IRELAND IN 1868.* Two economic currents are flowing in Ireland-a current of progress and a current of retrogression of the character of each of which this article aims at furnishing some indication and some suggestions for promoting the former and arresting the latter. For both purposes something must be said of the only strong political current visible in the island at present, one rushing back to the dismemberment of the kingdom, civil war, and the dissolution of civil society. I speak here of Fenianism, not so much in its organised and criminal form, as in that morally blameless form, so far as many of its adherents are concerned, which it takes without any definite organisation, and spreading, as it were, in the air. Organised and criminal Fenianism, though it numbers more sworn members than seems commonly supposed, is by itself, or without aid from America, a destructive, but not a formidable power. The annual chapter of accidents includes in its catalogue a thousand times more suffering and disaster, yet does nothing to shake the foundations of the State, or to endanger the safety of the nation as a nation. But another kind of Fenianism is developing itself, under no specific name * Reprinted from the 'Fortnightly Review,' of February 1868. as yet, in declared antagonism to the integrity of the State; which would shortly leave, if it gained its point, but one of the two economic currents before spoken of flowing in Ireland, that of backwardness and ruin. Various motives and feelings are converging to form a combination of a great part of the people of Ireland to demand separation from England. Romantic and generous hopes of a great independent Ireland, old legendary Ireland resurgent in glory, derived partly from ancient tradition, and partly from the nationality movement on the Continent, blend with well-grounded discontent at the system of tenure and the consequent emigration, and with it must be added the selfish desires of some individuals or parties; but the chief source of this gathering movement is an idea that England is falling (an idea which mistakes the weakness of a Government for the weakness of a nation), coupled with a persuasion that an English Parliament will concede anything to force or fright, nothing to justice and policy, and that even separation may be extorted by demanding it loudly in menacing numbers. What sort of legislation would follow the establishment of a separate Irish Parliament, if any legislation at all, might easily be anticipated, had it not been distinctly foreshadowed in a tentative declaration of some Catholic clergymen, drawn with great ability for its purpose, and assuredly not put forward without the private sanction of higher authority than it claims. It is enough to say it is declared that political economy will not do for Ireland, that the Irish manufacturer cannot compete with the English, and that the natural energies of the Irish people must be developed, that is to say, properly speaking, repressed by protection and prohibition. But there would, in reality, be small time or heed for legislation. The inevitable, immediate result of separation would be a furious war of religions and races, in which the upper and middle class of Catholics would be placed in a position of cruel embarrassment and danger from both sides; both sides, moreover, would invoke foreign assistance, and to exclude any other occupation England would be driven to resume her former position by main force, after the island had become from one end to the other a compound of Mexico and the Campagna, with the anarchy of one and the desolation of the other. There is indeed a sense to be hereafter referred to, in which (paraphrasing a foreign writer's remark) it were well that Ireland should be de-anglicised; * but in all other respects, what is especially desirable for the island, instead of separation, is a closer union with England. The greatest of all the calamities from which the Irish people suffered for centuries was not connection with England, but compulsory isolation, politically, socially, and commercially. For six centuries they were kept forcibly aloof from the nearest border * Speaking of the lingering effects of Spanish law and misgovernment in Lombardy, M. Émile de Laveleye has observed :- Le sort de la Lombardie fut semblable à celui des provinces flamandes: le joug de l'Espagne y arrêta toute activité commerciale et industrielle. Les fidéicommis et la main-morte s'étendirent rapidement. Les suites funestes se font encore sentir aujourd'hui. Ainsi que le remarque un économiste qui connaît parfaitement son pays, la Lombardie n'est pas tout-à-fait désespagnolisée (dispagnolizzata). Les Forces productives de la Lom bardie. of European civilisation and wealth; down to the time of many living men, they were denied both equal political rights and social intercourse with the English and Scotch, and their descendants in Ireland itself; and placed by nature in the remotest part of Western Europe, they have only in the present generation begun to derive from the English invention of steam locomotion something like a commercial equality for half of the island with the rest of the British nation. In every country in the world, however advanced, England itself not excepted, there are localities which remoteness has kept to this day in arrear of general progress; into which improvements common elsewhere have not found their way; and where the inhabitants appear almost barbarous in their ways to people whose father's ways were precisely the same. Had England been a solitary isle in an untraversed ocean, could its inhabitants be much better than savages now? Deduct from English wealth and civilisation all that is derived from the little country of Flanders alone, and how small would the residue be! He must be a barbarian who does not feel that the glory of England is a glory to the whole human race; but he must be a fool who does not see that it also belongs to the whole huınan race, and has come from every part of the world. Throughout its history the movement of both intellectual light and material progress has been one of diffusion, reaching the less accessible places last, and obstructed not only by distance, but by every moral barrier between country and country. England was by position an early receptacle of the movement in modern Europe, and it would have passed rapidly over to Ireland, but for a cruel succession of accidents and crimes which kept two races apart, in the words of a great English philosopher, the most fitted of any two in the world to be the counterpart of one another,' * and two islands apart adapted by nature for the closest commercial connection. No stronger evidence of the truth of these propositions is needed than the fact that in spite of Ireland's calamitous history, in spite of a system of law most obstructive to the development of natural resources-a system not really English in origin, but imposed upon England also by conquest-in spite of political conspiracy and insecurity, a current of progress is nevertheless running in various parts of the island, distinctly traceable to a closer connection with England. Draw a line between east and west from Londonderry to Cork, and on the eastern side, the one nearest to English markets, English influence, and English example, it will be found that the main current is one of progress, though not without an opposite stream; while on the western side, though the main current is one which carries desolation along with it, there are yet scattered indications of improvement, come from an English source and wearing an English form.† No one who has known the eastern half of the island for more than twenty years can have failed to perceive that a striking change has taken place in the life and * Representative Government,' by J. S. Mill. † In this description it is not thought necessary to take account of a temporary stagnation of the linen trade of Ulster, nor of a partial failure of crops last year in particular counties, balanced by good crops in others. |