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England and Id

f ,

A LECTURE

' ■; J)ELIVRIiEr) AT MONTliEAl.,

Dkoembku 17th, 1H80.

IIEV. A. J. BRAY.

PKTNTKD FOR THE ArTIlOll HY -lOHN EOVEI^L k SON

1881.

-^■„.

NGLApAllRELiip:

A LECTURE

S f^4- 415

. DELIVERED AT MONTREAL,
December 17th, 1880.

BY THE

REV. A. J. BRAT.

■ ii , ■ ,^ ■; ' . " ":■"•'■,- . ■ ■■■''.

Jim;

PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR BY JOHN LOVELL & SON.

1881. !v;

•

Entered according to Act of Parliament, in the year one thousand
eight hundred and eighty, by the Rev. A. J. Bray, in the
office of the Minister of Agriculture and Statistics, at Ottawa.

I y ■ <

\ ■ .

■'/

PREFACE.

It is quite possible that some objection will be
taken to the curtness of style adopted in the early
part of this lecture. In justification I must
explain that it was originally given as two
lectures. From a large number of citizens came
a request for the redelivery of them, and I gave
the two in a condensed form.

. In giving the lecture to the public in print, it
is necessary that I should affirm its correctness ;
>for a pamphlet has been published purporting to
be my lecture, whereas it is only an inaccurate
report by a shorthand Triter, who was engaged
by a patent medicine «nan. Reference to the
note at the end of the lecture will show what 1
am doing for self protection.

A. J. B.

Montreal, 6th January, 1881.

154287

REMARKS OF DR. KINGSTON.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is with much pleasure I have acceded to the request
that I should occupy the chair on the occasion of the delivery of a
lecture by the Rev. Mr. Bray. It is customary, I believe, for a
Chairman to foreshadow, in a degree, the ground to h& traversed
by the lecturer — to speak briefly of the obstacle 3 in the way, the
difficulties to be met with, and the dangers to be avoided ; but, as
the lecturer has not shown me his manuscript, I am unable to say
what obstacles he may have met with, nor how they have been
avoided or overcome. But I am confident that, from the
lecturer's past reputation — if soil is to be upturned, it will be soil
prolific with kindness ; if obstacles are to be overcome, they will
be overcome manfully ; if human prejudices are to be faced, they
will be faced boldly and honestly ; and if streams are to be met
with, or even the channel itself arched over, he will throw over them
arches of peace. With these remarks I beg to introduce to you the
Rev. Mr. Bray.

ENGLAND AND IRELAND.

Mr. Chairman,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I BEG you to believe that I felt it, and still feel it, no small
honour, to be invited to deliver my lecture again on Eng-
land and Ireland. Such a compliment is not often paid
to any man, and I am vain enough to think that there is
some usefulness attached to it, or good to be got from it»
or you would not have demanded its reproduction in
this form and place. But I am bound to say that I wish
the demand had come from a larger number of Englishmen
and Scotch. I wish the bills announcing the lecture had
been headed Englishmen as well as Irishmen, for, truth
to tell friends, I had more thought of the English than of the
Irish, when I decided upon the first delivery of the lectures.
I knew that the Irish had no need of education in the
history of their nation : they know the story of every
scar upon the mutilated body of Ireland. It has been
burnt into their memory, and will not easily be effaced.
But I wanted English people to look upon those scars,
and know how they were got. I wanted them to know

Lecture hy Rev. A, J, Bray,

tho causes of this periodic ont])urst of diricontcnt in
Ireland. They were sayinj^, what is the nuitttu' with
those Irish ? Is it because there is soniethiuL,' peculiar
in Celtic blood, which makes an Irishman never ha])])y
unless he is lighting, that there is trouble again ? Is this
new ditliculty a thing to be battered into silence by the
policeman's club, or to be driven into hiding by threats of
buckshot ? or is there some real reason, palpable and
sound, for the complaint ? I made an effort to answer that
question. I knew that the English ])eo^>le are a just
people, that the vast majority of them desire to right the
wrongs their fathers did, and that very many of them are
by no means unwilling to start the battle for better land
laws in Ireland, that it may extend to England by and by.
I want, if I can, to strengthen the hands of Gladstone and
Bright ; I want to put in a plea for justice ; and I want to
bring Englishmen and Irishmen together in this matter,
that they may understand each other, and, with joined
forces, promote the sacred cause of right. I thought I
could best accomplish that by laying the matter in bold
outline before my audience. So I told the story, — told it
with extreme carefulness, and an honest effort to bs fair*
I. have been complimented on the bravery displayed in
doing that. Ladies and Gentlemen, I was not conscious
of the exercise ' of any courage whatever. It never
occurred to me that I was doing a brave thing, for I like to
" tell the truth and shame the devil," — there is real pleasure
to be got from the operation. And then, just because I
am an Englishman, I know that I can afford to criticise
my country — own her wrongs of past and present. She
has not been always what she is now, I know that ; and I
hope to find her better to-morrow, than she is to-day. And
then, lastly, I am of the grand old Celtic race ; I come of
those whom the Saxon never subdued, but who fought

Enijland and freldnd, 7

and lived uiiiong tlie wild, weird scenes of Cornwall. My
first consciousnesH was filled with the Hobhinj^ of winds,
and the heat of the wild north sea-surf upon the rocks
and brown sand, and I sometimes think that I took from
the sea and the hold rocks some abiding sense of truthful-
ness. And now let me turn from self-glorying to the
story of Ireland.

Of Pagan Ireland we have no authentic history — a thing
not to be wondered at. With the introduction of Chris-
tianity into Ireland began Irish history. It found that
the original Celts had been con([uered by a colony of
Milesians, who had divided the Island into five Kingdoms,
Ulster, Leinster, Connaught, Munster, and Meath. These
were again suljdivided into small Principalities, inhabited
. by distinct se])ts, and each district was the common pro-
perty of the entire sept. The distribution of land was in
charge of the Tanist, or Toparch, who ruled. The cultivatf)rs
had no right of property in the soil, but had a right to,
land enough to live npon it somewhere. It was not feudal-
ism, nor any thing akin to it.

Christianity shed a great light over the land, and from
it into other lands. But it adopted the word and form of
the Eastern (h'eek Church, and not that of the Western
Kornan Church. St. Pati'ick may have been there, and
accomyjlished some of the things ascribed to him, but it is
extremely doubtful. Believe it if you like — it won't hurt
you. Whether St. Patrick came or not, it is certain that
in the ninth century the Danes did, and destroyed all the
national strength and glory.

Then came Henry, the second English king of that
name, armed with a Bull granted by Pope Hadrian for the
conquest of Ireland and its due subjection to the Church
of Rome. But Henry's eftbrts to conquer Ireland were
few and feeble, and had Irishmen been true to Ireland

Lecture by Rev. A. J. Bray.

It .-:

l(f

they would have vshaken off his gi'asp. But Dermod, King
of Leinster, played it false, and for personal ends owned
Henry's sovereignty. The English and Welsh went over
with and after Strongbow — did some more or less success-
ful fighting, and formed themselves into what was called
the "English Pale." Two blunders. The first by the
English : tliey did not conquer Ireland. The second In'
the Irish : they did not drive the English into ihe sea. A
decision would have been best for both parties and for all
time. The English there *' were like a spear point embedded
in a living body, inflaming all around, and disorganizing
every vital function." In 1494 Henry VII. made a feel)le
effort to force English rule and law upon Ireland, but it
failed, and it was not until the reign of Henry VIII. that
English authority became a reality in the land. Henry
had a nund to rule in Ireland just as he ruled in England,
and sent tiie unscrupulous Thomas Cromwell there to
execute his will. The great house of Kildare tliought to
frighten him by ])romoting a rising in 1534, under Lord
Thomas Fitzgerald, but it followed the fashion of Irish
revolts — they murdered the Archbishop of Dublin and
harried the Pale, and then took to the bogs and forests of
the border. Then Skeftington went with a train of artillery,
battered down the great castles, cowed the Englishmen of
the Pale and the Kerns of Wicklow and Wexford, and
trampled the wild Celtic tribes into utter subjection.
Henry was well disposed to rule Ireland by law, but he
knew of no law except English law. It was nothing to
him that the Irish were a people with settled ways, and a
poetry and literature ; he thought only of making Ire-
land English in manners, laws and language. A huge
blunder, as I think, and the mother of untold miseries.
Irish chiefs were transformed into English nobles, the lands
of suppressed abbeys were grauted to them, and the Eng-

England and Ireland.

lish L^ courts, taking no notice of the fact that by Irish
custom, which was Irish law, the land belonged to the
tribe at large, regarded the chiefs as sole proprietors of the
soil, and gave them a title to the land. Ileligion had
scarcely a form then. The church without the Pale was
the same as the church within the Pale in doctrine and
discipline, but the only intercourse was that induced by
mutual hate. When Henry had wrought the Krst part of
his programme for revolution in England, and had broken
with Kome, the Irish bishups and chieftains accepted the
change of headship without a word of protest, but when the
ecclesiastical change in England had brought about a change
in theology, and the Protestants wanted to impose their
beliefs on the Irish, the Irish said : " No — deal with nam(\s
and forms, and mere ecclesiasticism, if you will, l^ut when
you come to lay rude hands on our faith we resist, and
say it shall not be." And they did resist, and in resisting
found that as Irishmen they had a common cause and com-
mon foes ; that they were a people — and they clasped hands
over the grave in which they had buried centuries of feud ;
they found national identity in the identity of religion —
those within the Pale became one with those without the
Pale, and a nation was born of the union — it was Ireland.
But it was a child of the storm, destined to be rocked
and rent by many a wind. Mary took the throne of Eng-
land, and tried to thrust the shadow backward on the dial.
It gave Ireland religious peace, but just then, when Eng-
lish law and industry were spreading in the South, and
Munster was submitting to civilization, the Dublin Gov-
ernment resumed the old idea of colonizing, and gave the
whole county of the O'Connors to English settlers, calling:
it King's and Queen's counties, in honor of Philip and!"
Mary. This meant a savage warfare between the new
settlers and the dispossessed Septs, which ended by-and-by

Lecture by Rev. A. J. Bray.

r'f

in the complete extermination of the Irish. To whom
could the Irish look on the earth ? — religious enemies took
away their religious liberty, and religious friends spoiled
them of their lands. . ,

Under Elizabeth, Protestantism was forced on Ireland
again, and the Irish, siding with the Pope, rose in revolt in
1580 — rose only to be defeated, and defeat meant further
loss of land. In Munster more than 574,000 acres were
taken from Irish owners and given to Englishmen ; and one
condition of grant was that no Irish should be accepted as
tenants by the new proprietors, the Irish could only remain
as day laborers or ploughmen on the soil they had owned.
A few were able to evade the law by submitting to rent
and rack-rent — some more became day laborers, and more
went off to the mountains to form that vagrant, homeless,
half-savage tribe crushed into beggary and robbery and
agrarian outrages by oppression, and afterward known as
" Woodkerns," or " Rapparees," or " Tories."

