The Land-War In Ireland (1870) Part 14

But the '_self_' must be one body animated by one spirit; not two bodies, chained together, irritated by the contact, fiercely struggling against one another, eternally reproaching one another about the mutual wrongs of the past, and not unfrequently coming to blows, like implacable duellists shut up in a small room, each determined to kill or be killed. If England were to let go her hold even now, something like this would be the Irish 'situation.' The abiding force of this antipathy, in the full light of Christianity, is awful.

In his 'Life, Letters, and Speeches of Lord Plunket,' the Hon.

David Plunket states that, when his grandfather entered the Irish parliament, 'the English Government had nearly abandoned the _sham_ of treating the Irish parliament as an independent legislature; the treasury benches were filled with placemen and pensioners. All efforts tending to reform of parliament or concession to the Catholics had been given up as useless. Grattan and some of his immediate followers had seceded from an a.s.sembly too degraded to appreciate their motives, or to be influenced by their example; and whatever remained of independence in the House of Commons ministers still laboured to bring under their control. Scarcely thirty votes appeared in opposition on the most important divisions, while Government could at any time readily whip a majority of 100.'

According to a Government return made in 1784, by Pitt's direction, 116 nomination seats were divided between some 25 proprietors. Lord Shannon returned no less than 16 members, and the great family of Ponsonby returned 14; Lord Hillsborough, 9, the Duke of Leinster, 7, and the Castle itself 12. Eighty-six seats were _let out_ by the owners, in consideration of t.i.tles, offices, and pensions. No less than 44 seats were occupied by placemen, 32 by gentlemen who had promises of pensions, 12 by gentlemen who stood out for higher prices from Government. The regular opposition appears to have been limited to 82 votes, of which 30 belonged to Whig nominees, and the rest to the popular party.

It is, then, easy to account for the state of public feeling which Mr.

Plunket, with these facts and figures before him, so well describes.

He says truly that if it were possible to appeal to the country under these circ.u.mstances, the people would not have responded. 'Gloomy and desperate, they had lost all confidence in their parliament, and looked to other quarters for deliverance from the _intolerable tyranny_ under which they suffered. There can be no doubt that this anarchy and disgrace were in a great degree the result of a misgovernment, ancient and recent, _which seems to have been always adopted with a view to bring out strongly the worst elements of the Irish character_; but it was at that time said, and no doubt believed by the Opposition, that the ministry of the day had deliberately planned and accomplished the disorganisation of the Irish people and their parliament, in order to enable them to carry out their favourite project of the Union.'

Mr. Plunket, after describing the cla.s.ses of 'representatives' that his grandfather had to deal with in the Irish House of Commons, further says: 'It is true that this corrupt a.s.sembly cannot fairly be looked upon as the mirror of national character and national honour.

The members of the majority who voted for the Union _were not_ the representatives of the people, _but the hired servants of the Minister, for the Parliament had been packed for the purpose_.'

Towards the close of the century, however, the French Revolution, the American war, and the volunteer movement, had begun to cause some faint stirring of national life in the inert ma.s.s of the Roman Catholic population, which the penal code had '_dis-boned_.' Up to this time they were not even thought of in the calculations of politicians. According to Dean Swift, Papists counted no more in politics than the women and children. Macaulay uses a still more contemptuous comparison to express the estimate in which they were held in those times, saying, that their lords and masters would as soon have consulted their poultry and swine on any political question.

Nevertheless, during the excitement of the volunteer movement, some of the poor Celts began to raise their heads, and presumed to put the question to the most liberal portion of the ruling race--'Are we not men? Have not we also some rights?' The appeal was responded to in the Irish parliament, and in 1793 the elective franchise was conceded to Roman Catholics. It was the first concession, and the least that could be granted. But the bare proposal excited the utmost indignation in the Tory party, and especially in the Dublin corporation, where the Orange spirit was rampant. That body adopted an address to the Protestants of Ireland, which bears a remarkable resemblance in its spirit and style to addresses lately issued by Protestant Defence a.s.sociations. Both speak in the kindest terms of their Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, disclaim all intention of depriving them of any advantages they enjoy under our glorious const.i.tution, declaring that their objects are purely _defensive_, and that they want merely to guard that const.i.tution against the aggressions of the Papacy quite as much for the sake of Roman Catholics as for the sake of Protestants.

'Countrymen and friends,' said the Dublin Tories, seventy-five years ago, 'the firm and manly support which we received from you when we stood forward in defence of the Protestant Ascendancy, deserves our warmest thanks. We hoped that the sense of the Protestants of Ireland, declared upon that occasion, would have convinced our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects that the pursuit of political power was for them a vain pursuit; for, though the liberal and enlightened mind of the Protestant receives pleasure at seeing the Catholic exercise his religion with freedom, enjoy his property in security, and possess the highest degree of personal liberty, yet, experience has taught us that, without the ruin of the Protestant establishment, the Catholic cannot be allowed the smallest influence in the state.'

