UC-NRLF $B 757 bflM ( I \'\>'<^ % < ), A \'>''( .•• ; REESE LIBRARY OF THK UNIVERSITY .OF CALIFORNIA. Received ^^-^^^"^''^''-^'2-^ ;i8^^ </^ Accessions No. .^/C^'S Shelf No. s -8s> >^A I *£. ^^,.. , -*•..•:••: ,/;%.-.• ^--ITNr- f *.J^' l^''^' THE GOVEilENT OF IREUi Past, Present, and Prospective. In Four Parts, Author of ^''Memorials of Lord F. Cavendish,'''' '■'■ Gamhetta : a Monograph,'''' Sfc. WITH SHORT INTRODUCTIONS TO THE VARIOUS PARTS BY ALFRED ILLINGWORTH, Esq., M.P. for West Bradford; THOMAS WAYMAN, Esq., M.P. for Elland; JOHN BARRAN, Esq., M.P. for Otley; and Right Hon. G. J. SHAW-LEFEYRE, M.P. for Central Bradford. AND AN APPENDIX ON THE -PRESENT LAND WAR IN IRELAND," BY r. ELLIS, late Vicar of Wilsden. V^^ Of THE '^ UNIVERSITY §^\f^^^^VY\OQ One Shilling. In Cloth, Two Shillings and Sixpence. #i?aJ»f0r5>: Thomas Brear & Co., Limited. gonbott : SiMPKiN, Marshall & Co. ^/^f-^ In publishing my Lectures, I yield to the the pressure of friends who, having listened to the arguments and facts advanced, have wished to obtain them in a permanent form for purposes of reference. I can only hope that they may afford some help to those who desire to advance the national cause of Ireland in the English constituencies. I am much indebted to the authors whose works are named in the list of authorities recorded by me, and to gentlemen who have freely placed at my disposal books and Parliamentary documents, which have aided me in my work. I am glad also to acknowledge the kindness and courtesy of The Lord Mayor of Dublin (Mr. T. D. Sullivan, M.P.); Mr. William O'Brien, M.P, ; Mr. T. Harrington, M.P.; and other National Leaders; for their readiness to facilitate my enquiries in Ireland. Neither must I omit to note the generous willingness of Ministers of Religion, and other gentlemen in Ulster, to speed me in my study of the questions at issue. Above all, I am under obligation to the promoters of the Bradford Free Library and Mechanics' Institute, for without these Institutions I could not have obtained all the books I have read in the preparation of these Lectures. s. Lloyd. I, SUMMERSEAT PlACE, Bradford. List of Authorities. ^ Arnold's (Matthew) Essays. Blackie's — What does History teach ? (^ Blackwood's Magazine. u Burke's Published Works. IT Butt's — Land Tenure. Buxton — Mr. Gladstone's Irish Bills. K Campbell's — Lives of the Chancellors. Clancy Q. J.) — A Year of Unionist Coercion. Commission Reports. D'Alton's — History of County Dublin. Deane's History of Ireland. Dicey's — England's case against Home Rule. Dufferin's Ireland and Irish Emigration and Tenure of Land, Duffy's Gavan — Bird's-eye View of Irish History. Duffy's — Four years of Irish History. i^Froude's English in Ireland. i^Froude's History of England. •-Godkin's Land War. ^ Green's History of the English People. Handbook to Home Rule. •- Hansard's Debates. Healy's — A Word for Ireland. Healy's — The Irish Problem and how to solve it. Healy's — Why is there a Land Question ? •^ Hume's History of England. Kinnear's— Tracts on Ireland. Lawless — rlreland : Story of the Nations. KLecky's England in the Eighteenth Century. ^ Lecky's Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland. Leland's History of Ireland. McCarthy's (J. H.) Outline of Irish History. McGeoghegan — History of Ireland. McNeill's — The Irish Parliament ; English Interference with Irish Industries. Mitchell (John)— History of Ireland. Mullhall's— Fifty years of Progress. National League Pamphlets. Newspaper Reports. O'Connor's— The Parnell Movement. O'Rourke's — History of Irish Famine. Prendergast's Cromwellian Settlement. Parliamentary Reports. Past and Present Policy in Ireland. Robbin's Practical Politics. Sadler's Ireland's Evils and their Remedies. Scruton's Lecture. Shaw-Lefevre's — Peel and O'Connell. Shaw-Lefevre's — Incidents of Coercion. Smith's (Goldwin), Lectures— Irish History and Irish Character. Speeches of .bright, Butt, -^obden, Fawcett, K^ladstone, Grattan, Flood. Spenser's View of the State of Ireland. Sullivan's — New Ireland.' Swift's Works. Transactions of Relief Committee of Friends. Watson's Review of Irish History. Wylie's — Which Sovereign : Queen Victoria or the Pope ? Young's Tour in Ireland. All possible light and guidance are needed in the great Irish controversy which is now absorbing public attention. The opinions and views of those who have hearts to feel, and have studied the problems to be solved, and have also taken the trouble to visit Ireland to mix among her people, and to get at their feelings and experiences, are at this moment of special value. In the book the author has now presented to the public, the fads and refledions of an earnest and sincere friend to human progress are given in warm and vigourous language. I wish for this effort a wide circulation, and trust it will insure in the minds of all inquirers a true and just decision. Alfred Illingworth Daisy Bank, 22nd November, 1887. IRELAND BEFORE THE ACT OF UNION, AND UNDER THE GOVERNMENT OF AN IRISH PARLIAMENT. For many years the government of Ireland has been regarded as England's greatest difficulty. The Colonies and Dependencies have been either pacified or subdued, but Ireland has continued to be restless, dissatisfied, and to a great extent rebellious. And yet many of the greatest statesmen of the age have spent their powers in trying to establish peace and order in Ireland, and to reconcile her to the legislative union with Great Britain. On the rock of Irish affairs many popular English Governments have been wrecked ; and many progressive measures urgently needed by the English and Scottish peoples have been prevented by it from passing into law. During late years honest attempts have been made to pacify the Irish people, and to rule Ireland in harmony with the enlightened methods and spirit of nineteenth century civilization. Some of these attempts have been deliber- ately frustrated, and others have been weakened in their passage through Parliament by partisans and men who have held briefs in the interest of the privileged classes in Ireland and England ; while some measures have signally failed to accomplish the purpose for which they were conceived. That there has been much unacquaintance with the condition and needs of Ireland by those who have been legislating for her, must be clear even to the cursory reader of her history, and that there has been some fatal principle operating in all the legislation will be patent as we proceed with our study of the question. Yet for more than fifty years various concessions have marked the policy of England towards Ireland, and when these concessions, often spoken of as favours, have failed to satisfy the demands of the people of Ireland, and when discontent has taken the form of disloyalty to the English Government, and to the laws formulated at Westminster, then coercion has been tried and the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and the establishment of martial law have smothered, but have not extinguished the flames of disaffection. Changes of Policy. The alternations of policy between conciliation and coercion have done much to produce the present abject and destitute condition of Ireland, and to bring about the diminution of her resources, the lessening of her popula- tion, the stagnation of her trade, and the terrible veiled war raging in her midst. Coercion, if resolutely persisted in, would have settled the question of Irish submission to English government, by the expatriation or else extermin- ation of the people of Ireland. But it would have been a brutal and inhuman settlement. It would have been simply the adoption of the old-world methods of govern- ment, and the assertion that Christianity had not exalted the spirit and methods and intelligence of modern nations to any higher level than that reached by the Israelites in their dealings with the people of Canaan. Conciliation* if it had been sincerely and earnestly continued, would, I am convinced, have appealed to the nobler side of the Irish people, and the generous, responsive nature of the Celt wonld have burst into a white heat of glowing gratitude and sparkling patriotism. But men are asking — ** Have we not during the last twenty years been attempting to treat the Irish people as equals and brothers, and have they not been sullen and discontented, repaying earnest sympathy with ingratitude, and manifesting dissatisfaction with all the generous attempts that have been made ? " I reply that we have not treated them as equals, even while trying to remedy many of their grievances. We have not, as Englishmen, given them the same ungrudging trust and affection that we have extended to our neighbours in Scotland and Wales. We have treated them as aliens, or as people who knew not their own needs, and who could not be trusted with the remedies they demanded, lest with the use of the remedy there should come a national strength that would be injurious to ourselves. Further, a just restitution ought not to be regarded as a concession, and we ought not to expect effusive gratitude from a people to whom we are rendering a tardy and incomplete justice. A complete reparation for centuries of wrong-doing will alone entitle us to the confidence and respect of the Irish race; and while we are withholding from them some of their rights, we cannot expect them to abound either with gratitude to the English for the small benefits bestowed, or with respect for the character of the national legislature that has so long overshadowed and darkened the life of the rish nation. To understand whether we are withholding 8 anything to which the Irish are entitled, it is necessary for us to review their history, for in this way alone can we obtain a just view of their present national character and condition. Why rake up past wrongs ? It has been asked ** what has a list of ancient wrongs to do with the modern aspects of the question ?" This — that the present is the outcome of the past, and that therefore, in the settlement of the present, the influence of the past cannot be ignored. Politicians cannot be allowed to cut oif and cast into oblivion a large portion of history, in order that they may have an easy mind and a free hand in dealing with this question. The long chain of events cannot be separated just where men choose to separate it. All the yesterdays of the world are gathered into the to-day, and for a sound conclusion on Irish affairs it is necessary that we shall have a clear knowledge of the fountain-head of social discontent and national unrest, The selfish policy of English Governments ; the misrule and robbery of English lords and aristocrats, and the spoliations of English monarchs must not be concealed, while a nation is denounced and crushed by those who are inheriting the fruits of crime, and theft, and inhumanity. Mr. John Bright has asked why the ancient history of Ireland should be referred to. It is so long since, if not so far away, that it may be untrue — why rake up these wrongs ? Let us not say a word of disrespect of one who has done so much for the people of Ireland and England, and if he does not agree with the policy of the Liberal, let us express sorrow and regret, not resentment and malice. But his great past services do not entitle him to lecture the Liberal Party as though they were schoolboys or dolts, and in referring to the past I find that I am following the sage example of Mr. Bright, for in nearly all his great public addresses, a reference to past misdeeds, and a warning against the lineal successors of ancient oppressors form a prominent part. But we may place by the side of Mr. Bright' s protest, the opinion of men who declare that the present hostility of Irishmen to the English Government can only be properly understood by noting their past disabilities and miseries. Take Mr. Chaplin as a representative of high Toryism. In a speech delivered in the House of Commons, he states : — **The truth is that the English Parliament and the English people are mainly responsible for those conditions of the country, which have driven the people to the land, and the land alone, for their support. It was not always so ; there were other industries in Ireland in former days, which flourished and flourished to a considerable extent, until they first aroused, and were afterwards suppressed by the selfish fears and commercial jealousy of England — England who was alarmed at a rivalry and competition that she dreaded at the hands and from the resources of the Irish people." * * "I am convinced that it is in the history of those cruel laws that lies the secret of that fatal competition for the land in which — and it may well be a just retribution upon us — the source of all the troubles and all the difficulties that you have to deal with, will be found."* Mr. Chaplin is referring to ancient history, and he declares that in his opinion, the troubles of Ireland spring from the unsatisfactory condition of the Irish land system, and that this system has been necessitated " mainly" by the " English Parliament and the English people." * Hansard, 261 Third Series, 831, 832. 851. Quoted by Professor Swft McNeill — "English Interference with Irish Industries:" Sir Chas. Russell, Attorney-General in Mr. Gladstone's Government may be regarded as qualified to speak in the name of Liberalism on this point, and as he is himself an Irishman his words should have the greater weight. He says, ''To understand the Irish land question of to-day it is necessary to look back. I have no desire to recklessly rake up bye-gones. I wish to heaven the Irish people could forget the past. To them it is in the main a melan- choly retrospect. But England ought not to forget the past, until at least a great act of reparation has been done. Even among men of some education in England remarkable ignorance of the evil wrought in past times by England towards Ireland prevails. There is indeed a vague general expression that in very remote times England when engaged in the endeavour to conquer Ireland was guilty of cruelties, as most conquering nations are, but that those things have done but very little harm ; that their effects have ceased to tell, and that the only purpose served by keeping alive their memory is to irritate the temper of the Irish people and prompt them to look back rather than to look forward. Emphatically I say this is not so. The effects have not ceased. It is not too much to say that Ireland and Irishmen of to-day are such as English Government has made them."f The late Mr. Henry Fawcett, Postmaster General, was a true friend of the English workman and was in the advanced band of the Radicals who have led the vanguard of the people's progress, and he may be looked upon as an exponent of Radicalism on this question. In a speech at Shoreditch in 1881 he said " If people felt impatient with the Irish, they should remember that the Irish were to a great extent what the English had made them. If there + Hansard 261, Third Series 853. Quoted by Swift McNeill. were some Irishmen now displaying bitter hostility to England, it should be remembered that for a long time Ireland had been treated as if she had been a hostile or foreign country. A mass of vexatious restrictions were imposed on her industry, and it was thought that if any branch of Irish trade interfered with English profits, that branch of Irish trade was immediately to be discouraged." Mr. GoLDWiN Smith may be taken as the representa- tive of those Dissentient Liberals with whom Mr. Bright is numbered, and who have taken upon themselves the name of Unionists, and in his published writings he says of Irish history: "It is the history of a half-subdued dependency. Its annals are the weary annals of aggres- sion on the one side, and of rebellion on the other ; of aggression sometimes more, sometimes less cruel and systematic; of rebellion sometimes more, sometimes less violent and extensive, but of aggression and of rebellion without end. Few are the points, few are the characters of moral interest in such a story * * yet a knowledge of these events is of the highest practical importance to those who may be called upon to deal as rulers or land- lords with the Irish people." And again, Mr. G. Smith says : *• Statesmen are bound to be well acquainted with the historical sources of the evil with which they have to deal, especially when those evils are of such a nature as at the first aspect to imply the depravity of a nation " Lord DuFFERiN — an Irishman — a Peer, and one of the ablest rulers and administrators in the nation says : ** Unless the past is first dealt with, it will be impossible to come to a just settlement with regard to the future." So much then for the objection that ancient history has no place in the consideration of the Irish questions. 12 The Struggle Perpetual. That there has been in England the great un- acquaintance with Irish history to which reference has been made must be admitted on all sides, and this has been the main reason why people have asked the questions — ** Why is Ireland not satisfied and con- tented when so much time is spent in considering her grievances? why are agrarian crimes and moon- light raids not extinct ? and why is there in that country a .deep - rooted opposition to the present system of government ? " It is the old struggle repeating itself. The Welsh legend says that the buried dragons that represented England and Wales were asleep, but that whenever they woke they renewed their struggle and continued it until weariness and weakness made them sleep again. So it has been in Ireland. An awakening national life has made the people claim their freedom, and a recognition of their right and ability to govern themselves. This they have struggled for with English Governments until coercion has stifled their cries, buried their hopes, and robbed them of their power to combine in the light of day, but as soon as the iron grip has been taken from their throat, and weariness has been thrown off, they have renewed the conflict. That they have ever been dissatisfied is clear, and that they have regarded the legislative union with Great Britain as a sham of true union, and as the cause of their bitterest miseries is proven by the utterances of their patriots. This has been recognised by English politicians. In 1849, Mr. Bright acknowledged it by saying " We have had a union with Ulster, but there has been no union with the whole people of Ireland." 13 Colonisation of Ireland. Ireland is supposed to have been colonised from the east — the cradle of the race — but much of her early history can only be derived from legends and traditions, many of which have but little authority to support them. Fourteen centuries before the birth of Jesus Christ the few aboriginal inhabitants, after a severe conflict are said to have been overcome by Celts from Gaul or Spain, under the leadership of a chief called Miletus. If tradition may in this case be relied upon, this chieftain was a man of mature judgment, for instead of trying ^ policy of exter- mination, he attempted to secure a fusion of the ancient race with his own followers that he might thereby build up a united and strong nationality. The Ancient System of Government. The Clan system that flourished so long in Scotland was established throughout the country, and between the heads of the Septs or Clans, and the various members of them, the utmost loyalty and confidence existed. The land was not regarded as the property of any individual, but was held as a solemn posses- sion by the tribe, in the interests of each member of it. All, even the sick and frail, had an equal right to the soil, and even the portion set apart for the cattle of the chief, was only held for life by him, and was transferred at death, not to his children but to the new leader appointed to that position by the tribe. This was recog- nised until the reign of James L, when it was declared obsolete by the arbitrary act of the King and his advisers who regarded it as only a " scrambling possession." Then private property in Irish land received the recog- nition of English law, but Mr. Goldwin Smith has asked " has property in land according to the English system, presented itself to the Irish peasant, in the form of security or independence ? '^' "^ Has it not rather presented itself to him in the form of insecurity, degreda- tion and despair." Primogeniture was unknown among the Clans, and the law or custom — called gavelkind— provided for the equal distribution of a man's property among his sons. The chieftianship was not hereditary, for the law of Tanistry provided for the selection of the ablest relative of the chief, and his appointment during the life of the chief to the reversion of the office at death. The oldest surviving member of a family was often appointed, but when he betrayed some weakness of constitution or of character, the symbol of power was entrusted to abler or worthier hands. The Judge who adjudicated in any disputes was called a Brehon, and the laws that prevailed in Ireland were called the Brehon Laws. Mr. Deane says: *' The only property that was exclusively appropriated was the cattle. Every man was rich and powerful according to the number of his beasts." And again, he says: **The idea of paying rent was foreign to this race of freeholders. Their chief may indeed have required excessive help from them, may even have used the measure of unjust and forcible expul- sion on occasion, but there was no thought of eviction for rent. To serve their chief was to them a matter of natural, personal devotion ; he, in turn, would defend them. * Spend me, and defend me,' was their maxim. Even their very life would they spend with satisfaction and pride for one whom they loved, often beyond their own flesh and blood." 15 The Ancient Land System. It is important that we should understand the original land system of Ireland, even though it may not be possible after the changes and developments of life to revert to the original methods and ideas. But a knowledge of the subject will enable us the better to understand the struggles that have ensued since the English monarch and his courtiers swept away the ancient laws and usages. It is all the more necessary that we shall have correct ideas on this question, inasmuch as agriculture is almost the only industry in Ireland, and the land question is still one of the great unsettled problems of the day. Mr. Gladstone once said that the old and standing evil of Ireland was "land hunger," which he declared " must not be described as if it were merely an infirmity of the people for it, and really means land scarcity." But the land scarcity is in itself the result of the spoliation and confiscation of English Governments and English rulers. The land hunger of the people is caused by their necessities, and by the limitations intro- duced by privileged rulers acting in the interests of their class, and compelling the people to turn to the land for subsistence ; but what can be said for the land greediness of rich men, whose wealth enables them to throw round the land fetters which prevent the free and full cultivation of the soil, and make it the choice preserve, not of human beings, but of game. This is caused by selfishness and inhumanity, and a regard for personal pleasures above the interests of the poor and struggling tillers of the soil. Mr. Bright once said : " that in discussing the Irish question one fact must always be kept in mind, that is, that apart from the land of Ireland, there are few if any means of subsistence for the population, and consequently there has i6 always been for its possession an exceptional and unnatural demand."* And yet this land has been in many cases kept out of cultivation, and where it has been cultivated by the tenant, and improved, the owner of the land has seized and appropriated to himself the improvements, leaving the tenant doubly burdened in consequence of his industry. Mr. Bright, in the above quotation, uses the word " un- natural." It is unnatural for people as a whole to demand land where there are other industries, but it is natural for men and women to desire to live, and when their very life depends upon their obtaining soil to cultivate, it cannot be unnatural for them to ask that it shall be so cheapened as to enable the workers on it to obtain a livelihood ; and it cannot be unnatural for those whose fathers have been despoiled of the soil, to ask the children of the despoilers to restore it to the children of the despoiled, under such conditions that the benefits may be secured to the nation at large. What the Irish have been deprived of. The Irish nation has been despoiled of Free Govern- ment^ the Possession of the Land, and of Equal Religious Rights. The last-named was restored to them by the Act of Catholic Emancipation and the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, but the fact remains that for centuries the conscience of the people was coerced and stultified, and they were treated as criminals because they refused to allow their religious convictions to be shaped by State decrees. But Free Government and the Land have been and still are withheld from them, and although endeavours have been made in late years to lessen the iniquity of the land system, yet the infamous evictions which still blacken and curse Irish life, and the enforcement of rigid land ' * Hansard. Quot«d by Swift McNeill. ~ penalties by the selfish hand of a landlordism that in many cases has sold its soul to the usurers of Palestine and England for wealth that has been frittered, show the tyrannous character of the modern system. The whole history of Ireland proves, that a union secured by bribery and fraud, and a landlordism established by force of arms and still bolstered up by soldiers and mounted police, with all the armed might of England at their back, have taken the place of tribal rights and a government in harmony with national desires. Ireland Christianized. In the fifth century Ireland was missioned in the interests of Christianity by a Celt from Gaul or else Wales, a man whose name was Patricius, or as he is more fre- quently called Patrick. In a short time the whole Island is said to have been won for the Christian faith by the influence of this wonderful and holy man. Prayer and devoted service were the weapons he used, and the rough chieftains caught the contagion of his simple earnestness and were baptised as Christians. Armed with the same weapons, his converts went forth to mission the Continent of Europe, and to-day memorials of their toil and success remain in many lands. History declares that Ireland then became the foster-nurse of science, civilization, and religion, and that at the Irish schools students from Britain and Gaul {i.e., France) were regularly taught. The island then won for itself the name of insula sanctorum, and it was spoken of by potentates and scholars as the "sacred isle" and as the "island of saints." Preachers from Ireland found their way to the Court of Charle- magne, to the Camp of Alfred the Great, and to the rude villages of the Teutons ; and in Scandinavia, i8, they contended with the priests of Odin for the souls of the wild warriors who fought and died under the banners of the raven. Rosaries, chalices, crosiers, Celtic crowns and harps, and illustrated Scriptures bear witness to the advanced culture of the people. Mr. GoLDWiN Smith shows that the Celtic nature has always been regarded as a devotional one.* Reverence for religious authority is deeply ingrained in the Celtic nations. The warm and glowing imagination readily soared upwards towards fellowship with the ideal spiritual life of the Deity. The Irish were therefore likely to be easily influenced by the fervid preaching of Patrick, and their enthusiasm blossomed into flowers of holy and heroic deeds. GuizoT, in his history of France, says, '* Of all the countries of the West, Ireland was for a long time that in which alone learning was supported and thrown amid the general overthrow of Europe." MoNTALEMBERT declared that " Of all the nations the Anglo-Saxons derived most profit from the Irish Schools — Alfred the Great having received his education at an Irish University." Whether the latter statement is true or not may be questioned, but it is certain that Alfred had a profound admiration for Irish scholarship, and that when he establised his University at Oxford he appointed one of the most famous Irish scholars — Johannes Scotus Erigena — to preside over it. He also sanctioned the dedication to himself of the treatise against Transubstan- tiation, which was written by this renowned man. When Europe was sunk in barbarism, and the darkness of a loathsome and cruel idolatrous system brooded over the nations, the Irish went with their lamps to dispel the * See "Irish History and Irish Character." 19 gloom and to give to the nations higher and holier con- ceptions of God and Truth and Righteousness. It was from an Irish School that Virgilius went, before the time of Copernicus, to teach the "true system of the heavens" and to make the heads of Christendom rise in startled appre- hension at his bold speculations ; and Irish scholarship has its mementoes in lands far distant, where the bones of heroic missionaries have been laid in the soil by the hands of the men who received as a sacred trust the truths taught by the departed saints. Invasions of Ireland. Then came the fierce Saxon pirates and the Danes shouting with fervour their war songs, and in their mad lust of conquest slaying priests and people. Monastries, schools, and churches were burnt, many of the priests and monks dying at the altar or in the cell. The Normans followed in the track of their fierce progenitors, and the soil of Ireland was deluged time after time with blood. Yet she maintained her independence, and great chiefs rose one after the other to throw off" the yoke of foreign invasion. The Danes with all their fierce courage were only able to obtain small tracts of land and towns on the coasts, while the rest of the country continued under Brehon Laws and Irish chieftainship. But Ireland, in the struggle, lost her prosperity and her distinctive character for learning, piety, and culture, and an age of eff'eminate superstition intervened for a time. But even this supersti- tion, which identified the miraculous with so many of the acts of departed saints, was not the degrading, sensual ignorance that associated itself with religion in many other professedly Christian lands. The Irish Church still main- tained its freedom, and to a great extent its simple fervour. 20 The English Invasion. Previous to the English invasion, Ireland was divided into five provinces, each of which had its separate ruler, while one of them was called the Ard-righ or Chief Ring. Frequent disputes occurred between these rulers, all of them being more or less ambitious to attain the highest honour, just as in the Saxon Heptarchy in England. The rivalship of the chiefs led to numerous conflicts. The disputes of the Irish princes first gave occasion to the English warriors to visit Ireland. The King of Leinster — Dermot McMurrough — abducted the wife of O'Rouarch, one of the chiefs in Eastern Connaught, and the injured husband sought redress from the King of Connaught — Roderick — who was also Ard-righ. Roderick compelled Dermot to restore the woman to her legitimate partner, and deposed him from the position in which he had so fully disgraced himself. Dermot fled to the court of Henry II., King of England, and asked for aid in his proposed attempt to regain his throne, undertaking to do homage to the King if his dominions were restored. Henry had long desired to conquer Ireland, as had all his Norman ancestors. Efforts had been previously made but they had been unsuccessful, and Ireland was still possessed and governed by the Irish. Henry had prepared fourteen years before for any opportunity that might present itself, which would enable him to invade Ireland. Believing in the power and authority of the Church of Rome, he had sought and obtained from Pope Hadrian II. a papal *' bull," or document authorising him to take possession of the Island. The Pope at that time was supposed to have the right of lordship over all islands, and he exercised this right in the document by which he transferred the governorship of the island from the five 2t princes, and their chieftains to Henry II. But who wa^ Pope Hadrian II. ? An Englishman, who had climbed to the highest position in the Romish Church, and who doubtless had a special love for his native land, and a special hatred of the Irish Church, which had refused to bow its neck to the yoke of Rome. This Pope had originally been called Nicholas Breakspeare, and he is the only Englishmen who has ever attained to the dignity of a Pope, although others, notably Cardinal Wolsey, have been only a little way removed from it. At the time when King Henry II. obtained the Pope's consent to invade Ireland, there was existing a trade in slaves, that was fostered by the Danes who lived in the towns on the coast. This slave trade had been carried on for years, and had been partially suppressed by William the Conqueror and Bishop Wulfstan. But in the subsequent reign it had revived, and Henry wrote to the Pope pointing out this fact and stating that his intention was not only to suppress this trade, but also *' to enlarge the bounds of the Church, to restrain the progress of vices, to correct the manners of the people, to plant virtue among them, and to increase the Christian religion." He promised that as soon as his authority was paramount, he would ** subject the people to laws, extirpate vicious customs, respect the rights of native churches, and enforce the payment of Peter's pence, if the Pope would sanction the undertaking." But for fourteen years Henry had been unable to carry out this project, and now that Dermot came to him, he saw the golden opportunity for which he had been waiting. A band of knights under Robert Fitzstephen, son of the Constable of Cardigan, went to Ireland with Dermot. They were soon followed by Pilchard of Clare — commonly called Strongbow — Earl of Pembroke, and 11 when Dermot died a year after his return, Strongbow, who had married Eva — Dermot's daughter — claimed the throne of Leinster, and as Dublin had already been captured by surprise, he set up his authority there. Following the example of the Norman Conqueror in England, Strongbow divided large portions of the land that belonged to the Celts, among the chiefs and knights who had aided him. As soon as this was done, he returned to England to appease the jealousy of the King and to do homage to him for the newly acquired power and posses- sions. Henry II. now claimed to be acknowledged as Suzerain or lord, not only over Strongbow but over his chiefs and knights, as well as over the Irish who had not yet succumbed to the power of Strongbow. His claim over Strongbow and his knights was a just one according to the feudal laws in vogue in England, but not according to the Brehon laws that the Irish chiefs alone recognised ; and though Strongbow acknowledged the authority of Henry, the Irish leaders, with the King of Connaught at their head, did not acknowledge it. The country was torn by contending forces. Wherever Strongbow's power was dominant, the Suzerainty of Henry was admitted, but out- side the pale, ?>., the English part, the people clung to their ancient princes and their original rights. The King returned with Strongbow to Ireland, and would probably have succeeded in stamping the seal of his power over the whole of the island, had it not been for the turbulent conduct of the Barons, who on the murder of Archbishop Thomas a Becket, engaged in petty conflicts at home. The visit of the king, therefore, served but little purpose, and the king's youngest son, John, by his rude insults in plucking the beards of the Irish chief- tains, alienated many who would otherwise have given 23 their allegiance to the royalty of England. Sir John Davies, who was Attorney -General in the reign of James I., says : — " He (Henry H.) departed out of Ireland without striking a blow, or building one castle, or planting one garrison among the Irish ; neither left he behind him one true subject more than those he found there at his first coming over, which were only the English adventurers." But the king in his visit showed his feudal lords that he intended to demand the services from them to which he was entitled, and they were compelled to promise armed warriors to support him in his wars, and De Lacy had to give to the king " the service of fifty men." The Transactions of the Pope and King. Ireland was brought first under the lordship of the English king by the Pope of Rome, and then her church was brought under the dominion of the Church of Rome by King Henry II. This was fair. Both parties profited by the transaction, and the only sufi"erers were the Irish people, whose consent had never been sought or obtained. Previously, with the exception of the Christianised Danish Churches on the coast, the Irish, like the Welsh, had refused to bow down before the spiritual headship of the Roman Pontiff. Ireland had her own native churches that were independent of the Papal power. The Irish Church was handed over to the Papacy by the arbitrary act of Henry II., and Nemesis has followed in the track of the grave injustice. Archbishop Usher has shown that a religion not very different from the Protestant Faith prevailed in Ireland before the invasion of the English, and that it was the assumption of the Pope to the lordship of the isles that 24 gave Henry a shadowy claim to his suzerainty in Ireland, and that in return he laid the Irish Church at the feet of the Papal power. For centuries the only title by which the English monarch asserted his right to rule Ireland was the " bull " of Pope Hadrian. During the subsequent centuries the authority of the English was extended, or as some doughty Irish chief arose was contracted, and civil war with all its dread ex- cesses raged from year to year. Invaders and invaded were divided among themselves, and neither party seemed of sufficient strength to strike a decisive blow. Mr. Green says — " Had the Irish driven their invaders into the sea, or the English succeeded in the complete conquest of Ireland, the misery of its after history might have been avoided. A struggle such as that of Scotland under Bruce might have produced a spirit of patriotism and national union which would have formed a people out of the mass of warring clans. A conquest such as that of England by the Normans, would have spread at any rate the law, the order, the peace, and civilization of the con- quering country over the length and breadth of the conquered. Unhappy Ireland, while powerless to affect its deliverance, was strong enough to hold its assailants at bay. The country was broken into two halves whose conflict has never ceased."^* Theft of Land. The English conquerors made desperate attempts to secure land for themselves, and instead of endeavouring to build up a united nationality, their policy was to exter- minate the original holders of the soil. Civilization had been spreading for 30 centuries, and had been leavened * " Short History of the Enghsh People.'' 25 and directed by magnates of the Christian church, who were supposed to be acquainted with the spirit and princi- ples of the teaching given on the Judean mount as well as to be animated by them, and yet the English conquerors had not the same high conception of true government as the Miletians who, according to tradition, tried to assimilate the first settlers with themselves, so that they might together form a nation. Sir John Da vies says : — " This then I note as a great defect in the civil policy of the kingdom in that, for the space of 350 years at least after the conquest first attempted, the English laws were not communicated to the Irish, nor the benefit of protection thereof allowed unto them, though they earnestly desired and sought the same. For as long as they were out of the protection of the laws, so as every Englishman might oppress, spoil and kill them without controlment, how was it possible that they should be other than outlaws and enemies of the Crown of England." And again he writes : — *' Whereby it is manifest that such as had the government of Ireland, under the Crown of England, did intend to make a perpetual separation of enmity between the English and the Irish." Professor Blackie, with his usual terse wisdom, says : — ** It cannot be denied that the blessings which conquest brings with it when vigourously managed and wisely used are lightly turned into a bane whenever the power which has the force to conquer has not the wisdom to administer ; of which unblissful lack of administrative capacity and assimilative genius, the conquests of the Turks in Europe, and of the English in Ireland, present a most instructive example." 