By a decision of the King's Bench, when James the first
ruled England, the whole system of tanistry and gravel-
kind, whicli had grown out of the Brehon law and was re-
cognized over great part of Ireland, was declared illegal —
which means that, without any sort or kind of compensa-
tion to landlords, the proprietary rights of the natives were
swept away. Then came the plantation of Ulster. Tyrone
and Tryconnel accused of treason, tied, and six counties
were confiscated and settled with English and Scotch. A
\ ilarge Presbyterian element was introduced which tended
to increase theological bitterness. The character of
the new settlers was on the whole not for the making of
^^, peace; they were wild and evil, for the most part, hating
'^ji^heir Irish neighbors, and taking no pains to hide that hate.
But the Irish were a docile people, and bore the hardship
meekly: had England begun to act justly then they

^J1

England and Ireland.

would have become a peaceful and prosperous nation."
They had gone through the horrors which had marked the
suppression of the Irish under Elizabeth, — the confiscations
in three Provinces — the abolition of the land customs which
were dear to them all, — the legal condemnation of their
religion, and the planting among them, on their own soil, of
an alien and hostile race whose every act was cruelty ; but
all this would have been lived through and down if this
had been all — but all it was not, nor yet half of the whole.

The English had conceived a desperate hunger for Irish
lands. The trade of Discoverer was invented, — that is, that
those who could find defective titles might possess them-
selves of the estate. The English played a paying game
of confiscation by legal quibble, and played it to the end.
Every iniquity was perpetrated wliich was possible to
men of an advanced civilization and a reformed religion.

Charles I. was a mild-mannered man, — half a fool, but he
would have been harmless if born to anything but the
throne. Firmness and generosity were needed for the
government of Ireland ; Charles was obstinate and unjust.
He . took steps for increasing the army and religious
animosity — he made promises and then broke them —
guaranteed landlords in their rights, and then took their
lands from them by a process of legal confiscation. Went-
worth, who did some good in developing the material
resources of the country, and the linen manufacture,
wanted for the king a despotism in Ireland as in Eng-
land. The clouds of threatening gathered blackness. The
Puritan party in England was fost rising to power, inspired
by a fierce hate of Popery. The rumor ran through
Ireland that the Scotch Covenanters had resolved never to
lay down arms until religion was uniform throughout the
whole Kingdom. By the English Parliament Eoman
Catholics were driven from the army — the King was asked

i •

Lecture hy Rev. A. J. Bray.

to confiscate two-thirds of the lands of all Catholics ;
seven priests were hung for celebrating mass, and it was
declared in Parliament that the conversion of the Irish
Papists could only be effected by the Bible and the sword.
Petitions prayed for the extinction of Popery and Prelacy
in Ireland. The Irish believed that the time for fighting
had come. They were suffering under the sense of many
wrongs — from the act of uniformity under Elizabeth to the
confiscation of the Irish College under Charles. It seemed
as if the troubles in England gave them a chance, and they
took it, and rose in rebellion.

I must tell the story of that rebellion briefly. You
can see the causes which were at work to provoke that
revolt. In Ulster the ruthless policy of confiscation was
pushed on with vigour ; the Lords Justices sought to make
war easy and a necessity, and peace hard, impossible. In
Ulster it was agrarian grievance, but the gentry of Munster
and Connaught remained loyal, and would have so
remained had not the English Parliament first prorogued
the Irish Parliament, thereby depriving them of their qne
and only means for attesting their loyalty, and protecting
their lives and property, and then passed a resolution to
the effect that no toleration should be henceforth granted
to the Catholic religion in Ireland. On the night of October
22nd, 1641, the Irish of Ulster rose up in mad revolt
against the men who had been carrying on the work of
" rooting out the Irish." Early in December all Ireland
was ablaze with rebellion, — but out of Ulster it was a
defensive religious war, entered into by men w^ho had a
care for 'their conscience, and would make a demand for
freedom. Let me say in passing, that I hate war with
every fibre of my being. I have a horror of its horrors.
I think not so much of the men dying as of the widows
and orphans living. I think of the waste and w^oe it

England and Ireland.

means ; but there is something I hate more than I hate
war, and that is the spoiling of men of their rights. The
poor Irish ! It was an awful thing to rise like that and spoil
and kill ! Yes, but this is not the first part of the chapter.
This is the second act in the drama, coming naturally after
the first. They were being hemmed in, — the fatal circle of
English oppression was closing in upon them, — the hell-
hounds of injustice were at their heels, — what then ?
Should they die as men, fighting for men's rights to live
and worship God according to their conscience ; or, like
sheep worried to death by wild dogs ? Like men, say I, —
like men, fighting. Under some circumstances revolt is
glory, submission a crime. It may be, that if I had lived
in those days, an Englishman, I should have made a clutch
at the property of the Irish. I might have thought them
fair game for plunder and killing. I cannot tell, but I am
sure, I am certain, I know it by the blood that is in me,
that if I had lived in those days, an Irishman, I should
have risen in revolt, mad as the maddest at the cruel
wrongs imposed.

Popular history has it, and I believe a very general
credence is given to the statement, that the Ulster rebellion
began by a general and indiscriminate massacre of the
Protestants, — resembling the massacre of the Danes by the
English, the massacre of the French in the Sicilian Ves-
pers, or of the Huguenots at St. Bartholomew. Clarendon
declared that there were 40,000 or 50,000 of the English
Protestants murdered before they suspected themselves to
be in any danger, or could provide for their defence ; and
other writers have said that the victims within the first
two months were 150,000 or 200,000, or even 300,000.
Now for many years I believed in the truth of those state-
ments, and in public lectures I have justified the work of
Cromwell in Ireland, somewhat at least, on that ground

■4

Lecture by Rev. A. J. Bray.

For this lecture I carefully sought the matter out, — an
intelligent Irish gentleman helped me with books ; from
other sources I got means for forming an unbiassed judg-
ment. I need not tike you over all the musty ways I
have had to travel, but as the result of it I have no hesi-
tation whatever in saying, that while there were at the
first outbreak, as is almost always the case in a great
popular rising, some foul murders done, there was nothing
whatever in the nature of a general and oi-ganized mas-
sacre. The statements of sudden surprise and general
massacre like the Sicilian vespers, or the Huguenots, are
utterly untrue. In proof of that I could quote to you the
records of the time, letters to the King, and a dozen other
pieces of evidence. I am not saying that the Irish were
mild-mannered over the war, — that they got up one bright
morning and gave the English notice to quit, and lent them
jewels and money and jaunting cars to go comfortably
away, just as the Egyptians once upon a time said good-bye
to the Israelites, glad to be rid of them — it was savage
work done by savage men. In Ulster before the first
week had elapsed the English were driven from their
homes, and their expulsion was soon accompanied by hor-
rible barbarities. The Scotch, who formed the majority of
the Ulster Protestants, were at first unmolested, partly
because the rebels feared to attack them, and partly
because they hoped for a future alliance with them. But
the English were utterly stripped. The weather was wild
and cold, and all doors were closed against them, all food
and shelter denied to them, and in multitudes they per-
ished along the roads. Some singular acts of mercy were
shown, —such as when O'Reilly the leader took 1500 people
from Belturbet, and sent them with their goods under
convoy to Dublin, — which convoy plundered them on the
way ; and when capitulations were made and faithfuUy

England anjbd Ireland.

kept, when castles were surrendered, — and when Bedell was
allowed to receive and shelter poor Protestants, among
others the rector of Belturbet, and all this took place in
Ulster, where the horrible massacre was supposed to have
been committed. The main character of the rebellion was
plunder and not murder ; the chief object of the rebels
was to expel the English from the houses and lands they
had occupied. All the despatches to England s})(jke of plun-
der, but none of them of wholesale murder. Of course
most foul atrocities were committed. It was a popular
and undisciplined rising of men in a very low stage of
civilization, and years of cruel hardship had maddened
them. You must expect ferocity in them — and they were
ferocious. Eage and fear, all the motives of religious
and agrarian animosity, were combined. The persecuted
had turned upon their persecutors — the tiger was hunting
the hunters, and that is always wild work. Murders
occurred on a large scale, and with appalling frequency.
Eighty persons were flung into the river from the bridge
of Portadown ; as many, at least, at Oorbridge in the
County of Armagh ; men and women who had shut them-
selves up in houses for shelter and defence were burnt to
ashes; whole families were killed at a time, and that by
the score. Men were hanged, and women and children
were drowmed by the hundred. The rebels seemed to
remember the terrible days when Mountjoy and Carew
ravaged the land, and left " not a horn or corn " remaining,
and their parents had been starved to death by thousands.
I need not dwell on this story, it must be known to you
all. How that the outbreak was met by tenible reprisals, —
how that English politics brought Ireland to the side of
King Charles, signing a truce with him in 1643, and, by
successive stages in 1646-48 and -49, completed a recon-
ciliation between the great body of the Irish and Loyalists ;

Lecture by Rev. A. J. Bray.

and how that Cromwell then swept down upon the poor
doomed country, heating to earth rebel and royalist alike. It
ought to be remembered, to his honour, that one of his first
acts on going to Ireland was to prohibit the plunderings
and outrages the soldiers had been accustomed to commit ;
but nothing can atone for the terrible atrocities he com-
mitted and permitted there. There is no blacker record in
all history than the story of Cromwell in Ireland. He won
and well deserved the eternal hate of all Irishmen, and I
have never had the misfortune to meet an Englishman who
had mind or heart or conscience to say one word in defence
of the merciless barbarities he practiced there. If I had
to speak of Cromwell and England I should do it with a
proud, swelling heart ; I am proud of the great stand he
made for the people's freedom ; I am proud of the way in
which he broke the back of tyranny, and showed, by the
resistless logic of sword and gun, that the only divine
right kings have is to rule justly, and be true to the peo-
ple's good. He laid the foundations of England^s freedom
now, and made it grandly impossible for a tyrant to sit on
that throne evermore ; but of Cromwell in Ireland I am
ashamed — the man for the time was a fiend. The war was no
war at all, it was a series of massacres. Mercy was asked,
but no mercy was given — the word was passed to spare
none. Drogheda was stormed, the soldiers surrendered;
the officers were knocked on the head ; every tenth man
of the soldiers was killed, the rest shipped for the Bar-
badoes ; men and women were put to the sword when seek-
ing protection in the sacred worship of a church. It is
horrible to read of the assaulting and storming of Tredagh,
where 3000, besides some women and children, were slain.
It came to an end in 1652, and out of a population of
1,466,000, 616,000 had perished by the sword, by plague,
or by famine artificially produced — 604,000 of them were

England and Ireland.

Irish, and 112,000 were of English extraction. Liberty
was given to abh)-bodied men to abandon the country and
enlist in foreign service ; 40,000 of them went. Slave-
dealers were let loose on the land, and hundreds of boys
and girls, who had sinned against no government on earth,
were torn away from home and friends, shipped to the
Barbadoes, and sold to the planters. The Catholic religion
was absolutely suppressed, and a priest could give consola-
tion to a dying man only at the peril of his life.

