Burt A. The Evolution of the British Empire and Commonwealth From the American Revolution
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Irish
and Indian
Nationalism
655
Liberals between a
quarter
and
a
third of
the
part}'
joined
the
oppo-
sition
to
reject
his
Home
Rule
Bill
by
a
majority
of
30.
Nothing
daunted,
he
dissolved
parliament
and
appealed
to
the
country
in
July.
The
result
was
decisive.
The
combined Conservative
and
Liberal
Un-
ionists
got
a
majority
of
118
over
the
combined
Gladstonians
and Par-
nellites. The
Liberal
party
took
twenty years
to
recover
from
the
wreck.
What
was
denied
to
the
Irish
by
the
defeat
of
the bill
was less
than
what
had been
granted
to
British
people
overseas.
In
addition
to
foreign
affairs,
the
bill
reserved
the
subjects
of
defense,
foreign
trade,
and
customs
to
be
controlled
by
imperial
authority,
and
it
required
Ireland
to
contribute
one fifteenth
of
imperial
expenses.
Why,
with these
im-
portant
limitations,
was it
more
than the British
public
would tolerate?
Geography
was
a
determining
factor. Irish
autonomy
could
compromise
British
security
as
colonial
autonomy
could
not. The
proposed
conces-
sion
to Ireland
called for
a
very
much
greater
measure
of
trust
on
the
part
of Great
Britain
than
she had ever had
to
repose
in
any
colony,
and of
late
years
too
many
crimes had been committed
in
the
name
of
Irish
liberty
to
commend
that
liberty
to
law
r
-abiding
Englishmen.
More-
over,
Protestant
Ulster,
which
in
former
times had
supplied
leaders
of
the Irish
struggle
for
independence,
suddenly
blazed forth
against
Home
Rule. The
reawakening
of
the
old
Orange
feud
against
the
Green
was
largely
the
work of Lord
Randolph
Churchill,
who
crossed
to
Belfast for
this
very
purpose
in
February.
Rather
than submit to
a
Dublin
parliament,
"Ulster
will
fight,
and
Ulster will
be
right,"
he
reported
a few
weeks later. These words
almost
immediately
took
wings
and
flew about the
British
Isles
as a fierce
war
cry.
From
June
to
August,
Belfast
Orangemen
demonstrated
their
loyalty
by
indulging
in
savage
riots
that took
at least
thirty
lives
and
destroyed
much
property.
Such
wild lawlessness
was
proof positive
that Home Rule would not
pacify
Ireland,
a house divided
against
itself.
Parnell
seemed
chastened.
Having
committed
the Liberal
party
what was
left of
it,
which was
considerable
to Home
Rule,
his
game
was
to
cultivate
this
alliance
by generous
cooperation, by
playing
the
statesman
rather
than the
revolutionary'.
He also had
the
satisfaction
of
seeing
the Conservative
government
adopt
remedial
Irish
measures
that
he
had
proposed,
of which more
anon.
But
he
had two
vulnerable
points
one still
a dark
secret,
the
other more or
less notorious.
There
was
no
denying
that
he had
been
associated
with
criminal
conspiracies
of
Irish
extremists,
and
in
the
spring
of
1887 the London Times
began
publishing
a
series
of
articles
entitled
"Parnellism
and
Crime"
to
prove
656
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE:
his
guilt.
He
ignored
these
attacks
until
the
newspaper
published
the
facsimile
of
a letter
purporting
to
be
signed
by
him
and
virtually
ac-
knowledging
his
complicity
in the
Phoenix
Park
murders.
He
scorn-
fully
told
the
House
of Commons
that
the
letter
was
a
forgery,
and
he
was
greeted
with
incredulous
laughter
from
the
ministerial benches.
He could
sue
the Times
for
libel,
but
he
would
not.
Feeling
against
him
was
running
so
high
in
England
that
it
was
more
than
doubtful
if
he could
get
justice
from
a London
jury.
Things
looked
blacker
for
Parnell
in
1888,
when
one
of
his
followers
who
had been
implicated
in
the
Times
charges
sued
and
the
newspaper
produced
more
incriminating
letters
alleged
to
have
been
written
by
the Irish leader.
Thoroughly
roused,
he declared
to the
House
that
these
letters
were
forgeries
too,
and
he demanded
a select
committee
to
investigate
their
origin.
The
government
refused
but
passed
a
special
act
appointing
a
commission
of
three
judges
to
examine
the
whole
subject
of
the
charges
against
Parnell
and
his
party.
