by James Joyce
In what niche of the temple of glory should we place his image? If he has never won the sympathy of his own countrymen, how can he win that of foreigners? Doesn’t it seem probable that the oblivion that he would almost have desired awaits him? Certainly he did not find in himself the force to reveal to us triumphant beauty, the splendour of truth that the ancients deify. He is a romantic, a herald manqué, the prototype of a nation manqué, but with all that, one who has expressed in a worthy form the sacred indignation of his soul cannot have written his name in water. In those vast courses of multiplex life that surround us, and in that vast memory which is greater and more generous than ours, probably no life, no moment of exaltation is ever lost; and all those who have written in noble disdain have not written in vain, although, weary and [desperate, they have never heard the silver laughter of wisdom.]
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Fenianism
THE LAST FENIAN
1907
With the recent death of John O’Leary in Dublin on St. Patrick’s Day, the Irish national holiday, went perhaps the last actor in the turbid drama of Fenianism, a time-honoured name derived from the old Irish language (in which the word ‘fenians’ means the King’s bodyguard) which came to designate the Irish insurrectionist movement. Anyone who studies the history of the Irish revolution during the nineteenth century finds himself faced with a double struggle — the struggle of the Irish nation against the English government, and the struggle, perhaps no less bitter, between the moderate patriots and the so-called party of physical force. This party under different names: ‘White Boys’, ‘Men of ‘98’, ‘United Irishmen’, ‘Invincibles’, ‘Fenians’, has always refused to be connected with either the English political parties or the Nationalist parliamentarians. They maintain (and in this assertion history fully supports them) that any concessions that have been granted to Ireland, England has granted unwillingly, and, as it is usually put, at the point of a bayonet. The intransigent press never ceases to greet the deeds of the Nationalist representatives at Westminster with virulent and ironic comments, and although it recognizes that in view of England’s power armed revolt has now become an impossible dream, it has never stopped inculcating in the minds of the coming generation the dogma of separatism.
Unlike Robert Emmet’s foolish uprising or the impassioned movement of Young Ireland in ‘45, the Fenianism of ‘67 was not one of the usual flashes of Celtic temperament that lighten the shadows for a moment and leave behind a darkness blacker than before. At the time that the movement arose, the population of the Emerald Isles was more than eight million, while that of England was no more than seventeen million. Under the leadership of James Stephens, head of the Fenians, the country was organized into circles composed of a Sergeant and twenty-five men, a plan eminently fitted to the Irish character because it reduces to a minimum the possibility of betrayal. These circles formed a vast and intricate net, whose threads were in Stephens’” hands. At the same time, the American Fenians were organized in the same way, and the two movements worked in concert. Among the Fenians there were many soldiers in the English Army, police spies, prison guards, and jailers.
Everything seemed to go well, and the Republic was on the point of being established (it was even proclaimed openly by Stephens), when O’Leary and Luby, editors of the party newspaper, were arrested. The government put a price on Stephens’ head, and announced that it knew all the locations where the Fenians held their military drills by night. Stephens was arrested and imprisoned, but succeeded in escaping, thanks to the loyalty of a Fenian prison guard; and while the English agents and spies were under cover at every port, watching the departing ships, he left the capital in a gig, disguised as a bride (according to legend) with a white crepe veil and orange blossoms. Then he was taken aboard a little charcoal boat that quickly set sail for France. O’Leary was tried and condemned to twenty years of forced labour, but later he was pardoned and exiled from Ireland for fifteen years.
And why this disintegration of a movement so well organized? Simply because in Ireland, just at the right moment, an informer always appears.
* * * *
After the dispersal of the Fenians, the tradition of the doctrine of physical force shows up at intervals in violent crimes. The Invincibles blow up the prison at Clerkenwell, snatch their friends from the hands of the police at Manchester and kill the escort, stab to death in broad daylight the English Chief Secretary, Lord Frederick Cavendish, and the Under-Secretary, Burke, in Phoenix Park, Dublin.