Those men were as thoroughly convinced as their descendants, who protest against concession to-day, that all our Protestant inst.i.tutions would go to perdition, if Papists, although then mere serfs, were allowed to vote for members of parliament. They were equally puzzled to know why Roman Catholics were discontented, or what more their masters could reasonably do for them to add to the enviable happiness of their lot. 'We entreat you,' the Dublin corporation said to their Protestant brethren throughout the country--'we entreat you to join with us in using every honest means of persuading the Roman Catholics to rest content with the most perfect toleration of their religion, the fullest security of their property, and the most complete personal liberty; but, by no means, now or hereafter, to attempt any interference in the government of the kingdom, as such interference would be incompatible with the Protestant Ascendancy, which we have resolved with our lives and fortunes to maintain.'

Lest any doubt should exist as to what they meant by 'Protestant Ascendancy,' they expressly defined it. They resolved that it consisted in a Protestant King of Ireland; a Protestant Parliament, Protestant electors and Government; Protestant benches of justice; a Protestant hierarchy; the army and the revenue, through all their branches and details, Protestant; and this system supported by a connection with the Protestant realm of Britain.

The power of the political franchise to elevate a degraded people, to convert slaves into men, is exhibited before the eyes of the present generation in the Southern States of America; even where differences of race and colour are most marked, and where the strongest natural antipathies are to be overcome. We may judge from this what must have been the effect of this concession on the Irish Celts. The forty-shilling freeholders very soon became objects of consideration with their landlords, who were anxious to extend their political influence in their respective counties, for the representation of which the great proprietors had many a fierce contest. The abolition of this franchise by the Emanc.i.p.ation Act made that measure a grievance instead of a relief to the peasantry, for the landlords were now as anxious to get rid of the small holders as they had been to increase them so long as they served their political purpose. It was one of the great drawbacks which deprived emanc.i.p.ation of the healing effect it would otherwise have produced. If--as Pitt intended--that measure had formed part of the Union arrangements; if the forty-shilling freeholders had been spared, and the priesthood had been endowed, we should never have had an agitation for repeal or even for the separation of the church from the state. Pitt's plan of the Union included the abolition of Protestant Ascendancy.

Edmund Burke, in one of his letters on Ireland, said: 'A word has been lately struck in the mint of the castle of Dublin. Thence it was conveyed to the Tholsel, or city hall, where having pa.s.sed the touch of the corporation, so respectably stamped and vouched, it soon became current in parliament, and was carried back by the speaker of the House of Commons, in great pomp, as an offering of homage from whence it came. That word is Ascendancy. The word is not absolutely new.' He then gives its various meanings, and first shows what it does _not_ signify in the new sense. Not influence obtained by love or reverence, or by superior management and dexterity; not an authority derived from wisdom or virtue, promoting the happiness and freedom of the Roman Catholic people; not by flattering them, or by a skilful adaptation to their humours and pa.s.sions. It means nothing of all these. Burke then shows what it does mean. 'New ascendancy is old mastership. It is neither more nor less than the resolution of one sect of people in Ireland to consider themselves the sole citizens in the commonwealth, and to keep a dominion over the rest, by reducing them to absolute slavery under a military power; and thus fortified in their power, to divide the public estate, which is the result of general contribution, as a military booty, solely among themselves. This ascendancy, by being a _Protestant_ ascendancy, does not better it, from a combination of a note or two more in this anti-harmonic scale. By the use that is frequently made of the term, and the policy that is grafted on it, the name Protestant becomes nothing more or better than the name of a persecuting faction, with a relation of some sort of theological hostility to others, but without any sort of ascertained tenets of its own, upon the ground of which it persecutes other men; for the patrons of this Protestant ascendancy neither do nor can, by anything positive, define or describe what they mean by the word Protestant.... The whole is nothing but pure and perfect malice. It is indeed a perfection in that kind, belonging to beings of a higher order than man, and to them we ought to leave it.... Let three millions of people but abandon all that they and their ancestors have been taught to believe sacred, and to forswear it publicly in terms the most degrading, and nothing more is required of them.... The word _Protestant_ is the charm that locks up in a dungeon of servitude three millions of people.

