THE GENTLE ART OF PROPAGANDA.

Southland Times, Issue 18843, 8 June 1920, Page 2

THE GENTLE ART OF PROPAGANDA.

To the Editor. Sir, —In justification of the special treatment of Ulster, it is alleged that Ulster has always been England’s most devoted adherent and remained loyal when the other three provinces were straining every nerve to throw off the yoke of the stranger. A dip into "The Story of Ireland" will show you how far this is from the truth. More than any other province Ulster has hated English sovereignty, and revolted against it, until in the words of a recent writer, "there is not an inch of its soil that is not red with the blood of rebels.” The names of Godfrey O’Donnell, Lord of Tyrconnell, in one generation, and Shane the Proud, in another, come up before the mind. The latter kept the English forces at bay for more than sixteen years, and from his Ulster stronghold defied all the power of England, till he was removed by treachery. Hugh, Earl of Tyrone, and Hugh, Lord of Tyrconnell, came near to expelling the English as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century. In tiie succeeding generation Owen Roc led Ulster in rebellion. And for seven years, by force of military genius, and the valour of his Ulster lrooi>s, in well fought fields kepi the flag of Independence flying. Coming to the period after the plantations when the Irish had been killed or sold into slavery, or driven to the mountain fastnesses, and their lands given to Scotch, and English colonists, the "red hand of Ulster” was lifted again and again in open rebellion. To account for this revolt of the colonists, we must remember the wonderfully assimilative power of the Celt. Danes and Normans had been made "more Irish than the Irish and the planters and undertakers were net more proof against this absorbing element. The colonists soon found that England’s oppressions did not stop at affecting the Irish, but weighed on all Ireland alien as well as native. The Test Act and the Schism Act were enforced against Presbyterians and all other Non-Conformists, and as Green tells us, “laws were made to annihilate Irish commerce and to ruin Irish agriculture. Statutes passed by the jealousy of English landowners forbade the export of Irish cattle or sheep to English ports. The export of wool was forbidden lest it might interfere with the profits of English woolgrowers. Poverty was thus added to the curse of misgovernment and poverty deepened with the rapid growth of the native population, till famine turned the country into a hell.” Belfast, the chief scat of the wool industry, was rendered desolate. Various manufactures were destroyed and a debased coinage drove silver almost entirely out of the country. Emigration to America set in and when America struck for that freedom from English unjust exactions, which Ireland is to-day demanding, there were no more implacable foes to George Hl.’s tyrannies than the Ulster men who joined Washington. In Ulster the enthusiasm that was roused for the American revolution forced Pitt to declare that Ireland was behind the American cause to a man. The volunteers, a great force that wrung concession after concession from England was an Ulster movement, led by the Earl of Charlemont, an Ulster Protectant. The United Irishmen formed by Wolfe Tone, an Ulster Protestant, to secure civic, political and religious liberty for Irishmen, was an association, which at its- commencement, was composed almost exclusively of Presbyterians. The rebellion of ’llß started in Ulster, with the avowed object of securing independence. Coming down to the ’4B movement we see “the red hand of Ulster" again in evidence. John Mitchell, an Ulster Protestant, who proved his sincerity by the endurance of untold indignities, when the Government got him into its power, was the prime mover in that uprising which was quenched in blood. Later an Ulster Prote.sl.ant, Isaac Butt, was father and founder of the Home Rule movement, which may now be regarded as dead and buried. Thus we see Ulster at every point implacable in the determination to wrest Ireland from the power of the invader. The fourth and last assertion that the Protestants of Ulster would be treated with injustice by a National Parliament sitting in Dublin comes next for consideration. There is implied in this statement a fallacy, viz., that all Protestants are against Irish independence, and that there exists a chasm, between Protestants Catholics in Ireland, that cannot be bridged. Remembering that election returns have shown that Ulster is as much Catholic as Protestant and more Nationalist than Unionist., wc have but to examine how the Catholics in the past have shown their religious bias, and inquire, who were the persecutors on the score of religion. Green tells us that “the history of Ireland during the fifty years that followed its conquest by William the Third is one which no Englishman can recall without shame. After the surrender of Limerick every Catholic Irishman, and there were five Irish Catholics to every Irish Protestant, was treated as a stranger and a foreigner in his own country. ’Pile House of Lords, the House of Commons, the magistracy, all corporate offices in towns, all ranks in the army, the bench, the bar, the whole administration of government or justice, were closed against Catholics. The very- right of voting for their representatives in Parliament was denied them. Few Catholic landowners had been left by the sweeping confiscations which had followed the successive revolts in the island, and oppressive laws turned the immense majority into hewers of wood and drawers of water to their Protestant masters.” Catholic schoolmasters were outlawed and Catholic parents were forbidden to send their children to any foreign land lo be educated; land owned by Catholics was confiscated; no Catholics were permitted to possess arms of any kind; parish priests were permitted to remain only on condition of registering and giving security for good behaviour; and all others—bishops, monks and friars—were banished and forbidden to return under penalty of death. Rewards were offered for the capture of such as remained, and Catholics were required to pay these rewards; family' discord was encouraged by a law that the elder sou of a Catholic on proclaiming himself a Protestant, could become the owner of his father’s land; no Catholic could act as guardian, no Catholic was permitted to purchase land. The Test Act and the Schism Act put a premium upon apoetacy. Yet, in spite of the ferocity of these laws, bishops, clergy and schoolmasters defied the iniquitous enact-