Then came the Crorawellian settlement, — the foundation
of that deep and lasting division between the landlords and
tlie tenants which is the cause of all the political and social
troubles which waste Ireland and vex England to-day.
All the land of three of the largest and richest provinces
was confiscated and divided among adventurers and the
Puritan soldiers whose pay was in arrears. In 1652 the
Act of Settlement was passed ; all the great proprietors were
declared by law to have forfeited life and lands; those
who had accepted commissions were banished; all who
had borne arms under the King's lieutenant forfeited two-
thirds of their estates, and all who had not actually been
in the service of the Puritan Parliament against the King,
or had not done something to prove their affection for the
Puritans, forfeited one-third of their estates. That was
nearly as comprehensive as a policy of plunder could be, I
think. There was a display of charity, however, for all
those whose estates, real and personal, did not amount to
ten pounds w^ere offered a free pardon. But the one-third
of the estate to be restored to one class of offenders was
not to be of their own old estate, but, as the Act runs, " in
such places as Parliament, for the more effectual settlement
of the peace of the nation, should think fit to appoint.'*
And they thought fit to confine the Catholic landholders
to Connaught and Clare, beyond the river Shannon, and

Lecture hy Rev. A. J. Bray.

divide Leinster, Munster and Ulster among Trotestant
colonists. Commissioners were appointed to divide the
land according to the claims of the adventurers and Puritan
soldiers who gave the despoiled Irish until the 1st May,
1654, "to remove and transplant themselves" into their
new homes across the Shannon. Martial law was estab-
lished; no Catholic was permitted to reside within any
garrison or market town, or to go a mile beyond his dwelling
\without a passport ; every meeting of four persons, if not of
oXie family, was illegal and treasonable ; to carry arms without
a license, or have them in the house, was a capital offence ;
and any transplanted Irishman found on the left bank of the
Shannon could be legally shot by the first person who met
him. It was decided not to give "the least allowance, or
countenance, or toleration to the exercise of the Catholic
religion in any manner whatsoever." By proclamation all
Catholic clergymen were ordered to quit Ireland within
twenty days, under the penalty of high treason ; to harbor
a clergyman was to incur the penalty of death ; to know
of one concealed and not declare it was to be liable to
public whipping and the amputation of the two ears; to
be absent for one Sunday from the parish church was to
incur a fine of half a crown ; the magistrates were authorized
to take away the children of Catholics and send them
to England for education, and to tender the oath of
abjuration to all persons of the age of one and twenty
years, — the refusal to take the oath would subject them to
imprisonment during pleasure, and to the forfeiture of two-
thirds of their real and personal estates. Thus Ireland
under Cromwell's Act of Settlement. Was I right in say-
ing that, while he did mighty things for the good of Eng-
land, he deserved and won the eternal hate of all Irishmen ?
The Irish heart beat high and fast once more when
Charles the Second ascended the throne of Endaud. His

England and Ireland.

father, the first of that name as Engh'sh King, had pro-
mised an "act of oblivion," which should cover all offences
since the outbreak of rebellion, and the Second Charles
had written from Breda early in 1650, that he intended
to observe the engagements of his father. But there was
a practical difficulty in the way. The transaction had
taken place, — the land had passed into the actual possession
of English settlers, — they had got the right to it by Act of
Parliament, and it was in payment of loans or service.
The Irish could easily overlook all this, but for Charles it
was not so easy. A wrong is more easily done than
undone. The agents of the Irish Catholics proposed that
Parliament should pass an Act of Indemnity, and that the
Irish should be restored to their estates, but that a third
part of the produce of the estates should be applied for a
term of years to the satisfying of those adventurers and
soldiers who had valid claims, and that a Parliament should
be called in Dublin to raise a revenue for the Crown. But
English ideas opposed that. The English were still smart-
ing under a sense of wrong and revenge for that supposed
massacre at the outbreak of the rebellion, — which was fully
believed in England, and which gave such horrible ferocity
to CromwelPs temper, and they still remembered the
blood and money spent in putting that rebellion down.
More than that, it was easily seen that the sum i>roposed
to be raised would not compensate the adventurers and
soldiers who had received land instead of money, so the
proposals were rejected. The Irish could only get their
estates by holding them on the old tenure, and that meant
that the King would lose the quit rents paid by the
adventurers and soldiers, — £60,000 per year, no small
amount even for a King in those days. So a co:npromise was
adopted, and a declaration was issued which became the
basis of the first Act of Settlement. Charles confirmed to

Lecture by Rev, A, J, Bray.

tho adventurers all land possessed by them on May 7tli,
1659. He also confirmed, with a few specified exceptions,
the lands allotted to soldiers instead of pay, and provided
that officers who had served before June 5th, 1649, and
had not yet received lands, should receive them to the
value of rather more than half the amount due to them.
Protestants were made exceptional, and any estates of
theirs which had been given to adventurers or soldiers
were to be restored unless they had been in rebellion
before the cessation.

Then the " innocent Papists " were dealt with. These
comprised those who had at no time identified them-
selves with the Papal party, even in defence of their
religion : and then came measures for those who had been
in the rebellion, but had submitted and adhered to the
peace of 1648. If they had stayed at home and accepted
lands in Connaught, they were to be held to the bargain ;
but if they had served under His Majesty abroad, and had
demanded no compensation for their former estates,
they were to be restored, but this restitution was to
be postponed until reprisals had been made for the
adventurers and soldiers who got possession of their
estates. Thirty-six persons were able to avail them-
selves at once of this special act of grace. If I had been
offering criticism here instead of merely giving an his-
torical outline of the times, I should say we must not
hastily and too severely condemn the British Govern-
ment. Many conflicting claims and bitterly hostile
interests had to be dealt with : the king and his ministers
were not free to follow the bent of their own mind ; previous
legislation had created difficulties, and it is always easier
to do a wrong than to undo it again. Charles II. made
a more or less honest effort to be just toward Ireland, but
to be absolutely just was hard, if not impossible. When

England and Ireland.

a Parliament was summoned in Ireland the political in-
fluence of the adventurers was so great that they returned
an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons ;
the Ciiiholics had scarcely a show of representation.
Then there w^a ^his difficulty, — there was not sufficient
av. 'liable land to batisfy all parties. The Duke of Ormond,
who v^jis ruler there when Charles ascended the throne,
and to whofn vast grants of land were given, wrote : " If
the adventurers and soldiers must be satisfied to the ex-
tent of what they supposed was intended them by the decla-
ration, and if all that adhered to the peace in 1648 be
restored, as the same declaration seems also to intend,
there must be new discoveries made of a new Ireland, for
the old will not serve to satisfy all these engagements. It
remains then to determine which party must suffer ir» the
default of means to satisfy all." That was the trouble If the
area of Ireland could have been increased by Act of Parliit-
ment, I do not mean to say that the adventurers could have
been satisfied, but at least the problem would have been
easier of solution. Charles had no desire to root out the
Irish, and neither could he root out the Protestants whom
Cromwell had planted there. They had already obtained a
firm grasp upon the soil ; they were a strong, compact, and
well-armed body of men, able and willing to defend their
position ; they were in actual possession, while the
Irish dispossessed were broken, poor and miserable. It is
always easy to discredit the poor and the friendless, and
there were plenty of people willing and ready to circulate
reports to their discredit. There were rumors of plots
and crimes invented by the adventurers, and spread by
their paid agents in England, where they were quite readily
believed. The Irish were as unskilful as they were un-
fortunate, and always seemed to be hurting their own
cause. English public opinion was against them; they

Lecture by Rev. A. J, Bray.

1 1

quarrelled with the only man who had the power to help
them, the Diike of Ormond. No wonder, then, that the
king sided with public opinion and power. He declared
that he had intended to give the Irish all that was pro-
mised by the peace in 1648, but he promised it under the
idea that there were plenty of lands for the adventurers
and soldiers to be dispossessed for restorable persons, but
he considered the settlement of Ireland as an affair rather
of policy than of justice, and he thought it for the good of
his crown and Government that the loss should fall on the
Irish. The English Parliament argued in the same way.
and the Irish were sacrificed with small reluctance. The
articles of the peace of 1648 were simply abandoned,
but a Court of English Commissioners was appointed to
hear the claims of innocent Papists. Four thousand
innocents came forward, and began to establish their
claims ; 600 were heard, and nearly all of them made good
their case, and a panic broke out among the English
settlers. They saw that tliere were sufficient innocents to
eat up all the Government had to give; the Parliament
entered a protest; there was threat of a great Protestant
insurrection in Ireland ; the public opinion of England was
hostile to any concessions to the Catholics, the Commis-
sioners were recalled, and an Act of Seotlement was passed
which disposed of the question for the time. The Act
provided that the adventurers and soldiers should give up
one-third of their grants, to be used for increasing the
reprisals fund ; that Connaught purchasers were to retain
two-thirds of the land they held lu Se, timber, 1663; that
in aU cases of competition between the Catholics and the
Protestants, every ambiguity should be i iterpreted in favour
of the Protestants ; that twenty more of the Irish should
be restored by special fr vour, but that all the other Oath )lics
whose claims, for want of time, had not been attended to

England and Ireland.

red
)ro-
the
ers
but
ler
of
the

by the Commisgioners, should be treated as disqualified.
By that Act of Settlement more than 3,000 old proprie-
tors were driven from the inheritance of their fathers,
without even the show of a trial. Previous to 1641 the
Irish owned two-thirds of the good land in Ireland ; after
the Act of Settlement the Protestants owned that two-
thirds. It was settlement, settlement with a vengeance,
for the poor Irish !

And yet the years that followed the Act were marked by
peace and prosperity. The old Celtic race in the Green
Island was making a magnificent push to live somehow.
But Ireland was doomed. Charles II. died in 1685, and
liis brother James, the Duke of York, reigned in his stead.
James was the least wise of all the Stuart rulers ; he was
a man of less than mediocre ability, a Catholic, and bitterly
a bigot. His dull, narrow mind could contain but one
idea, and that was the re-establishment of Catholicism in
England. He hated Parliaments, and had a profound belief
in royal authority. England and Scotland were by this
time bigoted in Protestantism ; they identified Catholicism
with star chambers, royal tyranny, and a hundred other
evils — James with a lofty unconcern for that, wrought for
the Catholics. He gave them commissions in the army
and civil appointments, but, by maintaining the law as to
church and state held the people in loyalty for a time. In
the Monmouth rising that loyalty showed itself — but when
he struck hands with Louis of France, the Catholic bigoted
as himself, he turned the heart of the people from him.
He defied the Test Act, filled the army with Catholic
officers, and the streets of London with Catholic priests, and
dashed himself with mad impatience against every form
of English liberty. He ordered the Scotch to legalize the
toleration of Catholics, — offered them free trade with Eng-
land as a bribe, — ^but they were not to be bribed, and gave

Lecture hy Rev. A. J. Bray.

the king for answer — no. " Shall we sell our God ? " His
efforts to repeal the Test Act were fruitless, — the people
would not have it so. But the trouble in England was
joy in Ireland. William of Orange landed in England on
the 5th of November, 1688, and on the 12th of the follow-
ing March, James, after a sojourn in France, landed at
Kinsale. He at once issued a proclamation summoning
all Irish absentees to return and help their king, — another
proclamation called a Parliament for May 7th. It was
unlike the last Parliament, for many of the Protestant land-
lords had joined the Prince of Orange, or fled to England.
The Parliament was almost wholly Catholic. They met
without experience in public business, but with the
memory of most bitter wrongs. Many of them were the
sons of the three thousand, w ho, without trial or compensa-
tion, had been deprived of their estates by the Act of Settle-
ment. There was scarcely a man in the Parliament who
had not been injured in his fortunes or his family by the
confiscations of Ulster, the frauds of Strafford, and the long
train of calamities which followed. It requires no stretch
of the imagination to understand that such men, called to
form a Parliament at such a time, placed where they could
be masters of their old masters, should have acted with
violence and small regard for vested interests. But they
began well, by passing an Act securing religious freedom
to everybody in all parts of Ireland. They were far
ahead of their king. The next Act repealed Poyning's law,
and declared the legislative independence of Ireland, — a
position I for one wish they could have maintained ; and
they would have maintained it if by another Act they
could have swung the Green Island a thousand miles to
a. But the third measure was of another sort, it abol-
l^iied the payments to Protestant clergy in corporate
tv'vns; and a fourth enacted that the Catholics throughout

Ireh

cal c

fore.

com]

were

any

testj

tice,

Idc

Iris

England and Ireland.

