i'^' - I'..' If'; i'>V^!A''; iii SSI- 4 ^^^^ oo TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY ^^'" r TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY 169I-18 70 BEING A SERIES OF PAPERS BY W. K. SULLIVAN, LL.D.; GEORGE SIGERSON, M.R.I. A.; J. H. BRIDGES; LORD FITZMAURICE; JAMES R. THURSFIELD; AND G. P. MACDONELL WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY THE RIGHT HON. JAMES BRYCE EDITED BY R. BARRY O'BRIEN SECOND EDITION LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER h CO. Lit DRYDEN HOUSE, GERRARD STREET, W, 1907 BOSTON COLLFGK LIRKARY CHESTNUT HILL, MASS. The rights of translation and of repj-oduction are reserved Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson &» Co. At the Ballantyne Press, Edinburgh EDITOR'S NOTE The First Edition of this book appeared in 1888. Since then three of the Contributors have unhappily passed away — Dr. W. K. Sullivan, Dr. Bridges, and Mr. G. P. MacDonell. It may be stated that each writer is solely responsible for the correctness of the facts and soundness of the views contained in the part to which his name is prefixed. The Editor is only responsible for the subject, the title, the plan, and (jointly with Mr. Bryce) for selecting the authors of the book. R. BARRY O'BRIEN. March 1907. 1966 CONTENTS PAGE EDITOR'S NOTE . . v INTRODUCTION. By the Right Hon. James Bryce . . ix PART I By W. K. Sullivan, LL.D., President of the Queen's College, Cork. FROM THE TREATY OF LIMERICK TO THE ESTABLISH- MENT OF LEGISLATIVE INDEPENDENCE. (1691-1782.) I. The Treaty of Limerick; The Last Confiscation; AND THE First Parliament i II. Violation of the Treaty of Limerick— Inaugura- tion OF Repressive Legislation . . . .17 III. Period of the Penal Laws 30 IV. Period of Desolation ; Government of Ireland by an English Administration and a Parlia- ment AND Magistracy of Colonial Landlords 43 V. Period of Corruption; Dawn of Civil and Religious Freedom 58 VI. Rise and Growth of Movements for Freedom of Trade, Freedom of Religion, and Freedom OF Legislation 68 PART II By George Sigerson, M.R.I. A., Fellow of the Royal University, Dublin. FROM THE ESTABLISHMENT OF LEGISLATIVE INDE- PENDENCE TO THE ACT OF UNION. (1782-1800.) I. Effect of Concession — Work of an Independent Parliament 93 11. The Commercial Question — Progress of Irish Manufactures — Commercial Proposals Ac- cepted — Ministerial Disloyalty to the Irish Constitution 102 • 117 • 123 • 132 . 142 • 171 III. The Regency Question IV. The Franchise Act of 1793 V. The Olive Branch — Lord Fitzwilliam VI. Evolution of Rebellion . VII. Last Sessions of Parliament— The Union iii CONTENTS PART III By J. H. Bridges, late Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. FROM THE UNION TO CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION (1801-1829.) FACE I. Social Condition of Ireland at the Beginning OF THE Century 205 II. From the Union to the Death of Grattan . 223 III. The Catholic Association 271 PART IV By Lord Fitzmaurice and James R. Thursfield, late Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. FROM THE EMANCIPATION OF THE CATHOLICS TO THE INSURRECTIONARY MOVEMENT OF 1848 I. Reform and its Consequences 315 II. The Peel Interregnum and the Melbourne Regime 347 III. The Second Administration of Peel . . . 375 IV. The Famine and its Consequences . . . 401 PART V By G. P. MacDonell, Barrister-at-Law. FROM THE INSURRECTIONARY MOVEMENT OF TO THE LAND ACT OF 1870 I. The Encumbered Estates Act — The Tenant- right League II. The Tenant-right League — The Irish Church Missions — The Napier Land Bills III. Refusal of Redress . IV. Fenianism .... V. Disestablishment . VI. The Land Question VII. The Land Act of 1870, and Movement .... VIII. Conclusion .... INDEX 1848 423 Bills 435 449 463 472 485 THE Home Rule 496 504 500 INTRODUCTION^ The annals of Ireland present to the historian a melan- choly field, and one which few historians have cared to cultivate. Compared with those of France or Scotland, they are wanting in brilliant figures and dramatic situations. They seldom cross the great central movements of Euro- pean history, for the island has had but slight and transient relations with any Continental country, and has, until recent times, affected the course of events even in England only during a few short periods. Accordingly Irish history has been little studied out of Ireland. The time seems now to have come when Englishmen and Scotchmen feel the need of knowing more than they have hitherto cared to know of that Irish past which has produced a present so profoundly significant to themselves. But the fact that this quickened interest in Irish history is largely a political interest, born of passing events, makes the task of the historian more than usually difficult. He can hardly fail to be suspected of writing in a spirit of partisanship rather than of scientific inquiry. His pages are likely to be searched less for the sake of obtaining trustworthy information and just views than of finding arguments which may be used in current controversy. It is no disparagement to this book, which I have taken no small pains to bring before the world, to say not only that the chapters which follow contain no direct reference to the political controversies which now fill the national mind, but that the worth of history for the purposes of practical politics is apt to be, I will not say overrated, yet at least much ^ Except for a few slight verbal changes, this Introduction remains as originally written (in 1888. See p. v.) X INTRODUCTION misunderstood. History furnishes no precepts or recipes which can be directly applied to a political problem as a reported case can be applied by judges to a lawsuit brought before them, or even as a theorem of economic science can sometimes be applied to a question of legislation. Men talk of history repeating itself; but that is the one thing which history never does. Situations and conjunctions of phenomena arise which seem similar to others that have gone before them, but the circumstances are always so far different that it is never possible confidently to predict similar results, nor to feel sure that it is necessary either to avoid a remedy which failed, or to resort to one which succeeded on the previous occasion. The use of history to a statesman consists rather in this, that it gives him the data of the problem which lies before him. Statesmanship is a practical science, the foundation of which is a know- ledge of the facts to be dealt with, and history helps us to a true comprehension of the facts by showing how they have come into being, and by revealing the causes that have determined their relative importance. What is it that an English statesman ought to know about Ireland ? Her economic condition, and how law affects it, and how custom, and how custom modifies law : her religious con- dition, and what are the sources of the bitterness which religious feeling has taken ; whether these sources are drying up, and whether the power of ecclesiastics rests on or is due mainly to their spiritual authority or other grounds also : her social structure, and the causes that have gone far to destroy those relations of respect on the one side, and sympathy and protection on the other, which, where they subsist between the richer and the humbler classes, give stability to the body politic ; whether these causes of discord lie deep in the character of the people, or may be explained by a series of unfortunate events : the ideas and habits of the Irish, and the reason why their gifts, in some respects so brilliant, have effected little for the material prosperity and the contentment of the country : the sentiments of the INTRODUCTION xi people, or rather of each class of the people, towards England, as well as towards the law administered in England's name ; their sentiments towards their own leaders also, and what are the qualities which attract them, and what the faults they pardon. All these are matters on which hundreds of voices and pens have been daily pro- fessing to instruct us, each man giving the view which his partisanship, or his interest, or at best his personal experi- ence suggests. But the only sure guide to a knowledge of them is history, which, critically studied and honestly weighed, supplies indisputable facts by whose help the allegations prompted by passion and prejudice may be tested and the underlying truth be discerned. There will still remain room for difference of opinion as to the remedies to be applied, yet that difference will be far less wide among those who have mastered the facts of history than it is among those who derive their views from current speeches and articles ; and the former class will be more diffident and more charitable both in judging the Irish people and in condemning one another's conclusions. These facts English statesmen, absorbed in their own party struggles, have seldom studied, and indeed have seldom felt the need of studying. The duty of understand- ing them has now in some measure passed to the body of the English and Scottish people, admitted by recent legisla- tion ^ to a deciding voice in national issues. Irish history, of which the people of Great Britain have hitherto remained almost wholly ignorant, has accordingly become a matter of practical consequence. It is rich in political instruction of the kind I have described, but rich in little else. Some one, indeed, struck by the melancholy monotony with which similar follies and crimes have in Ireland gone on recurring during whole centuries, has said that Ireland has annals, but no history, because progress, the life of history, is wanting. It is at least true that these annals are dismal reading, from the days of the last national hero 1 Written in 1888. xii INTRODUCTION who fell at Clontarf to those of the first national states- man who created and adorned the independent and all too short-lived Parliament of 1782. Between Brian Boroimhe and Henry Grattan one finds only fierce clan-chieftains like Shane O'Neil or valiant soldiers like Sarsfield. In the dearth of some more authentic objects of admiration in primitive and mediaeval times, patriotic Irishmen have been driven to clothe in the bright colours of their own fancy the early ecclesiastical civilisation of the island — a civilisa- tion remarkable as witnessing to the intellectual gifts of the Goidelic branch of the great Celtic family, but which has left little behind it save the ruins of ancient shrines, numerous poems, and some striking legends, full of weird imaginative power, the offspring of earlier heathen times, together with a mass of primitive legal customs, full of interest in show- ing the logical acuteness and subtlety of the national mind. Few early races have shown more aptitude both for learning and for literary creation, and the fact that this creative gift has in recent centuries rarely taken shape in the higher kinds of poetry may be ascribed to the unfavourable conditions which, in destroying the old literature, gave little opening for the formation of a new one on the broader basis of modern European culture. In the ninth century this ecclesiastical civilisation began to crumble under the shocks of Norse and Danish invasion. The Anglo-Saxon civilisation of England suffered in the same way. But in England the invaders were near of kin to the previous inhabitants, and reinvigorated the apparently decaying stock. In Ireland they were far less numerous, and never spread out over the interior.^ Except in Wicklow and Wexford, they have scarcely affected the population of the island, while the blow they gave to the ancient monarchy ^ It would seem that the Norsemen were considerably influenced by the Celts, whose civilisation was in many respects more advanced than their own, but did not plant any Scandinavian institutions outside the strongholds they occupied. Probably they were too few in number. The influence upon early Icelandic poetry of the Gael with whom the Norsemen intermarried is remarkable, and has been dwelt upon by recent Icelandic scholars. INTRODUCTION xiii smoothed the path for the Norman-Welsh adventurers who came under Strongbow in the twelfth century. The conquest of 1169-72 was a conquest only in name. Henry II. did indeed receive the submission of the petty princes of Leinster and Munster, and even of Roderick O'Conor, titular High King of Erin; but neither he nor his successors for nearly four centuries attempted to establish English executive authority, much less English laws, over the greater part of the island. A small district round Dublin (a Scandinavian stronghold which had become the Anglo-Norman capital), the so-called English Pale, was by degrees organised as a little England, with counties, sheriffs, judges, and a rude Parliament under the Lord Deputy representing the English Crown. But the rest of the country remained in wild disorder, a low and crude form of feudalism having become mingled with the tribal system of the aboriginal Celts. The Norman settlers grew to be fully as Irish as the Irish themselves — in fact they became the heads of Celtic clans ; and the social condition of the isle was probably far worse, far more adverse to intellectual and moral progress, than it had been in the half-mythic days of 011am Fohdla, a thousand years earlier. Neither the Irish Church, whose reforma- tion we may charitably believe Pope Adrian IV. to have desired when he sanctioned the invasion of Henry II., nor the mass of the Irish people, gained anything, down to the time of the Reformation, from the events which nominally drew Ireland within the circle of the Romano- Teutonic civilisation of Western Europe, while the possible evolution of a truly national kingdom and national type of culture was fatally arrested.^ The first serious efforts to subjugate the island date from the establishment of a strong monarchy in England ' The invasion of Edward Bruce offered the best chance for the estabhsh- ment of an Irish kingdom, which might have leant upon Scotland ; but an Irish kingdom, even so supported, might have failed to maintain itself, as Scotland would have failed had Scotland not begun to receive Anglo-Norman arts and arms in the days before the War of Independence. xiv INTRODUCTION under the Tudors. Begun under Henry VII., these efforts advanced more rapidly under Elizabeth. They were stimulated by the danger which threatened her from Spain, a country whose statesmen saw, as those of France saw long afterwards, in an outlying and dis- affected dependency the weak point of the English realm. The cruelties which accompanied Elizabeth's campaigns and the more revolting injustice of her administrative policy were hardly worse than those which belonged to war and conquest generally in that age — not much worse than the conduct of Alva in Holland, or of Ferdinand II. and Tilly in Germany a generation later. We need not wonder that a half-starved peasantry, speaking a strange tongue, received as little sympathy from English captains, or even from scholars like Edmund Spenser, as the Mexi- cans had received from the soldiers of Cortes. Though Christian theology was much in men's mouths in the six- teenth century. Christian precepts had little effect upon their conduct. But it was inauspicious that the work of constructing a stable government should have begun in Ireland centuries later than in the rest of Western Europe ; that it should have been accompanied by a dispossession of the people from their lands and the unsparing use of fire and famine, as well as of the sword ; that the venom of religious hatred should have been added to the hostility of races in different stages of civilisation. Elizabeth reduced the south of the island and part of Ulster. James I., following in her footsteps, placed a Scottish colony in the north-eastern part of that province, where their descendants, down to our own day, occupy- ing the better lands from which the native Irish had been chased into the mountains, have retained not only their Presbyterian religion, but their Scottish dialect and customs.^ Ireland was divided into shires, for which a ^ Sixty years ago these Scottish dwellers in the low lands of Antrim and Down talked broad Scotch, and used to speak of the aboriginal in- habitants of the glens where the Gaelic tongue was still commonly spoken as " thae Eerish." INTRODUCTION xv regular system of judicature and of county government was in theory established ; a Parliament was organised, with members from all the shires and a number of so- called boroughs, most of them made boroughs for the very purpose of returning members subservient to Government. Catholics as well as Protestants, aboriginal Irishmen as well as colonists, enjoyed the suffrage and the right to sit. At the same time the ancient tenures of land were abolished, and the rules of English law applied, with a total disregard of the rights of the members of a clan in the land which had belonged to it. The breathing space under the first two Stuarts was short, if that can be called a breathing space during which the work of dispossessing the natives of their land by every art of chicanery went briskly on. In 1641 the imminence of the conflict between Charles I. and the Parliament of England seems to have precipitated an out- break in Ireland, for which both religious hatred and the resentment for land robbery had been ripening the minds of the original Irish. Many cruelties were perpetrated on both sides, but recent researches have shown that the natives were neither so distinctly the beginners of the insurrection nor so ferocious in the conduct of it as the English public of that day believed. Civil war raged until the energy of Cromwell, the first Englishman who can be said to have, at least for the moment, conquered all Ireland, enforced a sullen submission. Some have thought that the continuance for half a century of such rule as his, however harsh in its methods, might have proved a blessing to subsequent generations. For severi- ties which had introduced habits of order and brought about an amalgamation of the two races there would have been some palliation. But in fact the chief effect of the Cromwellian settlement was to dispossess a large number of landowners and their dependants, and to intensify the resentment of the Roman Catholics against their Protestant conquerors. In twelve years the Stuarts returned, with xvi INTRODUCTION fresh misgovernment in their train. Cromwell's settlers kept their grip on the lands they had seized from the old proprietors, and this additional fountain of bitterness was the only thing that remained from the interval of Puritan sway. Another civil war (1688-91) ushered in the final conquest by William III., which completed the work begun by the first Tudors nearly two centuries before. The island was brought into obedience, the obedience of despair, to the power of England. The forces of civilisation which England had at her command had now free scope for an action which a wise policy might have made beneficent. But what was the condition of the country, what the temper of the people ? Frequent wars had desolated the soil, checked the growth of towns, prevented the rise of commerce or the improvement of agriculture. The great mass of the inhabitants lived in hovels as bad as those of Connemara at the present day, and were always on the verge of famine. Speaking the Gaelic tongue only, without education or the means of getting it, professing a proscribed religion, ignorant of the laws they were expected to obe}^, they had nothing in common with the Protestant colonists who were now to rule them, not only as magistrates, but also as landlords. Such of the Roman Catholic gentry as had retained their estates were stripped of all political and many civic rights, and left virtually at the mercy of a Protestant enemy. Much of the best blood, and all the more ardent spirits of the nation, unable to brook servitude at home, sought a career in the armies of France, Spain, or the Empire. Among those who re- mained, whether of the upper or of the humbler class — for a middle class scarcely existed out of Dublin — what room was there for loyalty to the English Crown ? To them, smarting from the loss of their land by violence or injustice cloaked with legal forms, and remembering the savage wars of nearly two centuries, the English colonists seemed what the Turks seem now to the Chris- tians of the East — a band of robbers encamped on the INTRODUCTION xvii soil that once was theirs, calHng themselves a government, but giving none of the benefits of government in return for the rent and taxes they extorted. And the English Crown was nothing but the titular authority which stood behind the English colonists, leaving Ireland to their mercy. It is well to realise these things, not for the sake of invectives against England, which acted only as conquer- ing nations always do act, and no worse than some nations of that age, but to explain the subsequent course of events. There were two, or perhaps three, distinct masses of popula- tion in Ireland, separated from one another by everything but local position. There was a small body of British colonists, a larger nation sprung from the original inhabi- tants. The colonists themselves were divided, for the Presbyterians of Ulster had little, except aversion to Rome, in common with the Episcopalians of the East and South. The colonists possessed all the power and privilege, and nearly all the wealth ; the native population was plunged in ignorance and misery, and excluded from almost all civil rights. Beyond the sea there was in England a strong and prosperous state, centuries ahead of Ireland in many elements of civilisation, and most of all in those parts of civilisation which relate to law and government; a state holding Ireland as a dependency, resolved to let her fall to no other power, but scarcely deigning to attend to her con- cerns except for the purpose of preventing her industries from entering into competition with those of the richer country. To help Ireland forward in the path of culture and eco- nomic progress, to weld into one the various elements of population inhabiting her soil, and fit them to be politically incorporated with England and Scotland, so as to produce one great and truly united people, each part of which might con- tribute to the harmonious perfection of the whole — this was the task which lay before English statesmen at the end of the seventeenth century, a task whose accomplishment was, as events have proved, scarcely less essential to the welfare xviii INTRODUCTION of the greater than to that of the lesser island. The nar- rative contained in the present volume, which opens with the Treaty of Limerick, signed in 1691, and broken almost before its ink was dry, relates in detail how this task was dealt with. But before I close these introductory remarks, a few words may be said on the salient features of the period which followed. Of all the problems of government that of the adminis- tration of a dependency is the most difficult, and of all possible modes of administering a dependency that of leaving it to a dominant caste seems to be the worst. The operation of natural forces is interfered with, because revo- lution, the natural remedy in extreme cases of misgovern- ment, is prevented by the power of the superior country. The superior country remains ignorant of the facts and insensible of her responsibility. The dominant caste ceases to have patriotism, because it looks to the superior countr}' for support, and remains alienated from the mass of its fellow-subjects. It has even an interest in checking any progress which may threaten its own ascendency. These v»'ere the mischiefs which beset the government of Ireland by a small caste of Protestant landlords. There was a Parliament, but it was a caste Parliament, and it had too little power to have a sense of responsibility, for ultimate control lay with the viceroy and the English ministry. For Ireland to have been ruled by a despotic viceroy would have been better ; for such a viceroy, had he re- mained long in office, might have been so touched by the sufferings of the people and offended by the insolence of the caste as to seek to signalise his administration by beneficent reforms. But even the chance of benefit from reforming viceroys was denied. They came and went in quick succession. They came mostly to enrich themselves and their dependants, and such action as they took was taken to secure what they called "the English interest." The ministry in London neither knew nor cared how the people fared in Ireland. The people could hardly have INTRODUCTION xix fared worse. While England, and presently Scotland also, made rapid strides, Ireland stood still. Says Mr. Goldwin Smith : — ''The mass of the people were socially and economically in a state the most deplorable, perhaps, which history records as having existed in any civilised nation. . . . The Irish gentry were probably the very worst upper class with which a country was ever afflicted. Their habits grew beyond measure brutal and reckless. Their drunkenness, their blasphemy, their ferocious duelling, left the squires of England far behind. . . . Over the Roman Catholic poor on their estates these ' vermin of the kingdom,' as Arthur Young calls them, exercised a tyranny compared with which the arbitrary rule of the old chiefs over their clans was probably a parental authority used with beneficence and justly repaid by gratitude and affection. . . . All moral restraints on the growth of population were removed by the compulsory ignorance with which Protestant ascendancy and the penal laws had plunged the Catholic peasantr}' and the abject wretchedness of their lot. . . . The island became utterly overcharged with population. A mortal struggle for existence between the cotters on the one side and the * middlemen ' and tithe-proctors on the other then commenced, and a century of agrarian conspiracy and crime was the result. The atrocities perpetrated by the Whiteboys, especially in the earlier period of agrarianism (for they afterwards grew somewhat less inhuman), are such as to make the flesh creep. No language can be too strong in speaking of the horrors of such a state of society. But it would be unjust to confound these agrarian con- spiracies with ordinary crime, or to suppose that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime either on the part of those who commit them or on the part of the people who connive at and favour their commission. In the districts where agrarian conspiracy and outrage were most rife, the number of ordinary crimes was very small. In plain truth, the secret tribunals which administered the Whiteboj' code were to the people the organs of a wild law of social morality by XX INTRODUCTION which, on the whole, the interest of the peasant was pro- tected." 1 It was under conditions like these that the suspicion of the law and its ministers became worked into the very nerves and blood of the Irish peasant. His lawlessness, which scarcely exceeded the lawlessness of the landlord magistrates who ruled him, was not political, but directed against the land system and tithe system from which he suffered. He was too ignorant to have political aspira- tions ; nor did the Catholics make any movement in favour of either the elder or the younger Pretender. It was among the Ascendancy party that resistance to England began. They saw Irish manufactures destroyed for the sake of English manufactures ; heavy duties laid on Irish exports to England ; Irish revenues jobbed away in pro- viding places or pensions for favourites too disreputable even for the corrupt England of that day. England did nothing for Ireland, and suffered her to do nothing for her- self. Then at last the natural forces that make for freedom asserted themselves. Even among this tyrannous aris- tocracy a national feeling sprang up, and some of its better members, by the help of the Presbyterians of Ulster, who had long smarted under oppressions, and had now been inspired with hope by the revolt of the American colonies, seized for the first time upon England's necessity as Ireland's opportunity, and extorted, in 1782, the recogni- tion of legislative independence. Though the Irish Parlia- ment, which lasted from that year to 1 800, was usually more than half filled with pensioners, placemen, and the nominees of the Crown or of some magnate, and though only Protestant Episcopalians were eligible to sit in it, it swept away some bad laws and gave a momentary stimulus to the material prosperity of the island. A still better result of freedom was seen in the appearance of a large and liberal Irish patriotism. The Roman Catholics, therefore, downtrodden and despairing, took hope and be- ' "Irish History and Irish Character," pp. 189 si/^. INTRODUCTION xxi stirred themselves. Religious hatreds were for the moment swallowed up in a comprehensive enthusiasm for the greatness and happiness of the country. The concessions made in 1782 mark the first stage in the evolution of modern Irish nationality, created, not as in other countries, by the possession of a separate language and literature, or by pride in a separate history, but by the unwise policy of England. Grattan and Flood, Pon- sonby and Langrishe, did not look back to, nor feel them- selves the successors of, such Irish leaders as Shane O'Neil or Sarsfield. It was to the Enghsh, not to the Irish Celts, that they were linked by social and literary as well as by religious ties. England kindled among them, her own colonists, the flame of Irish national feeling when, among the Catholic Celts, it was dying away to a feeble spark, kindled it in Ireland, with the same folly as English statesmen showed in their dealings with America, by crippling Irish industries and humiliating the Irish legislature. This new national feeling stimulated and dignified the first acts of the Irish Parliament of 1782. But having far too narrow a basis, being full of corrupt men, and closed to all others than Protestant Episcopalians, this Parliament did not supply a wide enough channel for the new stream of national life which, so to speak, overflowed into extra-legal associations, first the Protestant Volunteers, who continued to hold formidable gatherings after their first aim had been accomplished, and then the Society of United Irishmen. Still, great as were the faults of the Irish House of Commons, all might have gone well had the island been left to herself. But Ireland was still a dependency, ruled by an Executive appointed from England, and the evils incident to a dependency reappeared in fatal force. The worse elements in the Ascendancy party drew together, and resolved to secure their dominance by forcing England to support them. The excesses of the Terror in France and the progress of the French arms had terrified the Crown and the ministry in xxii INTRODUCTION England, making them less than ever willing to see the Irish Parliament reformed, its basis enlarged, its powers consolidated. In Ireland itself the more advanced section of the patriotic party, led by Wolfe Tone, and strong in the towns of Ulster, was inclining to republicanism. Pitt hesitated for a time between repression and reform ; but in 1795 the choice was made, and the fatal recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, the viceroy who had been sent with a message of peace, while it stimulated the revolutionary party of the United Irishmen, left Grattan and the constitutional re- formers to be overborne by the forces of bigotry, selfish- ness, and corruption among the Ascendancy faction as well as by the power of England. One is loth to believe that even such men as Fitz- gibbon and his associates, much less Pitt, entertained the fiendish scheme of bringing about a union by provoking a rebellion. But the steps taken were well calculated to provoke an outbreak ; and when the rebellion had been quenched in blood, it became an irresistible argument for effecting the changes Pitt desired. The atrocities on both sides were horrible, yet the massacres perpetrated by the peasantry at Vinegar Hill yield to the hideous cruelties in which the Orangemen revelled, and which the Govern- ment refused to repress or punish.