wish us well. The fiery
heart of France tolerated our unarmed effort, and proferred its
aid. America sent us money, thought, love--she made herself a
part of Ireland in her passions and her organisations. From
London to the wildest settlement which throbs in the tropics or
shivers nigh the Pole, the empire of our mis-ruler was shaken by
our effort. To all earth we proclaimed our wrongs. To man and
God we made oath that we would never cease to strive till an
Irish nation stood supreme on this island. The genius which had
organised us, the energy which laboured, the wisdom that taught,
the manhood which rose up, the patience which obeyed, the faith
which swore, and the valour that strained for action, are here
still, experienced, recruited, resolute.
“The future shall realise the promise of the past.”
This is Davis’s passionate appeal to his own; and here is how he talks
to the enemy:
“And if England will do none of these things, will she allow us,
for good or ill, to govern ourselves, and see if we cannot
redress our own griefs? ‘No, never, never,’ she says, ‘though
all Ireland cried for it--never! Her fields shall be manured
with the shattered limbs of her sons, and her hearths quenched
in their blood; but never, while England has a ship or a
soldier, shall Ireland be free.’
“And this is your answer? We shall see--we shall see!
“And now, Englishmen, listen to us! Though you were to-morrow to
give us the best tenures on earth--though you were to equalise
Presbyterian, Catholic, and Episcopalian--though you were to
give us the amplest representation in your Senate--though you
were to restore our absentees, disencumber us of your debt, and
redress every one of our fiscal wrongs--and though, in addition
to all this, you plundered the treasuries of the world to lay
gold at our feet, and exhausted the resources of your genius to
do us worship and honour--still we tell you--we tell you, in the
names liberty and country--we tell you, in the name of
enthusiastic hearts, thoughtful souls, and fearless spirits--we
tell you, by the past, the present, and the future, we would
spurn your gifts, if the condition were that Ireland should
remain a province. We tell you, and all whom it may concern,
come what may--bribery or deceit, justice, policy, or war--we
tell you, in the name of Ireland, that Ireland shall be a
nation!”
Now, when Davis told England that, come bribery or deceit, justice,
policy, or war, _Ireland shall be a nation_; when Davis reminded the men
of Ireland that they had sworn “never to cease to strive until ‘_an
Irish nation stood supreme on this island_,’” he meant what he said. By
an Irish nation “standing supreme” he did really mean a Sovereign Irish
State living her own life, mistress of her own destinies, defending her
own shores, with her ambassadors in foreign capitals and her flag on the
seas. He tells us that he meant this. The most important of Davis’s
political articles are those in which he develops a foreign policy for
Ireland. And the most significant passage in all Davis’s political
writings is this (the italics are his own):
“Again, it is peculiarly needful for _Ireland_ to have a Foreign
Policy. Intimacy with the great powers will guard us from
English interference. Many of the minor German States were too
deficient in numbers, boundaries, and wealth to have outstood
the despotic ages of Europe, but for those foreign alliances,
which, whether resting on friendship or a desire to preserve the
balance of power, secured them against their rapacious
neighbours. And now time has given its sanction to their
continuance, and the progress of localisation guarantees their
future safety. When Ireland is a nation she will not, with her
vast population and her military character, require such
alliances as a _security_ against English _re-conquest_; but
they will be useful in banishing any _dreams of invasion_ which
might _otherwise_ haunt the brain of our old enemy.”
As a Separatist utterance this is as plenary as anything in Tone. The
“Irish nation” contemplated by Davis pre-supposed the breaking of the
English connection, for it was to have military resources sufficient to
guard against “an English _re-conquest_,” and was to seek foreign
alliances in order to banish any “_dreams of invasion_” cherished by
“our old enemy.”
To Davis, as to Tone, England was “the enemy.” Davis was as anti-English
as Tone, and, for all his gentleness and charity, more bitter in the
expression of his anti-Englishism than Tone was. To him the English
language was “a mongrel of a thousand breeds.” Modern English literature
was “surpassed” by French literature.
“France is an apostle of liberty--England the turnkey of the
world. France is the old friend, England the old foe, of
Ireland. From one we may judge all. England has defamed _all
other countries_ in order to make us and her other slaves
content in our fetters.”
Davis saw as clearly as Tone saw that the English connection is the
never-failing source of Ireland’s political evils, and he stated his
perception as clearly as Tone did.
“He who fancies some intrinsic objection to our nationality to
lie in the co-existence of two languages, three or four great
sects, and a dozen different races in Ireland, will learn that
in Hungary, Switzerland, Belgium, and America, different
languages, creeds, and races flourish kindly side by side, and
he will seek in English intrigues the real well of the bitter
woes of Ireland.”
Again:
“Germany, France, and America teach us that English economics
are not fit for a nation beginning to establish a trade, though
they may be for an old and plethoric trader; and, therefore,
that English and Irish trading interests are directly opposed.”
Yet again:
“The land tenures of France, Norway and Prussia are the reverse
of England’s. They resemble our own old tenures; they better
suit our character and our wants than the loose holdings and
servile wages system of modern England.”
And finally:
“We must believe and act up to the lesson taught by reason and
history, that England is our interested and implacable enemy--a
tyrant to her dependants--a calumniator of her neighbours, and
both the despot and the defamer of Ireland for near seven
centuries.”
It has thus been established, and established by his own words, first,
that as between Federalism and Repeal Davis was a Repealer: but,
secondly, that as between Repeal and Separation Davis was a Separatist.
In other words, he held the national position which Tone held, which
Lalor and Mitchel held, which the Fenians held, which the Irish
Volunteers hold. The fact that he would have accepted and worked on with
Repeal in no wise derogates from his status as a Separatist, any more
than the fact that many of us would have accepted Home Rule (or even
Devolution) and worked on with it derogates from our status as
Separatists. Home Rule to us would have been a means to an end: Repeal
to Davis would have been a means to an end.
In one of the phrases in which such men as he give watchwords to the
generations, a phrase which strangely anticipates the most famous of
Parnell’s phrases, Davis tells us what that end was:
“Ireland’s aspiration is for unbounded nationality.”
I have shown what he meant by “unbounded nationality”; he meant
sovereign nationhood, he meant spiritual, intellectual, and political
independence. The word “nationality” I have used here and elsewhere for
the inner thing which is a nation’s soul, and the word “nationhood” I
have made to include both that inner thing and the outer status,
political independence. It is obvious that Davis uses the term
“nationality” in the sense in which I use the term “nationhood,” for if
he meant only the inner spiritual thing his phrase would be meaningless.
