The New Irish Constitution Part 17

A poem of about 1100 A.D. describes how the people of Leinster, by their tribes and families, celebrated their fair of Carman-Carman reputed to have come "from delightful Athens westward." Every third year they held the feast and two years for the preparation. The kings sat in order in their Forud (a word cognate with _Forum_), surrounded by their councillors and retinue. "Each one sits in his lawful place, so that all attend to them to listen." The women were seated in the same manner, "a n.o.ble, most delightful host, women whose fame is not small abroad." There was a week for considering the laws and rights of the provinces for the next three years. "There aloud with boldness they proclaimed the rights of every law and the restraints." "Annals there are verified, every division into which Erin was divided; the history of the household of Tara-not insignificant, the knowledge of every territory in Erin, the history of the women of ill.u.s.trious families, of courts, prohibitions, conquests." The accurate synchronisms of n.o.ble races, "the succession of the sovereign kings, their battles and their stern valour," "Fenian tales of Finn, an untiring entertainment," proverbs, maxims, royal precepts, occult poetry, topographical etymologies, the precepts of law-givers and sages-all came in their turn; and inscribed tablets, and books of trees, satires, and sharp-edged runes.

While the memory of their origin, laws, and the t.i.tle of every man to his land, was thus imprinted on the people's minds, every other element of their civilization was displayed. Every day of the seven there was a show of the national sport of horse-racing. Commerce had its three markets-a market of food; a market of live stock, cows and horses; and the great market of "the foreign Greeks," where gold and n.o.ble clothes were wont to be, carried from the branching harbours that brought hosts into the n.o.ble fair. There were trumpets and music of all sorts, and poets, exerting their utmost power till each art had its rightful meed in proper measure from the king. Professors of every sort, both the n.o.ble arts and the base arts, were there selling and exhibiting their compet.i.tions and their professional works to kings, and rewards were given for every art that was just or lawful to be sold or exhibited or listened to. The people might enjoy the rivalry of rustic buffoonery, pipes, fiddles, chainmen, bonemen, and tube players, a crowd of babbling painted masks-all in their due place. Everything was provided for-the slope of the steeds, the slope of the cooking, the slope of the embroidering women. And finally the day of solemnity, ma.s.ses, adorations, and psalm singing, and the fast of all of them together; and so the a.s.sembly came to an end "without breach of law, without crime, without deed of violence, without dishonour."

The king who presided over these a.s.semblies was not a ruler in the Teutonic military sense. Ireland was free from two sources of military rule-the danger of conquest, and the fear of any attempt to force on the people a new and alien law. Protected by distance and the ocean, the island was long secured from foreign conquest: nor did the Irish need a central military power to enforce a native code which was already strong in the allegiance of the people. In this situation of comparative security the natural aim of the Irish was to preserve their local freedom. They objected, as the English after them have done, to military establishments and to compulsory service as systems which were a danger to liberty-and "liberty," as the English officials complained, "was the only thing that Scots and Irish constantly contended for." Herdsmen and ploughmen who carried on the business of the country refused to serve as soldiers for more than a few weeks in the year, and that only after sowing and reaping was done, and the cattle driven to pasture. Ireland was not in fact a military country. The dangers to peace lay mainly in the Gaelic law of succession to kingship and chieftainship, according to which the best man of the ruling kindred was elected by the freemen. Such a system provided frequent occasions of fighting-in rivalries of candidates and revolts of ambitious aspirants to power, all too ready to look for outside support, no matter where, from a neighbouring chief, a Norman baron, or an English deputy. From such variety of petty conflicts the feudal law of primogeniture saved other countries to some extent, though, as we know, that too was very far from insuring peace or harmony at all times.

Ireland no doubt suffered under this very conservative system of election, come down from the honoured past. The evils, however, were not incurable in a country left to itself. An attempt was already made to lessen them by the custom of electing along with the chief a Tanist or successor; and we can trace in Ireland also the growing custom of inheritance from father to son. The way of natural development was closed, not by the incompetence of the Irish, but by foreign enemies, who were careful to aggravate the mischief. It was the Danish wars and their results, and far more the wars of the English lord deputies, which made the very life of the tribe depend on military leadership and on that alone. The danger of local strife among independent states was in like manner exaggerated beyond measure when the deputies adopted the ferocious policy of advancing the English conquest by isolating the territories, and forcing them, on one plea or another, into civil war with their neighbours. Every territory had to maintain a retinue of soldiers out of all proportion to the normal state. Natural conditions were overturned, and statesmen then as now crippled the communities they governed with preparations for war in the interests of peace.