26 English Policy in Ireland. It is evident that the policy pursued in Ireland from the commencement of the English domination, was one calculated to uproot the people from the soil, and to sweep away all vestiges of their original rights. The barons and governors tried for centuries to do in that land what their sons have attempted to do in North America, and at the Antipodes, viz., to supplant and to exterminate the ancient settlers. Indians, Maories, and Irishmen, have all suffered because there has been in the Anglo- Saxon nature a wild and unsatisfied craving for land and power. Religious antipathy, greed, and ambition, have all had their influence for evil in the land. Henry II. had Ireland handed -over to him for a specific purpose, viz., "to reform the people." But the reforms were miserable farces, and the chief weapons used by the reformers were confiscations and muuders. The plea has been raised that the Irish nobles were turbulent and warlike, and fought with each other. So were the barons of Scotland, whom even Robert Bruce dared not leave to perform his vows in the Holy Land, and so were the English lords, whose feuds and bickerings reddened the land for centuries, and like deadly nightshades, cast their poison on English life during the reigns of the Plantagenets and the Tudors, and did not cease to injure the nation even when the strong hand of the Commons beat the power from their grip on the fields of Naseby and Marston Moor. Irish Petitions and their Rejection. In 1278, the Irish petitioned Edward I. to allow them permission to live under English law, and believing that kings, as well as nobles, were open to bribes, they sent a 2? gift of 8000 marks to purchase the royal favour. But though the king ordered Ufford, the Justiciary, to call Parliament for the purpose, yet the barons by subterfuges and evasions, thwarted the petition of Ireland, while at the same time they approved of the king's retention of the money. In the reign of Edward III., another petition was sent, but the barons who held the lands in Ireland again resisted the claims of the Irish to live under the English laws and constitution. They said, in the words of Sir John Davies, ** it was best policie to hold them as aliens and enemies, and prosecute them with a continual warre — the troth is that those great English lords did to the uttermost of their power crosse, and withstand the enfranchisement of the Irish." It is evident that the struggle to the Irish was one of life and death, and while they were contending for veiy existence, their oppressors were fighting for soil and spoil. It was not to the interest of grasping barons to conciliate the oppressed and make them loyal, but rather to prove them traitors and rebels, so that they might be assailed and robbed of lands, and homes, and life itself. Absenteeism. Even so far back as the reign of King John, the system of absenteeism commenced to curse Ireland, and it has continued to blight Irish life through the ages unto the present time. The lords and knights returned to England to enjoy amid the splendour of the Courts, the plunder they had secured in Ireland. The evils of absenteeism, and the expensive lives of the landowners of Ireland have long pressed heavily on that country, and government by middlemen and deputies has been one of its greatest ^^^Vo-^IBRA^^ ■2% disasters. Mr. Golclwin Smith has pointed out the evils of absenteeism. He says, — *' The greatest evils of absen- teeism are, first, that it withdraws from the Community its upper class, who are the natural channels of civilizing influences to the classes below them ; and secondly, that it cuts off all personal relations between the individual and his tenant, closes up the compassion of the landlord, and exposes the tenant to a pressure as unfeeling and relentless as that of a band of iron. It has also a general though not an invariable tendency to prevent the improve- ment of the land." How this evil developed is revealed in later history, and in the time of Dean Swift to use his own words, *'the old seats of the nobility and gentry are all in ruins, and there are no new ones in their stead.' The landowners were drawn to the frivolities and court gaieties in London, taking care however, to exact through their agents the full value of their tenants improvements, .and by which they — the landowners — were enabled to shine with an added lustre in the metropolis. Those barons and knights who stayed on the estates which they had won naturally began to take an interest in the people around them, and after a time many of them became assimilated with the native race. The rare beauty for which the Irish-women have been renowned won the hearts of their rulers, and many of them married Irish wives, and had Irish nurses for their children. The chil- dren naturally grew up to love Ireland, and to speak the native tongue, and when in their turn they came to rule, they re-established Irish customs, entertained the bards or harpers, and were installed by popular desire as chiefs, the people willingly giving to them similar affection and loyalty to that which had been given to the leaders of old. But the lords and knights at Court did not like the old 29 English, as they termed those who lived on the soil, and as the courtiers were near the King's ear and could whis- per into it, they took care to influence the King against those who were more favourably disposed than they were, to the ancient race. The First Irish Parliaments. In the year 1265, Simon-de-Montfort's Parliament met at Westminster, and there were present, in addition to the English representatives, burgesses and knights repre- senting Irish counties and boroughs. This, however, does not seem to have given satisfaction, for in the year 1295, a distinct Irish Parliament may be seen to exist, and there are Irish Statutes recorded for the year 13 10. But this Parliament represented only the views of Irish settlers and rulers, *' chiefly the latter." Isaac Butt contended in one of his speeches, and supported his contention by the testimony of able authori- ties, that ''From the earliest introduction of the power of the English kings into Ireland, the Irish who submitted to the rule of those kings had a right to the same Parlia- mentary constitution as that which England enjoyed," and he further said, " The Irish Parliament had, like the English Parliament, its hereditary House of Peers. Its House of Commons was elected exactly like the English House of Commons, by the freeholders of the counties, and by cities and towns deriving their right to return members from the charters of the kings. The freehold franchise was the same in both, and the royal charters had exactly the same efl"ect, and were construed and tried by the same rules of law." Mr. Flood declared in debate, that ** Three hundred years before any colony in America had a name, Ireland 3° had a Parliamentary constitution." It was unfortunate, however, that this Parliamentary machinery, was controlled and worked in the interests, not of the whole people, but of the dominant minority composed of landowners and nobles. In 1366, during the reign of Edward III., the Statute of Kilkenny was passed, which forbade the English to form relations with the Irish under penalty of death. To speak the native tongue, to use an Irish name, to adopt, as the Statute puts it, " any guize or fashion " of the Irish was to be punished by loss of land, but to commit the graver crimes of marrying an Irish woman, to entrust children to an Irish nurse, or to give them Irish Sponsors at Baptism was high treason that only bloody could wash out. No men of Irish blood were henceforth to be per- mitted to reside in a walled town, and within the Pale, to prevent the spiritual ascendancy of the natives, no Irish- man was to be received as a novice in any monastry. Military Occupation. Leland in his history says that soldiers were quartered in towns without any limit or payment, and that the properties of the Irish, ** their lives, the chastity of their families were all exposed to barbarians who sought only to glut their brutal passions, and by their horrible excesses they purchased the curse of God and man." This declaration is supported by Hume the historian, who states : — ** The small army which the English main- tained in Ireland they never supplied regularly with pay, and as no money could be levied from the island, which possessed none, they gave the soldiers the privilege of free quarters on the natives. Rapine and insolence in- flamed the hatred which prevailed between the conquerors 31 and the conquered, and want of security among the Irish introduced despair. For the English carried further their ill-judged tyranny. Instead of inviting the Irish to adopt the more civilized customs of their conquerors, they even refused, though earnestly solicited, to communicate to them the privileges of their laws and everywhere marked them out as aliens and as enemies." Sir John Davis says that this method of quartering soldiers bred idleness and misery, " for when the husband- man had laboured all the year, the soldier in one night did consume the fruits of all his labour. Had he reason then to manure the land for the next year ? " The Reformation. At the Reformation, Henry VIII. claimed to be King of Ireland, and not simply Suzerain, and he further de- manded to be acknowledged as Head of the Irish Church. This was a startling demand, and was bitterly resented by the Irish Priests and People. Henry II. had called upon the people to acknowledge the authority of Rome, and now his successor commanded them to throw off that authority, and acknowledge not only his headship over the land, but also over the church. Since the first English invasion to the time of Henry VIII, the authority of the Pale had not extended more than over a radius of 20 miles from Dublin, and the King had not the same means of enforcing his will in Ireland as he had in England. His changes in England were congenial to many of the people who looked to him for protection from the avarice and spiritual despotism of the Church, but in Ireland the Clergy had been the only protectors of the people from the greed and tyranny of the governors, and enquiry and conviction as well as dissatisfaction with the church had 32 not proceeded at the same rate of progress as in England. The people had been harassed in the past because of their Protestantism ; they were now assailed because of their allegiance to the Pope. They could not understand how the arbitrary will and mere pleasure of the king should decide once again their religion ; nor could they realise how the king could arrogate to himself a power which his predecessors had so persistently claimed for the Pope, whose authority had given them the land of Ireland. Mr. Burke once said, **If the people are in error, to inform them is not only fair but charitable ; to drive them, to attempt to eradicate by violence, a wide spreading and established religious opinion, is a strain of the most mani- fest injustice." Yet this was attempted in Ireland, and the result was, that the people not understanding the reason of the change and feeling ever a strong national antipathy to English rule, were now plunged into the hideous depths of a violent religious bigotry. The Church was despoiled of her revenues, her altars were broken down, and a new order of ministers was set up in opposition to the will and desire of the most respected and saintly in the land, as well as of the great bulk of native worshippers. Thus arose and was fostered the religious antagonism that has produced so terrible an entail of misery in more modern years, and that has been perpetuated by constant acts of injustice on the part of the governors and rulers in Ireland. Suppressing Catholicism. An Act of Supremacy was past in the year 1537, ^^^ was soon followed by the wholesale confiscation of Church lands. During the short reign of Edward VI. this policy was continued until Mary came to the throne, and there 33 is one thing very noticeable, and that is, that while in England and the Continent, the enthronement of Catholic- ism meant the burning of heretics, during Mary's reign, no Protestant in Ireland suffered death for his opinions, That has been the characteristic of Irish religion. Ireland has often been a home for refugees fleeing from persecution in England. In the year A.D. 300, the chris- tians in Britain when assailed by the sanguinary persecution of Diocletian found refuge in Ireland. In the 7th Century scholars found an Asylum there when assailed by the rampant barbarism that spread its pall of ignorance and brutality over the European Continent. Martyrdom for conscience and theological thought was certainly alien to the spirit of Irish Catholics. In Henry II.'s time it was said to an Irishman — " What is your church ? You have not even a martyr in your calendar." To this he replied — " You seem as if you could teach us how to make them." But the tolerance of the Catholics during the reign of Mary, was repaid with the most brutal severity when Elizabeth ascended the throne, for if her lords did not use the gibbet and the stake, they freely applied the still more terrible weapons of starvation and wholesale massacre. During Elizabeth's reign, strenuous efforts were made to overpower the Catholic population, and to compel them to accept the Protestant doctrines and practices, and the result was disastrous to the English Government. Mr. Froude says : — ** The English Government had added largely to their difficulties by attempting to force the Reformation upon Ireland while its political and social condition were still unsettled." Again, when speak- ing of the endeavours that were made to extinguish the people by the '* Colonization scheme," he says : — ** It cannot be said that England deserved to keep a country 34 which it mismanaged so disastrously." The Irish were not to be blamed if they looked to the Pope, to Spain, to France, to any friend in earth or heaven to deliver them from a Power which discharged no single duty that rulers owe to their subjects." In another place he says : — " The suppression of the Catholic Services, enforced wherever the English had power, and hanging before the people as a calamity sure to follow as the limits of that power were extended, created a weight of animosity which no other measure could have produced, and alone made the problem of Irish administration hopelessly insoluble." Further on he says : — *' Before the Government attempted to force a religion upon them that had not a single honest advocate in the whole nation, there was no incurable disloyalty. If they, were left with their own lands, their own laws, and their own creed, the chiefs were willing to acknowledge the English Sovereign." But the new gospel was supported by pillage and bloodshed. Chiefs and leaders of the tribes were invited to banquets and then put to death. Essex, the Queen's favourite, showed his subordinates how to proceed by inviting Sir Brian McPheJim O'Neil, .his wife and two hundred followers to a banquet and then massacring them. ** Men were stripped naked and thrown alive into bogs. The blind, feeble and sick, idiots and old persons were killed without mercy. Women were forced into barns, which were then set on fire, and those who tried to escape were either shot or stabbed ; babies were whirled about upon the points of spears, and women were hung upon trees, whilst the babes at their breasts were strangled with their mothers' hair." i 35 I cannot proceed — the horrors are too sickening ; the tales of misery are too harrowing to the human heart to be further written out. And this was done in the sacred name of religion, by men who were animated by the spirit of the fiends of the bottomless abyss. Mr. Froud sums up the matter very pertinently when he says : — ** The English nation was shuddering over the atrocities of the Duke of Alva. The children in the nurseries were being inflamed to patriotic rage and madness by tales of Spanish tyranny. Yet Alva's bloody sword never touched the young, the defenceless, or those whose sex even dogs can recognise and respect." But the sword of religion did touch these persons in Ireland. And not only was force exercised to slay the Irish, but with the most fiendish determination their food supply was destroyed. Year after year the crops were systematically burnt, and English nobles wrote to their friends vaunting their achievements in laying bare the productive soil of Ireland. Edmund Spencer, the author of the " Faerie Queen,' says : — '* The people were brought to such wretchedness as that any stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every corner of the woods and glens they came, creep- ing forth on their hands, for their legs would not bear them ; they looked like anatomies of death, they spoke like ghosts crying out for their graves ; they did eat the dead carrions happy where they should find them, yea, and one another soon after, in so much as the very carcases they spared not to scrape out of their graves ; and if they found a plot of water-cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet not able long to con- tinue there withal ; so that in short space there were none almost left, and a most populous and plentiful country 36 suddenly left void of man and beast ; yet sure in all that war there perished not many by the sword, but all by the extremity of famine." Mr. GoLDWiN Smith says, '' The famine, even supposing the people wasted their own country in self-defence, was caused by the cruel war." But there is abundant evidence to prove that the English and their sympathisers were the pillagers. Mr. Deane says, " Wherever the English went, they pillaged and laid waste : corn and the fruits of the earth were consumed by fire ; the implements of husbandry were destroyed also, and if any man were found attempting to till his field, or sow it, he was cut down by the sword." Henry VIII., notwithstanding his severity and disre- pute, was astute in many of the methods which he adopted to conciliate the Irish. In his treatment of O'Neil and O'Brien, he shewed the shrewdness of his mind, and won many of the Irish to the side of English government. He strove to secure the obedience of the people through a wise regard paid to their chiefs, and thereby established a new departure in the government of Ireland. Unfor- tunately, in the succeeding reigns of the Tudors, this policy was abandoned, and the Irish chiefs and their followers were once more treated with disrespect. The great fault, however, witlr Henry's reign was his attempt to force the new faith on the people, and his studious attempt to suppress the Celtic tradition of the people and to make Ireland as England in manners, in law, and in tongue. His regard for the chiefs could not fully atone for his curt contempt for Irish customs. Henry wanted to rule not by military or physical force, but by law, but Mr. Green says that the only conception of law which the king and his ministers had was that of English law. 37 "The customary law which prevailed without the Pale, the native system of clan government, and common tenure of land by the tribe, as well as the poetry and literature which threw their lustre over the Irish tongue, were either unknown to the English statesmen, or despised by them as barbarous." To ignore the traditions and ancient laws of a people is not the way to make them loyal and contented, and we cannot be surprised that Henry's pur- pose failed. Queen Elizabeth's Policy. Elizabeth had all her father's tenacity of purpose without his serpentlike shrewdness. The unwisdom of her methods in promulgating the Reformation made Protestantism appear to the Irish as a badge of servitude and slavery. The great forces, sympathy, tact, and a loving provision for the needs of the people, that win the hearts of men, were wanting, and in their place, severity, compulsion, and unfeeling despotism reigned. Men would not be driven to religion, nor have new views of worship thrust like horseballs down their throats. The fatuity and folly of the Queen may be seen in the fact that when Roman Catholic services were suppressed, and the people could not understand Protestant preaching in the English tongue, nor could ther# be found clergymen in Ireland to speak it, that then, instead of having the Irish language acknowledged as the medium of teaching, the Queen chose the Latin tongue as the instrument of devotion and instruction. This species of wise arrange- ment was enshrined in an Act of Parliament, 2 Eliz., cap. 13. Land Confiscations. During these reigns wholesale confiscations of land were made, and heresy as well as rebellion was made a 38 pretext for taking possession of soil owned by the Irish natives. Even Philip of Spain and Queen Mary, though Catholics, carried out the traditional policy of confiscation. Wide tracts in Leinster, comprising 985,000 acres, were seized. When James I. ascended the throne, O'Neil and Tyrconnell were declared traitors, and their lands were divided among various companies in England and Scot- land, and were colonised by men from these countries. The entire population of six counties was dispossessed, and the old chiefs and clans were compelled to retire to neigh- bouring counties. Mr. Fkoude says : — " The confiscated territory amounted to two millions of acres. Of these, a million and a half, bog, forest, and mountain were restored to the Irish, and the half million of fertile lands were settled with families of Scottish and English Protestants." There was much discontent at this. Colonists who had never turned up a sod of land had bestowed upon them the fruitful portions of it, while the bare, waste, unpro- ductive parts were handed back to the people of Ireland, to be tilled and improved by them, until a further conquest should seize upon the soil freshly cultivated. This was the Ulster experiment, which will be explained when we consider the modern aspects of the land question. Sir Arthur Chichester, smitten by the same rabid longing for land as other governors had been, called the Parliament together though it had not met for 27 years. To carry his scheme, he created 57 Protestant representatives of towns and counties. This Parliament was composed there- fore of 125 Protestants and 10 1 Catholics. Previous to this the Catholics must have had a majority, but this could not be tolerated by the English rulers, and hence Sir Arthur Chichester reformed the House and appropriated a large portion of land. And yet, though he covered Protes- i 39 tantism with the odium attached to injustice and robbery, he wrote that he knew not " how this attachment to the Catholic Faith was so deeply rooted in the hearts of the Irish, unless it was that the very soil was infected, and the very air tainted with Popery, for they obstinately prefer it to all things else, to allegiance of their king, to respect for his ministers, to the care of their own prosperity, and to all their hopes and prospects."* He might have learned that the religion for which a man makes sacrifices becomes endeared to him, and that in proportion to the greatness of the sacrifice is the strength of the affection. And he might have known further that to associate the new faith with iniquitous practices was the best means to make it offensive in the sight of any people. In 1369 a law was passed to compel men to reside in Ireland, the Parliament declaring that the estates of absentees who did not return within a given time should be forfeited to the Crown. But the absentees found means to avoid the penalty. King Richard II. had viewed with clear eye the conditions of the Irish people ; but though he spoke strongly on the question, his fierce barons were too turbulent for his meek spirit to control them, and the abuses remained. After his visit to the country, the King said — ** In our land of Ireland, there are three kinds of people — wild Irish (our enemies), Irish rebels, and obedient English. To us and our Council it appears that the Irish rebels have rebelled in consequence of the injustice and grievances practised towards them, for which they have been afforded no redress, and that, if not wisely treated and given hope of grace, they will most likely ally them- selves with our enemies." And yet, during the reigns of * Godkin. 8q. 40 the wise Tudors and Stuarts, we may see the old policy of injustice still pursued, and men compelled by the laws of a conquering nation to become either slaves or rebels. Rebellion and Revenge. Charles I. sent Strafford over to govern the land and further colonize it, and the Earl ruled with an iron hand until his recall and execution. During this reign, rebellion burst out and swelled into terrible dimensions. After the dethronement of the King it still continued to spread. The barbarities were almost unexampled in a land where barbarous practices had flourished for centuries under the fostering care of a foreign government. The land lay weltering .in the gore of the people. Religious bigotry, so long smouldering and burning in~ fitful fires to the eye, but maintaining perpetual luridity in secret, now burst out, and consumed in the flames of its passion the opposing sects. The triumph of Independency and Presbyterianism, under Pym and Cromwell, in England, seemed to foreshadow to the Catholic Irish a raid upon them. The civil wars had also relaxed the grip of English governors, and now the Irish burst into defiant rebellion. Massacre ran riot. Blood reeked from the deluged soil. Then Cromwell came, and met cruelty by still greater cruelty. Perhaps never since the time of Henry II. had the natives a better prospect of throwing off" the foreign yoke. A weak general or king must have gone down before the rush of revolt. But Cromwell was immovable. The marvellous resources of this determined man seemed irresistible. He believed that to strike terror into the minds of the Irish would be the means of preventing future bloodshed and trouble. Then came, by his orders, ** the raid of Drogheda," and the whole city was given up 4^ to death. For three years a pitiless war was waged. The people sank down groaning and despairing. Six hundred thousand people — men, women, and children — more than one-third of the population, perished. Forty thousand men fled from their country and joined the Spanish Army, while thousands of others were banished and were sold as slaves in the West Indies. This rebellion, commencing in 1641, like others, had been forced by the unwisdom of the English Government. Charles L received payment for privileges, religious and political, that the Irish desired, but his promises were shadowy and unreal. Straff"ord believed in a " thorough " policy, and one of his tenets was the suppression of all religions except that w^hich was established by the English Government. He and Archbishop Laud went hand in hand in tyranny, and died for their crimes at the hands of the exasperated Commons. But the Nonconformists who claimed freedom of conscience for themselves, as well as freedom of worship, were not prepared to grant these sacred rights to Catholics. The Catholics knew not to whom to turn. The King and his Cavaliers were against them. The Puritans and their leaders gave them no hope. The Roman Catholic officers were turned out of the army, and the priests were imprisoned ; the services of their religion were restricted or suppressed at the mere will of English officers and governors. What could they do ? They did what was alone open to them. They rebelled and died. The lessons of barbarity taught by their con- querors were learned by them, and in the flush of their first triumph, they embued their hand in the blood of Protestants. Twelve thousand at least, according to trustworthy authorities were slain — many of them in cold blood. Their deeds cannot be palliated or justified. But 42 the English had taught them, and were not slow to retaliate. The rebellion commenced on October 22nd, 1841. In December of the same year, the English House of Com- mons passed a measure to deliberately destroy the Catholic religion in Ireland. The Irish people became more exasperated as they saw the life or death character of the struggle. They saw it was a war of extermination, and therefore fought and slew with the desperate madness of despair. To them no quarter was shown. The wives and children of those who went over to aid King Charles against the Commons were murdered. In Scotland eighty were drowned in one day for the *' crime of being married to or the offspring of Irish soldiers." The Englishmen said : **nits will be lice," and so the children were slain. One officer, Sir William Cole, who had been engaged in the cruel work of slaying the Irish and of destroying their crops, summed up the deeds of his regiment, in which he gloried, by saying — •*' Starved and famished of the vulgar sort, whose goods were seized on by this regiment, 7,000." Confiscation Repeated. The country ,had peace given to it, but it was the quiescence of despair, and " it left behind a fearful legacy of hate." The Long Parliamsnt confiscated 2,500,000 acres, and offered them as security to adventurers who could advance money to meet the cost of the war. Estates were given to those who contributed as follows : — 1,000 acres in Ulster .. ;^2oo. 1,000 ,, ,, Connaught . . £300. 1,000 ,, „ Munster . . ;£^45o. 1,000 ,, „ Leinster .. /^6oo. A new survey of the kingdom was carried out under the direction of Sir William Petty (founder of the House of Lansdowne), by whom the surface of the kingdom was estimated at 10,500,000 acres. Of this, in the year 1641, 5,000,000 were in the possession of Catholics, 300,000 were the property of Churches and Colleges, 2,000.000 belonged to Protestant Settlers, and 3,000,000 were waste. The 5,000,000 owned by Catholics were confiscated, with the exception of 700,000 given in exchange in Clare and Connaught, and 1,200,000 confirmed to innocent Papists.'* No vestige of the Catholic religion was allowed to exist ; Catholic lawyers and schoolmasters were silenced ; and Mr. Deane says : — "All Ecclesiastics were slain like the priests of Baal." Three bishops and three hundred clergymen were thus slain. It is said that ** the hunting to death of the priests became an exciting species of chase." Mr. Deane further states : — " Into County Clare and part of Connaught the people were driven like cattle, and if in any mountainous recesses or caves a few peasants were detected at mass, they were smoked out and shot. A proclamation was issued that after March ist, 1654, all Irish Catholics — men, women, and children — who should be found in the kingdom might be killed by any person who should meet them, without charge or trial." Fortunately Henry Cromwell (the gifted son of the Protector) and Fleetwood, the General, both endeavoured to mitigate the severities, and for several years a better state of government spread itself over the kingdom. Mr. GoLDWiN Smith says: — **The peace of com- plete submission reigned in Ireland. Law was regularly administered, and the Protestant community at least pre- sented a picture of prosperity. But it is difficult to believe that the lot of the Irish Catholics can have been otherwise than hard under the domination of those fierce and fanatical children of the old covenant, who were dwelling 44- in vineyards which they iiad not planted, and houses which they had not built ; who ranked the religion of the subdued race with idolatry, and who must have constantly read in the expressive faces of the people intense hatred mingled with cowering fear. To make Ireland like York- shire is said to have been the Protector's object, and thus as far as the nature of things permitted, his genius as a ruler achieved. But the nature of things rendered it impossible for him to do more than create a Yorkshire on the surface, while an Ireland still lay alien and vindictive below." I commend Mr. Smith's words to those who are pur- suing the same policy of government as Cromwell, and who are complaining of the rebellious spirit of the Irish people. The "nature of things " exists still, and is one great element that must be considered in the modern settlement of the question. Mr. Deane says : — " The essential Irish demands were for freedom of religion ; freedom of Parliament, including the repeal of Poyning's Laws : for proper seminaries for the education of Roman Catholics ; a general pardon ; that no person should sit in the Irish Parliament unless possessed of Irish property ; that the Irish Parliament should be independent of that of England ; that no person should be governor for more than three years, and that no governor should acquire land while he was in office as governor." These do not seem very hard demands, and yet they were persistently refused by the Monarch and the English Government. Charles II. returned to power, with his train of licensed miscreants, on the deposition of Richard Crom- well, and he commenced his government of Ireland by confiscating many of the acres still remaining in the hands of the Irish, 170,000 acres of which he assigned to his 45 brother James. During this reign a Test Act was passed, by which no person could hold office, either civil or military, without subscribing to a declaration against Transubstan- tiation. As this was a fundamental doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, all Catholics were shut out of these offices. The importation of Irish cattle into England was also forbidden by law in this reign, because it robbed the English farmer of high prices. Mr. Prendergast says : — '* Eight millions of acres were disposed of after the Cromwellian settlement by Charles II. Two and a quarter millions were given to Irish of English descent, or Irish declared innocent of rebellion. To English courtiers and soldiers were given four millions and a half. The rest the King reserved.' James 11. repealed Poyning's Acts and the Act of Settlement, and re-installed the Catholics in office, but he clung tenaciously to the land, and confiscated the estates of all absentees of the age of seventeen years and upwards. Still the Catholics were faithful to him in his wars with William of Orange, and on his defeat they were again despoiled by the conqueror. Poyning's Laws. As the Poyning's laws are frequently referred to in Irish history, it may be necessary to explain them. During the reign of Henry VII., the Lord Deputy Poyning en- deavoured to secure a closer connection between the governing bodies of England and Ireland. In order to do this, he drew up laws which were afterwards interpreted to mean that the Irish Parliament was, in all legislative matters, subordinate to the King and his Council, and could not initiate legislation, nor carry it into law unless it had received the sanction of the Privy Council, and had 46 first been considered by it. Swift McNeill says : — " In 1495, by an Act of the Irish Parliament known as Poy- ning's Law, from the Lord Deputy, in whose administration it was passed, amongst other provisions all the laws of England, antecedent to that date are deemed good and effectual in Ireland. This provision, which forms what Mr. Hallam calls an epoch in Irish jurisprudence, fades into insignificance in the light of the measure which gives its peculiar importance to Poyning's Law. It was further enacted that no Parliament should in future be holden in Ireland, till the King's Lieutenant shall certify to the King, under the great seal, the causes and considerations and all such acts as it seems to them ought to be passed thereon, and such be affirmed by the King and his Council, and his license to hold a Parliament be obtained ; and any Parliament holden contrary to this form and provision should be deemed void." In speaking of these Acts, Mr. Deane says : — ** The one act reduced a long-standing grievance and wrong, while the other inflicted a wrong which remained for centuries. The former of these was to the effect that all statutes made in England were established and made of force in Ireland ; but this did not extend beyond the pale. By the latter it was enacted that no Parliament should be held in Ireland, except for causes and for the passing of acts to be certified beforehand, and licensed by the King and his Council. This limited the power of an Irish Parliament to the mere vetoing of English proposals. It could neither propose nor repeal a law, nor even alter such as were offered for its consideration." By this latter Act there was placed on the Irish legis- lature a strong and inflexible curb. This was felt to be intolerable, and was bitterly resented by the Irish. In the 47 reign of Queen Mary the Act was modified so that the assent of the English Privy Council could be given while the Irish Parliament was sitting, and not as claimed by Poyning's Act, before it met. Though repealed by James II., it was re-enacted by his successor. In the reign of George I., by an Act of Parliament, the English Houses of Parliament claimed the power of legislating for Ireland. But Daniel O'Connell has said : — " If that power so claimed had really existed, where was the necessity of passing that statute, and while the Act proclaims the slavery of Ireland, it admits the pre- existence of freedom." It is contended by Irish authorities that the Poyning's Law was never intended *' to take away the right of the Irish Parliament, but merely to prevent the governors of Ireland from giving the royal assent to laws that might be injurious to the King. It never gave to the English Parliament the right to dominate and overshadow the Irish Legislature." Mr. Isaac Butt says, *** From the admitted depend- ence of the Crown of Ireland upon that of England, arose the claim of the English Parliament to legislate for Ireland. Over all the colonies and dependencies of the British Crown, the British Parliament had exercised the right of legislation. Over Ireland they asserted the same right. I need not tell you how fiercely it was contested, and that it was finally abandoned in 1782." Professor Swift McNeill declares that '* The Irish Parliament, while admitting the dependence of the Irish on the English Crown, repelled, without qualification, the theory of the subordination of the Irish to the English legislature." (Quoted by Swift McNeil—" Irish Industries," pa^jj^ — — -«»,..^_^^ :T tTt -r-. .r^ . 48 Mr. Flood pointed out in his great speeches that the Parliament that passed the Poynings Acts, and the Parlia- ments of Queen Elizabeth's time had never regarded the Acts as being intended to deprive the Irish Parliament of its right to initate the legislation urgently needed in the interests of the kingdom — that it was only considered to be a popular law restraining evil governors, but "In no wise restraining the power of either House of Parliament." He showed that Lord Bacon, who wrote the history of Henry VII., and particularly mentioned Poynings would not have let so great a matter as a total inversion of the Constitution pass by the accuracy of his penetrating genius. He (Mr. Flood) said, " It is astonishing that the law of Poynings should have received such a false and vicious interpretation as it now bears. Do we understand its meaning at the distance of almost three hundred years better than the people in whose days it was passed, or they who succeeded for a hundred years after ? By them it was considered as a boon and a favour, but its operation now destroys the Constitution of Ireland, that Constitution which, growing side by side with the Constitution of Britain, it was- formed to protect. But the law was not in fault it was only the vile interpreter who was to blame, an interpreter placed between the king and the people, a monster unknown to the Constitution, whose office was to stifle the voice of the people, and to prevent the king from hearing, to render the people dumb, and the king deaf." Mr. Swift McNeill shows how this law has been used to deprive the people of Ireland of the benefits intended by Poyning to be extended to Ireland. He says, "The most casual glance at the history of the laws of the Irish Constitution, will afl'ord ample evidence of the persistent and reckless manner in which the provisions 49 of Poynings' Law were called in aid to pervert, mutilate, suppress and persecute every measure extending the benefits of the English Constitution to Ireland. The Treaty of Limerick. William III., when he marched his forces against General Sarsfield and the Irish who remained faithful to James II., found that he had to face no mean antagonist, and pressed on every side by great difficulties, in order that he might end the war and return to England in the interests of administration and order, he entered into a treaty at Limerick with General Sarsfield. This treaty provided for an anmesty to all who would take the oath of allegiance to the King ; in addition, all who desired to go to France were to be conveyed thither ; all Catholics were to enjoy the rights of their religion as in the days of Charles II., and the King and Queen pledged themselves to procure further security for the Catholics when the Parliament met. Subsequent history shows that this treaty was ruthlessly and cruelly violated. The Persecuting Code. What has been fitly called *' the persecuting code," was established during the reign of William III. The cruel civil war had thrown Protestants and Catholics into two camps, and now the defeated were visited with pains and penalties. Previously the Catholics had enjoyed some measure, small as it was, of political rights. They held the franchise, could elect members to Parliament, and were themselves eligible for election ; but now the Penal Code altered all this, and placed them in a condition of political slavery. Nothing can palliate or condone the establishment of this impious code, followed so as it was by what Mr. Burke called ** the ferocious legislation of Queen Anne." It was the fruitful cause of much sorrow and mischief, and we are to-day reaping a harvest of shame and difficulty as the result of it. Spies were set to work to find out plots and to dis- cover excuse for the forfeiture of estates. A system of mean and despisable chicanery was established, and a set of men called ''discoverers" were appointed to search out flaws in the titles of land held by Catholics. Leland says that in the MSS. of Bishop Sterne it was found that ** in the small county of Longford alone, twenty-five persons of one Sept were all deprived of their estates, without the least compensation or any means of subsistence assigned to them." Mr. GoLDWiN Smith asserts that the natives were obliged to submit, *' For they had been vanquished in the appeal to force. And if they were tempted to try their right in the courts of law, they found judges who were ministers of iniquity, and juries who gave their verdict in cases where the Crown was a party, with the terrors of the ' Star Chamber hanging over their heads." Leland states: — ''There are not wanting proofs of the most iniquitous practices, of hardened cruelty, of vile perjury, and scandalous subornation employed to despoil the fair and unoff'ending proprietor of his inheritance." A suitor for Court favours once said to the Duke of Ormonde, " I have no friends but God and your Grace." "Poor man," replied Ormonde, "you could not have two friends who have less interest at Court." And certainly it seems as though Justice and Mercy, the characteristics of righteous and Divine government, were cast contemptuously aside during the time when William IIL and his Council legislated for Ireland. 51 Again the land was re-settled. Lord Clare, in one of his speeches, referred to this period, and said : — *• It is a very curious and important speculation to look back to the forfeitures of Ireland incurred in the last century. The superficial contents of the island are calculated at 11,042,682 acres. Let us now examine the state of the forfeitures : — In the reign of James I. the whole of the province of Ulster was confis- cated, viz., 2,836,837 acres. Set out by the Court of Claims at the Restoration 7,800,000 ,, Forfeitures of 1688 .. .. ..1,060,792 ,, So that the whole of your Island has been confiscated with the exception of the estates of five or six families of English blood, and no inconsiderable portion of the island has been confiscated twice or perhaps thrice in the course of a century.;" Crippling of Trade and Commerce. Irish manufactures were also crippled by an enforced protection, and Mr. Froude says : — ** Ireland was regarded as a colony to be administered not for her own benefit, but for the convenience of the mother country." Until the reign of Charles II. England placed no restrictions on Irish commerce or manufactures. Lord North says: — ''Before the Restoration the Irish enjoyed every commercial advantage in common with England." •*In 1495," Hutchinson says, "the English com- mercial system and the Irish, so far as it depended on English Statute Law, was the same, and before this period, so far as it depended on the Common Law, and Magna Charta was the same."* * " Commercial Restraints,'' page 169. Quoted by Swift McNeill. 52 A law was also passed prohibiting not only the importation of cattle to England, but also of butter and cheese. Ireland was also forbidden to receive from the English plantations, Sugar, Tobacco, Cotton, Wool, Indigo, Ginger, and wood for dyeing purposes. The result was that cattle became a drug in the Irish markets, and horses that were sold for 30/- now fetched only i/-., and were sold as dog's meat, and beeves that sold for 30/- now only realised 10/-.* The agriculturalists in great numbers now turned to manufacturing, but again the Government stepped in, and in 1660 and 1697 the Irish woollen goods were stopped from obtaining entrance into England. They were then forbidden to export their goods to foreign markets "here- tofore supplied from England," and all *' export of wool and woollen goods from Ireland was prohibited under the forfeiture of goods and ship and a penalty of ^500 for every offence." They had been permitted to manufacture flax and hemp into goods, but in 1750 they had so developed their trade that their English rivals succeeded in securing from the Government the imposition of heavy taxes on the import of sail cloth made of Irish hemp into England. The fact was that the English competitors were being beaten out of the market, and the Government were com- pelled to furnish the navy with sails made by the Irish. The manufacture of glass was next crippled, and Irish cotton goods were subjected to an import duty of twenty- five per cent., and a statute law of George I. afterwards enacted penalties on the wearing of such manufactures in Great Britain unless they had been made there. * Swift McNeill — "Irish Industries," page 23. S3 Irish beer and malt, hats, gunpowder, coals, bar-iron, iron-ware, &c., were also subjected to restrictions, until at last the fishermen of Folkestone and Alderborough sent petitions complaining that the herrings caught at Water- ford and Wexford were sent to their markets, and therefore by reducing the prices they would otherwise have secured, interfered with their prosperity. But the Parliament decided that it must draw the line somewhere, and to the dismay and disgust of the petitioners it drew it at Irish herrings. Dean Swift wrote: — ''Ireland is the only kingdom I ever heard or read of in ancient or modern story which was denied the liberty of exporting their native com- modities and manufactures wherever they pleased." Everything that was made in Ireland, or was reared on Irish soil, seemed placed under the ban, and perhaps the only reason why the Parliament refused to tax the herrings was the difficulty and expense that would have been involved in proving that they had been reared in Irish waters. Mr. Froude says : — " England governed Ireland for what she deemed her own interest, making her calculation on the gross balance of her trade ledgers, and leaving her moral obligations to accumulate, as if right and wrong had been blotted out of the statute book of the universe." Lord DuFFERiN observes: — "One by one each of our nascent industries was either strangled in its birth or handed over gagged and bound to the jealous custody of the rival interest of England, until at last every fountain of wealth was hermetically sealed, and even the traditions of commercial enterprise have perished through desuetude." Mr. Lecky says : — " No country ever exercised a more complete control over the destinies of another than 54 did England over those of Ireland for three-quarters of a century after the Revolution. * * * The commercial legislation which ruined Irish industry, the confiscation of Irish land which demoralised and impoverished the nation, were all directly due to the English Government and the English Parliament." And Mr. Froude again declares that " if the high persons at the head of the British Empire had deliberately considered by what means they could condemn Ireland to remain the scandal of their rule, they could have chosen no measures better suited to their end than those which they pursued unrelentingly through three-quarters of a century." Richard Cobden, with the rare insight ever displayed by him, said in 1835: — ''There can be no doubt that England has during the last two centuries, by discouraging the commerce of Ireland — thus striking at the very root of civilization — rendered herself responsible for much of the barbarism that at the present day afflicts it. However much the conduct of England towards the sister island in this particular may have been dwelt upon for party purposes, it is so bad as scarcely to admit of exaggeration." Well might John Bright, yet under the influence of Mr. Cobden's spirit and fellowship, say : — " When the Irish peasant asks for food, and freedom, and blessing, his eye follows the setting sun ; the aspirations of his heart reach beyond the wide Atlantic, and in spirit he grasps hands with the great Republic of the West." Dr. Spence Watson writes in the Newcastle Leader-.— We had destroyed her cattle trade, and her trade in dairy pro- duce, but her grazing lands were still free, and her farmers had access to European ports (she was nearer than Great Britain to the west 55 coast of France, Spain, and Portugal and the Mediterranean ports), and found a ready market for their wool, which was accounted the best in Europe. I have read that fleece wool, which could be bought in Ireland at fivepence per pound, brought half-a-crown per pound in France. But in the first year of Charles II. 's reign (known to law as the twelfth), this trade in wool was seriously interfered with. By the 12 Car. II., c. 32, it was decreed that wool should not be exported from Ireland to any country but England, and six Irish ports alone were allowed to export it, and seven English ports to receive it. But even yet in her manufactures there was a ray of hope for the trade of Ireland. Forbidden to sell her raw wool, she began to manufacture it, or, rather, her woollen industries, which had been steadily growing, received a great impetus. From the Low Countries, as well as from England and Scotland, manufac- turers settled in Ireland, and everywhere was there evidence that at last the way to success in peaceful industry had really been attained. As early as 1641 there were not fewer than 30,000 woollen workers and their wives in Ireland. And then England again grew frightened. Her manufacturing supremacy was threatened. Her helot dared to become her rival in one branch of business. In 1696 Ireland was forbidden to trade with the colonies at all, and in 1699 an Act was passed to prohibit the exportation of woollen goods from Ireland to any country whatever, and a noble and thriving industry was deliberately destroyed ; thousands of manufacturers emigrated to the Continent, and so many workers left the Western and Southern districts of Ireland for America that they were almost deserted. Everywhere manufacture was crushed. Land alone remained. Is this not a terrible story ? Does it not throw light upon the unfortunate position which what we now mockingly call our sister country holds in this matter of manufacture ? Trade depends greatly on confidence, and confidence is a plant of slow growth. The great manufacturing nations have become such through their geographical position, through their superior natural resources, and through the gradual development and patient formation of the industrial character in their people. Ireland had the position ; we refused to allow her to take advantage of it. She had the natural resources ; we made them worthless. She began the formation of industrial habits in her people ; we ruthlessly stopped the process. We drove the Irish people on to the land at the very time that we forbade them to hold it legally. We made them serfs, and this day we feel in every phase and point of the Irish question the natural effect of mischievous commercial legislation of two centuries ago. 56 Ireland Depopulated. As a result of this, emigration went on in a continual flood. Mr. Lecky observes : — " One of the most obvious consequences was that, for the space of about a century, Ireland underwent a steady process of depletion, most men of energy, talent, or character, being driven from her shores." The Protestant population as well as the Catholic suffered from these measures. Indeed, as they were renowned for their trading propensities, their suffer- ing was the more severe. The whole country groaned under the twofold penalties of penal laws and commercia restrictions. Mr. Lecky again remarks : — *' If the ambition of an Irishman lay in the paths of manufacture and commerce, he was almost compelled to emigrate, for commercial enterprise had been deliberately crushed." Is there any wonder that the law was looked upon as an instrument of evil and oppression, and that centuries of injustice have made the people hate the law, which, had it protected them they would have loved. "Twenty thousand Puritans left Ulster on the de- struction of the woollen trade."^* ** Until the spell of tyranny was broken in 1782, when Ireland won back her own free Parliament, annual ship- loads of families poured themselves out from Belfast and Londonderry. The resentment they carried with them continued to burn in their new homes ; and in the war of Independence, England had no fiercer enemies than the great-grandsons of the Presbyterians who had held Ulster against Tyrconnell." * Mr. Froude. 