Ireland should henceforth pay their tithes and ecclesiasti-
cal dues to their own clergv and not to Protestants as he-
fore. It was spoliation of course, but the principle of
compensation was not known in those days, and the Irish
were the last people in the world likely to learn it from
any lessons the English could give. But the spoliated Pro-
testant clergy were guarant ed full liberty to profess, prac-
tice, and teach their religion. And I want to say here that
I do not find religious persecution as an element in the
Irish nature. It is tolerant, and not given to bigotry. I
give no " taffy to the Irish," but only speak truth as I get
it from history, when I say that at no time and under no
circumstances have the Irish shown a bigotry and intoler-
ance to equal that of the early Puritans. But to return
to the Irish Parliament : having S( mewhat spoiled the
Protestant clergy it passed Acts for encouraging strangers
to settle in Ireland, — for the relief of distressed debtors, —
for the recovery of waste lands, — for the improvement of
trade, shipping and navigation, and for establishing free
schools. All going to prove, you must allow, that the Irish
had an idea as to how to govern themselves if they might
but have the chance.

But, unfortunately, the A cts I have named did not end
the law-making. They were resolved that the descendants
of the old proprietors should be re-established in their
lands : holding that the outbreak of 1641 had been due
to the intolerable oppression and cruelties of the Lords
Justices and the Puritan party; that the Catholics of
Ireland before the struggle ended were fully reconciled to
the king, and had received from him a full and formal
pardon, with a royal pledge that their property should be
restored, which pledge had been broken ; and holding that
the t went' -.^oiir years which had elapsed since the Act was
passed i;a. nat • "d could not annul the rights of the old

Lecture hy Rev. A. J. Bray.

proprietors or their descendants ; — holding those things, they
repealed the Act of Settlement and explanati'm, and
enacted that the heirs of all persons who had landed pro-
perty in Ireland on October 22nd, 1641, and who had
been deprived of their rights by the Act of Settlement
should enter at once into their properties. The persons to
be dispossessed were of two kinds, some were the adven-
turers or soldiers of Cromwell, and they were to be sent
empty away — the fact that they had obtained land for
money lent to the Government or due as pay — that they had
improved the property and put up buildings on it, was not
taken into consideration. Tt was an absolute dismissal.
The other class consisted of those who had come to the
land by fair purchase of those who held it by Act of
Parliament, and the Irish legislators maintained that those
persons were entitled to full compensation. The terms of
the Act read ; that whereas certain persons have come into
possession after the Act of Settlement, "for good and
valuable consideration, and not considerations of blood,
afi&nity or marriage, declares that these persons are hereby
intended to be reprised for such their purchases, in the
manner hereafter to be expressed." But the question
came, how and from whence compensation was to be got ?
The Irish borrowed the English idea. From the days of Mary
to the Act of Settlement confiscations of Irish lands were
accounted for by some real or pretended treason, and,
following the example, the Irish Legislators passed an Act
declaring that the real estates of all Irish proprietors who
dwelt in any part of the three kingdoms which did not
acknowledge King James, or who aided, abetted, or
corresponded with the rebels, were forfeited and vested in
the Crown. Out of these lands they proposed to compensate
the purchasers under the Act of Settlement. Taking high
moral ground, we are bound to say that one wrong cannot

Eiigland and Ireland.

justify a second, and so this was unjust ; but, judging in the
light of previous events in Ireland, if I were an Irishman
I should not be ashamed of that Act.

But the next measure passed no Irishman could, or ever
will, glory in — it was the Act of Attainder. A list was
made out, containing more than 2,000 names of landlords
to be attainted of high treason. They were grouped. The
first group consisted of those who were said to be actively
engaged in rebellion against the King, and were to become
liable to all the penalties attaching to high treason, unless
they gave themselves up for trial before the tenth of
August. The next group consisted of those who had left
the country after November 5, 1688, and they were allowed
until September 1st to justify themselves. A third group
consisted of those who had left Ireland and wfere living in
England or Scotland, — and then the Act went on to say that
those absent from Ireland from any cause should have tiieir
lands provisionally vested in the King. The tyranny of the
Act is obvious. It threw the burden of proof upon the
accused instead of uyjon the accuser. And many were
spoiled of their lands for no other crime than living out of
Irel md in a time of civil war. Many were attainted by mere
common fame, and there is no sufficient reason for doubt-
ing the statement made, that the lists of attainted persons
were not published until after the period of grace had ex-
pired. All the excuse to be offered for it is that the Act
was passed in a time of panic. The legislators were in-
experienced, and King James was in desperate straits for
money to carry on the war. It was the blot on the Irish
Parliament, but not much worse in character or execution
than an Act of Attainder introduced into the English Par-
liament on the 20th of June, 168 *.

James found in Ireland an army of 50,000 men, with
Tyrconnel at their head, and with these he hoped to meet

'f ^

h«5i

Lecture hy Rev. A. J. Bray.

and master William of Orange. But the King was coin-
l)elled to front a difficulty : with him it was war against
William and Protestantism ; with the Irish it was a war of
races — a supreme struggle for their ancient rights in law
and land. They wanted Ireland for the Irish, and the first
step in such a policy was to drive out the Englishmen
who still stood at bay in Ulster. James wanted no such
strife, but it was forced upon him. Half of Tyrconnel's
army of fifty thousand was sent against Londonderry, where
seven thousand Englishmen, behind a weak wall, manned
by a few old guns, and destitute of even a ditch, made
olorious warfare of resistance. James made offers, which
were firmly rejected. The people died of hunger in the
streets, and of the fever which comes of hunger, but still
the cry of " no surrender " rang from the lips of those
heroes of battle. A hundred and five days it had lasted,
and only two days food remained to the besieged when an
English gun broke the boom across the river, and an-
nounced that help was at hand. The besiegers withdrew,
and the men of Enniskillen rushed from behind their walls,
and struggled through a bog to attack a force double their
number at Ne V o An Butler, and drive it back to Dublin in
a panic. James was in a worse panic than any depressed
soldier of his beaten army, and he looked upon his game
as hopeless. But the Irish were ardent and hopeful. The
Count of Lauzun came to help him with 7,000 picked
soldiers from France, and on the last day of June the Irish
army with James at its head, and the English army under
William faced each other. James had an army of about
20,000 men strongly posted behind the Boyne ; William
had a much larger force. " I am glad to see yoa,
gentlemen," William cried ; " if you escape me now, the
fault will be mine." Early next morning the English army
plunged into the river. The Irish Foot, who at first fought

England and Ireland.

well, broke into a sudden panic when tin passage of the
river was effected, but the Horse made so firm a stand that
for a time it held the English centre in complete check, but
William came with his left wing, and all was over. The
dull-minded James was a coward, a poltroon ; had he let
the Irish alone the defeat would have been far less sure —
he interfered, fool that he was, and then, in despair, fled
away to France, coward tliat he was. " Change Kings with
us," said an Irish ofiicer to an P^nglishman, who had taunted
him with the panic, " change Kings with us, and we will
fight you again," and they v/ould have done ; and since
then, no Englishman of sense and courage will sneer at an
Irish soldier. James had gone, but the brave Irish made
one more stand in the following Spring, and then were
beaten and broken utterly. Ireland was broken utterly.
In the war of races she had been conquered.

Limerick alone was left defiant for a time, but e\en
Limerick had to surrender. Two treaties were drawn up
between the English and Irish generals. By the first it was
stipulated that the Catholics of Ireland should enjoy such
privileges in the exercise of their religion as were consis-
tent with law, or as they had enjoyed t)iem during the reign
of Charles the Second. But I must remind my friends who
make complaint that this treaty was not kept, that the
generals were not competent to make such treat}^ binding —
they could only engage to do their best to have it ratified by
Parliament. They did their best, and failed. Parliament
was not in the humor to ratify such a liberal and reason-
able treaty. Ten thousand men chose exile to life in a
land where all hope of national freedom was gone, and when
the wild cry of the women, who stood watching them go,
was hushed, the silence of death settled down upon Ireland.
There was peace — it was the peace of despair ! No English-
man who loves, and is proud of what is noble and good in

»l

Lecture hy Rev. A. J. Bray.

I'li

the English temper, can tell without sorrow and shame the
story of that time of evil oppression and guilt. I want no
dealings with the man who can glorify, or even excuse, what
was done. The most terrible legal tyranny under which
a nation has ever groaned avenged the rising under Tyr-
connel. The people became, as Swift said, in bitter words,
*' hewers of wood and drawers of water " to their con-
querors. " h ewers of wood and drawers of water," indeed
—as veritable slaves as ever were whipped by tyrant

masters.

Alter the refusal of William to accept the treaty of
Limerick, — which would have given the Catholics some
legal right to life and religion, an Act was passed to pre-
vent Protestants from inter-marrying with Papists ; and
yet another to prevent Papists from being solicitors. (I am
using the language of the days I am speaking of in my
use of words, so my Catholic friends must not imagine
that I do it without care for their feelings when I use the
words Romish and Papist.) A clause was inserted in the
last Act I have named prohibiting Papists from being
employed as gamekeepers. I have read the Act, and could
nowhere nd the connection between solicitors and
gamekeepers, but I satisfy myself by reflecting that
when men are doing dirty work they cannot afford to be
nice about it. On the 4th of March, 1704, Anne being
Queen of England, the royal assent was given to an Act to
prevent the further growth of Popery. It really should
have read " An Act to abolish Popery," for that was the end
contemplated. By the third clause of the Act a Popish
father being a landowner, no matter whether he acquired it
by inheritance or by purchase, was deprived of the power
to sell, mortgage, or otherwise dispose of it, or to leave
portions or legacies out of it, if one of his sons became
Protestant. That is to say, the moment a son became Pro-

England and Ireland.

testant the father's proprietary rights were changed and
infringed. By the fourth clause the Popish father was
debarred, under a penalty of £500, from being a guardian
to, or having the custody of, his own children ; but if the
child, at any age, should declare itself a Protestant, it was
to be taken from its father and put into the charge of a
Protestant relation. The 5th clause provided that no Pro-
testant should maiTy a Papist, in or out of the kingdom, if
the Papist possessed land in Ireland. The sixth clause
rendered Papists incapable of purchasing any manors, tene-
ments, hereditaments, or any rents or profits arising out of
the same, or of holding any lease of lives, or other lease
whatever for any term exceeding thirty-one years. And
further, that if a farm produced a profit greater than one-
third of the rent, the right in it was immediately to cease,
and the whole would pass over to the first Protestant who
should discover the rate of profit. By he tenth clause,
the estate of a Papist, for want of a Protestant heir, was ta
be divided, share and share alike, among all his sons ; for
want of sons, among all his daughters ; and for want of
daughters, among all the collateral kindred of the father. A
very good law, let me say, — very good if applied all round
to Protestants as well as Catholics, and to England as well
as to Ireland. Had the law of primogeniture been abolished
thcLi' there would be less ugly questions to settle now.
But to legislate that way for one class of people, scattering
their lands, while another was allowed to concentrate, was
not good, it was ferocious, it was diabolical. By the six-
teenth clause aU persons taking ofdce, civil or military,
were required to take and subscribe the oath of supremacy,
and also an oath abjuring the Catholic religion. The
twenty-third clause provided that no Papist should dwell
in Limerick or Galway. The twenty-fourth provided that
no persons should vote at elections without taking the

"I«-

• . ■ > t!

f,l

• ^

Lecture by Rev. A. J. Bray.

oath of allegiance to the Crown, and abjuration of theff
faith ; and the twenty-fifth that all advowsons possessed
by Papists should be vested in Her Majesty. I have given
you the clauses as they were enacted, so that you may see
exactly what was done, and not have to rely on any mere
wt rd or comment of mine. The object is plain to us now,
as it was plain to the Catholics then. Tliey protested to
the English Parliament, and made piteous appeal to the
Irish Parliament ; they prayed for the Treaty of Limerick ;
but protests, appeals and prayers were wasted, for the
En,; lish had a mind to stamp out Popery. Protestantism
was showing how much better and kinder and liker to
Christ it was by a peculiar manner of legalizing robbery
and persecution.