What followed
was
in
fact,
though
not
in
form,
a state
trial,
the
most
famous
of the
century.
It
began
in
September
and
lasted
for
more
than
a
year.
Half-
way
through,
a
seedy
Irish
journalist
confessed
that
he had
forged
the
letters
for
mercenary
reasons.
He
escaped
arrest
by
fleeing
the
country
and
blowing
out
his brains
in
Madrid
as
police
entered
his
room.
The
newspaper,
which had
bought
the letters
for some
2,500
without
ques-
tioning
their
genuineness,
had to
pay
much
more for
the use it
had
made
of
them
5,000
damages
to
Parnell
and
250,000
costs. His
triumphant
vindication
lifted
Home
Rule
out of the
doldrums
on
the
very
eve of
his
fall,
which
dragged
down
his cause.
The dark
secret,
which at last
came
out,
was that for
nearly
a decade
Parnell
had been
living
in sin
with another
man's
wife.
Toward the
end of
1889
the other
man,
hitherto one of
his most devoted
followers,
brought
suit
for
divorce,
naming
him as
corespondent.
For
months
there
were
rumors that he
would
win another
triumphant
vindication,
but
such
talk
only
heightened
the
tragedy
when the case came
up
and
no
defense
was offered.
On
the
morrow
of
the Phoenix
Park
murders,
of
which he
was
innocent,
Parnell had offered
to
resign
and
Gladstone
had dissuaded
him. Now
their
position
was
reversed. The Irish
leader
was
guilty
and he
defied
the
Liberal leader's
advice to
retire
for the
sake
of
his cause.
The nonconformist
conscience of
England
strongly
condemned
the
adulterer,
and
so did
the Catholic conscience of Ire-
land.
Several
members of
his
parliamentary party
were
then
in America
Irish
and Indian
Nationalism
657
on
Home Rule
business,
and his two
right-hand
men
cabled
from
Chicago
opposing
his
continued
leadership.
The
majority
of
the
party
deposed
him
to
save
the
alliance with the
Liberals and
the
support
of
the
Catholic
clergy,
while
the
minority clung
to him and
the Fenians
rallied back
of
him.
So
bitter
was
the
schism
that
his
death
in
1891
could not heal
it;
and as
the
part}-
broke
up
into
factions,
the
majority
led
by
Justin
McCarthy
and
the
minority
now
by
John
Redmond,
the
vital
supply
of
American
funds
dried
up.
Gladstone
rushed
to
the
rescue of
dying
Home
Rule,
raising
it
as the
main
issue in
the
general
election of
1892. The
government's
majority
over the
Liberals in the
new House
dropped
to
forty,
and once
more
the
Irish
members
held
the balance of
power.
They
put
their
ally
back
in
office,
at
the
age
of
eighty-three,
that he
might give
Ireland
the
parliament
he
promised.
Against
the will of
many
of his own
followers,
even in
the
cabinet,
Gladstone
brought
in his second
Home
Rule bill
and
jammed
it
through
the
Commons
in the summer
of
1893.
The
Lords
threw
it
out,
whereupon
the stubborn
old
man
again
declared for
another dissolution
of
parliament
on
the
issue.
But
his
colleagues
had
had
enough
of it and of him.
In
the
spring
of
1 894 he bowed
out,
and
in
the summer
of 1895 his
party
was turned
out
by
the
electorate,
this
time
more
decisively
than in 1886.
*
Irish
nationalism
quieted
down
under Conservative
rule
which,
with
the
exception
of this
Liberal
interlude,
lasted
for
twenty years.
In
the
beginning
of
this
period agrarian
lawlessness
boiled
up
again,
but
not
so
seriously
as in
the
past,
and it
presently
subsided.
Late in
1886
some Irish hotheads
organized
the
"plan
of
campaign,"
a tenants'
strike,
which
inevitably
provoked
violence.
Tenants offered what
they
con-
sidered
was
a
reasonable
rent,
and
when
it was
refused
they paid
it
to
a
national
committee.
Parnell did not
approve;
the Roman
Catholic
church
disapproved;
and
the
Salisbury
administration,
which had tried
to
govern
Ireland
under
ordinary
law,
passed
the
Crimes
Act of
1887,
a
permanent
measure
that
strengthened
the hands
of
the
lord
lieuten-
ant and substituted
trial
by magistrates
for
trial
by
jury.