^ There is, indeed, no parallel in modern history to the conduct of those who "restored order" in 1798-9, except that of the Jacobin party in France during the Terror of 1793, and if there was more bloodshed during the Terror in France, there was more torture during the Terror in Ireland. Whatever may have been the motives of those who brought about the Union of 1800 — and no censure can be too severe for the methods they employed — there were strong grounds, over and above the supposed precedent of the Scottish Union, to recommend it, grounds which did not convince the Whig leaders of that day, but which Pitt ' Lord Cornwallis seems to have tried, but the passions of the governing class and of his own subordinates prevailed against his intentions. INTRODUCTION xxiii may well have deemed overwhelming. Union with Great Britain appeared to take Ireland out of the position of a dependency ; to offer a prospect of welding the different sections of the people together by the emancipation of the Roman Catholics ; to put an end absolutely to commercial hostilities, relieving the industries of Ireland from injury by British tariffs ; to open up to her inhabitants a wider career; to accelerate material progress by promoting the influx of British capital ; to give Great Britain an interest she had not hitherto felt in the welfare of what was how to become a part of herself. Why were these expected results not attained ? What were the causes which kept Ireland, after the Union as before, wretched and disaffected ? To enact that the Crowns and Parliaments should be one was not enough ; it was necessary to make the peoples one. This could be done only by bringing the more backward people up to the level of the more advanced. That process ought to have been governed by two prin- ciples, the principle of equality, and the principle of special treatment — principles between which there is no real incon- sistency. Neither principle was applied. Equality was not given, because in Ireland the church of the small minority remained not only dominant, but oppressive by her exactions, while in England and Scotland the church of the majority was the Established Church ; and because in Ireland a seat in Parliament was confined to the members of a caste, while in England and Scotland it was open to the bulk of the nation. Special treatment was given only in the form of severe coercion Acts, while all the remedies which the economic misery of Ireland and the absence of practical justice called for were refused. Ireland remained, after the Union as before, a dependency, with the old evils of dependency government, concealed in outward seeming by the admission of Irish members to the British Parliament, but aggravated in reality by the fact that those members were less truly representative, and more xxiv INTRODUCTION faintly responsible, than they had been in the Irish Parlia- ment of 1 782-1 800, when the Irish House of Commons was animated by a national feeling, and when, debating and voting under the eyes of the people, it could not fail to be influenced by their opinion and to fear their displeasure. There was, however, a species of union effected in 1800. At that date there were still in Ireland, as there had been in 1691, two disparate elements — a comparatively small population sprung from English colonists holding nearly all the wealth, privilege, and power ; a larger popu- lation, Roman Catholic in faith and of Celtic blood, still plunged in ignorance and misery. In 1782 and the im- mediately succeeding years, the nascent sense of nation- ality had begun to bring about a fusion of these two elements ; but the Rebellion intervened, and the Terror of 1798 rekindled the hatreds of 1689. It was, therefore, upon the members of the smaller body of inhabitants, sprung from the British colonists and professing the domi- nant faith, that the Union took effect, making them look more than ever to England, dividing them sharply as ever from the children of the dispossessed natives and persecuted Catholics. Before the Union the colonists had been Irish to the English, and English to the Irish ; after it they were only English to the Irish. The nascent flame of Irish patriotism in the upper classes was quenched. The richer among them were drawn more and more to England, and cared less and less for the welfare of the land of their birth. Those who ought to have been, by their education, abilities, and rank, the natural leaders of the people, abandoned the leadership in national movements to men more prone to violence, and more permeated by the pre- judices of the subject multitude. This was the substance of Grattan's argument against the Union, that it took away responsibility from the governors, destroyed the patriotism of the upper classes, severed them from the masses of the people, shattered the authority of property and education, threw the bulk of the nation into the hands INTRODUCTION xxv of agitators and adventurers. A reformed Irish Parlia- ment would have retained the leadership of the country; an Imperial Parliament lost it. England had refused to listen to Grattan ; she was next confronted by O'Connell, who first showed to his countrymen how the united Parliament might be used for their purposes. The government of a dependency discloses the weak points of a constitution. The Crown, which was powerful down to 1832, and the House of Lords, which has been able to maim or delay measures of change down to our own time, are answerable for many of England's failures in Ireland since 1800. In England these authorities did no great harm, because they knew when to yield to the opinion which was all around them. The feelings of distant Ireland could be ignored. The obstinacy of George III., who, as King of Ireland, had yielded the suffrage to the Catholics in 1793, prevented Catholic emancipation in 1800, when it might have made the Union at least tolerable ; the still less excusable perversity of the otherwise far from scrupulous George IV. delayed it till the concession had lost all its grace. The power of the House of Lords, which had now become totally un- amenable to any Irish influence, except that of the land- lords, continued to produce not less deplorable results after Catholic emancipation had been carried. It crippled the beneficent efforts of the Melbourne ministry in 1835-41 ; it threw out Mr. Napier's Land Bill, though proposed by a Tory Government, in 1852; while later instances, culminat- ing in the rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill of 1880, will rise to every one's mind. Since 1800 there have been three epochs at which a prospect opened of repairing the errors then committed, of winning the confidence of Ireland and bringing her into real accord with Great Britain. The first of these came in 1829, with the passing of Catholic emancipation. It was lost because the ministry then in power clogged xxvi INTRODUCTION the emancipation with humiliating conditions, and refused to follow it up by subsidiary economic and administrative reforms. The second came in 1835, with the accession of the Melbourne ministry. It was used to some extent, and with good results, so far as they went — results largely due to the enlightened humanity and statesmanship of Thomas Drummond, Under Secretary for a short, unhappily too short, space. Then a change in the balance of English parties arrested a process with which English party questions ought to have had nothing to do. Dependencies have more chance under a wise autocrat than under a shifting assembly, as the Roman provinces were better governed by the emperors than by the Senate and the Comitia. The third opportunity came with the collapse of the in- surrectionary movements of 1848, on the morrow of the great famine, and was frittered away in a succession of petty and only half sincere attempts to deal with the tenant-right question. Wretchedness and disaffection re- mained; and England, which had refused to listen to O'Connell, found herself confronted by a new set of con- spiracies and new groups of revolutionaries, now for the first time drawing most of their support from beyond the ocean, where a large population of Irish origin had grown up. Not long after the suppression of the Fenian attempts at rebellion, a new era opened with the Irish Church Dis- establishment Act of 1869. Mr. Gladstone resumed with greater energy and with stronger British support the policy first attempted by the Melbourne government a generation earlier. Even before 1869 Mr. Bright among statesmen, and Mr. Goldwin Smith among writers, had endeavoured to bring the true state of Ireland and the remedies she needed before the British people. Mr. Gladstone was, however, the first leader of a great party who steadily maintained and gave far-reaching effect to the principle that Ireland ought to be governed in the interests of her own people, and not in those of England or of the Ascendancy party, and that legislation for her ought to be framed not merely INTRODUCTION xxvii according to English ideas, but with due regard to the peculiar conditions which centuries of misgovernment and misery had produced. Adumbrated in 1869 and 1870 (the year in which a great Land Act was passed), this new principle found a fuller, and indeed a startling expansion, in 1886, when Mr. Gladstone introduced the earlier of his two Home Rule Bills. Nothing of what has been here said is matter of con- troversy to-day. Thoughtful Englishmen of all parties are now agreed in holding that the Union was carried at an unfortunate moment and by questionable methods ; that it ought to have been accompanied by Catholic emancipation ; that more sweeping measures of land reform ought to have been sooner passed ; that the Protestant Episcopal Church ought not to have been allowed to stand as an Establishment down to 1869; that the system of local administration ought to have been thoroughly remodelled and made popular. Thoughtful Englishmen of all parties admit that the chief cause which has prevented the union wath Ireland from bearing the same fruits of contentment as the union with Scotland did, is the fact that Ireland continued to be a dependency governed by a caste, and that her voice, partly through her own fault, partly through that of England, or through both, failed to make itself listened to in the council-halls of the Imperial Parliament, which would certainly have dealt with the evils of the country had it realised their gravity. Physiologists tell us that when an organ fails to do its proper work, some other organ is developed, or raised into abnormal activity, in order to supply the defect. It was thus that when, after 1782, the Irish Parliament, from its faulty constitution, failed to carry through the reforms that were needed, the Convention of Volunteers sought to express the will of the dominant part of the nation. So too, when, after 1800, the repre- sentatives of Ireland at Westminster were unable to secure the emancipation of the Catholics, the Catholic Association arose to speak in the name of the Catholic majority; so xxviii INTRODUCTION in later times other organisations have established their swayamong the people, because constitutional means were deemed delusive and inadequate. In whatever country a constitutional expression of popular will is wanting, or is overborne by external force, economic sufferings or social disorders are apt to produce an irregular govern- ment, supported by the people, but unhappily teaching them habits which make constitutional government more than ever difficult. There would be little profit in trying to apportion between England and the different classes and parties in Ireland the blame for the misfortunes of the period that lies between 1691 and 1869. When it is perceived that most of these misfortunes were a natural result of the position in which the two islands found themselves, the charge of deliberate malignity which some Irishmen have brought against England falls to the ground. The oligarchy that ruled England down to 1832 was often selfish, as all governments are apt to be, and oligarchies even more than others. England's chief faults, after the Union of 1800, were ignorance and heedlessness — faults always found where the governed are far from the sight of the gover- nors, and misgovernment brings no direct or immediate penalty in its train. United not to the Irish people as a whole, but to a caste which was hardl}' a part of that people, and knowing that caste to be bound to herself, she allowed it to govern in her name. She did not heed, because she scarcely heard, the complaints of the oppressed race. It is true that Lord-lieutenants and Chief Secretaries were almost always Englishmen. But going to Ireland with no previous knowledge of the country, and living there among the Ascendancy faction, they saw with its eyes and heard with its ears. Even statesmen like Peel and Goulburn appear in Irish history as the mere mouthpieces of the lawyers and officials who surrounded them, and accepted the brutal remedies for disorder which those officials, following the old traditions, suggested to them. Nor, INTRODUCTION xxix when the turn of the Whigs came, did they cordially recognise the equality of rights and duties to which the Catholics had been admitted in 1829, but sought to deal with them as if they were still an inferior class. Had England, even that unsympathetic oligarchy which ruled in the days of the four Georges, governed Ireland directly, influenced by no one class in Ireland more than any other, she could hardly have failed to remove many of the evils of the country. Had she left administration and legislation entirely in the hands of the Ascendancy men, excluding them from the legislature of Britain, the administration would probably have been no worse, and a spirit of Irish patriotism, a sense of responsibility to the mass of the inhabitants, and dread of their displeasure, such as seemed to be growing up in the last half of the preceding century, might have arisen to weld the Anglo-Irish and the native Irish into a united people. It was the combination of Dependency government with the practical control of a denationalised caste that proved so fatal during the first seventy years of the nineteenth century, as during the first eighty of the eighteenth. The faults of the Irish people are no less clearly trace- able to the conditions under which they lived. Miseries unparalleled in modern Europe, miseries which legislation did not even attempt to remove, produced agrarian crimes and lawless combinations. The sense of wild justice that underlay these crimes and combinations bred an ingrained hostility to law, and a disposition to sympathise with those who braved it. Englishmen who admit this explanation of the most distressing feature of Irish peasant life, are surprised that it should still subsist. But though it sprang up as far back as the first half of the eighteenth century, the conditions that produced it — that is to say, agrarian oppression and the absence of equal justice locally administered — remained long after the Union in scarcely diminished potency. With the aversion to law there came naturally an aversion to the so-called " English XXX INTRODUCTION Government " and to England herself. It was intensified among the leaders of the people by the events of 1798, and perpetuated by the contempt with which Irish patriotism was usually treated in England — a contempt in curious contrast with the sympathy which England warmly and frequently expressed for national movements elsewhere. England expected loyalty from the Irish, especially after she thought she had honoured them by union with herself. But what was there to make them loyal either to the Crown or to the English connection ? Loyalt}' is a plant which does not spring up of itself. A healthy seed must be sown, and sown in a congenial soil. Loyalty to the Crown is in England the result of centuries of national greatness, of a thousand recollections grouped round the head of the State, who personifies the unity and glory of the nation. In Ireland the recollections were recollections of conquest mingled with not a few of cruelty and treacher\^ The dominant caste, which had gone to the verge of rebellion in 1782, called itself loyal when, in 1798, the subject race followed the example which the Volunteers had set. This caste has since then professed attachment to the English Crown. Its attach- ment has not been disinterested. " Doth a man serve God for naught ? " The Protestant Ascendancy had solid reasons for adhering to the power which maintained it as an ascendancy. But the other Irish nation of a century ago, the nation of Celts and Roman Catholics, had in those days no more reason for lo^^alty to the King of England than the Christians of the East have for lo3falty to the Turkish sultan. Nor had the English kings generally sought to foster loyalty in the way which kings find most effective, b}' their personal presence. Before the appearance of James II., followed by the conquering entrance of William III., only three sovereigns had set foot in Ireland — Henry II., John, and Richard II. Since the battle of the Boyne only one royal visit was paid, that of George IV. in 1824, down INTRODUCTION xxxi to the visit of Queen Victoria in 1849. On both those occasions the sovereign was received with the greatest warmth, as was King Edward VII. in 1904. Why was one of the most obvious services a monarchy can render so long and so strangel}' neglected ? The want of a capacity for self-government, which is so often charged upon the Irish, does not need to be ex- plained by an inherent defect in Celtic peoples when it is remembered that no opportunity of acquiring it was afforded them. Since the primitive clan organisation of the native race was dissolved in the sixteenth century, neither local nor national popular self-government had ever existed in Ireland, until the establishment in our own time of repre- sentative municipal institutions in the larger towns, followed, after a long interval, by the County and District Councils of 1898. There were practically no free elections of members of the House of Commons till the famous Waterford contest of 1826, and even after that yea.Y an election was almost always a struggle between temporal intimidation by landlords and spiritual intimidation by priests. The Ballot Act of 1872 is the true beginning of Parliamentary life in the Irish counties, and seems to mark a turning-point in Irish histor3\ That Irish political leaders have sometimes wanted a sense of responsibility, have been often violent in their language, agitators and rhetoricians rather than statesmen, is undeniable, and must be borne in mind when England is blamed for refusing to follow their advice. But vehe- mence and recklessness were natural to men who had no responsibility, whom no one dreamt of placing in admini- strative posts, who found their counsels steadily ignored. They, like the people from whom they sprung, had no training in self - government, no enlightened class in sympathy with them, and able to correct by its more sober opinion their extravagances. Agitation was the only resource of those who shrank from conspiracy or despaired of insurrection; and the habit of agitation produced a type of character, as Cervantes says that every man is the son xxxii INTRODUCTION of his own works. Leadership had, with some honourable exceptions, become divorced from education and property, because the class which gave leaders to the nation in the thirty years before the Union had now been thoroughly denationalised. Where popular leaders are chargeable with any particular set of faults, those faults are almost invariably the result of the refusal of the educated and propertied class to recognise the needs and associate them- selves with the aspirations of the people. The reflection may occur that if these unhappy features in the character of English rule and the temper of the Irish people during the last three centuries were the result of causes acting steadily during a long period of time, a correspondingly long period of better relations will be needed to efface them. History, however, if she does not absolutely forbid, certainly does not countenance such a prediction. It has sometimes happened that when malig- nant conditions have vanished, and men's feeling under- gone a thorough change, a single generation has been sufficient to wipe out ancient animosities, and capacities for industrial or intellectual or political development have been disclosed which no one ventured to expect. Necessity and responsibility are the best teachers. Even the dreary annals of Ireland show some progress from century to century. Since 1886 that progress has been rapid, and it still continues. In a time like ours, changes of every kind move faster than they did in days of darkness and isola- tion ; and, though there are moments when clouds seem to settle down over Ireland or over Europe as a whole, yet if we compare the condition of the world now with that of a century ago, v/e find ample grounds for a faith in the increasing strength of the forces which make for righteousness and peace. JAMES BRYCE. TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY PART I FROM THE TREATY OF LIMERICK TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF LEGISLATIVE INDEPENDENCE 1691-1782 By Dr. SULLIVAN I THE TREATY OF LIMERICK ; THE LAST CONFISCATION ; AND THE FIRST PARLIAMENT On October 3, 1691, the Treaty of Limerick, closing the last struggle for Irish independence, was signed. James II., driven from England, took his stand in Ireland, where the Irish ralhed round him, not from any attachment to his dynasty or person, but because his position gave them a rallying-point to fight for national freedom. The details of the war are familiar history, yet it will be useful to briefly summarise the more salient facts. On the accession of James II. he appointed the Earl of Clarendon viceroy of Ireland, and Richard Talbot, after- wards Duke of Tyrconnel, commander-in-chief of the army. When leaving for Ireland, James told Clarendon that he would maintain the Acts of Settlement and Explanation ; and that, although the Catholics should have the freedom of A 2 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [i6S8- their religion and equality of privileges, he would let them see too that he looked upon them as a conquered people, and that he would support the Settlement inviolably. In this spirit Clarendon acted, and did everything he could to evade redressing the grievances of the Irish, by appointing them officers, magistrates, and so forth. Tyrconnel, on the other hand, disbanded the colonial militia, a well-armed body, and attempted to disarm them also. The march of events in England, the hostility of the English interest, and the uprise of an Irish public opinion, soon put an end to this dull government. Clarendon was recalled, and Tyrconnel took his place as viceroy. While Tyrconnel was organising an Irish army, James being still king in England, he committed a great blunder, which had far-reaching consequences, contributing in no small degree to the overthrow of the Stuart dynasi}'. He withdrew the garrison of Derry in order to send aid to King James in England. The removal of the garrison left the field clear for the partisans of William. When the Earl of Antrim was sent to repair the blunder, the young men of Derry resolutely closed the gates of the town against James's troops on December 7, 1688, and on February 20, 1689, William of Orange was proclaimed king in Derry. In this way the English got possession of one of the most important ports in the kingdom. On March 12, 1689, James 11. landed at Kinsale. Thence he hastened to Dublin, and summoned a Parliament, which met on May 7, 1689, and sat until July 18. This Parlia- ment of James has been described as a Parliament of Irish Celts, 3'et out of the 228 members of the House of Commons about one-fourth only belonged to the native race, and even including members of families Anglicised or of doubtful origin, not one-third of the House of Commons belonged to the so-called Celts. Of the thirty-two lay peers who attended, not more than two or three bore old Irish names. The four spiritual peers were Protestant bishops, among whom was the notorious Dr. Dopping; no Catholic bishops were summoned. Thirty-five Acts were passed, many of which were merely for the undoing of previous hostile 3689] TBE WAR OP 1689 5 legislation, such as the repeal of Poynings' Act, the repeal of the Acts of Settlement and Explanation, the repeal of the Act for keeping and celebrating October 23 as an anniversary thanksgiving in Ireland. Of the positive Acts the most notable were : an Act to secure liberty of con- science, and to repeal such Acts, or clauses of Acts, as were inconsistent with the same ; and an Act for removing all incapacities from the natives of Ireland. James did not approve of the legislation of his Irish Parliament, and, but for the presence of the Comte d'Avaux, the French ambassador, it is probable he would not have consented to the repeal of the Acts of Settlement and Explanation. Sufficient men had presented themselves to form fifty regiments of infantry and a proportionate number of cavalr3^ But as the native Irish had been excluded from serving in the army and militia, and as far as possible disarmed, these levies were undisciplined, and their officers, with few exceptions, were without military training and experience. There were no arsenals, and in the Government stores only about one thousand serviceable firearms were found ; there was no artillery, and no supply of ammunition, or of appli- ances for an army in the field. The colonists,^ who for the most part took the English side, were accustomed to the use of arms, having served in the disbanded militia, which had been well armed. They possessed a consider- able force sufficiently trained and armed to do garrison duty efficiently. The great want of the Irish in this, as in all previous Anglo-Irish wars, was money. What coin was in circulation was small in quantity and debased in quality. James's Government issued a brass coinage, which had no currency outside the kingdom, and even within it practicall}' circulated only among the partisans of James, and could not consequently help in purchasing arms, ammunition, and military stores, v/hich had to be imported from without. Under such unfavourable circumstances, the war began. The first campaign comprised the siege, or rather blockade, of Derry — for the Irish, having no artillery, could not under- ^ That is, chiefly the Protestants of English or Scottish origin. 