HOW IRELANDS ARE MADE. GREAT BRITAIN has been famous for centuries as the mother of manufactures. Her factories, mills, foundries, workshops, have annually turned out enormous quantities of an infinite variety of articles, good, bad, and indifferent, from the cheap deceptive fabric, called shoddy, to the most beautiful and costly brocade. In common parlance England has hitherto taken the lead as a maker of most things, "from a needle to an anchor." It is said that in not very distant times metal idols, made in Birmingham, for the worship of the heathen, and chains, for the convenience of slavedealers, were notable articles of production in the Midlands, and found their way into the most remote regions of the Dark Continent. On the seaboard coffin-ships for the ostensible exportation of emigrants, but practically for the benefit of insurers, constituted a special and highly profitable branch of British industry. Wilberforce, however, destroyed the one and Plimsoll the other, of those ingenious methods of money-getting, let us hope for ever. But the most signal instance of Great Britain's enterprise, skill, and versatility in the art of production has been displayed, strange as it may sound, in the manufacture of Irelands. Sceptics may sneer, but I propose, in the course of these pages, to give a clear and succinct account of the process of manufacture, premising that it is a tedious and enormously expensive one, and in the end the results obtained are most disappointing to the manufacturer who, in the present instance, will have to compound with his creditors, if not become actually bankrupt. The expected results have never been reached, but, so far, disaster to all concerned has been the only outcome. Men can never be tortured into regarding their torturers with affection. The idea is opposed to reason and common sense. All the tyrants and persecutors who ever existed, from Caligula to Kitchener, could not accomplish so much, because it is an impossibility. No! when opportunity comes, as come it must, if the teachings of history are to be believed, the persecuted will pay back the persecutors in their own coin, and not unlikely with interest. That history repeats itself is a truth not to be gainsaid—it is admitted by everybody. The saying has passed into a proverb, so trite, and worn so threadbare from frequent use, that few writers VOL. 157.-No. 2. L now care to apply the hackneyed phrase; yet no other short form of words, within the scope of my vocabulary, can convey precisely the same meaning. The reiteration is an established fact-just as year succeeds to year, and harvest to seed-time, so truly does history repeat itself in regular cycles. There are many indications that the law of genesis is again about to confirm the truth of the aphorism, and that at last the iniquitous acts of England, long as they have taken to germinate, will recoil upon her own head, and her fate will be like unto the fate of ancient Rome. As the River Thames flows past the majestic walls of Westminster, where laws are made that affect, directly or indirectly, about a fifth of the human race, so flowed the yellow Tiber past the Roman Forum, whence decrees went forth that had to be obeyed by all the peoples of the then known world. The great Cæsar, before the arrival of the fatal "Ides of March," when he was done to death by his former friends, the men whom he had raised from obscurity and made famous, ruled an empire embracing practically within its sphere all the nations of the earth, Great Britain included. The yellow Tiber still flows on its turgid course to the sea, where the most powerful navy of ancient times then "ruled the waves," passing by as it flows the ruins of the Forum, of the palace of the Cæsars, and of the Colosseum, the greatest structure of the kind ever raised by human hands; where the early Christians were given to the wild beasts as a spectacular entertainment for the vile and licentious aristocracy and the ferocious rabble of Rome, and gladiators fought and died, "butchered to make a Roman holiday." Not far away you can stand upon the very spot where Horatius kept the bridge "in the brave days of old," and look upon the same surroundings he looked upon, which are said to be little changed; but the Cæsars, their palaces, and their empire, and all its glory, where are they? Echo answers, "Where are they?" As it was in the past so is it now. The inevitable always happens. A living wren is of more account in the world than a dead Cæsar. Many years ago, sitting alone at early morning on a piece of broken wall in that stupendous amphitheatre, where emperors presided over the awful spectacles of carnage presented in the arena, which is placed appropriately upon the site of what was once a part of Nero's garden, that inhuman monster on whose death, by suicide, the Julian dynasty came to an end, I thought of Gustave Doré's great picture, so realistic and so sublime. The recollection enabled me, mentally, to people the enormous structure, which accommodated nearly 100,000 spectators, with the maddened and howling multitude of brutalised human beings, and to gaze upon the ghastly spectacle of the bleeding and lacerated bodies and limbs of the Christian martyrs scattered around, where crouching lions battened upon the dead and those already gorged with their horrid meal lay drowsily at rest. Musing dreamily upon the wonderful environments in which I found myself, my attention was attracted by a little wren, sometimes called "the king of all birds," busily engaged building its nest in an aperture in the wall. As I watched the little creature flitting backwards and forwards gathering materials for its nest, and apparently quite regardless of my near presence, the line in the American poet's1 sweet verse, referring to the Palatine and the Palace of the Caesars came into my mind, and, in paraphrase, I said unto myself: "Morn leaves the Colosseum free Passing on my way, I left the little bird in sole possession of the great Flavian Amphitheatre, or rather of the ruins of that mighty structure, erected 2000 years ago in the blood and tears and sufferings of 30,000 captive prisoners of war, as a monument and a type of the greatness and glory and permanence of the Roman Empire. And what has it all come to? Vanitas vanitatum. The smallest and most insignificant of birds has taken possession and appropriated it to its own use. What a commentary upon the instability of empires, the folly of human ambition, and the absurdity of the theories we have recently heard so much of regarding "the extension of empire." The