57 The woollen manufacturers, when they were sup- pressed, employed 12,000 Protestants in Dublin, and 30,000 in other parts. This was a large percentage of the population, which only numbered a little over two millions. Many of them went to France and the northern parts of Spain, and set up there a rival trade to the English one, and in 1805 it was stated by Mr. Newenham, that for fifty years the average annual emigration to America and the West Indies had been 4000, and that at least 200,000 had emigrated to the British Plantations. Between 1691 and 1745 as many as 450,000 Irishmen died in the service of France alone, and a number not far short of this had passed through the armies of Spain, while it is almost impossible to tell the exact number of those to whom " Ireland gave birth and the Gallic land a grave." The Consequence of Injustice. The Hon. Luke Gardiner, in 1 784, in the Irish House of Commons, declared that as a result of the restrictions, not only had England lost a principal protection of her woollen trade, but "that the large number of Irish in the American army had decided its victories, and that there- fore America had been detached from England chiefly by the force of Irish emigrants driven from their country by iniquitous laws." At the death of William III., less than one-seventh of the owners of the soil were Roman Catholics, though they were the great majority of the nation. Upon these, in addition to the commercial restrictions, there rested the terrible penal laws. Notwithstanding that the vast pre- ponderance of the inhabitants were Roman Catholics, the English Government by statute law placed all the parliamentary and political power in the hands of the few 58 Protestants. The result was, that now more than ever, Protestantism became associated with tyranny, and in the opinion of many of the inhabitants of Ireland, it still bears the stigma. Political power alone kept up the State Church, against the desires and views of the vast majority of the population. Mr. Goldwin Smith says that it "became necessarily the servile instrument" of that power, and taught the lesson to the ages that ''Christianity cannot be propagated through unchristian institutions, and that the State Church of a dominant minority is an insti- tution which, being unjust, must be unchristian." The Penal Laws. The law excluded Catholics from the army and navy, from corporations, the magistracy, the bench and the bar, from grand juries, and vestries. They could not be sheriffs, gamekeepers, or constables. They were forbidden to own any firearms under pain of fine, imprisonment, whip, and pillory. They could not own a horse worth more than five pounds, and any Protestant could compel them to sell any horse they possessed for that sum. There was no education for their children except at Protestant schools. They had no university ; could not teach a school, nor send their children on the continent to be educated. A Catholic could not be the guardian of his own child. Mr. Goldwin Smith remarks : — " It (the law) denied to the persecuted sect the power of educating their children at home, and at the same time, with an almost maniacal cruelty, it prohibited them from seeking educa- tion abroad." *They were not allowed to buy land, or inherit it, or receive it as a gift from Protestants. They could not hold * Mr. Froude—" English in Ireland." Mr. Lecky's History of i8th Century. 59 life annuities or leases for more than thirty-one years. If a Catholic purchased an estate of a Protestant, the first Protestant who informed the authorities of the fact became the owner of the estate, so that there were plenty of people on the look out. The eldest son of a Catholic, if he assumed a profession of Protestantism, became heir-at-law of the whole estate of his father, who was thereby reduced to the position of a life-tenant. A wife who left the Catholic Church and became a Protestant, was immeditely freed from her husband's control, and was assigned a portion of her husband's property that he could never afterwards touch. A Catholic could not be the guardian of a child of any deceased relative or friend, so that all Catholic orphans were brought up as Protestants. All Catholic Priests had to be registered, and it was a crime for an unregistered priest to celebrate a service in any way. " Any priest making a convert to Roman Catholicism was punished. There were rewards for the discovery of un- licensed priests, and no Catholic bishops were allowed in Ireland under a penalty of being hung, drawn, and quartered." A salary of £$o per annum was guaranteed to any priest who would abjure his faith. "Pilgrims to holy places were to be fined or whipped." •' Catholic heirs of a Catholic must share the land equally between them as they became subject to the law of Gavel- kind, and even then they must conform within six months or the lands descended to the next Protestant heir." Mr. GoLDWiN Smith says : — ** In the case of alleged offences against certain of the penal laws, the first prin- ciples of criminal justice were deliberately and ostentatiously set aside by removing the burden of proof from the accuser, and casting it on the accused." This is still being aimed at, as witness the charges of the Times newspaper against 6o the Parnellites, where the burden of proof was ruthlessly laid upon the Irish party, and as seen in the Government support of Mr. Lewis, a landlord, upon whose unsupported evidence, in spite of the advice of the resident magistrate, and the testimonies of the people to his previous good behaviour, Father Fahy was sent to prison. From the Bench, Lord Chancellor Bowes and Chief Justice Robinson laid it down as a declaration of law, viz. : — " That the law did not suppose any such person to exist as a Roman Catholic ; and Dopping, the Protestant Bishop of Meath, preached from the pulpit the infamous doctrine that Protestants are ** not bound to keep faith with Catholics." It is no excuse to say that Catholic teachers taught a similar doctrine in relation to Protestants, for if Protestantism is to prove itself a higher form of faith, it must show its claim to this position, by the superiority of its moral teaching, and the increased elevation of its spirit and life. Edmund Burke denounced the Penal Code for what he called its " vicious perfection." He might well do so, when he read that any marriage between a Protestant and a Catholic was null and void, and could, at any time here- after be annulled, so that though twenty years before, a Catholic woman had been led into wedlock by a Protestant man, he could now forsake her, and make his children illegitimate. Mr. Burke says : — *' It was a complete system full of coherence and consistency, as well fitted for the oppres- sion, imprisonment and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." And these laws were not only directed against two- thirds of the nation that were Catholic, but many of 6i them were also aimed at Nonconformist Protestants. The Protestants were divided into two halves. The Episcopalians enjoyed the protection of the State, and were buttressed by the military and naval power of England, but the Presbyterians were excluded from Parliament, corporations and public offices ; marriages by their minis- ters were dubbed illegal, and the Presbyterians were forced by these laws out of Ireland ; and, Mr. Grattan says, ** what we trampled on in Ireland, stung us in America." In a number of towns Catholics were cast out, and in the town of Bandon, the people were so proud of their exclusive Protestantism, that Dean Swift suggested as an inscription for the town gates : — " Jew, Turk, or Atheist May enter here, but not a Papist." But the people, though willing to accept this, did not appreciate the addition made by the Dean's Catholic servant : — " The man who wrote these lines spoke well, The same are written on the gates of hell." Dean Swift wrote satire after satire in denunciation of this system, of firm government, "and ironically advised a clergyman, whose church was in a tumble-down state, to give it to the Catholics, and when they had repaired it to take it back again. He further issued, with a fluency of satire, what he called a "Modest Proposal,"— viz.: "That the children of the Irish peasantry should be reared for food, and that the plumpest and fattest should be reserved for the tables of the landlords, who, as they had already devoured the substance of the people, had the best right to dispose of the flesh of the children of the people." Dean Swift did much to solidify and direct the national life of Ireland. When King George I. gave the right and 6i profit of coining copper for Ireland to his German mistress, the Dean poured out his wrath and indignation in a flood of molten invective and argument, and he roused the national life until the King had to withdraw his ill-omened gift. The Dean asserted that Ireland *' depended on England in no other sense than that in which England depended on Ireland ; that government without the con- sent of the governed was the very essence of slavery ; and that, by the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of their own country, they were, and ought to be, as free a people as their brethren in England." Persecution failed to crush religious belief, and the men who suffered cherished their faith the more fully. The Catholic Church took firmer hold of the imagination and life of the people, and this fatal policy of repression, while it crushed the national liberties of the people, made them estimate more highly the spiritual liberty that in their hearts they realised. Grattan's Parliament. During the reign of George ILL, Henry Grattan rose to prominence, and under his leadership the Irish people re-asserted the independence of Parliament, and their own right to initiate and make the laws necessary for the regulation of Irish affairs. In this he was supported by the great Whig leader, the founder of modern Liberalism, Charles James Fox. Mr. Fox, in the English House of Commons upheld the demands of the Irish, and did much to avert a strife between the the two countries. In the year 1775, the Catholics were allowed to take the oath of allegiance, and after three-quarters of a century were recognised as fellow-subjects with the class whose 63 representatives made the laws. This was the first result of the struggles for American Independence. In 1778, the Penal Code was further mitigated, so as to allow Catholic leaseholders to acquire leases for 999 years or five lives. The Act of Queen Anne's reign, which provided that if a child became a Protestant he should obtain his father's property, was repealed. Other measures followed. Then at the instigation of the Irish Parliament, the export of woollen goods was allowed, and a request for liberty to trade with the American and West Indian Colonies was sent to the English Parliament. Free Trade between England and Ireland was next claimed. The influence of the Americans was being felt more and more. Then Mr. Grattan proposed his famous resolutions, viz.: — 1. ''That the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland are the only powers competent to enact laws to bind Ireland." 2. "That the Crown of Ireland is and ought to be inseparately annexed to the Crown of England." 3. "That Great Britain and Ireland are inseparately united under one Sovereign, and under common and indissoluble ties of interest, loyalty, and freedom." Where is the Separatist policy here ? Yet those who accept and adopt the policy of Mr. Grattan are called Separatists. On February 15th, 1782, the Protestant Parliament refused to pass these resolutions. Dr. Spence Watson says : — " But these moderate resolutions would have repealed Poynings' famous law, and the Act of 1720, which confirmed that law, and they were rejected. Other attempts to obtain legislative 6+ independence for Ireland were alike unsuccessful, and in February, 1782, the famous Convention of Dungannon was held. And who were the men attending it ? Why, the Protestant leaders of the Ulster Volunteers, and they it was who, after long and earnest debate, resolved that the claim of any body of men other than the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland to make laws to bind that kingdom was unconstitutional, illegal, and a grievance. But they went further than this, those Ulster men, a century ago ; they resolved again ' That we hold the right of private judgment in matters of religion, to be equally sacred in others as in ourselves ; that we rejoice in the relaxation of the penal laws against our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects ; and that we conceive the measure to be fraught with the happiest consequences to the union and prosperity of the inhabitants of Ireland.' This Con- vention it was which settled that Ireland should be independent. Grattan again moved and lost his Declara- tion of Independence, but he had not long to wait, for, at the third time of asking, in April of that very year, he carried the day, and the Parliament of Ireland (such as it was) was free and independent." On the 17th of May, Lord Shelburne in the House of Lords, and Mr. Fox in the Commons, moved two resolu- tions, viz.: — 1. "That it is the opinion of this House that the Act of the 6th George I., entitled an Act for the better securing the dependency of Great Britain, ' ought to be repealed.' " 2. "That it is the opinion of this House that it is indispensable to the interests and happiness of both kingdoms that the connection between them should be established by mutual consent upon a 6s solid and permanent footing, and that an humble address should be presented to His Majesty that His Majesty would be graciously pleased to take such measures as His Majesty in His royal wisdom should think most conducive to that important end." George HI. and his ministers had just lost America to the English Crown by their insane measures of repression and their unwise restrictions and impositions, and yielding to the force of circumstances rather than to the dictates of right, they were now induced to try and save Ireland to the Crown by granting to her Parliamentary freedom. The required acts were soon passed, and while the Iiish Parlia- ment felt that it was again free, the Irish people rejoiced that their national claims were once more recognised. What had been refused to justice was yielded to fear. While England had power and a free hand, she dragged the Irish nation a captive at her chariot wheels. But now England was embroiled in , foreign wars. The navies of the world were marshalled against her. Her wars in America, India, and Spain, where she had to meet not only the native forces of the countries, but also the men whom her unjust laws had driven into exile, compelled her to withdraw her military forces from Ireland, and leave the people there to arrange for their own defence. This was soon done. Volunteers poured in to swell the ranks of defenders until from the 40,000 who were immediately enrolled they swelled to the number of 80,000. These were confined to Protestants, but the Catholics were permitted to send contributions, and nobly did they aid by their money and sympathy in the formation of this Volunteer Army. Four years after, the Convention of the People, aided by the Volunteers at Dungannon, demanded the enfranchise- 66 ment of the Irish Parliament, and as the armies of England were otherwise engaged, or were either wearied or dimin- ished by the long foreign strife, the English Government consented to the establishment of Grattan's Parliament. " What had been denied to justice was granted to fear." Grattan said: — "Ireland's progress was from injuries to arms, and from arms to liberty." Mr. ScRUTON says : — " What England had refused to reason she gave to fear, and the armed volunteers obtained from England what eloquence in Parliament had not been able to do. When first the removal of restrictions on Irish trade was suggested, every town in England went mad, Burke was turned out of his seat at Bristol for even suggesting that there was anything in the Irish demands. It was said at the time that a * foreign invasion could scarcely have created a greater panic' But the Protestants and Catholics in Ireland united in their demands. Grattan, himself an Irish Protestant, said, 'The Irish Protestant could never be free till the Irish Catholic had ceased to be a slave,' and he asked his Protestant brethren the question, * Are we to be a Protestant settlement, or an Irish nation?' England was at that time engaged in a war with France, and, owing to the demand for troops for the French and American wars, she had none to spare for Ireland. The Protestants got leave to volunteer and to arm, and the Protestants of Ulster — 'Loyal Ulster' — were the foremost in arming. These volunteers, as they were called, once armed, rapidly grew in numbers to fifty thousand men, and they used their arms and the weakness of the English Government to demand by armed force what England had refused to eloquence. The Dublin Volunteers paraded the streets of Dublin with two cannons, labelled ' Free Trade, pr This,' and under this pressure in 1779-80 Lord North 67 gave the Irish partial Free Trade. Then the Irish Parlia- ment refused to vote supplies to England. As the member who moved that resolution said: 'England has sown her laws in dragons' teeth ; they have sprung up in armed men.' They had risen now to eighty thousand, and the Lord Lieutenant was obliged to confess that he had no authority in Ireland. In 1781 the English army, under Lord Cornwallis, surrendered to the insurgents in America, at York Town, and the next year delegates from 143 Ulster regiments met in the Church at Dungannon, and unani- mously passed a resolution in favour of legislative independence, complete Free Trade, and complete religious toleration. That was ' Loyal Ulster.' Under this pressure the English Parliament unanimously accepted the legislative independence of Ireland, and the Act of 1783, in which they granted that independence, is a curious one in the light of the present debates. It sets forth that 'the right to be bound only by laws enacted by His Majesty and the Parliament of Ireland shall be, and is hereby declared to be established for ever,and shall at no time hereafter be questioned.' * For ever' was eighteen years."* The Irish Parliament in its constitution was very similar to the British one, and seemed either to have been originally formed on its model, or else to have been inspired by the same mind. The Poyning's Act was modified, but not repealed, in 1782. It was decided that no bills " should be originated, or altered, or suppressed by the Privy Council, but, before any bill passed by both Houses of the Irish Parliament should receive the assent of the Lord Lieutenant, as the King's representative, the consent of the Sovereign, under the great seal of England was necessary." * Public Lecture. Grattan's Parliament was therefore a Parliament held in Dublin, with the right to initiate and formulate legis- lation regulating the internal administration of Ireland, but it did not claim to make the legislation law, until it had received the assent of the Sovereign, and was stamped by the Monarch's desire with the great seal of England and the great seal of Ireland. Defects of the Parliament. The Parliament thus freed was full of defects, yet the Irish people could say of it as Touchstone said of his wife, ** She is a poor one, but mine own." It was solely a Protestant Parliament, and largely consisted of placemen and representatives of pocket boroughs. It needed reform to free it from the defects of its dominant class character, and from the faults which its exclusiveness had engendered since the abolition of the rights of Roman Catholic citizens. It needed reform and purity, which can only be realised when bribery is proclaimed -to be, not only a political crime, but also a penal one. Mr. Grattan said, in the Irish House of Commons, in 1793: — "I will advert to the state of your representation. Of three hundred members above two hundred are returned by individuals ; from forty to fifty are returned by ten persons. Several of your boroughs have no resident electors at all ; some of them have but one, and on the whole two-thirds of the representatives in the House of Commons are returned by less than one hundred persons." Previously, in 1790, Mr. Grattan said ; — '*The number of placemen and pensioners sitting in this house equal nearly one-half of the whole efficient body." Mr. CuRRAN, in the same debate, said: — "I rise in an assembly of three hundred persons, one hundred of whom have places and pensions." , Thomas Sheridan cried : — " Are there not many among us who could not find the way to the place they represent, who never saw a constituent, who were never in the borough, who at times cannot remember the name of it ? " Mr. ScRUTON, quoting the statistics of the times, says: — "In several of the boroughs there was no elector living ; in others there was only one. There was naturally a tremendous amount of bribery and corruption. Eighty- six pocket boroughs had been bought by grants of peer- ages and pensions ; twelve represented pocket boroughs that the Government had owned ; forty-four were place- men who held positions of advantage, and voted for the Government in return ; thirty-two members had promises not yet fulfilled, and had to vote on this occasion to earn their rewards ; and twelve only out of the hundred and eighty-six were put down as not having been registered among the applicants for peerages, places, or pensions, and as supporting the Government on public grounds. There was the regular opposition of eighty-two, of whom thirty were pocket boroughs, that had not yet been bought, but were in the market. Fifty-two represented the popular party, and there were thirty-two waverers. And so on, through a long list of names. Then there was no responsible Ministry. The Lord Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary were responsible, not to the Irish but to the English Parliament, so that if the Irish House condemned them they had only to come back to England and account to their masters — the English Parliament," 70 The English Government, during this time, bribed and influenced the members of the Irish ParHament, in order that reforms might be retarded, doubtless fearing that any large measures of land reform, or of extended representation, would open up the way to an interference with the arrogant privileges of the landlords and aristocrats in England. What Ireland Needed. There were two measures that were urgently needed, and these were pressed to the front. The one was Parlia- mentary Reform, and the other was the Emancipation of the Roman Catholics, and their recognition as citizens of the State. The Irish Executive was composed of English people and was not favourable to either measure of reform. In 1793, however, Catholics were allowed to vote for Protestant representatives, but were themselves excluded from the position. The Execu- tive feared reform, lest it should lose its hold over the Parliament, and should find its bribes thrown back into its lap by independent and honest members. The Volunteers met in Dublin, in October, 1783, to consider the questions of Reform and Emancipation, and while agreeing to the necessity of the former, differed as to whether representation should be extended to Catholics. Fiord said No! "for it would lead to the Disestablishment of the Protestant Church." Grattan said Yes ! *' for it is just to them." But these Protestant Volunteers opposed Grattan, and the result was, that the Volunteers losing their popular support, dwindled rapidly away. In 1785, Mr. Pitt's administration favoured a further extension of Free Trade, and on February 12th, Grattan presented to 71 the Irish Parliament resolutions in favour of it. But the opposition in England was so strong that Pitt had to yield, and re-cast three of the provisions, which made the bill of little worth to the Irish. In December, 1792, a Catholic Convention was held in Dublin. Representatives came from all parts of the country, and petitioned the Crown for enfranchisement. A number of them were appointed to bear the petition to London, and to present it to the King. He received it graciously, and through his Ministers, promised that the Catholic claims should be recommended in the Royal Address to both Houses of Parliament. But all this rosy prospect was unrealised. And the small measure passed in 1793, came too late to stop the flowing indignation of the people. Mr. Green says, "The hope of conciliation was lost in the fast rising tide of religious and social passion. An Association of United Irishmen begun among the Protestants of Ulster, with a view of obtaining Parliamentary Reform, drifted into a correspondence with France and projects of insurrection. The Catholic peasantry brooding over their misery and their wrongs, were equally stirred by the news from France, and their discontent broke out in the outrages of ' Defenders ' and * Peep-o'-day ' boys who held the country in terror." The teachings of the French Revolution, the leaders of which had not yet violated their principles by the deeds of blood and shame which make humanity shudder as it thinks of them, now began to be learned in Ireland. P>eedom began to inspire the lives of men, in the North and the South, and hope which, previous to 1783, had been crushed under the heavy weight of the nation's misery, now began to show its vigorous and growing life. 72 Excuse for Deaying Remedies. Wolfe Tone, a young Protestant barrister, of brilliant gifts, became the head of the movement for bringing pressure to bear upon a lethargic and selfish Government. His ideal purpose was to form a union of the whole Irish people, without local or religious distinctions. For a time the movement was kept within the limits of the law, but, ultimately it bade defiance to it. The Attorney- General — Fitzgibbon, afterwards called Lord Clare — said in a speech : — " The poor people of Munster live in a more abject state of poverty than human nature can be supposed able to bear ; their miseries are intolerable, but the legislature cannot stand by to see them take the redress in their own hands. Nothing can be done for their benefit while the country remains in a state of anarchy." This has been the excuse for delaying remedial legislation until the present time. Coercion bills and Crime bills have affected to be a remedy for disorder, and have been pushed through the Houses of Parliament with the utmost speed that Governments could command ; but remedial legislation has followed tardily and limpingly, as though afraid to follow too closely on the heels of its fiercer com- petitor. Statesmen who have been furious in their desire to hasten repressive measures, have been cool and slow in their movements when the reform of abuses has been taken in hand, and when the starving and suffering population have piteously cried for the removal of the class privileges which have caused their want and misery. ** Let them be quiet," has been the cry, when Ireland has been in earnest in asserting her grievances. " We can do nothing for the Irish until they are peaceable and still," has been the declaration of Statesmen. But when quietude has reigned — the quiet not of apathy, but of sullen despair — the 73 same parties have cried, *' Ireland is contented and quiet, and must not be agitated by fresh political measures." There is a story told of a Welshman, in the days when men were hung for trivial offences, who was being taken in a cart to be hanged by the neck. As the cart was proceeding, the wife of the condemned man — a woman of weak intellect — pushed through the crowd, and cried " Davie, where shall I plant the potatoes next year ?" " Plant them at Jericho," said the exasperated man. The woman, as she retreated weeping, cried out, " Our Davie's in a bad temper because he's going to be hung." The Governments of our country have been like the weak witted woman, they have complained that the people of Ireland have been in a "bad temper" because bad laws and the tyrannies of landlordism have condemned so many of them to misery and death. But would we have acted any differently if our rights had been persistently crushed, if our claims had been continuously disregarded, and ii our cries had been drowned by the clamour of our oppressors ? The way to have put Davie in a good temper \yould have been to revoke the sentence of death, help him to live a noble life, and let him plant the potatoes with his own hand. And the true way to silence the agitation of Ireland is to give the Irish people juster laws, and larger opportunities of securing national prosperity and national joy. Lord Fitzwilliam's Proposals. Lord Fitzwilliam was next sent out as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. He immediately secured the favour of the Irish, for he was known to be a broad-minded and sympa- thetic statesman and a gentle and honest administrator. 74 He evidently believed that concessions to the down- trodden Catholics was to be a part of governmental policy. He was sustained in this belief, not only by the present assurances of Mr. Pitt, but also by the policy to which he had given his sanction in the past. In a letter to the Prime Minister, Lord Fitzwilliam declared that half- measures of reform were of no use, and that *'to make a reservation is to leave a splinter in the wound." He recommended firstly a full measure of Catholic Emancipation, and then one of Parliamentary Reform. He removed certain agents, who were obnoxious to the Irish, from the Castle, and held out to the Catholics hopes of final pacifiation. But before he could face one of the remedial measures foreshadowed by him he was recalled. Not three months elapsed before the Beresford and Jocelyns and other lordly houses secured his removal from the post he so nobly adorned. Pitt's policy had changed. He did not like the independence of the Irish Parliament, and Mr. Lecky does not mince his opinions on the subject when he asserts that Pitt's object was to bring the Irish Parliament into contempt that he might destroy it altogether. Earl Fitzwilliam's letter is a notable one. In urging the Government to let him have a free hand in dealing with Catholic Emancipation, he says: — ** Equality is already granted in the Act of 1793. It remains to be considered whether the symbol of it shall be granted or withheld. The peace, tranquility, and harmony of the country may now be sealed and secured for ever. "^^ * Mr. Grattan's plan is a short and simple one. First, a general repeal of all restrictive and qualify- ing laws ; that done, to alter the oaths, that the people may be made one Christian people, binding themselves by one civil oath in a common cause. You will ask do I 75 mean to carry the principle to the full extent of a general capacity for every office ? I certainly do for all not regal or ecclesiastical. These I reserve, and these only. I would not reserve the highest office in the State — not the Seals nor the Bench." Result of Fitzwilliam's Recall. Fair promises were thus again broken, and the Catholics were thrown into consternation at the recall of Earl Fitzwilliam. The united Irishmen under Wolfe Tone having become impatient of the law's delay, the insolence of office, and the spurns which patient merit of the un- worthy had been obliged to take ; maddened by the hope- less appeals made by them to the Government, and losing all faith in those who had violated the most sacred assur- ances, they, in spite of Grattan, Curran, and Flood, burst into open rebellion. Insurrection. In October, an Insurrection Act was passed. The Habasus Corpus Act was suspended. The Protestant land- owners, and their fanatical friends who had been known as Peep-o-Day Boys, now took the name of Orangemen, and marshalled themselves on the side of the English Government. They raised forces, banded themselves together in secret conclaves, and held the North of Ireland down by terror and bloodshed. English troops poured into the country, and free quarters were given to the soldiery in every proclaimed district. The forces under Sir R. Abercrombie were vile and violent, and by their brutal outrages incited many of the people to rebel. The General said of them that they were *' in a state of licentiousness" which rendered them ** formidable to 76 everyone but the enemy." He resigned his commission in disgust. Lord Cornwallis himself referred to *' the ferocity of our troops who delight in murder," and he said, ** the conversation even at my table, where you will suppose I do all I can to prevent it, always turns on hanging, shooting, murder, &c." Of the free quarters of the soldiery he said, that it "comprehended rape and robbery throughout the whole country." In the struggle, the Protestant forces, ruled by landowners and representa- tives of the wealthy and dominant classes, .brought them- selves into notoriety for their cruelty and cowardice. Lord Cornwallis described them as " contemptible before the enemy when any serious resistance is made to them, but ferocious and cruel in the extreme when any poor wretches, either with or without arms, come within their power." In the struggle, the losses were large. At least seventy thousand persons are said to have perished. Pitt's Opportunity. Then Mr. Pitt seized what he regarded as a golden opportunity, and when martial law reigned, by bribery and corruption he purchased a Legislative Union. But the people of Ireland were not consulted about this Union, and had they been allowed to choose for themselves, they would have indignantly repudiated it. Mr. Bright has stated that the Union was secured " by proceedings disgraceful and corrupt to the last degree." And in this statement he is supported by every clear and careful historian. No one has the audacity to assert that it was a Union of the two peoples. A nation was sold by its servile Parliament, who took with free hand, bribes which enabled the members to roll in luxury, and the enslaved and bartered people were compelled to pay the financial price of their own sale. 77 The Act of Union had to be followed by a bill, empower- ing the Government to raise, by taxation, the money they had spent in strangling the Irish Parliament ; and the King gave his consent for a people to be taxed to pay bribes to the men who had traitorously slain the freedom and independence of their country. Mr. Green says of Mr. Pitt: — ** Disgusted at the bigoted fury of Irish Protestants, he determined to put an end to the farce of Independence, which left Ireland help- less in their hands." Doubtless he intended to make the Union a real one — one of common interest and brother- hood, and of mutual sympathy. He proposed therefore to follow up the Union by the removal of all Catholic disabilities, and to give to Catholics and Dissenters a perfect equality of civil rights. He suggested that, instead of the sacramental test, the British Parliament should secure political fidelity by an oath of allegiance and loyalty to the Constitution. To conciliate the Established Church, he proposed measures for strengthening its means of discipline, and for increasing the stipends of its poorer ministers. Many of his proposals were similar to those suggested by Earl Fitzwilliam ; but there was this great difference, that while the Earl would have given these things to a people whose House of Representatives had been purified, popularised, and freed from unwise inter- ference on the part of the English Governors, the Premier was only willing to give them to a people who were deprived of their separate legislature, and were held powerless by the preponderating votes of representatives, most of whom were ignorant of the requirements of Ireland, or were held in bondage by the chains of personal and class selfishness. But the King and the high Tories of the day would not go as far to conciliate the Irish 78 people as Pitt himself desired to go. George III., with the bigotry and stupidity for which he is so renowned, declared that he would break his coronation oath were he to consent to these proposals. Pitt resigned ; the oppor- tunity passed ; and when he returned again to power, he left the Catholics to their fate, with the result that they remained in civil bonds until a threatened revolution in 1829 forced the Duke of Wellington to grant Catholic emancipation. Professor Blackie says that " The authors of this agitation (in Ireland) were not the demagogues but the aristocracy ; as indeed in all cases of general discontent, social fret, and illegal violence, the parties who are accused of stirring up class against class are not the agitators who appear on the scene, but the mal-administrators who made their appearance necessary. Man is an animal naturally inclined to obey, and to take things quietly ; insurrection is too expensive an aifair to be indulged in by way of recreation, and there is no truth in the philosophy of history more certain than that whenever the multitude of the ruled rebel against their rulers, the original fault — I do not say the whole blame, for as things go from bad to worse, there may be blame and blunders on both sides — but the original fault and germinative cause of discontent and revolt unquestionally lies with the rulers." Mr. Froude, in speaking of the Irish Parliament, calls it *' an absurd caricature " ; and Lord Brabourne, in his article , denouncing Mr. Gladstone in Blackwood's Magazine, says, "Absurd or not, it had the spirit to refuse the Reform Bill, which Flood presented as the mouthpiece of the Convention. But this was done by the initiative and in support of the British Government." 79 English Interference with the Irish Parliament. Yes ! that is the open secret. The British Govern- ment continued to interfere and to stop Reform after Mr. Grattan and Mr. Fox had secured parliamentary freedom in Ireland, and the necessity of the rebellion which afforded Mr. Pitt a pretext for filching from Ireland her Parliament was caused by the corrupt influence of the British Government in preventing Reform. Mr. Goldwin Smith says : — ** The system of Irish Government after the declaration of independence probably became more profligate than ever; the Castle contended with its increased difficulties by an increase of bribery; the country nominally independent, was in fact, a dependency governed by corruption and intrigue." The Times newspaper in January, 1886, referring to this period, says: — **The administrative isolation of the Executive Government, supported on the one hand by Protestant ascendency in intimate and self-protective alliance with Protestant England, and on the other by vast powers of patronage unscrupulously exercised, and fettered by no legislative restrictions, was a security for the maintenance of union with Great Britain, which could not by any conceivable expedients be reproduced." What regretful tones ! Would it be desirable to resort to this condition of bribery and unscrupulous exercise of patron- age } The governing power in the country was a small minority not in sympathy with the great mass of the people (men who belonged to a class and a religion opposed to the majority of the nation) ; and yet so great was the pressure of the nation's requirements that these 8o men would have yielded but for the selfishness and cor- ruption of their nature, stirred up by the bribes of the English governors and officials. The two systems of government clashed. The British Government still desired all legislation to be drawn up in the interests of privilege, of landlordism, and of the aristocracy ; the Irish Reformers wanted the interests of the people to be chiefly considered ; and in the shock of these two systems of government,Ireland lost her Parliament. Mr. Lecky, in his latest volume, has given abundant evidence proving the interference of the English Govern- ment with the Irish Parliament. He shows that the Duke of Portland when he was Lord Lieutenant tried to fix **the precise limits of parliamentary independence, the con- sideration which should be given for the protection expected, and the share it would be proper for them to contribute towards the general support of the Empire." But Mr. Lecky says that his *' secret correspondence shows" that he was really aiming "to regain for England a very large part of the legislative supremacy which had been surrendered." Mr. Parsons, afterwards Earl of Rosse, in 1790, says : — *' The acquisitions of 1782 freed this country from internal power but not from internal malversation. On the contrary, this country has been governed worse since then than ever it was before, and why ? Because of these very acquisitions It has been the object of English Ministers ever since to countervail what we ob- tained at that period, and substitute a surreptitious and clandestine influence for the open power which the English Legislature was then obliged to relinquish." Mr. Lecky shows further that one-eighth of the public revenue of Ireland was divided between the Mem- bers of Parliament, and he declares that " The men who had been most opposed to the Constitution of 1782, were the men who were employed to administer it, and they did so almost avowedly with the purpose of keeping Parliament in complete and habitual subservience to the English Ministers." And again, — **The Irish Government was completely subordinated to the play of party government in England. An Irish administration which commanded the full confidence of the Irish Parliament, might, at any moment, be overthrown by a vote in the English Parliament, on some purely English question. Well might Mr. Gratton say — ** The Ministers sell your Lords and buy your Commons." And Mr. Lecky declares that *' it consisted almost entirely of landlords, lawyers, and placemen." That there was little hope of anything being done by such a body, one may suppose, until the pressure of the English Government, reduced by its Continental broils, allowed the weight of Irish agitation to be duly felt. Chance possibilities of English difficulties with Continental and Oriental powers alone offered to Ireland a possibility of relief. How THE Act of Union was Secured. To secure the Union, a million sterling was spent in bribes ; a million and a half was expended in buying up the interest that aristocrats claimed to have in the represen- tation of boroughs. As much as ;^8ooo was given for a vote, while other members, wiser in their generation, secured pensions for their services at the rate of ;!f2ooo a year. Twenty peerages, ten bishoprics, one chief- justiceship, and twelve judgeships were given to the men who had voted for the Union. People who met to protest 82 were treated as rebels ; the military charging and scattering public meetings and demonstrations. Twenty-seven out of thirty-two counties sent petitions against the Union. In County Down 17,000 petitioned against it, and only 415 for it. In the whole country the petitioners against it numbered 700,000, and the petitioners for it only 3000. The information on this subject, supplied in Mr. Lecky's book — "Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland" — is very instructive. If the Parliament had failed to advance the interests of the country, the blame might be laid at the doors of those who interfered wdth the representatives, and, by bribery, corrupted them. But, in spite of great defects and limitations, of class representation and veniality on the part of the members of Parliament, the freedom of the country grew, and the prosperity of the country ad- vanced. Pitt's Argument for the Union. When Mr. Pitt spoke in favour of the Union, what was his plea ? He admitted the prosperity of Ireland, and then argued that, "As Ireland is so prosperous under her own Parliament, we can calculate that the amount of her prosperity will be trebled under a British Legislature.'' He omitted from his calculation a most important item. He did not note that freedom and self-government are powerful factors in establishing that confidence which is so necessary to advancement. An old writer, centuries ago, was astute enough to observe that "wingless bees make no honey ;" and modern experience has shown that slave labour is not so productive as free labour, and that nations upon whose limbs fetters are placed, do not take the rapid strides which are easily taken by nations that are contented and free. 83 Ireland's Prosperity under her own Parliament. In 1785 the Irish sent into England goods to the value of two millions and a half, and received back goods valued at one million. In 1797, after fifteen years of Home Rule, Ireland sent into England more than ;^3, 000,000 worth of linen and linen yam, and between /'z, 000, 000 and /^3, 000, 000 value of provisions and cattle, besides corn and other articles of produce, while she still imported from England only ;^i, 000,000 worth of English goods, raising on her own soil what the inhabitants needed besides. The Testimonies of the '* Respectable " Classes. Lord Clare — the Tory Fitzgibbon — in 1798 said: — ** There is not a nation on the habitable globe which has advanced in cultivation — in manufactures, with the same rapidity, in the same period — (from 17^2 to 1798), as Ireland." Lord Grenville said in 1797 ''that the Irish had created a commerce with which they were before un- acquainted, and had extended their manufactures, and what they esteemed still more valuable, had obtained a free constitution." Mr. Grey, afterwards Lord Grey, in 1 799, in talking of the increase in industry and wealth in England during the period of Ireland's Parliamentary freedom, said that " there was nothing in the advancement of England to parallel the progress of Ireland." Lord Sheffield also stated that " perhaps the improvement of Ireland is as rapid as any country ever experienced." Mr. Plunkett, in 1799, spoke of Ireland as *" A little island with a population of four or five millions of people, * See Swift McNeill's "Irish Industries." 84 hardy, gallant, and enthusiastic ; possessed of all the means of civilization, agriculture, and commerce well pursued and understood ; a constitution fully recognised and established ; her revenues, her trade, her manufactures thriving beyond her hope, or the example of any other country of her extent, within these few years advancing with a rapidity astonishing even to herself, not complain- ing of deficiency in these respects but enjoying and acknowledging her prosperity." The Bankers of Dublin in 1798 passed the following resolutions : — " Resolved — That since the renunciation of the power of Great Britain in 1782 to legislate for Ireland, the commerce and prosperity of this kingdom have eminently increased." ** Resolved — That we attribute these blessings under Providence to the wisdom of the Irish Parlia- ment." *The Guild of Merchants met January 14th, 1799, and resolved as follows : — 1. "That the commerce of Ireland has increased and her manufactures improved beyond example since the independence of the kingdom was restored in 1782." 