In order to the proper adjustment of values we may now usefully set
down:
First, that the Federalism with which O’Connell dallied for a moment,
but which Davis and Young Ireland protested against and O’Connell
promptly disowned, abandoning it, indeed, with the contemptuous phrase:
“federalism is not worth _that_” (snapping his fingers), contemplated a
domestic Irish legislature to deal with domestic Irish affairs, adequate
Irish representation in an Imperial Parliament, and _power of veto in
the Irish Parliament over acts of the Imperial Parliament having a
separate action as regards Ireland_. It was thus a vastly bigger thing
than modern Home Rule, which reserves everything of real importance from
the jurisdiction of the Irish Parliament, which, far from giving the
Irish Parliament a veto over the acts of the Imperial Parliament
regarding Ireland, gives the Imperial Parliament a veto over all acts of
the Irish Parliament, and which preserves intact the power of the
Imperial Parliament to pass all sorts of laws binding Ireland and to
impose all sorts of taxation on Ireland, the Irish representation in the
Imperial Parliament to be a negligible quantity.
Secondly, that the Repeal of the Union, which, apart from his momentary
aberration into Federalism, was O’Connell’s life-long demand,
contemplated a Sovereign Irish Parliament co-ordinate with the English
Parliament and with absolute control of Irish taxation; and while there
was to be a common king, army, navy, and foreign policy, not a penny was
to be raised from Ireland for the financing of those concerns except by
the vote of the Irish Parliament. It will be seen that Repeal was as
much a bigger thing than the Home Rule of 1914 as O’Connell was a
greater man than Mr. Redmond. Repeal contemplated a sovereign
co-ordinate Parliament; Home Rule specifically contemplated a
subordinate Parliament. Under Repeal the Imperial Parliament would have
had no jurisdiction over any man of Ireland, over any sod of Ireland’s
soil, over any shilling of Ireland’s money; under Home Rule the
jurisdiction of the Imperial Parliament over these things and all other
things in Ireland was to have been absolute, for the Act laid down
(Clause One) that “the supreme power and authority of the Parliament of
the United Kingdom shall remain unaffected and undiminished over all
persons, matters and things in Ireland, and every part thereof.”
Thirdly, that even the noble and semi-independent status which would
have been secured to Ireland by Repeal was not sufficient for Tone, who
rose against the very constitution which Repeal sought to restore; for
Davis, who aspired to “unbounded nationality”; for Lalor, whose object
was “not to repeal the Union but the conquest,” and who “for Repeal had
never gone into agitation and would never go into insurrection”; for
Mitchel, who, far from accepting that partnership in the British Empire
on which Repeal was founded, avowed it as his aim in life to utterly
destroy the British Empire. What was it that these men wanted? They
wanted Separation; they wanted “to BREAK the connection with England,
the never-failing source of all our political evils.” Davis’s
principles, then, were Tone’s; and as to methods. That Davis would have
achieved Irish nationhood by peaceful means if he could, is undoubted.
Let it not be a reproach against Davis. Obviously, if a nation can
obtain its freedom without bloodshed, it is its duty so to obtain it.
Those of us who believe that, in the circumstances of Ireland, it is not
possible to obtain our freedom without bloodshed will admit thus much.
If England, after due pressure, were to say to us, “Here, take Ireland,”
no one would be so foolish as to answer, “No, we’d rather fight you for
it.” But things like that do not happen. One must fight, or at least be
ready to fight. And Davis knew this:
“The tribune’s tongue and poet’s pen
May sow the seed in slavish men;
But ’tis the soldier’s sword alone
Can reap the harvest when ’tis grown.”
And Davis was ready to fight. No one knew better than he that England
would yield only to force or the threat of force; and that England,
having once yielded, could be held to her bargain only by force. The
nation that he visioned was to be an armed nation; and armed for the
precise purpose of preventing any “reconquest” by England. No one saw
more clearly than Davis that Ireland made her mistake of mistakes when
her Volunteers abdicated their arms. Referring to Madden’s defence of
Grattan against Flood on the question of Simple Repeal, Davis writes:
“This is unanswerable, but Grattan should have gone further. The
revolution was effected mainly by the Volunteers, whom he had
inspired; arms could alone have preserved the constitution.
Flood was wrong in setting value on one form--Grattan in relying
on any; but before and after ’82 Flood seems to have had
glimpses that the question was one of might, as well as of
right, and that national laws could not last under such an alien
army.
“Taken as military representatives, the Convention at the
Rotunda was even more valuable than as a civic display. Mr.
Madden censures Grattan for having been an elaborate neutral
during these Reform dissensions; but that the result of _such_
neutrality ruined the Convention proves the comparative want of
power in Flood, who could have governed that Convention in spite
of the rascally English and the feeble Irish Whigs. Oh, had Tone
been in that council!”
The astonishing thing about Davis is that, writing in the still
constitutional _Nation_ of 1842-5, he was able to express his Separatist
faith so clearly, and to avow so openly his readiness to fight for that
faith. It took Duffy three years longer to reach the point which had
been reached in 1845 by his dead friend.
III
If we accept the definition of Irish freedom as “the Rights of Man in
Ireland” we shall find it difficult to imagine an apostle of Irish
freedom who is not a democrat. One loves the freedom of men because one
loves men. There is therefore a deep humanism in every true Nationalist.
There was a deep humanism in Tone; and there was a deep humanism in
Davis. The sorrow of the people affected Davis like a personal sorrow.
He had more respect for aristocracy than Tone had (Tone had none), and
would have been less ruthless in a revolution than Tone would have been.
But he was a democrat in this truest sense, that he loved the people,
and his love of the people was an essential part of the man and of his
Nationalism. Even his rhetoric (for Davis, unlike Tone, was a little
rhetorical) cannot disguise the sincerity of such passages as this:
“Think of the long, long patience of the people--their toils
supporting you--their virtues shaming you--their huts, their
hunger, their disease.
“To whosoever God hath given a heart less cold than stone, these
truths must cry day and night. Oh! how they cross us like
Banshees when we would range free on the mountain--how, as we
walk in the evening light amid flowers, they startle us from
rest of mind! Ye nobles! whose houses are as gorgeous as the
mote’s (which dwelleth in the sunbeam)--ye strong and haughty
squires--ye dames exuberant with tingling blood--ye maidens whom
no splendour has yet spoiled, will ye not think of the poor?...”