dynasty of the Cæsars and their empire have vanished. Their glory has departed; the sycophants, time-servers, and parasites who flocked around their thrones, bending the knee, crawling and creeping, fawning and flattering, and scrambling for honours and emoluments, have gone the way of all flesh; can it be said in regard to them that in this particular history has not repeated itself? I am afraid it must be admitted that history has acquired the habit of repeating itself at all times and in all its phases. The empires of old arose, spread themselves abroad, and in the process of expansion and annexation enslaved, plundered, massacred, and devastated, with fire and sword, all before them. They flourished for a time, until their great men began to think they had secured "a lease for ever" of empire; but when the incidental, or accidental, circumstances that primarily led to their rise, or, in other words, when the force which nourished their strength was exhausted, the rocket by which they were carried up on high exploded in mid-air and the stick fell to earth. Moreover, the fall was invariably traceable to the same causes that are operating at the present time-the stolid stupidity of the people and the turpitude of their rulers; the so-called "great men " who think they can ignore the eternal decrees of the Creator of the universe and His Providence, and trample 1 N. P. Willis. upon them with impunity-who think that by adopting anti-ethical ideas, rules, and principles of their own, and an anti-Christian code of morals, they can fly in the face of the Almighty and frustrate the everlasting laws of righteousness and justice primevally impressed upon the heart and mind and conscience of man; who think they can reject moral principles as only worthy of women, philanthropists, and fools, and believe that because they are themselves in positions of power they are superior to the laws of rectitude and even of reason. Such are the characters the late Professor Sidgwick had in mind when he wrote: "The morally emancipated statesman, the statesman who, when circumstances drive him to cruelty, rapacity, breach of faith, falsehood, will not waver and whine about the painful necessity,' but with simple decision, unhampered by scruples, take the course that leads straightest to the next stage of everlasting progress." Professor Sidgwick shatters into fragments the position of "the morally emancipated statesman" in the next sentence, and indicates plainly that he has no sympathy with such an atrocious principle. He goes on to say: "In the extreme form which this doctrine not unfrequently assumes, and in which I have for clearness presented it, it neither invites nor requires a formal refutation, since it neither appeals to the common consciousness of mankind, which, indeed, it frankly claims to override, nor to any principles which have ever been accepted by philosophers." 1 It is strange that English opinion is so ill-informed or so blind to the doings of the governing classes who, themselves receiving large stipends from the public purse, annually squander millions upon millions of the taxes levied upon the hard-won earnings of the people, in what Professor Sidgwick aptly describes as "conscious brigandage," scattering death and destruction broadcast throughout the world, inflicting unutterable wrongs and sufferings upon other nations, under the false and hypocritical pretence of spreading civilisation, Christianity, and moral principles in lands that had not before received the so-called blessings of English enlightenment. I will presently have something to say upon this latter point that may possibly be a surprise to many people whose worship of militarism and its chiefs is so abject, so unreasoning, and so ludicrous. There are unfortunately a great many people in the world in whose opinions the uniform of the soldier, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. Let it not be supposed it is my intention to make a sweeping charge against military men. Nothing is farther from my thoughts. I have met many brave and gallant soldiers who are the soul of honour, and it is a privilege to know them. I only charge those against whom evidence exists, and can be established under their own hands or out of their own mouths. But to return the fall of empires has invariably been brought about through the instrumentality of the very 1 Practical Ethics, pp. 67-68. peoples who were enslaved, oppressed, plundered, and maltreated. There is profound philosophic truth in the axiom that "Virtue is its own reward"; but the dictum is equally true that "Crime brings its own punishment." Nemesis, the sleuth-hound of destiny, if slow is sure; in the end she inevitably runs down her quarry, justice and righteousness resume their sway, and retribution overtakes the wrongdoer after generations, or, it may be, centuries of watching and waiting for an opportunity to deliver the death-blow. One of the greatest of England's poets (Lord Byron) has put the lesson thus: "For time at last sets all things even, And if we do but watch the hour Of him who treasures up a wrong." Granting that history repeats itself, there are plenty of indications that, after the example of ancient Rome, what was once the greatest of modern kingdoms is already tottering to her fall. The stage of senile decay, referred to by the great dramatist in chronicling the seven ages of man, seems to be approaching, and Great Britain's It may be that the sentence of doom pronounced against "all those that delight in wars" has already gone forth, and that it is now merely a question of time as to day and date of execution; so that after all Macaulay's New Zealander may in the near future get his opportunity of sketching the ruins of St. Paul's from a broken arch of London Bridge. To come to my theme of "How Irelands are made," I propose to outline events as they are recorded in regard to Celtic Ireland, relying mainly upon English authorities for my facts; not that Irish authorities, such as Lecky, Plowden, Gordon, Teeling, Daniel O'Connell, A. M. Sullivan, W. J. Fitzpatrick, Barry O'Brien, and many others, can be charged with misrepresentation or exaggeration. My reason for this course is that those good people whom I desire to reach and to convince of the multitude and enormity of England's crimes, committed under the disastrous influence of evil and selfinterested counsellors, will naturally accept the evidence of English witnesses rather than of Irish. Next I propose to refer shortly to what has been, and is still, going on in South Africa, leaving the |