Part 21 (1/2)

The n.o.bles are the highest cla.s.s. They have most to guard. In every other country they are the champions of patriotism. They feel there is no honour for them separate from their fatherland. Its freedom, its dignity, its integrity, are as their own. They strive for it, legislate for it, guard it, fight for it. Their names, their t.i.tles, their very pride are of it.

In Ireland they are its disgrace. They were first to sell and would be last to redeem it. Treachery to it is daubed on many an escutcheon in its heraldry. It is the only nation where slaves have been enn.o.bled for contributing to its degradation.

It is a foul thing this--dignity emanating from the throne to gild the filthy ma.s.s of national treason that forms the man's part of many an Irish lord.

We do not include in this the whole Irish peerage. G.o.d forbid. There are several of them not thus ign.o.ble. Many of them worked, struggled, sacrificed for Ireland. Many of them were true to her in the darkest times.

They were her chiefs, her ornaments, her sentinels, her safeguards.

Alas! that they, too, should have shrunk from their position, and left their duties to humbler, but bolder and better men.

Look at their station in the State. Is it not one of unequivocal shame?

They enjoy the half-mendicant privilege of voting for a representative of their order, in the House of Lords, some twice or thrice in their lives. One Irish peer represents about a dozen others of his cla.s.s, and thus, in his multiplex capacity, he is admitted into fellows.h.i.+p with the English n.o.bility. The borrowed plumes, the delegated authority of so many of his equals, raise him to a half-admitted equality with an English n.o.bleman. And, although thus deprived of their inheritance of dignity, they are not allowed even the privilege of a commoner. An Irish lord cannot sit in the House of Commons for an Irish county or city, nor can he vote for an Irish member.

But an Irish lord can represent an English const.i.tuency. The distinction is a strange one--unintelligible to us in any sense but one of national humiliation. We understand it thus--an Irish lord is too mean in his own person, and by virtue of his Irish t.i.tle, to rank with the British peerage. He can only qualify for that honour by uniting in his the suffrages and t.i.tles of ten or twelve others. But--flattering distinction!--he is above the rank of an Irish commoner, nor is he permitted to sully his name with the privileges of that order.

And--unspeakable dignity!--he may take his stand with a British mob.

There is no position to match this in shame. There is no guilt so despicable as dozing in it without a blush or an effort, or even a dream for independence. When all else are alive to indignity, and working in the way of honour and liberty, they alone, whom it would best become to be earliest and most earnest in the strife, sink back replete with dishonour.

Of those, or their descendants, who, at the time of the Union, sold their country and the high places they filled in her councils and in her glory, for the promise of a foreign t.i.tle, which has not been redeemed, the shame and the mortification have been perhaps too great to admit of any hope in regard to them. Their trust was sacred--their honour unsuspected. The stake they guarded above life they betrayed then for a false bauble; and it is no wonder if they think their infamy irredeemable and eternal.

We know not but it is. There are many, however, not in that category.

They struggled at fearful odds, and every risk, against the fate of their country. They strove when hope had left them. Wherefore do they stand apart now, when she is again erect, and righteous, and daring?

Have they despaired for her greatness, because of the infidelity of those to whom she had too blindly trusted?

The time is gone when she could be betrayed. This one result is already guaranteed by recent teaching. We may not be yet thoroughly instructed in the wisdom and the virtue necessary for the independent maintenance of self-government; but we have mastered thus much of national knowledge that we cannot be betrayed. There is no a.s.surance every nation gave which we have not given, or may not give, that our present struggle shall end in triumph or in national death.

The writers of _The Nation_ have never concealed the defects or flattered the good qualities of their countrymen. They have told them in good faith that they wanted many an attribute of a free people, and that the true way to command happiness and liberty was by learning the arts and practising the culture that fitted men for their enjoyment.

Nor was it until we saw them thus learning and thus practising that our faith became perfect, and that we felt ent.i.tled to say to all men, here is a strife in which it will be stainless glory to be even defeated. It is one in which the Irish n.o.bility have the first interest and the first stake in their individual capacities.

As they would be the most honoured and benefited by national success, they are the guiltiest in opposing or being indifferent to national patriotism.

Of the Irish gentry there is not much to be said. They are divisible into two cla.s.ses--the one consists of the old Norman race commingled with the Catholic gentlemen who either have been able to maintain their patrimonies, or who have risen into affluence by their own industry; the other, the descendants of Cromwell's or William's successful soldiery.

This last is the most anti-Irish of all. They feel no personal debas.e.m.e.nt in the dishonour of the country. Old prejudices, a barbarous law, a sense of insecurity in the possessions they know were obtained by plunder, combine to sink them into the mischievous and unholy belief that it is their interest as well as their duty to degrade, and wrong, and beggar the Irish people.

There are among them men fired by enthusiasm, men fed by fanaticism, men influenced by sordidness; but, as a whole, they are earnest thinkers and stern actors. There is a virtue in their unscrupulousness.

They speak, and act, and dare as men. There is a principle in their unprincipledness. Their belief is a harsh and turbulent one, but they profess it in a manly fas.h.i.+on.

We like them better than the other section of the same cla.s.s. These last are but sneaking echoes of the other's views. They are coward patriots and criminal dandies. But they ought to be different from what they are. We wish them so. We want their aid now--for the country, for themselves, for all. Would that they understood the truth, that they thought justly, and acted uprightly. They are wanted, one and all. Why conceal it--they are obstacles in our way, shadows on our path.

These are called the representatives of the property of the country.

They are against the national cause, and therefore it is said that all the wealth of Ireland is opposed to the Repeal of the Union.