THE ANNIVERSARY OF ST. PATRICK.

Kumara Times, Issue 835, 4 June 1879, Page 4

THE ANNIVERSARY OF ST. PATRICK.

[daily telegraph, makch 17.] To-day is the anniversary of St. Patrick, and the celebration, both in London and in other places, will derive an additional interest from the recent nuptials of the Prince whose name and title connect him with his sister island. Moore, in his well-known lines, linked the old air of St. Patrick's Day to a song in honor of another Prince ; and though George VI. " unbeseemed the promise of his Bpring," the effusive loyalty of the little ode was subsequently justified by the fact that the Act for the Emancipation of Catholics—the one thought of Erin when the poem was written, received the Royal assent in his reign. Even before this longdeferred fruition of their aspiration the Irish people welcomed the Kipg with an enthusiasm that spoke more for their readiness to love any Sovereign than for his worthiness. "There never were hearts, if our rulers would let them, more formed to be grateful and blest than ours," said thepoet, speaking for his fellow-country-men ; and he, no doubt, represented fairly enough the strong and warm personal feeling that animated the political traditions of the time and the race. This sentiment flourished in France before the Revolution, and has been immortalised by Bnrke as a " generous loyalty .to rank and sex," originally noble, but capable, as was Been under the Grand Monarque and his successor, of degeneracy into an. unquestioning and chivalrous fidelity to the wearer of the Crown. Irish Catholics took up the traditions of the French loyalists. The revolution, with all its hostility to religion, estranged them from the ardent Liberalism of the time, and they were proud of a loyalty which to us savors of sentiment in excess. The strange thing was that the statesmen of the epoch did not improve the occasion, and convert Catholic Ireland to Conservatism by timely concession. The grant to Maynooth was the begining of a process which Pitt would have completed had George 111. been less obstinate in his temper, or less infirm in mind ; but the difficulty created by a King who, on being farther pressed, might lose his wits again and throw the State into confusion, was greater than many writers of our own time are willing to admit. The opportunity, at all events, was lost, and theold-fashioned loyalty of the Irish Catholics to a King —as absolute in its way as the devotion of Highlanders to a Chief—disappeared, to a great exent, in successive agitations. The "passive obedience" which the Roman Catholic clergy had borrowed, more or less, from the Anglican divines of the Restoration, ceased to be preached by the young present prieshood, imperfectly trained at Maynooth; and then came returned American citizens to teach Republican ideas. Yet though the old, unreasoning Celtic attachment of the people to any and every Prince has died down, we believe that the Irish people as a body are ready to receive with cordiality and respect any member of the Royal Family, and are practically as loyal as the great majority here. The return of some Home Rulers may seem to conflict with this theory; but allowance must be made for the tendency of the Celtic race to vex the souls of those in authority by occasional plunges into capricious opposition. Even when Napoleon 111. had a great. h-ld on the imagination and attachment of France many rural constituencies sent up members with a mission of attack, if not of obstruction. The theory of the French and the Irish is that Governments can very well take care of themselves, and that it is not the business of the people tc give them political support. Farmers and shopkeepers voting for some blatant demagogue who denounces the English as though Strongbow's landing took place yesterday, wonld be extremely sorry if their representative's sedition were carried out; for they would bitterly lament the fall of prices and the loss of trade. But the more remote seem the chances of insurrection, the more is treasonable talk cherished as a harmless effervescence, i nglieb Princes, English Viceroys, English Boldiers, have always been popular fn Ireland, not only among Pretestants and the upper ranks of society, but among the middle classes and the peasantry ? and the only grumbling beard is when a comparatively parsimonius Lord Lieutenant saves his salary and gives few balls. Beyond the occasional bursts of oratorical disloyalty, however, we have the "national" newspapers in Dublin and their rejoicings at English defeats. This is an ugly trait in the public opinion of Ireland at the prpseut time That there should be any subjects of the Queen who hail with delight the massacre of brave soldiers, their own fellow-countrymen, by ruthless savages, testifies to a painful degradation of sentiment among presumably educated men. The feeling has even roused some Irishmen to treasonable verse in which the writer sings, "Then hurrah for our Zulu foes, For their solid and deep array, For the whelming crescent's close, And the whizzing array, For the assegai," ending with the prayer, "And soon may their shouts of victory ring O'er the Tugela's turbid wave." This poet laureate of the Zulus must be chagrined to find that lines which thirty years ago would have probably drawn down a persecution do not now attract the notice of the Attorney-General, for the very good reason that, though they are not dangerous. Were the majority of the Irish people disloyal, a regard for the interests of the Empire would compel us as before to put down printed sedition. But it is now understood that these spiteful effusions fall stillborn from the press. The papers that contain them are weekly sheets, published at small cost, and requiring very limited

