The Ireland Of The 19th Century

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31001, 5 March 1966, Page 4

The Ireland Of The 19th Century

The Irish Question. 1840-1921. A commentary on AngloIrish Relations and on Social and Political Forces in Ireland in the Age of Reform and Revolution. By Nicholas Mansergh. Allen and Unwin. 303 pp.

Professor Mansergh, in this book, has made a valuable addition to the fine works he has already published on Ireland. This is a scholarly and comprehensive work, written in a lucid and attractive style. It is not a history but a commentary on AngloIrish relations and on political forces in Ireland, 18401921. Its aim is “to explore some questions that possess enduring historical significance. ...” The book is a series of essays in political and historical analysis, and as such, it is selective in its choice of subjects. But this is the value of the book rather than a weakness. Many histories have been written covering this highly significant period in Irish history, and the recording of the events has precluded much in the way of critical analysis. This is a book which provides such an historical analysis. Nicholas Mansergh has written a searching commentary on the Irish question of the 19th century, and has placed it in a wider context that gives it an altogether new perspective. The writer himself admits that, even at this date, it takes courage to ven-

ture In a critical spirit into the field of modern Irish history. He wryly compares his situation to that of Gibbon who, “shrank in terror” from the prospect of writing a history of England under the Stuarts because in such a history, “every character is a problem, and every reader a friend or an enemy.” This is not as true of histories of Ireland today as it was in earlier years but it may explain why we have had to wait so long for a book of this type and quality.

There is a “newness” about the approach to Ireland in this work. The writer lets us see the Ireland of the 19th century through the eyes of contemporary travellers and observers. The number and range of these “observers” is nothing short of amazing, and all were ready to offer comment and criticism on the ills of Ireland, and to give advice. Mansergh shows how closely the continentals watched Ireland from Tocqueville to Lenin and from Mazzini to the Kaiser. No matter how much the reader may know of the misery and poverty of the Irish people, he experiences a new sense of shock when seeing them through the eyes of contemporary French, German, Italian and Spanish travellers.

If the conditions of life in Ireland excited such dismay, pity, and horror in those who saw them, “why did they not stir British public opinion and British statesmen to concern?” Mansergh is quite convinced that the chief reason was ignorance. There was no contact between the two

peoples. Englishmen did not visit Ireland, and, more deeply significant, English statesmen did not visit Ireland. Gladstone cancelled a proposed visit because of his sick sister, Disraeli cancelled his visit because of an attack of gout, and Salisbury was unable to face a crossing of the Irish Sea “even though he had earlier visited South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.” Typically, it was Richard Cobden and John Bright, who were the honourable exceptions. Bright undertook a fact-finding tour of Ireland in 1849, and for the next thirty years remained an outstanding champion of redress in Ireland. In the second section of this book, by skilful use of comparative methods, the writer carries out a highly interesting study of Irish nationalism in relation to European nationalism. The great nationalists of Europe were deeply interested in events in Ireland and Mazzini and Cavour, though so involved in Italian nationalism, both took an intense interest in Ireland. Mazzini could write in 1867, “I am feeling between the unhappy and the ferocious about the Fenians condemned. Today is the Queen’s birthday. Does she read the newspaper? Cannot she find a womanly feeling in her heart to ask the Cabinet to commute the punishment?” And when the condemned were reprieved, “You have been spared the infamy of Burke’s execution. I am glad of it. I have weakness for England and did not like the shame for her.”

The interest of Marx, Engels, and Lenin in Ireland, matched that of the Italians. Engels visited Ireland in 1856. and in a long letter to Marx giving a vivid account of the state of the country, he claimed to have seen over two-thirds of the whole country. For his part, Marx wrote at great length on Ireland, but for him Ireland was never more than a means to an end, viz., the overthrow of capitalism in England. There is irony in the fact that the Communist philosophers had a much more realistic picture of conditions in Ireland and were even more interested in the course of events within that country than the British statesmen responsible for ruling it. An interesting and instructive essay is that which deals with the influence of the romantic ideal in Irish politics. Yeats, by using “the inheritance of the Gaels for the poetic muse,” gave a romantic expression to the Irish national ideal. Mansergh gives much evidence to support the opinion that “Yeats, and the literary movement in which he was the commanding figure may be said to have conjured up the armed bands of 1916.” Yeats himself was to question his own part in the events of later years: Did that play of mine send out Certain men the English shot? Did words of mine put too great strain On that woman’s reeling brain* These are the questions of history that no poet (or historian) can answer, but they make interesting and instructive reading. The reader of this book will not find in it the history of Ireland that the title might imply. He will find, rather, a series of scholarly, discerning, and readable essays on a subject that has too often been treated with too little vision, within too narrow limits, and with too immediate a purpose. It is to be hoped that it will be the forerunner of other histories of the same quality. There is much material in Irish history awaiting similar research.