‘There is a moral law governing the lives of nations as of individuals.’ – Mr. O’Connor Power to Catholic Young Men of Dublin.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE IRISHMAN.
Paris, May 4, 1880.
SIR—When addressing you a few weeks ago I promised myself a long respite from the weary task of occasional letter-writing—not the less a task or the less wearisome because self-imposed—but I suppose I must belong to that large class for which there is proverbially no rest, and, however this may be, I fear I am destined to find but little before that final rest which comes to all.
I may, perhaps, as well begin by expressing my satisfaction, from a non-parliamentary point of view, at the general result of the elections. Carpet-baggism is more strongly in the ascendant than ever I could have hoped it would be; in plainer language, political scoundrelism is triumphant all along the line. The chief interest now is to know how long our scoundrels—that is the new and nastiest crop of them—are to be allowed to go on duping our fools. The late Mr. Butt took at least some seven or eight years to show his dupes that, while promising much, he was able to perform next to nothing at all. His parturient mountain produced some ridiculous mouse of a Grand Jury Law, of which I know little and care less. With such a life-achievement Mr. Butt went to his fathers, and now Mr. Parnell reigns in his stead. The King is dead, long live the King. But how long? Mr. Parnell promises vastly more than Mr. Butt, and is as much more energetic as he is less intelligent, but as his pace is so much rapider, so, in all human probability, will he more quickly reach that inevitable goal of all agitators—failure. He is still a very young man, but most certainly his agitating life will not be prolonged for that twenty years, which he and his Land League so kindly allow for the existence of landlordism. Shall we rather cut him short at the end of that two years, during which the same Land League permits the peasantry the pleasant privilege of paying no rent. Of course, sanguine people, with not too much brains, may naturally ask me why I am so confident that Mr. Parnell will fail? To whom I may shortly reply, more Hibernica, by asking what man in his senses expects the English Parliament to abolish Irish landlordism. I freely grant that Mr. Parnell himself, and some few of his more enthusiastic and less enlightened followers, may expect this; but I can only make this concession at the expense of their common sense, and I cannot for a moment allow that such men as The O’Donoghue or Mr. O’Connor Power labour under any such delusion. Mr. O’Donnell, probably the most intelligent and almost certainly the best-informed of Mr. Parnell’s erewhile followers, does not even pretend to believe in the new panacea. It is not often I find anything to praise in Mr. O’Donnell’s public utterances, but I am happy to be able to say now that in my opinion his late letter on the Land League scheme was as sensible and temperate as the remarks upon it by Messrs. Davitt and Egan were the reverse.
But to leave aside for the present these visionary projects for a near or a remote future, and to come to the last somewhat disturbed and distracted gathering of these dictatorial and domineering Land League agitators. I think it quite advisable that the men, and they must be many, who do not share in this new delusion, should attend these meetings and show their disapprobation in the usual way. Silence is proverbially, though often falsely, supposed to give consent, and there is no earthly reason that I can see why men who are any way like-minded with myself should not show it as strongly and as forcibly as they like. I do not, however, mean that the force should be physical. The argumentum baculum is nearly always a bad one, and it is as useless as it is unseemly to use the backs of chairs on the heads of people with whom you may differ in opinion. Happily, as far as I can make out, the violence at this meeting was slight, and if, unfortunately, it had been otherwise, I should say it would take very strong chairs to hurt the skulls of some of these Land Leaguers. But there should have been no violence at all, and for the future I trust there will be none. But the most curious part of the proceedings at the Rotundo were the closing remarks of Mr. Parnell. It seems some gentleman in America ‘handed’ Mr. Parnell twenty-five dollars, saying—‘Here are five dollars for bread and twenty for lead.’ This anecdote, which was told apropos of nothing under the sun, is reported to have been received with loud and prolonged cheers. It ought to have been received with loud and prolonged hisses, and persistent cries for explanation. Mr. Parnell only allows us to infer that he took the money, and, if so, I should like to know how many of that American gentleman’s twenty dollars have gone to his intention. All this Land League talk about lead is very idle, very misleading, and most inconsistent. Men who mean to make use of lead at the proper time, and in the proper way, never say anything about it at public meetings. At the land meetings last autumn there were constant cries, never, as far as I could learn, condemned by any of the speakers, to put lead into the landlords. Now, that is a use of lead for which I—who have no earthly dislike to the legitimate employment of the metal—have the strongest objection. It may be in a sense excusable, as it is certainly intelligible, that poor ignorant peasants, maddened by foul injustice, should sometimes resort to ‘the wild justice of revenge;’ but it is utterly inexcusable and unjustifiable that educated gentlemen, should lend as much as the negative consent of their silence to direct incentives to murder. I had almost forgotten to notice a still more extraordinary statement than that about the lead, which Mr. Parnell made at the same meeting.
‘The Americans sent millions to feed our starving people, but they sent me back with this message, that for the future you cannot expect one cent for charity, but millions to break the land system.’
For all comment upon this, I think I may content myself by saying that there is at least one region in which Mr. Parnell must suppose lead to exist in large quantities, and that is the heads of his audience.
In speaking as I do now of the new agitation, or the new agitators, I am by no means to be taken as absolutely condemning all agitations, or even all the present race of agitators. I do not, for instance, condemn men like Mr. P. J. Smyth, or even men like Mr. Shaw or Mr. Mitchell-Henry. I do not necessarily condemn Mr. Parnell himself, though his course has lately seemed to me to lie ‘in ways that are dark,’ but I do with all my soul detest and despise the great majority of his most prominent supporters. Agitation alone can never give us freedom, and is little likely to give us any considerable measure of amelioration, but an honest and earnest agitation, guided by upright and self-sacrificing men, might do much ‘to create and foster public opinion in Ireland, and make it racy of the soil.’ Notwithstanding all its failures and shortcomings, the old Repeal agitation, supplemented and purified by the Young Ireland movement, and inspired by the Nation newspaper, did in a measure do this, and there is no reason in the nature of things why the same means should not again attain the same end, or, aided by other means, even a higher one. Oh! for one hour of Thomas Davis!
Your obedient servant,
JOHN O’LEARY.