circulation to make them pay. The wide spread of elementary education has filled Irish cottages with young men who can read and write, and Ireland has always yielded a plentiful crop of amateur authors whose facility in producing prose and verse is really remarkable. The first opening of all youth there is the Poet's Corner of a newspaper, and Irish editors have constantly an abundance of gratuitous contributors seeking admission into their columns. This c rcumstance greatly promoted the career of the seditious newspapers ot 1848, but they also had the aid of a few young mm of real genius. Yet even then the influence of the Nation on the masses was out of all proportion to its pretensions an 1 to the talent it could command. It sp<>ke for the people and gave to journalism a fervor and force rarely displayed ; but the millions know nothing of Youni< Irelandism and the names of Mitchel, Meagher, and the rest never won wide fame until the owners were transported. The contrast is even stronger now. Seditious utterances are transmitted to London to form a paragraph of some interest, and when the Dublin people read the metropolitan papers they learn that high treason is printed at their doors; otherwise they would be as ignorant of the fact as M. Jourdain that he had been talking prose all his life. French or American journalists, if anxious to prove th&t the English people were not loyal, might with as much reason reproduce as evidence the Republican sentiments to be found in two or three obscure London prints. The toleration of our laws and customs for such exceptional displays indicates the strength of the Empire and the prevailing good sense of the nation as a whole. Were Ireland the " oppressed nationality" she is sometimes called, her sons would find many means of manifesting their discontent with their English 'conquerors." Irish society would exclude Englishmen as Venetians did Anstrians before 1859, and as Poles avoid Russians to this day. But English officials and English soldiers as we have already remarked, are very popular in Dublin, and the Viceorys most liked have been Englishmen. Many Home Rulers recently praised Sir Michael Hicks-Beach in Parliament, because while at the castle he had resolutely resisted the influence of native subordinates ! One of the new demands of the patriotic party is that the chiefs of the Board of Works and other important Irish departments should have seats in the House and thus be amenable to English opinion. In fact, we see no trace of that intention to keep Ireland for the Irish and the Irish in Ireland, which would be the real proof of a genuine nationalism. As to the antiEnglish spirit that finks vent in spiteful ballads and a few reckless votes, it is never shown in practical life. The constabulary, a fine body of men, are Irish Catholics of the peasant class. At the time of the Fenian revolt not one deserted or was even suspected of being untrue. When have Irish soidiers failed before the enemy, or hesitated to repress revolt? A steady stream of Irish emigrants into Great Britain testifies that England is regarded as a refuge—certainly not as a "tyrant's" home. Nor is it without its absurd significance that some of the most violent attacks on the Empire are addressed, as in the recent case of Mr Bigaar, to Irish artists and laborers who have found here the livelihood denied them in their native land. If these people loved Ireland and hated England in their hearts, their residences and careers are curiously at variance with the sentiments supposed to be welcome to them. Possibly reminiscences of rebellion form a kind of poetry or superstition, something refreshing because so remote from their daily work and the realities of their lives. So Moors keep the keys of old mansions that belonged to their ancestors ih Spain, and revive the glory of Granada in household tales.