The real Davis must have been a greater man even than the Davis of the
essays, or the Davis of the songs. In literary expression Davis was
immature; in mind he was ripe beyond all his contemporaries. I cannot
call him a very great prose writer; I am not sure that I can call him a
poet at all. But I can call him a very great man, one of our greatest
men. None of his contemporaries had any doubt about his greatness. He
was the greatest influence among them, and the noblest influence; and he
has been the greatest and noblest influence in Irish history since Tone.
He was not Young Ireland’s most powerful prose writer: Mitchel was that.
He was not Young Ireland’s truest poet: Mangan was that, or, if not
Mangan, Ferguson. He was not Young Ireland’s ablest man of affairs:
Duffy was that. He was not Young Ireland’s most brilliant orator:
Meagher was that. Nevertheless, “Davis was our true leader,” said Duffy;
and when Davis died--the phrase is again Duffy’s--“it seemed as if the
sun had gone out of the heavens.” “The loss of this rare and noble
Irishman,” said Mitchel, “has never been repaired, neither to his
country nor to his friends.” What was it that made Davis so great in the
eyes of two such men, and two such different men, as Duffy and Mitchel?
It must have been the man’s immortal soul. The highest form of genius is
the genius for sanctity, the genius for noble life and thought. That
genius was Davis’s. Character is the greatest thing in a man; and
Davis’s character was such as the Apollo Belvidere is said to be in the
physical order--in his presence all men stood more erect. The Romans had
a noble word which summed up all moral beauty and all private and civic
valour: the word _virtus_. If English had as noble a word as that it
would be the word to apply to the thing which made Thomas Davis so great
a man.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SOVEREIGN PEOPLE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PREFACE
This pamphlet concludes the examination of the Irish definition of
freedom which I promised in “Ghosts.” For my part, I have no more to
say.
P. H. PEARSE.
ST. ENDA’S COLLEGE,
RATHFARNHAM,
31st March, 1916.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SOVEREIGN PEOPLE
I
National independence involves national sovereignty. National
sovereignty is twofold in its nature. It is both internal and external.
It implies the sovereignty of the nation over all its parts, over all
men and things within the nation; and it implies the sovereignty of the
nation as against all other nations. Nationality is a spiritual fact;
but nationhood includes physical freedom, and physical power in order to
the maintenance of physical freedom, as well as the spiritual fact of
nationality. This physical freedom is necessary to the healthy life, and
may even be necessary to the continued existence of the nation. Without
it the nation droops, withers, ultimately perhaps dies; only a very
steadfast nation, a nation of great spiritual and intellectual strength
like Ireland, can live for more than a few generations in its absence,
and without it even so stubborn a nation as Ireland would doubtless
ultimately perish. Physical freedom, in brief, is necessary to sane and
vigorous life; for physical freedom means precisely control of the
conditions that are necessary to sane and vigorous life. It is obvious
that these things are partly material, and that therefore national
freedom involves control of the material things which are essential to
the continued physical life and freedom of the nation. So that the
nation’s sovereignty extends not only to all the material possessions of
the nation, the nation’s soil and all its resources, all wealth and all
wealth-producing processes within the nation. In other words, no private
right to property is good as against the public right of the nation. But
the nation is under a moral obligation so to exercise its public right
as to secure strictly equal rights and liberties to every man and woman
within the nation. The whole is entitled to pursue the happiness and
prosperity of the whole, but this is to be pursued exactly for the end
that each of the individuals composing the whole may enjoy happiness and
prosperity, the maximum amount of happiness and prosperity consistent
with the happiness and prosperity of all the rest.
One may reduce all this to a few simple propositions:
1. The end of freedom is human happiness.
2. The end of national freedom is individual freedom; therefore,
individual happiness.
3. National freedom implies national sovereignty.
4. National sovereignty implies control of all the moral and
material resources of the nation.
I have insisted upon the spiritual fact of nationality; I have insisted
upon the necessity of physical freedom in order to the continued
preservation of that spiritual fact in a living people; I now insist
upon the necessity of complete control of the material resources of the
nation in order to the completeness of that physical freedom. And here I
think I give what has been called “the material basis of freedom” its
proper place and importance. A nation’s material resources are not the
nation, any more than a man’s food is the man; but the material
resources are as necessary to the nation’s life as the man’s food to the
man’s life.
And I claim that the nation’s sovereignty over the nation’s material
resources is absolute; but that obviously such sovereignty must be
exercised for the good of the nation and without prejudice to the rights
of other nations, since national sovereignty, like everything else on
earth, is subject to the laws of morality.
Now, the good of the nation means ultimately the good of the individual
men and women who compose the nation. Physically considered, what does a
nation consist of? It consists of its men and women; of all its men and
women, without any exceptions. Every man and every woman within the
nation has normally equal rights, but a man or a woman may forfeit his
or her rights by turning recreant to the nation. No class in the nation
has rights superior to those of any other class. No class in the nation
is entitled to privileges beyond any other class except with the consent
of the nation. The right and privilege to make laws or to administer
laws does not reside in any class within the nation; it resides in the
whole nation, that is, in the whole people, and can be lawfully
exercised only by those to whom it is delegated by the whole people. The
right to the control of the material resources of a nation does not
reside in any individual or in any class of individuals; it resides in
the whole people and can be lawfully exercised only by those to whom it
is delegated by the whole people, and in the manner in which the whole
people ordains. Once more, no individual right is good as against the
right of the whole people; but the people, in exercising its sovereign
rights, is morally bound to consider individual rights, to do equity
between itself and each of the individuals that compose it as well as to
see that equity is done between individual and individual.