2. "That we look with abhorrence on any attempt to deprive the people of Ireland of their Parliament and thereby of their constitutional right and immediate power to legislate for themselves." Mr. Jebb, afterwards a Justice of the Court of King's Bench in Ireland, in 1798 published a pamphlet in which he says — ** In the course of fifteen years our commerce, * O'Connell's Defence in 1844. I 85 our agriculture, and our manufactures have swelled to an amount that the most sanguine friends of Ireland could not have dared to prognosticate." A Parliamentary document shows that from 1785 to the time of the Union, the increase of luxuries in Ireland greatly exceeded the rate of increase in England, and if the growing wealth of a nation is shown by the increase of its comforts and luxuries, then the figures which follow will tell their own tale : — Increase in consumption of Teas . . England 45 percent.; Ireland 84 per cent. Tobacco ,, 64 ,, ,, 100 Wines . . „ 52 „ „ 74 Sugar . . „ 53 „ „ 57 Coffee . . ,, 75 ,, .,, 600 Daniel O'Connell contended that "no country ever so rapidly improved as Ireland did during that period." Mr. Lecky has made several very forcible statements respecting the work of the Irish Parliament. He says that during the eighteenth century the Irish Parliament was on the whole "a vigilant and intelligent guardian of the material interests of the country " ; and further, that ** during the greater part of the century it indeed had little power except that of protecting the people against the law crushing Irish produce, but what little it could do it appears to have done. Its journals show a minute attention to industrial questions, to the improvement of means of communication, and to the execution of public works." 86 What the Union has Cost England and Ireland. This was the Parliament which was strangled by jobbery, corruption, and the intolerant jealousy and craven fears of the privileged classes of England and Ireland. Its destruc- tion was an iniquity, and the results of it were disastrous to both nations. It left the one nation full of bitterness, and of the dissatisfaction which always springs from a sense of injustice. It left to the other nation a terrible legacy of care and disunion. The union of the Parliaments resulted in the disunion of the peoples of the two counties, and it caused the Imperial Parliament to groan under a weight of difficulties which have destroyed its efficiency. The privi- leged classes gained for a time their purpose. They were able to retain their power,and frustrate and retard measures which were calculated to distribute wealth, and elevate the democ- racy of both countries. The English Masses had no representation, and cannot, with justice, be charged with complicity in the crime. The Union was a blunder in conception, and it was secured by fraud, misrepresentation, and physical force. It alienated Irish sympathies from England. It weakened the power of the Empire. It raised an enemy at the very doors of the British Citadel. It delayed great questions of reform, and it threw Ireland again into destitution, misery and rebellion. What was required, was, not the exasperating policy of Pitt ; not the demolition of the Irish structure of Government ; but the reform and purification of the Irish Parliament. For if, under so antiquated and restricted a Parliamentary representation, the country had thriven, what would it have done if all the posts of the nation had been thrown open to the highest merit, irrespective of creed or class, and if the voice of the masses had been heard in the 87 elections of the day; and what would it have done if the English had allowed Irish genius to work out the great problem of happy and safe self-government, without unwise and jealous interference ? The difficulties of to-day may be traced to the wrongs of the past, and to the stings left in the Irish heart, by the tyranny, cruelty, and crimes of the past, and the fraternity, fellowship, and true union of the nations can never be fully realised, until the wfongs of Ireland are righted, until resentment is lost in a friendship born of confidence, and until the reign of darkness is for- gotten in a brighter reign of freedom, justice, and love. I listened with much satisfadlion to two of the Ledures included in this little work on the government of Ireland. The Author then spoke clearly, ably, and temperately on behalf of a people with whom I sympathise warmly, and nothing but good can come from presenting in a printed form the fads and opinions he then advanced. On no subjed is information, honest and reliable, more needed than on the Irish Question in all its phases, and the Rev. S. Lloyd has made a useful contribution to the discussion of this question in the book now presented to the public. T. Wayman. Saville Close, Halifax, January 315^ 1888. PART II. IRELAND UNDER THE ACT OF UNION. FROM PITT TO GLADSTONE. In 1799 Mr. Pitt declared that the great object of the Union was to tranquilise Ireland and attach it to the larger island. He asserted his desire to make Ireland an integral part of the British Empire, and to bind all the inhabitants of the British Islands together in the bonds of common interest, and of mutual sympathy and friendship. In doing this he ignored the arguments and warning of the Irish leaders, and scouted the fears openly expressed by those who knew best the feelings and opinions of the majority of the Irish people. Henry Grattan's words were full of wisdom and forethought. In one of his great efforts to prevent the Parliamentary amalgamation he said : — *'The reform of Parliament, you say, and Catholic Emancipation are only pretexts ; the object you say is separation, and here you exact unconditional submission, you must " subdue before you reform." Indeed ! Alas you think so ! But you forget you subdue by reforming. It is the best conquest you can obtain over your own people. But let me suppose you succeed in " subduing before you reform," what is your success ? A military 90 government, a perfect despotism, a hapless victory over the principles of a mild government and a mild consti- tution—a Union. But what may be the ultimate conse- quence of such a victory — a Separation." These words may be commended to those who, in the present political struggle, declare their fear of a separation, and if more be needed, Daniel O'Connell's words are emphatic. He said in a speech delivered in 1813 : — ** Your enemies say that I wish for a separation between England and Ireland. The charge is false. It is, to use a modern expression, as false as hell ; and the men who originated it, and the men who inculcate it, know its false- hood. There lives not a man less desirous of separation between the two countries. There lives not a man more deeply convinced that the connection between them, based on one King and two separate Parliaments, would be of the utmost value to the happiness of both countries." If Mr. Pitt's desire was a pure one, he was unfortunate in the means he adopted for securing it, and also in the fact that he abandoned the ameliorative plans which had been foreshadowed and promised before the Par- liament of Ireland consented to extinguish its own separate life. He was also unfortunate in choosing a scheme of government to which the patriots of the day objected, and against which the leaders of the people have protested through all the years since the Act of Union was passed. That Mr. Pitt purposed to pass other measures may be clearly seen, but he was foiled in his attempts by the resistance of his own party, and the refusal of the King. Pitt's Surrender to the King. Sir James Graham said : — •* Mr. Pitt was ready to do the right thing at the right time, but genius gave way 91 madness, and two generations have in vain deplored the loss of an opportunity." The importance he attached to the Union may be seen from the inducements he held out in order to buy off the opposition of members of the Established Church, and of the Presbyterian ministers who had become closely allied with the National Party. To the former he guaranteed increased stability to the ecclesiastical insti- tutions ; and to the latter a large increase of the Regium Donum, which would make them independent of the subscriptions of their churches. His assurance of reforms favourable to the Catholics did not, however, conciliate them as may be seen from the first great speech of Daniel O'Connell, in which he said, amid the applause of an audience composed of many leading lawyers and commer- cial men, that ** The Catholics will show every friend of Ireland that they are incapable of selling their country,'' and that ** he would rather confide in the justice of his brethren, the Protestants of Ireland, who had already liberated him, than lay his country at the feet of foreigners." That Mr. Pitt was wishful to secure the Catholic interest may be seen from his proposal to endow the Catholic Clergy in Ireland, to mitigate the tithe-hardships, and to ensure the emancipation of Catholics from injustice and iniquities. He therefore retired from office, to return, however, after a brief interval, ignoring all his previous promises and protestations, and surrendering the plans he had carefully drawn up. An insane King, and a blind and bigoted party, prevented a Statesman from making the Union of Parliament a real union of the peoples, and the most powerful minister of the day, who could not long have been resisted had he persisted ii; his purposes, 0^^f'''y 0 92 ingloriously surrendered his convictions and tarnished his statesmanship at the call of the King and his henchmen. The objection of the King, sustained by Lord Lough- borough, and denied by Lord Kenyon and Sir John Scott (afterwards Lord Eldon), was that to grant Catholic Emanci- pation would be a violation of his Coronation oath, and that the throne would therefore properly revert to the Stuart line. On a copy'of his memorandum of 1795, he wrote, referring to Earl Fitzwilliam's proposals, ''And I, feeling the duty I owe to my coronation oath, would not have given my assent to any Bill that had but a shadow of putting Papists and Presbyterians in a state of equality with the Church of England."* Genius versus Madness. When Mr Pitt resigned, the King became ill, and on his recovery sent a message to Mr. Pitt by his physician — " Tell Mr. Pitt I am now quite recovered from my illness ; but what has he not to answer for, who is the cause of my having been taken ill at all ? " Mr. Shaw-Lefevre says: — "Pitt was profoundly affected by this, and determined not to press the question further." The King's tendency to madness therefore became a potent factor in the continued enforcement of unjust and unequal laws upon the Catholic population of the Empire. How many Catholics were driven mad by the injustice is not stated. There is one thing that must surprise all readers of history, and that is, that the people of Ireland did not renew the civil war, and from North to South burst into open conflict. An attempt was made, it is true, but it was * Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors, quoted by Right Hon. G. J. Shaw-Lefevre — " Peel and O'Connell," page 13. 93 feeble and abortive. This can only be explained by the fact that the people of Ireland had become dispirited and scattered, and were held by sullen despair in the bonds of inaction. Others looked upon the Parliamentary Union as an experiment, which they believed to be foredoomed to failure. Mr. C. J. Fox was one of these. He protested against the Union with might and main, and declared his belief in its ineflficacy to meet and remedy the miseries of Ireland ; but when it was passed he was willing to allow the experiment to be tried. His opinion that it would fail has been justified by an experience of eighty-seven years. When presenting the Catholic Petition of 1804 to the House of Commons, Mr. Fox said, in concluding a note- worthy speech : — '* The protestant ascendency has been compared to a garrison in Ireland. It is not in our power to add to the strength of this garrison, but I would convert the beseigers themselves into the garrison." It was not until Daniel O'Connell arose and thun- dered in the ears of the people of Ireland the truth, that they must rouse themselves if they would be free, that they threw off their lethargy and stupor, banded themselves in the ranks of the " Catholic Association," and expressed their determination not to rest until they had swept away the laws and political arrangements which crippled and impeded the free life of every Catholic in the realm. O'Connell never seemed to be tired of crying. " Hereditary bondsmen, know you not Who would be free themselves must strike the blow." When he arose, the Irish were, to use the words of Mr. T. P. O'Connor, " literally aliens in their own country." 94 The Purpose of the Act of Union. Mr. Pitt, in introducing the Act of Union, declared that by it " Ireland was to gain protection in the hour of danger, increase of commerce, command of English capital, and the avenue to honours, distinctions, and ap- pointments in the general service of the empire," and that, while Ireland was to be made "more free and happy," there would also be established " mutual harmony and confidence between the two nations."* The legislative Union was accomplished, according to the words of its author, for a specific purpose. It is, therefore, within the limits of discussion to ask whether the purpose has been accomplished, and if not, what has prevented it ? We have already seen that the Union was secured by fraud and force, and in opposition to the desires of the people of Ireland. Grattan said that " the whole unbribed intellect of Ireland was opposed to the Union." Mr. Lecky and the Union. Mr. Lecky says : — " Whatever may be thought of the abstract merits of the arrangement, the Union as it was carried, was a crime of deepest turpitude." ** In the case of Ireland, as in the case of Poland, a national constitution was destroyed by a foreign power, contrary to the wishes of the people. In the one case the deed was a crime of violence, in the other it was a crime of treachery and corruption. In both cases a legacy of enduring bitterness was the result." Is there not in the iniquity which marked its establishment a suflficient reason for the failure of the Union ? Unrighteousness in individ- ual or national life can never be permanent. It is opposed * See " Peel and O'Connell," by G. J. Shaw-Lefevre, page 2. 95 to the genius of the highest Hfe, both human and Divine. It violates the principles which are the basis of the Gospel, and which are interwoven into the very texture of human nature. Enforced unions founded on unrighteousness, and opposed to truth and love, can never be happy. The ex- perience of life is against it. A rape of violence and cruelty can only bring sorrow to the weaker power, and shame to the stronger one. The History of England and of Ireland, during the present century, proves this, for England has had to bear the shame of keeping Ireland subdued by the overthrow of free institutions and the forcible subjection of all that has been noblest in her national life. Irishmen have felt the sting keenly, and have taken their stand on the several distinct maxims very eloquently announced by Daniel O'Connell in his great speech on " the Repeal of the Union."* O'Coni^ell's Arguments. In that speech he contended that Ireland was fit for legislative independence, and was entitled to it. That the Parliament of Ireland was as ancient as that of England, and had not derived its existence from any charter of the British Crown, but had sprung out of the natural rights of freemen. He asserted that its independence long claimed was finally recognised and confirmed by solemn compact between the nations in 1782. He showed that self-government had not been an idle toy, but an efficient weapon in the hands of Ireland, and had contributed to her progress in manufactures and commerce, and that after the Union Ireland's prosperity steadily declined. Then turning to the Constitutional side of the question, he argued by quotations from great authorities, "that a * O'Connell's Speeches. 96 legislature cannot transfer the power of making laws into other hands, for being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others." He claimed '* that a case of specific fraud and coercion was sufficient to invalidate an indenture in a Court of Law." He then went on to prove that the Union had produced the most disastrous results in Ireland. It had robbed the people of their constitutional right to maintain a control over the conduct of the judiciary and the executive. It robbed them also through the tax-gatherer, by imposing an inordinate share of the public burthen on Ireland. It forced them to submit to an imperfect representation in the House of Commons, to inadequate powers in the Corpora- tions that ruled their cities, and to see the public employ- ments paid by their money given to Englishmen and Scotchmen." He proved also, by elaborate statistics, that the failure of trade, of manufactures, and of commerce, was an immediate result of the iniquitous union. What the people of Ireland have thought of the Union may be seen, however, not only in the speeches of their great leaders, but also in the way in which they have regarded the memory of those who bartered their country's liberties and rights. While Grattan and Curran, and others who opposed the Union are lovingly remembered, Castlereagh, Clare, and Pitt are execrated. There is a story told of Castlereagh that he was one day crossing College Green when he was accosted by an Irish peasant, who said — " My Lord, will it plaze ye to give me sixpence." "What will you do with it .?" said his lordship. " Indeed," was the reply, " I'd trate all the frinds ye 'ave in Ireland with it." Nor can we wonder at this, for Lord Cornwallis expressed his satisfaction when Castlereagh was appointed to the office of 97 Chief Secretary for Ireland, by saying " His appointment gives me great satisfaction, as he is so very unlike an Irishman." The Benevolent Acts of a Paternal Government. The Government of Ireland having passed into the hands of the Parliament in London, was immediately characterised by the introduction of coercive measures. During the first session of the United Parliament, five Coercion Acts were placed upon the Statute Book. Only five months elapsed before a coercion measure was passed, with severer clauses than those which had been carried during the rebelHon of 1798. Mr. T. P. O'Connor, in his able work on the Parnell Movement, says: — "Under the Act of 1800, courts-martial had the right to try prisoners ; two-thirds of the officers could pronounce sentence, and the sentence might be the sentence of death. To encourage these tribunals in doing their duty, the officers were instructed, in the words of the Act, ' to take the most vigorous and effective measures ;' and they received still further encou- ragement by being made absolutely irresponsible ; * no act,' decreed the Legislature, ' done by these tribunals shall be questioned in a court of law.' In 18 17 a modified Insurrection Act was passed, which in some respects was worse than the preceding Acts. A body of justices — that is, of landlords — were entitled to form a tribunal if they were presided over by a Serjeant-at-law or a Queen's Council, and this tribunal had the right to pass sentences varying from one year's imprisonment to seven years* transportation ; they were, like the courts-martial, irres- ponsible, for there was no appeal and no cerlioraii. These courts were employed in the trial of persons described as * idle and disorderly,' and the * idle and disorderly ' were included in the following category : — (i) Anyone found out of his or her dwelling-house between two hours after sunset and sunrise, who could not prove to the satisfaction of the tribunal that he or she was upon his or her * lawful occa- sions'— the mere fact of being out was sufficient authority to a policeman to arrest and detain till trial. (2) Persons taking unlawful oaths, or (3) Having arms, or (4) Found between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. in a public-house or an unlicensed house in which spirituous liquors were sold, and not being inmates or travellers. (5) Persons assembled 'unlawfully and tumultuously.' (6) Persons hawking seditious papers, unless they disclose the persons from whom they received them. It would, of course, be assumed by my readers, especially English readers, that these statutes were severe only in wording or intention and not in practical operation. But there was not one of these Acts which was not carried not only to the full lengths authorized by the words and intentions of the Act but to a large extent farther." The felling of trees brought persons under the juris- diction of a court of landlords, and exposed them to the sentence of seven years' penal servitude. Men were flogged almost to death, and for the most trivial offences whole districts were proclaimed. Attempts to improve the ordinary law were resolutely opposed by the Houses of Commons and Lords, and Daniel O'Connell was thwarted in all his measures for improving the condition of the Irish tenant. 99 *' Between 1825 and 1836 no less than four Acts of Parlia- ment were passed for the purpose of suppressing political organizations which he (O'Connell) had founded, and as the organizations were under the control of O'Connell, it is needless to say that they were legal, constitutional and peaceful in their methods."* The way in which landlords and tenants were treated may be seen from the following table, quoted by Mr. T. P. O'Connor : — For the Landlord. 1800. Habeas Corpus suspended ; Coercion Act. 1801. Habeas Corpus suspended ; two Coercion Acts. 1802. Habeas Corpus suspended ; two Coercion Acts. 1803. Habeas Corpus suspended ; two Acts. 1804. Habeas Corpus suspended. 1805. Habeas Corpus suspended ; one Coercion Act. 1807. February i, Coercion Act. ,, Habeas Corpus suspended ; August 2, Coercion Act. 1808. Habeas Corpus suspended. 1809. Habeas Corpus suspended. 1814. Habeas Corpus suspended ; one Coercion Act. 1815. Habeas Corpus suspended ; Insurrection Act continued. 1816. Habeas Corpus suspended ; first Eviction Act ; Insur- rection Act continued. 1817. Habeas Corpus suspended ; one Coercion Act ; second Eviction Act. 1818. Second Eviction Act. 1820. Third Eviction Act; same year, fourth Eviction Act. 1822. Habeas Corpus suspended ; two Coercion Acts. 1823 to 1828, Habeas Corpus suspended, and one Coercion Act in 1823, 1829. Habeas Corpus suspended. 1830. Habeas Corpus suspended.; Importation of Arms Act. 1831. Whiteboy Act ; Stanley's Arms Act ; fifth Eviction Act. 1832. Importation of Arms and Gunpowder Act. " The Parnell Movement," Page 20. 100 1833- Habeas Corpus suspended ; Suppression of Disturbance Act ; Change of Venue Act. 1834. Habeas Corpus suspended ; Suppression of Disturbance Amendment and Continuance Act ; Importation of Arms and Gunpowder Act. 1835. Public Peace Act 1836. Another Arms Act ; sixth Eviction Act, 1838. Another Arms Act. 1839. Unlawful Oaths Act. 1840. Another Arms Act. 1841. Outrages Act ; another Arms Act. 1843. Another Arms Act; Act consolidating all previous Coercion Acts. 1844. Unlawful Oaths Act. For the Tenant. 1829. Mr. Brownlow's Bill dropped in House of Lords. 1820. Mr. Grattan's demand for an Improvement of Waste Lands Bill refused. 1831. Mr. Smith O'Brien's Bill for the relief of the Aged dropped. 1835. Mr. Sharman Crawford's Bill dropped. 1836. Mr. Sharman Crawford's Bill dropped. Mr. Lynch's Reclamation Bill dropped. 1842. Irish Arterial Drainage Act passed. 1845. Lord Stanley's Bill dropped. ,, Mr. Sharman Crawford's Bill dropped.* Deaths of Pitt and Fox. Mr. Pitt died in 1806, and the Grenville Ministry was formed. Once more the Irish hoped against hope for the the attainment of remedial legislation. Mr. Fox, who had done so much for Irish independence twenty-four years previously, was now the leading force of this Ministry, and it was well known that he was desirous of immediately granting an Act for the Emancipation of the Catholic * " The Parnell Movement," page 22. 101 majority in Ireland ; but the King's stubbornness again stood in the way. Fox promised the Irish members that on the first opportunity he would bring their claims forward. Unfortunately however he died in the same year, when the Act for suspending Habeas Corpus was allowed to run out, and when the Grenville Cabinet proposed a Bill for allow- ing Catholics to hold Commissions in the Army and Navy, the loss of Mr. Fox rendered them impotent to overcome the opposition of the King, and they were driven from office. In 1616 an Act was passed to cheapen evictions, and it was said that "notices to quit have since fallen like snow- flakes." The Union has therefore been further prevented from being ratified and accepted by the people of Ireland in consequence of the failure of English Ministers to keep the most solemn promises ; the delay in reforms that seemed imminent under the Irish Parliament and the in- creased opposition that the Irish representatives had to face in their endeavour to secure for all citizens freedom from unjust legislation, and common equality in law and government. Delay of Catholic Emancipation. Nothing can be clearer in Irish History than that the Emancipation of Catholics was wellnigh attained when the Union was brought about. But twenty-nine years of suff'ering, waiting, and struggle passed before the House of Lords and the English Government gave to the people the boon of Catholic Emancipation. Even then it was declared to be grudgingly yielded and not freely bestowed. Yielded too not to the inherent justice of the Catholic demands, bnt to a base and a craven fear of agitation aiid force. 102 In 1807 Mr. Percival had called Lord Howick's (after- wards Earl Grey) Bill, which was intended to open up fuller careers of usefulness and gloryto the sons of Catholic gentle- men— ** one of the most important and dangerous measures that ever was submitted to the judgment of the Legislature.'' During the whole of the Percival administration, which lasted from 1807 to 18 12, the principle of Catholic exclusion was paramount in the Councils of the Cabinet, just as the principle of refusing to allow the Irish to govern their own country is the only bond of cohesion in the alliance of theTories and Dissentient Liberals in 1 888. The King was urged by Lord Eldon and others to refuse this consent to Lord Howick's bill, and though h-e had previously given that consent, he now withdrew it, and called upon the Government to pledge themselves never again to introduce the measure, or propose anything affecting the Catholic question. This they refused to promise, and resigned their offices. When George IV. was proclaimed Regent, the Catholics expected that they would have his sympathy and aid, inasmuch as he had previously declared his disagree- ment with his father's views on the subject of Catholic Emancipation. They had yet to learn however that the Prince Regent professed to favour the Catholics in sheer opposition to the King, and for the purpose of giving him annoyance. There was no love lost between this parent and his son. The Tories were also at the outset fearful lest the Regent should bestow his favour on the Catholics. But they were soon reassured, for Lord Eldon, the noted Tory lawyer, wrote to a friend that the Regent had become strongly Anti-Catholic, he said : — *'My young master is as eager as his father was upon that, and of the same way of thinking." 103 In 1810, Daniel O'Connell at a crowded meeting called by the requisition of Grand Juries in Dublin, made a great speech, and a petition was drawn up declaring that the Union had been put to the test of experience and had failed. It had produced an increase of distress, and was endangering the connection between the two countries. In 1 8 12 Mr. George Canning carried a resolution in the House of Commons, to the effect " That the House would, early in the next Session, take into its most serious consideration the laws affecting the Roman Catholics." But the Parliament was dissolved later in the year, and Mr. Canning found himself unable to carry out his ame- liorative purpose. It was not until 1821 that a bill for emancipation forced its way through the House of Commons, only how- ever to be contemptuously thrown out by the sworn opponents of the Democracy, who are seated in the gilded chamber. Death of Grattan. Previous to this the great Grattan passed away amidst the regrets of the nation. He was a splendid and repre- sentative patriot, who had walked through life with hands unsullied by political crime or baseness, and his demise left the Irish cause destitute of one of its most eloquent and able supporters. Even England acknowledged his patriotism and greatness, and opened her great mausoleum at Westminster for the reception of his remains. There his body still lies side by side with the body of Charles James Fox. English Statesmen honoured his remains, though they had done all they could to break his noble heart, and had trampled beneath their feet the principles and senti- ments that were dearer to him than life itself. They 104 respected his corpse, but let him die with sorrow in his heart, as he saw the cause for which he had suffered and struggled, openly opposed by the English Governments. In the year 1822 a measure for securing Catholic Emancipation was again passed by the Commons and duly refused by the Lords. This was repeated in 1823 and and 1825. For nineteen years the subject was conscien- ciously brought before Parliament, until in 1824 Daniel O'Connell came forward, and " with the reachings and graspings of a vivacious mind," succeeded in forming the Catholic Association. The Aristocracy and Catholic Emancipation. The action of the House of Lords was sustained by all the titled classes in the country, with few exceptions. The King's brother, the Duke of York, placed himself at the head of the opposition, and declared again and again his determination to resist the claims of the Catholics. Amid uproarious cheers, he declared that whether as subject or sovereign he would ever oppose the Catholic demands, " so help him God." Lord Chancellor Eldon wrote : — " Never was anything like the sensation the Duke of York's speech has made, it has had such an operation upon all ranks of men, that it will create insuperable difficulties to passing the intended measure another year." And again, ** It has placed him on a pinnacle of popularity." In another letter he wrote : — " Dined with the Duke of York. Twenty-four rejoicing Protestants round the table ; we drank the '48 and the year '88, and the glorious and immortal memory. LadyWarwicke and Lady Braybroke would not let their husbands go and vote for the Catholics ; so we Protestants drink daily, as pur favourite toast 'the ladies who locked up their hu§- bands.'" In reading this one must be inclined to think that the letter was written immediately after the dinner, and before its bibulous effects had passed away, and yet it is only a specimen of the way in which the Catholic defeat was signalised. In giving his account of the " Pitt " dinner, Lord Eldon says: — "The company were quite uproarious, they were in such high spirits at the Catholic defeat." That was in 1825, and alas for the prescience of these Statesmen, before four years had passed away, in spite of these '* noble" opponents, the genius of O'Connell, and the strength of the Irish people compelled the Government to consent to the emancipation of the Catholics. In 1827 Lord Liverpool was smitten with paralysis, and Mr. Canning was entrusted with the formation of the Cabinet. He had much difficulty in securing an adminis- tration, for Mr. Robert Peel — afterwards Sir Robert — and the Duke of Wellington refused to act with him, because of his sympathy with the Irish claims and his avowed wish to carry Catholic Emancipation. Again death came to delay the settlement of the question, and the removal of George Canning from this life, put off Catholic Emanci- pation for two years longer. The Clare Election. The Waterford, Monaghan, and Westmeath elections began to make the landlords and the aristocracy awake to the importance of the question. Under the influence of O'Connell, the tenantry of Ireland — the 40/- freeholders, who have done so much in England and Ireland to extend freedom to the masses — went to the polls and steadily voted against the nominees of the landlords. The result was that the Beresfords, the Jocelyns, and the Waterfords io6 were defeated, and a crowning triumph was obtained for the popular party, when O'Connell defeated the Govern- ment candidate, and was returned as member for Clare. The Election was a noticeable one, for while an army waited to put down any semblance of disturbance, the people walked resolutely to the voting booths, held on one day 1500 meetings at the same time, and took vows to abstain from whisky until the election was over, so that no pretext could be advanced by the Government that there had been violence, intimidation, or interference with freedom of voting. For six days the elections continued without disturbance. When Lous XVI. of France was informed of the defection of the French guards, he cried, "This is a revolt." " Sire," said the Duke de Liancourt, ** it is a revolution." And so this defeat of the ministerial party by the despised Catholics was also a revolution, though it was carried out by peaceful methods, and it forced convic- tion to the mind of the Government that the people of Ireland were really in earnest.^' Wellington's Choice. The Duke of Wellington choosing betwen emanci- pation and rebellion, urged the reluctant King to consent to the emancipation of the Catholics, and at last the policy of Grattan and O'Connell was affirmed by the action of the British Parliament. But though the Catholics were freed from their irksome chains, and Government offices were opened to them by Statute law, yet so great was the prejudice against them that it was some time before many of them were recognised as having any claim upon the attention of the higher powers in the realm. Measures * Mr. Godkin — " Land War in Ireland." 107 were also adopted and limitations were introduced which showed how grudgingly the boon had been surrendered. The Catholic Association, which, under the guidance and inspiration of O'Connell, had won the victory, was dis- solved by Parliament. O'Connell had his election at Clare declared void by a phrase inserted in the Emanci- pation Act for this very purpose. The 40/- freeholders were speedily deprived of the franchise. Their power was seen to be too great, and so the representatives of the pri- vileged classes, by raising the qualification, and revising the register in twelve counties, reduced the electorate from 100,000 to 12,000. Altogether 356,000 men who had sustained O'Connell in his work, were penalised at the very moment of their triumph, by the raising of the qualification from 40/- to £10. Wellington's Motives. The Duke of Wellington wrote Peel, and said : — " If I could believe that the Irish nobility and gentry would recover their lost influence, the just influence of property, without making these concessions, I would not move."^' The Irish Catholics have therefore little to thank Wellington and the Tories for, because it is evident from the Duke's own words, that he was seeking the interests' not of the tenantry or the masses of the Irish people, but of the landlords — " the Irish nobility and gentry." King George IV. resisted the measure to the utmost, and on one occasion, after promising his signature to the bill, sen^ to say that the measure gave more than he expected, and he should retract his promise. The Duke of Wellington was the only man in the Ministry who could squeeze this recalcitrant monarch into consenting to keep his promise * Shaw-Lefevre — " Peel and O'Connell," p. 92. io8 and sign the bill. This the Duke only accomplished by threatening to resign, and leave the throne to face the horrors of a revolution. Peel, in his place in Parliament, said in justification of his consenting to the bill: — "I have for years attempted to maintain the exclusion of the Roman Catholics from Parliament and the high offices of the State. I do not think it was an unnatural or unreasonable struggle. I resign it in consequence of the conviction that it can be no longer advantageously maintained ; from believing that there are not adequate materials or sufficient instruments for its permanent or effectual continuance. I yield therefore to a moral necessity which I cannot control, unwilling to push resistance to a point which might en- danger the establishments that I wish to defend." Was there a greater confession of impotence to resist the moral force of justice ever made by a responsible statesman than this. The letter of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland had done much to decide these statesmen, for he saw that to delay the measure meant rebellion, and wrote of the agitation — " You may put to death thousands ; you may suppress it ; but it will only be to put off the day of com- promise, and in the meantime the country is still more impoverished, and the minds of the people are, if possible, still more alienated." These words are full of meaning at the present time, when Nationalist leaders are crowded into prisons and compelled, by sheer brute force, to wear the felon's garb. Compare the language of Lord Eldon with that of Dr. Arnold. The nobleman says : — " If a Roman Catholic is ever admitted to form part of the Legislature, or to hold 10^ any of the great offices of the State, from that moment the sun of Great Britain is set for ever." Did ever bigotry inspire more senseless frothing than this. The noble-hearted Educationalist, whose work at Rugby will live for ever in the memory of the English people, writes in a far different strain. He says: — "It is the direct duty of every Englishman to support the claims of the Roman Catholics of Ireland, even at the hazard of injuring the Protestant Establishment : because those claims cannot be rejected without great injustice ; and it is a want of faith in God and an unholy zeal to think that He can be served by injustice, or to guard against contingent evil by committing certain sin." Emancipation Secured at last. Daniel O'Connell once said that if emancipation was not given in a proper spirit, it had better not be given at all, and that unless it was done heartily, and cordially it would only give the Irish additional power, and leave them a stimulant for exciting it. That it was not given in a proper spirit is clear. It was a concession to neces- sity, and showed the failure of physical force to withstand the moral power of a righteous cause. Millions of persons — three to one — signed petitions against it. All the old women of the country of ^' both sexes'''' were alarmed at what they considered to be the opening of the flood- gates to the inrush of the Papacy, and they hurried to erect paper barriers, which they hoped would stem the waters. But in spite of all, the bill was carried in the House of Commons by 353 votes to 180, and in the House of Lords by 213 to 109. The Tories loudly protested their antipa- thy to it, and declared that they only voted by the compulsion of Wellington's necessities, and that theyreluc- no tantly shouted "Aye." The bill came too late to awake generous sympathies in the Irish nature. The delay of reform, the terrible procrastination in yielding to just claims left a sense of embitterment against the Govern- ment in the minds of the people of Ireland, and prevented the growth of good feeling and of contentment in their hearts. They attributed the delay not to necessity, but to the opposition of men whose interests were thought to be bound up with the maintenance of the laws that repres- sed the national life and the national freedom. And they were correct in their thinking, for during all the earlier years of the century English Government was con- ducted in the interests solely of the wealthier classes. The representation of the country in Parliament was a miserable burlesque. The elections were carefully arranged farces. Everything in Government was tested by the touchstone of the landlords' interests, and popular measures were persistently thwarted, or toned down so as to be rendered harmless to the holders of property. The reformers had to press their way through the serried ranks of Tory squires and noblemen, and had it not been for the sacrificing toil of Liberal leaders, the serfdom of the English masses, as well as of the Irish Catholics, would have remained a blot on English civilization in the 19th century. The consequence of this Government of Ireland from Westminster by a majority 'of representatives of the " Classes" was a series of constant changes in the Irish ad- ministration. Every Government had its new Lord Lieuten- ant and Chief Secretary for Ireland, so that just as a man was beginning to understand the Irish problem, he was re- moved, and his successor had to learn the question afresh, and was at the mercy of the permanent officials who were all place-men and protesta>nts, and were themselves Ill directed by the members of the bar and the puppets of the drawing-rooms, for these by threatening social ostracism were able to effectually appal the underlings of Dublin Castle, who were inclined to sympathise with Irish Catho- licism or Irish Nationalism. Thomas Drummond's Work. Well might Croke describe all this "as a quicksand Government that swallows in its fluctuations every venture of reform." One name must however be honoured for the work done by him who bore it in the interests of religious and political equality. It is the name of Thomas Drum- mond, who was Under Secretary for Ireland during the time that Lord Morpeth was Chief Secretary, and Lord Mulgrave — afterwards Normanby — was Viceroy. During the years 1835 to 1839, he was the life of Irish Government, and dealt with impartial hand with all classes of the people. His record is one of the finest on the roll of Irish Secretaryships, and in consequence of his zeal in endeavouring to secure an improvement in Irish affairs, he undermined his constitution, and brought about his premature death. It was he, who, in a letter addressed to the Lord Lieutenant in reply to one sent him by some Irish magistrates, gave utterance to the well-known aphorism. '' Property has its duties as well as its rights," and declared further, "To the neglect of these duties in times past is mainly to be ascribed that diseased state of society in which such crimes (agrarian — referred to in the letter of the magistrates sent to the Lord Lieutenant) take their rise, and it is not in the enactment or enforcement of statutes of extraordinary severity, but chiefly in the better and more faithful performance of those duties, and t|ic; I 12 more enlightened and humane exercise of those rights, that a permanent remedy for such disorders is to be sought. Happy would it have been had Ireland been favoured with a larger number of officials of this stamp, but un- fortunately it was as Sidney Smith said, ** Ireland was governed for ten or twelve Orange families, who had been sucking the blood of the country a hundred years," and secretarys like Thomas Drummond could not be tolerated by these men. The Opinion of "Unionists." Mr. Lecky's Statements. The removal of the Irish Parliament from College Green, and the su»bstitution of an executive which was not in accord with the majority of the people, were events of national importance, and the consequence may be traced in the histories of both countries. Ireland had removed from it what Mr. Lecky calls **the safety-valve of the nation," and malcontents were enabled to lay the blame of all the miseries of the people at the doors of English mis- government. It took away the healthiest expression of public opinion by which the grievances of the nation could be set forth, and it left the Irish representation a continuous minority in a Parliament which understood but little of the needs of Ireland, and which did not seem anxious to listen to the cries of the poorest sections of the Irish people. After seventy years of trial, Mr Lecky says, '* the Imperial Parliament allays no discontent, and it attracts no affection." The removal of the Irish Parlia- ment was a decided disadvantage to the national life, and was unjustifiable as a matter of political expediency. The testimonvof those who are main advocates of Legislative 1^3 Union is opposed to their cause, and may be quoted against their case. Mr. Lecky says* : — " In truth, the harmonious co- operation of Ireland with England depends much less upon the framework of the institutions of the former country, than upon the dispositions of its people, and upon the classes who guide its political life. With a warm and loyal attachment to the connection pervading the nation, the largest amount of self-government might be safely conceded, and the most defective political arrangement might prove innocuous. This is the true cement of nations, and no change, however plausible in theory, can be really advantageous which contributes to diminish it, Theorists may argue that it would bl better for Ireland to become, in every respect, a province of England ; they may contend that a union of legislatures, accompanied by a fusion of characters, and identification of hopes, interests and desires, would strengthen the empire, but as a matter of fact, this is not what was effected in 1800. The mea- sure of Pitt centralized, but it did not unite, or rather, by uniting the legislatures it divided the nations." Mr. Lecky also shows the opinion expressed by many of the ablest and most loyal men in Ireland, by quoting a state- ment of Lord Claremont's to the effect that the Act of Union ** would, more than any other measure contribute to the separation of the two countries, the perpetual con- nection of which is one of the warmest wishes of my heart." Mr. Lecky also says : — *' In a country where the sentiment of nationality was as intense as in any part of Europe, it destroyed the national Legislature contrary to * " Leaders of Public Opinion," pp. 192-195. Quoted in '•Hand-Rook to Home Rule." 114 the manifest wish of the people, and by means so corrupt, treacherous, and shameful that they are never likely to be forgotten. In a country where, owing to the religious difference, it was peculiarly necessary that a vigorous lay public opinion should be fostered to dilute or restrain the sectarian spirit, it suppressed the centre and organ of political life, directed the energies of the community into channels of sectarianism, drove its humours inwards, and thus began a perversion of public opinion which has almost destroyed the elements of political progress." Mr. Lecky's arguments are more logical and consis- tent than his actions, and it can scarcely be conceived that the man who uttered these words with the force of a strong conviction, coujd ever be found in the ranks of a party pledged to maintain the system thus denounced. That it is unwise to ignore the claims of nationality has been proved again and again. It was this which inspired the struggles of Kossuth in Hungary, and Kosciusko in Poland, and it is the suppression of this by English Govern- ments and armies, which has lain at the root of Irish disaffection and discontent. One of the worst results of the Union has been the identification of government with injustice, the weakening of law, and the consequent employment of force, to supply what in more harmonious conditions would have been freely given by the people. Mr. Lecky shows that in the miserable government of Ireland. by English statesmen and a privileged legislature, we may see the cause of the diminution of legal force. He says, speaking of the 1 8th century and its Penal laws : — "The relation of classes was permanently vitiated ; for almost all the proprietary of the country belonged to one religion, while, the great majority of their tenants were of another. The Catholics excluded from almost 115 every possibility of eminence, deprived of their natural leaders, and consigned by the Legislature to utter ignorance, soon sank into the condition of broken and dispirited helots. A total absence of industrial virtues, a cower- ing and abject deference to authority, a recklessness about the future, a love of secret illegal combinations became general among them. Above all, they began to regard law as merely the expression of force, and its moral weight was utterly destroyed. For the greater part of a century, the main object of the Legislature was to extirpate a religion by the encouragement of the worst, and the punishment of some of the best qualities of our nature. Its rewards were reserved for the informer, for the hypo- crite, for the undutiful son, or for the faithless wife. Its penalties were directed against religious constancy and the honest discharge of ecclesiastical duty." " It would indeed be scarcely possible to conceive a more infamous system of legal tyranny than that which, in the middle of the 1 8th century, crushed every class, and almost every interest in Ireland." Mr. Goldwin Smith's Views. And if this be true of the i8th century, still more is it true of the present one when Coercion Acts have had to be used to cowe and overpower the freedom-loving sons of Ireland. Mr. Goldwin Smith may supplement Mr. Lecky, for he says, referring to the land system so rigour- ously maintained by the English Governments : — " How many centuries of a widely different training have the English people gone through in order to acquire their boasted love of law." And again referring to the White- boy tribunals, he says : — ** We have seen how much the law and th© ministers of the law have done to deserve the ii6 peasant's love. We have seen too in what successive guises property had presented itself to his mind : first as open rapine ; then as robbery carried on through the roguish technicalities of an alien code ; finally, as legal- ized and systematic oppression. Was it possible that he should have formed so aff*ectionate a reverence either for law or property as would be proof against the pressure of starvation." And again, he says : — " A people cannot be expected to love and reverence oppression because it is consigned to the Statute-book and called law." In a later work, wiitten in 1867, Mr. Goldwin Smith completed his argument, by saying:— "The Irish legis- lation of the last forty years, notwithstanding the adoption of some remedial measures, has failed through the in- diff'erence of Parliament to the sentiments of Irishmen ; and the harshness of English public opinion has embittered the efi"ects on Irish feeling of the indiff"erence of Parlia- ment. Occasionally a serious eff"ort has been made by an English Statesman to induce Parliament to approach Irish questions in that spirit of sympathy, and that anxious desire to be just, without which a Parliament in London cannot legislate wisely for Ireland. Such efforts have hitherto met with no response ; it is too much to hope that it will be otherwise in the year now opening." But in the year just opening (1868), Mr. Smith might have hoped* for Mr. Gladstone then commenced his great ameliorative work ; and it is sad to think that Mr. Smith was destined to be found among the opponents of the man who was endeavouring to put into a concrete and beneficent form, the abstract reasonings of Mr. Goldwin Smith. But Mr. Smith is more succinct in his arguments — for speaking of the Fenian movement, he says: — "The Fenian movement is not religious nor radically economical, (though no doubt it has in it a socialistic element), but national, and the remedy of it must be one which cures national discontent. This is the great truth which the English people have to lay to heart." ^Speaking of the land question he says: — "The land question, no doubt, lies nearest to the heart of the matter, and it is the great key to Irish history in the past ; but I do not believe that even this is fundamental." He then states what is " fundamental."