The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent Part 30

But Gladstone, though he cannot prevail on him to be Chief Secretary, has sent him to the India Office.'

'And may give him free lodgings in Kilmainham if he is refractory,' I chimed in. 'And so these two are like pigs with their bristles hurt, poor things. There's a pity.'

Some time later, when I heard Messrs. Chamberlain and Trevelyan were so disgusted with the Home Rule Bill that they were leaving the Government, says I to myself, 'I wonder if Mr. Gladstone in his own heart thinks if he had gratified their wishes about office he could have retained them.'

But as a matter of fact both are patriots far above such demeaning insinuations.

Mr. John Morley was a very well-meaning Chief Secretary, but a very misguided man.

In a conversation with me, Mr. Morley observed that, owing to the agitation, he saw no alternative but to make Parnell Chief Secretary.

I said that would be no use, for if he attempted to do his duty he would be shot, even more readily than I should.

Mr. Morley retorted:--

'He is the leader of the Irish nation.'

'I admit it,' I replied, 'and he is the only man you can make terms with.'

'How?' says he.

'You had better ask him,' says I, 'to nominate some foreign potentate to appoint commissioners who will say to Mr. Parnell, "Let Ireland pay her share of the national debt and buy out every loyal person who wishes to leave the country," and then, if Mr. Parnell says, "We are not able to do that," let them retort, "We will then disfranchise you, for this humbug has been going on long enough."'

'That's about it, according to your lights,' replied Mr. Morley.

Was I not right?

It is a singular fact that Ulster and Alsace-Lorraine have about the same acreage--5,322,334 to 3,586,560--and about the same population--1,581,357 to 1,719,470. The French and Germans are each willing to spend a hundred millions of money and half a million lives, the one to recover, the other to retain, the province, and yet Mr.

Gladstone proposed, not only to abandon Ulster, but to put it under the rule of the people the Ulsterites hate most on earth.

It is also remarkable that at the time of the Union the population of Belfast was 35,000, and Dublin 250,000. Now Belfast is 335,000, while Dublin remains at a quarter of a million. Belfast, in point of customs, is the third largest city in the British dominions, coming next after London and Liverpool, whilst it is the finest s.h.i.+pbuilding town in the world.

Yet its inhabitants were to be sold as though they were African slaves, for the sole purpose of getting votes for the Liberal Government.

I was one day invited by Froude to come to his home to argue out the Irish question with Mr. Jacob Bright and Mr. John Morley.

I counted on having Mr. Froude on my side, knowing his strong views, but as host he would not interfere. However, Miss Cobbe was there, and to my mind was equal to any of the company. With her on my side, I flatter myself we were too many for the others; but the worst of all arguments is that the arguing rarely serves any purpose except to make either party more obstinate.

I knew John Bright very well.

He was far and away the most honest man of all the Liberal party, and he fully realised the fact that a visible concentration of property and universal suffrage could not exist together. He was therefore anxious to enlarge the number of proprietors, but he did not countenance it being done entirely at the expense of the English Government without the tenants having to find such a sum of money out of their own pockets as would give them an interest in paying off the Government charges.

He was a very broad-minded man, with a simplicity of character which was admirable. I liked him much, and my one complaint against him was that he would never accept my invitations to come and pay me a visit in Kerry.

I never heard him make a speech, but with his beautiful voice it was a great treat to hear him read Milton. On one occasion he took me to the House specially to see Mr. Gladstone, but after nearly an hour he had reluctantly to tell me that the Prime Minister could not find leisure for our conversation that day owing to pressure of business, and another opportunity never came.

Although I regret not having met Mr. Gladstone, I yet feel glad that I never shook him by the hand. I may here mention that I never met Mr.

Parnell, though I have seen him in the House.

From my point of view Mr. John Morley has a dual existence. As man and as historian he is Jekyl, but as politician he is Hyde.

There is a well-known story about him, so familiar to some of us that it is possibly forgotten in England, wherefore I venture to relate it once more.

He was on a car, and asked the driver:--

'Well, Pat, you'll be having great times when you get Home Rule?'

'We will, your honour--for a week,' replied the man.

'Why only a week?' inquired the politician.

'Driving the quality to the steamers.'

CHAPTER XVI

GLADSTONIAN LEGISLATION

Although the exact measure of my appreciation of the Irish policy of the most dangerous Englishman of the nineteenth century has already been clearly indicated by casual remarks in previous chapters, that will not absolve me from duly setting forth some sketch of the inestimable amount of evil which resulted from the interest he unfortunately took in my unhappy land.

If Napoleon was the scourge of Europe, Mr. Gladstone was the most malevolent imp of mischief that ever ruined any one country, and I am heartily grieved that that country should have been mine.

It is so difficult to get English people to take any interest in Irish topics that I fully expect this chapter will be skipped by most of my readers east of Dublin. Yet if any will read these few pages, they will get as clear a view of the harm one man can do a whole land as by wading through hundreds of volumes, for I am giving them the concentrated knowledge I have acc.u.mulated by years devoted to profound study of the subject.

The course of history may be taken up almost on the morrow of the famine, for potatoes began to be a scarce crop again in 1850, yet the country was improving rapidly, and the relations between landlord and tenant were as cordial as in any part of the world.

So they continued in absolute amity until what is virtually universal suffrage was introduced and the ignoramus became the tool of every political knave.

Mr. Gladstone stated that he brought in the Irish Church Act to pacify the country in 1868, when the land was as peaceful as English pastures on a Sunday evening. He must really have done so to propitiate English dissenters, for no one in Ireland appeared to want it.

By this Act a resident gentleman was taken away from every parish in Ireland, whereby the evils of absentee landlordism were gravely enhanced.

Mr. Gladstone called it an act of sublime justice from England to Ireland. Previously, in virtue of ancient treaties commencing as far back as the reigns of William and Mary, the English Government was giving Presbyterians a grant--called Regium Donum--of 70,000 a year, and by a more recent arrangement was giving Maynooth a grant of 24,000, but that Whig Government actually paid them off out of the spoils of the Irish Church, thereby saving the British Exchequer 94,000 a year.

And if this be an act of justice, then Aristides can be cla.s.sed among hypocritical swindlers.

It must be borne in mind that when William Pitt caused the Act of Union to be pa.s.sed in Parliament, the union of the Churches was a fundamental feature, and this, indeed, was the main inducement held out to Protestants to promote the Union.

Surely it cannot be held to be a valid Union when the princ.i.p.al consideration in it is set aside, to say nothing of increasing the taxation by two million sterling a year more than was ever contemplated by the Act. This was clearly borne out by a Royal Commission composed mostly of Englishmen and presided over by Mr. Childers, an earnest politician and an ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The Catholic priests who expected that their Church would be established were disappointed, while the landlords, who were generally Protestants, had henceforth to support their clergy and at the same time to pay t.i.thes to the State.

As Irish taxation increased 50 per cent, while that of England only increased 18 per cent., the Irish people did not find Mr. Gladstone's Act soothing or profitable.

His next perpetration was the Land Act of 1870, whereby he provided that no landlord could turn out his tenant without paying him for all his improvements (even if these had been done without the knowledge or sanction of the landlord) and giving the tenant a compensation in money equal to about one-fourth of the fee-simple.