Every thoughtful reader of the debates in parliament on the state of Ireland, must have been struck with the difference of opinion between the Liberals and the Conservatives, as to the facts of the case. A still more violent difference was presented in the British parliament, in the year 1797, when there were great debates in both houses on the subject, and when the facts were still more glaring, one of them being that the reign of terror established by the Irish Government prevented the press from reporting the maddening atrocities which the ruling faction was daily perpetrating against the ma.s.s of the king's subjects. The debate arose in the Lords, on a motion by Lord Moira for an address to the king on the state of Ireland. He described the horrors of which he had been recently a witness, but softened the recital, lest he should shock his hearers too much. Orange loyalty was then licensed and let loose upon the defenceless Roman Catholic population in Ulster. Lord Gosford's description of the scenes of desolation in his own county, Armagh, is well known. He did what he could to prevent the burning of Roman Catholic houses, and the personal injuries inflicted upon the unfortunate inhabitants, while their Orange neighbours chased them out of the country, giving them Cromwell's alternative. But his mercy injured his reputation, and he felt obliged to protest solemnly that he was a loyal man, and that he wished to uphold Protestant ascendancy in Ireland as much as any of his accusers. He only asked that the poor Catholic should be allowed to live in peace. In the debate referred to, Lord Moira declared that ninety-one householders had been banished from one of his own estates; and many of them wounded in their persons. The discontent, he said, was not confined to one sect. He ascribed the state of things to the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, which crushed the hopes of the Catholics, and gave unbounded licence to the yeomanry, who were empowered to act with a vigour beyond the law; to turn out, banish, or kill the king's subjects, on mere suspicion, often prompted by private malice, and having no better warrant than anonymous information. But for all this the Irish parliament and the new reactionary viceroy freely granted acts of indemnity. According to Earl Fitzwilliam 'whole parishes, baronies, and even counties, were declared to be out of the king's peace.'

Mr. Fox brought forward a similar motion in the House of Commons, pleading the cause of justice and humanity in a n.o.ble speech, and boldly affirming principles of government for Ireland, which Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Chichester Fortescue, and Mr. Bright are now endeavouring to have carried out by the imperial parliament after seventy years of concession, extorted by three rebellions. Mr. Fox expressed his abhorrence of 'the truly diabolical maxim' of '_Divide el impera_,' by which the government of Ireland was conducted. He hoped that the discontent which threatened the separation of Ireland would be dissipated without the necessity of war. 'But now,' he said, 'the extremity of rigour has been tried--the severity of despotism has been let loose--and the Government is driven to that state when the laws are not to be put into execution, but to be superseded.' The motion was seconded by Sir Francis Burdett, who said: 'Whoever has seen Ireland, has seen a country where the fields are desolated, and the prisons overflowing with the victims of oppression--has seen the shocking contrast between a profligate, extravagant Government, and an enslaved and impoverished people.' The motion was rejected by a majority of 136. Lord Moira made a last and an almost despairing appeal on November 22, in the same year. In his speech he said: 'I have seen in that country a marked distinction made between the English and the Irish. I have seen troops that have been sent full of this prejudice, that every inhabitant of that kingdom is a rebel to the British Government. I have seen the most wanton insults practised upon men of all ranks and conditions. I have seen the most grievous oppression exercised, in consequence of a presumption that the person who was the unfortunate object of such oppression was in hostility to the Government; and yet that has been done in a part of the country as quiet and as free from disturbance as the city of London. He who states these things should be prepared with proofs. I am prepared with them.' He then went into a number of horrifying details, and concluded as follows: 'You say that the Irish are insensible to the benefits of the British const.i.tution, and you withhold all these benefits from them. You goad them with harsh and cruel punishments, and a general infliction of insult is thrown upon the kingdom. I have seen, my lords, a conquered country held by military force; _but never did I see in any conquered country such a tone of insult as has been adopted by Great Britain towards Ireland_. I have made a last effort. I acquit my conscience; I have done my duty.'

In subsequent debates, the following sentiments were uttered by the leading Whig statesmen of the day: 'The treatment of Ireland,' said Mr. Fox, 'was such as to harrow up the soul. It was shocking to think that a nation of brothers was thus to be trampled on like the most remote colony of conquered strangers.... The Irish people have been scourged by the iron hand of oppression, and subjected to the horrors of military execution, and are now in a situation too dreadful for the mind to contemplate without dismay. After the inhuman dragooning and horrible executions, the recital of which makes the blood run cold--after so much military cruelty, not in one, but in almost every part of the country--is it possible for this administration to procure unanimity in Ireland?' On March 22, 1798, the Duke of Bedford moved an address to the king, asking him to change his ministers, and alluding to the state of Ireland, as it was before the breaking out of the Rebellion. He said: 'Were I to enter into a detail of the atrocities which have been committed in Ireland, the picture would appal the stoutest heart. It could be proved that the most shocking cruelties have been perpetrated; but what could be expected if men kept in strict discipline were all at once allowed to give loose to their fury and their pa.s.sions?'