To insist upon the sovereign control of the nation over all the property
within the nation is not to disallow the right to private property. It
is for the nation to determine to what extent private property may be
held by its members, and in what items of the nation’s material
resources private property shall be allowed. A nation may, for instance,
determine, as the free Irish nation determined and enforced for many
centuries, that private ownership shall not exist in land; that the
whole of a nation’s soil is the public property of the nation. A nation
may determine, as many modern nations have determined, that all the
means of transport within a nation, all its railways and waterways, are
the public property of the nation to be administered by the nation for
the general benefit. A nation may go further and determine that all
sources of wealth whatsoever are the property of the nation, that each
individual shall give his service for the nation’s good, and shall be
adequately provided for by the nation, and that all surplus wealth shall
go to the national treasury to be expended on national purposes, rather
than be accumulated by private persons. There is nothing divine or
sacrosanct in any of these arrangements; they are matters of purely
human concern, matters for discussion and adjustment between the members
of a nation, matters to be decided upon finally by the nation as a
whole; and matters in which the nation as a whole can revise or reverse
its decision whenever it seems good in the common interests to do so. I
do not disallow the right to private property; but I insist that all
property is held subject to the national sanction.
And I come back again to this: that the people are the nation; the whole
people, all its men and women; and that laws made or acts done by
anybody purporting to represent the people but not really authorised by
the people, either expressly or impliedly, to represent them and to act
for them do not bind the people; are a usurpation, an impertinence, a
nullity. For instance, a Government of capitalists, or a Government of
clerics, or a Government of lawyers, or a Government of tinkers, or a
Government of red-headed men, or a Government of men born on a Tuesday,
does not represent the people, and cannot bind the people, unless it is
expressly or impliedly chosen and accepted by the people to represent
and act for them; and in that case it becomes the lawful government of
the people, and continues such until the people withdraw their mandate.
Now, the people, if wise, will not choose the makers and administrators
of their laws on such arbitrary and fantastic grounds as the possession
of capital, or the possession of red heads, or the having been born on a
Tuesday; a Government chosen in such a manner, or preponderatingly
representing (even if not so deliberately chosen) capitalists,
red-headed men, or men born on a Tuesday will inevitably legislate and
govern in the interests of capitalists, red-headed men, or men born on a
Tuesday, as the case may be. The people, if wise, will choose as the
makers and administrators of their laws men and women actually and fully
representative of all the men and women of the nation, the men and women
of no property equally with the men and women of property; they will
regard such an accident as the possession of “property,” “capital,”
“wealth” in any shape, the possession of what is called “a stake in the
country,” as conferring no more right to represent the people than would
the accident of possessing a red head or the accident of having been
born on a Tuesday. And in order that the people may be able to choose as
a legislation and as a government men and women really and fully
representative of themselves, they will keep the choice actually or
virtually in the hands of the whole people; in other words, while, in
the exercise of their sovereign rights they may, if they will, delegate
the actual choice to some body among them, _i.e._, adopt a “restricted
franchise,” they will, if wise, adopt the widest possible
franchise--give a vote to every adult man and woman of sound mind. To
restrict the franchise in any respect is to prepare the way for some
future usurpation of the rights of the sovereign people. The people,
that is, the whole people, must remain sovereign not only in theory, but
in fact.
I assert, then, the divine right of the people, “God’s grant to Adam and
his poor children for ever,” to have and to hold this good green earth.
And I assert the sovereignty and the sanctity of the nations, which are
the people embodied and organised. The nation is a natural division, as
natural as the family, and as inevitable. That is one reason why a
nation is holy and why an empire is not holy. A nation is knit together
by natural ties, ties mystic and spiritual, and ties human and kindly;
an empire is at best held together by ties of mutual interest, and at
worst by brute force. The nation is the family in large; an empire is a
commercial corporation in large. The nation is of God; the empire is of
man--if it be not of the devil.
II
The democratic truths that I have just stated are implicit in Tone and
in Davis, though there was this difference between the two men, that
Tone had a manly contempt for “the gentry (as they affect to call
themselves),” while Davis had a little sentimental regard for them. But
Davis loved the people, as every Nationalist must love the people,
seeing that the people are the nation; his nationalism was not mere
devotion to an abstract idea, it was a devotion to the actual men and
women who make up this nation of Ireland, a belief in their rights, and
a resolve to establish them as the owners of Ireland and the masters of
all her destinies. There is no other sort of nationalism than this, the
nationalism which believes in and seeks to enthrone the sovereign
people. Tone had appealed to “that numerous and respectable class, the
men of no property,” and in that gallant and characteristic phrase he
had revealed his perception of a great historic truth, namely, that in
Ireland “the gentry (as they affect to call themselves)” have uniformly
been corrupted by England, and the merchants and middle-class
capitalists have, when not corrupted, been uniformly intimidated,
whereas the common people have for the most part remained unbought and
unterrified. It is, in fact, true that the repositories of the Irish
tradition, as well the spiritual tradition of nationality as the kindred
tradition of stubborn physical resistance to England, have been the
great, splendid, faithful, common people--that dumb multitudinous throng
which sorrowed during the penal night, which bled in ’98, which starved
in the Famine; and which is here still--what is left of it--unbought and
unterrified. Let no man be mistaken as to who will be lord in Ireland
when Ireland is free. The people will be lord and master. The people who
wept in Gethsemane, who trod the sorrowful way, who died naked on a
cross, who went down into hell, will rise again glorious and immortal,
will sit on the right hand of God, and will come in the end to give
judgment, a judge just and terrible.
Tone sounded the gallant _reveillé_ of democracy in Ireland. The man who
gave it its battle-cries was James Fintan Lalor. Lalor was a fiery
spirit, as of some angelic missionary, imprisoned for a few years in a
very frail tenement, drawing his earthly breath in pain; but strong with
a great spiritual strength and gifted with a mind which had the
trenchant beauty of steel. What he had to say for his people (and for
all mankind) was said in a very few words. This gospel of the Sovereign
People that Fintan Lalor delivered is the shortest of the gospels; but
so precious is it, so pregnant with meaning in its every word, that to
express its sense one would have to quote it almost as it stands; which
indeed one could do in a tract a very little longer than this. No one
who wrote as little as Lalor has ever written so well. In his first
letter he laments that he has never learned the art of literary
expression; in “The Faith of a Felon” he says that he has all his life
been destitute of books. Commonly, it is by reading and writing that a
man learns to write greatly. Lalor, who had read little and written
nothing, wrote greatly from the moment he began to write. The Lord God
must have inspired the poor crippled recluse, for no mortal man could of
himself have uttered the things he uttered.
James Fintan Lalor, in Duffy’s phrase, “announced himself” in Irish
politics in 1847, and he announced himself “with a voice of assured
confidence and authority.” In a letter to Duffy, which startled all the
Young Irelanders and which set Mitchel’s heart on fire, he declared
himself one of the people, one who therefore knew the people: and he
told the young men that there was neither strength nor even a
disposition among the people to carry on O’Connell’s Repeal, but that
there was strength in the people to carry national independence if
national independence were associated with something else.
