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that of a

unscrupulous, and more unsparing than Austrian aid in getting a place for him
despotism, and to this enemy she is handed
over, bound neck and heels. Any two magis-
trates will be able to say what a crime is, to
assert that any Irishman is guilty of that
crime, and to land him for six months in
Kilmainham.

Now, who and what are these stipendiary
magistrates? Mr. T. Harrington electrified
the House of Commons with some interesting
details. Here is one application and no
attempt has been made to prove that it is not
literal and correct. 66
My brother, Stephen
Fitzgerald," writes the Knight of Kerry to the
Lord-Lieutenant," continues to lead an idle life
at home, and has fallen into habits injurious to
himself and his family. Under these circum-
stances I venture to ask your excellency's kind

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stipendiary magistrate. It is one for which I think he would be extremely well qualified.” Alas! and are our Irish brothers to be handed over to the tender mercies of this man and such as he? Aye, that they are; and, to add insult to injury, Colonel King-Harman has been appointed Under Secretary for Ireland. It is too pitiful, too horrible.

But, as United Ireland says, the spirit of the Irish people was never more clear and bright. They will stand by their leaders, and we will stand by them. This is our battle, too. The masses now, at last, are arrayed against the classes, and by the classes has the first blow been struck. The last blow will be delivered by the masses.

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A LEAGUE OF THE CELTS.

When we talk of ourselves as "the British People "we are too apt to forget what vastness and variety is included in the term. It is in the same vague and misleading way that we talk of ancient Greece, and confound in one hazy mass the citizen of Athens with the citizen of Sparta. Yet, the strength of Greece, the sun-like glory which still shines and floods the ages with its brightness, came from the variety and individuality of the Greek states, some of them hardly larger than an English market town. Nature abhors uniformity. We know better than Nature. We make our streets, our houses, our clothes uniform in dulness and deadness, and, worst of all, we seek to apply the cramping iron to human bodies and human souls. The heaven of false economics is a place where every man is exactly like every other man, and lives in exactly the

same way.

But if England has her faults, she has her virtues. And one of these is an honest wish to see her own errors, and to correct them. Thus, she has begun to see that what suits England, what has been especially and particularly made by the action of the English mind, will not always or often suit other peoples.

In Ireland she is beginning to seek out what is her duty, and she will soon do it. But the Irish people are only one part of that Britain which is Celtic and not English. The Highlands of Scotland, Wales, and Cornwall are inhabited by men who are of the same blood,

instincts, and manners as the Celtic Irish, and indeed are almost of the same language.

Now, these people have, in their degree, been treated as bad, or worse than the Irish. Indeed it is doubtful whether it is not the English blood which mingles with the Celtic in Ireland that has made the Irish so loudly protestant against their oppressors. The Celt has been noted as the bravest soldier who ever dashed himself against the all-vanquishing Roman legions. But the Celt once subdued had a tendency to sink into gloomy and hopeless despair. Not so the Saxon; he never knew when he was defeated. After that archrogue, William the Conqueror, and those minor rogues, the founders of our old nobility, had landed in England, the Saxons warred against them with a pertinacity, and by methods, that strongly remind us of the Irish as they fight now against their oppressors. Men like Robin Hood rose, each with a Plan of Campaign that bothered fat foreign priests and bloodthirsty barons out of all their poor wits. The only difference between the starving English and the starving Irish was the many murders and outrages committed by the former and the comparatively few committed by the latter.

But Ireland has been several times overrun. Each of these times has been marked by ferocious massacres that make St. Bartholomew's, in comparison, like some little grief of a child when seen side by side with the tragedy that wrecks a human life.

Now, on each of these occasions the room which murder left vacant in Ireland was filled by Englishmen. Indeed, so great has been the emigration from Britain to Ireland that it is hardly an anomaly to say that almost every Irishman is more English than Irish. Thus, when the befogged politicians who take words for thoughts and things, prate of the inability of Irishmen to govern Ireland, what they really do say is this:-"We have murdered half Ireland, and filled the vacancy up with Englishmen. The mixed race thus produced, which is half ourselves, does not possess one of those many virtues so apparent to ourselves and so eagerly hidden from the rest of the world."

But it is this very English blood in the Irish race that is protesting, as it has always protested, against misrule and tyranny.

The success of the Irish-English Celts, as we might call them, has encouraged, and put life and spirit into, the other Celtic peoples. These are bearing in front of England the banner of are bearing in front of England the banner of Liberty and the rights of man. In fact, we believe that they have in this country a high and holy mission. England has been so long under the heel of the oppressor that she has wellnigh forgotten the elementary ideas of right and wrong. England is really a conquered country, in which the conquered have, by seven hundred years of struggle, wrested some privileges from the conquerors, while she has forgotten others. England was conquered by a robber class, which constituted itself her aristocracy, and ruled her with a rod of iron. That class has constantly recruited itself-mostly from the scum of successful villany, but it is to-day the And in all these ages men have forgotten what was the old law and the old custom. The land was for all, and was clearly held by the chiefs for the people. Gradually the robber class upset that high tradition, and now land is held by themselves

same class it was then.

for themselves.

