troversies, some of us have been drawn into serious mistakes by our enthusiasm for Garibaldi: and these mistakes are exactly such as might warrant the inquiry, whether we have really improved since the days when men flew at one another’s throats, or celebrated senseless triumphs, about some political controversy which, in the eyes of sensible people, admitted of no controversy at all.
Whatever may have have been the inducement, Garibaldi has attempted civil war. He has attempted to take the direction of national affairs, in opposition to the King and the Constitution. Under the circumstances of his failure, it was permissible to console him, to minister to his wants, to take for granted his personal safety in a way which would go far to secure it from his own government. So far good. But enthusiasm has led too many of us further. It has led us to make light of the crime, because the adventurer himself has not reason enough to see that he has done ill and not well. Some of us have forgotten our attachment to our own principle and method of political society, and have exalted sedition at the expense of authority founded on popular consent. Some of us have gone further and done worse: we have taken advantage of the sedition of a hero to put a pressure on the tyrant he opposes. There have been public meetings in England for extolling Garibaldi for his one indefensible course of action; and those who are answerable for the meetings have plunged into the desperate error of arraigning the conduct of the French Emperor from the illicit foothold of Garibaldi’s selfwill and insubordination, instead of from the unimpeachable ground of reason and political experience.
It is true, and it is fortunate, that a check has been put upon this sort of demonstration, since the amnesty published from Turin has assured the world of Garibaldi’s safety, and has thereby extinguished the occasion for these meetings. But, on the whole, the impression created everywhere this autumn must be that the English, supposed to be reared and nourished in the very spirit and aliment of constitutional government, have, in considerable numbers, cast their influence into the scale of revolution, where revolution was utterly unreasonable, hopeless, and therefore inexcusable. This impression has produced its natural consequences. It has caused breaches of law in many places, and under circumstances of increasing aggravation. It has given occasion to outbreaks of popular passion, which have raised once more the question whether we are indeed politically wiser and better than former generations. It has proved that whenever accident unseals the fountain of Irish unreason, the floods burst out and spread abroad with undiminished volume and force.
The world has had abundant excuse for supposing that the faculty of reason is the weakest part of the genuine Irish constitution. England thought that the education of half a million of Irish children would show, after two generations of pupils had grown up, whether the fact was so. From time to time we have hoped that the proof would turn out what we wished; but such confidence has again been invariably checked. The impression is everywhere much what it was thirty years ago—that there is in the Irish a disastrous combination of wrong-headedness and constitutional proneness to illegality, which makes the case of Ireland still the great puzzle of rulers, and of reasonable people of all sorts. In passing this judgment we do not sufficiently remember how utter is the ignorance of the Catholic Irish generally of something else than theology—of history. It is the great drawback on any large scheme of popular education that history cannot be taught; or, at least, that modern and national history out of which political ideas, principles, and feelings grow. We are apt to forget that the Catholic Irish are utterly uninstructed in everything which is rooted in the Reformation, or has grown out of it for the three centuries which have renewed our nation and our country, politically, morally, and socially, as well as religiously. If we did consider duly the bearings of this peculiarity—that one portion of our nation has no knowledge whatever, but vast prejudices instead, on the national history of the last three centuries—we should feel it a grave political duty to spare that wrong-headedness to the utmost, waiting with all willingness till, by the course of events, the ignorance dies out, and fair play is afforded for sense to act, and reason to be trained. If we give up for Protestant children the immense advantage of enjoying the story of the reception of the Armada, and of the Revolution of 1688, and many another heart-warming chapters in our history, because Catholic children cannot share in such teaching, we might surely go one step further, and abstain from rousing the prejudices and passions of those Irish children when they have become men and women. This is, however, what most Irish and some English Protestants cannot see it right to do. Not only the Orangemen—who, in their origin, had a strong case—persist in occasionally stimulating the passions of Catholics whom they know to be ignorant, but the clergy of Protestant sects do the same thing in the name of liberty. The recent Belfast riots are as flagrant a specimen of unreason on both sides as could be found at any former date. The Rev. Mr. Hanna, and even the Presbyterian Dr. Cooke, and the whole body of their followers, in their demonstration at Belfast have thought fit to apply a perilous test, by which they have proved that their unreason is sure to be met by another unreason, the two together degrading the society in which they live to a barbaric state for the hour. The spectacle of Ireland under a new access of illegality about land and tenancy for many months past, should have deterred all reasonable people from asserting a right of meeting and discussion which nobody questioned; but we have witnessed that peculiar manifestation of unreason which makes wise men look gravest,—that reckless selfishness which pursues a legal right, perfectly undisputed, at the expense of the public peace, and of causing many a weak brother to offend.
The thing has spread like an epidemic. The same process must be gone through out of Ireland, and where Irishmen abounded. It was well known in London that everybody (except perhaps Lord