4 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1689- take a regular siege — which was gallantly defended by the Scoto-English colonists ; the check of Mountcashel by the Enniskilleners, who had followed the example of Derry ; the landing of Schomberg with an army of Dutch, French Protestants, and English, who went into winter quarters near Dundalk, where he lost nearly half his troops from sickness ; and, lastly, the military parade of James, who marched out from Dublin, and, failing to force Schomberg to fight, went into winter quarters himself. The result of the campaign was the successful defence of Derry, and the signal exhibition of James's incapacity as a general. At the opening of the second campaign, an exchange of troops was made between James and Louis XIV., with the view of giving prestige to the cause of the former. Six thousand French troops, under a drawing-room general, the well-known Comte de Lauzun, arrived in Ireland, and the same ships carried back an equal number of Irish troops — the brigade of Mountcashel, the best-trained and best- equipped body of troops in the Irish army. These troops, re-formed in France into three regiments of two battalions each, constituted the first Irish brigade in the service of France. This brigade, composed of native Irish, and led by Justin MacCarthy, Lord Mountcashel, who was much disliked by Tyrconnel, was more national than dynastic in spirit, and so it was considered very desirable to get such a body out of the way. The wasted army of Schomberg was strengthened by the arrival of William himself on June 14, 1690, with a considerable force. The united armies, composed of the most heterogeneous materials, one-half being foreigners of various nationalities, amounted to between 36,000 and 48,000 men.^ They were well equipped, armed, and trained, most of them being veterans, and duly supplied with artillery, and with everything necessary for an army ^ See discussion on the numbers of the opposing forces at the Battle of the Boyne in the " Notes and Illustrations " to the Macaricz Excidium, by the late John Cornelius O'Callaghan, the most careful and impartial authority on the subject (O'Kelly's "Destruction of Cyprus," published by the Irish Arch^c^ logical Society, 1850, pp. 340-360). S'Sgi] SIEGE OF LIMERICK 5 in the field, commanded by an able general, whose staff was efficient and experienced. To meet William, James set out from Dublin with an army of about 23,000 men. The French troops and the Irish cavalry were good, but the infantry was not well trained, and the artillery con- sisted only of twelve field-pieces. The battle took place on July I, 1690, at the passage of the River Boyne, a few miles above Drogheda. The Irish fell back on Dublin, and thence retired behind the line of the Shannon. About 20,000 half-armed infantry and about 3500 horse concen- trated at Limerick. The English having failed in taking Athlone, the key of the upper Shannon, William gathered together about 38,000 men in the neighbourhood of Limerick. Lauzun, having declared that Limerick could not be defended, and might be taken with roasted apples, withdrew with the whole of the French troops to Galway, to await the first opportunity of returning to France. On August 9, 1690, William moved his whole army close to the town, and summoned the garrison to surrender; but having failed, wuth a loss of 2000 men, to carry the town by assault, he raised the siege and went to England. The third and last campaign began late in 1691, The Irish received many promises of assistance from Louis XIV., but his ministers fulfilled few or none of them. With scarcely any loss of men, and with a small ex- penditure of stores and money, the Irish war enabled Louis to keep William and a veteran army of 40,000 men out of his way. The Irish troops in Limerick were, during the winter following the raising of the siege, half starved, half armed, and almost naked, and consequently unable to do anything until the arrival of the French fleet in the Shannon with arms, stores, and provisions, but no troops. There came, however, Lieut.-Generai St- Ruth, a French officer of merit, to take the command-in-chief of the Irish army, and he was accompanied by IMajor-General D'Usson. The campaign opened in the beginning of June with the advance of Ginkel on Athlone. The chief defence of the place was the River Shannon, the works being weak, and mounting only a few field-pieces; yet so obstinately was 6 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1691 the place defended, that but for the discovery of a ford^ and some neglect on the part of D'Usson, who commanded^ it is probable that the siege would have been raised. As it was, Ginkel became master of the heap of ruins before St. Ruth knew of the attack, though encamped only a few miles distant. St. Ruth moved his camp to Aughrim, and there was fought the final battle of the war on Sunday, July 12, 1691. The English were superior in numbers, in appointments, and small arms, but above all in artillery.^ St. Ruth was killed at a critical moment, and his army defeated, with a loss of about 4000 men, the English loss being about half that number. Part of the defeated Irish infantry retreated to Galway; but the bulk of the troops, including the whole of the cavalry, fell back on Limerick, which surrendered, after a gallant resistance, in October 1691. The Treaty of Limerick v/as signed on behalf of the English by the Lords Justices, Sir Charles Porter and Thomas Coningsby, and Baron De Ginkel, commander- in-chief of the British forces; on behalf of the Irish, by Sarsfield, Lord Gallmoy, Colonel Nicholas Purcel, Colonel Nicholas Cusack, Sir Toby Butler, Colonel Garret Dillon^ and Colonel John Brown. Its chief provisions were — "The Roman Catholics of this kingdom shall enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion as are con- sistent with the laws of Ireland ; or as they did enjoy in the reign of King Charles the Second ; and their Majesties, as soon as their affairs will permit them to summon a Parliament in this kingdom, will endeavour to procure the said Roman Catholics such further security in that par- ticular as may preserve them from any disturbance upon the account of their said religion. "All the inhabitants or residents of Limerick, or any other garrison now in the possession of the Irish, and all officers and soldiers now in arms under any commission of King James, or those authorised by him to grant the ^ See the discussion as to the strength of the opposing armies at the battle of Aughrim in the "Notes," etc., to Macan'a E.xcidiu7n, pp. 433-461. j69i] the treaty OF LIMERICK 7 same in the several counties of Limerick, Clare, Kerry, Cork, and Mayo, or any of them, and all the commissioned officers in their Majesties' quarters that belong to the Irish regiments now in being that are treated with, and who are not prisoners of war, or having taken protection,^ and who shall return and submit to their Majesties' obedience, and their and every of their heirs shall hold, possess and enjoy all and every their estates of freehold and inheritance; and all the rights, titles, and interest, privileges and immunities, v/hich the}'-, or every or any of them, held, enjoyed, and were rightfully and lawfully entitled to in the reign of King Charles IL, or at any time since by the laws and statutes that were in force in the said reign of King Charles IL, and shall be put in possession, by order of the Government, of such of them as are in the king's hands, or the hands of his tenants, without being put to any suit or trouble therein." Furthermore, all such estates were to be freed and discharged from all arrears of Crown rents, quit-rents, itiid other public charges which were incurred, or became due since Michaelmas 1688, on condition of taking a simple oath of allegiance to William and Mary. The other articles recognised the rights of merchants of the protected towns who might have been beyond the sea at the time of the capitulation, and the rights of cer- tain officers abroad on the business of the Irish army. A general pardon was to be granted to all persons comprised within the treaty, and the Lords Justices and the generals commanding King William's army were to use their best endeavours to get the attainders of any of them attainted repealed. Finally, noblemen and gentlemen were to have liberty to ride with a sword and case of pistols, and to keep a gun for defence or fowling. In the copy of the rough draft engrossed for signature the following words, " and all such as are under their protection in the said counties," which immediately fol- lowed the enumeration of the several counties in the second article, were omitted. This omission, whether the result of design or accident, was, however, rectified by ^ Galway being protected by a separate capitulation. 8 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1691- King William when confirming the treaty in February 1692. The confirming instrument stated that the words had been casually omitted ; that the omission was not discovered till the articles were signed, but was taken notice of before the town was surrendered ; and that the Lords Justices or General Ginkel, or one of them, had promised that the clause should be made good, since it was within the intention of the capitulation, and had been inserted in the rough draft. William then for himself did " ratify and confirm the said omitted words." ^ The colonists, or at all events the " new interests " — that is, those who shared or expected to share in the confiscations — were indignant at the concessions made to the native race. They thought the mere Irish had been secured the possession of too much land, and that they ought not to have been left anything whatever.^ Having concluded the treaty, the Lords Justices returned to Dublin, and attended Christ's Church on the following Sunday, where Dr. Dopping, Bishop of Meath, preached a sermon on the late events at Limerick, in which he argued ^ Confirmation of the Articles of Limerick, February 24, 1692 (Plowden, vol. i., Appendix ; Froude, " The English in Ireland," vol. i. p. 205). ^ Sir Charles Wogan, better known as the Chevalier Wogan, in his remarkable letter to Dean Swift, states that King William offered, before the battle of Aughrim, to his uncle, the Duke of Tyrconnel, the following terms : the free exercise of their religion to the Irish Catholics ; half the churches of the kingdom ; half the employments, civil and military too, if they pleased, and even the moiety of their ancient properties. Sir Charles tells us that " these proposals, though they were to have had an English Act of Parhament for their sanction, were refused with universal contempt. Yet the exiles, in the midst of their hard usage abroad, could not be brought to repent of their obstinacy. V^'henever I pressed them upon the matter, their answer was generally to this purpose : ' If England can break her public faith, in regard of the wretched Articles of Limerick, by keeping up a per- petual terror and persecution over that parcel of miserable unarmed peasantry and dastard gentry we have left at home, without any other apology or pre- tence for it but her wanton fears and jealousies, what could have been expected by the man of true vigour and spirit, if they had remained in their country, but a cruel war, under greater disadvantages, or such a universal massacre as our fathers have often been threatened with by the confederate rebels of Great Britain — ad quod non fiiit respoiisum ? ' " — Letter of Sir C. Wogan to Dean Swift, February 27, 1732 (Swift's Works, Bohn's edit. vol. ii. p. 667). 1692] SEQUEL OF THE TREATY 9 that no faith should be kept with so perfidious a people as the Irish. On the next Sunday Dr. Moreton, Bishop of Kildare, preached in the same church, but argued in favour of keeping public faith. And on the third Sunday Dean Synge preached in the same church, and took a middle course. "Keep peace with all men, if it be possible," was his text. William did not sympathise with those who de- sired to violate the treaty. He removed Dopping's name from the Privy Council, and put Moreton's in his place. The spirit in which the colonists intended to understand the treaty is best shown by the action of the sherififs and magistrates throughout the country, who believed that, under the protection of the foreign army, they might commit any injustice or outrage they pleased upon the disarmed natives. It is stated in a letter of the Lords Justices, written on November 19, 1691, six weeks after the sur- render of Limerick, that their lordships had received com- plaints from all parts of Ireland of the ill-treatment of the Irish who had submitted. So great were their apprehensions of the continuance of that usage that some thousands of them, who had at first quitted the Irish army with the intention of remaining in Ireland, subsequently proceeded to the ports of embarkation for France, and resolved to go thither rather than stay in Ireland, where, contrary to the public faith, as well as law and justice, they were robbed of their substance, and abused in their persons.^ But no one was prosecuted for having done these things, nor were any efficient means taken to prevent a recurrence of them. During the war the Acts of James's Parliament which repealed the Acts of Settlement and Explanation had been to some extent acted upon, and some of the original pro- prietors who had been dispossessed recovered their former estates. This added to the confusion already existing, so ^ Harris, the biographer of William III., says, "The justices of peace, sheriffs, and other magistrates, presuming on their power in the country, did in an illegal manner dispossess several of their Majesties' subjects, not only of their goods and chattels, but of their lands and tenements, to the great dis- turbance of the peace of the kingdom, subversion of the law, and reproach of their Majesties' Government." lo TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1692 that the ownership of landed property in Ireland immediately after the settling down of affairs at the end of the war was in a chaotic state. To remedy this condition of things, a Court of Claims was established, various commissions of inquiry v/ere appointed, and writs issued out of the Courts of Chancery and Exchequer. Upon these writs inquisitions were found and returned certifying the attainder of divers persons, and consequently the right and title of the Crown to a large extent of described territory. It was calculated that about four thousand resident, and fifty-seven absentee owners of property had rendered themselves liable to for- feiture of their lands, amounting to over 1,100,000 plantation acres. The Articles of Limerick, especially as they had been ratified with the omitted clause added, made consider- able modifications in this estimate, fully one-fourth of the newly confiscated land having been restored to the Irish owners under the articles in question. Many outlawries were also reversed, and sixty-five great Irish proprietors not protected by the Articles of Limerick were restored by special grants from the Crown. The domains of the Duke of York (James II.), the grants to Tyrconnel, and the lands of such others as were not to be pardoned, were granted by letters patent to various persons as rewards for military or civil service during the revolution, or simply to favourites and courtiers. Among the recipients of William's bounty were : Bentinck, afterwards Lord Portland, who received 130,000 acres; Henry de Ruvigny, created Earl of Galway, 40,000; Van Keppel, created Lord Albemarle, 100,000 acres ; Lord Sidney, 50,000 acres. Lady Orkney ob- tained the whole of the great estate of the Duke of York (James II.). The Articles of Limerick and the proceedings of the Court of Claims gave great dissatisfaction, especially to the many greedy expectants of a share of the prey which they saw rapidly disappearing in gifts to favourites, or in wages to the commissioners who managed the distribution, such as Coningsby, one of the Lords Justices, who rewarded himself generously. The general disappointment of the new colonial interest became very manifest when Lord 1692] THE COLONIAL PARLIAMENT 11 Sidney was made viceroy, and writs were issued for the first Parliament of William, which met in 1692. There was no Irish Act disqualifying Catholics from sitting, so some Catholic peers and commoners attended. The English Parliament had, however, passed in the preceding 3'ear an Act for abrogating the Oath of Supremacy in Ireland, and appointing other oaths. '^ The fifth section of this Act enacted that no member of either House of the Irish Par- liament should sit until he had taken the new oath, and the declaration against Transubstantiation. Although the rights of those protected by the Articles of Limerick were reserved in this Act, so far as the practice of the different professions was concerned, yet it was apparently intended to exclude members of parliament and peers from this protection. At all events, the colonists, who now con- stituted the Irish House of Commons, read the Act in this sense, and though they threw out a money Bill because it did not originate with themselves, they accepted an English Act passed over their heads, and applied it to exclude the representatives of the native race from Parliament. Among the measures which had been drafted by the Council and sent to England, was one for the confirmation of the Articles of Limerick. But, instead of passing the Act without discussion, as it was hoped they would have done, the colonists inquired by what means the omitted passage had been retained. They also criticised severely the new Act of Settlement ; they even threw out the Government Bill declaring the Acts of James's Parliament void. What they wished was that these Acts should be so cancelled as to preserve the record, which, according to the Government proposal, would be taken off the roll. They also complained that the commissioners appointed by the Crown to receive the forfeited estates had fraudulently diverted them to their own use, and accordingly ordered them to be prosecuted ; and they threw out one part of the money Bill as an assertion of their independence, because the Bill had not originated in their House, and then voted that it was the undoubted right of the Irish ^ 3 Will. & Mary, c. 2, English Statutes. 12 TIVO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1692- Commons to prepare their own money Bills. Finally, they threw out the Mutiny Bill because of the admission of Irish officers into the army. The attitude of the colonists irritated Sidney. He pro- rogued Parliament, with an angry rebuke to the Commons for trenching on the prerogatives of the Crown by rejecting a money Bill, and pronounced their vote to be contrary to the laws of the constitution. This protest was entered on the journals of the House. Sidney's attempt to govern Ireland without persecution, especially his invitation to the native Irish to enter the army, produced great commotion among those who con- stituted the "new colonial interest." Immediately rumours of a French invasion were sedulously set afloat. The "legends of 1641 " were revived. The "grievances" of the colonists were taken up in England. A discussion on Ireland took place in the English Parliament, and an address was voted, complaining of the great abuses and mismanagement of Irish affairs, such as the recruiting of the king's troops with " Papists, to the great endangering and discouraging of the good and Io3^al Protestant subjects in that kingdom " ; the granting of protection to the Irish Papists, " whereby Protestants are hindered from their legal remedies, and the course of the law stopped." Objections were raised to the addition ^ made to the Articles of Limerick after the town was surrendered, "to the very great encouragement of the Irish Papists." It was urged that this addition, as well as the articles themselves, should be laid before the House ; and also that no grant should be made of the forfeited estates in Ireland until Parliament had had an opportunity of discussing and settling the matter. As William had already disposed of nearly all the forfeited lands, and as he had confirmed the Articles of Limerick, including the omitted paragraph, under letters patent, this attempt of the English Parliament to set aside the Treaty of Limerick was a direct attack upon the king. In this state of affairs, Sidney, who was merely carrying out William's policy of toleration, to which he was himself more ^ Afife, pp, 7, 8. i693] ^^^ FORFEITED ESTATES 13 or less indifferent, became alarmed and embarrassed by the number of native Irish officers who were already in, or ready to join the army ; yielding to the popular current of intolerance that had set in in England, he issued, in January 1 693, an order for the arrest of all secular and regular priests. In May he signed a warrant for the dis- missal of all native officers, and the appointment of colonists in their place. The question of the disposal of the forfeited estates next led to a long controversy between the king and the English Parliament, which ended in favour of the latter. It will be more convenient, perhaps, to state the outcome of the controversy here, though I shall have to anticipate the events of some years later. No mapped surveys of the estates forfeited in consequence of the Revolution of 1688 were made, although it had hitherto been the practice to make them in former confiscations. Inquisitions, in the absence of such mapped surveys, were always unsatis- factory, inasmuch as many town-lands were often omitted altogether, and the contents of others were not given, the boundaries in many cases being left undefined. Thus the effect of not using mapped surveys was to conceal the extent of the forfeited land, and of the land granted away by letters patent by the king, and this was one of the causes which led to the dispute between the king and the English Parliament. It seems as if it were the design of those charged with the matter to conceal the extent of the lands granted. The case of the Duke of York's great estate is an instance in point. It was represented to William that the estate, which he granted to the Countess of Orkney, was only worth ;^5ooo a year, whereas it consisted of 120,000 acres of the finest land in Munster, worth at the time ;^26,000 a year. Not only were there no maps of the lands, but there was no inquiry as to persons to be bene- fited, or the grounds upon which their claims rested ; in fact, they rested for the most part upon wholesale bribery. One notorious case deserves to be recorded because of the light it throws upon the objects and uses which the legends or depositions regarding the so-called " Popish massacre of 14 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1693- 164 1 " were put. Mr. James Corry, ancestor of the Earl of Belmore, obtained a good estate and a heavy mortgage in consideration of his house having been burned by the " rebels," and of his having spent ;z^300O in provisions and other materials for the garrison of Enniskillen. Subse- quently it was found that Mr. Corry had done nothing for Enniskillen, and that his house was not burned by the Irish, but by the Protestant soldiers as a punishment for his disloyalty in saying in the town of Enniskillen that he hoped to see all those hanged that took up arms for the Prince of Orange. The Court of Claims had disposed of 504,593 acres when the subject was taken up, as before mentioned, by the English House of Commons, who appointed a com- mission of their own body to inquire into the extent, value, and condition of the forfeited lands in Ireland. The report, signed by a majority of the commissioners, was presented to the House of Conmions in December 1699. As the result of this, and the discussion that followed, an Act was passed, entitled "An Act for granting an aid to his Majest}^ by a land tax in England, and by the sale of the forfeited estates in Ireland." ^ This Act might be called a Second Act of Settlement. Under it a board of thirteen was created, in which were vested all the lands passed away by letters patent or otherwise since the accession of William and Mary, together with all other lands to which the Crown might lay claim, as well as all rever- sionary and other interests arising thereout. With the exception of seven, all the king's grants were resumed ; 655 denominations of lands containing 97,853 Irish plan- tation acres, and 1965 denominations of land without the enumeration of areas, but which Mr. Hardinge^ estimated at 293,559 acres, were restored to "innocent persons," or altogether 391,412 acres of land restored to their former owners; 3793 denominations of land containing 716,374 acres were sold. This gives the total area of profitable land restored and sold as 1,107,787 plantation acres, or 46,995 acres more than the number reported to the English Mi & 12 Will. III. cap. 2. ^ On "Surveys in Ireland." 1095] CONDITION OF IRELAND IN 1700 15 House of Commons by the commissioners in December 1699. The latter estimated the value of the forfeited land at ^^2,685, 1 30, but the actual result of the sales was only ^893,119, and, assuming the relative value of the restored land to be the same, the worth of the restored land would be ^^"487,98 1, or together, ;^ 1,38 1,1 00 — very little more than half the value assigned to them by the commissioners of 1699. The business part of the last of the series of confisca- tions being wound up, it is fitting to give a glance at the state of affairs at the closing of the confiscation ledger. This has been so well done by Lord Clare in his great speech on the Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland, that I cannot do better than use it for my present purpose. He first sums up in a few words the action of the British Government down to the Revolution ; then giving the number of acres of arable land in the whole country, and the number of acres confiscated in each of the successive confiscations, he says : " So that the whole of your island has been confiscated, with the exception of the estates of five or six families of English blood ; . . . and no inconsiderable portion of the island has been confis- cated twice, or perhaps thrice, in the course of a century. The situation, therefore, of the Irish nation at the Revo- lution stands unparalleled in the history of the habitable world. . . . The whole power and property of the country has been conferred by successive monarchs of England upon an English colony composed of three sets of English adventurers, who poured into this country at the termi- nation of three successive rebellions — confiscation is their common title; and from their first settlement they have been hemmed in on every side b}' the old inhabitants of the island, brooding over their discontent in sullen indigna- tion." To this statement of Lord Clare might be added, that this colony never amounted to one-third of the in- habitants, even after a destructive war and famine, and that their position and power — nay, their very existence — depended on England, without whose aid they would have disappeared after a few years. In fact, the continuous i6 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1695 pressure of England prevented the normal evolution of the country. The era of confiscations being now closed, and a new cycle of events about to begin, it is not amiss to ask. What was the position of the people ? A great part of the energetic, intelligent, brave, and patriotic had perished in the war or died of famine and pestilence, or had become mercenaries without a fatherland in the armies of kings in whose quarrels they had no interest, leaving behind them in Ireland a broken, impoverished, and dispirited people, without money, arms, or leaders — fit materials for a race of helots, were it not that they possessed an unconquerable spirit of resistance to oppression, and a hope in the future which nothing could extinguish. Sir Richard Cox, who described the Irish about this period as they were about to enter the penal probation, was correct in his picture, but, not recognising the two qualities I have named, his prog- nosis has proved worthless. "The youth and gentry of the Irish," he tells us, " were destroyed in the rebellion or gone to France ; those who are left are destitute of horses, arms, money, capacity, and courage. Five out of six of the Irish are insignificant slaves, fit for nothing but to hew wood and draw water." Thanks to the qualities of resistance, endurance, and hope, the Irish have shown a recuperative power and tenacity of national life not sur- passed by any other race, save the Israelites. II VIOLATION OF THE TREATY OF LIMERICK — INAUGURA- TION OF REPRESSIVE LEGISLATION Sidney did not succeed in averting the storm by his cowardly reversal of the policy of toleration. His secretary, Mr. Pulteney, was summoned by the English House of Commons, and examined in committee, as was likewise the notorious Dr. Dopping, Bishop of Meath. So deter- mined was the English House of Commons to prevent the Irish from getting any benefit by the Articles of Limerick, that they impeached Sir Charles Porter and Lord Coningsby, the Lords Justices who signed the treaty, in the hope of being able to damage it in some way or other. Coningsby boldly defended himself, but the Commons decided that, though there was no evidence to sustain a charge of treason, the conduct of the Lords Justices was to be censured as illegal and arbitrary. The Commons also recommended that a new beginning should be made ; so Lord Sidney was recalled, and the Parliament with which he quarrelled dissolved. Sir Henry Capel, an English member of Parliament, was selected as the new governor, and raised to the peerage. The special mission of the new governor was to conciliate the colonists, and enable them to reduce the Irish people to the condition of serfs. At first two others, Sir Cecil Wyche and Mr. Duncombe, were associated with Capel as Lords Justices, and Porter remained as Chancellor, with the object, no doubt, of keeping up a show of toleration and a tradition of the Articles of Limerick. Wyche and Duncombe were, however, unfit for their places — they showed a disposition to govern impartially, and were accordingly denounced as Tories and Jacobites. 