These,
how-
ever,
were
by
no
means
the
only
reasons for
the
relative
peace
that
descended
upon
Ireland.
The
disintegration
of
the Irish
political
move-
ment,
which
was
the
real
Parnell
tragedy,
was
a
veritable
godsend
to
an
administration
thoroughly
committed
against
Home Rule but
willing
to concede
local
self-government,
which
Ireland
got
in 1898
just
ten
years
after
England.
Very
important,
also,
was the continued
operation
658
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE:
of
the
legislation
that
Gladstone had
passed
to
redeem the
miserable
lot of
the
peasants.
Now the Unionists
adopted
this
policy
as
their
own
and
pushed
it
vigorously.
This
policy,
which
one
of
its administrators
aptly
labeled
"killing
Home
Rule
with
kindness,"
removed
the
main
cause
of mass
discontent
in
Ireland the
oppressive
land
system.
As
soon
as
Salisbury
took
office
in
1886,
Parnell
introduced
a
tenants' relief bill.
The
government
promptly
voted
it
down but
later,
in the
very
next
session,
passed
a
bill
containing
many
of
its
leading
provisions,
including
a
reduction
of
judicially
set
rents.
But
the
great
achievement of
the
years
that
followed
was the
actual transfer
of
the
ownership
of
the land to the
peasants.
The
idea of
land
purchase
had
originated
with
Bright,
who
inserted
in
the
Disestablishment
Act
of
1869
provision
for
the sale of
church
lands
to
occupiers,
the
government lending
them three
quarters
of
the
purchase
price
to
be
repaid
with
low
interest over
a
long
period.
Some
6,000
tenants availed themselves of this offer.
The Land
Acts
of
1870
and 1881
extended
it
to include
other lands
generally,
but on
such
conditions that
only
some
1,600
tenants
took
advantage
of
it.
Land
purchase
gathered
momentum from
1885,
when
Salisbury's
interim
administration
appropriated
5,000,000
to
advance,
on
the
security
of
the
land,
the full
purchase
price
and fixed
repayment
at
4
per
cent
of
this
price
annually
for
forty-nine
years.
In 1889
another
5,000,000
was
appropriated,
the
original
sum
having
been
exhausted;
and
the total number
of
purchases
reached
25,000
by
1891,
when
parliament
expanded
the
scope
of
the
scheme
by voting
an
additional
30,000,000
for
it.
Practically,
though
not
technically,
the
govern-
ment
was
expropriating
the
landlords
to transform their
tenants
into
free
proprietors.
The
judicial
protection
of
occupiers'
rights
as
tenants
depressed
the
market value
of
the
land,
making
it
that much
easier
for
them
to
buy;
and the
Treasury,
acting
in its
own
as
well
as the
pur-
chaser's
interest,
often
declined
to advance
a
loan
unless the
landlord
would
accept
less
than
the
tenant
was
willing
to
pay, thereby
forcing
down
the sale
price.
The
legal
principle
of
compulsory
sale
was
introduced
in
1896,
but
only
for
bankrupt
estates.
This stimulated
the creation
of
occupying
owners
and also
an Irish
cry
for the
general
application
of
the
principle
because
many
solvent landlords refused
to sell
at
ruinous
prices.
The
government
shrank
from such
undisguised
confiscation,
and
yet
was
most
anxious
to
speed
the
transfer of
the
land.
Here
was
a
nice di-
lemma
from
which
an
escape
was
sought
by
having
the state assume
Irish
and Indian
Nationalism
659
the
extra
charge
necessary
to
induce
sale.
Accordingly,
an
act
was
passed
in
1903
offering
vendors
a
bonus of
12
per
cent
on
the
purchase
price
for
tenants,
the
bonus to
be
paid
out of
public
funds.
To
balance
this favor to
landlords,
the
same act reduced
the annual
burden
on
purchasers
from 4
to 3.25
per
cent;
and to
preserve
the
solvency
of
the
scheme,
it
lengthened
the
period
of
repayment
to
sixty-nine
and
a
half
years.
The
temptation
of the
bonus
was so
effective
that the sale
of
estates
proceeded
rapidly,
and
Ireland
became
a
country
of
peasant
proprietors.
A
very
serious
agricultural
problem
was
solved
along
with,
but
independently
of,
the
land
problem.