Lord Holland was persuaded that his majesty's ministers could not tranquillise Ireland even by conciliation. 'How could they conciliate whose concessions are always known to be the concessions of weakness and of fear, and who never granted to the Irish--the most generous people upon earth,--anything without a struggle or resistance?' Lord William Russell, in June following, said: 'A man's loyalty was to be estimated by the desire he testified to imbrue his hands in his brother's blood.' Sheridan asked: 'After being betrayed, duped, insulted--disappointed in their dearest hopes, and again thrown into the hands of the rulers they detested and despised, was it impossible they should feel emotions of indignation? The struggle is not one of partial disaffection, but it is a contest between the people and the Government.' Mr. Tierney said: 'It was certain the people were in arms against the Government, nor was it easy to conceive how--having been scourged, burnt, and ma.s.sacred--they could have any other feeling than aversion to that Government.'

Every motion on the subject in both houses was rejected by overwhelming majorities. So little impression did the reports of the appalling facts which were of daily occurrence in Ireland make upon that Tory Government, that the speeches of ministers read exactly like the speeches of Mr. Disraeli, Mr. Hardy, Lord Mayo, and Mr. Warren, in the past session. Lord Grenville, the home secretary, professed the most profound respect for the independence of the Irish parliament, and he could not think of interfering in the least with its privileges, however the empire might suffer from its excesses.

'The motion of Lord Moira was not only unnecessary, it was highly mischievous.' He dwelt on the improved state of Ireland, and the tranquillity of the people. If there were partial excesses on the part of the military, they were unavoidable, and could only be deplored.

'He was unable to discern what should alienate the affections of Ireland. For the whole s.p.a.ce of thirty years his majesty's Government had been distinguished by the same uniform tenderness of regard, by the same undeviating adherence to the mild principles of a conciliatory system.... If any cruelties had been practised, they must have been resisted by a high-spirited people. Were there no courts of justice? The conduct of the lord lieutenant was highly commendable.

The system recommended by Lord Moira would only tend to villify the Irish Government.' Then came the fatal announcement which sounded the death-knell of thousands of the Irish people, and caused the destruction of millions' worth of property. The home secretary said: 'The contrary system must, therefore, be persevered in; and to the spirited exertions of the British military should we owe the preservation of Irish laws, of Irish property, and of Irish lives!'

To this the Marquis of Downshire added 'that he was not afraid of the effects of coercion. Every concession had been made that could be made towards Ireland. Every Catholic was as free as the safety of the state would admit. Were the Catholics to have an equal share in the government with the Protestants, the Government and the country would be lost.'

I will conclude by quoting the remarks of Mr. Fox, referred to above: 'If you do not allay their discontent, there is no way but force to keep them in obedience. Can you convince them by the musket that their principles are false? Can you prove to them by the bayonet that their pretensions are unjust? Can you demonstrate to them by martial law that they enjoy the blessings of a free const.i.tution? No, it is said, but they may be deterred from the prosecution of the objects which you have determined to refuse. But on what is this founded? On the history of Ireland itself? No; for the history of Ireland proves that, though repeatedly subdued, it could not be kept in awe by force; and the late examples will prove the effect which severity may be expected to produce.... I would therefore concede; and if I found I had not conceded enough, I would concede more. I know of no way of governing mankind, but by conciliating them.... My wish is that the whole people of Ireland should have the same principles, the same system, the same operation of government. ... I would have the whole Irish government regulated by Irish notions and Irish prejudices; and I firmly believe, according to an Irish expression, the more she is under Irish government, the more she will be bound to English interests. ... I say, therefore, try conciliation, but do not have recourse to arms.'

He warned and implored in vain. The Union had been determined on; and it was thought that it could be effected only after the prostration of civil war, into which, therefore, the unfortunate people were goaded.

CHAPTER XV.

POVERTY AND COERCION.

We are now in the nineteenth century, without any relief for the Irish peasantry. The rebellion of '98, so cruelly crushed, left an abiding sense of terror in the hearts of the Roman Catholic population.

Their condition was one of almost hopeless prostration. The Union was effected without the promised relief from their religious disabilities which was to be one of its essential conditions. The established church was secured, the rights of property were secured, but there was no security for the ma.s.s of the people. Domestic politics were almost forgotten in the gigantic struggle with Napoleon, which exhausted the energies of the empire. Any signs of political life that showed themselves in Ireland were connected with Catholic emanc.i.p.ation, and the visit of George IV., in 1820, held forth promises of relief which excited unbounded joy. The king loved his Irish subjects, and would never miss an opportunity of realising the good wishes for their happiness which he had so often and so fervently expressed to his Whig friends, when he was Prince Regent. O'Connell's agitation commenced soon after, and in nine years after the royal visit emanc.i.p.ation was extorted by the dread of civil war, frankly avowed by the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. But this boon left the ma.s.ses nearly where they had been, only more conscious of their power, and more determined to use it, in the removal of their grievances.