“A mightier question is in the land--one beside which Repeal
dwarfs down to a petty parish question; one on which Ireland may
not alone try her own right but try the right of the world; on
which she would be not merely an asserter of old principles,
often asserted, and better asserted before her, an humble and
feeble imitator and follower of other countries--but an original
inventor, propounder, and propagandist, in the van of the earth,
and heading the nations; on which her success or her failure
alike would never be forgotten by man, but would make her for
ever a lodestar of history; on which Ulster would be not ‘on her
flank’ but at her side, and on which, better and best of all,
she need not plead in humble petitions her beggarly wrongs and
how beggarly she bore them, nor plead any right save the right
of her MIGHT....
“Repeal may perish with all who support it sooner than I will
consent to be fettered on this question, or to connect myself
with any organised body that would ban or merge, in favour of
Repeal or any other measure, that greatest of all our rights on
this side of heaven--God’s grant to Adam and his poor children
for ever, when He sent them from Eden in His wrath and bid them
go work for their bread. Why should I name it?”
His proposals as to means thrilled the young orators and debaters as the
ringing voice of an angel might thrill them:
“As regards the use of none but legal means, any means and all
means might be made illegal by Act of Parliament, and such
pledge, therefore, is passive obedience. As to the pledge of
abstaining from the use of any but moral force, I am quite
willing to take such pledge, if, and provided, the English
Government agree to take it also; but ‘if not, not.’ Let England
pledge not to argue the question by the prison, the
convict-ship, or the halter; and I will readily pledge not to
argue it in any form of physical logic. But dogs tied and stones
loose are no bargain. Let the stones be given up; or unmuzzle
the wolf-dog....”
At Duffy’s invitation Lalor developed his doctrines in two letters to
the _Nation_, one addressed to the landlords and one to the people. To
the landlords he spoke this ominous warning:
“Refuse it [to be Irishmen], and you commit yourself to the
position of paupers, to the mercy of English Ministers and
English members; you throw your very existence on English
support, which England soon may find too costly to afford; you
lie at the feet of events; you lie in the way of a people and
the movement of events and the march of a people shall be over
you.”
The essence of Lalor’s teaching is that the right to the material
ownership of a nation’s soil co-exists with the right to make laws for
the nation and that both are inherent in the same authority, the
Sovereign People. He held in substance that Separation from England
would be valueless unless it put the people--the actual people and not
merely certain rich men--of Ireland in effectual ownership and
possession of the soil of Ireland; as for a return to the _status quo_
before 1800, it was to him impossible and unthinkable. When Mitchel’s
_United Irishman_ was suppressed in 1848, Martin’s _Irish Felon_, with
Lalor as its standard-bearer and spokesman, stepped into the breach; and
in an article entitled “The Rights of Ireland” in the first issue of
that paper (June 24, 1848) Lalor delivered the new gospel. A long
passage must be quoted in full; but it can be quoted without any
comment, for it is self-luminous:
“Without agreement as to our objects we cannot agree on the
course we should follow. It is requisite the paper should have
but one purpose; and the public should understand what that
purpose is. Mine is not to repeal the Union, or restore
Eighty-two. This is not the year ’82, this is the year ’48. For
repeal I never went into ‘Agitation,’ and will not go into
insurrection. On that question, I refuse to arm, or to act in
any mode; and the country refuses. O’Connell made no mistake
when he pronounced it not worth the price of one drop of blood;
and for myself, I regret it was not left in the hands of
Conciliation Hall, whose lawful property it was, and is. Moral
force and repeal, the means and the purpose, were just fitted to
each other--_Arcades ambo_, balmy Arcadians both. When the means
were limited, it was only proper and necessary to limit the
purpose. When the means were enlarged, that purpose ought to
have been enlarged also. Repeal, in its vulgar meaning, I look
on as utterly impracticable by any mode of action whatever; and
the constitution of ’82 was absurd, worthless, and worse than
worthless. The English Government will never concede or
surrender to any species of moral force whatsoever; and the
country-peasantry will never arm and fight for it--neither will
I. If I am to stake life and fame, it must assuredly be for
something better and greater, more likely to last, more likely
to succeed, and better worth success. And a stronger passion, a
higher purpose, a nobler and more needful enterprise is
fermenting in the hearts of the people. A mightier question
moves Ireland to-day than that of merely repealing the Act of
Union. Not the constitution that Wolfe Tone died to abolish, but
the constitution that Tone died to obtain--independence; full
and absolute independence for this island, and for every man
within this island. Into no movement that would leave an enemy’s
garrison in possession of all our lands, masters of our
liberties, our lives, and all our means of life and
happiness--into no such movement will a single man of the
greycoats enter with an armed hand, whatever the town population
may do. On a wider fighting field, with stronger positions and
greater resources than are afforded by the paltry question of
Repeal, must we close for our final struggle with England, or
sink and surrender.
“Ireland her own--Ireland her own, and all therein, from the sod
to the sky. The soil of Ireland for the people of Ireland, to
have and hold from God alone who gave it--to have and to hold to
them and their heirs for ever, without suit or service, faith or
fealty, rent or render, to any power under Heaven.... When a
greater and more ennobling enterprise is on foot, every inferior
and feebler project or proceeding will soon be left in the hands
of old women, of dastards, imposters, swindlers, and imbeciles.
All the strength and manhood of the island--all the courage,
energies, and ambition--all the passion, heroism, and
chivalry--all the strong men and strong minds--all those that
make revolutions will quickly desert it, and throw themselves
into the greater movement, throng into the larger and loftier
undertaking, and flock round the banner that flies nearest the
sky. There go the young, the gallant, the gifted, the daring;
and there, too, go the wise. For wisdom knows that in national
action _littleness_ is more fatal than the wildest rashness;
that greatness of object is essential to greatness of effort,
strength, and success; that a revolution ought never to take its
stand on low or narrow ground, but seize on the broadest and
highest ground it can lay hands on; and that a petty enterprise
seldom succeeds. Had America aimed or declared for less than
independence, she would, probably, have failed, and been a
fettered slave to-day.