After each one of these crimes, when the general indignation has calmed a little, an English minister proposes to the House some reform measure for Ireland, and the Fenians and Nationalists revile each other with the greatest scorn, one side attributing the measure to the success of parliamentary tactics and the other attributing it to the persuasive faculty of the knife or the bomb. And as a backdrop to this sad comedy is the spectacle of a population which diminishes year by year with mathematical regularity, of the uninterrupted emigration to the United States or Europe of Irishmen for whom the economic and intellectual conditions of their native land are unbearable. And almost as if to set in relief this depopulation there is a long parade of churches, cathedrals, convents, monasteries, and seminaries to tend to the spiritual needs of those who have been unable to find courage or money enough to undertake the voyage from Queenstown to New York. Ireland, weighed down by multiple duties, has fulfilled what has hitherto been considered an impossible task — serving both God and Mammon, letting herself be milked by England and yet increasing Peter’s pence (perhaps in memory of Pope Adrian IV, who made a gift of the island to the English King Henry II about 800 years ago, in a moment of generosity).
Now, it is impossible for a desperate and bloody doctrine like Fenianism to continue its existence in an atmosphere like this, and in fact, as agrarian crimes and crimes of violence have become more and more rare, Fenianism too has once more changed its name and appearance. It is still a separatist doctrine but it no longer uses dynamite. The new Fenians are joined in a party which is called Sinn Fein (We Ourselves). They aim to make Ireland a bilingual Republic, and to this end they have established a direct steamship service between Ireland and France. They practise boycotts against English goods; they refuse to become soldiers or to take the oath of loyalty to the English crown; they are trying to develop industries throughout the entire island; and instead of paying out a million and a quarter annually for the maintenance of eighty representatives in the English Parliament, they want to inaugurate a consular service in the principal ports of the world for the purpose of selling their industrial products without the intervention of England.
* * * *
From many points of view, this last phase of Fenianism is perhaps the most formidable. Certainly its influence has once more remodelled the character of the Irish people, and when the old leader O’Leary returned to his native land after years spent in study while an exile in Paris, he found himself among a generation animated by ideals quite different from those of ‘65. He was received by his compatriots with marks of honour, and from time to time appeared in public to preside over some separatist conference or some banquet. But he was a figure from a world which had disappeared. He would often be seen walking along the river, an old man dressed in light-coloured clothes, with a shock of very white hair hanging down to his shoulders, almost bent in two from old age and suffering. He would stop in front of the gloomy shops of the old-book dealers, and having made some purchase, would return along the river. Aside from this, he had little reason to be happy. His plots had gone up in smoke, his friends had died, and in his own native land, very few knew who he was and what he haddone. Now that he is dead, his countrymen will escort him to his tomb with great pomp. Because the Irish, even though they break the hearts of those who sacrifice their lives for their native land, never fail to show great respect for the dead.
James Joyce
Home Rule Comes of Age
1907
&n
bsp; Twenty-one years ago, on the evening of April 9, 1886, the streets that led to the office of the Nationalist newspaper in Dublin were jammed with people. From time to time, a bulletin printed in four-inch letters would appear on the wall, and in this way the crowd was able to participate in the scene unfolding at Westminster, where the galleries had been crammed full since dawn. The Prime Minister’s speech which had begun at four o’clock lasted until eight. A few minutes later the final bulletin appeared on the wall: ‘Gladstone concluded with a magnificent peroration declaring that the English Liberal party would refuse to legislate for England until she granted a measure of autonomy to Ireland.’ At this news, the crowd in the street burst into enthusiastic cries. On all sides was heard, ‘Long live Gladstone’, ‘Long live Ireland’. People who were complete strangers shook hands to ratify the new national pact, and old men wept for sheer joy.