Among the Celts, the old order lingered and did not give place to the new. The chief only held the land for the people; and that idea is as clearly fixed in the brain of a Scottish Highlander as is the idea that to-morrow's sun will light up loch, and glen, and mountain. It is as natural to him as the idea of God.

Now, when once an idea is created or revived among a Celtic people, it is held with a fervour and a force that Saxons seldom understand, and rarely appreciate.

The Highland Celt has no lofty ambition. He only wants to save himself from a civilisation that threatens to crush him before itself

is destroyed by the growing common sense of

humanity. The cot in the quiet glen, the few cultivated acres, the sheep-run on the hillside, the grass for a cow and a horse-these are all he seeks. With these he can lead a quiet and intelligent life, reading his book and singing the alternately mirthful and mournful music of his native hills, as he sits by the winter fire. And that is just what we deny, what up till now we have been saying he shall not have.

But the Celt has at last realised one thing. He has found that union is strength. The Welsh alone are weak, the men of Cornwall are weak, the Scottish Highlanders are weak. Together, they are strong. They have that force of numbers which is the only moral force Conservatism deigns to regard.

necessity, if the Celts are to obtain their just A League of the Celts is then a political demands. At a great Celtic conference, held some time ago at Bonar Bridge, in the far North of Scotland, the principle of Celtic cocheers that echoed far and wide through the operation was enthusiastically adopted, amidst Scottish hills. For a time that was all. There are wheels within wheels; and we do not pretend to say why that was not carried into effect that was so enthusiastically resolved.

But at last measures, we understand, are being taken to bring together to one focus and one direction the scattered forces of the Celts. Mr. J. Stewart Glennie, author, barrister, philanthropist, the head and soul of every Celtic movement, has set himself to work. He has issued a manifesto to his countrymen that must and will have effect. Dr. Dan Jones, a man whom Wales is justly proud to call her son, ably and enthusiastically supports the movement, and it has the cordial support of Michael Davitt, himself a Celt in blood and spirit.

We ask the sympathy of all Englishmen in this movement. The Celts are asking now for rights that Englishmen will ask for by-and-by. Therefore, let Englishmen support their

demand.

There should not be-there must

not be-any difference or any jealousy between Saxons and Celts. They are brothers of somewhat different temperament. Therefore, let them advance together, and side by side, none saying to the other, "Be like me," but each say "Be thyself, and God speed thee."

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THE WEARING OF THE GREEN.

Monday, the 11th day of April, 1887, will be entered in red and conspicuous letters upon the chronicles of Freedom. It is a day to rank with those in which were fought Marathon and Bannockburn. Then, too, a battle was fought, not with flashing steel or flying bullet, but with the keener, brighter weapons of reason. London protested against coercion. The generous heart of the English people was touched with pity for a suffering and struggling Ireland about to be given over to the cruel fangs of Theft and Anarchy, calling themselves Law and Order. The town that hailed Garibaldi with a delirium of enthusiasm, and which has responded to every impulse of liberty in every country, at last recognised the claims of Michael Davitt, and of Landlord-oppressed Ireland.

The process of opening the heart and mind of London has been slow, but it has been sure. If forty years ago anyone had prophesied such things and such a day, he would have been lucky to have escaped the treatment of a lunatic. Yet, as I passed along Fleet Street, with the church bells sounding out on that fair Easter Monday, and filling the whole air with their melody, it seemed to me that they took voice and sang

So we'll bide our time, our banner yet And motto shall be seen, And voices shout the chorus out, "The wearing of the green." Literally, London was "a-wearing of the green.' The green was everywhere. It seemed a nation of Irishmen. Young maidens wore it in coquetish knots upon their heaving bosoms, or buried it in the gold of their hair; old men, white with the snows of many winters, and wrinkled with the cares of many a reform battle, stood stern and erect as in their first youth, when in '32, England stood on the verge and coast of revolution, and bore their green with martial pride; and workmen crowded in their thronging thousands, proud to march beneath the flag of Erin.

Truly, it was a great day. The anti-Irish Press has tried to sneer away its triumphs. According to it, the caucus commanded, and the men came, careless and unenthusiastic. There is but one answer to such assertions, an answer too little given in this age of timid compromise the anti-Irish Press lied. We do not suppose that one of the men who wrote those articles was present at the demonstration;

very likely the articles had been written days before the event, and the writers were enjoying Easter in some of those lordly country seats, the owners of which make a point of "cultivating the Press." The day was begun, continued, and ended with enthusiasm. All London echoed its enthusiastic cheers.