“Not to repeal the Union, then, but the conquest--not to disturb
or dismantle the empire, but to abolish it utterly for ever--not
to fall back on ’82, but act up to ’48--not to resume or restore
an old constitution, but found a new nation and raise up a free
people, and strong as well as free, and secure as well as
strong, based on a peasantry rooted like rocks in the soil of
the land--this is my object, as I hope it is yours; and this,
you may rest assured, is the easier, as it is the nobler and
more pressing enterprise.”
Lalor proceeds to develop his teaching as to the ownership of the soil
of Ireland by its people:
“The principle I state, and mean to stand upon, is this: that
the entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the
sun and down to the centre, is vested of right in the people of
Ireland; that they, and none but they, are the land-owners and
law-makers of this island; that all laws are null and void not
made by them, and all titles to land invalid not conferred or
confirmed by them; and that this full right of ownership may and
ought to be asserted by any and all means which God has put in
the power of man. In other, if not plainer words, I hold and
maintain that the entire soil of a country belongs of right to
the entire people of that country, and is the rightful property,
not of any one class, but of the nation at large, in full
effective possession, to let to whom they will, on whatever
tenures, terms, rents, services, and conditions they will; one
condition, however, being unavoidable and essential, the
condition that the tenant shall bear full, true, and undivided
fealty and allegiance to the nation, and the laws of the nation
whose lands he holds, and own no allegiance whatsoever to any
other prince, power, or people, or any obligation of obedience
or respect to their will, orders, or laws. I hold, further, and
firmly believe, that the enjoyment by the people of this right
of first ownership of the soil is essential to the vigour and
vitality of all other rights, to their validity, efficacy, and
value; to their secure possession and safe exercise. For let no
people deceive themselves, or be deceived by the words, and
colours, and phrases, and forms of a mock freedom, by
constitutions, and charters, and articles, and franchise. These
things are paper and parchment, waste and worthless. Let laws
and institutions say what they will, this fact will be stronger
than all laws, and prevail against them--the fact that those who
own your lands will make your laws, and command your liberties
and your lives. But this is tyranny and slavery; tyranny in its
widest scope and worst shape; slavery of body and soul, from the
cradle to the coffin--slavery with all its horrors, and with
none of its physical comforts and security; even as it is in
Ireland, where the whole community is made up of tyrants,
slaves, and slave-drivers....”
As to the question of dealing with land-owners, Lalor re-echoes Tone and
Davis:
“There are, however, many landlords, perhaps, and certainly a
few, not fairly chargeable with the crimes of their order; and
you may think it hard they should lose their lands. But
recollect the principle I assert would make Ireland, _in fact_,
as she is _of right_, mistress and queen of all those lands;
that she, poor lady, had ever a soft heart and grateful
disposition; and that she may, if she please, in reward of
allegiance, confer new titles or confirm the old. Let us crown
her a queen; and then--let her do with her lands as a queen may
do.
“In the case of any existing interest, of what nature soever, I
feel assured that no question but one would need to be answered.
Does the owner of that interest assent to swear allegiance to
the people of Ireland, and to hold in fee from the Irish nation?
If he assent he may be assured he will suffer no loss. No
eventual or permanent loss I mean; for some temporary loss he
must assuredly suffer. But such loss would be incidental and
inevitable to any armed insurrection whatever, no matter on what
principle the right of resistance should be resorted to. If he
refuses, then I say--away with him--out of this land with
him--himself and all his robber rights and all the things
himself and his rights have brought into our island--blood and
tears, and famine, and the fever that goes with famine.”
In the issue of the _Irish Felon_ for July 8, Lalor, expecting
suppression and arrest, wrote “The Faith of a Felon”--a statement which,
ill-framed and ill-connected though he knew it to be, he firmly believed
to “carry the fortunes of Ireland,” and sent “forth to its fate, to
conquer or be conquered.” It was conquered for the time, but, like such
immortal things, it was destined to rise again. In it Lalor re-affirmed
his principles and re-stated his programme. The idea of the ownership of
the soil by the whole people, which is his essential contribution to
modern political thought, was in this statement put more clearly even
than before:
“What forms the right of property in land? I have never read in
the direction of that question. I have all my life been
destitute of books. But from the first chapter of Blackstone’s
second book, the only page I ever read on the subject, I know
that jurists are unanimously agreed in considering ‘first
occupancy’ to be the only true original foundation on the right
of property and possession of land.
“Now, I am prepared to prove that ‘occupancy’ wants every
character and quality that could give it moral efficacy as a
foundation of right. I am prepared to prove this, when
‘occupancy’ has first been _defined_. If no definition can be
given, I am relieved from the necessity of showing any claim
founded on occupancy to be weak and worthless.
“To any plain understanding the right of private property is
very simple. It is the right of man to possess, enjoy, and
transfer the substance and use of whatever HE HAS HIMSELF
CREATED. This title is good against the world; and it is the
_sole_ and _only_ title by which a valid right of absolute
private property can possibly vest.
“But no man can plead any such title to a right of property in
the substance of the soil.
“The earth, together with all it _spontaneously_ produces, is
the free and common property of all mankind, of natural right,
and by the grant of God--and all men being equal, no man,
therefore, has a right, to appropriate exclusively to himself
any part or portion thereof, except with and by the _common
consent_ and _agreement_ of all other men.
“The sole original right of property in land which I acknowledge
to be morally valid, is this right of common consent and
agreement. Every other I hold to be fabricated and fictitious,
null, void, and of no effect.”
As for Lalor’s programme of action, it was in brief:
1. To refuse all rent and arrears beyond the value of the overplus
of harvest remaining after due provision for the tenants’
subsistence for twelve months.
2. To resist eviction under the English law of ejection.
3. To refuse all rent to the usurping proprietors, until the
people, the true proprietors, had decided in national congress
what rents were to be paid, and to whom.
4. That the people should decide that rents should “be paid to
_themselves_, the people, for public purposes, and for behoof
and benefit of them, the entire general people.”
Lalor saw clearly that this programme might, and almost certainly would,
lead to armed revolution. If so--
“Welcome be the will of God. We must only try to keep our
harvest, to offer a peaceful, passive resistance, to barricade
the island, to break up the roads, to break down the
bridges--and, should need be, and favourable occasions offer,
surely we may venture to try the steel....
