



Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Michael Ciesielski and PG Distributed
Proofreaders





ABOUT IRELAND

BY

_E. LYNN LINTON._

LONDON:
METHUEN & CO.,
18, BURY STREET, W.C.

1890.




EXPLANATORY.


I am conscious that I ought to make some kind of apology for rushing
into print on a subject which I do not half know. But I do know just a
little more than I did when I was an ardent Home Ruler, influenced by
the seductive charm of sentiment and abstract principle only; and I
think that perhaps the process by which my own blindness has been
couched may help to clear the vision of others who see as I did. All
of us lay-folk are obliged to follow the leaders of those schools in
politics, science, or religion, to which our temperament and mental
idiosyncracies affiliate us. Life is not long enough for us to examine
from the beginning upwards all the questions in which we are
interested; and it is only by chance that we find ourselves set face
to face with the first principles and elemental facts of a cause to
which, perhaps, as blind and believing followers of our leaders, we
have committed ourselves with the ardour of conviction and the
intemperance of ignorance. In this matter of Ireland I believed in the
accusations of brutality, injustice, and general insolence of tyranny
from modern landlords to existing tenants, so constantly made by the
Home Rulers and their organs; and, shocking though the undeniable
crimes committed by the Campaigners were, they seemed to me the tragic
results of that kind of despair which seizes on men who, goaded to
madness by oppression, are reduced to masked murder as their sole
means of defence--and as, after all, but a sadly natural retaliation.
I knew nothing really of Lord Ashbourne's Act; and what I thought I
knew was, that it was more a blind than honest legislation, and did no
vital good. I thought that Home Rule would set all things straight,
and that the National Sentiment was one which ought to find practical
expression. I rejoiced over every election that took away one seat
from the Unionists and added another vote to the Home Rulers; and I
shut my eyes to the dismemberment of our glorious Empire and the
certainty of civil war in Ireland, should the Home Rule demanded by
the Parnellites and advocated by the Gladstonians become an
accomplished fact. In a word I committed the mistakes inevitable to
all who take feeling and conviction rather than fact and knowledge for
their guides.

Then I went to Ireland; and the scales fell from my eyes. I saw for
myself; heard facts I had never known before; and was consequently
enlightened as to the true meaning of the agitation and the real
condition of the people in their relation to politics, their
landlords, and the Plan of Campaign.

The outcome of this visit was two papers which were written for the
_New Review_--with the editor of whom, however, I stood somewhat in
the position of Balaam with Balak, when, called on to curse the
Israelites, he was forced by a superior power to bless them. So I with
the Unionists. The first paper was sent and passed, but it was delayed
by editorial difficulties through the critical months of the
bye-elections. When published in the December number, owing to the
exigencies of space, the backbone--namely the extracts from the Land
Acts, now included in this re-publication--was taken out of it, and my
own unsupported statements alone were left. I was sorry for this, as
it cut the ground from under my feet and left me in the position of
one of those mere impressionists who have already sufficiently
darkened counsel and obscured the truth of things. As the same
editorial difficulties and exigencies of space would doubtless delay
the second paper, like the first, I resolved, by the courteous
permission of the editor, to enlarge and publish both in a pamphlet
for which I alone should be responsible, and which would bind no
editor to even the semblance of endorsement.

I, only half-enlightened, write, as has been said, for the wholly
blind and ignorantly ardent who, as I did, accept sentiment for fact
and feeling for demonstration; who do not look at the solid legal
basis on which the present Government is dealing with the Irish
question; who believe all that the Home Rulers say, and nothing that
the Unionists demonstrate. I want them to study the plain and
indisputable facts of legislation as I have done, when I think they
must come to the same conclusions as those which have forced
themselves on my own mind--namely, that the Home Rule desired by the
Parnellites is not only a delusive impossibility, but is also high
treason against the integrity of the Empire, and would be a base
surrender of our obligations to the Irish Loyalists; that, whatever
the landlords were, they are now more sinned against than sinning;
and that in the orderly operation of the Land Acts now in force, with
the stern repression of outrages[A] and punishment of crimes, for
which peaceable folk are so largely indebted to Mr. Balfour, lies the
true pacification of this distressed and troubled country.


E. LYNN LINTON.





ABOUT IRELAND.




I.


Nothing dies so hard as prejudice, unless it be sentiment. Indeed,
prejudice and sentiment are but different manifestations of the same
principle by which men pronounce on things according to individual
feeling, independent of facts and free from the restraint of positive
knowledge. And on nothing in modern times has so much sentiment been
lavished as on the Irish question; nowhere has so much passionately
generous, but at the same time so much absolutely ignorant,
partisanship been displayed as by English sympathisers with the Irish
peasant. This is scarcely to be wondered at. The picture of a gallant
nation ground under the heel of an iron despotism--of an industrious
and virtuous peasantry rackrented, despoiled, brutalised, and scarce
able to live by their labour that they may supply the vicious wants of
oppressive landlords--of unarmed men, together with women and little
children, ruthlessly bludgeoned by a brutal police, or shot by a
bloodthirsty soldiery for no greater offence than verbal protests
against illegal evictions--of a handful of ardent patriots ready to
undergo imprisonment and contumely in their struggle against one of
the strongest nations in the world for only so much political freedom
as is granted to-day by despots themselves--such a picture as this is
calculated to excite the sympathies of all generous souls. And it has
done so in England, where "Home Rule" and "Justice to Ireland" have
become the rallying cries of one section of the Liberal party, to the
disruption and political suicide of the whole body; and where the less
knowledge imported into the question the more fervid the advocacy and
the louder the demand.

It is worth while to state quite quietly and quite plainly how things
stand at this present moment. There is no need for hysterics on the
one side or the other; and to amend one's views by the testimony of
facts is not a dishonest turning of one's coat--if confession of that
amendment is a little like the white sheet and lighted taper of a
penitent. Things are, or they are not. If they are, as will be set
down, the inference is plain to anyone not hopelessly blinded by
preconceived prejudice. If they are not, let them be authoritatively
contradicted on the basis of fact, not sentiment--demonstration, not
assertion. In any case it is a gain to obtain material for a truer
judgment than heretofore, and thus to be rid of certain mental films
by which colours are blurred and perspective is distorted.

No one wishes to palliate the crimes of which England has been guilty
in Ireland. Her hand has been heavy, her whip one of braided
scorpions, her rule emphatically of blood and iron. But all this is of
the past, and the pendulum, not only of public feeling but of legal
enactment, threatens to swing too far on the other side. What has been
done cannot be undone, but it will not be repeated. We shall never
send over another Cromwell nor yet another Castlereagh; and there is
as little good to be got from chafing over past wrongs as there is in
lamenting past glories. Malachi and his collar of gold--the ancient
kings who led forth the Red Branch Knights--State persecution of the
Catholics--rack-rents and unjust evictions, are all alike swept away
into