Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry Part 14

The one put a silken badge on a few members of one profession; the other would give to all professions and all trades the rank and riches which resident proprietors, domestic legislation, and flouris.h.i.+ng commerce infallibly create.

Emanc.i.p.ation made it possible for Catholics to sit on the judgment seat; but it left a foreign administration, which has excluded them, save in two or three cases, where over-topping eminence made the acceptance of a Judges.h.i.+p no promotion; and it left the local Judges--those with whom the people have to deal--as partial, ignorant, bigoted as ever; while Repeal would give us an Irish code and Irish-hearted Judges in every Court, from the Chancery to the Petty Sessions.

Emanc.i.p.ation dignified a dozen Catholics with a senatorial name in a foreign and hostile Legislature. Repeal would give us a Senate, a Militia, an Administration, all our own.

The Penal Code, as it existed since 1793, insulted the faith of the Catholics, restrained their liberties, and violated the public Treaty of Limerick. The Union has destroyed our manufactures, prohibits our flag, prevents our commerce, drains our rental, crushes our genius, makes our taxation a tribute, our representation a shadow, our name a by-word. It were n.o.bler to strive for Repeal than to get Emanc.i.p.ation.

Four years ago the form of Repeal agitation began--two years ago, its reality. Have we not cause to be proud of the labours of these two years? If life be counted, not by the rising of suns, or the idle turning of machinery, but by the growth of the will, and the progress of thoughts and pa.s.sions in the soul, we Irishmen have spent an age since we raised our first cry for liberty. Consider what we were then, and what we have done since. We had a People unorganised--disgusted with a Whig alliance--beaten in a dishonourable struggle to sustain a faction--ignorant of each other's will--without books, without song, without leaders (save one), without purposes, without strength, without hope. The Corn Exchange was the faint copy of the Catholic a.s.sociation, with a few enthusiasts, a few loungers, and a few correspondents.

Opposite to us was the great Conservative party, with a majority exceeding our whole representation, united, flushed, led by the craftiest of living statesmen, and the ablest of living generals. Oh, how disheartening it was then, when, day by day, we found prophecy and exhortation, lay and labour, flung idly before a distracted People! May we never pa.s.s through that icy ordeal again!

How different now! The People are united under the greatest system of organisation ever attempted in any country. They send in, by their Collectors, Wardens, and Inspectors, to the central office of Ireland, the contributions needed to carry on the Registration of Voters, the public meetings, the publications, the law expenses, and the organisation of the a.s.sociation; and that in turn carries on registries, holds meetings, opens reading-rooms, sends newspapers, and books, and political instructions, back through the same channel; so that the Central Committee knows the state of every parish, and every parish receives the teaching and obeys the will of the Central Committee.

The Whig Alliance has melted, like ice before the sun, and the strong souls of our people will never again serve the purposes of a faction.

The Conservative party, without union and without principle, is breaking up. Its English section is dividing into the tools of expediency and the pioneers of a New Generation--its Irish section into Castle Hacks and National Conservatives.

Meantime, how much have the Irish people gained and done? They have received and grown rich under torrents of thought. Song and sermon and music, speech and pamphlet, novel and history, essay and map and picture, have made the dull thoughtful and the thoughtful studious, and will make the studious wise and powerful. They have begun a system of self-teaching in their reading-rooms. If they carry it we shall, before two years, have in every parish men able to manufacture, to trade, and to farm--men acquainted with all that Ireland was, is, and should be--men able to serve The Irish Nation in peace and war.

In the teeth, too, of the Government we held our meetings. They are not for this time, but they were right well in their own time. They showed our physical force to the Continent, to ourselves, to America, to our rulers. They showed that the people would come and go rapidly, silently, and at bidding, in numbers enough to recruit a dozen armies.

These are literal facts. Any one monster meeting could have offered little resistance in the open country to a regular army, but it contained the materials--the numbers, intelligence, and obedience--of a conquering host. Whenever the impression of their power grows faint we shall revive them again.

The toleration of these meetings was the result of fear; the prosecution of their chiefs sprung from greater fear. That prosecution was begun audaciously, was carried on meanly and with virulence, and ended with a charge and a verdict which disgraced the law. An illegal imprisonment afforded glorious proof that the people could refrain from violence under the worst temptation; that their leaders were firm; and, better than all, that had these leaders been shot, not prisoned, their successors were ready. Such an imprisonment served Ireland more than an acquittal, for it tried her more; and then came the day of triumph, when the reluctant const.i.tution liberated our chiefs and branded our oppressors.