“It has been said to me that such a war, on the principles I
propose, would be looked on with detestation by Europe. I assert
the contrary. I say such a war would propagate itself throughout
Europe. Mark the words of this prophecy:--The principle I
propound goes to the foundations of Europe, and, sooner or
later, will cause Europe to outrise. Mankind will yet be masters
of the earth. The rights of the people to make the laws--this
produced the first great modern earthquake, whose latest shocks,
even now, are heaving in the heart of the world. The right of
the people to own the land--this will produce the next. Train
your hands, and your son’s hands, gentlemen of earth, for you
and they will yet have to use them. I want to put Ireland
foremost, in the van of the world, at the head of the
nations--to set her aloft in the blaze of the sun, and to make
her for ages the lodestar of history. Will she take the path I
point out--the path to be free, and famed, and feared, and
followed--the path that goes sunward?...”
A fortnight later, in the _Irish Felon_ for July 22, Lalor wrote the
article “Clearing the Decks,” which was intended to declare the
revolution. It was worthy of a braver response than it received:
“If Ireland be conquered now--or what would be worse--if she
fails to fight, it will certainly not be the fault of the people
at large, of those who form the rank and file of the nation. The
failure and fault will be that of those who have assumed to take
the office of commanding and conducting the march of a people
for liberty without, perhaps, having any commission from nature
to do so, or natural right, or acquired requisite. The general
population of this island are ready to find and furnish
everything which can be demanded from the mass of a people--the
members, the physical strength, the animal daring, the health,
hardihood, and endurance. No population on earth of equal amount
would furnish a more effective military conscription. We want
only competent leaders--men of courage and capacity--men whom
nature meant and made for leaders.... These leaders are yet to
be found. Can Ireland furnish them? It would be a sheer and
absurd blasphemy against nature to doubt it. The first blow will
bring them out....
“In the case of Ireland now there is but _one fact_ to deal
with, and _one question_ to be considered. The _fact_ is
this--that there are at present in occupation of our country
some 40,000 armed men, in the livery and service of England; and
the _question_ is--how best and soonest to kill and capture
these 40,000?...
“Meanwhile, however, remember this--that somewhere, and somehow,
and by somebody, a beginning must be made. Who strikes the first
blow for Ireland? Who wins a wreath that will be green for
ever?”
That was Lalor’s last word. The issue containing the article was seized,
the _Irish Felon_ suppressed, and Martin and Lalor arrested. In a few
months Lalor was released from prison a dying man. From his sick bed he
tried to rally the beaten forces; he actually went down into North
Munster and endeavoured to lead the people. This effort--the almost
forgotten rising of 1849--failed. Lalor died in Dublin a few weeks
after. But his word has marched on, conquering.
III
The doctrine and proposals of Fintan Lalor stirred John Mitchel
profoundly. Mitchel was not a democrat by instinct, as Tone and Lalor
were; he was not a revolutionary by process of thought, as Tone and
Lalor were; he was not from the beginning of his public life a believer
in the possibility and desirability of physical force, as Tone and Lalor
were. He became all these things; and he became all these things
suddenly. It was as if revolutionary Ireland, speaking through Lalor,
had said to Mitchel, “Follow me,” and Mitchel, leaving all things,
followed. Duffy and others were amazed that the most conservative of the
Young Irelanders should become the most revolutionary. They ought not to
have been amazed. That deep and passionate man could not have been
anything by halves. As well expect a Paul or a Teresa or an Ignatius
Loyola to be a “moderate” Christian as John Mitchel, once that “Follow
me” had been spoken, to be a “moderate” Nationalist. Mitchel was of the
stuff of which the great prophets and ecstatics have been made. He did
really hold converse with God; he did really deliver God’s word to man,
delivered it fiery-tongued.
Mitchel’s is the last of the four gospels of the new testament of Irish
nationality, the last and the fieriest and the most sublime. It flames
with apocalyptic wrath, such wrath as there is nowhere else in
literature. And it is because the man loved so well that his wrath was
so terrible. It is foolish to say of Mitchel, as it has been said, that
his is a gospel of hate, that hate is barren, that a nation cannot feed
itself on hate without peril to its soul, or at least to the sanity and
sweetness of its mind, that Davis, who preached love, is a truer leader
and guide for Ireland than Mitchel, who preached hate. The answer to
this is--first, that love and hate are not mutually antagonistic but
mutually complementary; that love connotes hate, hate of the thing that
denies or destroys or threatens the thing beloved: that love of good
connotes hate of evil, love of truth hate of falsehood, love of freedom
hate of oppression; that hate may be as pure and good a thing as love,
just as love may be as impure and evil a thing as hate; that hate is no
more ineffective and barren than love, both being as necessary to moral
sanity and growth as sun and storm are to physical life and growth. And,
secondly, that Mitchel, the least apologetic of men, was at pains to
explain that his hate was not of English men and women, but of the
English thing which called itself a government in Ireland, of the
English Empire, of English commercialism supported by English
militarism, a thing wholly evil, perhaps the most evil thing that there
has ever been in the world. To talk of such hate as unholy, unchristian,
barren, is to talk folly or hypocrisy. Such hate is not only a good
thing, but is a duty.
When Mitchel’s critics (or his own Doppelganger, who was his severest
critic) objected that his glorious wrath was merely destructive, a thing
splendid in slaying, but without any fecundity or life-giving principle
within it, Mitchel’s answer was adequate and conclusive:
“... Can you dare to pronounce that the winds, and the
lightnings, which tear down, degrade, destroy, execute a more
ignoble office than the volcanoes and subterranean deeps that
upheave, renew, recreate? Are the nether fires holier than the
upper fires? The waters that are above the firmament, do they
hold of Ahriman, and the waters that are below the firmament, of
Ormuzd? Do you take up a reproach against the lightnings for
that they only shatter and shiver, but never construct? Or have
you a quarrel with the winds because they fight against the
churches, and build them not? In all nature, spiritual and
physical, do you not see that some powers and agents have it for
their function to abolish and demolish and derange--other some
to construct and set in order? But is not the destruction, then,
as natural, as needful, as the construction?--Rather tell me, I
pray you, which is construction--which destruction? This
destruction _is_ creation: Death is Birth and
‘The quick spring like weeds out of the dead.’
Go to--the revolutionary Leveller is your only architect.