merits and remained at their posts attend* ing to the unfortunate people. Hunted like wild beasts from place to place, living in constant dread of arrest, they gave examples'%f the most heroic fortitude, and when seized and executed, they showed they could die like men. During all this time. a hierarchy set up by the Government was rolling in riches, the plundered property of the Catholic Church, bishops and rectors of the Established Church, were to use Lloyd George’s appropriate expression “dripping with the fat of sacrilege.” What the followers of Sir Edward Carson in Ulster want the world to believe ■is that Home Rule would mean the immediate execution of reprisals for this record of crime and shame. The testimony of Lecky, a Protestant and Unionist, to the character of the Irish Catholic is well worthy of our attention. He says: “No feature in the social history of Ireland is more remarkable than the almost absolute security which the Protestant clergy, scattered thinly over wide Catholic districts, have usually enjoyed during the worst periods of organised crime, and the very large measure of respect and popularity they have almost invariably commanded whenever they abstained from interfering with the religion of their neighbours. . . . Among the Catholics, at least, religious intolerance has not been a prevailing vice and those who have studied closely the history and the character of the Irish people can hardly fail to be struck with the deep respect for sincere religion in every form ,which they have commonly evinced.

. . . It is a memorable fact that not a single Protestant suffered for his religion in Ireland during all the period of the Marian persecution in England. The treatment of Bedell during the outbreak of 1641, and the Act establishing liberty of conscience passed by the Irish Parliament in 1689 in the full flush of the brief Catholic ascendancy under James the Second, exhibit very remarkably this aspect of the Irish character.” The Irish Catholic, naturally disposed to live in peace and quiet with his neighbour, knew’ well that the policy which turned Ireland into a shambles was forged in London and did not proceed from the hatred of his Protests neighbour. When O’Connell was offered emancipation as a bribe for his support of the Union, he said; “I would rather confide in the justice of my brethren the Protestants of Ireland, who have already liberated me than lay my country at the feet of strangers.” Almost every great leader in the fight for Irish independence has been a Protestant. Molyneux, Grattan, Flood, Dean Swift, Wolfe Tone, Charlemont, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Emmet, Curran, John Mitchell, Thomas Davis, John Martin, Smith O’Brien, Isaac Butt and Parnell. Looking back over the history of the Ulster volunteers and their action in 1782, when having forced the abolition of Protestant dissenters' grievances, they turned their attention fo the removal of Catholic grievances, and when a committee of the Catholics of Dublin, going to present an address to the King, reached Belfast, the Presbyterians unhitched the horses from their carriage, and drew the- Catholics through the city, a Protestant population cheering to the echo. Contrast the Ulster volunteers of 1782 with tha Ulster volunteers of 1914 under Sir Edward Carson and one wonders how the change came, alx)ut. The answer must be sought in the institution of the Orange Society in 1795. It was the organisation of that body that marked (he rise of religious fanaticism in Ireland. Pitt brought that body into existence, paid them, and protected them in their outrages; from the cold-blooded intent to break up the Irish unity that threatened to defeat his act of union. Stripped of all its camouflage about protecting the religion of the Protestants from the persecution of the Catholics, we can see that amongst the factors uniting the Tories in their fight for the preservation of the status quo the possession by the ascendancy party of all the emoluments of office shared by some hundred thousand gentlemen, mostly non-Irish, under a form of Government, the most expensive in the world, is too valuable to be relinquished without a big struggle. And again the volume of trade between England and Ireland, which is so profitable for England, is calculated to make English manufacturers most zealous for the prevention of Irish industries, which would successfully compete against the favoured nation, and lessen the profits of the capitalists. Whilst at the same time the natural advantages of Ireland, now lying idle, would be utilised to the inevitable disadvantage of those to whom Ireland is now a convenient milch, cow. With your permission I will return to this subject.—l am, etc., lONA.