The
Irish
peasants
were about the
worst
farmers in the
civilized
world,
thanks to
their own
ignorance,
which
negligent
landlords
had
done
nothing
to
correct;
and
much of
the
miserable
pittance
that
they
wrung
from the
soil was
gobbled up
by
middlemen,
commonly
local
public
house
keepers,
who had
them
in
their clutches. The
liquidation
of the old landlords
was no cure for
these
wretched
conditions.
What
Irish
agriculture
sorely
needed
was a
thorough
revolution of
farming
and
marketing
operations.
Such a
revolution
may
be
compared
with
that which
English
landlords
had
long
since
wrought.
But there were two
important
differences.
The
state of
Irish
agriculture
was
much
lower
than
English agriculture
had
been,
and
the
English
capitalist
solution
of
the
problem
of
efficiency
was
inapplicable
in
Ireland. The
Irish
agricultural
revolution
had
to
be
more
or less socialist
in
character.
One
Irishman,
a
Unionist,
was
largely
responsible
for
leading
the
multitude
of Irish
peasants
in the
way
they
should
go
to
put
Irish
agri-
culture on
its feet.
He was Horace
(later
Sir
Horace)
Plunkett
a
younger
son of
the
sixteenth Lord
Dunsanay,
8
a
product
of Eton
and
Oxford
and
America.
Ten
years
of
ranching
in Montana
gave
him a
considerable
fortune
and
an invaluable
experience
with which he
returned
to Ireland
in 1889 to commence his lifework.
His
first
step
was
to form
local
cooperatives.
As
they prospered
and
multiplied,
he
coordinated
them
nationally
in the Irish
Agricultural Organization
Society,
which
he founded
in 1894. It
gave
an
enormous
life
to
the
cooperative
movement
and
spread
a
knowledge
of
better
farming,
better
business,
and
better
living.
From
this he
went on to enlist
the
aid of
the
government,
and
in 1899
he
secured
the
passage
of
an
Agricultural
and
Technical Instruction
Act.
This established
a new
governmental
3
Grandfather
of the
literary
Lord
Dunsanay.
660
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE:
department
which,
with
himself as active
head,
provided
Ireland
with
colleges
that
trained
agricultural
scientists,
schools
that
gave practical
agricultural
education,
and itinerant
agricultural
instructors
who
con-
ducted
local
classes
and
directed
field
demonstrations
and
experiments.
The
department
enlisted
the
active
support
of
local
committees
and
fostered all
kinds
of
cooperatives
from
creameries
to banks. So
it
came
to
pass
that
Ireland
was
transformed
into another
Denmark,
specializ-
ing
in
the
dairy
and
poultry
industries.
Meanwhile
Irish
nationalism was
recovering
from the
hopeless
state
into
which
it
had
fallen
by
1893.
That
year
saw the
founding
of
the
Gaelic
League by
seven
literary
scholars in
Dublin
for the
prime
pur-
pose
of
reviving
the Irish
language. Early
in
the nineteenth
century
it
was
still the
native
tongue
of
the
majority
of
the
population;
but
as
the
century
drew
to
a
close
the
mass of
Irishmen
spoke
only
English
thanks
largely
though
not
entirely
to famine
and
heavy
emigration,
the
effects of
which
were
greatest
in the
purely
Irish
districts,
and
to
the
influence
of the
Roman
Catholic
clergy,
who frowned
on the
use
of
Gaelic.
Scottish
Gaelic
had
been
declining
too,
but not
so
rapidly,
for
Presbyterian
Highlanders
had
been
given
the
Bible in Gaelic
and
were
taught
to
read it.
The
cognate
Goidelic
speech,
long
extinct in
north-
west
and
southwest
England,
survived
only
in
Wales
and
there
it
was
strong.
It
had
gained
a new
lease
of
life in the
late
eighteenth
century,
when
its
adoption
by
Wesleyan preachers
enabled them
to
sweep
that
part
of
the
country
into
the
Methodist
fold,
and
in the
nineteenth
century
from
the
revival of
the
mediaeval
eisteddfod in
1819
as
an
annual
national
festival.
The
founding
of the
Gaelic
League
under
the
presidency
of
Douglas
Hyde,
a
Protestant
of
English
extraction
and
the
greatest
living
Celtic
scholar,
was the
small
beginning
of
a
big
movement
commonly
called
the
Celtic
revival,
or the
Irish
renaissance.
In
1898 a
national
festival
patterned
after
the
Welsh
was
held,
and
it
was
so
successful
that
thenceforth it
was
an
annual event.