17 B i8 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1695 Capel, on the other hand, took every opportunity of curtail- ing the rights of the Irish, and of infringing the Articles; and so Wyche and Buncombe were got rid of, leaving Capel master of the situation, as Lord Deputy. The new Government was carried on for two years without a Parliament, but supported by the English House of Commons, whose interference at this period affords the strongest example of the dependence of Ireland upon the Parliament of England from the Revolution until 1782. The Government, becoming at length embarrassed for want of money, thought it expedient to summon a Parlia- ment, Capel believing that he had reconciled Government and the "independent " colonists. Writing to the Duke of Shrewsbury on May 16, 1695, Capel says, " I have endea- voured with all industry to prepare matters in order to a Parliament, and do really find almost a universal dis- position in the Protestants to behave themselves dutifully, without insisting on the sole right " of originating money Bills. The consideration for this " dutiful behaviour " was to be such repressive measures against the native Irish as would effectually crush and ruin them. The bargain was carried out, the Commons voted the money, and in express words consented that the Journals of the Parliament of King James should be cancelled, and the Acts passed in it erased from the roll, " that no memorial might remain among the records of the pro- ceedings of that assembly." ^ For this dutiful behaviour Parliament was rewarded b}' two Acts; one "An act for the better securing the Government by disarming Papists ; " - the other, " An Act to restrain foreign educa- tion." 2 By the former Act every Papist, even though already holding a licence, was bound, before the first of March next following, to deliver up all arms to a justice of the peace or other head officer; any two justices might search for and seize arms. Persons suspected of con- cealing arms could be examined on oath ; any one not discovering or delivering up arms, or refusing or hindering 1 7 & 8 Will. & Mary, c. 3, Irish Statutes. a 7 Will. III. c 5 (1695). ^ 7 Will. III. c. 4. 1695] THE FIRST PENAL LAWS 19 search, or refusing to appear on due summons to be examined, was liable to a penalty, if a peer, of ii^ioo for a first offence, prcBinunire for tlie second ; if under the degree of a peer, £'^0 for first offence, and imprisonment for one year, and thereafter until the fine was paid, prcBmunire for the second offence. Officers covered by the Articles of Limerick might, on taking the oath of allegiance, keep (as provided by the articles in question) a sword, a case of pistols, and a gun for self-defence or fowling. No armourer or gunmaker could take a Popish apprentice under a penalty of ^20; the indentures of apprenticeship, bonds, and contracts of such an apprentice, would be void. A Popish apprentice exercising such a trade was liable to a penalty of ;!^20. Such an apprentice was bound to declare on oath, if asked, whether he was a Papist ; his refusal to take such an oath was to be held equivalent to a conviction of the apprentice, and also of the master unless he proved that when the apprentice was bound he was known or reported to be a Protestant, The tenth section declared that Papists should not keep a horse of above five pounds value. Any Protestant dis- covering on oath to two justices might, with a constable or assistants appointed, search for such horses in daytime, and break open doors in case of opposition, and, on paying five guineas to or for the owner, have the property of such horse as if he had bought it in open market. Any one concealing such horses was liable, on conviction by two witnesses before a justice, to be imprisoned for three months, and to pay a fine equal to three times the value of the horse, to be estimated by the justices at quarter sessions, who had power to keep the owner in prison until the fine was paid. Any one refusing to take the prescribed oaths ^ was deemed a Papist, and a magistrate who neglected or re- fused to execute the Act was liable to forfeit ;^50, and to be deprived of certain civil rights, such as that of acting as a magistrate. 1 The Oaths of Allegiance and Abjuration and Declaration against Transub- slantiation. 20 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1695 The second Act enacted that any one who went him- self, or sent any one, beyond the sea to be trained up in Popery, or sent over money, etc., for the maintenance, or as charity for the rehef, of a rehgious house, and was convicted thereof, should be deprived of all civil rights. A justice of the peace, upon information of such an offence, was required to summon and examine the person suspected without oath, and witnesses on oath, and if the offence was probable, he was to bind him or her to appear at next quarter sessions — the onus of rebutting the charge to lie on the defendant. The ninth section further enacted that no Papist should teach a school publicly, or teach in private houses except the children of the family, under a penalty of £"20 and three months' imprisonment for each offence. The tenth section recited the Act 28 Hen. YIIL, called " An Act for the English order, habit, and language," which enacted and provided, among other things, that the incumbent of each parish should keep, or cause to be kept, a school to teach English. It also recites another Act made in the twelfth year of Elizabeth, called " An Act for the erection of free schools," by which a public Latin school was to be constantly maintained and kept within each diocese of the kingdom ; such schools, according to the Act, "have been generally maintained and kept, but have not had the desired effect by reason of such Irish Popish schools being connived at"; but henceforward all Acts concerning schools were to be strictly observed. These Acts may be considered as inaugurating the penal era. But the spirit of the Ascendency towards their serfs, and the progress of their moral decay, may be better judged by two other Acts passed in the same year than even the special Popery Acts. The first of these is an Act declaring which days in the year were to be observed as holy days.^ Hired labourers and servants who refused to work for the usual wages on any day other than one of those appointed by this Act to be kept holy, or upon 1 7 Will. III. c. 14(1695). i69S] THE POSITION OF DISSENTERS 21 extraordinary occasions set apart by the king or chief governor, were fined 2s., which was to go to the poor of the p)arish. On default — and this was nearly certain — the labourer or servant was to be whipped. As whipping was a frequent punishment, and not deemed in general a pleasant or honourable function of the parish constable, it was found necessary to provide a fine of 20s. in case he refused to inflict the punishment. This great infringement on personal and religious liberty was aimed at the holy days of the national Church. These w^ere, no doubt, too numerous at the time, and interfered with industry. But, however true this may have been, it was tyranny to force any one to work against his conscience. The other Act was aimed at the suppression of the sports and pastimes of the people on Sundays, and was called "An Act for the better observation of the Lord's Day, commonly called Sunday." ^ The third section en- acted that, to prevent breach of the peace by disorderly meetings, hurling, football, cudgels, and other pastimes on Sunday, should be prohibited under a penalty of I2d, or two hours in the stocks. Strictly speaking, these Acts did not form part of the penal code as usually understood, and appear to have been borrowed from English Acts. Their enactment at this period was suggested by the same spirit that dictated the penal Acts properly so called, and this spirit was stamped upon even the most trivial law or regulation. Tiie " Protestant interest," though united against the "common enemy," as the native Irish were called, were divided among themselves. The position of Dissenters in Ireland was anomalous : the Huguenots and other foreign Protestants who had been invited to settle in Ireland were allowed full liberty of conscience ; not so the Irish and British Dissenters, who were subject to the Act of Uni- formity. In England the Toleration Act had secured them liberty of worship, but the Sacramental Test shut them out from public emplo3'ment. In Ireland, on the other hand, there was no Sacramental Test, and the Oaths of Allegi- 1 7 Will. III. c. 17 (1695). 22 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1695- ance and Abjuration, which had been substituted for the Oath of Supremacy, did not shut them out from the magistracy, or from holding commissions in the army ; they were ehgible to sit in Parliament, to be members of municipal corporations — in a word, they possessed all the secular rights of citizenship, yet were obliged to conform to the worship of the Established Church. King William, who was reluctant to persecute the Catholics, was naturally desirous to secure religious equality for the various Dis- senters, with whom he was more akin than with the Established Church. When in Ireland, he had shown his interest in the Presbyterians by giving them a grant of £1200 a year out of the customs of Belfast. But he had to reckon with a power whose force he did not understand. As the Protestant minority trampled on the liberty of the Catholic majority, so the Church minority, which formed barely one-third of the Protestants, and one-eleventh of the whole population, trampled on the rights of the majority of their fellow-Protestants. The Irish Established Church clergy were almost ex- clusively of the High Church party, extreme believers in the royal prerogative ; and their political principles gener- ally belonged to an absolutist type. The great landed pro- prietors and higher gentry, though still Calvinistic in belief and political principles, were outwardly High Churchmen, in order not to be confounded with the Puritans and Cromwellians, from whom they derived their wealth. King William was desirous of placing all Protestants on an equality so far as he could; he was, at all events, anxious to secure the Nonconformist ministers from the annoyances and petty persecutions of the clergy and minor officials of the Establishment. In 1692 Lord Sidney was directed to submit to Parliament the heads of a Bill identical with the English Toleration Act. The Bill was, however, fiercely opposed ; the bishops would not hear of toieration unless accompanied by a Sacramental Test, which would shut out Nonconformists from the army, the nav}^, the learned pro- fessions, and the civil service. Owing to the prorogation, and subsequent dissolution, of the Parliament of 1692, 1696] REACTION IN IRELAND 23 nothing came of the Toleration Bill. The king directed it to be reintroduced into the Parliament of 1695. The Dissenters, anticipating that another attempt would be made to impose the Test when the Bill should be before Parliament, appealed to the Protestant public in a remon- strance, pointing out that the Test Act in England was designed against Catholics, while in Ireland it would cut off the main branch of the Protestant interest ; they therefore preferred to remain as they were, liable to prosecution under the Act of Uniformity — and so they did remain until the exertions of their Catholic fellow-countrj^men emanci- pated them. The Toleration Bill was introduced into the Commons, and Capel did all he could to further it, but it was lost. Lord Drogheda tried to carry the heads of a similar Bill in the House of Lords, but it was defeated by the bishops. The party struggles and intrigues of Whigs and Tories in England produced a reaction in Ireland. The High Churchmen — bishops and laymen — who had been most desirous of coercing the Catholics, and clamorous against the slightest symptom of leniency towards them, were now disposed to favour them, and treat the Presbyterians harshly. Capel, who had favoured the equality of the Protestant sects, and alliance with them against the "common enemy," died in 1696; Porter was made Lord Justice, but he too died shortly afterwards. De Ruvigny, Earl of Gal way, and the Marquis of Winchester were next appointed ; and the Chancellorship was given to an English barrister named Methuen, who had been the minister in Portugal. King William, wearied by his disputes with English parties, seems to have lost all hope of carrying out a policy of toleration towards the Irish, and of effecting a union of the various Protestant sects under a common State Church broad enough to embrace every shade of Dissent. He thought it best to give free scope to the Irish Pro- testants; so he relinquished the power of reversing Irish outlawries, and in the heads of the Bill for this purpose which was sent over he allowed a clause to be inserted 24 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1696- by which the estates of persons who had been killed in "rebellion," or had died in foreign service, were to be included in the forfeitures. He went even much further, for he was willing to give up the omitted clause in the Articles of Limerick, if Parliament would confirm the remainder. When Parliament opened, "An act to confirm the Articles of Limerick " was prepared ; it should rather have been called "An Act for the frustration of the Articles of Limerick," for, besides leaving out, with the sanction of William himself, the omitted clause in the second article, it omitted the first clause, and curtailed the others to such an extent as practically to annul the treaty. The third reading of the Bill in the Lords was carried by a majority of only one. While the Bill was in the Commons, a petition from the representatives of the native Irish, pray- ing to be heard by counsel at the bar of the House before the measure became law, was presented to the House of Commons ; the petition was unanimously rejected. About the same period " a petition of one Edward Sprag and others, in behalf of themselves and other Protestant porters in and about the city of Dublin, complaining that one Darby Ryan, a Papist, had employed porters of his own persuasion, having been received and read, was referred to the committee of grievances, that they should report thereon to the House." ^ Seven bishops and seven lay peers made a protest against the Bill for the confirmation of the Articles of Limerick, which was entered on the Journals of the House. According to this protest, the articles were not fully con- firmed — "The Act as it passed left the Catholics in a worse condition than they were in before ; . . . the additional clause was most material, and several persons who had been adjudged within the articles would now be excluded from the benefit of them." A new Outlawries Bill — the first one having been with- drawn in consequence of the opposition of the Lords — came back from England. It was intended to prevent any further reversal of outlawries and close the matter once ^ Commons Journals, vol. ii. p. 679. i699] THE OUTLAWRIES BILL ' 25 for all. It exempted by name a number of peers and gentlemen whom the lords wished to favour, and so secure its passing. The preamble is a masterpiece, like those of most of the colonial Bills. All outlawries and attainders on account of the late war not already reversed, or affect- ing persons comprised within the Articles of Limerick, or persons exempted by name in the statute, were declared to stand good for ever, any pardon from the king or his heirs notwithstanding. Papists who had died in " re- bellion " before the peace were adjudged traitors tJ>so facto, and their estates passed from their families.^ The custom of calling every war in which the Irish were belligerents " a rebellion " was a most convenient way of securing a verdict without argument and by anticipation. It led, how- ever, to some curious and puzzling results. The Ascendency party were not satisfied with the partial repudiation of the Articles of Limerick which they had effected in the so-called Act for their confirmation. The majority of the Protestants were of Dr. Dopping's opinion, that no terms should be kept with the Irish ; but they lacked the moral courage to act upon it, so they determined to proceed piecemeal, and thus preserve their "honour." By the first Article of Limerick, it was provided that the Irish should enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their religion as were consistent with the laws of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the reign of King Charles II. Neverthe- less an Act was passed for banishing all Papists exercising any ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and all regulars of the Popish clergy out of Ireland. The object of this Act was to keep out the religious orders, and sanction only the secular priests, who in time were expected to die out ; as no bishops were to be allowed to remain in the country or come into it, no means of keeping up the succession would exist. This method of exclusion proved successful in England in a comparatively short time; in Wales it proved successful, though only after a considerable time ; in Ireland the cir- cumstances were wholly unlike what they were in England or Wales, and it .did not and could not possibly succeed. 1 9 Will. III. c. 25, Irish Statutes. 26 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1696- In the same session the Ascendency took another step in the elaboration of a code of laws for the destruction of religious freedom, and the debasement and ruin of the Irish people, by the passing of " An Act to prevent Protestants intermarrying with Papists." After reciting the mischiefs resulting from Protestant women marrying Papists, or Protestant gentlemen marrying Popish wives, it enacted that any Protestant woman, being heir apparent to or possessed of any estate or interest in land, or in possession of iJ^SOO of personal property, who married without a cer- tificate of the minister, bishop, and a neighbouring justice (or any two of them) to the effect that her husband was a known Protestant, should be deemed dead in law, and the property went to the next of Protestant kin. Such Pro- testant woman and her husband were incapable of being heir, executor, administrator, or guardian to any Protestant. The penalty for joining a Protestant woman in marriage with a Papist without the required certificate was a year's imprisonment, and a fine of i^20 to the Crown and the prosecutor. A Protestant marrying a Popish wife without a certificate was deemed a Papist or Popish recusant, and lost his civil rights. Soldiers marrying Papists were thereby withdrawn from the king's service; and an}^ one marrying a soldier without a certificate was liable to a fine of ;^20. The penal code was enriched the following year by an Act to prevent Papists being solicitors. Popish solicitors were especially obnoxious to the Protestant interest, as they were supposed to be always engaged in evading the law, and securing the landed property of Catholics, and getting hold of that of Protestants. They were, in the language of the Act, "common disturbers." No one could act as solicitor without taking the Oath of Allegiance, the Oath of Abjuration, and making the Declaration against Transub- stantiation, under a penalty of -^lOO to the prosecutor, and the loss of certain civil rights. They were also to educate their children as Protestants. Any one who practised as a solicitor under Charles II., or who was covered by the Articles of Limerick, was exempt. The plot to murder William, or more probably only to 1699] ALLEGED PLOT AGAINST WILLIAM ■ 27 seize his person, very natural!}^ aroused great indignation in England, In addition to passing an Act which, in the event of a similar conspiracy succeeding, would defeat' the object of it, an association originating in the English House of Commons was formed. The roll of association was very largely signed throughout England and Scotland. The members of this association bound themselves to stand by each other " in defence of the King and English liberty against King James and his adherents." A bill for the same purpose, probably identical with the English Act, was sent over to Ireland, and a copy of the association bond. With the purpose of stimulating the zeal and exciting the fanaticism of the Protestant interest, a common device was resorted to of putting forward some plot or conspiracy. On this occasion it was a paper containing " a project for the extirpation of all the Protestants in Ireland," asserted to be in the handwriting of " an officer of King James's army." It served its intended purpose. The Commons passed a series of resolutions, in which it was asserted that ever since the Reformation the Papists had endeavoured to sub- vert the Protestant religion by conspiracies, massacres, and rebellions ; that they still had the same intention, and de- sired to separate Ireland from England. Then came the real object — the necessity of more stringent laws to make the Protestant interest secure by force where reason and natural laws had failed. Catholics should be deprived of the right of voting at elections for members of Parliament ; the oaths prescribed for all holding public offices should be more strictly exacted ; and, lastly, a law should be passed making it high treason to deny William III. was lawful king. The resolutions were adopted by acclamation in the Commons, and the Bill sent from England was passed b}' a majority of twenty-four, though many spoke against the clause that required all persons, under a penalty of a prcs- iminire^ to renounce the superiority of any foreign power in ecclesiastical or spiritual matters within the realm. In the face of the fact that the great majority of the inhabitants of the country were Catholics who believed in the spiritual 28 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1699- supremacy of the pope, the Lords, while admitting that the Catholics would, if they could, overthrow Protestantism, and that severer laws were needed, deemed it unfair and illogical to exact the Abjuration Oath from persons who w^ere at the same time acknowledged to be Catholics, and threw out the Bill. It seems that this conduct was deemed disloyal, and some think it was the cause of the adoption of the measures for the suppression of the Irish woollen trade,^ which were passed immediately afterwards. The Irish Council were directed to prepare a similar Bill for the next session. Some members thought that some respect should still, if only for form's sake, be paid to the Articles of Limerick, and that such Catholics as had been covered by them should be exempted from the Abjura- tion Oath, and a clause was added to this effect in the heads of the Bill sent to England. The Lords Justices' correspondence with the Duke of Shrewsbury on the sub- ject is instructive. They considered that the arguments in favour of those who came under the Articles of Limerick, if valid, applied equally to all Catholics alike: if any Catholic could take conscientiously the Abjuration Oath, all ought to be required to take it; if not, none. The Lords Justices, however, had no scruples on the theological question, and thought that any one who intended to be a true subject of the king might take it. Their Excellencies, however, having decided the theological question, left the solution of the problem to the Council in England. The latter struck out the clause, and returned the Bill in the form in which the Lords had rejected it. In the meantime, however, the Commons had altered their opinions on the subject, and threw out the Bill by a majority of ten. The anger and disgust of the English politicians, and, indeed, of the public, were intensified by another event which was but the beginning of a new development. The colony, fungus-like, had spread its fibres through the country, concealing the true nation and assuming its appear- ance. The great majority of the inhabitants had no legal existence, and, like the helots and slaves in ancient and ^ Froude, o/>. cit., vol. i. p. 261. lyoi] PROGRESS OF THE ANTI-IRISH POLICY 29 modern states, did not count as part of the commonwealth. The colonists had all the land, all the places of honour and emolument, and practically unrestricted liberty to do with their helots whatever they pleased ; yet they became dis- satisfied with their mother country, because she insisted upon dictating to their Parliament. Though willing to be the gaolers, as Curran said, of their fellow-countrymen, they liked to believe themselves their masters. William Molyneux, the member for Dublin, in an ably written work, defended the independence of the Irish Parliament from any control of the English Parliament ; he contended that the latter had no power to bind the former, nor the former any obligation to enact the Acts of the latter, unless it so pleased. The struggles of political factions, and the reaction consequent on the plot against King William, led the triumphant party in the English Parliament to advance another step in the anti-Irish policy. By the Act il Will. III. c. 4, any Catholic bishop or priest convicted of saying mass, teaching or keeping a school, or exercising any other religious function, was guilty of prcejiiunire and therefore liable to perpetual imprisonment. One hundred pounds reward was offered for the apprehension of persons guilty of such acts. Again, any person professing, or educated in, the Popish religion who had not, within six months after attaining the age of eighteen, taken the Oaths of Allegiance and Abjuration and made the Declaration against Transubstantiation, could not inherit real estate in England. Again, no Papist was to be allowed to purchase land ; send his children to be educated abroad ; or refuse a proper maintenance to any of his children who should become Protestant, otherwise the Court of Chancery might intervene. The passing of this Act and the Resumption Act proved that William had been at length obliged to capitulate to his Parliament, and yield up his principles of religious toleration.^ Ill PERIOD OF THE PENAL LAWS On March 8, 1702, King William died. His rival, James, had died the previous year; and the son of the latter, known as the Pretender, was recognised by France as King of England. To all these events the Irish were pro- foundly indifferent. They had seen how William had been unable to fulfil his plighted word, or redeem his honour. With the exception of the Irish brigade in France, who might perchance obtain some advantage from a re- storation of the Stuarts — though, had such an event occurred, it is more than probable they would have been as badly treated as the Irish had been at the restoration of Charles II. — no one expected any good to come from such an event. The succession of the House of Hanover promised them nothing. The Jacobite poetry of Scotland and the corresponding popular poetry of Ireland offer a curious contrast — the former is dynastic and personal, the latter rarely either; it is chiefly allegorical of Ireland, and intensely national. Whenever it is dynastic or personal, it is probably of Anglo-Irish or Protestant-Jacobite origin. This shows, I think, that the Irish people cared nothing for the Stuarts ; rather it is certain that they despised James II., and knew nothing of his son and grandson, and might have been easily reconciled with the English after Limerick if they had been justly treated. There was much discontent among the colonists at the accession of Anne, as is shown by much of the pamphlet literature at the time. To calm the agitation and divert the attention of the dissatisfied colonists from the relation of the two kingdoms to one another to the " common enemy," a Bill to prevent the further growth of Popery, 1703] POLICY OF ORMOND 31 similar to the one in operation in England, was recom- mended by the English Government to the Irish Council. Rochester, who was opposed to the war, retired from the government of Ireland, and was succeeded by Ormond, whose rank and great prestige were expected to calm opposition. His name was ominous of evil to Ireland; and he did not belie the reputation of his family, for his mission was to complete and carry into effect the utter ruin and degradation of the Irish. The work of the session was carefully considered by the Council, much of it being intended to arrest the de- velopment of the germs of nationalism among the colonists. The first measure proposed was for the extension of the Act 9 Will. III. c, I (1697), ^'O^ banishing priests and pre- venting them from coming from abroad.