The Gaelic State in the Past & Future/Chapter 4

by Darrell Figgis

IV.

The Working of the State.

There never yet was a State, however perfectly devised, whose performance did not fall many leagues away from its intention. The dusty tomes on the top shelf only record the perfect, or imperfect, intention, for it is only by virtue of that intention that States exist at all. They do not record the follies and fatuities, the intrigues and trickeries, by which the best intentioned States are brought to grief. In all vocabularies the word Polity signifies something noble, and in all vocabularies the word Politics means something ignoble. It is perhaps necessary to remember this, for a certain type of historian (primed to depreciate everything Irish) has been very eager to discover the motes in the eye of the early Irish State while carefully neglecting the beams in the eye of its own modern wisdom.

Yet the intention of a State remains worthy for its own sake; and that the Irish performance during the first millenium did not fall very far away from the intention is clear, not only by what it achieved in Ireland, but also by what it achieved in Europe. As we have said, roses are not produced from waste heaps. The Irish State was actually in the process of solving its gravest fault when the invasion of a militarist system made that solution impossible. When Brian died in 1014 without establishing his dynasty—when his son died in battle with him without being able to claim the reversion of his father's work—Ireland was thrown into a dynastic war. Had Ireland remained without invasion the Nation must have solved that difficulty by eventually winning some system in which the executive stability would have been secured. Unhappily the country was invaded by a militarist system, which, being a militarist system, lived on no. economic labour of its own but preyed on the economic labour of the country and played off one part of the dynastic dispute against another in order to secure the fruits of its robbery. It so happened that the Nation had no means of resistance. The Fianna Eireann had been disbanded because it had threatened the State. The stateships could not be called upon for more than six weeks' military service at a time, and then not during Spring or Harvest, for the Nation had to continue its economic life or endure famine; while the feudal Normans preying on the economic labour of others could make war at all times and without cessation. And every year saw them making good their hold, while the stateships weakened, until finally when Hebridean mercenaries were introduced and quartered on the stateships it was too late to eject the invader.^[1]

It has sometimes been suggested that these dynastic wars arose because the kingships, from the monarchy downwards, were elective. This is not so. The trouble was that they were neither one thing nor the other. Had they been frankly hereditary a certain kind of security would have been won for the executive. On the other hand, had they been frankly elective, basing the election on the necessary qualifications for kingship demanded in the laws, a different kind of stability would have been secured . The straightforward dependence on the people's choice would have compelled some protection for their choice when made, especially as the defeated candidates would still have preserved intact their chances for a subsequent election; and the monarchy would have been drawn into closer relation with the stateships. The system that actually prevailed, however, gave neither sort of advantage, and was plainly a compromise from some earlier dispute. The monarch was elected, it is true, but he could only be elected from the righ-damhna. That righ-damhna consisted of all within three generations from a king. That is to say, if a king's sons were not chosen in the succession after him, and the grandsons were missed, and the great-grandsons after them, then the whole line passed out from the righ-damhna. Now, if Irish history be closely examined it will be found that most of the disputes arose at this critical point. Men were usually not willing to carry their failure to secure election to the point of war unless they happened to be at the critical fourth generation when that failure meant the extinction of their whole line from royal rights. And when it so fell out that three separate dynasties claimed those rights, it is fairly clear that the critical moment would always be arising, or always be threatened.

It is speculation to suggest how this would have been remedied had the State been left free to work out its own destiny. Clearly the executive would either have become frankly hereditary or frankly elective. Probably at that time it would have become hereditary, especially as the son generally claimed to succeed from his father unless there were special reasons why he should not or could not. But then, what of the kings of stateships and territories? Had these also become hereditary th% State from top to bottom would have become impossibly rigid; but there are reasons to suggest why this would not have been so. For one thing, the kings of stateships were elected by the voice of the freemen, whereas the kings of the higher executives were elected by their own courts. Moreover, the stateships served immediate and local needs that required the consent of the freemen for their continual adjustment. The two operating together would undoubtedly have compelled, without any of the complications of a righ-damhna, the perfectly free election of the executive head and leader of a stateship. Therefore, had the monarchy become hereditary there would have been two contradictory principles in the State; there would always be a tendency to bring one into line with the other; and it is not very difficult to see which principle would finally have prevailed.

Any arrogation of power by the monarch (and it is the first principle of monarchs to arrogate power) would have struck athwart the rule of the people in their most familiar and immediate life. A moment always arises in history (always has arisen and always will arise) when a monarch and a people front one another with the claim to real power. In such issues the people always win in the end, even when their rights in the State are most degraded. How much simpler would the issue be when the people, as in the Irish State, held the land, the final source of all wealth, in their own possession in corporate stateships? In the crisis that later befell all States no nation could have faced the future with greater assurance than Ireland, had Fate not thrown a sterner destiny before it.