This is a history of two years never surpa.s.sed in importance and honour. This is a history which our sons shall pant over and envy. This is a history which pledges us to perseverance. This is a history which guarantees success.

Energy, patience, generosity, skill, tolerance, enthusiasm created and decked the agitation. The world attended us with its thoughts and prayers. The graceful genius of Italy and the profound intellect of Germany paused to wish us well. The fiery heart of France tolerated our unarmed effort, and proffered its aid. America sent us money, thought, love--she made herself a part of Ireland in her pa.s.sions and her organisation. From London to the wildest settlement which throbs in the tropics or s.h.i.+vers nigh the Pole, the empire of our misruler was shaken by our effort. To all earth we proclaimed our wrongs. To man and G.o.d we made oath that we would never cease to strive till an Irish nation stood supreme on this island. The genius which roused and organised us, the energy which laboured, the wisdom that taught, the manhood which rose up, the patience which obeyed, the faith which swore, and the valour that strained for action, are here still, experienced, recruited, resolute.

The future shall realise the promise of the past.

THE RESOURCES OF IRELAND.[42]

Bishop Berkeley put, as a query, could the Irish live and prosper if a brazen wall surrounded their island? The question has been often and vaguely replied to.

Dr. Kane has at length answered it, and proved the affirmative.

Confining himself strictly to the _land_ of our island (for he does not enter on the subjects of fisheries and foreign commerce), he has proved that we possess _physical_ elements for every important art. Not that he sat down to prove this. Taste, duty, industry, and genius prompted and enabled him gradually to acquire a knowledge of the physical products and powers of Ireland, and his mastery of chemical and mechanical science enabled him to see how these could be used.

Thus qualified, he tried, in the lecture-room of the Dublin Society, to communicate his knowledge to the public. He was as successful as any man lecturing on subjects requiring accurate details could be; and now he has given, in the volume before us, all his lectures, and much more.

He then is no party pamphleteer, pandering to the national vanity; but a philosopher, who garnered up his knowledge soberly and surely, and now gives us the result of his studies. There was undoubtedly a good deal of information on the subjects treated of by Dr. Kane scattered through our topographical works and parliamentary reports, but that information is, for the most part, vague, unapplied, and not tested by science. Dr. Kane's work is full, clear, scientific, exact in stating places, extent, prices, and every other working detail, and is a manual of the whole subject.

In such interlaced subjects as industrial resources we must be content with practical cla.s.sifications.

Dr. Kane proceeds in the following order:--First, he considers the _mechanical_ powers of the country--viz., its fuel and its water powers. Secondly, its _mineral_ resources--its iron, copper, lead, sulphur, marble, slates, etc. Thirdly, the agriculture of the country in its first function--the raising of food, and the modes of cropping, manuring, draining, and stacking. Fourthly, agriculture in its secondary use, as furnis.h.i.+ng staples for the manufacture of woollens, linens, starch, sugar, spirits, etc. Fifthly, the modes of carrying internal trade by roads, ca.n.a.ls, and railways. Sixthly, the cost and condition of skilled and unskilled labour in Ireland. Seventhly, our state as to capital. And he closes by some earnest and profound thoughts on the need of industrial education in Ireland.

Now, let us ask the reader what he knows upon any or all of these subjects; and whether he ought, as a citizen, or a man of education, or a man of business, to be ignorant of them? Such ignorance as exists here must be got rid of, or our cry of "Ireland for the Irish" will be a whine or a brag, and will be despised as it deserves. We must know Ireland from its history to its minerals, from its tillage to its antiquities, before we shall be an Irish nation, able to rescue and keep the country. And if we are too idle, too dull, or too capricious to learn the arts of strength, wealth, and liberty, let us not murmur at being slaves.

For the present we shall confine ourselves to the subjects of the mechanical powers and minerals of Ireland, as treated by Dr. Kane.

The first difference between manufactures now and in _any_ former time is the subst.i.tution of machines for the hands of man. It may indeed be questioned whether the increased strength over matter thus given to man compensates for the ill effects of forcing people to work in crowds; of destroying small and pampering large capitalists, of lessening the distribution of wealth even by the very means which increases its production.