In the same way the growth in authority of the high-king was frustrated by external violence. During the Danish invasions the position of the high-king was of great importance as leader and centre of the national resistance, and head of the general a.s.semblies of the country "to bring concord among the men of Ireland." After these wars, when Ireland came more directly under European influences, efforts were made there, as in other countries, to shape a "kingdom" in the modern sense of a centralised monarchy. Such efforts after unity, which in Ireland, as in every other European country, were in any case slow and difficult, found a determined enemy in England from the time of Ruaidhri O'Conor and Henry II. onwards.

In English interests, under the English "Lord of Ireland," the island was to have no home-born king "coming to Tara," as the mediaeval phrase went, and not even a strong governor of any kind.

"A phantom government," wrote Richey, "planted at Dublin fulfilled none of the duties of a ruler, but by its presence prevented the formation of any other authority or form of rule."

If any leader appeared among the Irish of authority in peace or power in war, the whole force of England was immediately called in to his destruction, and to reestablish confusion and strife. "Ireland were as good as lost," the English said, "if a wild wyrlinge should be chosen there as king."

It cannot be doubted that the Irish system had sprung from the soul of a people with an intense national consciousness, that it bound the various clans under obedience to one common law, that it gave to all the inhabitants, rich and poor, learned and simple, an enthusiasm for their race and country which rooted that law in their hearts, and endowed it with a tenacity of life that no political misfortune could destroy.

The people were inspired by more than material considerations, and through centuries of suffering nothing but death could extinguish their pa.s.sionate loyalty to their chief and devotion to their race. English governors could never catch the reason or meaning of that patriotism. "It should seem,"

said Perrott, the ostentatious proclaimer of English superiority, "that they think, when once they leave their old customs, ... they are out of all frame or good fashion, according to that saying, _They which are born in h.e.l.l think there is no Heaven_."

England, however, according to the Unionist teaching, offered a better thing. She "invented" for Ireland a Parliament. What did the Irish make of that? Here we enter on a new range of denunciations-the inadequacy to English ideas and benevolences, not of Iberians and Celts, but of Normans and of English themselves.

Every form of Parliament, the best that England could do, ended in Ireland, according to Mr. Balfour, in a "series of failures." Ireland was already well accustomed in every one of its territories to meetings of notables and a.s.semblies for public business; and there was no special difficulty in introducing among a people of their training a representative Parliament. But from this "British invention" the Celtic people were in effect shut out, either formally or practically. The Parliament was conferred on Normans, who had so distinguished a history in England, and on English Protestants. And yet, we are told, every experiment of an "Irish" Parliament failed; under the same malign influences, it would seem, as were set forth by a lord deputy under Henry VIII.: "As I suppose, it is predestinate to this country to bring forth sedition, inventions, lies, and such other naughty fruits, and also that no man shall have thanks for services done here."

This seems to have been the view of Mr. Litton Falkiner, who in his Essays has drawn attention to the conspicuous faults of the Parliament as shown in the history of Poyning's Act. That statute, according to him, reduced Ireland to legislative impotence, but the Parliament willingly and with no difficulty pa.s.sed it; and not only was the bridle placed in the mouth of the Irish legislature with its own a.s.sent, but it was so placed by its own desire, and the Parliament long and strenuously resisted its removal. An explanation, suitable to Ireland, for this singularly irrational conduct is given.

"Not the least curious feature in the history of the subsequent operation of Poyning's Law is the great inconvenience which it occasioned to the English Government, and its corresponding popularity with the anti-English element in the Irish legislature."

The conclusion would seem to be that the atmosphere of the island so contaminated the Anglo-Norman settlers that they exchanged reason for fantastic inconsequence, and replaced self-interest by an insanity of "patriotism." We have here a typical ill.u.s.tration of the way in which the "Irish" Parliament has been thrown under rebuke, and the spirit of its condemnation. It is interesting to ask whether the facts bear out this theory of unreason, and of a wilfulness inexplicable and characteristic of this island alone.