! "The real root of the disaffection which exhibits itself at present in the guise of Fenianism, and which has been suddenly kindled into flame, by the arming of the Irish in the American civil war, but which existed before in a nameless and smouldering state, is, as I believe, the want of national institutions, of a national capital, of any objects of national reverence and attachment, and consequently of anything deserving to be called national life. The English Crown and Parliament the Irish have never learnt, nor have they had any chance of learning, to love, or to regard as national, notwithstanding the share which was given them, too late, in the representation. The greatness of England is nothing to them. Her history is nothing, or worse. The success of Irishmen in London consoles the Irish in Ireland no more than the success of Italian adventurers in foreign countries (which was very remark- able) consoled the Italian people. The drawing off of Irish talent, in fact, turns to an additional grievance in their minds. Dublin is a modern Tara, a metropolis from which the glory has departed ; and the viceroyalty, though it pleases some of the tradesmen, fails altogether to satisfy the people. * In Ireland we can make no appeal * Smith's " Irish Question," pp. 3 to 7. Quoted in " The Hand Book of Honie Rule," pages 183 & 184. \ Ibid, p. 183. ii8 -^ to patriotism, we can have no patriotic sentiments in our school books, no patriotic emblems in our schools, because in Ireland everything patriotic is rebellious.' These were the words uttered in my hearing, not by a complaining demagogue, but by a desponding statesman. They seemed to be pregnant with fatal truths. "If the craving for national institutions, and the dis- affection bred in this void of the Irish people's heart, seem to us irrational and even insane, in the absence of any more substantial grievance, we ought to ask ourselves what would become of our patriotism if we had no national institutions, no objects of national loyalty and reverence even though we might be pretty well governed, at least in intention, by a neighbouring people whom we regarded as aliens, and who, in fact, regarded us pretty much in the same light. Let us first judge ourselves fairly, and then judge the Irish, remembering always that they are more imaginative and sentimental, and need some centre of national feeling and affection more than ourselves." Mr. Dicey's Admissions. Does not all this prove that Mr. Pitt's experiment of 1800 had failed, and that the leaders of the so-called Unionists have acknowledged the folly and impotency of governing Ireland without her consent, and in governing her from Westminster. The statistics which we shall quote later, will still further prove this, and if we want further testimony, it is supplied in the writings of the latest cham- pion of " Unionism," Mr, Dicey, who writes : — " Eighty-six years have elapsed since the conclusion of the Treaty of Union between England and Ireland. The two countries do not yet for-m an united nation. The Irish people are, if not more wretched (for the whole European world has 119 made progress, and Ireland with it), yet more conscious of wretchedness, and Irish disaffection to England is, if not deeper, more widespread than in 1800. An Act meant by its authors to be a source of the prosperity and concord which, though slowly, followed upon the Union with Scotland, has not made Ireland rich, has not put an end to Irish lawlessness, has not terminated the feud between Protestants and Cathohcs, has not raised the position of Irish tenants, has not taken away the causes of Irish dis- content, and has, therefore not removed Irish disloyalty. This is the indictment which can fairly be brought against the Act of Union."* And again, '* The Act of Union did not lead to national unity, and a measure which appeared on the face of it (though the appearance, it must be admitted, was delusive), to be a copy of the law which bound England and Scotland into a common country, inspired by common patriotism, produced conspiracy and agitation, and, at last, placed England and Ireland further apart, morally, than they stood at the beginning of the century. The Treaty of Union, it was supposed missed its mark because it was not combined with Catholic Emancipation. The Catholics were emancipated, but emancipation, instead of pro- ducing loyalty, brought forth the cry for repeal The Repeal movement ended in failure, but its death gave birth to the attempted rebellion in 1848. Suppressed rebellion begot Fenianism, to be followed in its turn by the agitation for Home Rule. The movement relies, it is said, and there is truth in the assertion, on constitu- tional methods for obtaining redress. But constitutional * Quoted in " Handbook of Home Rule," page i88. Jrlr. Dicey's "England's Case against FJome Rule," page 128, 120 measures are supplemented by boycotting, by obstruction, by the use of dynamite. A century of reform has given us Mr. Parnell instead of Grattan, and it is more than pos- sible that Mr. Parnell may be succeeded by leaders in whose eyes Mr. Davitt's policy may appear to be tainted with moderation. No doubt, in each case the failure of good measures admits, like every calamity in public or private life, of explanation, and after the event it is easy to see why, for example, the Poor Law, when extended to Ireland, did not produce even the good effects such as they are which in England are to be set against its numerous evils ; or why an emigration of unparalleled proportions has diminished population without much diminishing poverty ; why the disestablishment of the Anglican Church has increased rather than diminished the hostility to England of the Catholic priesthood ; or why two Land Acts have not contented Irish farmers. It is easy enough, in short, and this without having any recourse to theory of race, and without attributing to Ireland either more or less of origi- nal sin than falls to the lot of humanity, to see how it is that imperfect statesmanship — and all statesmanship, it should be remembered, is imperfect — has failed in obtain- ing good results at all commensurate with its generally good intentions. Failure, however, is none the less failure because its causes admit of analysis. It is no defence to bankruptcy that an insolvent can, when brought before the Court, lucidly explain the errors which resulted in disastrous speculations. The failure of English statesmanship, ex- plain it as you will, has produced the one last and greatest evil which misgovernment can cause. It has created hostility to the law in the minds of the people. The law cannot work in Ireland because the classes whose opinion in other countries supports the actions of the courts, are 121 in Ireland, even when not law-breakers, in full sympathy with law-breakers."* ** There exists in Europe no country so completely at unity with itself as Great Britain. Fifty years of reform have done their work, and have removed the discontents, the divisions, the disaffections, and the conspiracies which marked the first quarter, or the first half of this century. Great Britain, if left to herself, could act with all the force, consistency, and energy given by unity of sentiment and community of interests. The destruction and the uncer- tainty of our political aims, the feebleness and inconsistency with which they are pursued, arise, in part at least, from the connection with Ireland. Neither Englishmen nor Irishmen are to blame for the fact that it is difficult for com- munities differing in historical associations and in political conceptions to keep step together in the path of progress. For other evils arising from the connection the blame must rest on English Statesmen. All the inherent vices of party government, all the weaknesses of the parliamentary system, all the evils arising from the perverse notion that reform ought always to be preceded by a period of lengthy and more than half factitious agitation met by equally factitious resistance, have been fostered and increased by the inter- action of Irish and English politics. No one can believe that the inveterate habit of ruling one part of the United Kingdom on principles which no one would venture to apply to the government of any other part of it, can have produced anything but the most injurious effect on the stability of our Government and the character of our public men »»# ''The advocates of Home Rule find, by far, their strongest arguments for influencing English opinion, in * Dicey, " England's Case against Home Rule," pages 72-74 122 the proofs which they produce that England, no less than Ireland, has suffered from a political arrangement under which legal union'has failed to secure moral union."* Irish nationality could not tolerate the suppression of the national legislature, and the subsequent Government of Ireland has shown that the Nationalists, under Grattan, were right in their objection to the Act of Union. Since then, the intolerance and despotism of English Govern- ments have helped to strengthen the national spirit and have added fuel to the national passion for freedom. The more fiercely the elements have beaten against the nation- ality of the Irish people, the more securely it has taken root in the Irish mind. Mr. Gladstone's Views of Nationality. Mr. Gladstone says, in his article on " Lessons in the 1 8th Century," p. 279, Handbook to Home Rule: — " This is the point at which we may best learn the second and the greatest lesson taught by the history of Ireland in the eighteenth century. It is this, that, awful as is the force of bigotry, hidden under the mask of religion, but fighting for plunder and for power with all the advantages of possession, of prescription, and of extraneous support, there is a David that can kill this Goliath. That con- quering force lies in the principle of nationality." " It was the growing sense of nationality that prompted the Irish Parliament to develop its earlier struggles for privilege on the narrow ground into a general contest for freedom, civil and religious, on a ground as broad as Ireland, nay, as humanity at large. If there be such things as contradictions in the world of politics, they are to be found in nationality on the one side, and bigotry of all kinds * Dicey— " England's Case Against Home Rule." 123 on the other, but especially religious bigotry, which is of all the most baneful. Whatever is given to the first of these two is lost to the second. I speak of a reasonable and a reasoning, not of a blind and a headstrong nation- ality ; of a nationality which has regard to circum- stances and traditions, and which only requires that all relations, of incorporation or of independence, shall be adjusted to them according to the laws of Nature's own enactment. Such an nationality was the growth of the last century in Ireland. As each Irishman began to feel that he had a country, to which he belonged, and which belonged to him, he was, by a true process of nature, drawn more and more into brotherhood and into the sense of brotherhood with those who shared the allegiance and the property, the obligation and the heritage. And this idea of country once well conceived, presents itself as a very large idea, and as a framework for most other ideas, so as to supply the basis of a common life. Hence it was that, on the coming of Lord Fitzwilliam, the whole generous emotion of the country leapt up with one consent, and went forth to meet him. Hence it was that religious bigotry was no longer an appreciable factor in the public life of Ireland. Hence it was that on his recall, and in order to induce acquiescence in his re- call, it became necessary to divide again the host that had welcomed him — to put one part of it in array as Orangemen, who were to be pampered and inflamed ; and to quicken the self-consciousness of another and larger mass by repulsion and proscription, by stripping Roman Catholics of arms in the face of license and of cruelty, and, finally, by clothing the extreme of lawlessness with the forms of law." 124 The Irish Famine. But if anything more is needed in the history of Ireland to show the futility and folly of governing Ireland from Westminster, it is supplied in the terrible story of the Irish famine. We can scarcely, in this land, estimate the awful sufferings of the people during the years when the famine raged. The Government seemed helpless. O'Connell's repeal agitation was paralyzed. The high hopes of the people were checked. The warm impulses springing up in the hearts of the Irish, as they saw the day of freedom drawing nearer, were chilled by the blight- ing, withering seasons that destroyed the chief staiF of life. Whole districts were depopulated. The blight came like deadly nightshade, poisoning the hearts and minds of the people, and leaving behind a terrible legacy of hate. Painful misunderstanding and hostile recriminations have sprung up between the two countries in relation to this subject.* The English people talk of the sympathy mani- fested by England, and the generous contributions which were made to stem the famine. The Irish talk of the delay, pitiful inaction, and criminal mismanagement of the English Cabinet and the Dublin Executive. Everything in the shapeof relief was hindered, by prejudice, ignorance, and short-sighted economy. It was a stupendous calamity^ which the ordinary machinery of the Poor Law system was unable to cope with. What was needed was prompt and liberal local administration of relief out of government resources. The ports were locked up, and protection held the keys, and kept the ship filled with American supplies outside. The food resources of the people — the corn grown in Irish fields was sent out of the country, to be sold for the benefit of the landlords, while the poor *A. M. Sullivan's "New Ireland," 1 125 peasantry were starving by thousands on the road-side. English officers and officials strangled every measure of relief with red tape. Official Investigations. The Government went in for official investigations, at a time when Americans and foreigners were sending ship-loads of grain. The establishment of huge soup kitchens was tried to arrest the famine fiend. The people struggled to reach the soup, some fell to the ground and were trampled to death. The madness of hunger overcame the tenderness of sympathy. The weak waited and died, while the stronger reached the food and were saved from death. The Irish Poor Law system completely broke down under the strain. When the families were separated at the workhouse door, the scenes were heart-rending. Fathers, mothers, and children were parted to meet no more in this world. They abandoned hope when they entered there, for the famine fever was in ev^ery ward, the air was loaded with disease, and the poor starving ones knew that they were being separated to die alone. Oh ! it was terrible ! unendurable ! ! Poor widows, whose husbands had starved, clasped their childen to their breasts and cried, ** I cannot part with them, — if I am to give them up, I'll not come in, — I'll beg the world with them, — we'll die together." But, inexorable officialism said, "You must part or starve out- side ;" and death said, " If you part you shall not meet again !" Mr. TuKE says :* — ** We visited the poorhouse at Glenties, which is in a dreadful state ; the people were, in fact, half starved, and only half clothed. They had not * " Transactions of the Relief Committe of Friends," quoted by O'Connor. 126 sufficient food in the house for the day's supply. Some were leaving the house, preferring to die in their own hovels rather than in the poor-house. Their bedding con- sisted ol dirty straw, in which they were laid in rows, or on the floor— even as many as six persons being crowded under one rug. The living and the dying were stretched side by side beneath the same miserable covering." The general effect of all this is summed up thus pithily but completely in the report of the Poor Law Commissioners for 1R46: "In the present state of things nearly every person admitted is a patient ; separation of the sick, by reason of their number, becomes impossible ; disease spreads, and by rapid transition the workhouse is changed into one large hospital." People committed petty larcenies in order to be sent to gaol, for they were starving outside. But the gaols were also homes of pestilence. Dr. Browne wrote of Castlebar Gaol : — " Our county gaol was crowded to more than double its capacity, those • committed being in a state of nudity, filth, and starvation. Typhus broke out, and by the end of April we were in a state of actual pestilence. Every hospital servant was attacked, and from our wretched overcrowded state the . mortality was fearful — fully forty per cent. ; * * * * not a few of those committed were inmates of the fever wards a few hours after committal." The Census Commissioners reported that, *' Taking the reported deaths from fever alone, between the begin- ning of 1846 and the end of i849, and assuming the mortality at one in ten, which is the very lowest calcu- lation, and far below what we believe to have occurred, above a million and a half, or 1,595,040 persons, being 4* 11 of the population in 1851, must have suffered from fever 127 during that period. But no pen has recorded the number of the forlorn and starving who perished by the wayside or in the ditches, or of the mournful groups, sometimes of whole families, who lay down and died, one after another, upon the floor of their miserable cabin, and so remained uncoffined and unburied till chance unveiled the appal- ling scene." In 1847 °^^ fifteenth of the medical staff" died. A quarter of a million perished from fever alone, while the mortality was further swelled to gigantic proportions by smallpox, dysentry, and other epidemics. Hinged coffins were used, and the dead fell uncoffined into the graves, while the coffin was brought back to be used again and again. Landlords and Famine. The absentee landlords, as usual, did not see the misery. The resident ones did what they could to stem the disaster, and many incurred debts that afterwards brought them to ruin. Some landlords were, however, almost heartless ; and one of them, the Duke of Norfolk, made himself notorious by suggesting to the starving and distressed people, the use of a certain curry powder, of which he would freely give them the recipe, and by which they could stave off' the pangs of hunger. A Royal Duke's Compassion. But even this is surpassed in brutality by a royal duke, described by Daniel O'Connell as " the son of a king, the brother of a king, the uncle of a monarch." This lofty personage said, " Ireland is not in so bad a state as has been represented. * *' *•'* *' I understand that rotten potatoes and seaweed, and even grass, properly mixed, 128 aflford a very wholesome food. We all know that Irishmen can live upon anything, and there is plenty of grass in the fields, even if the potato crop should fail." Surely this prince must have been referring to a royal personage, who, in Babylon, was removed from his throne and com- pelled to ** eat grass like an ox." But the Government was slow to believe in the reality of the famine, and when it was made clear to them, they were tardy and unprepared. The Evening Mail said, in 1 845 : — '* The apprehensions of a famine are unfounded, and are merely made the pretence for withholding the payment of rent." Again, it said, "There is a sufficiency, an abun- dance of sound potatoes for the wants of the people." Blindness of Politicians. Lord George Bentinck said that ** The potatoe famine in Ireland was a gross delusion — a more gross delusion had never been practised upon any country by any government." ** The cry of famine was a mere pretence for a party object." Lord Stanley said : " Famine in Ireland was a vision — a baseless vision." Bills were passed to remedy the misery but they were unsuitable to the conditions of the case. With a Coercion Bill in operation, such measures as relief works. Labour Rate Acts, and soup kitchens were too inadequate. In 1846, when the Relief Works were commenced, the famine had already made frightful progress, and wretched and emaciated people, just alive, tottered with their diminished strength to build roads and make cuttings, that are to-day covered with moss and grass, and are a standing monu- ment of the gigantic folly of the government remedies for a famine-stricken people.* * See A. M. Sullivan's " New Ireland." 129 In J 847 the miserable narrow arrangements had to be thrown aside, and the Government, by extraordinary means, had to deal with an extraordinary crisis. But they were, as usual, too late, and a million of deaths, which might have been prevented, lay at the doors of English mis- government. In 1835 the Poor Law Inquiry reported that 2,235,000 persons were out of work, and in distress, for thirty weeks in the year. The Devon Commission declared *' It would be im- possible to describe adequately the sufferings and privations which the cottiers and labourers and their families in most parts of the country endure." '* Their cabins are seldom a protection against the weather." " A bed or a blanket is a rare luxury.'' " In many districts their only food is the potato, their only beverage water."* Mr. J. S. Mill sums up the question by writing of the Irish landlords as follows: — "Returning nothing tothe soil, they consume its whole produce, minus the potatoes strictly necessary to keep the inhabitants from dying of famine."! But this was before the pinch of famine came. We may judge, therefore, of the more terrible destitution which afterwards existed, when millions were sacrificed at the altar of the landlords' interests, by the restrictive legislation of a House of Parliament comprised chiefly of landlords. Well might Daniel O'Connell say, " If we had a domestic parliament, would not the ports be thrown open — would not the abundant crops, with which Heaven has blessed her, be kept for the people of Ireland — and * Quoted by T. P. O'Conner, " Parnell Movement," p, 24. i Quoted by Mr. Healy, " Why is there a Land Question ?" p. 55. 130 would not the Irish Parliament be more active even than the Belgian Parliament to provide for the people food and employment." Mr. T. P. O'Connor says :* — " The measures pro- posed by the Government for dealing with the distress were, first the importation of corn on a lowered duty through the repeal of the Corn Laws ; and, secondly, the advance of two sums of ^^50,000, one to the landlords for the drainage of their lands, and the other for public works. The ridiculous disproportion of these sums to the magni- tude of the calamity was proved before very long ; but to all representations the Government replied in the worst and haughtiest spirit of official optimism. 'Instructions have been given,' said Sir James Graham, 'on the respon- sibility of the Government to meet any emergency.' Only one good measure was covered by the generous self-com- placency of this round assertion. Under a Treasury minute of December 19, 1845, the Ministry had instructed Messrs. Baring and Co. to purchase /'loo.ooo worth of Indian corn. This they introduced secretly into Ireland, and its distribution proved most timely." The Food Supply and the Starving Peasantry. Reference has been made to the good crops of wheat and oats during the famine time, and to the fact that these crops were largely exported while the peasantry were dying of starvation. Mr. T. P. O'Connor says: — "Side by side with the fields of blighted potatoes, in 1845, were fields of abundant oats." The Mark Lane Express reported that in one week, during 1845, 16,000 quarters of oats were exported from Ireland to London." Lord John Russell, in 1847, wrote to the Duke of Leinster as fol- * " Parnell Movement," p. 27. 131 lows: — " Everyone who travels through Ireland, observes the large stacks of corn, which are the produce of the late harvest." John Mitchell gives a case of a captain who saw at Rio Janeiro, in South America, a \»essel laden with Irish corn, at the very moment when the people of Ireland were vainly crying for food. In similar circumstances, Belgium, Holland, Russia, and even Turkey had closed their ports and kept their corn to feed their starving popu- lation. Daniel O'Connell urged the English Parliament to follow this wise precedent, but as this would have interfered with the landlords' rents and gains, the Govern- ment refused, and the Irish peasants starved. The land system had to be kept up, if the people died to support it» Indignation was felt at the heathen customs, which buried living slaves around the posts of a chiefs dwelling, so as to keep the edifice secure ; but only smirking complacency prevailed, as thousands of Irish people were condemned to starvation in order to perpetuate the land system. Mr. T. P. O'Connor has placed the argument in a nutshell, by saying, ''The Irish land system necessitated the export of food from a starving nation. The Imperial Parliament was the parent of this land system ; the Imperial Parliament was then responsible for the starva- tion which this exportation involved."* Mr. A. M. Sullivan has written, with a pen inspired by the deep sympathies of an earnest and conscientious spirit. He says : — "The first remarkable sign of the havoc which death was making was the decline and disappearance of funerals.f He tells the story of a Catholic priest, who met in Galway, during the famine, a man with a cart drawn by a donkey, on which there were three coffins, * "The Parnell Movement," p. 26. t " New Ireland," p. 64. 132 containing the bodies of his wife and two children. When he reached the churchyard, he was too weak to dig a grave, and was only able to put a little covering of clay on the coffins. The next day the priest found ravenous dogs making a horrid meal ^rom the corpses."* In some cases parents were obliged to dig the graves of their dead children ; and in other cases, were too weak to do so, and were only able, before they laid down by the side of the corpses to die also, to close the door of their hovels, so as to prevent the dogs and pigs from entering and devouring the bodies. Mr. O'Rourke, and Mr. Tuke give a number of instances, and the former quotes an eye witness of a scene in Skibbereen, as follows : — ** The only article that covered the nakedness of the family, that screened them from the cold, was a piece of coarse packing stuff, which lay extended alike over the bod|ies of the living and the corpses of the dead ; which served as the only defence of the dying, and the winding sheet of the dead."f Surely in all this there is proof of the break down of the administration. Red Tape and the Irish Famine. Lord John Russell also refused to interfere with the regular mode by which Indian corn was brought into Ireland. This was in the interests of the retail traders, whose shops were so few that the emaciated labourer on the public works had to walk, in some parts, twenty or twenty-five miles in order to buy meal for himself and family. Some of the traders trafficked on the needs and miseries of the people. Famine prices were charged for food, and one firm in Cork was reported to have made * "New Ireland," p. 379. Quoted in " Parnell Movement." t O'Rourke—" History of the Irish Famine," p. 272. 133 ;^4o.ooo> and another £?o,q>oo by speculating in corn. The Government stores refused to open their doors to the people until the Autumn, and men and women who had crawled long distances, were found dead at the doors of the stores, at which they had knocked in vain, while in the stiffened grasp of the corpses money was found * The money earned on Government works, owing to blunders in the administration, was at times not paid for a week or a fortnight, and the worker either crept into his hut to die, or perished by the road-side. Poor shrivelled men, left their wives and children dying at home, and trudged often eight miles for a day's work, for which they were paid 5d., and at times as low as 3d.t And this from a paternal government, claiming to be enlightened, civilized, and christian, as well as the wealthiest in Europe. Mr. O'Connor gives a few quotations from Irish news- papers, such as "A family of six lived for one week upon the carcase of an ass, in the parish of Ballymackey, County Tipperary." *' Great distress in Ulster, — people eating ass flesh."]: Epidemics of cholera raged through the country also, and were followed by other diseases which decimated the population. In 1 849 the deaths from zymotic diseases, as reported by the Census Commissioners, reached 123,386. This in addition to those who succumbed to starvation and various afflictions induced by privations. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy shows the way in which the people were sent out of the country: — "Vast masses tried to make their way to America. In the year 1845, 74,669 persons emigrated from Ireland ; in 1846 the num- ber had risen to 105,955 ; during 1847 i* ^^^^ ^^ 215,444. * " Parnell Movement,'' pp. 24 and 25. + " New Ireland," pp. 206 to 225. % " The Parnell Movement." 134 No means were taken to preserve these poor people from the rapacity of shipowners. The landlords delighted at getting rid of them, made bargains for their conveyance wholesale, and at small prices ; and in those days emigrant ships were ui>der no sanitary restrictions of any effective- ness. Thus the emigrants, already half-starved and fever-stricken, were pushed into berths that 'rivalled the cabins of Mayo, or the fever-sheds of Skibbereen.' 'Crowded and filthy, carrying double the legal number of passengers, who were ill-fed and imperfectly clothed, and having no doctor on board, the holds,' says an eye-witness, •were like the Black Hole of Calcutta, and deaths in myriads.'" "The statistics of mortality bear out these words. Of 493 passengers during the year in the Queen, 136 died on the voyage ; of 552 in the Avon, 236 died ; of 476 in the Virginius, 267 died; of 440 on the Larch, 108 died and 150 were seriously diseased. 89,783 persons altogether embarked for Canada in 1847. The Chief Secretary for Ireland reported with regard to these that 6, 1 00 perished on the voyage ; 4,100 on their arrival ; 5,200 in hospital ; 1,900 in towns to which they repaired. 'From Grosse Island up to Port Sarnia, along the borders of our great river, on the shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie, wherever the tide of emigration was extended, are to be found one unbroken chain of graves, where repose fathers, and mothers, sisters and brothers, in a commingled heap, no stone marking the spot. Twenty thousand and upwards have gone down to their graves."* The people maddened by their despair, rushed to the ports to secure berths for England. But the Government * Sir C. G. Duffy's " Four Years of Irish History," pp. 531-532. Quoted in the " Parnell Movement," pp. 44 and. 45. 135 . requested the owners of steamships to raise their fares for deck passengers, and thus the already impoverished victim of eviction and despair, was further fleeced by the desire of a paternal government. Emigration. In 1847. between January 15 and May 4, the Census Commissioners state that 180,000 Irish exiles were landed in Liverpool. Between June 15 and August 17 of the same year, 26,335 arrived in Glasgow from Ireland. "Many of these were aged people, unfit for labour ; out of 1,150 patients in the Glasgow Fever Hospital at the period, 750 were Iiish."* **The population of Ireland, by March 30th, 1851, at the same ratio of increase as that of England and Wales, would have been 9,018,799 — it was 6,552,385."! The Census Commissioners calculated ** that the deficit, inde- pendently of the emigration," in the five famine years, was 985,366 — nearly a million of people. But those who emigrated often perished during the voyage. Seventeen per cent, of the emigrants either died during the passage, or immediately on their arrival at their destination, so that of the emigration of 1,180,409, no fewer than 200,668 must be added to the death roll already stated. Destruction of Social Customs and Elevating Institutions. In addition to all this, the evils wrought in the con- dition of the country were very numerous. Take the following testimonies: — "Here are twenty miles of country, sir, said a dispensary doctor to me, and before the famine there was not a padlock from end to end of it, Under ♦ "ParnelliMovement," pp. 44-84. f " Parnell Movement," p. 84. 136 the pressure of hunger, ravenous creatures prowled round barn and storehouse, stealing corn, potatoes, cabbage, turnips, anything, in a word, that might be eaten. Later on, the fields had to be watched, gun in hand, or the seed was rooted up and devoured raw. The state of things struck a fatal blow at some of the most beautiful traits of Irish life. It destroyed the simple confidence that bolted no door ; it banished for ever a custom, which throughout the island was of universal obligation — the housing for the night, with cheerful welcome, of any poor wayfarer who claimed hospitality. ''Fear of 'the fever' even when no apprehension of robbery was entertained, closed every door, audthe custom once killed off has not revived. A thousand kindly usages and neighbourly courtesies were swept away. When sauve qui pent \\diS resounded throughout a country for three years of alarm and disaster, human nature becomes contracted in its sympathies, and 'every one for himself becomes a maxim of life and conduct long after. The open-handed, open-hearted ways of the rural population have been visi- bly affected by the ' Forty-seven ordeal.' Their ancient sports and pastimes everywhere disappeared, and in many parts of Ireland have never returned. The outdoor games, the hurling-match, and the village dance are seen no more."* 'The famine,' says Gavan Duffy, 'swallowed things more precious than money and money's worth, or even than human lives. The temperance reformation, the political training of a generation, the self-respect, the purity and generosity which distinguished Irish peasants, were sorely wasted. Out of the place of the damned, a sight of such piercing woe was never seen as a Munster * " New Ireland," pp. 67 and 68. 137 workhouse, with hundreds of a once frank and gallant yeomanry turned into sullen beasts, wallowing on the floor as thick as human limbs could pack. Unless, indeed, it were that other spectacle of the women of a district wait- ing in pauper congregation around the same edifice for outdoor relief. New and terrible diseases sprang out of this violation of the laws of nature. There was soon a workhouse fever, a workhouse dysentery, a workhouse opthalmia ; and children, it is said, were growing up idiots from imperfect nourishment. In eight of the worst poor- law unions, the contract coffin left the workhouse seventy times a week with the corpse of a human being. The opthalmia often carried with it consequences more painful than death, when it left the sufferer unfit to earn his bread any more in the world. There were upwards of 2,000 cases of this disease within ten months in the Tipperary Union, and as many in the Limerick Union. In Tippe- rary, Sir William Wilde, one of the Census Commissioners, saw eighty-seven patients whose sight was permanently damaged, eighteen incurable blind figures, thirty-two who had lost one eye. In Connaught, where poverty was long the chronic condition of the country, the famine had actually created a new race of beggars, bearing only a distant and hideous resemblance to humanity. Wherever the traveller went in Galway or Mayo, he met troops of wild, idle, lunatic-looking paupers wandering over the country. Grey-headed old men, with faces settled into a leer of hardened mendicancy, and women filthier and more frightful than harpies, who at the jingle of a coin on the pavement swarmed in myriads from unseen places, strug- gling, screaming, shrieking for their prey like monstrous and unclean animals. Beggar-children, beggar-girls, with faces gray and shrivelled, met you everywhere : and women 138 with the more touching and tragic aspect of lingering shame and self-respect not yet effaced. I saw these accursed sights, and they are burned into my memory for ever. Poor, mutilated, and debased scions of a tender, brave, and pious stock, they were martyrs in the battle of centuries for the right to live in their own land, and no Herculaneum or Pompeii covers ruins so memorable to me as those which lie buried under the fallen roof-trees of an 'Irish extermination.'"* Clearing the Land. Some of the landlords seized the opportunity of clear- ing their lands of distressed tenants. Their inability to pay the rent, left them at the mercy of inexorable land- lordism, and their weakness, consequent on insufficient food, prevented them from keeping a "grip on their home- steads." The property was cleared of small tenants, and many of them landing in England, in a destitute and penniless condition, were compelled to herd together in the lowest places of our seaports, until the name of the "Irish settlement" became a name of reproach and con- tempt among fastidious and respectable people, who lived in more salubrious neighbourhoods. In addition, these people were compelled to take labour of the hardest and most dangerous character, at any price that was offered, so as to avoid starvation. The result was that the labour- rate of English workmen was kept in a reduced condition, and the English artisans and labourers had to bear the imposition directly induced by the unfeeling conduct of Irish landlords. The evictions were carried out with great coarseness and cruelty. In these late years the accounts of evictions at Bodyke, and elsewhere, have thrown a flood *Sir C, G. Duffy, Quoted by T. P. O'Connor.—" Parnell Movement," pp. 83 and 84. 139 of light, through the medium of the Press, on the charac- ter and working of Irish landlordism. But still more terrible, and heartless, and unjust were evictions carried out ruthlessly in the days of famine, before the glass of public observation was directed to the scenes. Unsym- pathetic evictions threw the tenants into the storm and the snow in the depth of winter, and the disease germinated under the Irish hedges, afterwards developed in the English towns and counties, and compelled the sufferers to apply for help at English hospitals and workhouses. The rates of the towns and counties was increased, so that, in addition to a lessened rate of wages, the English householders had to pay an increased sum to the rates, to enable Irish land- lords to clear the land of the human beings who had cultivated it, and improved its worth. Lord Palmerston spoke of the evil, and strongly denounced it, but took no steps to call to justice the landlords, whose action brought about the death of the poor peasantry. In a speech de- livered in the House of Commons, he says : — *' The people were turned out of their houses, without the chance of obtaining a home ; were driven to perish on the road-side, or to eke out a hungry existence as squatters on the fringe of a bog, or on the outskirts of some neighbouring town. This is a great grievance. Cases have occurred where landlords have done this to a great extent. I hope the landlords will abstain from exercising that power which the law gives them, and that, by showing a little more consideration to the peasantry whom they find on their estates, they will seek to do away with that grievance, which is expressed in the somewhat absurb term of ** fixity of tenure." 140 An Englishman's Opinions. In 1846, Mr. PouLETT Scrope, an English M.P., spoke clearly on the question, and pointed out the respon- sibility of the landlords who condemned their tenants to death, and who committed wholesale murders in the name of law. "Remember, life is destroyed in Ireland in other ways than by the bullet of the assassin. Life is taken in Ireland by the slow agonies of want, and disease engen- dered by want, where human beings are deprived (however legally) of the only means of living, and no resource offered them in its place. When a landlord clears his estate by driving from their homes hundreds of poor tenants who have no other possible source of refuge, does he not as effectually destroy their lives (at least many of them) as if he shot them at once ? It would be a mercy to do so in compassion. Do you deny that the lives of the peasantry are unprotected by law — that they are obliged to protect themselves by these criminal outrages ? I ask you if, since these very discussions began, we have not had proofs — multiplied proofs — of the mode in which the landlords of Ireland are decimating the people of Ireland.? Ay, in the midst of fever and famine, was not a whole village razed by Mr. Gerrard — 400 souls turned out upon the highway — not allowed even to rest in the roadside ditches ? Was not another village razed by the Marquis of Waterford ? Another, I believe, by Mr. Clarke, of Nenagh, who was murdered ; another by Mr. Pierce Carrick, who was murdered for the same intention, * * * Now, I ask, what becomes of these ejected wretches, whose houses are pulled down, who are driven forth from the land where they were born and bred, hunted even out of the road-side ditches, when they take shelter there, as was literally the case in the Gerrard clearances ? Where HI are they to go ? How are they to live ? * * * If they squat on another landlord's estate, they are driven off again as nuisances, pests — as people, in one word, who have no right to exist. ^ * ijr- * j ^sk, what becomes of them ? Why, we know, on the best authority, they wander to the big towns and try to live by beggary ^' * * Is not an ejectment of this kind tantamount to a sentence of death on a small farmer or cottier, whose only chance of living and maintaing his family is the occupation of a bit of land ? Can you wonder at his retaliating on him whom he feels to be his oppressor ? Or can you wonder that thousands, who know themselves to be exposed to this fate, every day contrive to save themselves from it by a system of outrage and intimidation ?"* How Evictions were Carried Out. Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, after quoting the above, says :^ '* A specific case of this kind, where the people of a whole village were ejected, was brouht before the House of Com- mons by Sir Robert Peel, on the official report of a Major McKee, to the Poor Law Board. * It would appear,' he said, ' from the evidence recorded, that the forcible eject- ments were illegal, that previous notice had not been served, and that the ejectments were perpetrated under circum- stances of great cruelty. The time ohosen was, for the greater part, nightfall on the eve of the new year. The occupiers were forced out of their houses, with their helpless children, and left exposed to the cold on a bleak Western shore, on a stormy winter's night ; some of the children were sick ; the parents implored that they might not be exposed, and that their houses might be left till the morning ; these prayers for mercy were in vain, and many of them have since died.' " * " Peel and O'Connell." 