Lord Redesdale, writing to Lord Eldon in 1821, said:--'In England the machine goes on almost of itself, and therefore a bad driver may manage it tolerably well. It is not so in Ireland. The country requires great exertion to bring it into a state of order and submission to law. The whole population--high and low, rich and poor, Catholic and Protestant--must all be brought to obedience to law; all must be taught to look up to the law for protection. The gentry are ready enough to attend grand juries, to obtain presentments for their own benefit, but they desert the quarter-sessions of the peace. The first act of a constable in arresting must not be to knock down the prisoner; and many, many reforms must be made, which only can be effected by a judicious and able Government _on the spot_. Ireland, in its present state, cannot be governed in England. If insubordination compels you to give, how are you to retain by law what you propose to maintain while insubordination remains? It can only be by establishing completely the empire of the law.'

Sir Archibald Alison ascribed the unhappy relations of cla.s.ses in Ireland to what he calls 'the atrocious system of confiscation, which, in conformity with feudal usages, the victors introduced on every occasion of rebellion against their authority.' Sir George Nicholls has shown, in his valuable history of the Irish poor law, that as early as 1310 the parliament a.s.sembled at Kilkenny resolved that none should keep Irish, or kern, in time of peace to live upon the poor of the country; 'but those which will have them shall keep them at their own charges, so that the free tenants and farmers be not charged with them.' And 130 years afterwards, the parliament a.s.sembled in Dublin declared that divers of the English were in the habit of maintaining sundry thieves, robbers, and rebels, and that they were to be adjudged traitors for so doing, and suffer accordingly. In 1450, this cla.s.s of depredators had increased very much, and by their 'thefts and manslaughters caused the land to fall into decay, poverty wasting it every day more and more; whereupon it was ordained that it should be lawful for every liege man to kill or take notorious thieves, and thieves found robbing, spoiling, or breaking houses; and that every man that kills or takes any such thieves shall have one penny of every plough, and one farthing of every cottage within the barony where the manslaughter is done, for every thief.' These extracts show a very barbarous state of society, but Sir George Nicholls remarks that at the same period the condition of England and Scotland was very similar, save only that that of Ireland was aggravated by the civil conflicts between the colonists and the natives. There were some efforts made in Ireland, by various enactments, to put down this evil, and to provide employment for the large numbers that were disposed to prey upon the industry of their neighbours, by robbery, beggary, and destruction of property. But while there was a legal provision made for the poor in England, there was none in Ireland, where the people were, _en ma.s.se_, deprived of the means of self-support by the action of the Government. Hence, so late as the year 1836, the poor-law commissioners reported to the following effect:--

It appeared that in Great Britain the agricultural families const.i.tuted little more than a fourth, whilst in Ireland they const.i.tuted about two-thirds, of the whole population; that there were in Great Britain, in 1831, 1,055,982 agricultural labourers; in Ireland, 1,131,715, although the cultivated land of Great Britain amounted to about 34,250,000 acres and that of Ireland only to about 14,600,000. So that there were in Ireland about five agricultural labourers for every two that there were for the same quant.i.ty of land in Great Britain. It further appeared that the agricultural progress of Great Britain was more than four times that of Ireland; in which agricultural wages varied from sixpence to one shilling a day; the average of the country being about eightpence-halfpenny; and that the earnings of the labourers came, on an average of the whole cla.s.s, to from two shillings to two and sixpence a week or thereabouts for the year round. Thus circ.u.mstanced, the commissioners observed, 'It is impossible for the able-bodied in general to provide against sickness or the temporary absence of employment, or against old age, or the dest.i.tution of their widows and children in the contingent event of their own premature decease. A great portion of them are, it is said, insufficiently provided with the commonest necessaries of life. Their habitations are wretched hovels, several of a family sleep together on straw, or upon the bare ground, sometimes with a blanket, sometimes even without so much to cover them; their food commonly consists of dry potatoes, and with these they are at times so scantily supplied as to be obliged to stint themselves to one spare meal in the day.

There are even instances of persons being driven by hunger to seek sustenance in wild herbs. They sometimes get a herring or a little milk, but they never get meat except at Christmas, Easter, and Shrovetide. Some go in search of employment to Great Britain, during the harvest; others wander through Ireland with the same view. The wives and children of many are occasionally obliged to beg; but they do so reluctantly and with shame, and in general go to a distance from home, that they may not be known. Mendicity, too, is the sole resource of the aged and impotent of the poorer cla.s.ses in general, when children or relatives are unable to support them. To it, therefore, crowds are driven for the means of existence, and the knowledge that such is the fact leads to an indiscriminate giving of alms, which encourages idleness, imposture, and general crime.' Such was the wretched condition of the great body of the labouring cla.s.ses in Ireland; 'and with these facts before us,' the commissioners say, 'we cannot hesitate to state that we consider remedial measures requisite to ameliorate the condition of the Irish poor. What those measures should be is a question complicated, and involving considerations of the deepest importance to the whole body of the people, both in Ireland and Great Britain.'

