“The real root of Irish disaffection is the want of national institutions, of a national capital, of any objects of national reverence and attachment, and, consequently, of anything deserving to be called national life. The greatness of England is nothing to the Irish. Her history is nothing, or worse. The success of Irishmen in London consoles the Irish no more than the success of Italian adventurers in foreign countries (which was very remarkable) consoled the Italian people. The drawing off of Irish talent, in fact, turns to an additional grievance in their mind. Dublin is a modern Tara; a Metropolis from which the glory has departed; and the Vice-Royalty, though it pleases some of the tradesmen, fails altogether to satisfy the people. ’In Ireland we can make no appeal to patriotism; we can have no patriotic sentiments in our school books, no patriotic emblems in our schools, because in Ireland everything patriotic is rebellious.’ These were the words uttered in my hearing, not by a complaining demagogue, but by a desponding statesman.”
Between 1861 and 1871 the tide of nationality was rising. Fenianism diverted it in the direction of separation. Isaac Butt brought it back to the channel of legislative autonomy. The failure of the Land Act of 1870, the refusal of Parliament to amend it, the renewal of Coercion, the political excitement caused by Fenianism and the definite demand for Home Rule, swelled the tide and gave it fresh force. All the Land Acts passed between 1881 and 1909 have not changed the current of public feeling. Home Rule has not been killed by kindness.
The class which long refused to remove Irish material grievances, now say, that, since some of those grievances have been remedied, the Irish ought to abandon the demand for Home Rule. John Stuart Mill warned the class in question many years ago that if the removal of material grievances were delayed, the time might come when the fight would be for an idea, and that then the Irish problem would be more formidable than ever. The fight to-day is for an idea—the idea of nationality—and English Unionist statesmen do not apparently understand it:
“Alas for the self-complacent ignorance of irresponsible rulers, be they monarchs, classes, or nations! If there is anything sadder than the calamity itself, it is the unmistakable sincerity and good faith with which numbers of Englishmen confess themselves incapable of comprehending it. They know not that the disaffection which neither has nor needs any other motive than aversion to the rulers, is the climax to a long growth of disaffection arising from causes that might have been removed. What seems to them the causelessness of the Irish repugnance to our rule, is the proof that they have almost let pass the last opportunity they are ever likely to have of setting it right. They have allowed what once was indignation against particular wrongs, to harden into a passionate determination to be no longer ruled on any terms by those to whom they ascribe all their evils.”(157)