We sincerely lament, with Lord Wharncliffe, the loss of domestic manufactures; we would prefer one housewife skilled in the distaff and the dairy--home-bred, and home-taught, and home-faithful--to a factory full of creatures who live amid the eternal roll, and clash, and glimmer of spindles and rollers, watching with aching eyes the thousand twirls and capable of but one act--tying the broken threads. We abhor that state; we prefer the life of the old times, or of modern Norway.

But, situated as we are, so near a strong enemy, and in the new highway from Europe to America, it may be doubted whether we can retain our simple domestic life. There is but one chance for it. If the Prussian Tenure Code be introduced, and the people turned into small proprietors, there is much, perhaps every, hope of retaining our homestead habits; and such a population need fear no enemy.

If this do not come to pa.s.s, we must make the best of our state, join our chief towns with railways, put quays to our harbours, mills on our rivers, turbines on our coasts, and under restrictions and with guarantees set the steam engine to work at our flax, wool, and minerals.

The two great mechanical powers are fire and water. Ireland is n.o.bly endowed with both.

We do not possess as ample fields of flaming coal as Britain; but even of that we have large quant.i.ties, which can be raised at about the same rate at which English coal can be landed on our coast.

The chief seats of flaming coal in Ireland are to the west of Lough Allen, in Connaught, and around Dungannon, in Tyrone. There is a small district of it in Antrim.

The stone coal, or anthracite, which, having little gas, does not blaze, and, having much sulphur, is disagreeable in a room, and has been thought unfit for smelting, is found--first, in the Kilkenny district, between the Nore and Barrow; secondly, from Freshford to Cashel; and thirdly, in the great Munster coal country, cropping up in every barony of Clare, Limerick, Cork, and Kerry. By the use of vapour with it, the anthracite appears to be freed from all its defects as a smelting and engine coal, and being a much more pure and powerful fuel than the flaming coal, there seems no reason to doubt that in it we have a manufacturing power that would supply us for generations.

Our bogs have not been done justice to. The use of turf in a damp state turns it into an inferior fuel. Dried under cover, or broken up and dried under pressure, it is more economical, because far more efficient. It is used now in the Shannon steamers, and its use is increasing in mills. For some purposes it is peculiarly good--thus, for the finer ironworks, turf and turf-charcoal are even better than wood, and Dr. Kane shows that the precious Baltic iron, for which from 15 to 35 per ton is given, could be equalled by Irish iron smelted by Irish turf for six guineas per ton.

Dr. Kane proves that the cost of fuel, even if greater in Ireland, by no means precludes us from competing with England; he does so by showing that the cost of fuel in English factories is only from 1 to 1-1/2 per cent., while in Ireland it would be only 2-1/2 to 3-1/2 per cent., a difference greatly overbalanced by our cheaper labour--labour being over 33 per cent. of the whole expense of a factory.

Here is the a.n.a.lysis of the cost of producing cotton in England in 1830:--

Cotton wool 8,244,693 or per cent. 26.27 Wages 10,419,000 " 33.16 Interest on capital 3,400,000 " 10.84 Coals 339,680 " 1.08 Rent, taxes, insurance, other charges, and profit 8,935,320 " 28.65 ---------- ------ 31,338,693 100.00

In water-power we are still better off. Dr. Kane calculates the rain which falls on Ireland in a year at over 100 billion cubic yards; and of this he supposes two-thirds to pa.s.s off in evaporation, leaving one-third, equal to nearly a million and a half of horse-power, to reach the sea. His calculations of the water-power of the Shannon and other rivers are most interesting. The elements, of course, are the observed fall of rain by the gauge in the district, and the area of the catchment (or drainage) basins of each river and its tributaries. The chief objection to water-power is its irregularity. To remedy this he proposes to do what has increased the water-power on the Bann five-fold, and has made the wealth of Greenock--namely, to make mill-lakes by damming up valleys, and thus controlling and equalising the supply of water, and letting none go waste. His calculations of the relative merits of undershot, overshot, breast, and turbine wheels are most valuable, especially of the last, which is a late and successful French contrivance, acting by pressure. He proposes to use the turbine in coast mills, the tide being the motive-power; and, strange as it sounds, the experiments seem to decide in favour of this plan.