There is a close parallel between the history of Poyning's Act in 1494 and that of the Union in 1800, so that the one may help us to understand the other. In the fifteenth century, as in the eighteenth, trade and wealth were increasing fast in Ireland with commercial intercourse of the peoples, and barriers were breaking down between the two races. In both these centuries alike the commercial jealousies of England were quickened by the growth of Irish trade, and its political fears by a question of the Crown-by Irish preference to the House of York over that of Lancaster under Henry VI.-and under George III., by views held in Ireland as to the Regency. Alike with Poyning's Act and with the Union the proposed remedy was to bring Ireland under closer subjection to England. The statute ordered that no Parliament should be held in Ireland till the Council had certified to the King under the great seal of Ireland all the causes and considerations, and the Acts that should pa.s.s in it; and had received the King's license under the great seal of England, as well in affirmation of these Acts as to summon Parliament. The means used for carrying this Act and the Act of Union were practically the same; the promise on each occasion was that the Act would ensure the order and liberties of Ireland; while for the unconvinced there remained threats, military demonstrations, and bribery-both subtle and extensive. Every place of authority in the country was newly packed with English officials, all servants of the Lancastrian party in power. A Parliament was called from which all the great earls were absent-Ormond, Desmond, Kildare. This mere shadow of a Parliament-strangers, place-hunters, and men, as we shall see, under sentence of ruin, without natural leaders, controlled by English officials-was required to accept the King's decree for "the whole and perfect obedience of the country." In Poyning's Law notice was given of the King's intention to make an Act for the general resumption of his whole revenues since 1327, an Act never equalled by any measure before or since for throwing all civil rights and liberties into the hands of the Crown. From pieces of parchment hanging to it with the autograph of Henry VII. written at the top, it appears that savings were made in favour of various persons exempting them from the operation of this Act. Thus according to their conduct or deserts at the pa.s.sing of Poyning's Law, men would find ruin or protection at the King's hand. Alike in their ign.o.ble beginnings, Poyning's Law and the Act of Union remained in their later developments the source of dissension and the great battle-ground between English rulers and Irish subjects.

So much for the pa.s.sing of the Act with "no difficulty." How it was intended to work by Henry VII. we cannot tell, but the violent methods of later Tudor sovereigns respected no barriers. Whenever Poyning's Act stood in their way, the first remedy was an Act for its "repeal"-that is, an "exposition" how it was to be understood, or an enactment that all statutes of that Parliament were valid, "notwithstanding Poyning's Act."

No Tudor ever proposed to "repeal" that part of the statute which limited the freedom of Parliament: but only to abrogate the formalities which interfered with his own direct method of government. The Dublin Parliament, for its part, clearly saw that if the Act gave a tremendous power to the Crown, it yet held provisions which were a protection, so far as they went, from arbitrary tyranny. The preparing, before a Parliament could be called, of Acts to which the Seal of Ireland had to be affixed before they went to receive the Seal of England, a.s.sured some discussion in Ireland, some degree of publicity, and some hindrance to unexpected laws sprung upon it by a foreign and uncontrolled Executive, and rushed through by a packed majority. Parliament, in fact, held that law and recognised order were safeguards to liberty; and its battle in Dublin was for the security of law, even of Poyning's Law, against the mere will of the King and his ministers: a motive neither trivial nor irrational.

The first conflict arose with the Parliament of 1536-7, which was called to establish what we may call the Protestant succession, to declare Henry head of the Church, to order the suppression of abbeys, and to decree vast confiscations in Leinster to the King's benefit (in many cases estates of members of the Parliament), with the purpose of new "Plantation." It was not likely that such laws would be peaceably drawn up in Dublin and offered to Henry in the form he preferred. On the first day of its session, May 1st, 1536, therefore, the "repeal of Poyning's Act" was ordered-that is, to declare it void for that Parliament. The experiment was new and untried, and the Houses obeyed. By the "repeal" Henry and Cromwell were set free from every restriction. They could send over new and unforeseen bills, neither known nor discussed in Ireland, without agreement with the Irish Council, at any time before or after Parliament opened, and could alter bills during the session as they chose. Every shred of protection to the framing of bills in Ireland, or their discussion there, disappeared. The usurped powers were used to the uttermost. In seventeen days ten Acts had pa.s.sed the Commons. Cromwell wrote to delay the Act for the Succession if it was still in an incomplete stage, probably for some changes. The King wrote to desire an astounding Act to confer on himself all the land in Ireland. But resistance had already begun. Parliament had attempted to protect the country by providing in their Repealing Act that a number of matters should be excluded from its operation, such as the liberties of boroughs, etc., and that no laws should be enacted by this Parliament but such as were for the honour of the King, the increase of his revenue, _and_ the commonweal of the land. As Acts poured over from England members pleaded that they were contrary to these conditions, and prepared to carry the matter to a court of law. The struggle lasted eighteen months. Parliament was adjourned, contrary to law, six times in the next year. Finally Commissioners were sent over in September, 1537, carrying with them a series of Acts drawn up in England, and added others of their own devising; all to be pa.s.sed "notwithstanding Poyning's Act." The limitations which Parliament had attempted to set up in their "Repealing" Act were set aside by a new "repeal," which declared the "mere truth" of the first to be that every Bill was valid which concerned _either_ the King's honour, _or_ the increase of his revenue, _or_ the common weal of the land: and that anyone who brought the question to a suit in any court of law should suffer as a felon.

