Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small]

a ja sory man, if the aim is simply to operate *** Coba pop, ation, to £re their patriotism, and to ya toditora for their country's liberation; but very wwww, dit sautions wish to enlist the sympathies and chery 2 of Eagle.men and Anglo-Americans in the cause of Invand. provokes the wrath or contempt of these.— wrath, if they regard the Irish as strong.-contempt, if they look upon tuem as weak, and only giving utterance to mortiled national vanity or wounded sensibility. It tends to isolate the Irish, and to make them enemies where they might easily gain friends. It tends to convert what should be a war against oppression for common justice into a war of piece, in which the Irish must lose more than they can gain. The Celtic may be the nobler, the more deserving race, but it cannot be denied that the Anglo-Saxon is, at present, the more powerful. It would seein, therefore, to

be the true policy of Irish patriots to keep, as far as possible, the distinction of races out of the question, and to be careful not to bring the pride of the one race into conflict with the pride of the other. In a struggle for Irish liberty on the simple ground for justice, half of England would remain neutral or side with Ireland; in a war of races, all England to a man would arm against her. In the former case, Ireland could command the moral influence of the world, and the physical force of as many chivalric lances as she would need; in the latter, she would be thrown entirely on her own resources, and left to struggle single-handed. We love and honor the Irish people, and hold their rights as dear as our own,-not, however, because they are Irish, the descendants of Mileg or Milesius, of whom we know nothing, but because they share our common humanity,— are our neighbours and our brethren, whom we are commanded to love as ourselves. They have fallen into the hands of robbers, who have stripped and wounded them, and left them half dead. We would pour the oil and wine into their wounds, and restore them to their health and possessions. But if they should insist, that, before doing this, we must abjure our Anglo-Saxon blood, and make ourselves Celts, we should feel ourselves free to leave them as we found them, with simple pity for their weakness or intolerant nationality. We are willing to leave them their identity, but they must leave us ours, if they expect us to work with them or for them.

We are well aware that many of the Irish patriots really seek to avoid the contest of races, and labor to effect in Ireland a union of all Irishmen, without distinction of race or creed, for the liberty of their common country. But we like this no better than the cry of "Death to the Saxon," for the union is practicable only on conditions which would extinguish the old Celtic race and civilization, which we are anxious to preserve. The Anglo-Saxons in Ireland-those, we mean, who retain their distinctive character, and have not become absorbed in the original Celtic population-are the party which oppresses Ireland, and renders an effort for freedom necessary. It is not England out of Ireland, but England in Ireland, that causes the mischief. To call upon England in Ireland to make common cause with the patriots for the freedom of Ireland is only to call upon the tyrant to make common cause with his victim.

The fact, that the union of parties has to be sought, to be

labored for, is a proof that the two parties have not the same interest, and that the liberty wanted by the one is not the liberty wanted by the other. If the interests of both parties were the same, their union would come of itself, as a matter of course. As the case stands, it can be effected only by a compromise, and that compromise must be all on one side, a concession on the part of the patriots of all that they are struggling for. The Celtic Irish, in order to effect it, must be able to make it for the interest of the Anglo-Irish to cut themselves loose from it, which they can do only by consenting to become more completely their slaves than they now are. The Anglo-Irish have no country but England, and they regard Ireland as their country only in so far as it is inseparably united to England, and under the British government. They cannot, then, be made to join the patriots from love of country. To make them abjure England, and adopt Ireland separated from England, you must give them something more than they can get by union with England. And what have you to give them? They are now the ruling caste, and are sustained in their dominion by their connection with the English government. How will you make them believe it is for their interest to sever that connection, and to make common cause with you against England, which sustains them in power over you, unless you give them sufficient guaranties, in some shape, of a more extended and complete dominion over you than they now have, or can have, if the connection with England continues?