Sir George Nicholls, who had been an English poor-law commissioner, was sent over to Ireland to make preliminary enquiries. He found that the Irish peasantry had generally an appearance of apathy and depression, seen in their mode of living, their habitations, their dress and conduct; they seemed to have no pride, no emulation, to be heedless of the present and careless of the future. They did not strive to improve their appearance or add to their comforts: their cabins were slovenly, smoky, dirty, almost without furniture, or any article of convenience or common decency. The woman and her children were seen seated on the floor, surrounded by pigs and poultry: the man lounging at the door, which could be approached only through mud and filth: the former too slatternly to sweep the dirt and offal from the door, the latter too lazy to make a dry footway, though the materials were close at hand. If the mother were asked why she did not keep herself and her children clean with a stream of water running near the cabin, her answer invariably was--Sure, how can we help it? We are so poor.' The husband made the same reply, while smoking his pipe at the fire or basking in the sunshine. Sir George Nicholls rightly concluded that poverty was not the sole cause of this state of things. He found them also remarkable for their desultory and reckless habits. Though their crops were rotting in the fields from excessive wet, and every moment of sunshine should be taken advantage of, yet if there was a market, a fair, or a funeral, a horse-race, a fight, or a wedding, forgetting everything else, they would hurry off to the scene of excitement. Working for wages was rare and uncertain, and hence arose a disregard of the value of time, a desultory, sauntering habit, without industry or steadiness of application. 'Such,' he proceeds, 'is too generally the character and such the habits of the Irish peasantry; and it may not be uninstructive to mark the resemblance which these bear to the character and habits of the English peasantry in the pauperised districts, under the abuses of the old poor law.

Mendicancy and indiscriminate almsgiving have produced in Ireland results similar to what indiscriminate relief produced in England--the like reckless disregard of the future, the like idle and disorderly conduct, and the same p.r.o.neness to outrage having then characterised the English pauper labourer which are now too generally the characteristics of the Irish peasant. An abuse of a good law caused the evil in the one case, and a removal of that abuse is now rapidly effecting a remedy. In the other case the evil appears to have arisen rather from the want than the abuse of a law; but the corrective for both will, I believe, be found to be essentially the same.'

The expectation that such a neglected people, made wretched by bad land laws, should be loyal, was surely unreasonable. For them, it might be said, there was no Government, no protection, no encouragement. There could not be more tempting materials for agitators to work upon. Lord Cloncurry vividly sketches the state of things resulting from the want of principle and earnestness among politicians in dealing with Irish questions at that time.

'From the Union up to the year 1829, the type of British colonial government was the order of the day. The Protestants were upheld as a superior caste, and paid in power and official emoluments for their services in the army of occupation. During the second viceroyalty of Lord Anglesea, an effort was made by him to evoke the energies of the whole nation for its own regeneration. That effort was defeated by the conjoint influence of the cowardice of the English cabinet, the petulance of Mr. Stanley, and the unseasonable violence and selfishness of the lately emanc.i.p.ated popular leaders. Upon Lord Anglesea's recall the modern Whig model of statemanship was set up and followed: popular grievances were allowed to remain unredressed; the discontent and violence engendered by those grievances were used from time to time for party purposes; the people were hung and bayoneted when their roused pa.s.sions exceeded the due measure of factious requirement; and the state patronage was employed to stimulate and to reward a staff of demagogues, by whom the ma.s.ses were alternately excited to madness, and betrayed, according to the necessities of the English factions. When Russells and Greys were out or in danger, there were free promises of equal laws and privileges and franchises for oppressed Ireland; the minister expectant or trembling for his place, spoke loudly of justice and compensation, of fraternity and freedom.

To these key-notes the place-hunting demagogue pitched his brawling.

His talk was of pike-making, and sword-fleshing, and monster marching.

The simple people were goaded into a madness, the end whereof was for them suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the hulks, and the gallows; for their stimulators, silk gowns and commissionerships and seats on the bench. Under this treatment the public mind became debauched; the lower cla.s.ses, forced to bear the charges of agitation, as well as to suffer its penalties, lost all faith in their social future; they saw not and looked not beyond the momentary excitement of a procession or a monster meeting.'

Sir Robert Peel, when introducing the Emanc.i.p.ation Bill, had to confess the utter failure of the coercive policy which had been so persistently pursued. He showed that Ireland had been governed, since the Union, almost invariably by coercive acts. There was always some political organisation antagonistic to the British Government. The Catholic a.s.sociation had just been suppressed; but another would soon spring out of its ashes, if the Catholic question were not settled.