In this first battle, Parliament, taken by surprise, was defeated. Every attempted safeguard was thrown down, and nothing left but the royal tyranny. "The King's causes in Parliament take good effect," wrote the Commissioners; and twenty-four Acts were pa.s.sed. Having finished their work, and having discovered in searching among old Acts that this Parliament was illegally held, they hastily dissolved it, making provision to hide its unlawful character.

The Parliament of 1541 which gave to Henry the t.i.tle of king was the only one of the century in which we find no proposition to repeal Poyning's Act. Other means had been used during four years of widespread and deceitful negotiations (1537-1541) to ensure the King's success. A series of false promises as to rights in land had been cunningly dispatched through the country. There was a careful scrutiny of the coming Parliament. Lists were drawn up for Henry's benefit. The House of Lords was safe. The vast majority of prelates in it were docile nominees of the new head of the Church. Of the score of peers on the list six were reported to Henry as having "neither wit nor company of men"; one was wise in counsel but without any soldiers; and nine were new creations, at the King's bidding-six of them scarcely a month old, some indeed still waiting for their letters patent. In the Common House were divers knights and many gentlemen of fair possessions, but no list of these is given. The House had evidently been packed: for an Act was pa.s.sed repealing the old statute against non-residents and proroguing of Parliaments. There was indeed a concession to placate opponents. "From henceforth" the knights and burgesses were to be resident, under penalty of fines-a provision well calculated to disappoint the hopes it raised. Under these circ.u.mstances the repeal of Poyning's Act was for once dispensed with. Having secured his t.i.tle of King, Henry could fling away his Parliament, and no a.s.sembly met again for thirteen years.

Queen Mary called her one Parliament in 1556 to carry two Acts which surpa.s.sed in terror and ferocity any yet proposed. The Act for the confiscation and plantation of Leinster lands, ordered Leix and Offaly to be turned into the King's and Queen's counties, the first shires made since the time of John; and desired they should be "planted" with "good men." A second Act gave power to Commissioners to perambulate the whole realm and divide it into shires as they thought convenient, without further reference to Parliament. Henceforth any Irish chief or Norman lord might learn suddenly that by a mere decree of the Deputy his authority was abolished, his territory dissolved into a chaotic ma.s.s of helpless people, under officers speaking a foreign tongue, and laws wholly unknown to them, the land leased out according to English tenure, new taxes imposed, and a Commissioner with his hangmen placed in their midst to govern "in a course of discretion."

When Parliament met, two drafts of the Act for "the well-disposing" of Leinster lands were "lost." The loss or embezzlement was perhaps contrived with the hope of resisting any third Act that might arrive after the session had opened, as contrary to Poyning's Law. If so, the hope was vain. An Act was prepared to explain "how Poyning's Act was to be exponed and taken," and to enact that since events might happen, (as for example the loss of unwelcome drafts) during the time of Parliament necessary to be provided for, which at the time of the summoning of Parliament were not thought or agreed upon, therefore the Irish Government might send over considerations and causes for new ordinances, and that these being returned under the Great Seal of England might be enacted, notwithstanding Poyning's Act. A third draft was sent over, and the Act of Confiscation pa.s.sed-the first of the Great Plantations.

That sinister measure, "An exposition of Poyning's Act," was again prepared for Elizabeth's Parliament of 1560, which was called to declare the Queen's t.i.tle and her Supremacy over the Church. But the Houses disappeared before it was brought in:

"The Lord-Deputy is said to have used force, and the speaker treachery.... I heard," said Dr. Lynch, "that it had been previously announced in the House that Parliament would not sit on that very day on which the laws against religion were enacted; but, in the meantime, a private summons was sent to those who were well known to be favourable to the new creed ... the few members present a.s.sented, and the speaker won for himself the name of being the chief author of the laws enacted against the Catholic religion."