But that was not all, nor enough. In 1709 another
Act was passed to explain and amend the Act to prevent
the further growth of Popery. The third clause of it
provided that in case of a child of Popish parents declaring
itself a Protestant, the High Court of Chancery should
have power and authority to compel the father under
oath to make clear the value of all his property, personal
or real, and the Court should give an order for the father
to pay for the support of the child, according to the judg-
ment of said Court. The twelfth clause provided that all
servants in public employment — members of Parliament,
barristers, or officers of any court of law — should educate
their children Protestants. The sixteenth clause provided
that a Papist teaching school publicly or in a private
house, or as usher to a Protestant family, should be
deemed and persecuted as a Popish regular convict.
The 1 8th clause provided that Popish priests who might
turn Protestant should receive £30 per annum. The
twentieth clause dealt with the remunerations to be given
for finding and denouncing Popish clergy and school-

■;■ 1

England ar Ireland.

masters; for discovering an aiv ibisKop, b'shop, vicar-gen-
eral, or other person exercising loreign urisdiction, £50 ;
for discovering a regular or secular clergyman not regis-
tered, £20; for discovering each Popish sch( xiiaster >r
usher, £10. The thirtieth clause provided that aiy
Papist, being tried under this x\ct should be tried by Pro-
testants. The 37th clause provided that no Papist in
trade, except the linen trade, should take more than two
apprentices. Then followed an Act to prevent Popish
clergy from entering the kingdom ; another for registering
Popish clergy, and prohibiting them from employing
curates. These are the penal laws, and penal enough they
were, God knows. No more atrocious business was ever
transacted within the pale of civilization.

The effect of all this degrading persecution may be
guessed at. The people saw their chapels shut up, their
priests hunted out of the land or brutally murdered ; they
saw religion and law thrown into violent antagonism ;
they learnt to regard law as their natural enemy. In
England law and religion were on the same side — law
supported religion, and religion sanctioned law ; so the
people learnt to unite these two great forces in their own
mind, and the magistrate was a man of double authority
wher he happened to be a clergyman. But the Irish had
no such teaching. To them the law was an enemy, opposed
to their religion, opposed to their just rights in lands and
trade, the enemy of the family, of the nation, bent only on
confiscation and persecution. It is a horrible thing to
teach any people that lesson; it is subversive of all a
people's best interests, it is worse than barbarism, and when
a people have once learnt that they won't soon unlearn
it again. When you laugh at the Irishman because he is
not sure of his vote, but is sure that it wiU be " agin the
Government," remember that it was in his blood at his

Lecture hy Rev. A, J. Bray.

birth, — it camo to him as a heritage. It was rubbed into
the Irish nature by the penal code, and it is hardly to bo
wondered at that ho is slow in believing that law and
religion are united at last.

The influence of those laws as they related to property
was hardly less disastrous. There are writers who insist
upon it that the code was a dead letter. The Irish did not
find it so. In trade they had many disabilities and illegal
exactions. Dr. Nary wrote in 1724: — "At present there
is not one free nlan, or master of any corporation, nor of
any other of the least charge, bating that of a petty con-
stable, of the Roman Catholic religion in all the kingdom ;
neither are any of the tradesmen or shopkeepers of this
religion suffered to work at their respective trades, or sell
their goods in any. of the cities of Ireland, except they pay
exorbitant taxes, which they call quarterage, to the respec-
tive masters of their corporations." In many parts of
Ireland the most lucrative trades were long a strict mono-
poly of Protestants, who refused to admit any Catholic as
an apprentice. But the condition of the landowner was
far worse. I read to you the clause providing for dis-
coverers and their reward. The supply was soon forth-
coming. A whole profession of spies and informers was
called into being, and so well did they succeed that in 1739,
a writer said that in all Ireland there were not twenty
Papists who had £1000 in land. A Protestant gentry
grew up regarding ascendency as their inalienable right,
proudly and ostentatiously indifferent to the interests of
the masses of the people, and carefully preserving social
distinctions. A Catholic could not carry the arms which
were considered the signs of a gentlemanly position with-
out a license, which was often difficult to get, and he only
kept his hunter or his carriage horses by the forbearance
of his Protestant neighbour. A story is told of a Catholic

England and Ireland.

into

o bo

and

j,'entleman who once drove into MuUingar at the time of
the assizes in a carriage drawn by two beautiful horses.
A man 8topf)ed the carriage, and tendering ten guineas
claimed the horses for his own. The gentleman drew a
brace of pistols from his pocket and shot the horses dead
upon the sjiot. The man who tendered the money was
acting according to law.

And then we must not forget that behind all this lay
the important fact that most of the land of the country was
lield by the title of recent confiscation, and that the old
j)OSsessors or their children were living before their eyes in
poverty, in wretchedness, in serai-slavery, but by the
people still remembered, and honoured, and sympathized
with. The cruel enactments of the penal code were due
to the fact that those holding the property felt that their
position was insecure. And this made it 'impossible that
political movements in Ireland should have a national
character. This made the landlords, as a class, reckless,
arrogant and extravagant, and this made them bitterly
hostile to every scheme for ameliorating the condition of
the Catholics. Yon see the picture, and do you wonder
at the way things have worked ? I do not. Why is
Ireland unlike Scotland or England ? Do you not see ? In
Scotland the greater part of the land is held, even now, b/
the descendants of chiefs, whose origin fades away in the
twilight of fable. In England, although there have been
great fluctuations and changes, much of the land is still
owned by families which rose to power under the Tudors
or even the Plantagenets. In Scotland and England
centuries of co-operation, of sympathy, and of mutual good
service, have united landlord and tenant by closest ties.
The close sympathy between the Scotch people and the
Scotch gentry has been one great cause of that admirable
firmness of character and manly independence which

. i

'"^n

! 1

Lecture hy Rev. A. J. Bray.

characterize the Scotch. But in Ireland, where the pitiful
absence of industrial life marks out the landlords as being
the natural leaders of the people, this sympathy has been
almost entirely wanting. Instead of sympathy there was
hostility. The division of classes and the war between
them was begun by confiscation, perpetuated by religion,
and aggravated by law. Nothing so consolidates a people
as the sense that in time of struggle or difficulty, they will
find their natural leaders at their head — men in whom they
can trust, whose interests are identical with their own.
But in Ireland there was no such sense, there could be no
such sense. The men to whom they should have been
able to look as leaders were their actual enemies by
avowal and practice. This told with degrading power
upon every part of their national life; it hindered their
progress politically, educationally, and in all that concerns
a nation. It made it impossible for a man to have a
prosperous career open to him unless he first apostatized ;
60 that he had to commence by first degrading himself —
for I hold that it is a degradation for a man to change
his religion unless he does it inteUectually and with pious
motive only. We can only understand the present con-
dition of Ireland by keeping in mind this fact that, while
"in Scotland and England the people and the landlords
were drawn together by co-operation, religion and law, in,
Ireland they were separated by every conceivable differ-
ence. The landlords were a caste, and dominant, separated
from their tenants by privilege, by race, by religion, hy law
by the memory of inexpiable wrongs, and by the actual
and daily administration of justice, which was entirely
under the control of the landlords. They grew even more
lordly in their bearing, — their will was law ; and the people
grew ever more submissive. The landlords were reckless
of life and morals. Ireland was made a very by- word

England and Ireland.

)itiful
being
been
e was
ween
igion,
)eople
y will
they
own.
be no
been

and proverb for its profligacy. There was everything
done to hinder public improvement, nothing whatever to
help it. The English had made an effort, and succeeded
in stamping out Irish industry. A Navigation Act
excluded her from the colonial market. She was prohibited
from exporting cattle. Manufacture began to increase —
an industrial enthusiasm arose in the land, — English and
Scotch went over, — thousands were employed in the manu-
facture of woollen, and it seemed as if Ireland would
become an industrial nation. But England had not
learnt the great gospel of generosity and free trade : a
woollen manufacture sprang up in England ; English
manufacturers, wanting a fair field and plenty of favour,
petitioned for the total suppression of the rising industry
in Ireland. The petition was heard and the National
Policy adopted. By the Act of a Parliament summoned in
Dublin, 1698, the industry of Ireland was utterly des-
troyed. The Irish were forbidden to export their woollen
manufactures to any country whatever, and their raw
wool to any country except England. Poverty was the
result, of course, poverty and wi'etchedness. Three
famines in twenty years, and the people dying by
thousands. Most sickening sights to be seen, — dead bodies
in the fields eaten by dogs, — children dying on dung
heaps, — 'babes sucking at the cold breasts . f dead mothers.
There was no poor law, and not much public charit}*^;
there was nothing but oppression, and I do not want to
linger upon the revolting story.

• It has often been asked why the Irish have been so
utterly bek.nd all nations in the matter of education, and
the answer i^-a s'mple — because education was denied to
them. It is true that a law was passed under Henry
VIII. compelling every clergyman to have a school in his
parish ; but it soon became a dead letter, as we have seen.

Lecture hy Rev. A. J. Bray.

Catholics were excluded, by the penal code, from the
educational institutions of the country, and Catholic edu<}a-
tion was forbidden. The law had it as a main object to
keep in brutal ignorance about four-fifths of the people,
unless tliey availed themselves of the Charter Schools,
which were originated by March and afterwards adopted
by Primate Boulter in 1733. The object of the schools
was thus declared : " to rescue the souls of thousands of
poor children from the dangers of Popish superstition and
idolatry, and their bodies from the miseries of idleness
and beggary." The idea was broad, as you see. And it
was cleverly conceived. For there was no legal provision
for the relief of the poor, and a bad season would bring on
a famine. The Society proposed to take the half-starved
children from the Catholic parents between^the ages of six
and ten, to feed and clothe,* lodge and educate gratuitously,
' and to apprentice the boys and provide for the girls. But
the one condition was that they should be educated as
Protestants. When it was found that parents would
sometimes place their starving children there for a time
and then withdraw them when the pinch was over, a law
was passed providing that, once the children had been
placed in the schools, the parents lost all control over them,
and could not withdraw them. The same law provided
that the officers of the Society were empowered to take
any children between the ages of five and twelve who
were found begging and educate them as Protestants.
Mr. Froude in that peculiarly inaccurate book, " The Eng-
lish in Ireland," has said that " the Charter Schools were
the best conceived educational institutions which existed in
the world." Had the schools offered an education, an
industrial education, I could adopt Mr. Fronde's language;
but when I see that it only proposed to do that by inter-
fering with the people's religious convictions and domestic

England and Ireland.

happiness, I cannot adopt the language. The parental
instinct was strong in Irish as in English breasts ; and it is
a cruelty to place before people the dreadful choice of
seeing their children brought up in dirt and hunger and
misery to drag out a wretched existence, or to lose them
altogether that they may be educated and cared for and
taught to despise their parents* religion. Had the Society
gone to work in the name of God and humanity, and not
bigotry, Ireland would have had a different history than
that she now reads through hot bUnding tears.