142 "Peel, in commenting on this, said: — *I know that the law is powerless in procuring redress in such cases ; but I know also that the mere statement of the facts in the House of Commons, accompanied with the expression of such feelings as can alone be excited where such facts are narrated to us, will not be without their influence.' But why was the law powerless ? or why should no remedy have been attempted ? and why had the report of the Devon Commission produced no result ?" These last questions are very pertinent. Can it be conceived that these terrible massacres of innocents, carried out in the name of justice and the rights of property, would have been tolerated in England ? Would not the divinity that still lives in human hearts, in spite of the hardening influences of a selfish humanity have asserted itself, had these facts been brought home to the minds and hearts of the population ? Would an Irish Parliament in Dublin have tolerated these things, and given armed soldiers, paid out of the public rates, to support this sys- tem, by which the children of the poor were deliberately and cruelly sentenced to death ? O'Connell's Last Arguments. Mr. Daniel O'Connell, in the last speech he delivered in the House of Commons, with the shadow of death already darkening his brow, spoke of the evils of starvation and landlordism, and urged the Parliament to do some- thing more to remove the accumulation of miseries under which the people were groaning and dying. And he gave increased force to the point advanced in a letter written a few days previously. In this letter, the last written by him to the Repeal Association, he said : — " It will not be until the death of hundreds of thousands that the regret H3 will arise that more was not done to save a sinking nation, How different would the scene be if we had our own Parliament, taking care of our own people, of our own resources. But, alas ! alas ! it is scarcely permitted to think of these, the only sure preventatives of misery, and the only sure instruments of Irish prosperity." Evictions Continued. Wholesale evictions followed on the heels of the famine. Houses were levelled, and when the evicted people built temporary dwellings, they were burnt down as soon as the inmates left to dig a few potatoes for the daily food. The famine clearances of 1848, are a dark condemning record against the landlords. The people were exhausted — their means and strength had been dissipated in the long struggle with want. They could not pay the demands of the owners of the property. The resident landlords having mortgaged their lands were pressed for payment. The Encumbered. Estates Act was passed, and provided for the sale of mortgaged land. Mortgages were foreclosed. The land changed hands, and new landlords came into possession with the idea that nothing could be done for the wretched people now living on the soil. Emigration was declared to be the infallible panacea for the miseries of the country, and the only one left to the Irish people. It was asserted that the land must be held by thrifty people from England or Scotland — men with money and modern ideas. The regeneration of the country was attempted by the removal of the ancient toilers and the establishment of a new peasantry. It was the old idea which had repeatedly failed in the past, yet still capitalists and political economists clung to it, and in spite of the misery it inflicted, and the loss of life 144 consequent thereof, they tried it again. Evictions took place in the most barbarous and unchristian spirit. Methods were adopted which were a disgrace to civilization, and which had they happened in Turkey or Austria would have been indignantly denounced. Rain or sleet, thunder or snow, the houses must be levelled and the lands cleared. The aged grandsire, the sick infant, the dying mother, were turned into the road. The houses were unroofed and levelled to the ground. One gentleman solicited immortal renown by inventing a machine for pulling the roof oif by one effort. The Legislature rose to the occa- sion in 1848, and passed an Act to mitigate the miseries and inconveniences of evictions. The milk of human kindness revealed its presence, and to remedy the sorrows of the Irish people, those whose hearts were tender pro- hibited evictions — on Christmas-Day and Good-Friday — and declared that houses must not be unroofed until the inhabitants had been brought out. The Extent of a Government's Sympathy. The force of kindness and justice reached this amazing height, and threw round the unsympathizing landlords these strong restraints (?). Is it not pitiful to read of this meagre attempt to curtail the action of the landlord class ? Welj might Mr. T. M. Healy ask in his book **A word for treland," the question — '' What manner of landlords were these who required such restraints to be solemnly imposed by statute ? " The Kilrush evictions were reported to the House of Commons by Captain Kennedy in his official returns, and Sir Robert Peel said of them " I must say that I do not think that the records of any country, civil or barbarous, present materials for such a picture . . Three such tragical instances I do not believe were evei" H5 presented, either in point of fact or as conjured up even in the imagination of any human being . . . and they were heard with the expression of the deepest abborence by the House of Commons." And to meet barbarities like these, and to regulate men inflamed by selfishness, to acts of demons, the most Christian Legislature under heaven prohibited these things on Christmas-Day and Good-Friday, and "thoughtfully enacted that the roof must not be pulled off a tenant's home — until the inmates had left." Alas for the "rarity" and meagreness of "Christian charity" and civilized judgement. The London Times shouted " In a few years more, a Celtic Irishman will be as rare in Connemara as the Red Indian on the shores of Manhattan." The shouts of the Times have been heard in later periods of English history, and have been resonantly loud whenever tyranny has been dominant, and the reign of peace postponed until the regime of blood, and the " gunpowder and glory business," have had unfettered sway. Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne, who wrote in the Times, signing his letters with the initials S. G. O., was evidently antagonistic to the policy of that "thunderer," the utter- ances of which have since sunk in England to the hoarse sounds of the mimic elements manufactured on the theatrical stage by an enterprising manager, for the special delectation of an audience that demands " plenty for its money." Lord S. G. Osborne gives information of the way in which these evictions were completed. The starving and dying were carried out into the roads. Coroners inquests were frequently held over the bodies of those who had died upon the roads where they had been cast by the agents of the landlords. The verdicts repeatedly passed were "Death by starvation" and "Death 146 by exposure." The starving were evicted, and died ; and yet the agents and sheriffs and landlords held their heads erect, as if they were irreproachable characters. The poachers who snared and destroyed game were treated as felons, but the ''gentlemen" and officials who hurled from their homes and left to die on the road the poor peasantry of Ireland, were received into the bosom of society, and were recognised as guiltless and honourable men. Lord John Russell stated that in 1 849 — ^just after the famine had left the people helpless — more than 50,000 families, consisting of probably 300,000 persons, were cast out into the roads as though they were dogs ; no pity was exercised towards them, no mercy was extended to them, and no refuge was afforded them. He said : — " We have made Ireland — I speak it deliberately — we have made it the most depraved and the most miserable country in the world ; but we are callous to our own ignominy and to the results of our misgovernment." But these evictions were not simply confined to the time immediately succeeding the famine. They mark the whole course of Irish history, and they have embittered the minds of the Irish youth. Boys cast out with their parents on the road-side in inclement weather, have grown up with inveterate hostility to England, and many like Michael Davitt have devoted their great powers to an attempt to obtain redress for their fellow-countrymen. The Irish National League Pamphlets condense much information on the subject. No. 7 of these pamphlets gives the following : — ** Ireland," said John Bright, in Dublin, on 30th October, 1866, "has been a land of evictions — a word which, I suspect, is scarcely known in any other civilized country." 147 "In newly settled countries," said Mr. Butt, ''land is said to be cleared when the forest is cut down, the jungle or brushwood removed, and the wild beasts are driven away. In Ireland the estates are 'cleared' when the human beings that encumber them are swept from the soil." Many persons — especially in England and Scotland — do not yet know what dreadful and abominable things Irish evictions are and have been. Here are three illustrative scenes described by well-known Irishmen. Mr. Butt in his " Land Tenure," speaking of the Glenveigh evictions, in Donegal, says: — "A few years ago a gentleman purchased in the Landed Estates Court the property of one of the wildest and most beautiful of the highland districts of Ireland. In a valley almost separated from the rest of the world, round a primitive hamlet, there dwelt a peaceful population, who could have probably traced back their generations in the same spot to a period before the Plantation of Ulster. Differences arose between the new comer and the old inhabitants. A man was murdered under circumstances which gave the new proprietor a pretext to say that it originated in this feud. Under the excuse of punishing the non- detection of the murderer, he * cleared.' his estate of every living soul. In vain the Protestant and Catholic clergy joined in a solemn protest against a sentence which they pronounced both as cruel and unjust. In vain they bore their testimony to the peaceful character of the little community whom that sentence doomed to a miserable fate. The proprietor was inexorable in his stern resolve. Nearly three hundred human beings 148 were driven out, without the prospect or the power of doing anything on God's earth to get them bread. Their mountain homes are levelled to the ground, and one great sheep farm occupies the district which gave shelter and bread to numbers of human beings." The same gentleman writes in the same work, of the Tullamore evictions, in the King's County: — "A townland in one of the midland counties was inhabited by a prosperous and contented community. An estate of about five hundred acres was divided into about thirteen farms; thirteen thriving families occupied the ground. They paid a rent the full value of their farms. They paid that rent punctually. The families of some had occupied for centuries the same farms. The industry of themselves and their forefathers had given fertility to the soil. Crime was unknown among them. Disputes with their landlords they had none. It suited the convenience of their landlord to sell his interest in this estate. The purchaser was buying it to traffic in it, and he believed it would be more marketable if it were freed from the incumbrance of human beings. To effectuate this object the seller covenanted to clear the estate. The tenants, who had paid up every penny of their rent, were all served with notice to quit ; they were evicted. Thirteen human habitations were levelled ; the inmates turned out upon the world, reduced at once from comfort to absolute beggary. It so happened that in this instance the landlord adopted a course which enabled a jury to strain the law, and award these poor tenants ample compensation. But for the awkwardness with which the proceeding was carried out, it might all have been done without the power of any human 149 tribunal to take cognizance of the wrong. An accidental blunder in the process put it in the power of a jury of landlords, by the damages they awarded, to mark their sense of the moral character of the act." Dr. Nulty, the Catholic Bishop of Meath, a man of probity and culture, says, when speaking of a sight he saw, — " Seven hundred human beings were driven from their homes in one day. The houses were destroyed. In one house typhus fever held its inmates. Some had died, others were at the height of the fever. They supplicated the agent who superintended the evictions to spare their house a little longer; but no! they must go, was the reply. He ordered a large winnowing sheet to be secured over the beds on which the fever victims lay — fortunately they happened to be delirious at the time — and then he directed the houses to be unroofed cautiously and slowly." The Bishop says, '*I administered the last Sacrament of the Church to four of these fever-victims next day, and save the above-mentioned sheet there was not a roof nearer to them than the canopy of heaven. The heavy rains that usually attended the autumnal equinoxes descended in cold copious torrents throughout the night, and at once revealed to the houseless sufferers the awful realities of their condi- tion. The landed proprietors in a circle all round, and for many miles in every direction, warned their tenantry against admitting them to a single night's shelter. Many of these poor people were unable to emigrate. After battling in vain with privations and pestilence, they at last graduated from the workhouse to the tomb ; and in little more than three years nearly a fourth of them lay quietly in their graves defying eviction. And yet, would you believe it, that agent and those landlords escaped hanging. They had used the law."* * Quoted in SuUivan's "New Ireland," 150 Well might Daniel O'Connell write in John Bright's album, when asked for his autograph : — Within that land dwelt many a malcontent Who cursed the tyranny to which he bent. That land full many a wringing despot saw, Who worked his tyranny in form of law. One of the most terrible evictions recorded was that of Glenveigh, mentioned above. History records the dark deed, and paints it in its true colour, to the everlasting disgrace of a tyrant landlord. The district was prosper- ous ; the landlord who sold the soil spoke in the highest terms of the people, but the new landlord wanted the farms and the people had to go. Houses were torn down. Widows and orphans were cast out on the road-side. One old man, nearly ninety years of age, on leaving his house for the last time reverently kissed the doorposts, with all the impassioned tenderness of an emigrant leaving his native land. Miserably clad, mid drizzling rain, they crouched for shelter under the hedges and trees. Public subscriptions furnished funds for the emigration of the people, and before they left they marched in a body to the burial ground where their forefathers slept, and throwing themselves on the turf they reverently kissed again and again the green covered places of the dead. No doubt they envied the dead their continuance in the soil. They were sent across the water and flung almost penniless into the new world, to cherish an undying hatred of the nation to which that landlord belonged, and to the Legislature, the laws of which enabled him to do this great wrong. Families Evicted. Re-admitted as Caretakers. 1849-51 .. 263,000 .. 73,000 1852-60 .. 110,000 .. " 28,000 1861-70 .. 47,000 .. 8,000 1871-80 .. 41,000 .. 6,000 1881-82 .. 21,000 .. 4,000 Total 33 years .. 482,000 .. 119,000 151 Thus the number of persons actually evicted (on an average of 5 per family) was over 2,000,000 (say 70,000 per annum), about 35 per cent, of the population. In the report of Captain Kennedy, a case is mentioned of two children lying asleep on their father's corpse, \^ile their dying mother lay near them, all homeless because of eviction ; and of another where a man turned out of his house built himself and his children a shelter of loose stones, which was demolished by the agent while the man was gathering shell-fish for the support of his family. Dr. Spence Watson writes as follows in a special Supplement of the Newcastle Leader-. — But even after the proof of this paper has been corrected in this first month of the year of grace (!) 1887, comes the following account from the Killarney district of Ireland, where Lord Kenmare and Mr. Herbert, of Muckross, seem to be trying who will evict the most tenants : — "Patrick Leary's house was first visited. He has nine children. The tenant could not afford to pay a farthing. The children all tattered in rags were seated round the turf fire, impart- ing warmth to their naked limbs, and when the police put in an appearance their heartrending cries could not fail to send a thrill of pity through the spectators. The bailiffs quickly set to work in removing the furniture, &c., and in order to facilitate the removal they were broken up and thrown on a manure heap opposite the door. It was in vain that Leary and his wife expostulated with the bailiff to be allowed to seek temporary shelter in an outhouse. They were put out in a blinding storm of hail. The poor woman sought shelter alongside the furniture, which was piled upon the road. She had a child about two years of age in her arms, who cried bitterly. Three other little bareheaded children standing in the snow, without shoes or substantial clothing to keep out the intense cold, were blinded by hailstones, threw themselves under the skirts of their mother's gown for shelter, and were sobbing and weeping intensely. A little child about nine months old was wrapped up in a blanket in the arms of his sister. The police appeared to be visibly moved ^ Leary held the place under a lease at the yearly rental of £z2, the 152 valuation being /i6 5s. Only twice did he get a reduction of 2s. in the pound. He asked to be allowed into the Land Court to have a fair rent fixed, but was refused. To-day he asked French, the bailiff, for time to pay a part of what was due, but the former said it was Mr. Hussey he had to deal with, and no compromise was come to. There*are only about three acres in the entire holding for tillage, the rest being mountains and rocks. The present tenant came into the place ten years ago. He and Looney are the only two tenants in the place, and the nearest farmer's house is three miles, so that the probability is that they had to take shelter by the ditch for the night, as they got no notice of the eviction, and consequently could not go to their friends to-day, who would provide them shelter. A move was next made to the house of Timothy Looney. He was not able to afford to pay any rent, and he asked for time, but the bailiff would not listen to this. He has seven young children, his wife, and his aged father, eighty years of age, leaning on two crutches. The place was in possession of the family from time immemorial. The poor old man was not permitted to remain for the night, and probably to-day's proceedings will end his days. Before leaving, I saw Looney improvising a sort of shelter by the side of an outhouse, composed of beds and furniture, where they were going to put up for the night. The rent Looney was paying was ^25, while the valuation is only /15 5s. Two years' rent was due." THE RULE OF THE ESTATE. Such was and such is an eviction. Remember that up to 1870, only sixteen years ago, the system continued in all its rigour. At any time and upon any pretext a man might be turned out from his home. The house he or his fore-elders had built might be pulled down about his ears, and he might be driven away from the land to which he had given all its value, the owner quietly pocketing the benefit of the exertions of generations of tenants. The tenant might have paid that rent which justly had never become due with perfect regularity, still out he must go. The landlord held in his hands that which meant life or death to his tenant, and he availed himself in many instances of this power to the full. Upon the Lansdowne Estates, for example, tenants were forbidden to marry without the agent's permission. On the same estates a tenant '53 sheltered his sister-in-law whilst her husband was seeking work. The rule of the estate was that no stranger should be taken in. The poor woman was approaching her confinement, and she was removed to a shed on a relative's land, where the child was born. The relative was fined a gale of rent and made to pull the shed down. The poor sick woman took refuge in a cavern on the mountain, and for allowing it the tenants who jointly grazed the land had two fines levied upon them. Sir John Gray, quoting Chief Baron Pigott's words in passing sentence upon persons accused of the manslaughter of a boy of twelve years of age, spoke thus of evictions and of the rules of this and other estates, the breaches of which being punished by eviction became imperative and dangerous laws, laws which men must obey or suffer the result, which, to an Irishman, is worse than death. The boy's " mother at one time held a little dwelling, from which she was expelled. His father was dead. His mother had left him, and he was alone and unprotected. He found refuge with his grandmother who held a little farm, from which she was removed in consequence of harbouring this poor boy, as the agent of the property had given public notice to the tenantry that expulsion from their farms would be the penalty inflicted upon them if they harboured any persons having no residence on the estate. These two cases showed that the tenantry were, because of the extra- ordinary powers conferred by law on landlords, in such a state of serfdom that the mother could not receive her daughter, that the grandmother could not receive her own grandchild, unless that child was a tenant on the estate ; and the result, in the case he was referring to, was this, — that the poor boy, without a house to shelter him, was sought to be forced into the house of a relative in a terrible night of storm and rain. He was immediately pushed out again, he staggered on a little, fell to the ground, and next morning was found cold, stiff, and dead. The persons who drove the poor boy out were tried for the offence of being accessories to his death, and their defence was that what they did was done under the terror of ' the rule of the estate,' and that they meant no harm to the boy." Now, Englishmen and Englishwomen, who have the love of your own little ones deeply implanted in your hearts, who have understood how close the ties of blood are amongst the Irish people, who know what the land which they have made and which is their 154 one hope and only home means to them, can you not understand how these accursed laws which allow men who have done nothing for them, who have never seen the land from which they have sucked all the improved annual value, who in the sight of God are unjust and extortioners, to turn them and their little ones adrift on the world, homeless and houseless, make the crimes and outrages of which you hear so much, and such exaggerations, not only possible^ but certain ? I have not given you the worst cases. If you will look into the books and papers, which are accessible to all, you will read for yourselves scores of instances as bad, and at times even worse than anything I have told. And remember that in the four years from 1849 to 1852 there were 221,845 evictions, and that in each there was misery to a family of our fellow-beings involved, and that even yet, this very day, the same infernal work is going forward wherever a man is unable to pay his rent, from whatever cause, and that we English people are paying for it, and providing police and soldiers that it may be done effectually." Influence of Laws on Irish Feeling. The oppressive land laws which made these things possi- ble, in an age when slavery was denounced and when slaves in the West Indies and the United States of America had been freed, have done much to make the people of Ireland hate a Parliament which seemed determined at all hazards to keep intact the odious laws until forced to relax them by the pressure, not of justice, but of public force and threatenings. The manner in which the land was seized,, the rents continually raised because of improvements made by the tenants, and the people evicted because they were unable to pay the additional imposts placed upon their own industry, filled the minds of the Irish with intense hatred of English-made laws. The sensitive emotional nature of the people of Ireland was not sufficiently taken into consideration by the governing powers. Unvarying: law in accordance with the rigid ideas of unsympathetic 155 Political Economists took the place of a sympathetic treat- ment of the population. Political Economy uncontrolled by a broad humanity, and therefore destitute of its noblest factor, has been the inspiration of English rulers. The Parliament dominated by the spirit of landlordism, and composed of a majority of aliens, has repressed the native institutions, and fostered methods of restriction which have been ruinous to the energies and aspirations of a people who dearly love freedom. Political Economy and Humanity. The Parliaments of this century have too often been like a huge juggernaut rolling its iron wheels along, impelled by the privileged classes, and in its cruel pro- gress the brightest and best of Ireland's sons have been hurled to the ground and crushed. Loveless theories of the rights of property and the claims of landlordism have usurped the place of a loving attention to the first necessities of a nation's progress, and inflexible and cast- iron like laws with which the governed had no sympathy, have spread misery in the lives of those whose inalienable birthright was a right to live in the world equally with the right claimed by the governors. The voices of the Irish representatives have been disregarded and silenced. The measures carefully drawn up by those who knew best what were the necessities of the people have been contemptu- ously thrown out by Lords and Commons. Instead of trying to pacify and content the people, they have been exasperated to limits beyond human endurance. Their demands were said to be opposed to economical and social laws, and their opponents forgot that these laws to be respected must be inspired and controlled by moral and elevating principles which shall appeal to the Christianity 156 which like invisible ink is written on the human constitu- tion, and is brought out and made legible by the heat of trial and suffering. Englishmen have been surprised at the apparent apathy of respectable people who have refused to co-operate with the law officers in their attempts to grapple with those whom the law calls criminals. We have not always looked at the cause of crime. We should denounce positive and negative sympathy with iniquity and declare that tyranny cannot be a remedy for tyranny^ Light is the only victor over darkness, love the only antidote to selfishness, and a broad and all compassing charity and justice can alone beat injustices to the ground. Good laws, based on the inherent right of all men to live and to be preserved from harm, can alone overcome cruel and iniquitious practices. We should not palliate a wrong done by a tenant or a landlord, a cottier or a bailiif, and in apportioning blame we should look on all sides of the subject. It is as much an assassination to cast out children into the snowy road to die, as to shoot from behind a stone wall at an agent. Both are murderers who do this, and the laws should be so framed as to bring both equally to justice. The English Parliament in refusing to act on the Report of the Devon Commission and other Commissions appointed by itself, has made itself an accessory before and after the fact in the murders which have stained Irish soil. The unfortunate system has produced crime, and the Government has only punished the crime of the murderous and incensed tenant, while it has honoured and supported the equally murderous landlord. Was it likely that men would sit still and see their children destroyed ? Was it to be expected that men should be content to be punished for their labour, and the most successful of them to be loaded with heavier burdens ? Agents, landlords, and ^57 legislators are guilty in the sight of God and of man. Their actions have been clear violations of the Golden Rule, and of the spirit of Him who declared that He came '*not to destroy men's lives but to save them." And if we condemn those who have committed crimes against landlords and agents, let us be equally just in condemning the greater criminals, who with fuller knowledge and vaster power have been the first aggressors. Want of Progress Under the ** Union." If Ireland under the Act of Union had shared a prosperity similar to that realized in England some mitigating features might have been seen in the injustice of her government. But Ireland under the Imperial Parliament has failed to make adequate progress, and has not shared the measure of prosperity she reached during the time of her own Parliament. The supreme test of the worth of any Government is whether it contributes to the prosperity of the people and secures for them an increase of stability and peace, as well as a multiplication of comforts. Governments must be valued and honoured according to their practical results, and the working out of the great fundamental principles of freedom. The Union of 1800 must be tried in the same way as the laws formulated for the government of other lands. All laws are to a great extent experiments, and if they fail, states- men must use their powers to discover better methods for the regulation and development of national life. We have seen that in the year 1800 there was a great advance in Irish manufactures and commerce, and that the wealth of Ireland was so much increased that the people were able to indulge in further luxuries. What has been the condition of Ireland since ? Her trade has declined, her 158 population has been driven from her shores by an enforced emigration, until it numbers fewer than it did three-quarters of a century ago. She has sunk lower and lower until she has reached a level more depressed than that of any nation in Europe. The nobility and the wealthier classes left Dublin to reside in London, near the centre of govern-' ment. The seats and mansions of the aristocracy have fallen into ruins, and are the abode of owls and bats. The Dublin residences of the gentry are now let out in tene- ments, and are in a dilapidated condition. The Irish people have been compelled to pay to an absentee class the moneys needed to enable the landlords to mingle in the gaieties of Court life. " Prior to the Union, ninety-eight Peers, and a proportionate number of wealthy Commoners, inhabited the city (of Dublin). The number of resident Peers at present does not exceed twelve. The effect of the Union has been to withdrawn from Dublin many of those who were likely to contribute most effectually to its operation and importance. A house which in 1797 paid ;£"6 4s. is now subject to £'^,0, whilst the value of property has been reduced 20 per cent. The number of inhabited houses has diminished from 15,104 to 14,949. The num- ber of insolvent houses augmented from the year 1815 to 1822 from 880 to 4,719. In 1799 there were only 7 bank- rupts in Dublin, in 18 10 there were 152."* Thus reads the Report of the Select Committee on Dublin Local Taxation in 1825, and Mr. T. M. Healy declares that a report on the city in 1886 would tell a still more woeful tale. IMr. T. M. Healy says: — f'D'Alton, in his History of the County Dublin, p. 85, f;ives a comparative table, * Quoted by T. M. Healy. " A Word for Ireland." t >, „ ,. ,, pp. 47-48. 159 compiled from the most approved authorities, of the )t the annual ab sentee rental : — 1691 ;^i36,oi8 1729 ^627,799 1782 ;^2,223,222 1783 ;^i,6o8,932 1804 ;^3, 000,000 1830 ;^4,ooo,ooo 183S ;^5, 000,000 " In 1830, Mr. Butler Bryan estimated, before a Com- mittee of the House of Commons, the absentee drain at ;^3,ooo,ooo. Mr. Ensor, ' after a minute calculation,' at ;^4,ooo,ooo. The total rental of Ireland is estimated at about ;(f^i5,ooo,ooo ; and .on 23rd April, 1872, a return of Irish Landed Proprietors was presented to the House of Commons {^Thorn's Directory for 1884, p. 743), from which it appears : — 5,589 persons, owning 8,880,549 acres, valued for rating at £ 4,718,497, then resided * on or near their property'; 4,842 proprietors, owning 5,215,264 acres, valued for rating at /^'2, 499, 343, lived * usually elsewhere in Ireland, and occasionally on the property' ; 821,200 acres, valued at ;^49 1,778, were held by public institutions and persons (unclassed as to absenteeism) owning under 100 acres. The remaining 2,973 proprietors, owning 5,129,169 acres, valued for rating at ^^2,470,81 5, are set down as ' absentees.' The return does not include absentee house -owners, such as Lord Pembroke, who draws over half a million from Dublin alone. The Irish Doomsday Book shows that of the 20,000,000 acres in Ireland, 1,942 own two-thirds, 744 own one-half, 292 per- sons own one-third, 14 persons own 50,000 acres each, 12 persons own 1,297,888 acres, 3 persons own 3,000,000 acres, and one person owns 170,119 acres." i6o Sir Gay AN Duffy says: — "The Union was a profitable compact for one of the parties. England found a market for her fabrics, a recruiting field for her army, a partner in her public burthens, and by making absenteeism a necessity among the wealthy classes who were members of the Houses of Parliament, and the train who followed them, she drew from Ireland an annual tribute of five or six millions of rent. She enjoyed a monopoly of the public patronage, the chief offices paid by Irish taxes were filled by English functionaries. But for the other partner it was a disastrous compact." When legislative independence was secured by Grattan the woollen trade revived, and though the population was only 4,000,000, yet 150,000 were employed in silk and woollen manufactures. In 1 84 1, though the population had then increased to more than 8,000,000, yet the artisans employed in these trades had become fewer than 8,000. The mills in the provincial towns had all closed ; in Dublin, where 90 master manu- facturers had given employment to 5,000 artisans, the number of manufacturers had diminished to 12, and the workmen were under 700. 'The fate of the remainder might, as far as they survived, be learned from the annual reports of the Mendicity Society, some were breaking stones for gd. a day, some were starving for want of that miserable resource. A benevolent Doctor in a report he made, said — " I found in Luke's parish, 65 houses con- taining 1,763 inhabitants, nearly 28 persons in each on an average, among the entire of whom scarcely fifty blankets could be found." Duffy again says — speaking of fifty years after the Union — " The social condition of the country during the half-century then drawing to a close was without a parallel in Europe. The whole population were dependent on i6i agriculture. There were minerals, but none were found in what miners called * paying quantities.' There was no manufacture except linen and the remnant of a woollen trade, slowly dying out before the pitiless competition of Yorkshire. What the island chiefly produced was food, which was exported to richer countries to enable the cultivator to pay an inordinate rent. Foreign traders saw with amazement an island possessing all the natural condi- tions of a great commerce, as bare of commerce as if it lay in some bye-way of the world which enterprise had not yet reached. Harbours looking towards the prosperous western world were completely vacant, harbours looking toward the east were occupied only by ships which carried raw produce and human food to England. There was no foreign trade. . . . The noble quays of Liffey, which would rival the Lung d'Arno if Dublin were the seat of a national Government, held only a few coal barges and fruit boats. Similar decay was nearly universal. The provincial towns in general had an unprosperous or bank- rupt look. There was scarcely a county which could not show some public work begun before the Union and now a ruin. When an Irish gentleman visited other countries, the contrast turned his blood to gall. Lord Cloncurry declared that there was more misery in Dublin than in all Europe." The ** Union " and Manufacturing. " Let us see what was the effect of Pitt's measure on manufactures. In 1800 there were in — Dublin . . 90 woollen manufacturers, employing 4,918 hands „ . . 30 woolcombers, employing 230 hands „ .. 13 carpet-combers, „ 230 „ ,, . . 2500 silk-loom weavers,.-^ — : r^.^ Y^ Cn THE '^ \i (( rNlVERSITY )) l62 Cork . . 1000 braid weavers 2000 worsted weavers 3000 hosiers 700 woolcombers , . 2000 cotton weavers 600 linen-check weavers Wicklow . . 1000 hand-loom weavers Kilkenny . . 56 blanket manufacturers Balbriggan 2500 calico looms at work To-day not a vestige of these industries remain, with the exception perhaps of a single tweed factory in Dublin, while of new works to take their place there are practically none. These are but sample instances of decline, for all over the country may be seen roofless factories, idle mill- wheels, and empty storehouses. * I shall do all that in me lies to discourage Irish woollen manufactures,' said William III. to his Parliament (1698) ; but the discouragements of restrictive laws in the seventeenth century operated less fatally to Irish trade than the indirect blight brought on every Irish industry by the Legislative Union. In the eighty-six years it has been in force there have been eleven Acts for the direct relief, otherwise than by the ordinary poor law, of exceptional distress ; ten for the indirect relief of poverty by public works ; four for giving the poor employment at the public expense ; four for contending with famine fever ; four for saving from starvation the thousands of children deserted through the poverty of their parents ; three for the relief of railway companies unable to proceed with their works ; four for the artificial assist- ance of banks, aud for sustaining commercial credit ; and four affecting encumbered estates ; making in all forty- three Acts in fulfilment of Pitt's prophecies of boundless prosperity as the result of his measure."* * T. M. Healy.— " The Irish Problem and how to solve it, 1883." i63 An eminent French statesman visiting Ireland in 1824, said he had seen the Indian in his wigwam, and the negro in his chains, but that the condition of the Irish tenant-at- will was worse than that of the savage or the slave. In 1834 the Parliament refused to consider the Repeal Question, but it passed a resolution to apply the best attention to the removal of all just causes of complaint, and to the promotion of all well-considered means of improvement for the benefit of Ireland. Promises are good when they are kept, but are useless when they are violated. The Corporations of England and Scotland were reformed, but Ireland was not only destitute of her Parliament, but her Municipal Corporations were also left unreformed and were exclusively in the hands of Protes- tants, although a Royal Commission had reported that in every case they had plundered the public estate granted for their endowment. The Poor Law computed that the number of agricultural labourers in the country was over a million, and that one-half of them were out of employ- ment for thirty weeks in the year. Thomas Carlyle in his "Chartism*' says that this is a fact perhaps the most elo- quent that ever was written down in any language, at any date of the world's history. Evidence of Commissions. Parliamentary Commissions enquired from time to time into the destitution and degradation of the Irish nation, and the statements of the witnesses called are enough to tear the heart-string of every human being. Dr. Doyle, Bishop of Kildare, stated that " It is scarcely imaginable on what a pittance the people subsist ; he lies down on a little straw on the floor, and remaining ihere motionless all the day, gets up in the evening, eats 164 a few potatoes, and then throws himself again upon the earth, where he remains until morning; thus he drags out an existence which it were better was terminated in any way than continue in the manner it is." He was asked the question " Do you think this evil likely to increase ? " and he replied "If the laws be not altered, and the country settled so that people will have a confidence in the peace, and good order to be established, and if the English capitalists do not go to Ireland, I do not know why it must not increase." "The state of the laws keeps every- thing unsettled and insecure, and discourages men of capital and industry from embarking both in the improve- ment of Ireland." Another witness, Mr. Blake said — " I do not conceive that there is any political curse upon Ireland that is to prevent her from being as happy and as peaceable as other countries, if instead of attempting to fit the people to the constitution, the constitution be fitted to the people." Mr. Leslie Foster was asked ** To what cause do you attribute the frequent occurrence of disturbance in Ire- land ?" and he replied "I think the proximate cause is the extreme physical misery of the peasantry, coupled with their liability to be called on for the payment of different charges which it is often perfectly impossible for them to- meet. The immediate cause I conceive to be the attempt to enforce these demands by the various processes of the law ; but that there must also be taken into consideration the fact that they are living under institutions for which they have neither much aff"ection or respect." Reading all these facts, can we be surprised that Lord Chesterfield's statements should be adopted by others, and that many approved of the sentiment, viz.: — ''If the military force that has suppressed the rebellion had killed i65 • half as many landlords as Whiteboys, it would have con- tributed more effectually to restore quiet, for the people of Ireland are worse used than slaves by the masters and the deputies of the deputies." Mr. MuLLHALL gives some very forcible statistics*: — In fifty years the population of the United Kingdom has risen from twenty-six millions to thirty-seven millions, an increase of 42 per cent. But the ratio of increase was reduced from 28 per cent, in 1841 to 8 per cent, in 1861, mainly because of the Irish Famine, which carried off over 1,200,000 persons. Statistics of Emigration. Emigration has removed from the United Kingdom in fifty years more than nine millions of people, of whom 10 per cent, have returned. '* Most of those who went to the United States were Irish ; the bulk of whom went westward to open up the new Territories. In thirty years down to 1880, the aggregate wealth of eleven Western States multiplied twelve and a half times, showing an increase of 2654 millions sterling; at least one-fourth of this amount, or a sum equal to our National Debt, was the result of Irish settlers." Since 1837 ^^^ emigrants have comprised : — Irish persons .. .. 4,186,000 English and Welsh . . 4,045,000 Scotch . . . . . . 870,000 Total .. .. .. 9,101,000 Population. The population of Dublin from 1841 to 1886 has increased 45 per cent., but Manchester has increased 97 * '• Fifty Years of National Progress," by Michael G. Mullhall. i66 per cent., Liverpool 105 per cent., Glasgow 10 1 per cent., Birmingham 138 per cent., Leeds 122 percent., Sheffield 180 per cent., London 108 per cent. Property The value of house property in relation to population is as follows : — Dublin ^44 per inhabitant, Birmingham ;^76, Glasgow ;;^ioo, Manchester £\<:>^, Liverpool ^,114, London £\^^- The general average is England £'^^y Scotland £^2, Ireland £iz. The Death Rate. With the increase of poverty in Ireland there has been an increase in the death rate. In 1886 the death i eight principal cities were ; — London . . 207 Glasgow . . 24-8 Liverpool . . 237 Edinburgh . . ig'i Manchester. . 25-9 Leeds . . . . 20*8 Birmingham 20*0 Dublin. . . . 27-0 Committals for Crime. With regard to crime, the annual average of com- mittals for the ten years ending 1885 was per 100,000 of the population — England and Wales 60, Scotland 71, Ireland 77. Education. With regard to education, the percentage of persons able to write their names in the marriage register has been at three different periods as follows : — 1836 1850 1881 England . . 57 . . 64 . . 84 Scotland . . 78 . . 83 . . 88 Ireland .. 48 .. 55 .. 67 167 Mr. MuLLHALL, in speaking of the condition of the masses, says: — " Suicide and divorce are likewise increas- ing, except in Ireland, where both are almost unknown." The chapter on Ireland in MullhaWs Fifty Years of National Progress, pp. 114- 116, deserves careful study: — '' The present reign has been the most disastrous since that of Elizabeth, as the following statistics show : — Died of famine .. .. 1,225,000 Persons evicted . . . . 3,668,000 Number of emigrants .. 4,186,000 Evictions were most numerous immediately after the Famine, the landlords availing themselves of the period of greatest calamity to enforce their *' rights." Official returns give the number of families, and these averaging seven persons we ascertain the actual num- ber of persons evicted : — Years. Families. Persons. 1849-51 263,000 . . 1,841,000 1852-60 110,000 770,000 1861-70 47,000 329,000 1871-86 . 104,000 728,000 Total . . 524,000 . . 3,668,000 The number of persons evicted is equal to 75 per cent, of the actual population. No country, either in Europe or elsewhere, has suffered such wholesale extermination. i68 "Emigration since 1837 ^^^ amounted to a number equal to 84 per cent, of the present population : — 1837-50 1,085,000 1851-60 .. .. .. 1,231,000 1861-70 .. .. .. 867,000 1871-86 .. .. ., 1,003,000 Total . . . . 4,186,000 "Existing Irish settlements abroad and the estim- ated wealth in their possession show that the bulk of the emigrants were good citizens, of thrifty and industrious habits, viz. : — Number. Wealth, millions United States . . 2,040,000 .. 388 Canada . . 1,053,000 I II Australia . . . , 666,000 .. 132 Buenos Ayres 27,000 18 Cape Colony, &c. 25,000 6 Total.. .. 3,811,000 .. 