Easter Monday is hardly a day favourable to a great demonstration. London workmen have few holidays, and these are far between. When they have a day that they can call their own, it is but natural they should seek the open country, and enjoy the scene and scent of green fields smiling amidst the woodlands, or that they should fleet the merry hours amidst the harmless dissipations of the Crystal Palace and those other institutions of a like kind that shed a little brightness on the London life. All honour to the working men for having given up their holiday, and for having undertaken a day's hard work when they might have enjoyed a day's pleasure.

Almost as interesting as the long-drawn-out procession, with their music and their flags, were the crowds that lined the streets. The meaning of these crowds was plainly evident, and only to be mistaken by those who were determined to see nothing but what they wanted to see. The spectators were with the movement. Everywhere was the green, everywhere the cordial welcome to those who marched past, on their way to the Reformers' Tree.

Α

One incident of the way struck me deeply and painfully. I had kept moving pretty much on the line of one of the great processions, passing here and there, from one point to another, watching with eager interest every detail of the march. At last we came to a point where some carriages had been stopped by the passing crowd. I was particularly struck by the occupant of one of these. haughty-looking lady was watching the crowd with evident scorn and dislike, with that dangerous look in her eyes that the Roman ladies must have had when they held up their white, small hands and decreed the death of the vanquished gladiator. If ever eyes spoke, her eyes expressed a wish to drive her fiery horses through the compact crowd. By her side was seated a lovely boy, who laughed and clapped his hands to the sounding music and the gay and fluttering banners. Suddenly his young, fine face became downcast.

"Look, Mamma," he said, "what is that poor woman crying for?"

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She is probably drunk," said the lady, and sank back into her carriage as it began at last to glide easily away.

I looked in the direction towards which the little boy had pointed. An old woman, with a thin, pale face and white hair, cleanly, but very, very poorly clad, was silently weeping. Going up to her, I asked the reason of her tears. She replied to me, in a voice that was sweetly enough, but unmistakably Irish"Ah, sir, it's for joy I'm crying. It's never meself that expected to see this day."

66 Do you love Ireland so much?" I asked. 'Ah, sir, me husband died for it, and me sons had to cross the seas for it.' And again she began to weep. I respected her grief, and silently left her.

My lady would not understand this grief. A poor woman; a poor, old, ignorant Irishwoman weeping for anything else than whisky: weeping for her country! That my lady could not by any possibility understand.

Passing the Carlton Club, the bands played the Dead March in Saul. Alas, the power represented by the Carlton Club is not dead yet, is, indeed, far from dead, and is operative to oppose every good and great plan that may be urged by those who love the poor, and seek to improve their cheerless lot. All that is dead in the Carlton Club is human feeling, and that is dead and rotten. The wish for mischief and the power to do it are terribly and grimly alive.

At last the Park was reached. To watch the crowd passing through the massive gateways like a huge and rapid river emptying itself into a sea, was a sight to awe, and yet elate, those who believe in the power and desire of man to advance man's welfare. Hyde Park that Monday was one vast reply to the cynicism of the wealthy and leisured classes who, having run riot amidst all the good things of life, at last adopt as their own the doctrine which asks the question, "Is life worth living?"

I said a sea of people; it would be more correct to say an ocean. From the eminence of one of the platforms, I looked far and wide over the scene. A bright sky, a fresh wind, and people wandering in their tens of thousands: that day the sun on his journey round the world beheld no more remarkable spectacle. When the crowd broke up and began to wend away in various directions to the various points from which it came, then the sight was almost Few large towns have more inhabitants than were moving there. When America

sublime.

had as many people she was considered an important colony; when Australia reached a population so great she began to be considered crowded.

I went from platform to platform, and listened to many speakers. Most spoke well; all spoke with enthusiasm; and each hal a large audience. It pleases certain papers to talk of mob orators addressing only a handful, who listened, partly because they were there by command of their local caucuses to be an audience, and they were an audience. The audiences were only limited by the range of the speakers' voices. To get within that, in almost every case, needed enthusiasm and broad shoulders.

At last I left the Park, deeply impressed. by two things: the greatness of the occasion and the order, method, and intelligence of those who took part in it. And, as I entered the Park with one verse ringing in my ear, I left it with another sounding to me from Shelley

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THE Standard says that "the British farmer is struggling hard with difficulties through which he scarcely sees a ray of light." The difficulty in the way of the British farmer is landlordism. In spite farmers have to pay to landlords sixty millions of lower prices and increased competition, British sterling per annum for the right of employing capital and labour on the land which Nature has provided for their use.

MR. JOHN LOVELL AND THE LAND QUESTION.— the Halfpenny Weekly-is written by Mr. John A most ingenious little book-re-published from Lovell on the Land Question. He treats it with great liveliness and much intelligence. In telling the story of how land became what it is he is mainly right; but in advocating free trade in land for all the evils of the system he is altogether all the land-evils that have appeared here are rewrong. America has free trade in land, and yet appearing there. What free trade in land does is to increase the number of the monopolists-it does not destroy the monopoly.

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