I want to dwell a Uttle now on the landlords and their
tenants. I have spoken of the hostility which existed
and its causes ; now look at the effects. You will call to
mind how much was done in England and Ireland by the
co-operation of landlord and tenant. But Ireland had only
a little of that. — absenteeism meant that at least one-third
of the rent of the country was spent in England. Very
many of the tenants never saw their landlords, and only
thought of them as high-handed robbers. Intercourse
might have softened that down, but instead of that the
middleman came to make everything worse. The landlord,
not liking the trouble of collecting his rents from the many
tenants he had in whose interest he had no concern, let
his land on a long lease to a large tenant, who paid the
rent to the landlord, and made a profit for himself by sub-
letting, and who undertook the work of managing the
estate. This put the control of the tenants into the hands
of an inferior class of persons, who were necessarily
Protestant, but had none of that culture which tones down
the asperities of religious differences. Very often the
middleman became in turn an absentee, sublet his tenacy
at an increased rent, and put other masters in to live upon
the already over-rented tenants.

As might be expected, the poor sank into the condition

Lecture hy Rev. A. /. Bray.

of "cottiers," a specific and almost unique product of
Irish industrial life. They had no permanent interest in
the soil. The English farmer was a capitalist, who selected
farming as one of the ways open to him to make a living ;
not so the Irish farmer, he had neither money nor know-
ledge, and found only the land between himself and
starvation. Of course, rents were regulated by competi-
tion, but it was the competition of a half-starved people
who in desperation of hunger would promise anything.
Swift said : " It is the usual practice of an Irish tenant,
rather than want land, to offer more than he knoweth he
can ever be able to pay ; and in that case he groweth
desperate and payeth nothing." The landlords did nothing
at all for the tenants. They had to build their own mud
hovels, plant their hedges, and dig their ditches. They
were half naked, half starved, and wholly ignorant. They
had to pay rack rents to the middlemen, tithes to the
clergy of the church they never attended, but hated, and
dues to their own Priests. The land in many parts was
rich and fertile, but they were never farmed ; each poor
wretch as he got a few acres was only anxious lo get all
he could out of the soil, and spend nothing upon it. He
couldn't build a decent house if he would, and he wouldn't
if he could, for it would mean more rent to pay. Ireland
had aU the possibihties of a prosperous, even a wealthy
country, they were killed by British legislation. The
trade was restricted and finally destroyed, and agriculture
was depressed by hard masters and middlemen.

But, thank God, * change in the English Government of
Ireland was introduced. A gleam of light, shot athwart
the darkened sky; it was Ireland's time of morning.
The great and brilliant Chatham was at the head of the
English Government. The marvellous eloquence of Edmund
Burke had convinced the head and heart of England that

England and Ireland.

Jt of
3t in
jcted

ring;

>ple,
ling.

Irishmen had a right to religious liberty; and in 1778 an
Act was passed for " the relief of His Majesty's subjects
professing the Popish religion." This \/as at least a good
beginning, for the religious intolerance of the Protestants
had filled the Irish mind with wild bitterness. But this
Act went further than merely relaxing the ferocious laws
of Queen Anne, it provided that they might take land on
a lease not exceeding 999 years, or determinable upon any
number of lives not exceeding five. The lands of Papists
were made descendable, devisable or transferable, as
fully as any of His Majesty's subjects. Papists were able
to hold and enjoy all cstr.tes which might descend, be
devised or transferred to them. The iniquitous law which
altered a Catholic parent's estate if his eldest son conformed
was abolished.

In the year 1782 another Act was past for the further
relief of His Majesty's subjects professing the Popish reli-
gion. By it they might purchase lands or take interest
therein, except advowsons and boroughs returning members
to Parliament. A great many other old cruel disabilities
were by the same Act wiped out. The Catholic clergy
were relieved of their penalties, and another Act was passed
to allow persons professing the Popish religion to teach
school. But all this was only tinkering matters a little, it
was a start in the right direction, but the work was not
boldly done, and there was no definite aim. England
might have recognised Ireland as a free nationality, and
bound it to herself by federal ties, or she might have
absorbed it as she absorbed Scotland ; but she did neither —
she had neither a national nor an Imperial policy. With
perverse ingenuity the worst features of both were adopted.
I have spoken of the Acts which gave toleration to the
Irish in all matters of education, worship, and dealing with
lands, but still the native Catholics were in all social and

Lecture hy Rev. A. J. Bray.

political matters, as of old, " hewers of wood and drawers of
water" for Protestant masters, who looked on themselves as
mere settlers, and would resent as an insult being called
Irishmen. The Parliament was no real Parliament at all.
Administration and justice were in the hands of members
of the Established Church, a body comprising about one-
twelfth of the population. Three nobles returned sixty
members to the House of Commons. Politics were only a
means for public plunder, and the means were used with
no sign of stint or compunction. But trouble came to
England, offering Ireland a chance. There was an effort
made to implant British tyranny on the Continent of
America, but the soil was against it, and it died. During
the revolt of New England, when Old England was unduly
alarmed by the bold stand of its colonists, and a threat of
invasion from France, it called on Ireland to make provi-
sion for its own defence. The answer was forty thousand
volunteers in arms ; it was a Protestant force with Protes-
tant officers, and having some claims to make, and the ,
power to enforce them, they demanded and got the inde-
pendence of the Irish Parliament, and the recognition of
the Irish House of Lords, as an ultimate court of appeal.
The English Houses abandoned by a formal statute the
judicial and legislative supremacy they had asserted over
Ireland. That is to say, in 1782 Ireland had a national
independence, and was held to England only by the fact
that the Sovereign of the one island was the Sovereign of
the other.

Home Rule was granted. How did it answer? We
shaU see. The old religious bitterness was partially healed,
persecutions came well nigh to an end, but the dominant
party was still the minority, the strangers for whom their
lands had been confiscated. It was not government of
Ireland by the Irish, but by English settled in Ireland,

England and Ireland.

The great landlords were more rapacious than ever. The
English Government had been a check upon them ; the
check was gone, and they used their freedom to the utmost.
Poverty spread, and deepened into misery. The sight
moved the heart of the great Pitt, and in 1785 he dragged
a bill through the English Parliament to do away with
every obstacle to freedom of trade between England and
Ireland. ^ It was intended, and well intended, to create a
loyal and prosperous Ireland. He struggled with it almost
alone, and against fierce opposition, and by the power of
his good cause and great genius fought it through, and
handed it to the Irish Parliament, — only to have it instantly
flung back by the Irish Protestant faction under Grattan,
which then ruled the Irish Parliament. That will give
you an idea of what Irish independence meant. It meant
rule by a few landlords. The Catholics were refused
admission to the franchise, and to equal civil rights. Even
the Protestant Englishry had not a fair share of the repre-
sentation, and the Catholics were crushed into deeper
misery. " If ever there was a country unfit to govern
itself," said Lord Hutchinson, "it is Ireland ; a corrupt
aristocracy, a ferocious commonalty, a distracted govern-
ment, and a divided people."

The English war with France gave Ireland another
chance, at least the Catholics in it. They had long been
hoping for some kind of reform in parliamentary matters.
Grattan had been pleading for it with marvellous eloquence ;
the United Irishmen Society had pressed for it with vigor-
ous words of threatening, but the grasp of the great land
owners could not be shaken off. In 1792 Pitt forced on
the Irish Parliament measures for the admission of Catholics
to the electoral franchise and to civil and military office
within the Island, which gave promise of a new era of reli-
gious liberty. But the promise was too late in coming.

. li

Lecture by Rev. A, J. Bray.

U .-It.

The United Irishmen had already entered into correspon-
dence with France, and formed projects of insurrection.
The French Revolution heated the blood of the Irish
Catholics to the point of frenzy. Their discontent broke
out in social disorder — in the outrages of secret societies of
" Defenders " and " Peep o' Day Boys," which spread a
panic in the ruling classes. By sheer terror and bloodshed
the land owners kept it down. They formed themselves
into " Orange " Societies to meet the secret societies about
them ; outrages on the one side were met by further tj^ran-
ny on the other. The maddened Protestants would enter-
tain no notion of further concessions to people whom they
looked upon as on the verge of revolt, and parliamentary
reform was becoming less and less possible. The Catholics
threatened an insurrection if'concessions were not granted ;
the Orangemen threatened an insurrection if they were —
the United Irishmen actually became a revolutionary body,
and sent Wolfe Tone to France to seek aid in a national
rising. He was warmly welcomed, ai d in December, 1796,
Hoche shipped away from Brest with an army of 25,000
toward the Irish coast. Had it reached Ireland, the Irish
might well have been lost to the British Crown. But the
winds fought against Hoche as before they had fought
against the Spanish Armada. A gale broke up the fleet and
hindered the invasion. The prospect of it was enough. It
turned Ireland into a hell. Protestant soldiers and yeo-
manry marched over the country, scourging and torturing
the " croppies," as the Irish peasantry were called for their
short cut hair, robbing, ravishing, murdering at their will.
The lightest suspicion — unfounded charges were sufficient
warrant for bloodshed. The outrages awoke a thrill of hor-
ror in the breast of the hardest and blindest English Tories ;
but the land owners who formed the Irish Parliament sanc-
tioned them in a Bill of Indemnity, and protected the evU

England and Ireland.

workers for the future by an Insurrection Act. The terror
aroused a universal spirit of revolt. Ireland drank in that
hate of England and English rule which all the justice and
moderation of later governments have failed as yet to des-
troy. On the 23rd of May, 1798, the Catholic peasantry rose
in arms : 14,000 men, headed by a priest, marched on Wex-
ford, took it, and the town became the centre of the revolt.

But the old misfortune was still at their heels. They
were still looking for help from France — but it did not
come, and they were left to fight their own battles. In a
horrible way they did it. The Protestants of Wexford
were driven into the river, or flung into prison. Another
body of insurgents, driven mad by the cruelties of the royal
troops, massacred a hundred Protestants in cold blood.
The horrors they had suffered were fiercely avenged.
Loyalists were lashed and tortured in their turn, and every
soldier taken was butchered without mercy. The Ulster
Protestants refused to join the rising — the Catholic gentry
threw themselves on the side of the Government — Lord
Lake appeared before their camp on Vinegar Hill with a
strong force of English troops — the camp was stormed —
the insurgents dispersed, and when in August General
Humbert landed with a French army he found that resis-
tance to tho English rule in Ireland had been trodden out
in blood.

Pitt saw, and said, that the Independence of Ireland
meant only a succession of Irish tragedies, and he proposed
to unite the two Parliaments. The Irish borough mongers
-.and the Dublin Parliament offered it fierce opposition — but
it was only a matter of money, and Pitt bought them all,
body and soul, for a million pounds sterling, and sundry
pensions and peerages the net value of which could not be
told. In June, 1800, one hundred Irish members became
members of the House tf Commons at Westminster, and

Lecture by Rev. A. J. Bray.

twenty-eight temporal, with four spiritual peers, took their
seats in the House of Lords. Commerce between the two
countries was freed from all restrictions, and every trading
privilege of the one thrown open to the other.

I need not dwell on the story now at length — to talk
of the Ribbonmen and the famines — of the great Dan
O'Connell, whom any nation would be proud to own, and
who fought for the Repeal of the Union, — which was begun
in 1810, — but accepted complete Emancipation as a com-
promise. I have gone through the record carefully and
without flinching. I have not hesitated to dwell on English
misrule and tyranny in Ireland. I have shown you Ire-
land as an independent country. And up to the point at
which I have ceased to merely give history, we can plainly
see that, first of all, England had never a settled policy with
regard to the Government of Ireland. It simply pursued
a policy of expedients. At one time it petted and promised
the Irish : at another time it trampled them in the dust.
But we cannot say that of the Government now. It has a
policy, and that is, Justice to Ireland. The next difficulty
arose from the religious question. The Irish were forced
into bitter hate of Protestantism because it represented to
them cruelty and misery, but the different acts of tolera-
tion, followed by the Act of Emancipation, and that fol-
lowed by Disestablishment of the Irish Church on the 31st
of May, 1869, wiped out that trouble forever and ever.