The
linguistic
phase
of
the
move-
ment
made
slow
but
steady
progress,
while
the
literary
phase,
expressed
in
English
with
peculiar
Irish
grace,
developed
with
almost
explosive
rapidity.
Inspired
by
the
rediscovery
of
ancient
Irish
literature,
legends,
and
history,
such
poets
and
dramatists
as W.
B.
Yeats,
J.
M.
Synge,
and
Lady
Gregory
kindled a
new
spirit
in
Ireland
and
leaped
into
international
fame.
Everybody
has
heard of
the
Abbey
Theater in
Dublin,
which
was
established
in
1904
for
the
production
of
plays
on
Irish themes.
There
the
very
soul
of
Ireland
seemed to
sing.
Irish
and
Indian
Nationalism
661
The
political
aspect
of
this
Irish
reawakening
was
stimulated
by
the
Boer
War,
but
this
influence
was
less
striking
than it was in the de-
velopment
of
dominion
nationalism.
The
schism that had
paralyzed
the
Home
Rule
movement
came
to
an
end in
1899,
when
Justin
Mc-
Carthy
died
and his
followers
accepted
John
Redmond as
their
leader.
The
reunion of
the
party,
however,
did not
provide
a
single
focus for
Irish
political
aspirations.
Within the
Gaelic
League
there
was
a
grow-
ing
feeling
that
parliamentary
agitation
was
futile,
and
in
1904 Arthur
Griffith,
the
most
brilliant
journalist
of
the
League,
launched
the
Sinn
Fein
movement.
The
original
and
technical
issue
between Home
Rulers
and
Sinn
Feiners was
that
the
former
implicitly
recognized
what the
latter
utterly
denied
the
constitutional
authority
of the British
parlia-
ment
to
legislate
for
Ireland. Griffith
and his
fellows
asserted
that the
Irish
members
of
that
body
were
betraying
Ireland
by
sitting
in West-
minster,
that
they
should
assemble
in
Dublin
and
there
constitute
themselves as
an
independent
legislature.
Practically
and
eventually
this
meant
the
application
of
revolutionary
force
to set
up
a
republic.
In
1905
Douglas
Hyde
toured the
United
States
and
brought
back
1
1,000
for the
Irish
cause. But
the
reopening
of
the American
purse
was
to
have
less
influence than
the
exigencies
of
English politics upon
the
outcome in
Ireland
by
determining
whether the
renewed drive for
Home
Rule
would win
the
race
against
Sinn Fein,
When
the Liberals
returned
to
office
at
the
end of
1905,
they
would
not touch
Home
Rule,
which
had
caused them
so
much
grief,
unless
they
had to
in
order to
command
a
majority
in
the
House
of
Commons,
The
general
election
at the
beginning
of
1906
relieved
them
of
this
necessity
until the
Lords'
rejection
of
the
1909
budget
forced
an
appeal
to
the
country
in
January
1910,
As there
was
every
indication that the
contest would
be
so close
that the
Irish
Nationalists
would
again
ride
the balance of
power,
Asquith
bid
for
Redmond's
support
by
promising
a Home Rule bill if the
government
was
sustained. The
Liberals lost a
hundred seats and the
Unionists
gained
even
more,
with
the
result
that
their
standing
in
the
new
House was
equal;
Redmond then
bound
the
prime
minister to
put
Home
Rule
on the statute
book
as
quickly
as
possible.
Majority opinion
in
England
was
hostile
to
the
project;
but
the
Irish leader
could count on the
open sympathy
of the
dominions,
which
welcomed
the
prospect
of Ireland's
joining
their
ranks,
and
on
the old
pressure
from
the
United
States,
whose
friendship
was
becom-
ing
more
valued
in Britain.
Thus
once more
English
politics
had
played
into Irish
hands,
but it
662
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE:
proved
to
be
just
a
few
months too
late
for
Home
Rule
to
win.
As
there
was
not
the
slightest
chance of
getting
a Home
Rule
bill
through
the
House
of
Lords,
its
enactment had to
wait until
the
House
of
Commons
acquired
the
constitutional
right
to
override
the veto
of
the
upper
chamber.
This
entailed
another
general
election
at the
end
of
1910,
the
passage
of the
Parliament Bill
in 191 1 after
a
memorable
struggle,
and
a
further
delay prescribed
by
the Parliament
Bill for
legislation
without
the
concurrence of the
Lords.