Therefore, take courage, all you that Jacobins be, and stand
upon your rights, and do your appointed work with all your
strength, let the canting fed classes rave and shriek as they
will--where you see a respectable, fair-spoken Lie sitting in
high places, feeding itself fat on human sacrifices--down with
it, strip it naked, and pitch it to the demons; whenever you see
a greedy tyranny (constitutional or other) grinding the faces of
the poor, join battle with it on the spot--conspire,
confederate, and combine against it, resting never till the huge
mischief come down, though the whole ‘structure of society’ come
down along with it. Never you mind funds and stocks; if the
price of the things called _Consols_ depend on lies and fraud,
down with them, too. Take no heed of ‘social disorganisation’;
you cannot bring back chaos--never fear; no disorganisation in
the world can be so complete but there will be a germ of new
order in it; sans-culottism, when she hath conceived, will bring
forth venerable institutions. Never spare; work joyfully,
according to your nature and function; and when your work is
effectually done, and it is time for the counter operations to
begin, why, then, you can fall a-constructing, if you have a
gift that way; if not, let others do _their_ work, and take your
rest, having discharged your duty. Courage, Jacobins! for ye,
too, are ministers of heaven....
“I do believe myself incapable of desiring private vengeance; at
least, I have never yet suffered any private wrong atrocious
enough to stir up that sleeping passion. The vengeance I seek is
the righting of my country’s wrong, which includes my own.
Ireland, indeed, needs vengeance; but this is public
vengeance--public justice. Herein England is truly a great
public criminal. England! all England, operating through her
Government; through all her organised and effectual public
opinion, press, platform, pulpit, Parliament, has done, is
doing, and means to do, grievous wrong to Ireland. She must be
punished; that punishment will, as I believe, come upon her by
and through Ireland; and so will Ireland be _avenged_.”
This denunciation of woe against the enemy of Irish freedom is as
necessary a part of the religion of Irish nationality as are Davis’s
pleas for love and concord between brother Irishmen. The Church that
preaches peace and goodwill launches her anathemas against the enemies
of peace and goodwill. Mitchel’s gospel is part of the testament, even
as Davis’s is; it but reveals a different facet of the truth. A man must
accept the whole testament; but a man may prefer Davis to Mitchel, just
as a man may prefer the gospel according to St. Luke, the kindliest and
most human of the gospels, to the gospel of St. John.
Mitchel’s teaching contains nothing that is definitely new and his. He
accepted Tone; he accepted Davis; he accepted in particular Lalor; and
he summed up and expressed all their teaching in a language transfigured
by wrath and vision. Tone is the intellectual ancestor of the whole
modern movement of Irish nationalism, of Davis, and Lalor, and Mitchel,
and all their followers; Davis is the immediate ancestor of the
spiritual and imaginative part of that movement, embodied in our day in
the Gaelic League; Lalor is the immediate ancestor of the specifically
democratic part of that movement, embodied to-day in the more virile
labour organisations; Mitchel is the immediate ancestor of Fenianism,
the noblest and most terrible manifestation of this unconquered nation.
And just as all the four have reached, in different terms, the same
gospel, making plain in turn different facets of the same truth, so the
movements I have indicated are but facets of a whole, different
expressions, and each one a necessary expression, of the august, though
denied, truth of Irish Nationhood; nationhood in virtue of an old
spiritual tradition of nationality, nationhood involving Separation and
Sovereignty, nationhood resting on and guaranteeing the freedom of all
the men and women of the nation and placing them in effective possession
of the physical conditions necessary to the reality and to the
perpetuation of their freedom, nationhood declaring and establishing and
defending itself by the good smiting sword. I who have been in and of
each of these movements make here the necessary synthesis, and in the
name of all of them I assert the forgotten truth, and ask all who accept
it to testify to it with me, here in our day and, if need be, with our
blood.
At the end of a former essay I set that prophecy of Mitchel’s as to the
coming of a time when the kindred and tongues and nations of the earth
should give their banners to the wind; and his prayer that he, John
Mitchel, might live to see it, and that on that great day of the Lord he
might have breath and strength enough to stand under Ireland’s immortal
Green. John Mitchel did not live to see it. He died, an old man, forty
years before its dawning. But the day of the Lord is here, and you and I
have lived to see it.
And we are young. And God has given us strength and courage and counsel.
May He give us victory.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Notes
This file uses _underscores_ to indicate italic text.
In some cases, Irish words appear to be printed with grave accents
rather than the acute síneadh fada. In this edition all Irish words use
only the modern standard fada.
In the Graveside Panegyric for O’Donovan Rossa, the Irish language
passage was printed in cló Gaelach, Irish script with lenition dots. It
is given here in Roman script, with lenition indicated with the letter h
as in modern Irish.
New original cover art included with this ebook is granted to the public
domain.
The following changes and corrections have been made:
• p. 10: Added “a” to phrase “the maintenance of a portion of the
machinery.”
• p. 23: Added period after phrase “where the master went the disciples
followed.”
• p. 32: Replaced “I I” with “I” in phrase “I have often thought that
the type of English education in Ireland was the Laocoon.”
• p. 55: Replaced “definace” with “defiance” in phrase “some defiance
flung at the Englishry.”
• p. 142: Replaced “atricle” with “article” in phrase “When I wrote the
article for December 1913.”
• p. 147: Replaced “Sinn Fein” with “Sinn Féin” in phrase “The National
Council of Sinn Féin recently sent an anti-enlisting car through the
streets of Dublin.”
• p. 171: Replaced “it it” with “it is” in phrase “it is not very
amusing.”
• p. 179: Replaced “do no” with “do not” in phrase “But these
conditions do not to any extent exist in Ireland.”
• p. 190: Replaced “Keatings” with “Keating’s” in phrase “he was trying
to spell his way through Keating’s _Trí Bior-Ghaoithe an Bháis_.”
• p. 192: Replaced “’o” with “o’” in phrase “You have heard o’ the Hawk
o’ the Hill-top.”
• p. 192: Added period after phrase “they say Parnell is dead--the
dirty fellow.”
• p. 246: Replaced “irrelevent” with “irrelevant” in phrase “But this
would be irrelevant to my purpose.”
• p. 313: Replaced “as” with “us” in phrase “This is a history which
pledges us to perseverance.”
• p. 321: Added closing double quote after phrase “federalism is not
worth _that_.”
• p. 325: Added word “that” in phrase “Flood, who could have governed
that Convention in spite of the rascally English.”
• p. 350: Added period after phrase “we cannot agree on the course we
should follow.”
• p. 364: Moved comma from after to before space in phrase “leaving all
things, followed.”
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