Seven years pass, and we are at the second Home Rule Act. Gladstone, having in the meantime completed the moral assassination of Parnell with the help of the Irish bishops, reads his measure to the House for a third time. This speech is shorter than the other; it lasts hardly an hour and a half. Then the Home Rule Bill is passed. The happy news traverses the wires to the Irish capital, where it arouses a new burst of enthusiasm. In the main room of the Catholic Club, it is the subject of joyous conversations, discussions, toasts and prophecies.
Fourteen more years pass and we are at 1907. Twenty-one years have passed since 1886; therefore the Gladstonian measure has come of age, according to English custom. But in the interval Gladstone himself has died and his measure is not yet born. As he well foresaw, immediately after his third reading, the alarm sounded in the upper House, and all the Lords spiritual and temporal gathered at Westminster in a solid phalanx to give the bill the coup de grâce. The English Liberals forgot their commitments. A fourth-rate politician who voted for every coercive measure against Ireland from 1881 to 1886 dons the mantle of Gladstone. The position of Chief Secretary of Ireland, a position which the English themselves have called the tomb of political reputations, is occupied by a literary jurist, who probably hardly knew the names of the Irish counties when he was presented to the electors of Bristol two years ago. Despite their pledges and promises, despite the support of the Irish vote during a quarter of a century, despite its enormous majority (which is without precedent in the parliamentary history of England), the English Liberal ministry introduces a measure of devolution which does not go beyond the proposals made by the imperialist Chamberlain in 1885, which the conservative press in London openly refused to take seriously. The bill is passed on the first reading with a majority of almost 300 votes, and while the yellow journals break out in shudders of pretended anger, the Lords consult each other to decide whether this wavering scarecrow about to enter the lists is really worthy of their sword.
Probably the Lords will kill the measure, since this is their trade, but if they are wise, they will hesitate to alienate the sympathy of the Irish for constitutional agitation; especially now that India and Egypt are in an uproar and the overseas colonies are asking for an imperial federation. From their point of view, it would not be advisable to provoke by an obstinate veto the reaction of a people who, poor in everything else and rich only in political ideas, have perfected the strategy of obstructionism and made the word ‘boycott’’ an international war-cry.
On the other hand, England has little to lose. The measure (which is not the twentieth part of the Home Rule measure) gives the Executive Council at Dublin no legislative power, no power to impose or regulate taxes, no control over 39 of the 47 government offices, including the police, the supreme court, and the agrarian commission. In addition, the Unionist interests are jealously safeguarded. The Liberal minister has been careful to insert in the first line of his speech the fact that the English electorate must disburse more than a half million pounds sterling each year as the price of the measure; and, understanding their countryman’s intentions, the journalists and the Conservative speakers have made good use of this statement, appealing in their hostile comments to the most vulnerable part of the English electorate — their pocketbook. But neither the Liberal ministers nor the journalists will explain to the English voters that this expense is not a disbursement of English money, but rather a partial settlement on account of England’s debt to Ireland. Nor will they cite the report of the English Royal Commission which established the fact that Ireland was overtaxed 88 million francs in comparison with her senior partner. Nor will they recall the fact that the statesmen and scientists who inspected the vast central swamp of Ireland asserted that the two spectres that sit at every Irish fireplace, tuberculosis and insanity, deny all that the English claim; and that the moral debt of the English government to Ireland for not having reforested this pestiferous swamp during an entire century amounts to 500 million francs.
Now, even from a hasty study of the history of Home Rule, we can make two deductions, for what they are worth. The first is this: the most powerful weapons that England can use against Ireland are no longer those of Conservatism, but those of Liberalism and Vaticanism. Conservatism, though it may be tyrannical, is a frankly and openly inimical doctrine. Its position is logical; it does not want a rival island to arise near Great Britain, or Irish factories to create competition for those in England, or tobacco and wine again to be exported from Ireland, or the great ports along the Irish coast to become enemy naval bases under a native government or a foreign protectorate. Its position is logical, as is that of the Irish separatists which contradicts it point by point. It takes little intelligence to understand that Gladstone has done Ireland greater damage than Disraeli did, and that the most fervid enemy of the Irish Catholics is the head of English Vaticanism, the Duke of Norfolk.