The Deputy Suss.e.x sought to calm the rage of the Parliament by pledging himself solemnly that the Statute of Uniformity should not be enforced during Elizabeth's reign. So violent was the opposition of lords and chieftains to "the laws against religion," that Suss.e.x, it was said, prorogued Parliament and went to England to consult the Queen. Thus it ended after nineteen days.

After this experience:

"We have small disposition to a.s.sent to any Parliament," wrote Elizabeth to the Deputy in 1566. "Nevertheless, when we call to remembrance the ancient manner of that our Realm, that no manner of thing there ought to be commented or treated upon, but such as we shall first understand from you, and consent thereunto ourself, and consequently return the same under our great seal of this our Realm of England; we are the better minded to a.s.sent to this your request."

The legal correctness of this regard for Poyning's Act disappeared in the course of three years' preparation for the new a.s.sembly. The Parliament met in 1569 to find the Commons packed with strangers, contrary to the renewed law which had been won from Henry VIII. in 1542 against the practice. The gentry of the Pale and the Dublin burgesses protested in vain against the return of strangers for boroughs which they had never even seen: "the more words the more choler." Elizabeth's vast schemes of confiscation and breaking up of the old Irish society were met with hostility. Under pressure of the Deputy, therefore, a second session was held to pa.s.s a single bill, the "Repeal of Poyning's Act"; on the plea that grievous sores known to the high court in Ireland could not be reformed as not having been certified to the Queen. This bill was bitterly opposed: "so jealous were they that they would not in long time enter into the consideration thereof." The remonstrants did in fact force some concessions; that provisions made by the present Parliament for the common weal, the augmentation of the Queen's revenues, and the a.s.surance to her of lands and profits, which were certified under the Great Seal of Ireland, and returned to Ireland under the Great Seal of England, should first be publicly proclaimed in six cities, and only after these proclamations should pa.s.s into law, "Poyning's Act notwithstanding."

The way was now clear, and the next session brought the attainder of Shane O'Neill and the tremendous confiscation of Tyrone and other lands in Ulster. A beginning was made of Munster confiscations. The Deputy was to appoint English-speaking clergy to all ecclesiastical dignities in Munster. Other Acts ordered all Ireland to be reduced to shire land; and abolished all Irish and Anglo-Norman chieftaincies or "captainships"

except by special patent (thus depriving the chiefs of the benefit of their indentures), under penalty of death without benefit of clergy, as the law was drafted in England; the Parliament subst.i.tuted a fine and pa.s.sed the decree with great opposition, for "the matter misliked them more than the pain." The Queen herself sent letters ordering Parliament to pa.s.s a heavy impost which must ruin the Irish wine trade, in which matter "they showed themselves so unquiet that they were more like a bear-baiting of disordered persons than a Parliament of wise and grave men." Taught by experience, the Parliament now insisted on a law to limit the repeal of Poyning's Act, in which they explained their reasons for objecting to any repeal at any time. Before that Act, they said, when liberty was given to the governors to call Parliament at their pleasure, "Acts pa.s.sed as well to the dishonour of the Prince, as to the hindrance of their subjects, the remembrance whereof would indeed have stayed us from condescending to the repeal of the said statute," save for their persuasion that Sydney through his motion meant only the honour of the Queen _and_ the common benefit of the Realm (going back in these words to the first repeal of 1536); but they feared that the like liberty might be abused by other governors, and therefore enacted that none other should ever use the liberty of Sydney, and that no Bill should ever be certified into England for repealing or suspending of Poynings' Act unless it was first agreed on in a Session of Parliament in Ireland, by the greater number of the Lords and the greater number of the Common House, that is by both Houses carrying the Bill by a separate vote.

The Parliament of 1569, distinguished by a high order of public spirit and legal ability, was driven to its fatal close in a general war against those "that banish Ireland and mean conquest," a striking phrase of Anglo-Irish patriots.

A new "Repeal of Poynings' Act" was demanded of the Parliament in 1585.

