EMPIRE SELF-RAISING FLOUR
of.
Rises Above all Others.
RECORD
The West AUSTRALIAN
PERTH, SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, A
1913
Remarkable Chapter from Harold Begbie's Book, "The Ladg Next Door" ---Bishop Kelly of Ross
(Concluded.) "The strength of our national life is the chastity of our women. All the beauty of family life in Ireland flows from the purity of Irish mothers. You have seen some of the cabins in which our people live ; not very long ago almost the whole peasantry of
Ireland was housed in that way-one wretched room for the existence of a family-for eating, sleeping, everything. Well, in spite of such a dreadful environment, the purity of the people has persisted. Our women are chaste, our men are chivalrous, our children are virtuous. Nothing seems able to brutalize them. Ilere and there, of course, evil manifests itself; we are not perfect ; but rare are the cases of seduction, almost unknown are the cases of adultery, and When such things occur they are met by the censure and the opposition of a virtuous public opinion. We can justly boast that our people are chaste. Now, with a nation so minded, and left to develop its own way of life, is it not certain that Ireland might become the sanctuary, the holy place, of my ambition? What is to prevent it ? Our women breathe into the souls of their children a love for family life, our men teach their sons to cultivate the land and to turn the temper of the selniest soil on th side of a bill and father. mother, and children believe in (;od. Is then not here everything that makes for the beeuty of life and the sanctity of Fulda' existence ? "I do not mean that there will he no progress, that we shall remain cultivators and nothing but cultivators. We hope to raise our population to at least ten millions, and agriculture must therefore be fortified by industries. Bat we shall seek to develop village industries. Instead of factory towns, with their horrible slums, their poverty, and spiritual degradation, we shall add little workshops and little factories to our villages. We shall always he in the first place, cultivators. We shall he the market -garden of England, perhai s one of its wheat -fields, and this will be our chief employment. But we shall seek to supply our own needs in the way of manufactures ; so far as we can, we shall endeavour to make locally some at least of our chief necessities. It will never be our objective to export these manufactures, never our ambition to come into commercial conflict with tine great manufacturing nations like England and Germany no, we shall be content to make what we can for ourselves. and to support ourselves firstly and chiefly by the fruit of our
simple, and modest.
We are quite certain that materialism is wrong. What, is more important, we are quite certain that idealism is right. We make the conscious choice of beget), and peace, rather than ugliness and contention. We deliberately elect for God, and as deliberately we reject
Mammon.
"You hear people say that Home Rule will he the, death -blow of Rome in Ireland. That is not true. Ireland is religious, and Ireland is Catholic. At first, perhaps, the strong wine of freedom may tempt the younger gen-
eration to resent the paternal interference of the priest at first there ;
may be an unreckoning enthusiasm for secular education, leading to agnosticism but the habit of religion will assert itself again. I welcome ! ionic Rule for one thing in this respect, that it will deliver the parish ;
for beauty, Again, do you know of any clergy in the world with fewer black sheep among them than the clergy of Ireland? "I am not afraid. Time will bring changes, life will advance, knowledge will modify even those opinions which seem to us now of primary importance ; but the essential characteristic of the Irish nature will endure, and that characteristic is the religious sense. Ireland will never he inence is more powerful
kindness, and
chastity
fidel.
"So it all comes to this under the Union we are dragged against our will, we a poor and simple agriculture' -ere e into the roaring machinery and the extravagant organization of a rich, complex, and industrial civilization. The more you bear our burdens, the more you paralyse our sense of responsibility. The more :
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fields. "Why cannot we do all this under the Union ? Because we have no incentive of enthusiasm because we are spoon-fed and debilitated with one of England's hands, let, hindered, and obstructed with the other ; because. our intellect is absorbed by politics ; because we have a passion for freedom because we cannot rest v. bile we are governed by another ; because the form of government under which we live has improveriehed our industriee and drained our population. It will take years before we can recover the lost ground, but with the first heating of enthusiasm in the blood of Ireland's freedom that ricceery will begin. "have I made you feel, have I convinced you, that the Irish question is a spiritual question, a religious eitestinn ? Our movement in its soul is that, ncthine but that. We do not believe in the strife of industrialism. We do not believe in the struggle for existence. We seek to disengage ourselves from all that strife and struggle, into which the Union has dragged us, in order that we may follow our own way of life, which is quiet, ;
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BLARNEY
CASTLE, NEAR CORK, IRELAND.