^ This Act did not include secular priests, who were to be allowed to officiate and die out from want of successors, all bishops being ex- cluded. Experience showed, however, according to Ormond, that secular priests, being educated among the queen's enemies, imbibed their sentiments, and so at their return "did become incendiaries to rebellion;" hence it was neces- sary to prevent their return. The first clause enacted that every ecclesiastic coming into the kingdom V\^as liable to the penalties of 9 Will. III. c. I ; thus including secular as well as regular priests, as also persons harbouring, relieving, or concealing ecclesiastics. The duration of this Act was in the first instance limited to a period of fourteen years, but its provisions were subsequently made perpetual. As a pendent to the Act for preventing Popish priests from coming into the kingdom, a Bill was prepared for register- ing the Popish clergy. ^ By this Bill all secular priests in Ireland were required to go before a magistrate, register their names, and take out a licence. The register was to include abode, age, parish, time and place of receiving orders, and the name of the prelate from whom the orders were received. The priest registering was required to give two sureties to be of good behaviour, and not to remove to another part of the kingdom. The penalty was committal ^ 8 Anne, c. 3. ^ 2 Anne, c. 7, 32 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1703 to gaol pending transportation, and the offender was liable to the same penalties as bishops and Popish regulars. Similar penalties were imposed in case of return. The Bill also provided an annual stipend of ^20 (afterwards increased to ^30) for converted priests, to be levied off the county in the manner of grand jury cess. Parish priests were not allowed to keep a curate or assistant. In order to ensure the enforcement of the Act, it was to be given in charge at every assizes, and the list publicly read. But the chief measure of the session was the Act to prevent the growth of Popery. The suggestion of the measure and its principle were the work of the English Council. In the preamble, as it was laid before the House of Commons on November 19, 1703, one of the causes put forward as justifying the necessity for fresh legislation was the leniency and moderation which had hitherto been shown in carrying out the repressive laws ; another was that emissaries of the Church of Rome were perverting Protestants from their religion. Accordingly, following the precedent of the English Act, seducing a Protestant from his faith was made a new crime, both in the seducer and the seduced. The Foreign Education Act was extended and made more stringent. Catholic parents were com- pelled to make competent provision for the maintenance of their Protestant children ; and, in order that the land should pass away wholly from Catholics, no land which had been at any time in, or should hereafter come into, the possession of a Protestant was allowed to come into the possession of a Papist. The committee proposed that a Catholic should not be in a position to recover such land under any circumstances, though they proposed to leave Catholics free to inherit from one another. In the case, however, of a Catholic having real or personal property, and all his children being Catholic, the estate was to be gavelled — that is, divided among the children, share and share alike ; but should the eldest son conform within twelve months after the death of his father, or, if under age, twelve months after coming of age, he might take the estate as heir-at-law. The committee also recommended i 1703] ACT TO PREVENT THE GROWTH OF POPERY 33 that the dispensing power given to the Lord-Lieutenant in the disarming Act should be withdrawn. The Articles of Galway and Limerick, which entitled Catholics to hold and acquire property in those towns, and abide therein, were wholly altered. All Catholics then living in the towns named might continue to reside there on giving security for their good behaviour ; but for the future no Catholic should acquire property in Limerick or Galway, or reside there. There was also a clause disabling Catholics from voting at elections. These were the substantial provisions of the Bill as it was transmitted to England. In the form in which it came back, some changes were made; but, except in two ways, the chief features of the Bill were unaltered. The changes so far were not favourable to the Catholics, while they put the Protestant Dissenters in a worse position than before. The preamble was altered so as not to imply any leniency on the part of the administration in the past. The penalties of the Foreign Education Act were extended to all Catliolics who sent their children abroad without a licence. The change affecting Dissenters only was two- fold : first, that only Protestants belonging to the Estab- lished Church could claim a benefit under the Act, so that if an estate should lapse to a Presbyterian, as next of kin, he could not enjoy it, and it would pass to the next heir, no matter how remote, who happened to be a member of the Established Church ; and, secondly, the Test Act was imported into the Bill. It followed that no Dissenter could hold any office or place under the Crown above the rank of a constable, unless he took the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper according to the rite of the Established Church. Thus at one blow the Independents, Presbyterians, Hugue- nots, Quakers, and other Dissenters were excluded from the army, the militia, the civil ser\'ice, the municipal cor- porations, and the magistracy ; there being no Toleration Act in Ireland, the Dissenters were thus reduced very nearly to the level of the Papists. Before the Bill passed in the Irish Parliament, the Catholics prayed to be heard by counsel in opposition to it. C 34 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1703 The petition was granted, and three gentlemen pleaded at the bar of the House — Sir Theobald Butler, who had been solicitor-general to James II. in Tyrconnel's administra- tion, Counsellor Malone, and Sir Stephen Rice, who had been chief baron under the same administration. Their case rested, of course, mainly on the Articles of Limerick — the lawyers being themselves protected persons — and was ably argued, especially by Sir Theobald Butler. The answer on the part of the Commons rested mainly on the familiar argument, "That any rights which the Papists pretended to be taken from them by the Bill were in their own power to remedy by conforming, as in prudence they ought to do, and that they ought not to blame any but themselves." It was further urged that the passing of this Bill would not be a breach of the Treaty of Limerick, because the persons therein comprised were only to be put into the same state as they were in, in the reign of Charles II., and because in that reign there was no law in force which hindered the passing of any other law thought needful for the safety of the Government. Lastly, it was argued that the House was of opinion that the passing of this Bill was needful at present for the security of the kingdom, and that there was not anything in the Articles of Limerick to prevent its passing. The same counsel pleaded before the House of Lords also, and there the right of a legislature to make any laws it thinks necessary for the safety of the State, and the contention that no treaty or previous obligations should tie up the hands of legislators from providing for the public safety, was fully admitted b}?- Sir Stephen Rice, who con- sidered that a legislature had a right to enact any law that may be absolutely needful for the safety and advantage of the public; such a law could not be a breach either of these or any other like articles. But then, such laws ought to be general, and should not single out or affect any one particular part or party of the people, who gave no provocation to any such law, and whose conduct stood hitherto unimpeachable ever since the ratification of the aforesaid Articles of Limerick. To make any law that 1703] THE ACT PASSED 35 shall single out any particular part of the people from the rest, and take from them what by right of birth, and all the preceding laws of the land, had been conformed to and entailed upon them, will be an apparent violation of the original institution of all right, and an ill precedent to any that hereafter might dislike either the present or any other settlement which it should be in their power to alter, the consequences of which it is hard to imagine. The Lord Chancellor summed up the arguments on both sides ; but, as Southwell's letter, giving an account of the discussion to Nottingham, informs us, the argu- ments of the CathoHc advocates produced, as might be expected, no result. "The arguments," he wrote, "were considered and answered, and all the clauses against the Papists passed unanimously till we came to the Sacra- mental Test, on which we had a two hours' debate. It was objected that we were creating a new distinction of Church and Dissent, when there ought to be only that of Protestant and Papist ; that it weakened our Protestant interest when we were provoking the Papists afresh." He added, " That in cases of public danger all people were obliged, in duty and interest, to oppose the common enemy ; that, if ever we hoped a union with England, it could not be expected they would ever do it, but upon the same terms they stand upon ; and that in England the Dissenters have both writ for and preached confor- mity when it was for their interest and advantage." ^ The Bill was carried in the House of Commons by a very large majority, the only opposition being on the Sacra- mental Test. Not a single member of either House said a word in opposition to the clauses against the Catholics. The Act for the registration of priests was passed at the same time, but the Oath of Abjuration was not as yet insisted upon ; but, as Mr. Froude says, " Had the execu- tion of the law been equal to its verbal severity, it would still have sufficed to extinguish Irish Popery within the compass of a generation." " But under the circumstances 1 Froude, op. cif., vol. i. pp. 315, 316. 2 Ibid., p. 317. / 36 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1704- it could not be enforced ; nor did the colonists want it enforced. If the whole of the Catholics had become Pro- testant, the Ascendency would lose their advantages. One of the great central facts of Irish history is that the colonists never wished the Catholics to become Protestant. So in earlier times they did not wish them to become English — they did all they could to prevent it. The spoils in both cases would have been less. With the view of stimulating magistrates to enforce this Act, the Irish House of Commons passed a resolution declaring " that all magistrates and other persons what- soever who neglected or omitted to put it in due execu- tion, were betrayers of the liberties of the kingdom." ^ A further resolution was passed declaring " that prosecuting and informing against Papists was an honourable service to the Government." The trade of informer, being now an " honourable " one, became also a lucrative one, and the business grew very active. In the year 1707, the union of Scotland with England was carried b}^ a majority of one hundred and ten. The Irish House of Lords again addressed the queen in favour of a similar union between Ireland and England; but the Irish House of Commons did not favour the project — indeed, it had grown in disfavour — and the English minis- try were, if not indifferent to it, afraid to rouse the jealousy of the English trading classes. The union created great discontent in Scotland among all classes, but especially among the Presbyterians of the south-west of Scotland, where a widespread conspiracy was discovered in the following J^ear. It was assumed that a similar conspirac}' must hav#^|pisted in Ireland, and accordingly forty-one Catholic noblemen and gentlemen were arrested and imprisoned for s5me time in Dublin Castle, without any charge being preferred against them. The same panic which led the Government to arrest the harmless peers and gentlemen, whose only desire was to be forgotten, made them see treasonable meetings in favour of the Pretender, in pilgrimages to holy wells, hurling, ^ Commons Journals, March 17, 1704. i7o8] RECALL OF ORMOND 37 mummers, and all gatherings of the peasantry. Once for all, it should be remembered that Jacobitism was a Scotch and English sect, to which the Irish never really belonged. The alarm about the Pretender was the immediate cause of the forging of another link in the penal chain, namely, the enacting of a law in 1708 to prevent Catholics from acting as grand jurors, unless it appeared that a sufficient number of Protestants were not forthcoming ; and also to provide that in all trials of issues {i.e. by petty juries) on any presentment, indictment, information, or action, on any statute, for any offence committed by Papists in breach of such laws, the plaintiff or prosecutor might challenge any Papist returned as juror, and assign as a cause that he was a Papist. The plan of the descent of the Pretender upon Scotland is said to have included a landing of French troops at Galwa}^, in case of any partial success in Scotland ; the Government, we are told, had information of the intended plan. In the event of some success in Scotland, it is possible that a landing might have taken place in Galway or some other place, and it may be admitted that, in conversa- tion among the Jacobites in France, the probability of some such landing may have been mentioned; but there is no evidence to show that the Irish abroad or at home intended to take part in the plans of the Pretender. The depressed and declining state of trade, and the emigration of the most energetic and independent of the artisans, many, indeed most, of whom were at this time Dissenters, coupled with the rumours of the threatened invasion of Scotland by the Pretender, convinced the Government that the imposition of the Sacramental Test was a blunder. The Earl of Pembroke was accordingly sent over in the summer of 1707, in place of Ormond, to endeavour to get rid of the Test; with him came as secretary Mr. George Doddington, whose correspondence throws much light on the state of things at the time. Pembroke's speech at the opening of Parliament dwelt chiefly on the danger from the overwhelming numbers of 38 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1709- the Catholics, and on the necessity of uniting all Protestants against them, and also of finding some additional means of securing the Protestant interest and introducing harmony and unanimity amongst all sections of Protestants. The supplies were freely voted, but the question of the Test, for which Pembroke had been specially sent, made no progress. Doddington considered the removal of the Test impracticable, but thought no difficulty would arise from another turn of the Popery screw. An amendment of the Popery Act was accordingly proposed and carried through the House of Commons with much enthusiasm. The plea alleged for the necessity of fresh legislation was the skill with which the attorneys had succeeded in evading the Act of 1704, and the necessity for improving the machinery of the former Act. In the House of Lords some modifications were made in the Bill which did not commend themselves to the Commons. These modifications were accepted in England ; but, as amended, the Bill was rejected by the Irish colonists as not being stringent enough. The colonists^ were dissatisfied with Pembroke; they desired a more extreme Ascendency man. So in May 1709 he was replaced by Thomas, Earl of Wharton — one of the most profligate politicians ever engaged in the government of Ireland. Wharton promptly proceeded to carry out the objects for which he was sent to Ireland, namely, to pass a second Popery Act, to repeal the Test Act, and unite the colonists against the " common enemy," the native Irish. In his address to Parliament he dwelt on the inequality in number between the Protestants and Papists of Ireland, and suggested that further enactments were necessary to confirm the law for preventing the growth of Popery, and establish a good understanding among all denominations of Protestants. The Commons responded to this invitation to increase the severity of the 1 A Tory pamphlet of the period of the Duke of Shrewsbury's viceroyalty defines this much-used term thus : " They know very well that Atheists, Deists, Soci7iians, and Sectarists of all sorts go under the name of Pi-otestaiits, and those with the truly oi-thodox of the Established Church make up the ^Protestant interest' of that kingdom" ("A Long History of a Certain Session of a Certain Parliament, in a Certain Kingdom," 1714, p. 15). i7io] COMPLETION OF THE PENAL CODE 39 penal code. A Bill to explain and amend an Act intituled " An Act to prevent the further growth of Popery " was passed without delay. This Act was heralded by a pro- clamation ordering all registered priests to take the Abjura- tion Oath before March 25, 17 10, under pain oi prcBinunire, The penal code was now practically complete, and was, as Edmund Burke described it, "A machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people and the de- basement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." ^ While the Irish Catholics as the " common enemy " were the chief objects of penal legislation, the Dissenters, who constituted perhaps two-thirds of the whole colonial interest, suffered from many disabilities inflicted upon them by their brethren, the dominant minority of the Established Church. The Dissenters had acted the part of the " mean whites " in America — they helped to oppress the Catholic slaves and support a system of government of which the Established Church planters alone got the profit. When the Popery Bill was before the House of Commons, the ten Presbyterian members all voted for the sections against the growth of Popery, and the Dissenters generally were clamorous for the stringent application of the penal code. They were rewarded for this zeal against the " common enemy " by the insertion in the Bill, when before the English Privy Council, of a section imposing the Sacramental Test upon themselves. The Irish Parlia- ment could not alter a Bill sent from England ; they could only reject it as a whole. Bishop Burnet tells us that the section referred to was inserted for the purpose of wrecking the Bill. This plea has been often used when- ever it was desired to shift the responsibility for some questionable Acts from English ministers to the Irish Parliament. The " English interest " knew they had nothing to fear from the opposition of the insignificant minority of Dissenters in the Irish House of Commons, while, on the other hand, the House of Lords would not ^ Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe. 40 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1710- reject a Bill which gave them the Sacramental Test. They reasoned rightly; the Dissenters made a feeble resistance in the House of Commons, and so the "mean whites" were now in the grip of the bishops, who put the laws in force against them. They very soon cleared out the Presbyterian magistrates of Ulster, and put in their place "men of little estate, youths, new-comers, and clergymen," the sole qualification being regular attendance at church. Out of twelve Aldermen in Derry, ten were Nonconformists, and these were deprived of their offices. The entire cor- poration of Belfast were superseded. The most objection- able rite of the Presbyterians in the eyes of the bishops was their marriage, which they regarded simply as a licence to sin. It was even announced in some dioceses that the children of all Protestants not married in the parish church would be regarded as bastards. Nay, even some bishops are said to have gone so far as to prosecute in their courts many persons of reputation as fornicators for cohabiting with their own wives.^ Wharton's Government connived at the non-enforce- ment of the laws against the Presbyterians. But they soon realised that connivance was not liberty, for, on venturing in a missionary spirit to occupy the field left by Church pluralists, they roused the anger of the bishops, especially at Drogheda, where they addressed a congre- gation composed of " base persons, coopers, shoemakers, and tailors," who were threatened with the stocks ; the preachers were arrested and bound over by the mayor to take their trial at the assizes. The Lord-Lieutenant ordered a r/o//e prosequi to be entered. Jonathan Swift entered the field against the Dissenters, and argued that they were the only real political danger to which Ireland was exposed. The Catholics he considered " harmless as women and children, powerless to hurt, and doomed to certain disappearance in one or two generations." The House of Lords complained to the queen that the Presbyterians were the cause of all the disorders in Ireland, and that Lord Wharton was standing by them. The ^ Froude, op. cit., vol. i. p. 319. I7I31 PERSECUTION OF DISSENTERS 41 Presbyterian synod, in their defence, charged the bishops with " having placed an odious mark of infamy upon at least half the Protestants of Ireland." The complaint of the Lords coincided with the ministerial crisis by which the ministry of Godolphin and Sunderland fell and Boling- broke and the Tories came in, so Wharton was recalled. The Tories having for the time a majority in the English House of Commons, an address of both Houses to the queen was voted on November 7, 1711, complaining of Wharton in reference to the Drogheda affair, and also charging the Presbyterians with ** tyranny in threatening and ruining members who left them ; in denying them the common offices of Christianity ; in printing and pub- lishing that the Sacramental Test is only an engine to advance State faction, and to debase religion to serve mean and unworthy purposes." They prayed her Majesty to witlihold the Regium Donum.^ The last days of the Parliament of the penal laws were spent in a characteristic quarrel between the Lords and Commons, arising out of a vote of ;^5000 to Trinity College, Dublin, for building a library as a reward for the zeal of the Provost and Fellows in having expelled a Fellow named Forbes because he " aspersed the memory of King W^illiam." In this quarrel the Presbyterians got some hard knocks, and the miserable alms of £1200, called the Regium Donum, was withdrawn in compliance with the wish of the House of Lords. The native Irish were assumed to be so completely outside the constitution at this time that there was no need even to abuse them. So anxious were the colonists to shut out the Irish people from the faint reflection of freedom which a knowledge of even the debates of Parlia- ment would give them, that an order of the Flouse of Commons was made in 171 3, "that the sergeant-at-arms should take into custody all Papists that were in, or should presume to come into, the galleries." ^ A new feud had arisen before the end of the session, 1 A grant to the Presbyterians, as to which see Part III., J>os^. - Commons Journals, vol. iii. 42 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1714 between the Government of the Duke of Shrewsbury and the corporation of Dublin, by which the city was left without municipal government for nearly two years, and the courts of lav/ brought to a standstill. As a sequel to this dispute the Commons addressed the queen to remove Sir Constantine Phipps, an English Jacobite, who was Lord Chancellor, and whom they accused of favouring Popery — that is, of not deciding causes as they wished — and threatened to impeach him.^ The House of Commons passed the money Bill, but appended to it a list of grievances which was in reality an indictment of the Government. The Lord-Lieutenant refused to accept the supplies under such conditions. As no arrangement could be made between the parties, the Government dispensed with the supplies, and the Parlia- ment was prorogued until the autumn, never to meet again. The Bill to prevent the growth of schism was then before the English Parliament. Bolingbroke himself moved in the House of Lords that the provisions of the Bill should be extended to Ireland. The Bill passed, but on the day the Act was to come into operation Queen Anne died, and with her the Parliament of the penal laws. George I. came peaceably to the throne, and the Parliament which he summoned continued the polic}'' of its predecessors. Ireland was so far out of English politics that the dominance of Whigs or Tories in the larger island made little difference to the wretchedness of the smaller, or to the oppression inflicted on Catholics and Noncon- formists. Scarcely any considerable event ^ marks the period which elapsed between the death of Anne and the beginning of the rule of Primate Boulter, to be described in the next chapter. ^ " A Long History," etc. ' The Irish took no part in the Jacobite movements of 17 15. IV PERIOD OF DESOLATION; GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND BY AN ENGLISH ADMINISTRATION AND A PARLIAMENT AND MAGISTRACY OF COLONIAL LANDLORDS The penal code was in full force at the opening of the Hanoverian period. At the close of each session of Parliament a resolution was passed declaring ''That it is the indispensable duty of all magistrates and officers to put the laws made to prevent the growth of Popery in Ireland in due execution." In his speech proroguing Parliament in 172 1, the Lord-Lieutenant, the Duke of Grafton, recommended both Houses to keep a watchful eye on the Papists, as he had reason to believe that the number of Popish priests was dail}' increasing; and, when Parliament reassembled in 1723, he recommended fresh legislation against them. On this occasion a series of resolutions was reported by the Commons, chiefly relating to priests, but also including the status of Nonconformists. When lawyers began to conform in considerable numbers, consternation seized the Protestant interest. Primate Boulter expressed his alarm in several letters, and exaggerated the number of con- formists. A Bill was prepared to enact that a Catholic who conformed to the Established Church could not hold any office or practise as a solicitor or attorney until seven years had elapsed, and then only on producing a certificate of having taken the Sacrament thrice in each 3^ear of his probationership, and on having duly enrolled his certificate in the proper office. This Bill appears to have been based on an abortive Bill introduced in the Parliament of 1719, which included a clause for the branding with a hot iron on the face of all unregistered priests and friars arrested. 44 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1714- For this punishment some ingenious member of the Privy Council substituted castration. The clause was struck out in England by Lord Stanhope, owing, it is said, to the remonstrance of the French minister, Cardinal Fleury, though it is asserted by some that such interference was not necessary. The heads of the Bill of 1723 had been adopted, and were presented in state by the Speaker to the viceroy, with a special request that he would recommend them to the Enghsh ministers. The Duke of Grafton replied that, as he had much at heart a matter which he had himself advised, the Commons might depend on his carrying out their wishes. The Bill was not returned. At the close of the session the Duke of Grafton consoled Parlia- ment for the loss of the Bill, attributing that catastrophe to the lateness of the time at which it was introduced; and he encouraged them to stem the growing evil by a vigorous execution of the laws, and especially by putting into the commission of the peace only those who had distinguished themselves by their steady adherence to the Protestant interest. Primate Boulter did not, however, lose sight of his project of driving Papists out of the profession of the law, and accordingly succeeded later in passing into law a similar Bill, with the term of probation reduced, however, to five years. In the early part of this period the Lord-Lieutenant resided chiefly in England, visiting Ireland every other year while Parliament was sitting, the government mean- time being carried on by Lords Justices, one of whom was usually the special confidant or agent of the English ministry, and who in turn managed affairs through some of the great magnates who owned the greater part of the Parliamentary representation, and who were known as " undertakers." Here it is well to remind the reader that the Parliamentary representation was a kind of property, so that Parliament did not even represent the colonial interest, but only a small minority of the minority of the people of Ireland. The chief business of the managers of the "king's business" was comprised under four heads: 1724] PRIMATE BOULTER 45 <^i) to pass the money Bill — that is, to get supply passed; (2) to prevent the colony from indulging in any aspiration of independence of England ; C3) to prevent any interference with English trade or other interests; and (4) to prevent the further growth of Popery. One of the most successful of the managers of the undertakers was Hugh Boulter, an English bishop who, in 1724, was translated from Bristol to the primatial see of Armagh. For the eighteen years until his death in 1742, during which he was thirteen times Lord Justice, he was practically the ruler of Ireland and the dispenser of govern- ment patronage. He never lost sight of the four main duties of an English ruler in Ireland which are enumerated above. The Irish Protestants thought to monopolise all power, whereas they had only made themselves stewards for the English Government. In one of the earliest of Primate Boulter's letters, he lays bare one of the chief maxims of British rule in Ireland, and one, too, which he carefully followed — keep the different sections and parties of the nation asunder.^ Throughout the whole of his cor- respondence he never loses sight of the other chief maxim of English government in Ireland — fill all the principal places with Englishmen. Writing to Lord Townshend, he says, " The English here think the only w^ay to keep things quiet here and make them easy to the ministry, is by filling the great places with natives of England."^ The Church party, who formed only about one-third of the Protestants of the kingdom, ferociously persecuted the Catholics all through the reign of George I. in every way the code permitted, and indulged in the sport of priest- hunting, in which they employed as priest-catchers the ^ See his letters to the Duke of Newcastle, January 19, 1724 [1725], Letters, vol. i. p. 8. Primate Boulter carried on a large correspondence. A number of his letters were collected by Mr. Ambrose Phillips, who had been his secretary, and deposited in the library of Christ Church, Oxford. These have been published in two volumes. But they were carefully sifted, those relating to the most important events not being amongst them. A complete collection is a desideratum. ^ April 25, 1725, vol. i. p. 21. Pages might be filled with extracts from the primate's letters inculcating this maxim. 