"The turbine was invented by M. Fourneyron. Coals being abundant, the steam engine is invented in England; coals being scarce, the water-pressure engine and the turbine are invented in France. It is thus the physical condition of each country directs its mechanical genius. The turbine is a horizontal wheel furnished with curved float-boards, on which the water presses from a cylinder which is suspended over the wheel, and the base of which is divided by curved part.i.tions, that the water may be directed in issuing, so as to produce upon the curved float-boards of the wheel its greatest effect. The best curvature to be given to the fixed part.i.tions and to the float-boards is a delicate problem, but practically it has been completely solved. The construction of the machine is simple, its parts not liable to go out of order; and as the action of the water is by pressure, the force is under the most favourable circ.u.mstances for being utilised.

"The effective economy of the turbine appears to equal that of the overshot wheel. But the economy in the turbine is accompanied by some conditions which render it peculiarly valuable. In a water-wheel you cannot have great economy of power without very slow motion, and hence where high velocity is required at the working point, a train of mechanism is necessary, which causes a material loss of force. Now, in the turbine the greatest economy is accompanied by rapid motion, and hence the connected machinery may be rendered much less complex. In the turbine also a change in the height of the head of water alters only the power of the machine in that proportion, but the whole quant.i.ty of water is economised to the same degree. Thus if a turbine be working with a force of ten horses, and that its supply of water be suddenly doubled, it becomes of twenty horse-power; if the supply be reduced to one-half, it still works five horse-power; whilst such sudden and extreme change would altogether disarrange water-wheels, which can only be constructed for the minimum, and allow the overplus to go to waste."

Our own predilection being in favour of water-power--as cheaper, healthier, and more fit for Ireland than steam--gave the following peculiar interest in our eyes:--

"I have noticed at such length the question of the cost of fuel and of steam power, not from my own opinion of its ultimate importance, but that we might at once break down that barrier to all active exertion which indolent ignorance constantly retreats behind. The cry of 'What can we do? consider England's coal-mines,' is answered by showing that we have available fuel enough. The lament that coals are so dear with us and so cheap in England, is, I trust, set at rest by the evidence of how little influential the price of fuel is. However, there are other sources of power besides coals; there are other motive-powers than steam. Of the 83,000 horse-power employed to give motion to mills in England, 21,000, even in the coal districts, are not moved by fire, but by water. The force of gravity in falling water can spin and weave as well as the elasticity of steam; and in this power we are not deficient. It is necessary to study its circ.u.mstances in detail, and I shall therefore next proceed to discuss the condition of Ireland with regard to water-power."

Dr. Kane proves that we have at Arigna an _inexhaustible_ supply of the richest iron ore, with coals to smelt it, lime to flux it, and infusible sand-stone and fire-clay to make furnaces of on the spot. Yet not a pig or bar is made there now. He also gives in great detail the extent, a.n.a.lysis, costs of working, and every other leading fact as to the copper mines of Wicklow, Knockmahon, and Allihies; the lead, gold, and sulphur mines of Wicklow; the silver mines of Ballylichey, and details of the building materials and marbles.

He is everywhere precise in his industrial and scientific statements, and beautifully clear in his style and arrangement.

Why, then, are we a poor province? Dr. Kane quotes Forbes, Quetelet, etc., to prove the physical strength of our people. He might have quoted every officer who commanded them to prove their courage and endurance; nor is there much doubt expressed even by their enemies of their being quick and inventive. Their soil is productive--the rivers and harbours good--their fis.h.i.+ng _opportunities_ great--so is their means of making internal communications across their great central plains. We have immense water and considerable fire power; and, besides the minerals necessary for the arts of peace, we are better supplied than almost any country with the finer sorts of iron, charcoal, and sulphur, wherewith war is now carried on. Why is it, with these means of ama.s.sing and guarding wealth, that we are so poor and paltry? Dr.

Kane thinks we are so from want of industrial education. He is partly right. The remote causes were repeated foreign invasion, forfeiture, and tyrannous laws. Ignorance, disunion, self-distrust, quick credulity, and caprice were the weaknesses engendered in us by misfortune and misgovernment; and they were then the allies of oppression; for, had we been willing, we had long ago been rich and free. Knowledge is now within our reach if we work steadily; and strength of character will grow upon us by every month of perseverance and steadiness in politics, trade, and literature.

--------------------------------------------------------------- [42] _The Industrial Resources of Ireland_, by Robert Kane, M.D., Secretary to the Council of the Royal Irish Academy, Professor of Natural Philosophy to the Royal Dublin Society, and of Chemistry to the Apothecaries' Hall of Ireland. Dublin: Hodges & Smith, 21 College Green.

THE VALUATION OF IRELAND.