In the same dispute another fault of the State was involved in fact, was one of the causes that led to the invasion of the foreigner. For the dynastic war was really the struggle of the provinces for the hegemony. The O'Neills of Meath and Ulster, the O'Conors of Connacht and the O'Briens of Munster contended together in the names of their provinces; and the Mac Murchadhas of Leinster, having no part in the war, were driven into a false isolation. This was only possible because the provinces had interposed an authority between the executive of the State and the stateships that had no real function. They could materially hinder, and could not materially help, the smooth working of the State. Had the provincial or territorial courts not existed the result would have been as deft a balance between a centralised and decentralised State as can well be imagined. The interposition of the provincial courts reduced the central authority almost to a futility except when a masterful personality held the monarchy. They broke the balance between the centre and parts of the whole, and in the result snapped the connection that existed between them. The only real link they needed they possessed in the Councils that met under the presidency of the Monarch in national assembly to adjust and continue the government of the country: the Council of Brehons, the Council of Rulers, the Council of Historians, and so forth. Each Council decided its own affairs, and the Monarch and his higher officals held the whole in co-ordination. That was a real and a vital connection. No other, was needed. The provincial courts could only possessing as they did, for the most part, powers almost equal to the monarchy break that connection, and so disturb the balance of the whole. They did so in the outcome of things, occupying the place that they did; and they did so deliberately, creating local loyalties in order to increase their power. They were, and could not help but be, a disruptive element in the State.

Undoubtedly the dynastic war of the eleventh century, pressed to its logical consummation, would have ended this false value. The dynastic war of the first centuries between Connacht and Ulster had ended in the elimination of Ulster as a rival; and, however the later war would have ended, a strong central author^ must eventually have emerged and the provincial kingships have been reduced to a merely nominal position in the economy of the State, without possessing the power to dispute the monarchy or its executive hold on the Nation. This in its turn would have required a national army; and would have answered another defect. For when in the fifth century Ireland disbanded her national militia, the Fianna Eireann, she lay a prey to any invader at a time when armies had become national necessities.

Such criticisms are, it is true, speculative. Even as such, however, an attempt has been made to keep them close to the development that the events themselves suggest to the development that, as history proves, all nations must finally obey. In the eleventh century, it must be remembered, Ireland was almost the only country in Europe with a national State. Other nations were not to achieve their States for centuries; and even then many of them now famous did not create States so careful in its parts and so concerted as a whole. It is not at all likely that Ireland, had she been left alone to work out her own destiny, would have continued with a broken State without correcting the causes of its disruption. She would have proved a startling exception to the course of history had she done so. Yet the main value of such criticisms is that they permit an examination of the Irish State at a moment when its inherent weaknesses had worked themselves out to the surface. At the height of Brian's power those weaknesses existed, but they were held in submission by his personal strength. After his death they at once rose to the surface, just because of the strength with which he had held them in submission and the manner by which he had risen to power. They then demanded a remedy contained in the State itself, and not dependent on the strength of a master mind. And in looking to the old Irish State for instruction it is important to note its weaknesses once they revealed themselves, and to perceive the development by which they would have been corrected.

Yet, while criticism is good, it is proper to look on the other side of the coin. In the light of its own day the Irish State was a remarkable achievement, but in the light of any other day it would be hard to find a statecraft so complete, so wise and so soundly based on a people's will while compact in itself. It was at once both aristocratic and democratic: in fact, it makes these modern expressions to seem, what they are, false entities, for it shows them to be parts of one whole, obverse and reverse of the same thing. The Normans when they came commented on the familiarity that existed between the members of a stateship and its king. The king, in fact, was generally required to foster his children with some freeman's family. Yet to be a king a man had to be pure of birth, perfect of body, without physical blemish, and if considerable training in the laws and arts; while the oath he took, even though it were not always kept, is sufficient to show the moral qualities expected of his office. The arts did not exist at the whim of a lordly patron, but were maintained at the people's charges. Each stateship conceived it an honour that Poetry, Music and History should be accorded the highest rank in its economy. Their professors were furnished land for their maintenance, and sat as equals at the king's table. The same was true of the Doctors of Medicine. These were all public servants, serving the public and maintained at the public charge. Those that came overseas to learn in the schools were, apparently, not charged for their tuition, but had only to conform to the legal responsibility laid on such schools, for they came in such numbers that the Council of Brehons had to make special regulations for them. And the Baile Biatach, as we have seen, had land apportioned him for the maintenance of public hospitality. These things were not then, any more than they are now, precisely familiar virtues among the nations.

So for the State itself, as an organisation. Its faults we have seen; but, even so, it found as wise a balance as any nation has yet found between a centralised and a decentralised system. Authority, to be sure, depended a good deal from the personality of whoever exercised it; but then history has shewn that this was not an attribute exclusively monopolised by the Irish State. In the last resort, not only in the theory but in the practice and working of the State, that authority was based on a free people. The State's only property, and the final source of all its wealth, the land, was owned by the people in corporate stateships; and those corporate stateships had its assemblies of freemen which discussed and adjudicated its affairs. The national life was one of high ideals of Art; of physical and mental aristocracy; it held in high esteem its intellectual leaders; it prized its scholarship but these ideals were rooted in the possession and husbandry of the soil. The student will need to search well before he betters the Irish State; and the more truly he search the more deeply he will wonder at the strange tragedy that it should have been hindered at a critical hour of its development.

1. A parallel instance may serve to show how the working of the State, taken at a moment of indecision, was turned against itself. In the fifteenth century England was plunged into a dynastic war. Those who have read the documents of the time will know with what perfidy that war was marked. The English barons openly sold their swords to the highest bidder as a natural thing. Treachery and insecurity were rife on every hand. Now, if an enemy had invaded England at that moment, and had been willing to pay the extra prices that would have been demanded of a foreigner, and, where this was not possible, had turned passion and party strength, against passion and party strength, taking care to balance the contending forces evenly, such an enemy could have entrenched himself in the country, and in the course of time have defied ejectment. England was spared this misfortune; Ireland was not.