Mr. O'Connell had boasted that he could drive a coach-and-six through the former act for its suppression; and Lord Eldon had engaged to drive 'the meanest conveyance, even a donkey cart, through the act of 1829.' The new member for Oxford (Sir Robert Inglis) also stated that twenty-three counties in Ireland were prepared to follow the example of Clare. 'What will you do,' asked Sir Robert Peel, 'with that power, that tremendous power, which the elective franchise, exercised under the control of religion, at this moment confers upon the Roman Catholics? What will you do with the thirty or forty seats that will be claimed in Ireland by the persevering efforts of the agitators, directed by the Catholic a.s.sociation, and carried out by the agency of every priest and bishop in Ireland?' If Parliament began to recede there could be no limit to the retrogression. Such a course would produce a reaction, violent in proportion to the hopes that had been excited. Fresh rigours would become necessary; the re-enactment of the penal code would not be sufficient. They must abolish trial by jury, or, at least, incapacitate Catholics from sitting on juries. 2,000,000 of Protestants must have a complete monopoly of power and privilege in a country which contained 5,000,000 of Catholics, who were in most of the country four to one--in some districts twenty to one--of the Protestants. True, there were difficulties in the way of a settlement.

'But,' asked Sir Robert Peel, 'what great measure, which has stamped its name upon the era, has ever been carried without difficulty?

At the present moment there is a loud cry in the English press for the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and for the old remedy, coercion.

Those who raise the cry would do well to read Mr. Shiel's speech at the Clare election in 1828. He said:--

'We have put a great engine into action, and applied the entire force of that powerful machinery which the law has placed under our control.

We are masters of the pa.s.sions of the people, and we have employed our dominion with a terrible effect. But, sir, do you, or does any man here, imagine that we could have acquired this formidable ability to sunder the strongest ties by which the different cla.s.ses of society are fastened, unless we found the materials of excitement in the state of society itself? Do you think that Daniel O'Connell has himself, and by the single powers of his own mind, unaided by any external co-operation, brought the country to this great crisis of agitation?

Mr. O'Connell, with all his talent for excitation, would have been utterly powerless and incapable, unless he had been allied with a great conspirator against the public peace; and I will tell you who that confederate is--it is the law of the land itself that has been Mr. O'Connell's main a.s.sociate, and that ought to be denounced as the mighty agitator of Ireland. The rod of oppression is the wand of this enchanter, and the book of his spells is the penal code? Break the wand of this political Prospero, and take from him the volume of his magic, and he will evoke the spirits which are now under his control no longer. But why should I have recourse to ill.u.s.tration, which may be accounted fantastical, in order to elucidate what is in itself so plain and obvious? Protestant gentlemen, who do me the honour to listen to me, look, I pray you, a little dispa.s.sionately at the real causes of the events which have taken place amongst you.... In no other country, except in this, would such a revolution have been effected. Wherefore? Because in no other country are the people divided by the law from their superiors, and cast into the hands of a set of men who are supplied with the means of national excitement by the system of government under which we live. Surely, no man can believe that such an anomalous body as the Catholic a.s.sociation could exist excepting in a community that has been alienated from the state by the state itself. The discontent and the resentment of 7,000,000 of the population have generated that domestic government which sways public opinion, and uses the national pa.s.sions as the instruments of its will. It would be utterly impossible, if there were no exasperating distinctions amongst us, to create any artificial causes of discontent. Let men declaim for a century, and if they have no real grievance their harangues will be empty sound and idle air. But when what they tell the people is true--when they are sustained by substantial facts, effects are produced of which what has taken place at this election is only an example. The whole body of the people having been previously excited, the moment any incident such as this election occurs, all the popular pa.s.sions start simultaneously up, and bear down every obstacle before them. Do not, therefore, be surprised that the peasantry should throw off their allegiance when they are under the operation of emotions which it would be wonderful if they could resist. The feeling by which they are actuated would make them not only vote against their landlord, but would make them scale the batteries of a fortress, and mount the breach; and, gentlemen, give me leave to ask you whether, after due reflection upon the motives by which your va.s.sals (for so they are accounted) are governed, you will be disposed to exercise any measure of severity in their regard?'

The greatest warrior of the age rebuked the men who cried in that day that the sword should be the arbiter of the Irish question; and Sir Robert Peel, in his own vindication of the Emanc.i.p.ation Act, said:--

'I well know that there are those upon whom such considerations as these to which I have been adverting will make but a faint impression.

Their answer to all such appeals is the short, in their opinion the conclusive, declaration--" The Protestant const.i.tution in church and state must be maintained at all hazards, and by any means; the maintenance of it is a question of principle, and every concession or compromise is the sacrifice of principle to a low and vulgar expediency." This is easily said; but how was Ireland to be governed?