As to Educational matters, much has been done, but
more remains yet to be accomplished. I have told you of
the Repeal of the Acts forbidding Catholics to teach in
School, but further advance was made in 1831, by the
establishment of an Irish National School system, which had
no aim in it to convert the Irish to Protestantism, and
while denominationalism was to be excluded, the course of
education was "combined literary and separate religious

England and Ireland,

instruction." The Government appointed Commissioners
to watch its affairs, and made a grant of public money to
sustain it. And a great good has been accomplisiied by it.
The schoolmaster abroad has worked wonders, and no one
can say that education is not appreciated in Ireland. Some
of the people are densely ignorant still — but so are some of
the people of England. The School system has not done all
it could, and should have done, but that is no fault of the
English Government — let the truth be told — it is due to
the Church of the majority of the Irish people. The
Catholic clergy will have denominational schools — they
insist upon it that the catechism and repeating of prayers
are the chief things to be learnt, and they interfere and
hinder the work of education. What is wanted for Ireland
is a system of compulsory education with the Priests left out.

But that raises the other and broader question — how are
they to find money to pay for this ? They are poor, — they
are miserably poor, that is the reason of their ignorance
and the solid ground of their discontent. And that raises
the land question. I have told you how the Irish land
changed hands, — of the three great confiscations which have
never been interfered with. But efforts have been made
to ameliorate the condition of the Irish tenant. At first
he was often a mvjre tenant at will, — perhaps of a middle-
man who compelled him to pay rack rent. When he took
it there were no buildings upon it, and with every im-
provement made he stood the chance of having his rent
increased.

To make an effort possible on the part of the landlord to
ease the circumstances of the tenant, the Government, in
1849, passed the Encumbered Estates Act. The need for it
was pressing. A large section of the landlord class were
little better than nominal proprietors. A mountain load of
mortgages, or a net work of settlements, made it impossible

» I

Lecture by Rev. A. J. Bray.

for them to carry out any scheme for the reform and im-
provement of their relations witli tho Leiumts. Many an
Irish proprietor with a nominal rent roll of thousands per
year possesseil in reality only a few hundreds. They had
great names and great houses to maintain on a merely
nominal income. Indulgence to tenants was impossible,
and the Government came forward to rid the estates
of those encumbrances, and give landlord and tenant a
fresh start. It was one of the greatest Legislative boons
ever conferred on Ireland.

Still more legislation was required however. The En-
cumbrance Act only removed a dilliculty, that a greater and
older one might be reached. The people became poor
again, and miserable again, and discontent grew apace in
the poor soil.

In 1870 Mr. Gladstone boldly grappled with this great
evil and passed the Landlord and Tenant Ireland Act, which
did justice, so far as an Act of Parliament could do justice,
to the tenants. It provided that tenants disturbed, or choos-
ing to give place to another tenant, shall claim and have
compensation ; it was laboriously careful to make it plain
that the English Government had determined that the
Irish landlord shall deal fairly with his tenant. I need not
wea.y you with the dry details of the Act, but briefly let
me say, that by it compensation was made legal and bind-
ing, except when a lease of thirty-one years has expired. ■
The compensation is for disturbance and improvements, it
gives the tenant the right to choose under what law of
compensation lie will claim ; it provides for the sale of
lands to the tenants, and for transfer of leases in legal form.
It ig often asked now : Is the Irish farmer under any dis-
ability to-day unknown in England or Scotland ? Techni-
cally he is not. He holds his tmure just as an English
or Scotch farmer ; his position on the whole with regard to

England and Ireland.

leases and compensation is better than that of a farmer in
Canada — for here I })elieve a lease of twenty -one years
carries no compensation. In Ireland the term is thirty-
one years. That so far as it goes is good and sounds wcdl ;
but we must remember that Irish history did not begin
to be written in 1870, and Irish memory dates farther
back than tlie time of the union in 1800. The landlord
and tenant system is not what it is in England, because it
did not begin in the same way, and has not come down
the ages in the same manner. There is the curse of great
estates. The total area of Ireland is 20,159,678 acres, of
this

452 persons own each more than

135

((

5,000 acres.

10,000

20,000

50,000
100,000
170,119

((

292 persons hold about one-third of the island.

And the people remember how those proprietors came

by those large tracts of land. They say in effect : You

gave ns the Act of Toleration, and of Emancipation, you

gave us back our religious rights, but you never gave us

back our land. We do not acquire land, we are poor, we

are still owned by an alien race. Give us back our own.

Now, I am free to acknowledge that the matter is an

extremely difficult one to deal with. Turn where you may

and yoa will find perplexity. Some of the landlords came

into the property by actual purchase, and the others, the

original adventurers, took land as payment for money lent ,

to Government, or arrears of pay as Cromwell's soldiers.

Itights in land are not moral, but political. The Act of

Settlement was an Act of Parliament, which an Act of

Parliament can repeal or amend. Should ij do so ? that is

< ■■<

Lecture by Rev. A. J. Bray.

'. !<i

the question. Parliament cannot ignore the past, or say-
when moral right began. If it should say it began with
the confiscations, then, why not a year or two earlier ? If
confiscations were right for the proper settle" aent of
Ireland then, what is right for the proper settlement of
Ireland now ? If confiscation was wrong then, two hun-
dred years have not made it into a right. We have ]tassed
the age of brute force and entered upon the era of justice.
Shall we then take those lands en bloc, and hand them
back to tlie original proprietors ? I say nc, and every
Irishman here would say no, I believe. The balance of
.justice must be even. How can that be accomplished'?
It is a difficult subject, as I have said, but one may form
an opinion and express it. I have formed mine, and when
I have an opinion on any thing I am in the habit of
speaking it out. I force it upon no one, just as no one
has forced it upon me. And I say to the English first of
all, the law of primogeniture should be abolished in
Ireland. Tliat would maintain a just regard for all vested
interests and break up the too great estates, one of the
fruitful curses of Ireland. Then, let the Government
purchase land, put it on the market, and make the sale of
it easy to the Irish. Give compensation to landlords as it is
now given to tenants. Give free-trade in lands as you
liave given free-trade in all matters industrial. But have
an exception by limiting the acreage ; provide that farms
shall not be too big nor too small. Compel the landlord
to co-operate with the tenant. Legislate for at least
inhabitable houses and necessary outbuildings. Then,
have an intelligent, generous policy for promoting Irish
emigration, that this living in hovels and on a few acres
may come to an end. And to the Irish I would say :
Have patience. You are the victims of English mis-
government and oppression for centuries. The fault, in

England and Ireland.

part at least, lies at your own door. The better part
of England is willing and anxious to do what is right
with you. Our fiithers did wrong, but centuries of
blundering injustice cannot be wiped out in a few years.
We must feel our way gradually. To raise the question
of primogeniture in Ireland is to raise the same question
a.« i;- ^''^gards England. There is a great body of landed
proprietors who will oppose it tooth and nail. Therefore,
be patient. Agitate, argue, discuss, but not with shilla-
lah and blunderbuss. Barbarous mutilation of cattle and
shooting of landlords will not help you. The English
temper is against coercion, and may turn ugly if you
attempt to lay on the lash ; but it is in favour of justice.
Help it by your moderation and patience. England can-
not be coerced ; she is not frightened at your threats, but,
she can be persuaded. Use all legitimate arguments, and
Ireland will get her rights ; for in spite of the past, which
is irrevocable, and the present, which is difficult, England
will to herself be true. Let the Irish leaders make sensi-
ble and practical suggestions and less merely inflamma-
ble speeches. Many a time Ireland has thrown away a
good chance by a want of prudence. Never had Ireland
a better chance of justice than now. Protestant bigotry is
a thing of the past ; the English are not afraid of the Pope,
and the Jesuits driven from Catholic France may take
refuge in Protestant England. The people are not only just,
but generous. The Government of the day reflects the
people, and is not the creature of a Tory aristocracy. The
Irish may well trust Gladstone and Bright, but Glad-
stone and Bright are for law and opposed to violence. A
a few outrages more may well stop the work of reform and
justice upon which they have entered. Let the Land League
agitate, but let the leaders speak out against violence. Let
them help and not hinder the British Government. And I

■"■I

Lecture by Rev. A. J. Bray.

would say earnestly to the Irish : Be prudent and you will
get justice. England is your friend. Make up your mind to
it that you will get more from England than you will ever
get from Italy. From my heart of hearts, I wish justice,
prosperity, peace to Ireland.

II d

. Hi

Alderman Mooney moved a vote of thanks to the
Rev. lecturer. He was sure that all would agree with
him that the subject had been ably and eloquently dis-
cussed.

Mr, E. B. McNamee seconded the motion. He said
that he had heard many lectures and discourses on the
Irish question, and never did he hear it put in so plain
and masterly a manner as to-night. Montreal, in fact, the
Dominion, might weU be proud of having an historian
who is capable of handling so delicate a subject in this
mixed community as to satisfy all parties and give
offence to none. It augurs well for the city of Montreal
that, after a heated discussion of old world grievances, we
can sit down and hear the subject dealt with calmly and
intelligently. All would agree with him that the lecture
was an intellectual treat.

The Chairman in putting the motion said : In a question
so difficult as that which the Rev. Mr. Bray has had to
deal with this evening, it is to be expected that there
would be some expressions of opinion. Indeed, I noticed
what might be possibly considered slight murmurs of
disapproval from one or two voices in one part of the
lecture ; but these were lost in the general applause. There
can be no difference of opinion that there is a panacea
placed before you by the Rev. lecturer for the wrongs

I "i,.''

which he has so ably exposed, and which we would wish
to forget. His lecture was indeed an intellectual treat as
Mr. McNamee has aptly qualified it. Mr. Bray is entitled
to our thanks ; and in order to ascertain that you all think
so, I wiU ask that those who wish to express their thanks
will now hold up their right hand. (Carried.) Now those
who are against^ it. ( " Not one, not one," and loud and
enthusiastic applause.) I have very great pleasure in
saying the " ayes " have it unanimously. (Great cheering.)

Mr. Edward Murphy moved, on behalf of the meet-
ing,

That the Lecture Committee, with the permission of the Reverend
Mr. Bray, be requested to publish in pamphlet form his Lecture from
the original manuscript. (Cheers.)

In support of this motion, Mr. Murphy said that in his
opinion such an important Lecture should have a more
permanent form than that of a newspaper report. He felt
sure it would gratify the large audience present (cheers),
besides it would be only an act of justice to the Eeverend
and learned lecturer, as few had any idea of the labour and
research the preparation of such a Lecture entailed. He
undertook the work, and the able and eloquent lecture we
have just had the pleasure of listening to is the result.
(Cheers.)

Mr. James O'Brien seconded the motion, which was
carried unanimously with great cheering.

(From The Gazette, Montreal, Gth January, 1881.)

An action of great public interest was yesterday instituted by the
Rev. Mr. Bray, against Mr. Devins, tiie druggist, for the unauthorized
publication of Mr. Bray's lecture on "England and Ireland." Mr.
Bray has caused the lecture to be copyrighted. The ground of com-
plaint against Mr. Devins' issue is that it is in violation of the Copy-
right Act; that it is a caricature of the original lecture which was
delivered from manuscript, and that it is an advertising dodge, its
j^ages being interspersed with notices of quack and other medicines.
The affidavits of Mr. Samuel E. Dawson, the publisher, and of Mr.
Bray himself are fyled to support the charge of damage and want of
accuracy of the spurious pamphlet.