46 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1724- dregs of another persecuted race, the Jews, especially Portuguese Jews, whose sufferings and degradation had made them fit instruments of persecution. No true idea can be formed of the kind of persecution endured b}^ the Irish people in those sad times from the general state of things in Dublin and other large towns, bad as it occasionally was there ; it was the helpless peasants in remote districts who alone could tell what the lawless petty oligarchy of middlemen, agents, bailiffs, and yeomen were capable of doing with perfect impunity. The zeal of the Church party against the common enemy did not make them more tolerant of the Nonconformist constituent of the Protestant interest, although it formed nearly two-thirds of the whole; notwithstanding, too, that it S3'mpathised with, and assisted so far as it was permitted, in the persecution of the common enemy. By means of the Sacramental Test the Dissenters were shut out of the army, the navy, the civil service, the magistracy ; the ruling Church refused to recognise their marriages, and forbade them to have schools of their own — though in the two latter matters the law was rarely enforced ; nevertheless, it paralysed their efforts to improve themselves. In spite of their zeal and loyalty at the time of the Pretender's invasion of Scotland, the return of the Whigs to power, and the support of the viceroy, who wished that the only distinction which should be recognised was that of Protestant and Papist, the Sacramental Test was not abolished. The claims of the Presbyterians were revived in the viceroyalty of the Duke of Bolton in 1719, the only result being a miserable Toleration Bill, allowing them to worship in their own chapels when they could get sites to build them on, but leaving them under all their civil disabilities. Even this slight concession was gained by reviving and enlarging a great evil, which, despite the efforts of Primate Boulter and the English interest, had begun to fall into abeyance — the filling up of all high offices with EngHshmen. The Established Church clergy were at this time so Jacobite that they omitted the names of the memibers of the royal family in their service. The Whig administration wished. 1729] DESOLATION OF IRELAND 47 therefore, to leaven the bench of bishops with English partisans. A few years later Primate Boulter complains that if an Englishman were not appointed to the vacant see of Cashel, there would be thirteen Irish to nine English bishops, " which we " {i.e. the Lord Chancellor and himself, both Englishmen) "think will be a dangerous situation." ^ This gradual filtering of Englishmen into Church benefices, judgeships, and, in fact, into all offices of emolument, kept the English interest alive and con- tinuously recruited the Castle set. Out of these fresh importations new families of gentry burgeoned, or, in the case of a fat bishopric or chief judgeship, or other high office, they blossomed perchance into nobility. The destruction of manufacturing industry, the restric- tion on trade, the falling of the land out of cultivation, the conversion of arable land into pasture, the drain from ab- sentee rents and pensions, and the cost of imported luxuries, had gradually impoverished the kingdom to an alarming extent. Villages and farm-steadings surrounded by culti- vated fields were now replaced by long stretches of treeless, houseless country, occupied by cattle and sheep, while, on the inferior land, wretched, half-naked peasantry living in holes or hovels, practised a poor system of husbandry to provide rack-rents, which were increased upon the least sign of improvement either in the appearance of the land or of the dwelling or dress of the peasants. The houses of the gentry were mostly mere thatched cabins. The peasantry were always on the brink of starvation, and were now entering upon a period of famines — five or six in the course of twenty years — culminating in the dire famine and its accompanying pestilence, or hunger-fever,' of 1741, in which 400,000 persons perished. Even before the com- mencement of the famine period, the frightful desolation of the country and the misery of the people excited the notice of Dean Swift, who in 1720 published his first pamphlet on strictly Irish topics: "A Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures." In a letter to Pope, Swift gives us an interesting account of the events connected with this ^ Letter to Lord Carteret, February iS, 17:6 [1727], vol. i. p. 141. 48 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1724- pamphlet, which throws much light on the government of Ireland at the time. "It spread/' he says, "very fast, being agreeable to the sentiments of the whole nation except of those gentlemen having employments or were expectants. Upon which a person in great office here immediately took alarm ; he sent in haste for the chief justice, and informed him of a seditious, factious, and virulent pamphlet lately published with a design of setting the two kingdoms at variance ; directing at the same time that the printer should be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law. Waters, the printer, was prosecuted, the grand juries of the county and city were effectually practised with to represent the said pamphlet with all aggravating epithets, for which they had thanks sent them from England, and their presentments published for several weeks in all the newspapers. The printer was seized and forced to give great bail." The jury returned a verdict of not guilty, ^^ although they had been culled with the utmost industry." The chief justice, who was a zealous loyalist, " sent them back nine times and kept them eleven hours, until, being perfectly tired out, they were forced to leave the matter to the mercy of the judge, by what they call a special verdict."^ The judge, under such circum- stances, did not venture to pass sentence, but decided to have a second trial; but when the Duke of Grafton arrived, he at once ordered a nolle prosequi to be entered. The words in italics show that "jury packing " in political trials is an old institution in Ireland. The conduct of the judge, too, shows the antiquity of some unjudicial exhibitions on the bench. If such things could be done in the first court in the kingdom, what must have been the administration of justice in the petty courts in remote districts ? At the period with which we are dealing, the value of all the coin in circulation did not perhaps exceed ^400,000 ; the copper coinage was deficient, debased, and in great part counterfeit. Owing to the high standard of value of gold relatively to silver, the latter tended to decrease, and the former to increase ; from other causes the increase ^ Swift's Works, vol. ii. p. 549, Bohn's edition. 1729] WOOD'S HALFPENCE 49 of gold was chiefly in large foreign coins. The result was a lack of silver change, and too many large gold coins. Bishop Berkeley alludes to this in one of his queries : "Whether four pounds in small cash may not circulate and enliven an Irish market which many four-pound pieces would permit to stagnate ? " ^ In fact, so hampered was trade on account of the state of the coinage, that wages could not be paid in coin — weavers, for instance, often being paid their wages in cloth, which they were sometimes compelled to exchange for half its value. The Duchess of Kendal, who was notorious for her insatiable greed, and was always looking out for opportunities to gratify it, discovered that Ireland wanted copper money. About 1724 she pro- cured a patent for one William Wood, a large ironmaster and owner of mines, to coin ^^108,000 (Irish) worth of half- pence and farthings. It appears, from the terms of the patent and the price of copper at the time, that the profit on the transaction would have been at least ;^40,ooo, of which a goodly share would no doubt have gone to the duchess. A great clamour arose about this gross and extravagant job. The two Houses of Parliament petitioned the king, the halfpence were refused, and great disgust and annoy- ance were felt at court ; even ministers quarrelled over the matter. After a long delay, but only after an inti- mation that no money Bill would be passed, an answer came to the petition of Parliament asking for the with- drawal of the patent. The answer was evasive — it was, in fact, a transparent device to escape out of the difficulty without making any real concession. An inquiry was pro- mised, which was entrusted to a committee of the English Privy Council; samples of the halfpence were assayed at the Mint, under the direction of Sir Isaac Newton, then Master of the Mint, who reported them to be in accordance with the patent. The committee reported that the king had acted within his prerogative, and that the patent could not be legally withdrawn. The report was sent to Dublin and circulated, and the Government believed the storm had blown over. 1 The Queris/, No. 482. D 50 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1724- It is probable that nothing more would have been heard of the subject had not Dean Swift, in 1724, taken it up. Under the signature of M. B., a drapier, he pub- lished in rapid succession a series of letters and some incidental pieces in which he consigned to everlasting scorn and infamy this miserable job and all connected with it. The unfortunate Wood served as a lay figure, through whom the real culprits were wounded. The whole country got into a wild state of excitement ; no one would take the halfpence. The Duke of Grafton was not con- sidered strong enough to cope with such a storm, so he was recalled, and in 1724 Lord Carteret, one of the ablest statesmen of the Whig party, was sent in his place, to use all means which experience in England had proved suc- cessful in such cases: "corruption and resolution, adroit- ness and good dinners ; ' Burgundy,' * closeting,' and ' palaver.' " ^ Carteret set to work the very day of his arrival — that, too, on which the fourth Drapier letter appeared — to carry out a vigorous policy contrary to the advice of many of his Council. " A vigorous policy in Ireland " always gave satisfaction in England ; so Harding, the printer, was prosecuted. Swift addressed an anonymous letter to the grand jury, who following his advice threw out the bill ; though browbeaten by Chief-Justice Whitshed and sent back to consider their verdict, they persisted in it by a majority of twenty-seven to eleven. The majority were sent for individually in succession and expostulated with, but in vain. The chief-justice was so enraged that he discharged the grand jury contrary to law and precedent. A second grand jury was summoned, but, instead of presenting the printer of the " Drapier's Letters," they presented all persons who had attempted or should endeavour to impose Wood's halfpence upon Ireland as enemies of his Majesty and of the welfare of the kingdom. The Government had now either to yield and withdraw the patent, or to treat the colony as they did the native Irish, and govern the whole country by force. Under the advice 1 Froude, 954 out of ^^76,684.954. 254 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1801- but no attempt was made to raise any part of it in Ireland. With regard to the apportionment of the vast sums raised by loan to the account of either countr}'' as fixed by the Act of Union, there is no proof that it was ever made with even approximate accuracy. In the Parliamentary inquiry into Anglo-Irish accounts that took place half a century afterwards, it was found that " no record was made in the books of the Exchequer of apportionment between the two countries as to what was separate and what was joint." Estimates of the proportion to be borrowed by either country were given to Parliament in the financial statements of the Chancellor of the Exchequer ; but written proof that these estimates were acted upon there is none.^ In 181 5 a select committee of the House of Commons was appointed to consider the financial position of the two countries. The committee reported that, as the Irish debt was now more than two-fifteenths of the British, the con- solidation of their exchequers might now, consistently with the seventh article of the Act of Union, be properly effected. In the following year, a Bill founded on their report was 1 " Report on Irish Taxation," 1864, evidence of Chisholm, vol. ii. p. 319. It is difficult for us to realise the laxity with which the public accounts of Great Britain were kept in those times. The Taxation Committee of 1864 found that till 1822 there had never been a real balance of income with expenditure (p. 16). It will surprise those who suppose that Irishmen are worse men of business than Englishmen or Scotchmen to find that, on the unquestioned authority of the clerk of the exchequer, " accounts of income and expenditure were far more accurately stated in Ireland than in Great Britain, up to the time when the exchequers were amalgamated" (see Appendix to Report, p. 4 1 9. See also Minutes of Evidence, Q. 6385). The following extract from Mr. Chisholm's examination before the Committee of 1864 maybe of interest: " Q. 6398. Therefore, should it happen that the Act of Union directs the payment (of ante-Union debt) to be separate, that was violated in the account that was actually taken, was it not ? Ans. That certainly was not done. Witness proceeds to explain the mode in which the accounts of the joint expenditure were kept : each item was examined as to whether it belonged to joint or to separate expenditure. Q. 6302. When you say this was done, when was it done ? Ans. It was done at the various periods when the accounts for joint expenditure were settled. Q. 6393. What, year by year? Ans. It was not done year by year, certainly. Q. 6394 Was there any account made for eleven years ? Ans. / believe there was no account settled for eleven years." i8i7] CONSOLIDATION OF EXCHEQUERS 255 passed without much discussion. A few remarks were made by Sir J. Newport and others as to the unfair pro- portion of the common burden imposed upon Ireland at the Union, Castlereagh replied in a speech of some hardihood.^ "This," he said, " it had so happened, was the only part of the arrangement which was not objected to at the time. This had been admitted to be conceived in a spirit of indul- gence." He could not have forgotten, but he must have supposed his hearers to have forgotten the indignant pro- tests of the minority in either House of the Irish Parliament. It has been often said that Ireland suffered nothing by the abolition of her exchequer, or even by the undue share of joint taxation laid upon her at the Union, which, by involving her in debt, had led to that abolition. During the sixteen years that her exchequer remained separate she paid to the tax-collector, not what she was bound by the Act of Union to pay, but what she was able to pay ; the tax-gatherer received from her from year to year, not two- fifteenths, but only one-thirteenth of what he received from Great Britain. And although her inability to pay more in- volved her in an enormous debt, yet by the Consolidation Act of 1 8 17 this burden was taken off her shoulders, and transferred to the united kingdoms. But those who reason thus forget some essential condi- tions of the case. They forget that, if Britain was hence- forth to share the debt of Ireland, Ireland was also to share the pre-Union debt of England, from which she had hitherto been free. Ireland, at the beginning of the great war with France, was all but free from debt. Her Par- liament had voted large sums for the war, and she had incurred heavy expenditure in the suppression of the Re- bellion. But even so, at the time of union her debt had not risen beyond one-sixteenth that of Great Britain. Had her share of the joint expenditure been fairly estimated, the sum which was actually collected from her taxpayers during the first sixteen years of the century would have left her financially independent, free or almost free from debt, able to nurse her growing manufactures, as England had nursed ^ " Parliamentary Debates," vol. xxxiv. p. 611. 256 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1801-17 hers in previous centuries, and as other countries, our own colonies included, have done since ; able, therefore, to supply the most urgent of her economic needs — an outlet for that part of her population which the tillage of the soil might fail to support. The Act of Union had provided for the contingency of an Irish surplus, which might be appro- priated for the removal of taxation, or any local purposes which Parliament might approve. Such a surplus, though it could not have accrued during any of the years of war, even had Ireland's proportion of payment been reasonably rated, might well have arisen so soon as the war ceased. Evils for which the remedies attempted have been as vain as they were costly and perilous might have been prevented, or at least they might have been dealt with when more tractable, because less inveterate and overwhelming. By the consolidation of exchequers no such resource was left. There was, indeed, a clause in the Act of Union instructing Parliament to set aside for the purposes of encouraging agriculture or manufacture, or for the maintenance of insti- tutions for pious or charitable purposes, a sum equivalent to that granted by the Irish Parliament on the average of six years previous to the Union. But those years were years of war, and some of them of rebellion. The sum so allotted for industrial purposes had been insignificant.^ For any further needs Ireland had no expectations except from that clause in the Act which made it possible for Parliament to grant " such particular exemption or abatements in Ireland or Scotland as circumstances might appear from time to time to demand." Ireland was still entitled to plead zn forma pauperis. Charitable remissions, charitable doles of all kinds, private and public, have been heaped upon her capriciously, and, in times of excitement, with unstinting hand. But injustice balanced by charity is a miserable substitute for justice. The exemptions granted by the Act of 1816 were for assessed taxes and land-tax. On these exemptions Ireland has been often congratulated. ^ See "Taxation Committee, 1865," Appendix, p. 121. 1812-14] CONSOLIDATION OF EXCHEQUERS 257 The produce of her soil was great ; her exports of beef, bacon, and butter, hides, and corn to England throughout the war were increasing ; yet the land, the source of all this wealth, paid no tax to the State. The owners of it were untaxed for their carriages and horses, their butlers and footmen. No rate was levied as yet for the maintenance of the poor. It was not seen at that time, though it has since become obvious, that the owners of the land were themselves the heaviest burden of the Irish State. The Irish landlord, receiving and spending rent, building no farmhouses, mak- ing no fences or drains, was still identified with the English landlord, who was a sleeping partner always, and sometimes an active partner, in the business of agriculture. Much was said against those of the landlords who were absentees, but it was not seen, till McCulloch explained it to the Com- mission of 1825,^ that the economic difference between residents and absentees, if both one and the other spent their incomes unproductively, was of less moment than was commonly supposed. A tax upon absentees had been pro- posed by Lord Harcourt during his tenure of the Lord- Lieutenancy in 1773, and was again considered by Peel in 1842. A tax on land ownership would have been equally just, and, if wisely levied, with due security against evasion of its incidence, would have been economically sound and beneficial in its results. But to expect the Irish landowners to assent to such a tax was idle. Their own existence, unmodified for half a century to come by any official recog- nition of the rights of tenants, was a heavier tax than any other. The underground agrarian conspiracies, which, in default of equitable government when lawful association has been crushed, have been the Irish peasant's sole defence against starvation, became at the close of the war unusually active. The average price of wheat, which in 181 2 had been £6, and in 181 3 £$ per quarter, fell in 18 14 to £;^, 12s., and ^ " Evidence before Select Committee of House of Commons on State of Ireland, 1825," pp. 807-838. R 258 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1814 remained at that lower level for the two following 3'ears.^ The price of bread might seem of small moment to the peasants, the majority of whom could never afford to eat it. But when corn paid the rent, the fall in price brought ruin. To keep up rents, arable land was converted into pasture, and the cottier tenants were evicted wholesale. At this time, moreover, the thirty-year leases granted during the years that followed the relaxation of the penal laws in 1 778 were falling in. Few were the landlords who, like Lord Fitzwilliam, recognised any preferential claim of their tenants to renewal. The majority put their land to auction, and leased it to the highest bidder. The new leaseholders extorted the last penny from the cottier, and then got rid of him, to find another, if they could, to take his place. If the terror inspired by the Caravats and the Carders hindered " strangers " from bidding for vacant farms, and thus offered the sole available defence against ruinous competition, what wonder if the homeless peasant joined their ranks ? The time when statesmen were to acknow- ledge that tenants had rights was half a century distant. From 1812 to 1818 Peel was Irish secretary. He had entered Parliament three years before, as member for the close borough of Cashel, at the age of twenty-one. Though he did not come with the younger Pitt's prestige, yet much was looked for from him ; and if he could not initiate a new Irish policy, yet he might at least have seen facts at first hand, and have taught others to see them. But since the Union many batteries and outworks had been added to the fabric known as Dublin Castle, now no longer con- trolled by a Dublin Parliament; and Peel, like other chief secretaries and viceroys after him, saw no light but such as passed through its loopholes. In the summer of 18 14, Peel brought in two Coercion Bills. The first, entitled "The Superintending Magistrates 1 Average price of wheat I8I2 122 8 I8I3 100 6 I8I4 72 I I8I5 63 8 I8I6 76 2 i8i4] DISTURBANCES— COERCION ACTS 259 Bill," enabled the Lord-Lieutenant to declare a district disturbed, to appoint a superintending magistrate with a salary of ^700 a year, and a staff of special constables, and to charge the cost upon the county. The Bill passed rapidly through all its stages, and was read a third time on July 5.^ Three days afterwards he took the stronger step of reviving the Insurrection Act of 1807, which in 1 8 10 had been allowed to expire. In Peel's Bill there were a few slight modifications, but it contained the well- known clauses authorising arrest of suspected persons found outside their houses between sunset and sunrise, closing public-houses after nine, permitting domiciliary visits of magistrates, dispensing with trial by jury, and re-enacting the transportation clauses. He remarked, when introducing the Bill, that " in those parts of Ireland where the laws had been administered with the greatest severity, and where the greatest number of convictions had taken place, the terror arising from these convictions had hardly survived the cause, when new combinations of a more extensive and dangerous character had come to birth ; and these combinations were carried on with a degree of secrecy that defied the law as it at present existed." He said that twenty counties were disturbed, and read letters from Roscommon and West Meath, detailing the outrages of Caravats and Carders. Some of these statements were ludicrous exaggerations,^ but that others were as true as they were terrible is as certain as the existence of the causes which led to their commission. The symptoms were driven inwards ; the sources of disease remained untouched. It will be seen afterwards that they were intensified. The Whigs made a few protests against the suppression ^ " Parliamentary Debates," vol. xxviii. pp. 163, 532. 2 Mr. Baron Fletcher, in his charge to the grand jury of Wexford in this year, quotes the following specimen of the exaggerated stories then current : — "Such is the disturbed state of Ireland that one of the judges of assize upon the Leinster circuit, Mr. Justice Fletcher, in coming from Kilkenny to Clonmel, was pelted by stones in the town of Collan, and owed his safety to the dragoons that escorted him." On reading this statement the judge made inquiry, and found that a stone had indeed been thrown at his escort of five dragoons by a child of seven years old. This, he observes, was the entire outrage. 26o TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1815-16 of trial by jury. An amendment was proposed to limit the operation of the Bill to a year. But no division was taken, and the Bill passed the third reading unchanged.^ In the Upper House a few remarks were made by Lord Stanhope as to the hardship, pointed out by Wakefield five years before, of forcing the occupying tenant to pay his rent twice over when the middleman became bankrupt. But Lord Redesdale's reply was held to be conclusive : " Such was the law in this country ; and, although it was the cause of discontent, such were the contracts, and it would be improper and unjust to alter them." He found it in the bond, and there was no Portia to refute him.- In the following year, 181 5, disturbances had not dimin- ished. Applications were made by the magistrates of many counties to put the Insurrection Act in force. In the south- ern counties it was actually enforced. In the autumn Tip- perary and Limerick were occupied by a large military force. Several attacks were made on the escort guarding the mail. In the spring following, an attempt was made by Sir J. Newport to bring about an inquiry into the state of Ireland. He moved an address to the prince regent, stating that "the need of keeping a force of 25,000 men in Ireland in time of peace obliges us to consider its state as distressing and dangerous. We have granted repres- sive powers; we wish deliberate examination of the evils, and of the source whence they originate." Peel replied. His speech was a mere echo from the Castle, without an}^ sign of insight or judgment of his own. Disturbances, magnified when coercion was at stake, were minimised when inquiry was imminent. The north, he said, was tranquil but for the difficulties connected with illicit distilleries. The west was tolerably quiet. So was Leinster, and so on the whole was Munster also. Tippe- rary. King's County, and Limerick were alone disturbed. It was difficult, he continued, to give the House an idea of the exact nature of these disturbances. They had no precise or definite cause. He had no wish to depreciate ^ "Parliamentary Debates," 1814 (vol. xxviii.), July S, 13, 20. - Ibid., vol. xxviii. p. S63. i8i4] JUDGE FLETCHER'S CHARGE OF 1814 261 Irish virtues. The Irish had many good qualities, but in those districts there was " a general confederacy in crime, ... a settled and uniform system of guilt, accompanied by horrible and monstrous perjuries such as could not be found in any civilised country." He did not see any purpose that could be served by inquiry. Much harm was being done by the press. Catholic Emancipation had been spoken of, but he was convinced it would rather aggravate than mitigate the evil. He moved, as an amendment, that Government should lay before the House a statement of the disturbances in Ireland, and of the measures adopted for their suppression. The amendment was adopted by 187 votes against 104.^ And yet the obscurity which veiled the state of Ireland from Peel's vision would have been dispelled had he listened to the language used officially by a judge of assize in the very year when his Coercion Bills were passed. In the autumn of 18 14 Mr~ Baron Fletcher came to Wexford, and gave to the grand jury of that county such a charge as judges have not often ventured to de- liver. He had been, he said, on circuit for many years in every part of Ireland. Conspiracy against the Govern- ment, treasonable correspondence with a foreign foe, he was convinced that there was none. But widespread dis- turbance there assuredly was ; and manifold causes, deep- rooted and hitherto neglected, had conspired to create it. What these causes were he then explained. He spoke of the high rents of land, driven by high prices and by competition to amounts far beyond what culture could repay ; of the inevitable resort to illicit distilleries as a means of making up the deficiency; of the connivance at this evil by the resident gentry, because it ensured ready markets for corn and guaranteed the rent. He spoke of the shameless toleration of Orange associations, whose members were allowed to frequent the fairs and markets with arms in their hands, under the pretext of self-defence, but with the lurking view of inviting the attacks of the Ribbonmen, confident that, armed as they were, they ^ "Parliamentary Debates," vol. xxxiv. pp. 11-75. 