The union of races in Ireland, it is clear, is possible only on the condition that the Celt consents to be swallowed up in the Saxon. The Saxon must be continued as the ruling race, and for Celtic Ireland we should have a Saxon Ireland. The original population of the island, the oldest people now known, retaining, perhaps, the earliest civilization of which any traces have been preserved, would become gradually extinguished through slavery, or lost in the dominant race. No friend to Ireland can wish this. We wish to see Celtic Ireland preserved. We would not see the old Irish nationality destroyed, or even weakened. We respect it, and should regret to see the old Celtic civilization give way to the Anglo-Saxon. We may not like to have the Irishman perpetually thrusting his nationality into our faces, telling us, when he is pleased with us, that we have a great deal of the Irishman in us, and cursing us as a Saxon dog when we

are so unfortunate as to displease him, but we would not see him less of an Irishman than he is. We are Saxon, and intend to remain so; for we are not yet convinced that we cannot be Catholic without being Celtic; but we know few things more ridiculous than the Irishman who disowns his own order of civilization, and undertakes to pass for a Yankee. A yankeefied Irishman is a sorry sight. He has abandoned the good qualities of his own race, without adopting the good qualities of ours, and is merely a compound of the bad qualities of each. No: let the Irishman remain an Irishman, and the Anglo-Saxon remain an Anglo-Saxon; and while they study to love and respect each other as brothers, let neither attempt or suppose that either ought to be the other. Each has his peculiar excellences, and each his peculiar defects, and it is not necessary to undertake to strike the balance between them. We would have neither swallowed up in the other. In our daydreams for Ireland, we have pictured her rising from her thraldom, after ages of oppression and misery, to her proper rank among the nations of the earth, a genuine Celtic kingdom, retaining and transmitting the virtues and the glories of the old. Celtic race. The union of Saxon and Celt on the soil of Ireland for such an end is impossible, and any end for which it could be effected would be opposed to it, and necessarily tend to defeat it.

For the same reason, we are opposed to the call for a union without distinction of creed. Celtic Ireland is at heart Catholic, and can be nothing else. Its essential character is gone, if it ceases to be Catholic. Protestant Ireland is English, and depends for its existence on the connection with England. Sever that connection, give the power to the national party, and it would soon melt away before Catholic Ireland. Protestant Ireland knows this. On what conditions, then, Ön will it make common cause with Catholic Ireland? On the condition that Catholic Ireland is to rule? Not at all. It will demand a guaranty that Catholic Ireland shall either cease to be Catholic, or be subject to Protestant Ireland. The Protestant coöperation can be purchased on no other condition, unless we suppose the Protestants are prepared to sign their own death-warrant as Protestants; and this guaranty must be given in the shape of democracy, or in that of indifferentism, for it can be given in no other. If the patriots waive their Catholicity, put their church out of the question, and make politics the paramount affair, the Protestant may consent to unite with them, if he is to run no

great pecuniary hazard; for he knows very well, that, when Catholics suffer any interest to take precedence of their religion, or when they become willing to forsake it for a temporal object, however laudable in itself, there is very little to be feared from it. Indifferentism is sure to follow, and then in religious matters the Protestant can have every thing his own way. Democracy, which in a country like Ireland must be Jacobinism, will afford him an equal guaranty, and therefore in a Jacobinical revolution he might not be unwilling to engage; for he cannot but see that a democracy in Ireland would throw the whole power of the state into the Protestant party, who are the principal owners of the soil. The natural tendency of a democracy is to throw the power of the state into the hands of the property-holders by the voluntary action of the party without property, and to engross a whole people with their material interests. A people ruled by the representatives of money, and engrossed with material interests, make but sorry Catholics,-such Catholics as Protestants would have nothing to fear from. But a democratic, or rather Jacobinical, Ireland under the rule of Protestant proprietors and indifferent demagogues, bent only on material interests, would be any thing but Celtic Ireland, and do any thing but preserve the old Celtic civilization and the primitive virtues of the Milesian race.

The call for a union of parties in Ireland without distinction of race or creed proceeds on what we regard as a false assumption, namely, that the real enemy of Ireland is the England out of Ireland. That enemy is England in Ireland, and an enemy that would be too strong for the Celtic population, even if it had no connection with England out of Ireland. Ireland is lost, if she severs her connection with Great Britain before she has subdued the England on her own soil. What seems to us, then, Ireland's true policy is, to detach the England out of Ireland from the Anglo-Irish, and gain its support for the national party. We would use the connection for the benefit of Celtic Ireland, instead of seeking to get rid of it. England has no real interest in supporting at the expense of the Celto-Irish the Anglo-Saxon party in Ireland, and she does it only because she believes that it is through their means, and theirs only, that she has been able to keep the crown of Ireland united with her own. They were her garrison in the country. She was obliged to support them, or lose the crown of Ireland. Let Celtic Ireland make her peace with England out of Ireland, and she can easily use the power of the imperial government to pro

« AnteriorContinuar »