The Commons
had to
pass
Home
Rule
in
three
successive
sessions
in
1912, 1913,
and
1914
before
it
could
become
law in
defiance of the Lords.
During
this
long process,
party
strife in
Britain
grew
extremely
bitter over Home
Rule,
and a
storm
blew
up
in
Ulster
that
was
more
furious than
the
one
of
1886.
To the
ordinary
Protestant in
Ireland,
"Home Rule meant
Rome
rule,"
an
abominable
thing.
The
dread of domination
by
a
Roman
Catholic
government
was also a
cloak
for economic fears.
Ulster
was
the
only
industrial
part
of
Ireland
and,
as
a
consequence,
by
far
the
richest.
It
possessed
some of the
biggest
and
most
prosperous
linen
factories
and
shipyards
in
the
world.
Industrial
Ulster
was a
juicy
orange
for
a
Home
Rule
government
to
squeeze.
While the
business
community
of
Ulster
recoiled
in
horror from the
thought
of
crushing
taxation,
another
nightmare
haunted
organized
labor.
It
was
Protes-
tant,
skilled,
and
well
paid;
whereas the
unskilled
workers were
Catho-
lic,
unorganized,
and
poverty-striken.
The
skilled
believed
that a
Roman
Catholic
government
in
Dublin
would
push
their
wages
down
by
helping
the
unskilled
up.
Protestant
Ulster
rallied
under
the
fiery
leadership
of
a
great
lawyer,
Sir
Edward
Carson,
who
thereby
came to
be
known
as
"King"
Carson,
and
resolved
to
resist
Home
Rule
by
force
if
necessary.
Again
the old
cry
was
raised,
"Ulster
will
fight,
and Ulster
will be
right."
Though
the
Home
Rule
bill
contained
clauses that
limited
the
power
of the Irish
parliament
for
the
express
purpose
of
safeguarding general
imperial
and
specific
Ulster
interests,
the
announcement
of
these
pro-
visions in
the
spring
of 1912
did
not
check the
ominous
movement that
was
centered
in
Belfast.
Already
it
was
creating
its
own
army,
the
Ulster
Volunteers;
and
in
the
autumn
it
produced
the
Ulster
Covenant,
modeled
after
the
historic
Scottish
National
Covenant,
pledging
its
signers
to
fight
to
the
death
against
Home
Rule.
To
meet
this
threat in
the
north,
southern
Ireland
began
to arm
and
drill
toward
the
end
of
1913;
thus a
second
illegal
army
sprang
into
existence,
the
Irish Na-
tional
Volunteers. The
government
forbade
the
importation
of
arms
Irish and
Indian
Nationalism
663
into
Ireland;
but
they
poured
in
from
England
for
the
Ulster
Volun-
teers,
and
they
trickled in
from
Germany
for the
Irish
National
Vol-
unteers.
Protestant
Ulster
was
preparing
to
prove
its
loyalty
to
Britain
by
rebelling
against
the
British
government,
and
Nationalist Ireland
was
preparing
to
get
national
self-government
with the aid
of
rifles
aimed
at
Ulstermen
and,
if
London
did
not
keep
its
word,
at
British
soldiers
too.
Asquith
was
caught
in a
terrible
plight.
He
could neither
press
on
nor back
out
without
incurring
the
grave
risk
of
plunging
Ireland into
a
bloody
civil
war.
All he
could
do to
ease the
tension was to win Red-
mond's
consent
to an
amendment that
would
allow
any
Ulster counties
to
stay
out
of
Home
Rule
for six
years,
if
they
so
decided
by
popular
vote.
But
the
only
condition
that
the
Ulster
opposition
would
accept
was
the
permanent
exclusion of
the
counties with
Protestant
majorities.
This
was
intolerable to the
Nationalists
because
of the
size of the
Roman
Catholic
minorities,
which
ranged
from 20 to
nearly
50
per
cent
of the
population
in
these
counties. The
Home
Rule
leader
dared
not
make
any
further
concession
lest he
lose
his
precarious
hold
on
the
Irish
National
Volunteers,
who
were
really
a
Sinn
Fein
organization.
To
make
matters
worse,
the
Irish crisis
demoralized the
British
Army.
In the
spring
of 1914
there
was a
rash
of
resignations by
officers who
feared that
they
would be
ordered to coerce
"loyal
Ulster."
On 25
May
the
Commons
passed
the
bill for the last
time,
with a
majority
of 77
provided
by
Redmond's
followers.