262 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1816 would overcome defenceless opponents and put them down. *' These associations," he said, " poison the very fountains of justice, and even magistrates under their influence have in too many instances violated their duty and their oaths." He dwelt on the peculations of the grand juries, assessing their counties for the benefit of their friends ; on the harassing cruelty of the tithe-proctor, pressing hardest on those who did most to improve their land ; lastly, on the conduct of absentee landlords, extracting through their agents the uttermost penny of the value of the lands. " If a lease happen to fall," he said, " they let the farm by public auction to the highest bidder. No gratitude for past services, no preference of the fair offer, no predilection for the ancient tenantry, be they ever so deserving ; but, if the highest price be not acceded to, the depopulation of an entire tract of country ensues. What, then, is the wretched peasant to do ? Chased from the spot where he had first drawn his breath, incapable of procuring any other means of existence, can we be surprised that a peasant of unen- lightened mind and uneducated habits should rush on the perpetration of crime, followed by the punishment of the rope and the gibbet ? Nothing, as they imagine, remains for them, thus harassed and thus destitute, but with strong hand to deter the stranger from intruding on their farms, and to extort from the weakness and terror of their land- lords, from whose gratitude or good feeling they have failed to win it, a preference for their ancient tenantry." ^ Then he passed to the remedies. Was there no method of alla3ang the discontent of the people, and of hindering them from flying in the face of the law ? Was there no remedy but Act of Parliament after Act of Parliament in quick succession framed for coercion and punishment ? Was the Irish peasant so incurably debased as the English traveller, passed on from one country squire to another, all of them interested in concealing from him the true state of the country, and poisoning his ear with amusing false- hoods, was taught to believe? Remove its causes, the 1 Mr. Baron Fletcher's "Charge to the Wexford Grand Jury in 1814." See Appendix to Animal Register ior 1S14. i8i6] EJECTMENT ACT OF 1816 263 disease will disappear. Let landlords build their tenants' houses, and see that they have at least what they have not as yet, "the comforts of an English sow." Let ab- sentees come back ; let the tithe system be revised ; purify the grand jury presentments from gross jobbery ; but over and above all these things reform the magistracy. Equal and impartial administration of justice was what the peasant needed ; justice, which the rich man pursues till it be at- tained, but which, that it may benefit the cottager, must be brought home to his door. The commission of the peace in every county in the kingdom should be examined. During times of rebellion and war men have crept into it who ought not to remain. The needy adventurer, the hunter for preferment, the intemperate zealot, the trader in false loyalty, the jobbers of absentees, — these men should be expunged from the roll. The Coercion Acts revived this year had entrusted the magistracy with terrible powers. Let men be chosen who would not use these powers as he had known them used, for their own personal advantage.^ Judge Fletcher's words brought hope, it may be, to many a despairing spirit. But they were not audible beyond the Irish Channel. Peel was not content with thwarting Newport's motion for inquiry into the state of Ireland. A Bill was brought in^ and passed, without at- tracting any notice or discussion thought worthy of being recorded in the Parliamentary chronicles, which, as though the power of the landlord to depopulate tracts of country by eviction were not large enough, made the work easier and swifter. The preamble recited that landlords suffered loss by tenants running away in arrears and deserting their tenements ; that by the present process ejectments cost more than the tenement was worth ; that a less expensive remedy was wanted ; and that it would be convenient to 1 " I have seen times," said the judge, "when persons who, thinking tlie lives named ia their tenants' leases were lasting somewhat too long, have, by the aid of such a law, found means to recommend a trip across the Atlantic to the persons thus unreasonably attached to life ; and thus achieved the down- fall of a beneficial lease, and a comfortable rise of their income in consequence. Such things have occurred ; I have known the fact." 2 56 Geo. III. c. 88. 264 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1816 give more summary powers by process of civil bill before the assistant barristers of counties. It was provided that, if the tenant was in arrears for half a year, or if he deserted, or left his land vmcultivated, or carried off stock, proceed- ings of this more summary kind might be taken against him. Two justices were first to survey the premises and see that they were in the state described. As to the rent that might be due, they were to take the landlord's affidavit. They were then to sign a certificate, Vv^hich the landlord was to serve with the process. If the tenant failed to appear or to prove his case, the landlord was to be put in possession. The fifteenth section of the Act gave the Irish landlord what English landlords had long held,-^ the right of seizing growing crops in distress for arrears of rent. This poor remnant of tenant right, v/hich the Irish peasantry had retained, was snatched away. The effect of the Act was that the peasant who had sown his potatoes and oats in the spring, and crossed the Channel in the early summer to eke out his poor livelihood and earn his rent by haymaking in the English counties, came back to find his cottage unroofed, his crops sold, and his wife and children begging their bread. To authorise this summary procedure for arrears of six months was to hand over the tenantry bound hand and foot, for their landlords to work their will upon them; for the "hanging gale "of six months was a universal custom in Ireland. The formality of the landlord's affidavit, to be read and approved by tv/o magistrates, who, when not landlords themselves, were landlords' agents or creatures, was as bitter a mockery of justice as had ever veiled itself in the garb of law. Nevertheless this Bill conceded something to the tenant. A clause was inserted to remedy the gross abuse of calling on the occupying tenant to pay his rent twice over, Avhen the middleman had failed to pay rent to his superior. In such cases the occupier might recover by civil bill process to the extent of fifty pounds, and he might set off costs against rent subsequently due.^ The clause was equitably meant, but it was utterly inoperative in ^ By II Geo. II. c. 19. - Section 16 of the Act. i8i7] FAMINE— PUBLIC WORKS 265 practice. It was found by the Parliamentary committee of inquiry nine years afterwards that, whether from ignor- ance of the law or from the cost of litigation, procedure under this clause never took place. Practically the abuse remained unaltered. But the main purpose of the law was strenuousl}'' followed. Men and women were driven by thousands from their fields to make way for cattle. Nemesis was kind ; for she struck soon and strongly. The two years that followed were years of pestilence and famine. The oat harvest of 1817 was poor in quality and scanty. The potato crop had not failed ; in some parts it was even plentiful ; but the season was wet, and storage more difficult than usual. And many had none to store, for those they had planted had been seized. The seeds of typhus have been always endemic in Ireland. Favoured by some subtle atmospheric change, they ran riot on feeble frames depressed to the lowest stage of vitality by want, by forced idleness, by despair. Hordes of starving families were driven from their homesteads into the garrets and cellars of the nearest town ; when hope of finding work was gone, and town after town had been visited in vain, they betook themselves to a life of aimless vagabondage, living on wild turnips and nettles when alms failed, and carrying death with them. From Donegal to Wexford, from Kerry to Armagh, hardly did a village here and there escape. The fever was in the highest degree contagious ; doctors, priests, nurses were struck down by it. Strangers who had sought refuge in a cabin, sometimes even its usual inmates, were brought out when seized into the open air, and set down by the roadside, a rude imperfect shelter of sticks and straw being set up over their heads. Food was brought to them by the passers-by ; the rough weather was less fatal thaa the tainted air of the cabins. Private charity and official help did not fail. Reports were called for from the physicians of every district, and a medical inspector was appointed for each province. Grants of public money were made. The medical reports, while dwelling with sufficient fulness on the insanitary conditions of towns and villages^ the overcrowded lodgings unsupplied with air and light, the 266 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1817-19 want of hospitals in which to isolate contagion, and other such outward conditions of distress, are also unanimous in pointing to the more potent factors — vagrancy, starvation, cold, and above all the moral lethargy and despondency resulting from enforced idleness. These were for the statesman rather than for the physician to cure.^ Into some kind of action statesmen vv^ere driven. To enforce sanitary regulations, to form local boards of health, was well; to build tramp wards for vagrants would at least give work to those who built them. Something more was needed. With great reserve at first, and afterwards more boldl}^ the committee of 18 19 came to the conclusion that political economy, as men then understood the word, must be set aside; that the State must provide work. *' Seeing," they said, in their report of June 7, "that land- lords in Ireland throw expense of buildings and repairs on the tenant, and bearing in mind the lamentable circum- stance, almost peculiar to that country, of the non-residence of a great proportion of proprietors, they think that Ireland has a claim to the generous consideration of Parliament."- They suggested the establishment of public works ; the reclamation of bogs and of mountain-lands ; the revision of the fishery laws ; and the formation of roads from the principal fishing-ports to the inland towns. Kind suggestions these; and the attempts to reahse them were undoubtedly beneficial for the moment. Their per- manent utility has been far more doubtful. That permanent good may result from public works wisely conducted, no one who has read history would deny. A despot has carried out such works for a dependent nation ; a free Parliament for its own countrymen. But a board of works, responsible to the careless judgment of a distant and alien Parliament, has always sunk into jobbery. The grants for public works in Ireland were for a long time the purchase- money of Parliamentary support. 1 Reports of Committee of House of Commons on contagious fever in Ireland, 1S18 and 1819. The fever was typhus, complicated in the second year by an outbreak of relapsing fever. 2 The second report of the committee, in 1819, is much more outspoken than the first. i8i7] " FAMINE— PUBLIC WORKS 267 The years that followed Waterloo brought gloom and oppression to Western Europe, in which Britain as well as Ireland shared. The suspension of Habeas Corpus, and the enactment of coercion in all its forms, was not limited to the western side of the Irish Channel. The Seditious Meeting Act of 18 17, defied and enforced with bloodshed at Peterloo, two years afterwards, was followed by the Six Acts of December 18 19. There were as many secret societies in Glasgow and in London as in Dublin or Cork. The West Riding was to the full as unquiet as Tipperary. During the two years of famine and disease, Ireland was too prostrate for disturbance. Times of misery are less dangerous to oppressive rulers than the memories which survive them. One feature of the coercive legislation of 181 7 is sig- nificant. The Seditious Meeting Act of that year was expressly made inapplicable to Ireland. The reason of the exemption was an open secret. Political associations of all kinds were amenable to this Act, and it was specially severe on those in which secret oaths were administered. It would, therefore, have suppressed the Orange lodges, which statesmen then, as in later times, while affecting to deplore, covertly supported. On Sir J. Newport moving that the Act should extend to Ireland, Lord Castlereagh observed that Ireland was in so tranquil a state as not to need unusual restraint. As to Orange societies, he very much regretted their existence ; he felt persuaded that, after what had been said in Parliament about them, they would not be extended. On this occasion, however, it was not necessary for Parliament to interfere. To do so would provoke resentment. The sincerity of the pretext may be tested by the fact that in the same session Peel moved the continuance for a year of the Insurrection Act of 18 14, which otherwise would have expired.^ Yet Peel, too, was profuse in his assurance that Ireland was tranquil. " No description," he said, " could give an adequate impression of the distress prevailing in many districts. But subordi- nation and good order prevailed even where that distress 1 " Parliamentary Debates," vol. xxxv. pp. 812 and 1131. 268 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1817-20 was most deeply experienced." It is not famine that stirs men to action, but the memories of famine. A moral lethargy hung over the country during those gloomy 3^ears. The cause of Catholic Emancipation was pleaded still by Grattan in Parliament, But the dispute as to the veto on Catholic bishops remained, and it hindered an}'- cordial alliance between Grattan and the Catholic Board in Dublin. O'Connell was told by his friends that he was going too far, and was urged to yield. But he stood firm ; he guarded the independence of his Church like the ark of the covenant. He was no bigot ; Ireland was now, as always, more to him than the Church : but in the Church of the majority, free from State control, lay the smouldering embers of national life. O'Connell's firmness during those years is not the least of his titles to his countrymen's gratitude. From time to time he issued a stirring appeal to the Catholics of Ireland, urging them to hope against hope, gratefully recognising the support of their Protestant countrymen in their struggle for justice, but firml}' rejecting every compromise that involved State interference with Church government.^ In 1820 Grattan died at the age of seventy. His last speech in Parliament had been a protest, in the previous year, against the tax on air and light, which, as medical evidence had shown, had done much to foster and propa- gate the recent pestilence. It was a fit close of his career. In the spring of 1820 he had come from Dublin, intending to present the usual petitions of the Catholics. His strength was already failing, and he was urged to leave the task to another. But he chose to die at his post. He had served for twenty years in the Irish, and for fifteen in the united. Parliament. His judgment as to the Union never altered. But the marriage, he said, had taken place, and it v/as the duty of every one to render it as fruitful and advantageous as possible.- His life, public or private, had been v.'ithout a spot. For a brief moment 1 See letters to Catholics of Ireland of October 1819 and January 1S21, in " O'Connell's Life and Letters." - Speech on window tax, May 4, 18 19. i82o] LIFE AND WORK OF GRATTAN 269 it seemed as though it would have been his lot to wield in Ireland the power that Pitt had held in Britain ; far different then would have been her destiny. In West- minster men listened to him with reverence ; for with some peculiarities of manner, he had every gift of the great orator — close argument, ready words and wit, the vehemence of a fiery nature stirred by a great purpose. In pleading the cause of civil justice for Catholics, his task was hard from its simplicity. The ablest men either agreed with him, like Canning, or, like Peel, evaded arguments which they could not meet. But large masses of the British population were against him, and he was left to wrestle with a dead weight of ignorance and obstruction, which rolled back again and again like the stone of Sisyphus. But **he knew the strength of the cause that he supported : it would walk the earth and flourish when dull declamation should be silent, and the pert sophistry that opposed it should be forgotten in the grave." That his life in London had somewhat blunted his insight into Ireland's needs can hardly be denied. He took less part than others in pressing that systematic inquiry into the condition of the country which Parliament for twenty years persistently refused. He limited himself too exclusively to the Catholic question, and was far too willing to accept the compromise of State interference with the clergy, which CConnell had resisted. Dissension be- tween the two Irish leaders was inevitable. But of the two it was the younger that understood and judged the other best. Grattan, said O'Connell, quoting words that had been used by Grattan himself of Flood, was an oak of the forest, and would not bear transplanting.^ 1 See " O'Connell's Life and Speeches," vol. ii. p. 183. The previous words of O'Connell's speech, made five years before Grattan's death, when Grattan had refused his usual advocacy of the Catholic claims in Parliament, are worth quoting : " I recall to mind his early and his glorious struggles for Ireland. I know he raised her from degradation, and exalted her to her rank as a nation. I recollect, too, that if she be now a pitiful province, Grattan struggled and fought for her whilst life or hope remained. I know this and more, and my gratitude and enthusiasm for these services will never be extinguished." 270 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1820 He was buried in England's abbey with splendid honours. The Duke of Sussex, Mackintosh, Tierney, Wilberforce, Brougham, followed in the procession; the Duke of Norfolk and the Duke of Wellington were pall- bearers. An illustrious death, constrasting strangely with that of O'Connell, nearly thirty years afterwards, in a foreign land darkened by disaster and apparent failure. But there are some failures which outweigh success ; and, in the memories of Ireland, these two names will remain united. NOTE TO PAGE 250 It was arranged by the Act of Union that each nation should be charged with its own ante-Union debt. This would have been just to Ireland as to England, but for one consideration, viz. that by far the greater portion of the ante-Union debt of Ireland was the result of the fooling of the English Government subsequent to the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam. In 1793, the debt of Ireland (unredeemed funded and unfunded) was only ^2,253,000. In 1798, it had risen to ^10,130,000; in 1801, to ^28,541,000. By a strange perversion, this rapid increase of debt has been attributed to the extravagance of Grattan's Parliament. If so, why was no such extravagance exhibited prior to 1795? Ill THE CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION The Catholic cause depended henceforth on the life of no man, however strong. Clear-sighted statesmen saw it to be inseparably bound up with the social life of the Irish people, whose condition grew year by year more disturbed and critical. Grattan, in his last speech, had spoken of the miserable state of Dublin. He specified two parishes containing 8227 houses, of which 2487 were either shut up or unable to pay county cess and window tax. The Bank Act of 1 819, wise as it may have been, strained and broke the slender threads of commerce in the southern towns. Eleven of the Munster banks out of fourteen failed. Famine again threatened ; disturbances did not cease. It was clear that Ireland could not be let alone. Renewed efforts were made to settle the Catholic claims by a compromise in- volving State interference with the priesthood. In February 1821 Plunket brought forward a series of six resolutions for dealing with the Catholic question. They set forth that, whereas certain oaths and declarations were necessary as a condition for the enjo^^ment of certain rights, these might now be safely repealed or altered. The oaths of disbelief in transubstantiation and saint-worship should be repealed ; that of the king's supremacy should be so modified as not to imply that the king exercised spiritual as well as temporal supremacy in religious matters. The Protestant succession was specially guarded ; the offices of Lord Chancellor and Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland were reserved for Protestants. Peel opposed these resolutions; but they were carried by 227 against 221. On March 16 a second Bill was brought in, enacting that no person should be a bishop 272 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1821 or dean in the Roman Catholic Church, whose loyalty and peaceable conduct should not have been previously established. Every priest was to swear that he would not recognise any bishop of whose loyalty he was not personally satisfied ; that he would not correspond with the pope or any of his agents as to the disestablishment of the Church in England, Scotland, or Ireland ; that he would not hold correspondence with Rome on any matter touch- ing his civil allegiance. Energetic remonstrances against this Bill poured in from Ireland. O'Connell denounced it. The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin expressed the unanimous dissent of his clergy ; but it passed the second reading by a small majority. The resolutions previously carried were then made part of the Bill, and it passed the third reading. In the Upper House it was opposed by Lords Eldon, Liverpool, and the Duke of York, and thrown out on the second reading by 159 votes against 120.^ The discussion had produced more acrimony than it had alleviated, and had the Bill passed into law, the bitter- ness would have been aggravated. Another plan was now tried. Irishmen had been deprived too long, it was said, of the sunshine of royalty. No king had been in Ireland since William III. If the king now were but to show his face to Irishmen, ail would be well. George IV. went to Dublin in August, and stayed in Ireland for a month. The plan seemed to prosper marvellously. All Dublin poured forth to meet him. "The king was all affability," says the chronicler, "condescending to shake hands with the lowest of the populace. During the whole period of his stay in Ireland he met with nothing but the most ardent demon- strations of loyalty. ' My heart,' the king assured them, ' has always been Irish. From the very day it first beat, ^ Mr. Shaw Lefevre, in his work " Peel and O'Connell," p. 50, notes this as " the first of a very long list of cases in which remedial measures for Ireland, passed by the House of Commons, have been rejected by the House of Lords." He remarks that "the House of Lords has been leavened and prejudiced on Irish questions by a number of peers from Ireland, representing only one, and the smallest section of the people, and only one interest, that of landlords ; a body without any popular sympathies, and the determined opponent of every measure of justice to their country." i82i] KING VISITS IRELAND— DISTURBANCE 273 I have always loved Ireland.' " The Irish question, some thought, was solved. No one was more profuse in his demonstrations than O'Connell, and no one was more sincere. The Nationalists eagerly hailed the opportunity given them of showing that their hatred of the Union had no tinge in it of disloyalty to the Crown. There lived not a man, O'Connell had said before, and continued to say, less desirous of separation than he, or more desirous of independence.^ Those who supposed that Irish loyalty meant satis- faction with English institutions were delighted with this enthusiasm, and imagined for a moment that the Irish had been soothed, like offended children, by so simple a remedy. The disillusion came soon, and is thus recorded by the chronicler : " It is melancholy to be obliged to relate that the events of October, November, and December destroyed all the splendid anticipations to which his Majesty's visit to Ireland had given rise in the minds of those who possessed a superficial acquaintance with the character of that people. The gaudy and hollow bubble of conciliation soon burst, and a system of outrage, robbery, murder, and assassina- tion commenced, hardly to be paralleled in the annals of any civilised country. The counties of Limerick, Mayo, Tipperary, and Cavan were the chief seats of the dis- turbance." ^ In Limerick, Mr. Going, a magistrate, was attacked on the public highway, and his body riddled with shot. His watch and a large sum of money were left untouched. The body was guarded home by a military escort. Within an hour bonfires were lit on every hill to tell the deed far and wide, and shouts of exultation rose from every village. Near Nine-Mile House, in Tipperary, a mob surrounded the house of Shea, an agent, who had recently removed some under-tenants from lands which they held at will. They fired the house ; Shea burst through the crowd, but was caught and hurled back into the flames. These deeds of horror can be told. But the pangs of hunger, the sight of children starving, the un- roofed cottage, the winter's food carried to the agent's 1 Speech of January 29, 181 3. ^ AKtiztal Register, 1821. S 274 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1822 granary, who weighed these in the balance ? " It is clear," says the chronicler, " that the common people were con- federated ; that they wished to dictate the regulation of property; that they resisted the payment of taxes and tithes, and had bound themselves by the profanation of an oath to enforce those wicked plans by plunder, torture, and murder." Clear indeed ; if only the writing of the Fates could have been read with understanding. That, when Parliament met in 1822, the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, and the Insurrection Act renewed, at first till the close of the session, and subsquently till August in the following 3^ear, was matter of course. In April, famine,^ which had been lowering for a year, burst again on the land with the suddenness peculiar to countries where each man raises his own food, and market prices do not give the usual warnings. A wet autumn had again rotted the potatoes in the ground. When the small part of the crop that was saved had been nearly consumed, the price suddenly rose from three-halfpence to sixpence the stone. In Clare county, thirteen thousand people were reported from the barony of Clonderalaw as being without seed for the next crop. In the parish of Finloe, seven out of every eight men were starving. Throughout Galway, Sligo, Kerry, Cork, the same tale was told with dismal iteration. Men asked what crimes were punishable with imprisonment, for in the prisons there was food. And, as it had been four 3''ears before, famine was followed closely by typhus fever. English charity was stirred. A quarter of a million was raised by private charity ; half a million Avas voted by Parliament. It is noteworthy that many debates took place during the session of 1822, on what was called agricultural distress throughout the three kingdoms. But the distress in Great Britain was not due to famine, but to plenty. Wheat fell during the year to 46s. and never rose above 56s. The sufferings of English landlords and farmers were more than balanced by the blessing of cheap bread to ^ The Annual Register, which gives, but also which withholds, much important information on Irish events, mentions the famine of 182 1-2, but is silent on the more terrible famine of 181 7-18. i822] FAMINE— DISTURBANCE— COERCION 275 Manchester and Birmingham. But the Irish cottiers did not know the taste of bread. The debate that took place on the renewal of Sir. J. Newport's motion for inquiry^ into the state of Ireland showed a growing consciousness that the experiment of governing Ireland from Westminster had not as j-et suc- ceeded. Newport dwelt on the admitted evils of absentee proprietors ; on the broken spirit of the resident gentry ; on the absence of all interchange of kindly offices between high and low ; on the increase of internal taxation, unac- companied by increase of revenue. Exports increased, while the peasantry starved ; for what Henry Boyle said in 1747 was true still, that there was no country in the world so fertile as Ireland, whose inhabitants consumed so little of their own produce. These things had been said before ; but it was a new thing that they should be enforced by the weighty authority of Grant, who had been Irish secretary, in succession to Peel, from 181 8 to 1821. It must be admitted, said Grant,- that not merely was the landlord an absentee, but very frequently the agent also ; and, in addition to the rent which the tenants paid to the landlord, pecuniary considerations were exacted by both the agent and his deputy. The absence of proprietors, the habit of letting land to the highest bidder without regard to the claims of former occupiers, the fact that when prices were high rents were exorbitant, when prices were low rents had not been reduced adequately, furnished too much ground for the complaint prevalent in Ireland as to the price of rent. Newport's motion was withdrawn ; but the time for resisting it was swiftly passing by. It was melancholy, as Lord Lansdowne had said at the opening of the session, ^ but also it was obvious, "that, though it was now more than twenty years since the Union, it was still necessary, in discussing the interests of the United Kingdom, to consider those of Great Britain and Ireland separately as two distinct parts." 1 April 22, 1822. * " Parliamentary Debates," vol. vi. (new series), pp. 1509-10. The whole speech is worth reading. ^ Debate on address, February 15, 1822. 