The second deduction is even more obvious, and it is this: the Irish parliamentary party has gone bankrupt. For twenty-seven years it has talked and agitated. In that time it has collected 35 million francs from its supporters, and the fruit of its agitation is that Irish taxes have gone up 88 million francs and the Irish population has decreased a million. The representatives themselves have improved their own lot, aside from small discomforts like a few months in prison and some lengthy sittings. From the sons of ordinary citizens, pedlars, and lawyers without clients they have become well-paid syndics, directors of factories and commercial houses, newspaper owners, and large landholders. They have given proof of their altruism only in 1891,’ when they sold their leader, Parnell, to the pharisaical conscience of the English Dissenters without exacting the thirty pieces of silver.
James Joyce
Ireland at the Bar
1907
Several years ago a sensational trial was held in Ireland. In a lonely place in a western province, called Maamtrasna, a murder was committed. Four or five townsmen, all belonging to the ancient tribe of the Joyces, were arrested. The oldest of them, the seventy year old Myles Joyce, was the prime suspect. Public opinion at the time thought him innocent and today considers him a martyr. Neither the old man nor the others accused knew English. The court had to resort to the services of an interpreter. The questioning, conducted through the interpreter, was at times comic and at times tragic. On one side was the excessively ceremonious interpreter, on the other the patriarch of a miserable tribe unused to civilized customs, who seemed stupefied by all the judicial ceremony. The magistrate said:
‘Ask the accused if he saw the lady that night.’ The question was referred to him in Irish, and the old man broke out into an involved explanation, gesticulating, appealing to the others accused and to heaven. Then he quieted down, worn out by his effort, and the interpreter turned to the magistrate and said:
‘He says no, “your worship”.’
‘Ask him if he was in that neighbourhood at that hour.’ The old man again began to talk, to protest, to shout, almost beside himself with the anguish of being unable to understand or to make himself understood, weeping in anger and terror. And the interpreter, again, dryly:
‘He says no, “your worship”.’’
When the questioning was over, the guilt of the poor old man was declared proved, and he was remanded to a superior court which condemned him to the noose. On the day the sentence was executed, the square in front of the prison was jammed full of kneeling people shouting prayers in Irish for the repose of Myles Joyce’s soul. The story was told that the executioner, unable to make the victim understand him, kicked at the miserable man’s head in anger to shove it into the noose.
The figure of this dumbfounded old man, a remnant of a civilization not ours, deaf and dumb before his judge, is a symbol of the Irish nation at the bar of public opinion. Like him, she is unable to appeal to the modern conscience of England and other countries. The English journalists act as interpreters between Ireland and the English electorate, which gives them ear from time to time and ends up being vexed by the endless complaints of the Nationalist representatives who have entered her House, as she believes, to disrupt its order and extort money. Abroad there is no talk of Ireland except when uprisings break out, like those which made the telegraph office hop these last few days. Skimming over the dispatches from London (which, though they lack pungency, have something of the laconic quality of the interpreter mentioned above), the public conceives of the Irish as highwaymen with distorted faces, roaming the night with the object of taking the hide of every Unionist. And by the real sovereign of Ireland, the Pope, such news is received like so many dogs in church. Already weakened by their long journey, the cries are nearly spent when they arrive at the bronze door. The messengers of the people who never in the past have renounced the Holy See, the only Catholic people to whom faith also means the exercise of faith, are rejected in favour of messengers of a monarch, descended from apostates, who solemnly apostasized himself on the day of his coronation, declaring in the presence of his nobles and commons that the rites of the Roman Catholic Church are ‘superstition and idolatry’.