But it
was
enacted
too late
to become
operative.
Before
Ireland
could
blow
up,
the
Old
World
blew
up.
Rather
than
face a
civil
war
in
Ireland that
would
cripple
Britain
as
she
entered
the
World
War,
Liberals
and
Home
Rulers
agreed,
to the
unspeakable
relief of
Unionists
and
Ulstermen,
to
suspend
the
operation
of Home
Rule
until hostilities
ceased.
Though
no one knew
it at
the
time,
that
decision
delivered
Nationalist
Ireland
into the
arms
of the Sinn
Fein leaders.
Wisdom that
looks
backward has
since
condemned the lack of
courage
that
dealt Home
Rule
the
fatal
blow,
but
no one
can
prove
that
the
alternative
would have
been
better.
Indian nationalism
was
more
like Irish than
dominion
nationalism in
that it was a
reaction
against foreign
rule
established
by
conquest,
and
it
drew
nourishment from
roots
that
penetrated
deep
into
the
past
of
the
country.
Yet it
owed
much
to
what
the British
gave
to
India.
The
British
gave political
unity,
which
India
had
never
possessed
in
all
its
long
and
confused
history
of
previous conquests,
and
the
British
rein-
664
CHAPTER
THIRTY-THREE:
forced
this
political
integration
with
physical
integration.
Every
im-
provement
in
communication and
transportation
tended to
break
down
the
vertical
and
horizontal
barriers the
divisions of
geography,
race,
and
caste
that
had
always
prevented
the
people
of
India
from
having
any
sense
of
unity.
The British
also
planted
and watered the
seeds
of
nationalism in
the
ground
that
they
thus
cleared for its
growth.
The
educational
policy
inaugurated by
Macaulay
and
pushed
by
the
govern-
ment
even
after
the
Mutiny
for the
British
scorned the
idea
of
keep-
ing
the
Indians
down
by
keeping
them
ignorant
gave
the
literate
classes a
common
language, English,
that
bound
them
together
for
the
first
time;
and it
indoctrinated them
with
British
ideals of
liberty,
which
sooner
or later
were
bound
to
inspire
a
nationalist
challenge
to
British
rule.
Moreover,
quite
apart
from
this
formal
education,
individual
Englishmen
of
scholarly
bent
explored
the
antiquities
of
India,
which
Indians
themselves
had
long
neglected,
and
thereby
roused in
them
the
proud
consciousness
of
being
the
heirs of a
civilization
much
more
ancient
and
in
many
ways
more
splendid
than
that
of
England.
Though
the
Mutiny
was a
wild
revulsion
against
Occidentalism
as
well
as an
outburst
of
anarchy,
it was
no
expression
of
Indian
nation-
alism,
which
did
not
arise
until
years
afterward.
There
was,
however,
a
causal
relationship
which
Indian
myth
inverted.
The
blood
spilled
by
the
Mutiny
manured
the
soil from
which
Indian
nationalism
sprang.
As
the
reflex
from
the
horrible
shock
of
1857
caused
the
British in
India
to
withdraw
from
the
society
around
them,
and
the
Indians
also
to
draw in
upon
themselves,
a
wide
gulf
opened
between
rulers
and
ruled,
and
the
increased
racial
consciousness
on
both
sides
fed
the
growth
of
Indian
nationalism.
The
seventies
saw
the
rise
of
a
native
press,
both
English-language
and
vernacular.
Some
of
the
latter
seized the
occasion
of
the
Russo-
Turkish
War
of
1877-78
to
praise
Russia
and
attack
Britain,
suggest-
ing
the
assassination
of
British
officials
and
the
overthrow
of
the
British
raj.
This
was
something
new
in
India,
and it
looked
like
the
beginning
of
Indian
nationalist
agitation.
To
the
viceroy,
Lord
Lytton,
and his
council it
was
seditious
incitement
and too
dangerous
to
tolerate.
There-
fore
they passed
the
Vernacular
Press
Act
of
1878,
clamping
censorship
upon
this
class
of
newspapers.
The
response
from
the
rising
generation
of
western-educated
Indians
was an
angry
howl,
another
novelty
in a
land of
traditional
submission
to
authority.
The
act
was
also
severely
criticized
in
England,
particularly
by
Gladstone.
When he
returned
to
power
in
1880,
he
sent
the
Marquis
of
Ripon
to
replace
Lytton.
The