The reason was again the same-for the more convenient pa.s.sing of Acts to deprive the people of Ireland of their land and their religion; Elizabeth mainly anxious about her property in land, and the deputy about religious uniformity. There was a Bill to extend to Ireland all the English laws against Popish recusants, and demand the Oath of Supremacy as a test of the fidelity of Parliament: an Act for the attainder of Baltinglas; another for the attainder of Desmond, and a hundred and sixty more "traitors," and for the confiscation of Munster; one to limit the landowners' old-established rights of conveyancing of land as "likely to tend to disinherit the Queen's Majesty." Such Acts could never be pa.s.sed under the formalities of Poynings' Law.

The Viceroy, however, had to reckon with two new problems. Representatives of the Irish race sat in the Parliament, Hugh O'Neill in the Lords, some fourteen Irishmen in the Commons. And the effect of the enactment made by the last Parliament was now seen in its enactment that "repeal" henceforth must be carried by a majority in each of the two Houses, voting separately. By fraudulently counting an absent vote Perrott declared the Bill carried by one in the Lords: the Commons threw it out by thirty-five.

He prorogued Parliament for three days, and when it met again brought in the Bill; again the Ireland Party in the Commons defeated the Englishmen who supported the Government; and thus overthrew, in Perrott's words, "the repeal of Poynings' Act that should have set them at liberty to treat of that and all other things necessary for the State." The opponents of suspension, he said, desired only to make void the whole Parliament because they could abide no reformation in matters of religion or State; and would bring the new chiefs, O'Reillys, Maguires, and the rest, into jealousy of the Parliament. The landowners and gentry, "the stirrers of Parliament and the lawyers," on their side declared they feared to give despotic power to the Viceroy and distrusted his purpose, "some of the Irishmen either mistaking or conceiving it was framed to another intent than it did pretend, whereby they drew on them the Deputy's disfavour, and displeasure on him from the Queen."

The defeat of "repeal" showed the Houses their strength. The Lords dashed new Acts proposed against treason and the trial of accessories-statutes namely, said Perrott, for the safety of the Queen. The Commons wrecked the Bill for Desmond's attainder, striking out eight score names of "men of living" and leaving only eight. They refused, moreover, to escheat lands protected by law, and to tax land in a manner tyrannous and contrary to Irish custom. The "disturbers of Parliament" were met by five adjournments in eleven months; but the devices by which these sticklers for the law were finally subdued is too long to tell here. Parliament met at last in April, 1586, to register the royal will. The Lords read and pa.s.sed the four Acts for the attainder of rebels in Munster. The Commons still resisted for a week. The official intrigue to compel their submission is confused by the bitter wrangle of the Deputy and the Treasurer for the honour of the plot. Finally the Desmond confiscations were "wrought out"

of the Parliament with so great difficulty, said Spenser, "that were it to be pa.s.sed again I dare undertake it would never be compa.s.sed"; and the Deputy gave the royal a.s.sent to the Bill by which over half a million acres of Desmond land were forfeited by Act of Parliament to the Crown, as the O'Neill land had been forfeited nearly twenty years before. After which Parliament was dissolved, with an oration of Justice Walshe, the Speaker, who, in "the universal comfort of all estates," asked the Commons "what is there more of earthly felicity that can be required," reminded them that the escheated lands "accepted by the Queen of us" were of far less value than the smallest portion of Her Majesty's charges for their benefit, and mentioned how they had "willingly consented to attaint and stain in blood Her Majesty's disloyal subjects and unbar the succession of their traitorous lines, to the end that the memory of their names may be quite extinguished."

Thus after a hundred years the Parliament won its first success in refusing the repeal of Poyning's Act. Mr. Litton Falkiner calls us to wonder at the "curious circ.u.mstance" that "successive Parliaments of the sixteenth century declined on patriotic grounds to abrogate the very statute the repeal of which was to become the greatest triumph of Irish patriotism in the eighteenth century," and insinuates that we may here see displayed the captious and capricious spirit that infects the "predestinate" peoples of Ireland. Out of the old habit of contempt it has being boldly suggested by some that the independence of Parliament, by others that the Catholic religion, were in no way valued by Irishmen until they made the discovery that these could be used to annoy and disconcert England. Such unworthy suspicions must disappear as we watch the grave conflict of men threatened with ruin, imprisonment, death, in their struggle to defend the first rights of law, property, and religion.