priest from the sphere of politics, You advance along your difficult road, and set him free for his purely spiri- the more you drag us from our firetual duties. Remember that the sides and our fields. We do not depriest has been driven into politics. sire a complex civilisation. We do sophisticated. In the bad times, before recent legis- not want to become lation, the peasants had no one else We dislike and we suspect the elaboto, whom they could tarry their cola - rate machinery of your social life. We plaints against the landlord or his may to you, Set us free leave us to agent. The priest was the witness of pursue our own path, to fulfil our barbarous cruelties. Ile saw his peo- own destiny. We feel that something ple defrauded, starved, ill-treated, more than our fortunes are hound up soinetiinee debased and demoralized, in this plea for self-government ; it driven into exile. Do you wonder is our character. You destroy our inthat he became a politican ? Would dependence, you paralyse our self-renot English clergymen become poli- liance, you take away from us what ticians in a like circumstance ? But God gives as a chief blessing to a with Irish freedom, the excuse, the n ition, our sense of responsibility. We justification, for this political inter- tend under the Union to become the ference ell' go. And then the parish re.rasites of your wealth, the hangj,riest will devote himself solely to ers-on of your imperial greatness, the spiritual needs of his people, he the sponging toadies of your bounty. will instruct them exclusively how to That, to us, is more than intolerlive, and leave them to vote as they able, more than perilous ; it is fatal will. to body, soul, and spirit. Canada "You have seen something of the could not advance in such shackles, influence of the Irish priest. You are Australia could not advance in such not a catholic, but do you see any- bonds, South Africa in such a case thing in that influence which is evil would he a constant danger to your or dangerous ? Does not the parish peace. Your genius is to preside rre st, whatever he his dogmas, teach o er a bro Irrhood of free nations, virtue and the love of God ? Do you to leave the component parts of your -now of any country in the world empire to develop along their ()en where the Triest is more closely and l'nes ; the greater the freedom you inteeately associated with the faint- grant them, the greater their loyalty, the greater your security. Why ly life of the nation, where his :
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cannot you treat Ireland in the same way? For bow many centuries have you tried in vain to govern her from London, to destroy her nationality, and to suppress the spirit .of her independence ? Why make of this little island the single dark exception to the brilliant success of your genius for empire ? "Believe me, Ireland will never be at 'rest until she is free. Until you set her free she will be a thorn in your side, There will always be Irishmen-even if the dwindling mass should become slothful and apathetic -who, for the sake of Irish character, will preach the ancient gospel of freedom, will rouse the undying spirit of her independence. You would surely do the same in England, if some
ower were at work which threatencharacter, which sapped and ruined the foundations of English manhood. You would fight, then, not for empire, but for character, for life. It is the same with us. Again and again I tell you that we are at war with you for the spirit of Irish nationality. We do not criticize your civilization, we admire many of your splendid qualities, we envy you much of your energy, your grit, your sterling common sense; but we think that your civilization is not suitable to Ireland, we believe that we have qualities that are of value to mankind, and we believe that only by exercising the functions of selfgovernment can we develop our kind of energy, our kind of grit, and our kind of common saise. You must go ed your English
forward on the road of industrial f.rogress, creating new problems as fast as you solve old, treading down and obliterating landmarks as fast es you set up new ones ; but we must live our own life of rastnral simplicity, moving more slowly, content to see fresh horizons when God reveals them, attempting to solve only those ancient problems which frustrate the growth and near the beauty of man's soul. Leave us to that. We shall be then no hindrance to your progress. And perhaps some of the statesmen of your nee democracy may occasionally pay us a visit to see how an old-fashioned people, following in the footsteps of its ancestors, manages the business of human life. "Believe me, we wish you no harm. Most cheerfully shall we send you our tiel.{ and outLer, our eggs and bacon, our cabbages, and potatoes; and ale aye most delightfully shall we welcome you to our shores when you are in need of quiet and repose "Am I a dreamer? Well, when you are in Belfast perhaps you may think so. But go among our peasants; sit by their peat -fires, stand in their gar!
dens, visit their cowsheds, walk throfind ugh their fields, and you will that I (10 not dream. And do remember, when you are in Belfast, that something like 70 per cent. of Ireland's population is engaged, directly or indirectly, in agriculture, and that only 30 per cent. is industrial. My dream is the aspiration of the
Irish people." PATRONISE
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