How was the Protestant const.i.tution in church and state to be maintained in that part of the empire? Again I can antic.i.p.ate the reply--"By the overwhelming sense of the people of Great Britain; by the application, if necessary, of physical force for the maintenance of authority; by the employment of the organised strength of government, the police and the military, to enforce obedience to the law." I deliberately affirm that a minister of the crown, responsible at the time of which I am speaking for the public peace and the public welfare, would have grossly and scandalously neglected his duty if he had failed to consider whether it might not be possible that the fever of political and religious excitement which was quickening the pulse and fluttering the bosom of the whole Catholic population--which had inspired the serf of Clare with the resolution and energy of a free man--which had, in the twinkling of an eye, made all considerations of personal grat.i.tude, ancient family connection, local preferences, the fear of worldly injury, the hope of worldly advantage, subordinate to the all-absorbing sense of religious obligation and public duty--whether, I say, it might not be possible that the contagion of that feverish excitement might spread beyond the barriers which, under ordinary circ.u.mstances, the habits of military obedience and the strictness of military discipline opposed to all such external influences.'

The officer who commanded the military force in Clare during the election, testified, as the result of his observation there, that, even in the constabulary and the army, the sympathies of a common cause, political and religious, could not be altogether repressed, and that implicit reliance could not long be placed on the effect of discipline and the duty of obedience. On July 20, Lord Anglesea wrote as follows:--

'We hear occasionally of the Catholic soldiers being ill-disposed, and entirely under the influence of the priests. One regiment of infantry is said to be divided into Orange and Catholic factions. It is certain that, on July 12, the guard at the castle had Orange lilies about them.' On July 26, the viceroy wrote another letter, from which the following is an extract:--'The priests are using very inflammatory language, and are certainly working upon the Catholics of the army.

I think it important that the depots of Irish recruits should be gradually removed, under the appearance of being required to join their regiments, and that whatever regiments are sent here should be those of Scotland, or, at all events, of men not recruited from the south of Ireland. I desired Sir John Byng to convey this opinion to Lord Hill.'

Emanc.i.p.ation was carried, and the people were disaffected still.

And why should they not be disaffected still? Emanc.i.p.ation had done nothing for them. The farmers were still at the mercy of the landlords, whose pride they humbled at the hustings of Clare and Waterford. They were still tormented by the t.i.the-proctor seizing the tenth of all that their labour produced on the land. The labourers were still wretched, deprived of the forty-shilling freehold, which protected them from the horrors of eviction and of transportation in a floating h.e.l.l across the Atlantic. I well remember the celebrated anti-t.i.the war in 1831, as well as the system by which it was provoked, and I can bear witness to the accuracy of the following description of the t.i.the-proctor by Henry Grattan. He said:--

'The use of the t.i.the-farmer is to get from the parishioners what the parson would be ashamed to demand, and so enable the parson to absent himself from his duty. The powers of the t.i.the-farmer are summary laws and ecclesiastical courts; his livelihood is extortion; his rank in society is generally the lowest; and his occupation is to pounce on the poor in the name of the Lord! He is a species of wolf left by the shepherd to take care of the flock in his absence.' A single t.i.the-proctor had on one occasion processed 1,100 persons for t.i.thes, nearly all of the lower order of farmers or peasants, the expense of each process being about 8 s. They had heard of opinions delivered in parliament, on the platform, and from the press by Protestant statesmen of the highest consideration, that it was a cruel oppression to extort in that manner from the majority of the tillers of the soil the tenth of its produce, in order to support the clergy of another church, who, in many cases, had no flocks, or only a few followers, who were well able to pay for their own religious instruction. The system would be intolerable even were the state clergy the pastors of the majority; but as the proportion between the Protestants and the Roman Catholics was in many parts as one to ten, and in some as one to twenty, the injustice necessarily involved in the mode of levying the impost was aggravated a hundredfold. It would be scarcely possible to devise any mode of levying an impost more exasperating, which came home to the bosoms of men with more irritating, humiliating, and maddening power, and which violated more recklessly men's natural sense of justice. If a plan were devised for the purpose of driving men into insurrection, nothing could be more effectual than the t.i.the-proctor system. Besides, it tended directly to the impoverishment of the country, r.e.t.a.r.ding agricultural improvement and limiting production. If a man kept all his land in pasture, he escaped the impost; but the moment he tilled it, he was subjected to a tax of ten per cent. on the gross produce. The valuation being made by the t.i.the-proctor--a man whose interest it was to defraud both the tenant and the parson--the consequence was, that the gentry and the large farmers, to a great extent, evaded the tax, and left the small occupiers to bear nearly the whole burden; they even avoided mowing the meadows in some cases, because then they should pay t.i.the for the hay.

There was besides a tax called church cess, levied by Protestants in vestry meetings upon Roman Catholics for cleaning the church, ringing the bell, washing the minister's surplice, purchasing bread and wine for the communion, and paying the salary of the parish clerk. This tax was felt to be a direct and flagrant violation of the rights of conscience, and of the principles of the British const.i.tution; and against it there was a determined opposition, which manifested itself in tumultuous and violent a.s.semblages at the parish churches all over the country on Easter Monday, when the rector or his curate, as chairman of the meeting, came into angry collision with flocks who disowned him, and denounced him as a tyrant, a persecutor, and a robber.