It was a slow battle, with rare and scanty triumphs for defenders of the const.i.tution. Long silence followed the first victory of the Parliament in refusing the repeal of Poyning's Act: it was not summoned again for twenty-six years. Its next meeting was amid dark threatenings. The old sessions in Dublin had been honourably held in "the house called Christ's Church situate in the high place of the same, like as St. Paul's in London"; Parliament was now ordered to hold its debates in the Castle, surrounded by extra troops brought to overawe an a.s.sembly which was robbed of even the appearance of free deliberations. When they objected to being placed over the Castle stores of powder (in a room which had been, in fact, lately wrecked by an accidental explosion of gunpowder) and made a reference to Guy Fawkes, their objections were set aside with a scornful taunt "of what religion they were that had hatched such c.o.c.katrice's eggs." From that time began a new and even more ominous story than before.

A fatal doom in fact hung over the two Houses in Dublin. The Irish Parliament, which at this time had no relation whatever with the English Parliament, depended directly and solely on the King. The royal policy of Tudors and Stuarts, in their different ways, was to fortify their personal authority over Ireland and its Parliament, and by this means to strengthen the despotic and military power of the Crown; and make Ireland, without or against its will, a peril to the liberties of England. The natural result was to bring the Irish Parliament under the angry suspicion of the English Parliament and people, and create a forced and disastrous hostility. Not only was the const.i.tutional party in Ireland cut off from the natural support of their brethren who were fighting the battle of liberty in England, and separated from its due share in the general struggle for liberty; but the royal policy finally drove the English Parliament to determine that all independent action of the Irish Parliament should be entirely suppressed, and thus brought about a const.i.tutional revolution which for the first time subjected the Irish Parliament to the absolute control, not of the King, but of the English Parliament itself. From this time, it is evident, Poynings' Act and its repeal took a new significance.

The Parliament which "England gave to Ireland," that gift "of British extraction," was, as we know, very far indeed from the Parliament which the English won for themselves. The English Parliament had behind it in effect the people of England. The Irish Parliament was by the Castle policy separated from the people of Ireland, who were utterly excluded, or if cautiously admitted were selected in small and discreet numbers from among those who had cut themselves off from their own people and pledged themselves to the Government. It was sedulously weakened within by perpetual infusion among its high officials, its peers, its prelates, and its members from boroughs and shires, of strangers born across the sea-men whose special mission was to "banish Ireland" and reduce all to subservience to the interests of another country. Its Statutes were treated with negligent contempt: "The same Statutes, for lack they be not in print, be unknown to the most part of your subjects here ... these of the Irishrie which newly have submitted themselves be in great doubt of such uncertain and unknown laws," the Deputy reported. In 1569 it was proposed, apparently without any reference to Parliament, to print such of the Statutes "_as it was desirable for our subjects to take note of_"; in 1571 Recorder Stanihurst carried to London the roll of 170 statutes which were _thought meet_ to be printed by the new English settler, Carew, (perhaps the most hated of all by the Parliament itself) and a few officials-a selection which was in London again corrected by Burghley, and the printing still delayed.

That a Parliament hampered, mutilated, restricted, demoralised, should have made such a stand for the country's interests, testifies to the vigour of const.i.tutional and national life in Ireland. Society indeed is so closely bound together in any country that the most imperfect and exclusive body of its inhabitants must feel to some degree the needs and aspirations of the whole. Mr. A. M. Sullivan, in the last Home Rule controversy, rightly argued that it was not what the Parliament was that chiefly mattered, but where it was: "Anything will do, if it is only in Ireland," he said, "the Protestant Synod would do." The same need for some representative life of a people in their own land was felt by the Great Earl of Kildare over four hundred years ago. "You hear of our case as in a dream," he cried to the London councillors, "and feel not the smart that vexeth us."

The close of the old Irish polity, the fate of the Irish Parliaments, have a deeper lesson to teach than the supposed faults of the Irish temper, Iberian, Celtic, or Norman. The story of the old Gaelic State, and of the later Anglo-Irish Commonwealth, both alike reveal a power of patriotism, a pa.s.sion of human aspiration, which cannot find its final satisfaction in material gifts; and which is ill understood by those who deny to Ireland fair fame, dignity, and a lofty patriotism, and offer in their place oblivion, with a promise for the future of Tariff Reform and its financial consequences. The series of failures that have through seven centuries followed the English dealing with Ireland have their inexorable lesson:

"That nothing has a natural right to last But equity and reason; that all else Meets foes irreconcilable, and at best Lives only by variety of disease."

IX.-Ireland As A Dependency. BY PROFESSOR A. F. POLLARD