655 *' In one generation four million emigrants, who left home penniless, have become possessed of real and personal property to the amount of 655 millions sterling, besides having sent home to their friends since 1851 a sum of thirty-two miHions. This shows an average accumulation of fourteen millions yearly, or £'] per head on the medium number of exiles since 1837." Failure of Feeble Remedies. Attempts have been made in late years to remedy these evils. All the leading statesmen of the century have 169 tried their utmost powers to induce Ireland to accept the badge of servitude, and bow to a system of government which they declared to be the only possible one. Failure has been inscribed upon all their plans. That which has been fatal to the success of all the purposes and schemes of the English Cabinets, has been the assertion of the principle that Ireland must never be allowed to have a separate legislature, but must always be ruled in the inter- ests of England. The spirit of landlordism of Protestant ascendancy and of the predominance of England is the inspiring and directing force of the legislation of Pitt and Percival, of Palmerston and Peel, and even Russel, Canning, Melbourne, and Aberdeen, while sincerely in sympathy with progressive measures in England, could not divest their minds of the idea that Ireland must be kept as a subject-island. The central injustices of the country were never dealt with. The blotches on the cheek were vigorously treated by drenching admixtures of the brim- stone and treacle of alternate coercion and the relaxation of coercion, but the cancer of injustices, which was eating away the life of the nation, was left untouched. The small measures of relief, reluctantly passed, were accompanied by the flourish of trumpets and the acclamations of the governing classes. All the Cabinets tried only to cure Ireland by opium-like doses of legislation, which lulled to sleep and dulled the pain, but when the patient awoke, the anguish was as intolerable as ever, and another course was demanded by the condition of the suffering one. National Phlebotomy. Then a course of coercion, which acted like the old process of phlebotomy was adopted, and the life-blood of Ireland was let out with no stint or remorse. I have heard of a coachman wko regularly brought down his lash on one of the horses at a certain part of the road. When asked the reason of this chastisement each journey, he said ''that the horse once shied at the whitened gatepost close by, and now," he continued, "I alius gives 'im some- thing to remember, so as he can't notice that post." That has been the policy in Ireland — a sharper pain in the shape of coercion and martial law has been inflicted, to draw Ireland's attention from her real diseases, when the opium-like doses have failed. In consequence, the country has been reduced to a condition of increased weakness. But all in vain. Drenches of coercion and small sweet- meats to take away the nauseous taste have all failed. Ireland was not satisfied with homeopathic donations of aconite and sulphur, when she needed food. She demanded to be treated as one who had long suffered from disease and neglect, and who required not only that the diseases affecting her life at its citadel should be removed, but that her weakened system should also be strengthened by generous and just supplies of food. Removal of iniquitious class government, and the supply of honest and just laws, strengthening freedom and developing industry was needed. But instead of this, coercion laws of the severest character were passed and administered with cruel hand. The Black List. Mr. Boyd Kinnear, M.P., in June, 1884, in a small leaflet, says:* — "From 1800 to 1870 there were some forty coercion bills passed for Ireland. Between 1819 and 1830 five Royal Commissions and Select Committees took evidence (and the evidence would break your hearts) ; and between 1829 and 1869 there were twenty-seven Bills and * Quoted by T. M. Healy, " A Word for Ireland," pages 95-96. 171 Resolutions offered by Irish members on the Land Question, and every one was rejected. Yet all these Bills were of the most moderate character. No matter what they pro- posed, the Irish members could not obtain a hearing in the English Parliament. Yet the Land Question involved the life and death of 6,000,000 of Irish human beings. Of these 6,000,000, about one-half have perished or been driven into exile by evictions since 1845. Think of it! And all this by laws which you, the people of England and Scotland, have enforced upon Ireland." In a pamphlet on Ireland {■^. 5), published in 188 1 — the same Mr. Kinnear, after alluding to the way in which Ireland has always been ruled by foreigners, according to their foreign ideas, ex- claims : — ** Would Scotland be contented with such a system t Assuredly not. Before ten years were out, there would be a smouldering rebellion from one end of the country to the other, and an English official's life would not be safe beyond the radius of a policeman's baton." 1800 f to 18051 1807 1808-9 1814 to ■ I8I6 1817- 1822 to 1830 Habeas Corpus Suspen- sion. Seven Coercion Acts. ist February, Coercion Act. Habeas Corpus Suspen- sion. 2nd August, Insurrection Act. Habeas Corpus Suspen- sion. Habeas Corpus Suspen- sion. Insurrection Act. Habeas Corpus Suspen- sion. One Coercion Act. Habeas Corpus Suspen- sion. Two Coercion Acts in 1822, and one 1823. 1830 Importation of Arms Act. 1 83 1 Whiteboy Act. 1831 Stanley's Arms Act. 1832 Arms and Gunpowder Act. 1833 Suppression of Disturb- ance. 1833 Change of Venue Act. 1834 Disturbances Amendment: and Continuance. 1834 Arms and Gunpowder Act. 1835 Public Peace Act. 1836 Another Arms Act. 1838 Another Arms Act. 1839 Unlawful Oaths Act. 1840 Another Arms Act. 1841 Outrages Act. 7.2 1 84 1 Another Arms Act. 1843 Another Arms Act. 1843 Act Consolidating all Pre- vious Coercion Acts. 1844 Unlawful Oaths Act 1845 Additional Constables near Public Works Act. 1845 Unlawful Oaths Act. 1846 Constabulary Enlargement 1847 Crime and Outrage Act. 1848 Treason Amendment Act. 1848 Removal of Arms Act. 1848 Suspension of Habeas Corpus. 1848 Another Oaths Act. 1849 Suspension of Habeas Corpus. 1850 Crime and Outrage Act. 1851 Unlawful Oaths Act. 1853 Crime and Outrage Act. 1854 Crime and Outrage Act. 1855 Crime and Outrage Act. 1856 Peace Preservation Act. 1858 Peace Preservation Act. i860 1862 1862 1865 1 866 1866 1867 1868 Peace Preservation Act. Peace Preservation Act. Unlawful Oaths Act. Peace Preservation Act. Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act (August). Suspension of Habeas Corpus. Suspension Corpus. of Habeas of Habeas Suspension Corpus. 1870 Peace Preservation Act. 1 87 1 Protection of Life and Property. 1 87 1 Peace Preservation Con. 1873 Peace Preservation Act. 1875 Peace Preservation Act. 1875 Unlawful Oaths Act. 1 88 1 to 1882 Peace Preservation Act (suspending Habeas Corpus) . 1 88 1 to 1886 Arms Act. 1882 to 1885 Crimes Act. 1886 to 1887 Arms Act. Many of the remedies proposed were heroic but futile. There was a clever cartoon a few years ago in Fun — **Poor Ireland" — the "sick sister" of the British family is sitting in a doleful plight, surrounded by above a dozen political doctors, every one pressing his peculiar specific. Dr. Russel offers his *' Whig mixture," Dr. Bright a " land cordial," Dr. J. S. Mill insists on severe ''heroic remedies," whilst Dr. Gladstone recommends " generous treatment." A Communist shows a dangerous knife; a Roman Catholic Priest has a prescription for " complete isolation." Dr. Disraeli is feeling the patient's pulse with puzzled shake of the head, while Dr. Robert Lowe in the back-ground holds up his hands in hopeless despair of any good being done.* "The Hour and the Man." Ignorance of the true needs of Ireland has been one of the causes of her misgovernment, and selfishness in national policy has spread bitterness over the Irish life. All the measures of tyrannical force have failed, and Ireland has remained as poor and destitute and dissatisfied as ever. Nay ! her poverty, destitution, and dissatisfaction have in- creased, as her sons have become more educated, and by constitutional privileges have been better able to appre- hend and realize their position. Many of the great states- men who were unable to see the primary needs of the people, or were not sufficiently strong to free England from a traditional policy which had been outstripped by the progress of thought and freedom, passed from view, and left the problem still unsettled. The Andromeda of Erin was still chained to the rock, and assailed by unjust government and landlordism and a compulsory alien church. A modern Perseus was needed. Those who essayed the task were too weak for it, and were compelled to flee before the attacks of privilege, many of them with wrecked reputations. But during part of this time, nursing his strength into increased vigour, and training his great mind to cope successfully with the dangers, there lived one who was destined more than any other of his age to be the great statesman of the Irish Question. Slowly but surely he progressed from Toryism to become a follower of Peel. Slowly but surely influences born in association with Canning took fuller form and * "Ireland in 1872,"— Dr. Macaulay. 174 increased life in his nature and policy. ' Through the Coalition Government of Lord Aberdeen, he marched to a position still more advanced and renowned. The lesser offices of the Government were but rungs in the ladder by which he climbed to the first position in English Parlia- mentary life, and in the nation's esteem. And then when he had risen to a height which enabled him to take a wider view of the great questions of the day, and when his power and influence in the nation enabled him to work out his beneficient purposes, he staked his honourable reputation upon great and hitherto discarded methods to settle the difficulties of Irish government. His mind refused to be bound and crippled by the hoary traditions of an age out of date, and in 1868 the Disestablishment of the Irish Church — the forerunner of the Land Act of 1870 — showed the Irish people the sympathy and states- manship, the justice and righteousness of England's noblest and greatest political leader — the peerless and fearless Mr. Gladstone. March 'jth, 1888. Dear Sir, You are doing good service by educating the people on the Irish Question, and if the next part of your work is as instrudive as your last, I have no doubt it will have a large circulation. Our opponents are hoping by denunciation to stem the onward progress of the Home Rule Movement. They complain that Mr. Gladstone's measures would not meet the requirements of the case. What have they offered in place of it ? Nothing but a system of intensified restrictive government, which increases the race-hatred which has been so long indulged in by Englishmen, and unless the Irish people had been well advised, would have led to increased resentment on the part of that people. I am, dear Sir, Yours truly, John Barran. Rev. S. Lloyd, PART 111 MR, GLADSTONE'S REMEDIES FOR IRELAND'S GRIEVANCES. Mr. Gladstone is the first great Statesman of the century who has succeeded in popularising measures based on the principle laid down by Mr. C. J. Fox in 1797. Mr. Fox then declared that it w^as his desire to have Irish Government regulated by Irish notions and Irish prejudices and he said, *' I firmly believe that the more she is under Irish government the more she will be bound to English interests." This was no new idea to Irish Statesmen. It was the position taken up by Grattan and Flood, and by Sir John Parnell, as well as by most of the great Irish leaders who preceded them. But English Premiers during the chief part of this century, have clung tenaciously to the principle enunciated by the English Cabinets of the 17th and i8th centuries, viz., that Ireland should be ruled in the interests of England, by English ideas of government, and should simply be governed in the same way as England. They have ignored the want of similarity in the conditions of the two countries, and have refused- to note the race- distinctions between the inhabitants of both islands. Mr. Disraeli with acute perception of the necessities of Ireland, and being at the time untrammelled by the .78 exigencies of office, declaimed strongly against the idea, and the Tory Cabinet of Lord Salisbury, with the Unionist buttresses and their candid friend Lord Randolph Churchill are acting in opposition to a principle at one time laid down by the great chief, now departed from the arena of this life. Modern Elishas, upon whose shoulders the mantle of the great political Elijah has fallen, are showing their superiority to the dead seer, by reverting to a principle of government which he has declared to be erroneous and impotent. The great difference to be observed between the legislation of Mr. Gladstone and that of the Tory Party is, that while the latter desire to continue the plan of governing Ireland by English-made laws and English notions, Mr. Gladstone is anxious to bring Irish government into harmony with native ideals, sustained by native forces, so that confidence in the admin- istrative executive may be secured, and the people of Ireland may be induced to render to the law, not a sullen submission, but a wise, cheerful, and prompt obedience. A New Era of Legislation. A new era dawned upon the history of Irish legisaltion after the futile Fenian Insurrection of 1867. Previously the Statesmen of England appeared satisfied with the repression by force of Irish disloyalty. But now Mr. Gladstone's great aim was directed at the removal of Irish disaffection by the destruction of Irish grievances. He sought to secure greater confidence in English fairness, and to make the Union between England and Ireland one not of force but of love and of a common interest equally recognised by the democracy of both countries. In the year above named, the Irish nation was in the throes of revolution. For some time previously, men secretly met 179 for the purpose of preparing, if need be, for opposing the English claims by force of arms. Fenianism, like Nihilism in Russia, honeycombed the life of the people. It was reported that cellars were used, even in Yorkshire, for the purpose of drilling the Irish manhood, and fitting them to take part in the coming strife. The embers of rebellion were being fanned into a flame by the tardiness of English governments in granting reforms, and by the heartlessness with which the landlords of Ireland enforced their exactions, supported by the authorities at Dublin Castle. It was at this crisis that Mr. Gladstone came forward with his resolutions for dealing with the anomaly of the Irish Church. The Irish Church. Whatever may be said in favour of the Established Church of England by its doughty defenders, it is now generally acknowledged that the Irish establishment was practically indefensible. This became clear, during the progress of the debate. It was the Church of a dominant minority, and it had been considered by the majority of the population as a part of the garrison, by which a foreign power kept them in subjection, and under the pretence of rendering them religious service, fleeced them of their hard-earned gains. The brilliance of Mr. Disraeli, the glib impetuous speech of Mr. Gathorne Hardy, and tha dashing impulsive oratory of the late Lord Derby — the Rupert of debate — all failed to make out a substantial case for the maintenance of the Irish Church System. As a missionary church it had failed. The wisdom of its prelates and the devotion and piety of many of its ministers failed to commend it to the Irish mind. To the large number of Catholics it represented an arrogant and i8o tyrannical mistress, and they were angry at being compelled to tolerate and maintain in the name of religion, a Church, the ministries of which they rejected, while they looked upon its ministers as the liveried and subservient creatures of a conquering State. To the Irish the system reeked of tyranny, extortion, and favouritism, and they regarded it as opposed to those principles which are the basis of true religious faith. Dean Swift wrote unsparingly of the evils of the Irish Church system. The prelates were drawn chiefly, and almost entirely from England. The Irish ecclesiastics of the Church itself were consistently over- looked. Swift said that Ireland was like a hospital, where the poor for whom it was built were starved, while the house officials grew rich and fat. The best livings were given to men in England who did not understand the Irish people. Many of the Clergy were absentees drawing large sums from the livings, and neglecting the spiritual work. Bishops were known, who had never been in their dioceses for twenty years but had lived in England, and sold their benefices as they became vacant. Archbishop Bolton said that " a true Irish bishop has nothing more to do than to eat, drink, grow fat, rich, and die." Dean Swift, however, with his usual humour said that the explanation of the matter was that ** excellent and moral men have been selected on every occasion of vacancy, ^ut it unfortunately has uniformly happened that as these worthy divines crossed Hounslow Heath on their way to Ireland to take possession of their bishoprics, they have regularly been robbed and murdered by the highwaymen frequenting that common, who seize upon their robes and patents, come over to Ireland, and are consecrated bishops in their stead." In 1849 ^^- John Bright said "I assert that the I8l Protestant Church in Ireland is at the root of the evils of that country." Mr. McCeoghegan asserts that during the reigns of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Elizabeth and James I., **not sixty of the Irish embraced the Protestant religion." The reason of this is stated by Mr. Godkin, "because the Reformation would have been more truly called the Confiscation " and " because there is at this moment scarcely an Irish noble- man, inheriting an ancient property who does not owe the bulk of it to the confiscated lands of the Church." The Church Degraded by Alliance with the State. Dr. Macartney, Dean of Melbourne in 1874, pub- lished a pamphlet in which he said that ** England laboured for centuries to degrade the Church of Christ into a political tool. So far from the experiment of attempting to convert or benefit Ireland through her national Church having been tried for 300 years, discoun- tenance, neglect, or open persecution has attended every exhibition of spirituality, within her own bosom, or of missionary exertion without. Her confidence has been gained to betray, her wealth and honours used to corrupt her, she has been feasted like Isaac to be deceived, invited like Tamar to the fraternal mansion, to be defiled and then cast out." Raumer, the German Historian, who visited Ireland in 1835, says, " Acts of intolerance and injustice deepened the hate of the Irish to the new faith. The Protestantism that was bolstered by wrong was hated and despised, and the evils of government were associated with the Church which the Protestant rulers maintained in opposition to the traditions and desires of the people." Sydney Smith said of the Irish Church, ** There is no abuse like it in all I82 Europe, in all Asia, in all the discovered parts of Africa, and in all we have heard of Timbuctoo. Count Cavour, the great Italian Statesman, was a firm friend of England's, and his admiration of English Institutions was expressed with no reticent tongue, yet of the Irish Church he wrote, "It remains to the Catholics a representative of the cause of their miseries, a sign of defeat and oppression. It exasperates their sufferings, and makes their humiliation keenly felt." In the early part of the century, the progress of the Church was associated with open rebellion and bloodshed. The system of tithes was in operation, and the tithe dues were gathered in by military force from the fields of the poor peasantry. Sydney Smith says, " With Henry II. came in tithes to which in all probability about one million of lives have been sacrificed in Ireland. The Tithe Agitation. There was nothing that filled the Catholics with greater repugnance to the Protestant Faith in Ireland than the imposition and gathering of tithes. Every visit of the tithe collector was a reminder of the injustice of the Church and the humiliation of the nation. Those who did not avail themselves of the services of the Established Church were compelled to pay for the service of its ministers. It was a badge of inferiority placed upon the neck not only of Roman Catholics, but of dissenters of all the sects. Nonconformist Protestants, as well as Catholics regarded the Clergy as professional officers of the English Government. Poor tenants, whose children were hollow- eyed and shrunken in frame, were compelled to give the food their family needed, to support ministers whom they detested because they represented spoliation and wrong. •83 The clergyman and the tithe proctor rode into the fields and selected the tenth of the crops, but invariably refused to take the tenth child and support it. Tithes were resisted. Cattle and crops seized could not find a pur- chaser. Blood was shed in the gathering of an impost required to support ministers of a gospel of peace and glad tidings. The clergy, themselves suffered, for as the tithes were part of their stipulated income, when they were deprived of them, they were often thrown into depths of poverty, the parishoners frequently looking on at the sufferings of the clergy without compunction or regret. The tithe question was for nearly fifty years of the present century and during a large part of the 1 8th century a constant subject of trouble. Mr. Grattan in 1787 tried vainly to induce the government to settle this burning question by the removal of its most obnoxious features. In 1833 the government confessed its inability to collect the tithes, and proposed at a cost of £993, S^^ to buy up the arrears of tithes for the years 1831, 1832, 1833, and to levy this sum in the shape of a land-tax, on all lands, to be spread over ten half-yearly payments, until the land- lords had repaid the amount. When O'Connell succeeded in securing a clause in the government measure by which a reduction of 40 per cent, on the composition was to be allowed to the payers of the tax, the House of Lords threw it out. O'Connell opposed the Government method of settling the question, for he knew that though the land- lords paid the tax in the first instance, it would ultimately in the great majority of cases have to be paid by the tenants in the form of an increased rental. The tithes had often been farmed to a tithe - proctor who secured re-imbursement by exercising the most ruthless rapacity. Police batons and military bayonets were the weapons 184 employed in the gathering of an impost required for the support of the kingdom of Him who came to reveal Divine Love to man, and to proclaim the glad tidings of peace and goodwill. The cost of this tithe-gathering was also very great, and it is roughly estimated that the nation paid twice as much in securing this unpopular and unjust demand as the total amount received. It was an infliction on the poorest part of the community to sustain the Church of a wealthy minority. A catholic landlord a little more than forty years since was able to say — " I pay tithes in eight parishes. In the whole of these parishes there is not one church or glebe, or one single resident clergyman. I am not aware that there is a single Protestant in the whole eight parishes ; and I do not believe that Divine Service according to the Protestant ritual has been celebrated in any since the Reformation." And these parishes were not isolated cases. At least 199 similar ones could be found. Conversion of Tithes into a Rent-charge. In 1 838 Lord Melbourne took the first steps in the direction of Disestablishment by doing as intimated above, viz., converting the tithes into a rent-charge or land-tax, payable first of all by the landlords. This, however, while it removed the obnoxious method of collecting the tithes did not afford absolute satisfaction to the people. In most cases the landlords seized the opportunity of raising the rents so as to cover the sum which the government had determined should be paid by the landlord to the rector. Catholic landlords, were especially embittered because they were now made tithe-proctors of a Church they hated and condemned. Still, on the whole, the bitterness was mitigated, and the tithes continued to be paid in an indirect, instead of a direct way. But the sting of an ■§5 Unaccepted Church system still remained fixed with venom in Irish life. In the Parish Church that was neat and tidy, the parson and clerk with occasionally a listener or two met to worship, while in some hovel near, hundreds of eager Catholics took part in the weekly devotions. Condition of Catholic Places of Worship. j\Ir. GoDKiN quoting from waitings of Mmisters of the Protestant Church, says, "While the penal laws were in force, the Roman Catholic Clergy were obliged to administer spiritual consolation to their flocks rather according to their temporary convenience than any systematic plan. No places of public worship were permitted, and the clergyman moved his altar, books and everything necessary for the celebration of his religious rites from house to house, among such of his flock as were enabled in this way to support an itinerant domestic Chaplain, while for the poorer part some ivaste house or stable in a remote or retired situation was selected, and here the service was silently and secretly performed, unobserved by the public eye." As years rolled on, and the spirit of toleration grew, the secrecy was removed, but still the Catholics were unable to maintain a dominant Protestantism and also erect commodious places for their own form of worship. This was ever to them a cause of extreme rancour and enmity. Mr. Godkin says, *' appeals were made to the British Legislature on behalf of the Irish Catholics, and made in vain, which I verily believe would have melted the stern fanaticism of Turks if made by Greeks." In the Report on Public Instruction, evidence of the religious needs of Catholics were sworn to on oath. An M.P., Mr. D. Browne stated that on festivals, such as i86 Christmas or Easter, he had seen from lo to 15 times as many people kneeling outside on the road, as the Chapel could contain. Colonel Carey, the Agent to the Duke of Devonshire, said, " That the places of worship on his Grace's property were very wretched thatched Chapels, so irregular in the line of their roof that they looked like several cabins joined together." The Parish Priest of Skibbereen stated that he had a Chapel which was so decayed that it was in danger of tumbling down upon the people. It could not hold half the number of persons who attended the services each Sunday, and therefore, Mr. Collins said, " you may see them in severe weather under the pelting of storms, with their hats off, kneeling in the mud." The Earl of Kingston corroborated this testimony, saying, " There is not room for one-third of the congregation. Anybody travelling through Ireland on a Sunday will see them kneeling all about the Chapel yards and in the streets. They have no means to build. The Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, Dr. , Kelly, did much to raise voluntary contributions for the erection of suitable places of worship, but he stated before the Com- mission "that there were in the Archdiocese 15 or 18 slated Chapels, and 8 or 10 in progress; the remainder of 106 places of worship were wretched thatched cabins, none of them sufficiently capacious to contain the con- gregation, and in many places the public prayers were celebrated in the open air, having no covering but the canopy of heaven." Refusal of Governments to help the Catholics. Many private individuals among the Protestant Churches were ashamed of this condition of things and i87 aided the Catholics, but the Government refused to vote " one shilling " for the building of Churches for the poor and oppressed Catholics. When William Pitt secured the passing of the Act of Union, it was understood that he would immediately do something to remedy this grievance, but when he suggested a State provision for the Catholic Priesthood, and the emancipation of Irish Catholics, the King and the Tories crushed it out of life. And during the century, while hundreds of thousands were ** voted from the Imperial Exchequer for the purposes of the Established Church, and in particular of the erection of ^Protestant Churches, the Parliament persistently refused to aid the Catholics. A rich Protestant Church, with comparatively few worshippers, already endowed and supported by tithes and confiscated estates, was further aided by large grants, while " the sons of peasants were left kneeling in the mud, under the canopy of heaven, exposed to rain and storm. "f Government Grants to the Church of THE Rich. From 1 79 1 to 1803 the Board of First Fruits granted to the wealthy Church of the minority viz. : the Protestants the sum of ;^5oo in 88 cases ; making a total of / 44,000. During the same period for Clergymen's Houses they granted ;^ioo in 116 cases ; making a total of ;^i 1,600. From a Parliamentary return ordered in 1826, it appears that since the Act of Union the following amounts had been voted by Parliament up to that date : — Gifts for Building Churches /^Z2^,g^6 Loans ,, ,, ;^286,572 so that there was a total of ^511,538 for building + Godkin, " Land War," p. 536. Protestant Churches in 25 years. But that is not all. During the same period Gifts were made for Glebes . . ;!f6i,484 Gifts for buildingGlebe Houses/^144,734 Loans for the same purpose -jf 222, 291 making a total for Glebes and Glebe Houses of /'428,509. Thus between the years 1791 and 1826 the establishment obtained for Churches and Glebes /^94o,047. Is there any wonder that while the parishes were helped so liberally that the Bishops when they died were able to leave large fortunes to their children, and bring them into the ranks of the Aristocracy. Twenty Bishops left a personality of /'86i,868, or ^43,093 on an average for each Bishop. In 1831 a Census of Ireland showed that the inhabi- tants numbered 7,767,400. It was estimated that of these the Protestants numbered 800,000, while nearly 7,000,000 were Roman Catholics. For the 800,000 people the Protestant Church provided 4 Archbishops, 32 Bishops, and 1385 Benefices. The revenues of the Church amounted to ;^865,ooo per year. The tithes, chiefly contributed by Catholics were of the annual value of /^62o,ooo. Some of the Bishops received large amounts. The Bishop of Derry had/ 12,000 a year. The benefices ranged from £\o to /^2,8oo per annum. Rectors, in whose parishes there were ten or twelve Protestants, including the family at the rectory took as much as ^800 or ^1,000 as annual stipend, besides profits arising from glebe lands and Church Cess. The measures of 1833 reformed some of these things, but the great evil remained that the Catholics were compelled to support a Church which they believed to be associated with a tyrannous and foreign yoke. In the year 1871 the gross income of two Archbishops and ten Bishops amounted to ;^58,03i — the total income of the Church reached /^6 13, 984 — while the actual members of the Church reached only 668,000, as compared with a Roman Catholic population of 4,140,000. But in spite of all the representations of the Irish Party, the English Parliament time after time refused to believe that there was in Ireland any earnestness on the question, or any real grievance. It is only a sentimenta grievance they said ! Men who talk like this forget that nations have feelings as well as individuals, and when the spirit of a nation is aggrieved and she believes herself to be oppressed, the injustice that oppresses make the apparently sentimental grievance a real one. But men in England, like the ostrich that buries its head in the sand, could see no danger. It was a fools paradise in which many lived ; but there came a rude awakening. Mr. Gladstone and the Clerkenwell Explosion. The Fenian movement, and at last the dread Clerken- well explosion, came as a hideous surprise to many in the nation, and showed the deep hatred of the Irish people, and their desperate determination no longer to be content to live under this gigantic spoliation and wrong carried out in the supposed interests of religion. Mr. Gladstone saw this, and finding that now at last the people of England were aroused, stepped forth to proclaim with loud and commanding voice the principle that should guide English Government in Ireland. Tories have persistently misrepresented Mr. Gladstone's references to the Clerkenwell explosion. They have obstinately refused to see the meaning of the speech, when it has been explicitly explained. If they did not so repeatedly announce themselves as the Educated Party we should igo fancy that plain etymological meanings were beyond the grasp of their mind. But are they not honourable men ? Of course ! For was not Lord Nelson an honourable man when he put the telescope to his blind eye ? None are so blind as those who will not see. The black owlet of Coleridge's Poem dropped his heavy fringed eyelid and said I cannot see the light. It would be a wonder if any- one could see who resolutely shut his eyes. The Tories have declared that Mr. Gladstone, by speaking of the Clerkenwell explosion, offered a premium to violent des- peradoes to secure political notoriety by crime and violence. He did nothing of the sort, but simply pointed to what was a fact, viz., that Englishmen had refused to believe in the reality of an Irish grievance, and were careless in investigating it until the Clerkenwell explosion and the riots in Manchester came to startle them into a belief in its reality. And now that the nation was aroused, he saw a Statesman's golden opportunity for relaxing the oppressive bonds that fettered religious life in Ireland. Sydney Smith, more than 60 years ago, expressed his opinion as to the need of earnest agitation in order to secure Irish reforms by saying, ** The mild and the long- suffering may suffer for ever in this world. If the Catholics had stood with their hands before them simpering at the Earls of Liverpool and the Lords Bathurst of the time, they would not have been emancipated until the year of our Lord four thousand. As long as the patient will suffer the cruel will kick." In quoting this, I must not be understood as approving of the Clerkenwell explosion and the Fenian movement, but as simply calling attention to the wisdom of Mr. Gladstone's action, in seizing the moment for reforming the Church, when the Irish people, acting on the advice of Sydney Smith, had refused any 191 longer to lie still under the infliction of so great an injustice. Sir Robert Peel and the Irish Church. In 1828 Sir Robert Peel said ** The Protestant Constitution in Church and State must be maintained at all hazards and at 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 is Ireland to be governed ? How is the Protestant Constitution in Church and State to be maintained in that part of the Empire ? Again, I anticipate the reply. By the overwhelming sense of people of Great Britian, by the application, if necessary, of physical force for the maintenance of authority, by the employment of the organized strength of government, the police and the military to enforce obedience to the law." Here was the modern imitation of Uzzah supporting the ark with vengeance. But in 1868 the greater disciple of Sir Robert Peel, advancing with the increased charity and enlightenment of 19th Century civilization, presented to the House of Commons his famous resolutions in favour of the Disestablishment of the Irish Church. In spite of Gathorne Hardy's defiant opposition. Lord Stanley's temporising delay, and Mr. Disraeli's ostentatious imitation of James Fitz-James — Mr. Gladstone was triumphant in the encounter. The Government appealed to the country, and were defeated at the polls, and Mr. Gladstone stepped into place and power amid the enthusiastic hurrahs of a nation bent on reforming a grave and hoary injustice. In his bill, Mr. Gladstone, like a true and living son of the Church, tried to make the change felt as little as possible to the Protestant Bishops and Curates. Vested interests were safeguarded — the Constitution of the Church was carefully drawn up, so as to avoid future difficulty or schism, and a large surplus of money was set apart for the relief of unavoidable calamity and suffering. Speeches of Mr. Bright and Mr. Lowe. The Speeches of Mr. Bright, and Mr. Lowe, were among the brightest features of the debate. Mr. Gladstone had pointed out that with the surplus of money, provision might be made for those who suffered from various afflictions, and that institutions for the blind, deaf, and dumb might be sustained as well as reformatories, homes for the training of nurses, and county infirmaries. Mr. Bright emphasized this purpose of Mr. Gladstone's. He pointed out how much better the money would be spent in sustaining these institutions, than in maintaining a clergy three times more numerous than the requirements of the population. He said, with an outburst of the truest eloquence — *' We can do but little it is true. We cannot re-illumine the extinguished lamp of reason ; we cannot make the deaf to hear ; we cannot make the dumb to speak ; it is not given to us From the thick film to purge the visual ray, And on the sightless eyeballs pour the day : but at least we can lessen the load of affliction, and we can make life more tolerable for vast numbers who suffer." Mr. Robert Lowe — now Lord Sherbrooke — excelled even his most brilliant orations in the magnificence of his attack on this religious despotism. He said " The Irish Church is founded on injustice ; it is founded on the dominant rights of the few over the many, and shall not stand. You call it a Missionary Church — if so, its mission is unfulfilled. As a Missionary Church it has failed 193 utterly. Like some exotic brought from a far country with infinite pains and useless trouble, it is kept alive in an ungrateful climate, and an uncongenial soil. The curse of barrenness is upon it ; it has no leaves, it bears no blossoms, it yields no fruit. Cut it down — why cumbereth it the ground." How THE Money was divided. The gross value of the Irish Church property was estimated at sixteen millions — of this sum five millions went to the incumbents. yf 1,700,000 was given as compensation to curates, a^d certain of the laity. /^5 00,000 went to remunerate men and churches for the loss of private endowments. The grant that had been made to the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth, and Regium Donum, or gift of King Charles II. to the Presbyterians of Ulster swallowed up ;^i,25o,ooo. The rest ^7,000,000 was reserved to be applied to the relief of those who suffered from calamities referred to in Mr. Bright's speech. Only a few years later a large portion of of the amount was lent to Irish landlords to aid them, one per cent, being charged for the loan, after they had had the money for two years without percentage. The Bluster of Orangeism. Of course the wildest excitement prevailed in Ulster. The defenders of privilege and class, and of a protected religion were furious. One said it was a national sin ; another called upon the Queen to jeopardise her crown rather than see the Church of God destroyed. In Exeter Hall, Mr. Gladstone was stigmatised as a traitor to his Queen, his country, and his God. One minister of religion called the Cabinet a " Cabinet of brigands." Another christened Mr. Gladstone "Judas Iscariot Gladstone." But it was all senseless frothing at the lips of disappointed men. Nobody seemed any the worse for it. Everybody seemed the better, the kifuriated clergymen cast the bile out, and were relieved, while Mr. Gladstone was the more endeared to the people, because of the noble way in which he had raceived the unreasoning attacks. The Church was not injured, but was vastly improved. She was left free to do her spiritual work without being handicapped by her connection with an intolerant and oppressive system. Her coffers were stj^ll full, and her ministers were still well paid ; and the Irish Catholics were able to rejoice that now no stupendous and frOwning ecclesiasticism buttressed by force, overtopped the national life, or over- shadowed ttiat free religious equality, that ought to be the birthright of every child of God, in every land under the sun. Another Reforai. Scarcely a year passed away after the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, before Mr. Gladstone again stepped forward to grapple with another huge abuse. The Tories were again maddened by anger and the Public Halls rang with the clamour of men who have ever supported land- lordism and the wealthier classes in their conflict with the strengthening Democracy. To these, Mr. Gladstone was now like Herod, who, when he had killed James, the brother of John, with the sword, proceeded further to take Peter also ; " He has destroyed the National Church ! " they cried, " and now he aims at destroying the absolute rights of landlords." How they longed for the palmy days of Palmerston, and wished that his voice could ring from tha halls of the dead, and emphasize his assertion 1!hat '^* TenanJt right is la»dlord -^ong." 195 The Irish Land System. I have already referred to the large agricultural interests of Ireland, and to the fact that by the crippling of the Irish manufactures, the people had been thrown upon the land for a living. There was nothing else for them to do. Their choice was between emigration, obtaining a bit of land for cultivation, and death. Patriotism and love of nationality appealed against emigration, and all the love of life found in human nature protested against death, so they clung tenaciously to the land as their only means of salvation from expatriation or death. And yet their hold upon the land was feeble and precarious. They had no security for improvements except in the case of those who lived in Ulster, and there what was called Tenant Right, was a provincial custom and not a statute-law. They had no compensation for disturbance, no certainty of tenure, no guarantee of per- manency in their holdings, however much they improved them. They lived from hand to mouth, afraid to improve their land, or build neat cottages, or make the present ones tidy and respectable in appearance, lest the landlord should take his premium on the improvements by increas- ing the rent. The more labour and money a tenant put into the soil, the more it was endeared to him, and yet the more he was in the power of the landlord and his middlemen, who were able to secure a rack-rent by the threat of eviction. The holders of the farms were merely tenants-at-will, and were liable to be dispossessed at any time, at the mere whim of the landlord or his agent. A rascally landlord was able to raise a tenant's rent £/\. per annum, because the tenant at his own expense, had removed the old thatched roof of his house, and put a slated one on. It was thought by this expenditure that he 196 was doing so well on the farm that he could afford to pay more rent. The rents were taxes on industry and enter- prise. The middlemen acting between the landlords and the tenants were often placed in great difficulty. The landlord, absentee as he was, spent his money out of the country where it was raised. At times he wanted larger sums for the luxuries of London and the Continent, and for the extravagances of his sons and daughters, and so the middleman, by putting the screw on the tenant, had to raise more money, or else incur the obloquy of his employers. Some of the landlords themselves were in debt, and were feeling the screw of Jewish money-lenders, and they were " between the devil and the deep sea." Money they must have to save foreclosure and bankruptcy and it mattered not who suffered or starved, so long as the landlords were able to keep up a respectable appearance. The farms were exploited and the tenants starved to satisfy the rapacity and greed of money-lenders. Shakespeare represents Brutus, as being far ahead of the so called Christian Landlords of Ireland, for he says : — " By heaven ! — I would rather coin my heart And drop my blood for drachmas than to wring From the hard hands of peasants their vile trash, By any indirection." Freedom of Contract in Ireland. People have said, why did not the tenants refuse to pay, and leave their holdings ? Was there not freedom of contract ? Of course there was freedom of contract, similar to that which exists between a starving man and the only baker in the town, or, to that which exists between thirsty travellers in a wilderness and the possessor of the only well. The question, "why did not the tenants leave 197 their farms ? " is the outcome of the crassest ignorance of the subject. Their very life, and the lives of their children depended upon their staying. If they left what could they do for a living ? The labour market was overstocked, there was no capital in the country for manufacturing purposes* The only alternative was emigration or death, unless they threw themselves into the already crowded unions of the land. Besides, they had all their little capital invested there in the soil and buildings, and to leave would be to re-commence life without capital, with the burden of years resting upon their shoulders, their strength diminished, to pass into tke condition of a mere labourer in a foreign land. Many of them did this, and thousands of the emigrants soon found graves in other soil. The privations of the people were terrible, their food scanty and poor, and the money sent to them by friends and relatives in America and Australia went to make up the rent. I am persuaded that many of the landlords if they had seen the misery and despair of the people would have relented, but they were far from the heart-rendering scenes, and they preferred the bliss of ignorance to the anguish which must have come to them, had they gazed upon the wan faces and stunted limbs of the Irish children. The land was held at the mercy of an absentee landlord class, who could evict, and thereby pass a sentence of perpetual poverty or of death upon men, women, and children, whose wails never reached their oppressors amid the music of Parisian operas, or the chink of the dice in the hell of the Monte Carlo gambling saloons. Influence of the Land System on Irish Character. The system itself tended to degrade the Irish character, and it bred laziness and a condition of living 198 not far removed from starvation. The system was wrongly grounded. One writer says, that when he was in Ireland he had a passion for flower gardens and clean yards, and said to one of the tenants — why don't you clear away these dry heaps, and plant flowers to climb up the walls of your houses ? ** Begor Sir," was the reply **if I make the place so nate as that, the agynt will say I am able to pay more rint."* The Devon Commission of 1843 condemned the Penal Code, the Confiscations of Elizabeth and James I., and the wars of Cromwell for the influence they had exerted on the landed property of Ireland, and for the restrictions necessitated by them. The Commissioners felt that even the measures of 1771, 1777, 1782, and 1793, by which the stringent laws aff"ecting Roman Catholics were relaxed had been passed in the interests of the landlords, who had found that confining the land to Protestant tenants did not pay. I cannot deal with all the features of the land system in this small pamphlet. They may be studied by the English Student with great advan- tage in larger works. Some things should, however, be noted. The ** lease for a life " by which one life held the land, might have been good, had the land been held as in England where the landlord feels the influence of public opinion, and where he makes the improvements on the soil. But in Ireland, when the tenant died, and his son desired the farm, an additional price was placed upon it, and as the father's legacy to his children was chiefly the improvements he had secured in his land, when his son objected to pay and left the holding, he lost all hold of his father's legacy also. At one time one-seventh of the land of Ireland was held under this provision. * A. M. Sullivan, Young Ireland, 199 Ulster Ten^nt-righT|. The tetiant-right of Ulster was a very old custom. Public bodies, such as some of the London Companies, and individuals who held large tracts of land, let out portions to tenants who took the entire responsibility and paid to the landlord a specified sum. The tenant as in the other provinces made all the improvements, but was allowed freedom in management, and was able to obtain from his successor in the farm a sum of money which was paid a?s remuneration for what had been expended in the land, and also as a purchase of the good-will of the farm. This was the first instalment of the joint-proprietorship in the soil, which was one of the main principles of Mr. Gladstone's Land Act of 1870. Sums equal to i o or 1 5 years purchase were at times given in Ulster for the tenant-right. The districts where it prevailed flourished, while other districts declined where it was not in vogue. One great reason, therefore, of the difference in the appearance of Ulster farms and those in other parts is to be found in the difference of the land system that prevailed. Landlords resolutely refused for years to allow the customs of the Ulster tenants to be extended to the people of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught. Mr. Justin McCarthy says, that '' offering land for hire in Ireland was like offering money on loan to needy spendthrifts: any terms would be snatched at by the desperate borrower of to-day, no matter what was to happen to-morrow. When the tenant had got hold of his piece of land, he had no idea of cultivating it to the best of his strength and opportunities. Why should he ? The moment his holding begun to show a better appearance, that moment he might look to having his rent raised, or to being turned out in favour of some other competitor who offered higher terms for occupation. Why should he improve ? Wherever he was turned out of the land he would have to leave his improvements for the benefit of the new comer. He was therefore content to scratch the soil instead of cultivating it. He extracted all he could from it in his short day. He lived from hand to mouth, from hour to hour."