Upon the affidavits of Mr. Bray and Mr. Dawson, Judge Johnson
made an order of suppression, and authorized the Court officers to
seize the edition of Mr. Devins. On proceeding to Mr. Devins' ware-
house they were informed all the pamphlets had been sent out, but,
on a search, the officers found 1,000 numbers in a back room, which
they carried away. Mr. Bray's action is for $3,500.

Mr. Bray then instituted a second action through his attorneys,
Messrs. Macmaster & Co., for the penalty of infringing on a copyright,
claiming one dollar a piece for each pamphlet found in defendant's
i|f possession . The original action involves the right of an author and
lecturer to the product of his brains, and we give the declaration,
affidavits and Judge's order in full. We omit the petition upon which
the order to impound and suppress the spurious pamphlets was based,
as it is a substantial reiteration of the declaration.

Canada,
Province of Quebec
District of Montreal

SUPERIOR COURT.
No. 13.

The Rev. Alfred J. Bray, plaintiflf, vs. Richard J. Devins,
defendant.

The Reverend Alfred James Bray, of the city and district of Mon-
treal, minister and lecturer, plaintiff, complains of Richard J. Devine,
of the same place, druggist, defendant, and declares : —

That plaintiff is the author, composer and owner of a lecture
entitled *' England and Ireland," which the plaintiff prepared with
great care and after much research into the relations existing between
England and Ireland ; and plaintiff reduced the subject matter of said
lecture to writing, and delivered the same from manuscript before a

public audience in the city of Montreal on the 17th day of December,
1880 ; that the plaintiff's maiiuscript of the said lecture was of great
value, and immediately after the delivery of theeaid lecture the plain-
tiff received several offers therefor, among other offers, one of $500,00;
that no accurate report of the said lecture has yet appeared, and the
manuscript of the said lecture, or a true copy thereof, was of the full
value of five hundred dollars ; that plaintiff determined to copyright
the said lecture, in order to preserve his right of property and interest
therein, and in order to keep his interest therein intact and beyond
literary piracy pending the delivery thereof in several of the cities of
the Dominion of Canada, where the plaintiff has been requested to
deliver the said lecture during the present year; that the plaintiff'
delivered the said lecture on the 17th day of December, 1880, for the
sums realized from the admission fees paid by his audience, from
which the plaintiff received a net profit of $115, an! the plaintiff' could,
during the first five montlis of the present year, 1881, deliver the said
lecture in ten cities of the Dominion of Canada, and could realize
therefrom the average sum of $100 from each of the said lectures,
aggregating thereby a sum of $1,000; that on the 29th day of
December, 1880, the plaintiff obtained an interim copyright for the
said lecture, and registered the same in accordance with the pro-
visions of '* The Copyright Act of 1875," preliminary to obtaining a
full copyright thereof under the provisions of said Act; that the
defendant at various dates between the 20th day of December, 1880,
and the 4th day of January instant, did, at the city of Montreal, print,
publish and circulate, and did cause to be printed, published and cir-
culated in the city of Montreal and throughout the Province of Que-
bec and Dominion of Canada, a printed book or pamphlet entitled,
" England and Ireland," a lecture by the Rev. A. J. Bray, and pur-
porting to be the lecture composed and delivered by the plaintiff,
without the consent and authority of plaintiff and in defiance of the
plaintifl^s protestations; that the pan)phlet so published by defend-
ant purports to be a true copy and report of plaintiff's said lecture,
but in truth and in liict is a misrepiesentution thereof in which the
plaintiff is made by the defendant to state matters and opinions at
variance with historical facts and the real contents of the plaintift''s
said lecture and manuscript ; tliat furthermore, the defendant in tlie
said pamphlet has garbled the contents of the plaintiff's lecture, has
omitted passages essential to convey the true interest and meaning of
the lecture, and has inserted others not contained in said lecture and
entirely unauthenticated by history ; that the said pamphlet is t-ouehed
in many parts in words and phrases not used by plaintiff, but which
misrepresent the opinions and literary style and finish of plaintifi's

•*^

lecture and manuscript; that the said paraphlet contains a gross cari-
cature of the facts, opinions and literary finish of the plaintiffs said
lecture on '* England and Ireland," by reason whereof the plaintiff
has been and is injured in his reputation as a lecturer and public
speaker, and has suffered damage thereby at the city of Montreal in
the further sum of $1,000 ; that furthermore, the defendant has
brought the plaintiff at the city of Montreal into ridicule and con-
tempt by publishing the said lecture at the city of Montreal, and in
the Province of Quebec, and Dominion of Canada, with divers adver-
tisements for drugs, patent and other medicines interspersed in the
Itody of each of the pages of the said pamphlet, as the whole will
appear on reference to a copy of the said pamphlet herewitli fyled as
plaintiff's exhibit No. 1, and by reason whereof the plaintiff hath been
and is wounded in his feelings and sensibilities, and has suffered
additional damage, to wit., at the city of Monti*eal in the sum of
$1,000 ; that the defendant has published the said pamphlet in order
to advertise his said drugs and medicinee, and for purposes of gain
and profit in his trade as a druggist; that the defendant has as afore-
said caused to be printed, published and circulated 10,000 copies of
the said pamphlet, by reason whereof the value of plaintifTs manu-
script and interim copyright has been greatly injured, if not entirely
destroyed, and the plaintiff has been deprived of the value of the said
ijianuscript, to wit of $500, and of the gain he would have derived
from delivering the said lecture in the several cities of the Dominion
of Canada, to wit of the sum of $1,000 as aforesaid; that by reason of
the printing and publication of the said pamphlet the offer to pur-
chase the same had by plaintiff' has been this day withdrawn ; that
by reason of all the said several premises, the defendant has caused
a loss, injury and damage to the plaintiff at the city of Montreal
amounting to the sum of $8,500, which the defendant is bound and
liable to pay to plaintiff; that the plaintiff is entitled to an order for
the suppression of the said pamphlets, and to an order for the seizure
thereof until the final decision of the present suit; and the plaintiff
places himself upon his country, and makes option of trial by jury ;
Wherefore plaintiff reserving all his rights to sue, as well in his own
name as in the name of Her Majesty the Queen, for the penalty for
which the defendant has become liable under the provisions of the
said Copyright Act, and praying acte of his option for trial by jury,
further prays that the defendant may be adjudged and condemned to
pay and satisfy to the plaintiff the sum of $3,500 for damages and
costs of suit, and that failing to satisfy the judgment of this honor-
able Court, the defendant niay be held by coercive imprisonment
until the amount of the condemnation money and costs are fully paid ;

18 can-
s said
ilaintiff
public
real in
nt has
nd con-
and in
Is adver-
in the
ole will
Jfyled as
ith been
suffered
sum of
in order
of gain
as afore-
jopies of
s manu-
entirely
the said
! derived
•orainion
eason of
to pur-
n ; that
5 caused
klontreal
und and
)rder for
» seizure
plaintiff

)y jury ;

his own
lalty for
s of the
by jury,
mned to
^ges and
3 honor-
ionment
\y paid ;

that a f?nal order be made for the fxuppression of the said pamphlet,
and that the name may be executed in such manner as may be
ordered by this honorable Court ; and that pending such final order
for suppression, a provisional order be made authorising and ordering
any one of the bailiffs of the said Court to seize and attach all the
copies of the said pamphlet that may be found in the possession of the
defendant or under his control, or in the possession of his agents, or ot
the printer or printers thereof, and if necessary to employ and use
reasonable force to execute this order, and that the said copies so
seized may remain seized and attached until the final determination
of the issues herein; the whole with costs distraits in favor ot the
undersigned Attorneys.

Maomaster, Hutchinson & Knapp,
Attorneys tor Plaintiff.
Montreal, 4th January, 1881.

affidavit of S. E. DAWSON, ESQ.

Samuel E. Dawson, of the city and district of Montreal, bookseller
and publisher, being duly sworn, deposes and says : — I have read the
plaintiffs declaration ; have partially examined the exhibits in sup-
port of it fyled. The pamphlet (exhibit one) published by defendant
is an inaccurate and unreliable report of the plaintift'^s lecture on
England and Ireland ; said pamphlet i^ a grave injury to plaintiff,
whose reputation as a scholar and lecturer is injured thereby. It is^^
in the interest of truth and justice that the said pamphlet should b^l^
seized and suppressed.

And I have signett,

SAMUEL E. DAWSON.

Sworn l)efore me at Montreal, this fifth day of
January, eighteen hundred and eighty-one.

Hubert, Honey & Gendron, P.S.C.

-, )

AFFIDAVIT OP REV. A. J. BRAV.

i ^^ J ..'

The Reverend Alfred James Bray, of the city Rml iH^trict of Mon-
treal, being duly sworn, doth depose and say :— I am the plaiotti^'
herein. I have read the declaration and petition in this cauwi 'I
am unable to pronounce as to the actual value of the injury 1 have
sustained financially, but, to the best of my knowledge and belie., the
averments of my said declaration are substantially true. I protested
against the publication of the defendant, Devins, and notified him

\' I' ■ ■•

that T would not allow liim to publish my lecture in pamphlet form,
interspersed with his quack medicine ad verti semen ta, for one thousand
dollars. The publication of the said lecture.by defendant is entirely
witliout my connent, and the pamphlet containing it is so unreliable
and inaccurate that it is in the iiitert'st of justice and truth that an
order should be made suppressing it and tor its seizure.

And I have signed.

A. J. BRAY.

Sworn and acknowledged Itefore me this fifth
day of January, eighteen Ijundred and eignty-one.

HuBKRT, Honey & Gendron, P.S.C.

Jl^PfJE JOIIXHON S ORDER TO IMPOUND AND SITPPRESS.

Having seen and examined the petition of the sai<l plaintiff' tlie
declaration in the present action, and the affidavits of the Rev. A. J.
Bray and Samuel E. Dawson in support thereof, and|having seen.and
examined tlie pamphlet complamed of, the original manuscript oi the
lecture, and other exhibits tyled in this cause, I do authorize, enjoin
and order any one of the bailiffs of the Superior Court for Lower
Canada to seize and attach all copies of the pamphlet alleged to be
issued by the defendant, Richard J. Devins, entitled " England and
Ireland— a lecture by the Rev. A. J. Bray," that may be found in the
possession of the said defendant or under his control, or ir iie posses-
sion of his agent or agents or the printer or printers thereof, and if
necessary to employ and use reasonable force to execute this order.
And I do further order and enjoin that all copies of the saidipamph let
so seized shall remain seized and attached until the tinal determina-
tion of the said suit.
Montreal, 5th January, 1881.

(Signed), F.G.JOHNSON, J.

, , The additional action to recover the penalty was instituted im-
mediately after the finding of 1,000 copies of the pamphlet in the
defendant's pos.^ession. The actual manuscript of England and Ire-

(/^iland will be published in a few days under the supervision of the Rev.

K||Mr. Bray at the request of a great number of citizens and others,

' !i

//.

I I

et form,
lounand
entirely
I reliable
that an

RAY.

ntiff the
pv. A. J.
seen. and
pt ol the
e, enjoin
Df Lower
'ged to be
!;land and
nd in the
e poases-
of, and if
lis onier.
pamphlet
'termina-

'».

ON, J.

tuted im-
det in the
1 and Ire-
f the Kev.
hers.