* If the tenant became a labourer, he had to submit to receive wages, which were often 6d. a day, and at times less even than that. In addition, the employment was only occasional and uncertain. To sustain life, potatoes were an absolute necessity, and yet the wages of these labourers were insufficient to secure a full supply of this watery diet, and there were 2,235,000 persons who were out of work or in distress for 30 out of the 52 weeks every year. It became a necessity of existence that some- thing should be done to eke out the miserable wages received in Ireland. In 1835, the Commission reported that in Ireland there were 1,131,000 agricultural labourers whose average earnings were only from 2/- to 2/6 a week. The Devon Commission in 1845 suggested remedies for this lamentable state of things, but as Mr. Gladstone pointed out in his speech in introducing the Land Bill of 1870, a quarter of a century had elapsed and the terrible blots remained a disgrace to English government and a cause of misery to the Irish people. Commissions are miserable and useless things, unless their findings are em- bodied in wise and remedial legislation. The Law and Private Contracts. When Mr. Gladstone came forward with his remedy, the Tories cried out '* The law has no right to interfere * History of our own times. with private contracts ! " That it was a startling invasion on what were considered to be the rights of property is true. But so was the Encumbered Estates Act of 1849, which interfered with the possessions of landlords in what were considered to be the more pressing and legitimate claims of the Community. But when men claimed that it was beyond the province of the Legislature to overpower the claims of landlordism, they were treading on unsafe ground. Their opposition made many persons enquire " how have the rights of landlordism been established ; have they been the outgrowth of native customs and original rights ; are they indigenous to the soil, or have they been planted there by a later hand ? " Research into the history of the Irish race proved that landlordism was not a native product, and that the rights and claims of Irish landlords were not established by traditional usage, but were the outcome of spoliation and confiscation, and were the gifts of the Legislature, and of the Monarchs after the conquest of the island. People saw that landlordismjn Ireland was the creature of law, and of authority acting in the place of law ; that it was opposed to the native clan system, and that it had been imposed upon the people by the power of the few against the will of the many inheriting the island. They saw, too, that it had been made dependent upon feudal conditions of military service and military support which were not carried out by the owners of the soil. The more the question was considered, the more fully the foreign character and the injustice of the institution were recognised and many people cried loudly ** that what the law had made unjustly the law could unmake with justice." It was not until 1850 that the English people began to read these things in their true light, and to wake up to the enormity of the evil that was 202 impoverishing and injuring the sister-isle, and now that 2 0 years had passed, they were prepared to support Mr. Gladstone in his endeavour to remedy this grievance. It was then that the English people began to see that the landlord had let land to a tenant, and then when he had spent the best years of his life in reclaiming it, and the improved land represented so much brain and muscle, and strength, and years of vigour, that the landlord had stepped in and appropriated to himself the tenant's improvements, and turned the tenant out with spent forces and bent frame to grapple with the difficulties of life afresh. Berkeley said that landlords were " vultures with iron bowels," and Mr. GoLDWiN Smith has declared that '*in the days of Elizabeth the eagles took wing for the Spanish main, and the vultures settled down on Ireland." The term vultures has commended itself to these gentlemen as typical of the character of Irish landlords, but I am persuaded that many of them are more truly represented by the vampires who, in fabled story, are said to suck the blood from the veins of living victims, for these men in Ireland drained from their living channels, health, strength, and life itself, and left the poor aged tenants portionless and feeble to face an un- sympathetic world, and pass from the roads and fields to the workhouse and the grave. And what is the worse feature of the case is that many English gentlemen who went to Ireland honestly intending to benefit the people, became infected with the poisonous influence of Irish landlordism. It seemed as though, like Lot, among the people of Sodom, they had caught the vices of the class with which they identified themselves, or like those who looked into the eyes of Medusa, the Gorgon, they had lost their human characteristics, and had becorae transformed into stony, unfeeling beings. 203 Disraeli and the Irish Question. Discussing, on i6th February, 1844, some of the eternal coercive *' remedies," Mr. Disraeli said : — " He wished to see a pubHc man come forward and say what the Irish question was. Let them consider Ireland as they would any other country similarly circumstanced. They had a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, an alien Church, and the weakest executive in the world. This was the Irish question. Gentlemen would say at once on reading of a country in such a position, the remedy is revolution — not the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. But the connection with England prevented revolution. Therefore England was logically in the position of being the cause of all the misery of Ireland. What, then, was the duty of an English Minister ? To effect by his policy all the changes which a revolution would do by force ! "^* But Mr. Disraeli did little to remedy these evils, and it was not until 1868 and 1870 that Mr. Gladstone saw the possibility of successfully applying his axe to the upas tree. There is a story told which suggests the method of English legislators. An Irish Priest once asked a milk- man who admitted that he filled his pail occasionally from the pump, " how do you know, Michael, when to stop watering ? Begorra — your reverence, was the reply, we go on watering till the customers cry out agin it." As long as Irishmen refused to cry out in the shape of disorder and crime, as we have seen, English Statesmen only hawked legislation which was diluted to the weakest point. Until Mr. Gladstone took the question in hand, Whigs and Tories were nearly on a level in the matter, and the only difference is stated in the humorous language of Daniel * Hansard, Ser. hi., vol. Ixxii. p. 1016, 204 O'Connell — "A Whig Government, Sir, is like Paddy's old hat, thrust into a broken pane. It is true it doesn't let in much light, but at any rate it keeps out the cowld."* The Land Act of 1870. Mr. Gladstone had laid his ruthless hand on the sacred ark of the Church which had so long been the possession of Tories and their children who were dedicated to an easy and indolent life, and now he stretched forth his hand on the still more sacred ark of landlordism which had always been the favourite heirloom of the educated party of privilege and caste. But Mr. Gladstone saw that the system was wrongly based, that the foundation was insecure in policy and morality. And so he proceeded to present a list of principles that should guide English Statesmen of the future in their treatment of the land question, and to meet the present crisis, he gave effect in his Land Bill to the principles he had enunciated. The Law Superior to Landlordism. The complete and unfettered right of a landlord over his property was overthrown. There was an assertion, that just as the law was superior to an ecclesiastical establishment, so it was above landlordism. There was a recognition, too, of the partial rights of a tenant in the land he tilled. Mr. Gladstone's bill acknowledged to some extent, a partnership of tenant and landlord in land cultivated or reclaimed. Just as a tenant must not injure the property of a landlord, neither must the landlord filch the property of the tenant. It was a great revolution and it denied the doctrine of absolute and irresponsible owner- ship. It asserted the right of the State to control the landlord interest, as well as the interest of the Manufac- * Mr. A- M. §ulliv^n. Young Ireland, . 205 turers of the realm. It threw upon the landlord the burden of proving his right to evict. The Ulster Tenant Right was made a legal institution. Compensation for Improvements. If any tenant were disturbed, the bill provided that the improvements belonged to him, and not to the landlord, as heretofore, unless the landlord proved they had been made at his expense, and that he could therefore refuse compensation. The right of the tenants to compensation for improvements not proved to belong to the landlords was asserted. But the burden of proof lay with the landlords instead of the tenants, and a special institution was arranged to carry out the provisions of the bill. Mr. Justin McCarthy says " It allowed the tribunals thus instituted to take into consideration not merely the strict legal conditions of each case, but also any circumstances that might affect the claim of the tenant as a matter of equity. Mr. Gladstone's great object was to bring about a state of things by virtue of which a tenant should not be dispossessed of his holding so long as he continued to. pay his rent, and should in any case be entitled to full compensation for any substantial improvements which his energy or his capital had effected." How hard the work was, seemed to be known to Mr. Gladstone, and he desired to give to the tenant the value of his toil. Of American virgin soil "t has been said, that it needed only " to be tickled with a spade, to laugh into a harvest," but in the stony soil of the mountain farms, much hard work and expenditure were needed to make it produce even a moderate supply of potatoes and market produce. The cry of the people of Ireland had been for fixity of tenure, and Mr. Gladstone hoped to secure this. The sequel has shown how futile 2o6 were his efforts to thwart and make sympathetic the land- lords of the day. Tory Opposition to the Land Bill. But moderate as were the provisions of the bill, the Tories opposed it tooth and nail, and the men who now are pointing to the Act as a great revolution in Irish landlordism, and as one of the finest efforts ever made to exalt a fallen and poor peasantry, were the men who toned down the measure as far as they could, and placed all possible difficulties in its path. But the rare genius and lofty spirit of Mr. Gladstone triumphed, and the main features of the bill were passed into law. Defects in the Land Bill. The bill was a great one, though it was not perfect. It was, however, as complete as it could be made at the time. Still, it had many defects, which have become more palpable now that the nation has reached an advanced position on the question, and now that we have increased enlightenment on the character of Irish landlords, and the workings . of Irish landlordism. It fettered the action of the tenant in draining, road-making, quarrying, turf-cutting, and the making of water-courses, and it provided that in case he violated these strict details, eviction should not be deemed a disturbance. Compensation was restricted in a large number of cases, and there was not sufficient provision for compensating those who were evicted in consequence of not paying a rack-rent. *' Freedom of contract " was still upheld, but when bad harvests and falling prices prevented the tenants from paying the rent enforced upon them, their improve- ments were confiscated, and became by law the spoil of the landlord. But in spite of defects, the bill was a startling 207 interference with the supposed rights of landlords, and was to some small extent a restitution to the occupiers and tenants of the rights of which they had been despoiled. ^ It gave definite form to the assertion that property had its duties, as well as it rights, and it declared that one of the duties of those who possessed property was to recognise the rights of tenants. In spite of Mr. Disraeli's attempt to challenge and defeat the main principles of the bHl it was carried, and on August ist, 1870, it received the royal assent. Some of the Irish party opposed the bill in its ultimate form, and were denounced as paid agitators who did not want their country pacified. The eleven members who voted against it were abused by both parties in Parliament, and yet experience has shown that their action was wise, and that their objections founded on the assertion that the bill was not sufficiently broad to meet the case, were forceful and true. Mr. T. M. Healy, however, has said " the bill was as much as Parliament at the the time would allow Mr. Gladstone to grant," and the leader of the Liberal Party had therefore again shown his knowledge of political movements in the national life, by giving statesmanlike effect to the utmost desiae of the country. But the result in Ireland was as the Irish party had predicted. Increase of Evictions. " What happened ? As plainly foretold by them, the Land Act of 1870 worked little benefit to the Irish occupier. Evicticms actually increased ! In the three years before its passing, the ejectments on notice to quit were 4,253 ; in the three subsequent years, they reached 5,641, showing an increase of 1,388. In the next three years they were 8,439 ! These figures represent only the capricious evictions, aad do not incilude ejectment for 208 non-payment of rent or non-title. While it recognized the grievous wrong done to the victim of a capricious eviction, the Act left full power to perpetrate what it thus admitted to be unjust. It still left the tenant at the mercy of the cupidity, the malice, or the whim of his landlord. Instead of giving security of tenure, it gave the County Court Judge, at his discretion, the power of imposing on the evicting landlord a limited pecuniary fine. In other words, as has been well said, it gave the homeless, and perhaps penniless tenant, "the right to a law-suit." While it carefully fixed a maximum on the amount of com- pensation which could be awarded to a tenant for disturbance by the landlord, it left to a judge — too often a landlord himself — an absolute discretion as to what amount under that limit he might choose to award."*' ''Since 1880 the landlords have been prevented from evicting with such ease as before that date ; but even within the last five years they have, nevertheless, turned out of their homes no less than 22,429 families, or 1 12,026 persons. Those families were evicted for non- payment of exorbitant rack-rents, and a large number of them have been partly sustained for years out of the funds of the Irish Land League and the Irish National League. Cruel evictions are still going on in almost every part of Ireland."! Failure of the Act to Grapple with Rack-Renting. Mr. A. J. Balfour, M.P., Chief Secretary for Ireland under Lord Salisbury's Premiership, in a letter written December 8th, 1887, says: — ** The law as to com- * a Word for Ireland— Mr. T. M. Healy. f Pamphlet on Irish Landlordism. 209 pensation for improvements is contained in the fourth section of the Land Act of 1870. Under that section a tenant on quitting his holding whether in consequence of an ejectment or for non-payment of rent, or by his own voluntary surrender, or for any other cause whatever, is entitled to full compensation for improvements, and the Court in making its award is governed solely by the value of the improvements. If the ejectment has been for non-payment of rent the landlord is of course entitled to set off the rent in arrear, so far as it goes, against the sum awarded for compensation." Precisely, and that is the greatest defect of the bill. It did not grapple with rack- renting. It allowed landlords to raise the rents, and to threaten the tenants with eviction unless the iniquitous demands were complied with. Mr. Healy says : — " The fatal imperfection in the Act of 1870, however, was that, in the vital matter of rack-renting, it provided no remedy. Landlords could still continue to rob their tenantry as freely as before. That "silent system" of rent-raising, which has choked the Irish Court of Bankruptcy with tenant-farmers, could flourish as malignantly as ever. It afforded no protection when a grasping proprietor demanded an increase under a threat of eviction. Before the farmer could derive any benefit from the " protective " clauses of the Act, he must have left his holding for ever. And to the struggling tenant, who for long years had been paying a rack-rent, the protection was a mockery. The impossible rent broke him down, and the fact that he was evicted for non-payment of it, alone excluded any claim for compensation for disturbance, while the paltry sum which might be awarded him for improvements was but a poor viaticum to face the world upon. Non-payment of one year's rent defeated the right to compensation for 210 disturbance, though under the scale provided in sec. 3, compensation amounting to several years' rent might otherwise be awarded."** Protection to the rack-rented tenant was a sham. Impossible rents still left him helpless in the hands of hard taskmasters. To make bricks without straw was not more difficult and slavish to the Israelite of old than to pay a rent raised to a sum larger than the land could bear, was difficult, and indeed impossible, to the Irish tenant. The small amount allowed in the case of improvements made by evicted tenants, especially when the rent owing was deducted from it, was no real compensation for the loss of the home, where the tenant had reared his children, and of the land into which he had put the strength of his early manhood. Then if he owed more than a year's rent, as Mr. Healy shows, he could not claim compensation for disturbance. Are the Landlords to be " Hoisted with their OWN Petard " ? Perhaps one of the most obnoxious clauses is that contained in section 4 of the bill, where the judge is directed to " take into consideration the time during which such tenant" may have enjoyed the advantage of such improvements," in *' reduction of the claim of the tenant." This clause, imported into the bill in the interests of the landlords, admits a principle which I fancy the representatives of their class will not be prepared strenuously to support when they are paid out and dismissed by the Irish people. It will materially reduce the cost of the land to the nation if the time when the landlords have enjoyed the advantages of rents raised on * A Word for Ireland, p. 3. 211 tenants' improvements, and rack-rents raised on land still unimproved, be considered "in reduction of the claim" of the landlord. When the State disturbs the landlords, I opine that those who hold briefs for them will not insist upon the principle for which they demanded recognition when the bill for the relief of the Irish tenantry was passed in 1870. The Land Courts themselves did not secure the confidence of the Irish people, and their impartiality was much doubted. Law in Ireland had ever in the experience of the men appointed to adjudicate in the Land Courts, favoured the landlords, and it must have been very difficult for them to overcome prejudices and conceptions of law founded on long-standing customs. Some of their decisions ' seemed to be based on the principle of giving the tenants as little compensation as possible. Different standards of compensation were set up in the various Courts, and it was admitted by chairmen of the Courts that they had never given the maximum compensation allowed by the Act. The Bessborough Commission of 1880 discovered many of the defects of the bill, and of the administration of the Courts appointed for making the bill operative. The Irish leaders were desirous of supplementing the bill by other measures for securing additional relief to the tenants, and from 1871 to 1880, no fewer than 31 measures have been rejected by Parliament, or have been withdrawn in consequence of the strong opposition brought against them. Mr. Gladstone's measure was well conceived, but he could not foresee the difficulties likely to arise, and the magnitude to which those difficulties grew. Penalties of Wrong-doing. The Irish peasants of America, forced there by the 212 land laws prevailing in Ireland, in company with other emigrants, many of whom were compelled by petty tyrannies to leave English villages, tilled the productive soil of the Far West so effectually as to be able to send an abundance of produce by the cheap water carriage to Liverpool to compete with English producers. As a result of this prices fell, and the English and Irish landlords and farmers have suffered from the competition of the United States. Had these landlords treated the people with greater kindness and less haughty self- assertion of superiority, how much of the competition of America would have been delayed, and how much longer the financial gains of the landlord interest would have been maintained ? But this is a subject for the moralist and speculatist ! Failure of Harvests. In addition to the competition referred to, a bad harvest in 1877 was succeeded by a poor harvest in 1878, and a worse one in 1879, and in the last-named year, the potato crop was almost an absolute failure. The crop of 1876 was worth over ;^i 2,000,000, but in 1877 it sunk to ;^5, 000,000. In 1878 there was a slight improvement, and the value of the crop rose to the sum of ^7,000,000; while in 1879, it fell to the extremely low sum of only a little ^3,000,000. And this in a country where the population so largely depended for their daily food on the supply of potatoes. What stands out in grim and dark outline is the conduct of the landlords in these years of privation ! In proportion to the badness of the harvests evictions increased. In 1876 they were 1269 n 1877 „ „ 1323 213 In 1878 they were 1749 „ 1879 „ „ 2667 Further than this, in consequence of a defective harvest in England another source of revenue was cut off from the cottiers of Connaught, who usually came to England to supplement by wages earned here, the money gained on their own soil, and without which they could not pay the landlord. It was estimated by Dr. Hancock, the Irish official statistician, in February, 1880, that the loss of the Connaught harvest men in 1879 from the failure of English wages alone was ;/^ 250,000. The landlords and their allies refused to believe in the reality of the distress. They made out that it was only a pretence to avoid payment of rent. Mr. Lowther's Sagacity. The London papers made light of the matter, and Mr. James Lowther, the Irish Chief Secretary, had nothing but sarcasm and jibe for the Irish leaders, declaring that the assemblies of those who met to protest against the high-handed exactions of the landlords, and to appeal to the Government, were simply anti-rent gatherings. He said, " With reference to the state of affairs in certain parts of the West of Ireland, brought about by what is known as the anti-rent movement, the Government is fully alive to the necessity of dealing promptly with it. Colonel Bruce, Deputy Inspector- General of Constabulary has been despatched on a special mission to the districts concerned. His duty will be to consult with the resident magistrates and the local constabulary, and report to the Government as to what additional police force and special police stations may be required to enable full protection to be afforded to all 214 persons in the exercise of their legal rights. Special police protection will be afforded to process-servers or others requiring it. Considerable reinforcements are being drafted into these districts, and it has being notified to the inhabitants that in the event of any attempt at outrage, the cost of these measures will be levied off the neigh- bourhood in which it occurs." — Hansard, ser. hi. vol. ccxlvii. p. 433.*' At last the authorities of Dublin Castle began to yield, and in the end Relief Acts, a Seed Act, and ultimately a Disturbance Bill were either formulated or passed. In 1 88 1 Mr. Parnell and Mr. John Dillon sent over from the United States contributions amounting to _;^70,ooo, of which ;^5o,ooo was directly spent in charity. The Irish emigrants had become tired of contributing money to keep up landlordism, while they had afterwards to provide for their evicted relatives, and now they sent their contributions partly to relieve distress and partly to provide machinery for wresting justice by constitutional methods from the unwilling hands of dominant English Statesmen. The Lord Mayor of Dublin started a fund in the Mansion House, and during the year distributed in seed and food / 181,000, a great part of which came from Australia! f The New York Herald alone raised ;^5o,ooo; the Canadian Government sent a large grant, and at length the " Castle " itself was driven to make official acknow- ledgment of the famine which its mouthpieces so long denied. This took the shape of a letter from the Duchess of Marlborough, the wife of the Lord Lieutenant, appeal- ing for help in The Times (which resulted in /^i 35,000 being administered in charity from Dublin Castle) ; and * Quoted by Mr. T. M. Healy — A Word, for Ireland, p. 123. fHealy, p. 126. 215 then the Government, when Parliament met two months later, was moved to pass a comical Relief Act, which resulted in the Irish landlords being allowed to borrow out of the Irish Church Surplus / 1,100,000, This money was lent without interest for two years, and afterwards bore only one per cent., and was ostensibly granted to enable employment to be given by the proprietors in im- proving their estates. The measure of course was a flagrant job, and brought little benefit to any deserving person, while the most serious allegations have been made as to the manner in which the bulk of the money was spent.^ But even then Mr. Lowther was not satisfied that the land laws were wrong. Nothing could disturb his immaculate self-complacency. Everyone else who spoke on the subject was ignorant or selfish, he alone remained the one infallible authority on Irish questions. To the appeals of the Irish members to cure these disastrous famines by an alteration of the land laws, he replied : — '* The hon. member for Cork (Mr. Shaw) spoke of the extension to the whole of Ireland of what is commonly known as the Ulster tenant custom, and he says that on a former occasion I spoke of that suggestion of his as pure, undiluted communism. That, sir, is a statement I did make, and which I am quite ready to repeat now. . . • Much has been said of the present state of the land laws, but I have no hesitation in saying that they have nothing to do with the present state of Ireland." The "Daily Telegraph's" Investigation. Mr Healy has done good service by quoting in his book, letters that appeared in the Daily Telegraph under * Healy. 2l6 the heading of " The Distressful Country." The Special correspondent of this prominent Tory paper, wrote : — "The cabins of the peasantry seemed to be about the very worst dwelHngs for human beings I had ever viewed. I noted that many of the cottages I passed boasted no windows, that they all had mud floors, and most of them mud walls ; that many were insufficiently thatched ; nearly all were shared by the family pig, as well as by the family children ; that in the majority of cases a very slough of mud faced the door, and that the utmost misery of appear- ance characterised every dwelling. I have been in many lands and have seen many so-called oppressed people at home, but I declare that neither in the Russian steppes, nor in the most neglected Bulgarian villages, still less in the very poorest Hindoo hamlets, have I ever seen such squalid kraals as the farmers of this part of Mayo inhabit. Here they are not hidden away from public view, but front the high road — a dreadful testimony to mismanagement and uncleanness, such as can be met with nowhere else. An officer of one of Her Majesty's regiments, who lately served with honour in Zululand, declared to me that not even in the worst parts of Cetewayo's dominions did he come across anything so bad as here ; and I am inclined to believe that he was not exaggerating in the slightest." . Writing of the rents of Western tenants, the same gentleman said : — '* Their rents seem immoderately high, taking the Poor-law valuation as a standard. John Grady, for example, occupies land valued at £■}, los. and pays £,^\ while Tom Ball has a still smaller holding rated at 30s., for which he pays ^^5 and taxes. It is manifestly impos- sible that these men can make a living off" poor land so heavily burdisned — land brought under cultivation by themselves or their predecessors, without the owner 217 stirring a finger or investing a sixpence in its improvement. The rent, in point of fact, had to be made up by labour in England, and it is just this state of things which should be borne in mind by people who are disposed to complain of the Irish tenant's revolt. His life is often one of slavery for the benefit of the men who own the soil of a country where agriculture is the only industry." Report of Mansion House Committee. In the vivid report officially addressed to the Dublin Mansion House Relief Committee on the condition of the North Mayo peasantry in 1880, pp. 11- 13, and 34-35, Mr. J. A. Fox says : — " I have taken the precaution of seeing with my own eyes many of the recipients of relief in their miserable hovels, which, so far as I have yet observed, are a shocking reproach to the civilization of the nineteenth century ... I do not believe that tongue, or pen, how- ever eloquent, could truly depict the awful destitution of some of these hovels. The children are often nearly naked. Bedding there is none, everything of that kind having long since gone to the pawn-office, as proved to me by numerous tickets placed in my hands for inspection in well nigh every hovel. A layer of old straw, covered by the dirty sacks which conveyed the seed potatoes and artificial manure in the spring, is the sole provision of thousands— with this exception, that little babies sleeping in wooden boxes are occasionally indulged with a bit of thin, old flannel stitched on to the sacking. Men, women and children sleep under a roof and within walls dripping with wet, while the floor is saturated with damp, not uncommonly oozing out of it in little pools. In one case I asked a gaunt, starved looking man, whom I found literally endeavouring to sleep away the hunger, where his little children slept, when he pointed to a cotner in the moist room, in which I could see no sign of bedding. * Do they wear their clothes at night?' 'No.' 'How then do they keep warm ?' 'There is,' he replied, in the most amazing simplicity and composure, 'a deal of warmth in children,' signifying that they obtained warmth by huddling together like little animals. This occurred at Carrycastle. ... I invariably found them on the occasion of my visit crouching around the semblance of a fire lighted on the open hearth. And this at midsummer, showing how terribly low must be the vitality among them. ... It was only when I was accompanied by a Catholic priest I could get an insight into the appalling want. Alone, some of the most destitute tried to screen from me the poverty of their truckle beds, upon which the straw was often so thin that I could touch the bare boards with my hand. These received me with a dull, passive surprise, wondering what might be the object of my curiosity in so wretched a country. And even the priest himself had occasionally to use no little persuasion to overcome this modest feeling, by assuring them that I was present in the capacity of a friend. Everywhere the condition of the children was otherwise dreadful, besides, there being for them nothing but the indian-meal, badly cooked, to live upon, and the parents only too glad if the charitable funds provided the family with half enough even of that. Sometimes there was a miserable cow about the premises — for in every case I am referring to the class of small farmers, mostly residing on three to five acres of land, which in North Mayo is generally found to be reclaimed bog or mountain slope ; and this cow was supplying milk, principally gratis, to a small number of children other than the owner's, to mix with the indian- 419 meal. Occasionally people appealed privately to my companion on no account to cut off the charitable supplies from the possessor of the cow, seldom worth more than few pounds, and just then unsaleable in any market, as the animal was the hope of so many little ones. At other times cooked cabbage, without a morsel of condiment save salt, was found where there was no meal, and in some instances one was found mixed with the other. But in numerous cases there was neither milk, meal, nor cabbage about the premises, and in those I gave some temporary relief to fill up the interval till the next general distribution of the local committee. Sometimes even charity itself had failed, and the mother of the tender young family was found absent, begging for the loan of some indian-meal from other recipients of charitable relief — the father being almost in every instance away in England labouring to make out some provision for the coming winter. Yet in the most destitute cases hardly a word of complaint was uttered on the subject, it being a habit with, if not the nature of, the Mayo peasant sub- missively to ascribe his lot in the times of scarcity as well as plenty to the ' will of Providence.' We visited more than thirty hovels of the poor, principally in the townlands of Culmore and Cashel, in which I beheld scenes of wretchedness and misery wholly indescribable. In some of those hovels evicted families had lately taken refuge, so that the overcrowding added to the other horrors of the situation. In one hovel, in the townland of Cashel, we found a little child three years old — one of a family of six, apparently very ill, with no person more competent to watch it than an idiot sister of eighteen, while the mother was absent begging committee relief, the father being in England ; in another, an aged mother, also very ill, lying 210 alone and unattended, with nothing to eat save long- cooked indian-meal, which she was unable to swallow ; in another, in the townland of Culmore, there were four young children, one of whom was in a desperate condition for want of its natural food — milk — without which it was no longer capable of eating the indian-meal stirabout, or even retaining anything whatever on its stomach." Gereral Gordon's Verdict. In the south of Ireland things were little better, and the late General Gordon, the hero of Khartoum, writing from Roche's Hotel, Glengariff, County Cork, in Novem- ber, 1880 (published in The Times) said: — "I must say, from all accounts and from my own observation, that the state of our fellow-countrymen in the parts I have named is worse than that of any people in the world, let alone Europe. I believe that these people are made as we are — that they are patient beyond belief, loyal, but at the same time broken-spirited and desperate, living on the verge of starvation in places which we would not keep our cattle. The Bulgarians, Anatolians, Chinese, and Indians are better off than many of them are. ... I am not well off, but I would offer Lord [Bantry] or his agent [Mr. J. W. Payne, J. P.] /^i,ooo if either of them would live one week in one of these poor devil's places, and feed as these people do."* The Servant Girls of America Taxed. The Irish in America, exiled from their homes and native soil, denuded themselves of comforts, and freely sent their hard-earned wages to relieve the victims of the landlords' injustices. While the gentry, who had exploited * Quoted by Mr. T. M. Healy, pp. 116-120. 221 the country, did comparatively little for the struggling, starving peasantry, the ** servant-girls of New York," and the thrifty toilers on the distant farms, sent through bankers alone, in addition to the money sent in other ways, the returns of which were ordered to be printed by Parliament, viz. : — In 1848 .. /^46o,i8o „ 1849 .. /^540,6i9 „ 1850 .. /957>o87 „ 1851 .. /^99o,8ii It has been estimated that remittances since 1852 have amounted to no less than ^2,000,000 a-year. This has been chiefly the Irish landlord tax on the people of the United States and the colonies. Lord Dufferin has given some very interesting statistics.* He states that between 1848 and 1864, the Irish emigrants sent back to Ireland more than ;^ 13,000,000. Sergeant Heron, Q.C., has supplemented this state- ment in a paper read before the Statistical Society in 1862. He asserts that a sum equal to one-fourteenth of the rental of Ireland is annually received from foreign charita- ble persons. From 1851 to 1861 ;^ii,ooo,ooo were sent in charity to Ireland from North America, by the emi- grants. In 1852 Ireland received a larger sum in charity from America than was realized by the profits of the trade of exporting horned cattle to England. Growth of Mr. Parnell's Influence. In March of 1880, Lord Beaconsfield dissolved Parliament and issued his letter to the Duke of Marl- borough— the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland — which attracted so much notice from friends and opponents. The Irish * " Irish Emigration and Tenure of L^nd in Ireland," page 3. 222 representatives were without an accredited leader. On the death of Mr. Isaac Butt, the founder of the Home Rule Party, Mr. Shaw acted as sessional Chairman, and was looked upon generally as the authorised leader. It was, however, apparent to those who understood the inner workings of the national life, that Mr. Shaw's policy was too timorous and hesitating to secure that enthusiastic following which was necessary to success. Close observers saw that Mr. Shaw's influence was rapidly becoming over- topped by the greater power and courage of a member of the Party who, though a landlord and a Protestant, was to the finger-tips a patriot and a Statesman. Gradually this was recognised, and it was further seen that his policy was more in harmony with the desires of the population than the rival plans of Mr. Shaw- Mr. Butt had felt the mastery of this cooler and clearer mind, and had called a Confer- ence to strengthen his own position as a leader in dealing with this strong member of the Party. But Mr. Parnell, the member in question, came out of the struggle with flying colours. In 1877, the English Home Rule Confederation had shown their appreciation of the position by deposing Mr. Butt from the Presidency and appointing Mr. Parnell to the position. Now, in 1880, in the City Hall in Dublin, Mr. Parnell was appointed leader of the Party and Mr. Shaw vacated his position as sessional chairman. When the elections were over it was found that the Tory policy had been repudiated by the nation, and Mr. Gladstone was once more Premier of England. Mr. Forster's Secretaryship. Seeing the gravity of the situation in Ireland, he, in conjunction with Mr, W, E. Forster, M.P. 223 for Bradford, introduced a Relief Act to deal with the temporary needs of the people. Mr. Forster had been appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, with a seat in the Cabinet, and those who knew his sympathy with Ireland, and his great work in the cause of education, predicted much benefit to the two countries as the result of his work. It is surprising to note that many who now laud his statesmanship then denounced and defeated his far-seeing and beneficient plans. To stave off evictions, until Mr. Gladstone's Land Bill could be passed, Mr. Forster introduced what was practically Mr. Parnell's previous measure for the suspension of evictions, viz., '* The Compensation for Disturbance " Bill. \ The Tories and Compensation. But the Tories opposed this, and thwarted the beneficent purpose of Mr. Forster. Foot to foot their leaders fought him and his measures in the House of Commons, and though the Government succeeded in securing a majority in that house, yet the permanent Tory majority in the gilded chamber of the peers, shutting their ears to the cries of the evicted in Ireland and to the deniands of the preponderating electorate that had returned Mr. Gladstone to power, contemptuously threw out Mr. Forster's bill. How much the Tories are to blame for the subsequent failure of Mr. Forster's Secretaryship, to settle the grievances of the Irish people, and for the clouding of his last days, their own consciences and judgments must tell them in their calmer hours ! The country continued to be despoiled, and, sad to say, depraved characters, instigated by the notorious and diabolical James Carey, attempted to destroy the life of the man, who in spite of the defects of his administration, 224 loved Ireland and the Irish people, and who from the day when he climbed mountain and forded river fighting the famine and saving the people, was ever anxious to do what he could to rescue Ireland from its misery and poverty. Let no tongue revile the dead. If Mr. Forster is to be blamed for the error of attributing to Irish Statesmen the guilt which belonged to a few murderous and deluded men, at least let him be freed from the stigma which rests upon the system of administering law in Ireland, and which the Tories in the Houses of Commons and Lords refused to alter. Mr. Forstek. and Mr. Balfour Compared. If Mr. Forster had lived a little longer, he would have found that even in the estimation of the men who opposed him, and had been imprisoned during his term of office, that he occupied a position of respect as compared with Mr. A. J. Balfour. One of the most prominent of the leaders of the Irish nation, in my hearing, said, * Though I fought against Forster and his adminis- tration of the law, I could not think hardly of him. I always felt that he had a warm heart.' Roused to anger, his philippics in the House of Commons stung and withered, but they were preferable to the cool insolence and studied contempt of the defender of philosophic doubt, who from the height of his fancied superiority looks down indifferently upon the representatives of the Irish people. Mr. Balfour's coldheartedness is apparent to all. The Bill of Mr. Forster's which the Tories rejected was only intended to remain in force for a year, and it applied only to such districts as were scheduled under the head of *' distressed " in the Relief Act. The defects of the Land Act of 1870 were to be temporarily 225 remedied until a more detailed and permanent bill could be prepared. In the ''distressed" districts the bill provided that the tenants who could show the County Courts that the non-payment of their rent was due to the existing distress were to be allowed compensation for improvements and disturbance, on condition that these exceeded in value the amount of rent owing. It really was to prevent the landlord from confiscating the tenant's goodwill and improvements, when, in consequence of distress in the district, he was unpunctual in paying his year's rent. If this bill had been passed, evictions would have been stopped in most places during the existence of the distress, and the country would have been kept quiet until the tranquilising policy of Mr. Gladstone could have found expression in his Land Act. But the House of Lords defied justice, humanity, and the expressed wishes of the people's representatives by a vote of 282 to 51. The Lords threw out a bill for lessening tenants' costs in cases of eviction, although the Commons had passed the bill, and then they further rejected a bill for assimilating in Ireland and England the laws for the registration of voters. The cry of the Tories for equal laws in the two countries was shown to be but a deceptive cuckoo-cry by the action of the most prominent and decorated orna- ments of the Party. Land Act of 1881. I cannot deal with the details of the question from that time to the present. Mr. Gladstone's Land Act was passed in 1881, and was intended to further complete the great work done in 1870. The landlords had had eleven years of grace given to them, and instead of endeavouring to establish harmonious and confidential relations between 226 themselves and their tenants they had used the time to further their own interests. Now, Land Courts were estabHshed and Commissioners were appointed to fix fair rents, and so the principle of interfering with the landlord to secure justice to the tenant was further developed. The Healy Clause. One of the most important sections of the Land Bill of 1 88 1 is what is called the Healv Clause. By this clause the benefits of the bill were to apply retrospectively. It provides that "no rent shall be allowed or made payable in any proceedings under this Act in respect of improvements made by the tenant or his predecessors in title, and for which, in the opinion of the court, the tenant or his predecessors in title shall not have been paid or otherwise corapensated by the landlord or his predecessors in title." The feeling of landlords in relation to this is expressed in the declaration of Lord Lifford, who objected to it because he thought its "effects went back to Adam." But the clause was passed. In the discussion, Mr. Parnell suggested that this clause should be strengthened by an additional resolution, but the Govern- ment thought it was not necessary. Mr. Gladstone said, on August 9th : — " I am obliged to decline the proposed addition of the words of the hon. member for the City of Cork (Mr. Parnell) on this ground. In the Act of 1870 we did in respect to the tenant recognise the principle that he might be compensated by a reasonable lapse of time in respect of improvements he had made We do not recognize that principle in the present Act. . . . It is much better that those who make the improvements should have the whole benefits of the improvements."