276 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1822-3 A Bill was brought in by Goulburn, who had succeeded Grant as Irish secretary early in 1822, to facilitate the emplo3'ment of the poor in road-making and other public works. They were to be carefully supervised by Govern- ment officers, and the amount of money granted was not to exceed that for which grand juries had made presentments.^ Some attempt was made by Lord Lansdowne and by New- port to touch the question of tithe. Gratttan's exposition of the iniquitous mode of collecting it was repeated, and the remedy he suggested forty years before, the principle of commutation actually adopted in 1838, was suggested. But to this a deaf ear was turned. Tithe, said Lord Liverpool, was as sacred as rent. Half a century was to pass before the sanctity of rent itself should be disputed. Nevertheless a measure was proposed and carried by Goulburn in the following session, which was a first step in this direction. The Bill authorised the Lord-Lieutenant, on the application of the incumbent or of the principal tithe-payers, to order a special vestry to be convened, who were to choose a commissioner for the purpose of fixing commutation on the basis of the average price of corn for the preceding three years. The incumbent was to choose another com- missioner, and there was provision for such further arbi- tration as the case might require. The appointment of Lord Wellesley to the viceroyalty in the winter of 1 82 1-22 brought the Irish a friend; and the death of Castlereagh in the following autumn removed a statesmen not less fatally mistaken in his Irish than in his British and European pohcy. The viceroys since the Union had not been distinguished men." Lord Hardwicke held the office till 1805, and had not left his mark. The Duke of Bedford had been popular during his few months of office, and had been drawn by an enthusiastic crowd to the waterside in significant demonstration against those who had caused his recall, rather than for any good thing that he had done. Of the Duke of Richmond, Lord Whit- 1 " Parliamentary Debates," vol. vii. p. 1029. 2 Neither viceroys nor chief secretaries were members of the Cabinet during this period. 1 822-3] TITHE REFORM— LORD WELLESLEY 277 worth, Lord Talbot,^ no more is to be said than of the brave Gyas and the brave Cloanthus in the ^neid. The Irish secretariat had greater names to boast of. WelHngton had filled the office from 1807 to 1809; Peel from 18 12 to 1 8 18. Peel's cautious, cold temperament had rendered him singularly slow to understand the people he had come to rule. His successor, Grant, had learnt the lesson much more aptly. On Catholic Emancipation, now an open question for ministries, it had became an established prac- tice that the Lord-Lieutenant and the Chief Secretary should be of opposite ways of thinking. Thus the commonplace conservatism of Goulburn was thrown in to balance the wider sympathies and vigorous brain of Wellesley. Wellesley's sympathies with Catholic Emancipation were less important than his firm resolve that the Orange conspiracy should no longer openly insult the feelings of the majority of the Irish people. It had been the practice to decorate the statue of William III. on July 12, and on November 4 and 5. In 1822 the celebration had caused the usual disturbances on the first of these occasions, and notice was given before the second that it would be for- bidden. The prohibition was bitterly resented by the Orange leaders. The merchants'* guild passed a resolution condemning it. Six weeks afterwards Lord Wellesley was insulted and attacked in the Theatre Royal. Ten arrests were made, and three men were charged with conspiracy to murder the viceroy. But a jury was selected by one of the sheriffs which ignored the bill altogether in the case of eight of the prisoners, and in the other two brought in a true bill as to the minor charge of rioting.^ The inquiry instituted by the House of Commons in the spring of 1823, into the conduct of the sheriff, threw much light on the ^ The Duke of Richmond held office from April 1807 to August 1813; Lord Whitworlh, till October 1S17 ; Lord Talbot, till December 1821 ; Lord V^ellesley, till 1828. ^ See papers relating to riot at Dublin Theatre, December 14, 1822, p. 4. Also evidence taken before the House of Commons in committee. May 1S23. The evidence of Sir G. Whiteford, foreman of the grand jury, a man known to be unfavourable to the disuse of the statue-decoration, is specially instruc- tive (pp. 105-I10). 278 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1823 nature of the Orange associations ; and showed also that the institution of the jury was as clay in the hands of the potter to the bitter partisans who were allowed to form the panel. Meantime, under Wellesley as under Talbot, under the Insurrection Act of 1822 as under its predecessors, agrarian crime, the gnashing of teeth of the hunted animal at bay, the peasant's savage protest, not seldom his protection, against injustice and hunger, had never slackened for a month. In May 1823 a Bill was brought in to continue the Insurrection Act for a further term. On the second reading^ Sir H. Parnell reviewed the history of coercion since the beginning of the century. The Insurrection Act of 1796 had been prolonged to 1802, From 1803 to 1805 there was martial law. The Insurrection Act had been renewed for three years in 1807, and again for four years in 1 8 14, and yet again in 1822. In many of these years. Habeas Corpus had been suspended. The Arms Act of 1807, the Peace Preservation Act of 18 14, had remained in force since their enactment. Only four years could be found out of twenty-three that could be spoken of as tranquil. 2 He moved for a committee of twenty-one members to inquire into the recent disturbances. The committee was refused, and the Bill passed by 88 votes against 39. But these feeble efforts to deal with Irish problems were soon to be superseded by a new force, wholly unfore- seen, and far more effective than any that had arisen since the times of Parliamentary independence ; the appearance of the Catholic Association as the organ of social reform and national life. The dissensions of the reforming party on the question of the veto had left behind them a state of apathy and hopelessness which it appeared impossible to rouse. The Catholic Board, which, on the suppression of the Catholic Committee in 1 8 12, had taken its place, never rose to im- portance. It was a debating-ground between the Catholic gentry willing to concede the veto and the Catholic priest- 1 June 24, 1813 ; " Parliamentary Debates," vol. viii. p. 1148 e^ seq. ~ Viz. 1802-3, 1805-6, 1810-11, 1818-19. 1S23] DEVELOPMENT OF CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION 279 hood resolute to maintain their independence. O'Connell sided with the priesthood ; indeed, it was he who had first stirred them to resistance. But among influential laymen he stood for a time almost alone. The attendance at the board meetings fell off; the very rent of the office was often paid from O'Connell's purse ; ^ and after a few years the society ceased to exist. Between 18 19 and 1822 O'Connell's annual addresses to the Catholics of Ireland alone fanned the spark of hope. Besides these there was no sign of life, except in the wild forces of insurrection in the south and west, which one day a potent leader might arise to subdue and guide. In 1823 O'Connell and Sheil, with a few friends, met in a tavern in Sackville Street, and drew the outlines of a new society, under the title of the "Catholic Association of Ireland." Its purpose was described to be that of adopting "all such legal and constitutional measures as may be most useful to obtain Catholic Emancipation." It was needful to steer clear of the Convention Act of 1796, forbidding delegation. The association was, therefore, expressly de- clared not to be a representative or delegated body. It was not limited to Catholics. Every one who subscribed jCi, 2s. 9d. annually was to be a member. Reporters were to attend. The meetings were to be held at three on Saturday afternoons ; and if by four o'clock ten members had not assembled, the meeting was to be adjourned.^ A small debating club with reporters — such was the imperceptible germ of what in a few months would be a wide-branching tree. Subscriptions flowed in rapidly from every part of Ireland. Lords Killeen, Gormanston, Kenmare, and many other influential Catholic landlords, sent in their adhesion. The clergy joined them. After a few weeks the meetings began to flag, and were on several occasions adjourned for want of a quorum. O'Connell then devised a new scheme. Let the people be appealed to, he sug- gested ; let subscriptions be invited in every town, in every ^ See " Life and Speeches," vol. ii. p. 242. 2 These regulations, adopted May 24, 1823, are given in the fourteenth Appendix to Wyse's " History of Catholic Association." 2So TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1824 village. If but a million of the Irish people gave a penny per month, an income of fifty thousand pounds would be raised for the public good. Their objects, he said, were the following: — First, to convey to Parliament petitions from every county and parish in the kingdom, not only as to Catholic Emancipation, but as to every legal grievance requiring redress. For this purpose they needed a Parlia- mentary agent in London, who should act for them in the same way that colonies were represented by their agents. Secondly, they needed funds to resist and to prosecute in the law courts acts of violence committed by Orangemen. Thirdly, it was essential that their cause should be repre- sented in the English as well as the Irish press. And, finally, to secure the ardent adhesion of the priests, the support of Maynooth and of free Catholic schools was added to the programme.^ Collectors should be appointed for each parish to receive the monthly subscriptions, the lowest being fixed at a penny, the highest at 2s. In this wa}' the peasant, the workman, the small tradesman, would feel that he had a voice in the association — that he was working in the common cause. The plan was thought irrelevant by some, chimerical by others. But it was adopted ; and O'Connell, with Shell and a few others, received powers from the association to carry it out. It succeeded marvellously. Collectors volunteered in every part of Ireland. From the child of seven to the grandfather of seventy, every Catholic in Ireland was invited to con- tribute. Every one who contributed felt double ardour in the cause. The institution of the Catliolic Rent, so the subscriptions were called, stimulated discussion, and linked the people together from one end of Ireland to the other. " It is difficult," says the historian, himself an active leader in the cause, " to paint to a stranger, it is unnecessary to paint to a witness, the spirit of extraordinary enthusiasm which burst forth at that period throughout all Ireland. It was the beginning of a totally nev/ order of things." "As 1 This scheme was first proposed at a meeting of the association on Fel^ruary 4, 1824. A full account of it is given in the Dublin Evening Post of the following day. 1 824] THE CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION 281 the collectors increased and improved their system, they enlarged its objects. They took rooms, and held their meetings v/eekly ; and not only received reports of rent and remittances to the association, but discussed every subject of public policy connected w^ith the general question. The feeling of the people was awakened.^ They saw, in their own words, that something was to be done for them also. It was not a cold question of distant and doubtful advan- tage; the readmission of the peerage or the gentry to the privileges of their order ; the extension of legal honours and emoluments to the Catholic barrister; but it was the strong and home assurance which every peasant soon had of instant protection against local wrong, the redress of the law against the law, the assisting hand in distress from a body in which he found the interpreter of his own sufferings; and the conviction that, whilst others still sought their emancipation, his emancipation had already begun. Every complaint was listened to, every injury was inquired into; protection was promised, and the promises made good with a precision and promptitude which they failed not to contrast with the slovenly and reluctant justice of his Majesty. The decision of the bench was almost second to the debate of the asso- ciation. The village magistrate detested but feared it; the peasant appealed to it and obeyed it. A fourth estate rose up in the kingdom, as powerful in many instances as the other three." 2 The fact is that, without the slightest claim, without a ^ O'Connell invariably repudiated the notion that the admission of a few Catholic gentlemen to Parliament was all the Irish wanted. See, for instance, his speech in the Corn Exchange, February 9, 1825 (reported in DttHiit Evejibig Post) : " We are collecting the rent for the benefit of the people ; for them we are bound to seek protection and redress. We seek to establish a holy alliance between the English Throne and the Irish people ; and so long as the mockery exists of making the people pay Church rates when there is no Church, and tithes when there is no parson, so long must we continue to protest and appeal." " Wyse, " History of Catholic Association," vol. i. pp. 205-211. See also "Evidence of Select Committee of House of Commons, 1825," pp. 346, 373, and 838. Major Warburton, of Ballinasloe, observes (p. 842), "I did not conceive any system of government could be so complete in carrying on com- munication from heads to inferiors ; I thought it a most complete organisation for that purpose." 282 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1824 sign of any secret desire, for political independence, the small group of men who met from week to week under O'Connell's guidance in the room in Capel Street had established for the moment an efficient, though an ex- tremely irregular, system of self-government. If the essential function of government be the protection of life and property, the association performed that function more effectively than any Government which had ruled Ireland since the Union, possibly since the English con- quest. By the common consent of all the witnesses who gave evidence to the House of Commons on the subject, disorder, insurrection, murder, which Arms Bills, Insur- rection Bills, or Peace Preservation Bills had been power- less to arrest, suddenly ceased. On the repression of crime O'Connell spoke in unvarying tones of unmistakable sternness. It was one of the two edges of the sword he wielded that his voice on this matter was heard and obeyed.^ And so it was that Peace for a short space visited the land, with Hope as her forerunner. Some day, perhaps, it will be thought strange that no British statesman could be found to whom the very strength of this association constituted the best reason for its con- tinuance. An itiiperiimi in imperio it was called, and it undoubtedly was. But the existence of one authority within the compass of another does not of necessity imply that it is a cancerous growth requiring extirpation ; it may be a healthful organ of the body politic, subserving its purposes and adding to its force none the less that it may have arisen in a spontaneous and unforeseen way. A ^ See, as one example among hundreds, his speech in St. Michael's Chapel, Limerick, March 22, 1824 (reported in Dublin Evening Post of March 27). Alluding to agrarian crime in Munster, he said, " Many a widow, many an orphan, grieves over the consequences of these disturbances. Murder — oh, it l)rings the curse of Heaven on their heads; the hand of man pursues to punish it ; the red right arm of God's avenging justice hangs over the head of the murderer and of the midnight assassin ! Let me not be misunderstood. I do not say you do not labour under grievances ; that the tithe system. Church rates, grand jury jobbing, Orange bigotry, corporate monopoly, are not grievances. Your wrongs I pity ; whatever of life and talent I possess, it is directed to redress them ; but until you drop your evil proceedings I can be of no use to you." 1 824] THE CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION 283 society professing and practising obedience to the law as it stands, enforcing it when good, urging its repeal when bad, is not a hurtful society, however strong; it is bene- ficial in the direct proportion of its strength. Now, to a British Government, if such there could then have been, that strove to govern Ireland with a single eye to wisdom and justice, the Catholic Association was fulfilling an in- valuable purpose. It was bringing to the knowledge of the rulers the needs of the land they governed. Like the ca /t 2 (^rs of the French States General in 1789, it gave expres- sion for the first time to the grievances of every barony, every parish of the four provinces. The Irish members of Parliament should have done this, it may be said. But most of them would not, and most could not. To the few who were willing and able, Parliament rarely gave a hear- ing ; and on no occasion as yet had it so far followed their counsel as to consent to the appointment of a committee to investigate the facts. These facts were now dragged into the light. For the first time in Irish history had a British Government the means of knowing what the mass of Irish people thought of rack-rents paid twice over ; of tithe-proctors valuing potato-fields by good years for the quantity, by bad years for the price ; of the gross jobbery with which county cess was levied and squandered ; of roads kept in repair at ;^5 the perch ; of the village tyrants dispensing injustice from the bench ; of the armed Orangeman swaggering in country fairs boasting, and not seldom proving, his impunity for acts of violence, while against Ribbonmen the midnight search for arms was rigorously pursued. Those things were now for the first time publicly and systematically canvassed. Over and above these were the grievances of religious inequality; the Catholic parish rated for the building and repairs of the Protestant church, even to the very payment of organist, tuner, choristers, and cost of the Prayer-books ; the public money voted for the Kildare Street schools, nominally unsectarian, but used, if not designed, for prose- lytising ; and, finally, as keystone of the arch supporting the fabric of oppression — the laws that shut out the Catholic 284 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1824-5 from exercise of civil rights. And the society that performed this invaluable service rendered 3'et another of which no Government had hitherto been found capable — it maintained order, and protected property and life. That toleration of such a society would have been the wisest policy, it is not difficult now to see. But of such a policy the statesmanship of that time was incapable. It was not j'et recognised that for the union of a scattered empire, agitated by divergent, often hostile, interests and traditions, delegation of power was the first condition of orderly ascendency. The boroughs of England and Scot- land had not yet gained their freedom ; the British colonies were governed by a sub-department of the War Office. It was not to be thought of that Ireland should manage her own affairs, even within the humble limits of presenting to Parliament and to the public systematic statements of her own grievances. In December 1824 O'Connell was prosecuted for sedi- tious language. The words said to be used by him have not a very formidable sound, and even the Times news- paper ridiculed the prosecution. The grand jury ignored the bill.i The king's speech at the opening of the session of 1825 showed that the Association was not to be allowed to enjoy its triumph. "Outrages," it said, "have so far ceased as to warrant the suspension of the extension of extraordinary powers in most of the districts hitherto disturbed. Industry and commercial enterprise are extending in that part of the United Kingdom. It is the more to be regretted that asso- ciations should exist in Ireland irreconcilable with the spirit of the constitution, and calculated, by exciting alarm and ^ The words with which he was charged were these : " Nations have been driven mad by oppression. He hoped that Ireland would never be driven to resort to the system pursued by the Greeks and the South Americans to obtain their rights ; he trusted in. God they never would be so driven. He hoped Ireland would be restored to her rights ; but if the day should arrive, if she were driv^en mad by persecution, he hoped that a new Bolivar might be found — that the spirit of the Greeics and that of the South Americans might animate the people of Ireland " (see Dublin Evening Post, December 20 to January 5). 1 825] THE CATHOLIC ASSOCIATION 285 by exasperating animosity, to endanger the peace of society and to retard the course of national improvement." The contradictions in this speech, asserting Peace to be endangered by the association under whose influence she had at last appeared, were not passed in silence. Brougham began a powerful speech by remarking that, though associa- tions were spoken of by the Government, one association only was aimed at ; and that, whatever the terms of the new law to be enacted, no even balance would be held between Catholic and Orangemen. But what was the ground for any such measure ? "I take it upon myself conscientiously to say that, after the most attentive and vigilant observation of all the Catholic Association has done and said, I cannot discover a single word or act which justifies the charge made in the king's speech." After reviewing the facts in detail, he concluded thus: "It would at present be no difficult task to alienate the minds of the people of Ireland from this countr}'. They were taught to look to the British Parliament for support ; that support has failed them. They were advised to look up to their repre- sentatives, but there again they found themselves deceived. I lament the fact, but so it is, that the peace of Ireland is secured by the Catholic Association, and by the Catholic Association alone. Ireland is at this moment tranquil. Never were the laws of the land more regularly enforced, more cheerfully obeyed in that part of the countr}^, than they are at present. Some abuses are still complained of; yet such is the luxury of even an approach to an equal distribution of justice amongst these poor people, that they already rejoice and feel comparatively happ}^ There never was a period when disaffection was less to be apprehended than at present ; and there is only one way in which those unfortunate disturbances can be rekindled, namely, by taking legal steps to put down the Catholic Association." ^ Substantially the same things were said in the Upper House by Lord Lansdowne. Was it not more desirable, he asked, that public opinion should make its way by open channels than by secret ones ? But such language was, of 1 "Parliamentary Debates," 1S25, vol. xii. pp. 63-68. 286 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1825 course, unavailing, and a few days afterwards the Bill appeared. It was impossible to rely on the well-worn clauses of the Convention Act, which forbade delegation, because delegation, on the present occasion, there was none. The body which met on Saturdays in Capel Street was in no sense, except the moral one, representative. Every member — that is to say, every guinea subscriber — might, if he chose, attend every meeting. It was with this preliminary difficulty that the Bill had to deal. The recital, after reference to the Convention Act, proceeded thus : "Whereas it is found that societies, committees, and other bodies, without previous election or appointment, . . . may be so constituted that the mischiefs intended to be provided against by the said Act may equally arise ; " and enacted that any society now or hereafter constituted in Ireland, "exercising the power of acting for the purpose of pro- curing the redress of grievances in Church or State, or the alteration of any matter by law established, ... or for the purpose of carrying on or assisting in the prosecution or defence of causes civil or criminal, . . . which shall con- tinue their meetings or proceedings by adjournment or otherwise for a longer time than fourteen days from their first meeting," ... or " which shall authorise an}' body or bodies to levy or receive any money or contributions from his Majesty's subjects, . . . shall be deemed an unlawful combination and confederacy." The third section referred to the clauses of 4 Geo. IV. c. 87, for preventing the administration of unlawful oaths, and forbade all associations which administered any oaths whatever at times and places not required by law, or which " excluded persons of any form of religious faith." This clause, if enforced, would have been fatal to the Orange Association ; but it was not enforced. The eighth section enacted that " nothing herein con- tained was to affect " any society formed for religious worship "or acting merely for purposes of public or private charity, science, agriculture, manufactures, or commerce." A weak joint this in the armour; and O'Connell's eye was not slow to detect it. 1825] THE SUPPRESSION BILL 2S7 The Bill was brought in by Goulburn,^ Plunket and Canning supporting it. The Catholic Association, said Plunket, had three thousand members. Its funds were collected by an army of thirty thousand. It levied con- tributions on noble, priest, and peasant. " I deny," he continued, "that any portion of the subjects of this realm have a right to give up their suffrages to others ; to select others to speak their sentiments, to debate on their griev- ances, to devise measures for their removal, these persons not being sanctioned by law." Canning was even more vehement. " Self-elected, self-constructed, self-assembled, self-adjourned, acknowledging no superior, tolerating no equal, interfering at all stages with the administration of justice, denouncing publicl}' before trial individuals against whom it institutes prosecutions, rejudging and condemning those whom the law has acquitted, menacing the free press with punishment, and openly declaring its inten- tion to corrupt that part which it could not intimidate, and, lastly, levying a contribution on the people of Ire- land — was this an association which the House could tolerate ? Could there exist in this kingdom, without inti- mate hazard to its peace, an assembly constituted as the House of Commons is, and another assembly invested with a representative character as complete as that of the House of Commons, though not conferred by the same process ? " In vain Brougham pleaded that the petitioners against the Bill might be heard at the bar of the House ; and Mackintosh urged that against associations of this kind coercion was powerless — they perished only by the removal of the grievances that called them into being. The Bill was pressed rapidly through all its stages by large majorities, and early in March was read a third time in the House of Lords. Few suspected how entirely it was to fail of its purpose.- But the association had already done a great work. 1 February 10, 1825. * This Statute was commonly spoken of in the popular speeches and journals of the time as the Algerine Act. 288 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1824-5 Ireland had been roused by it and calmed. The chronic oscillation between apathy and outrage had ceased, and she rose to the honourable strife of free citizenship. In England the result had not been less. Stubborn indifference to the social state of Ireland was exchanged for anxious inquiry. In 1824 a commission was appointed to investi- gate the question of Irish education; and the appointment of a Catholic on the commission was a guarantee that one of the sorest grievances of the Catholic clergy — the syste- matic proselytising carried on in State-supported schools — would be carefully probed. In 1825, while the Suppres- sion Act was still in debate, the object for which many efforts had been made in vain for more than twenty years had been at last attained. Select committees of both Houses had been appointed to consider the state of Ireland, O'Connell himself being summoned to give evidence. These committees, after a protracted inquiry, made no report. But the evidence taken before them remains as an invaluable record of contemporary observation on the Catholic question in all its bearings, on the state of the law of landlord and tenant, on the tenure of the 40s. freeholders, on tithe and church-rate, on local taxation, on the magistracy and the administration of justice, and on a mass of minor matters connected with the internal administration of the country. ^ There is no evidence that the impossibility of dealing adequately with such a mass of details in the overworked and party-ridden Parliament at Westminster was visible to any British statesman of that time. On that point experi- ence was to be the sole teacher. The Suppression Bill had stimulated the zeal of the Emancipationist party in Parliament. No sooner had it left the Lower for the Upper House, than Sir. F. Burdett brought forward a series of resolutions dealing with the oaths disqualifying Catholics from membership of Parlia- ment or corporations. The first resolution abolished the oaths, disavowing belief in Transubstantiation, and the worship of the Virgin and the saints. The second modified 1 See " Report of Committee of House of Commons," presented June 3, 1825. 1825] THE SUPPRESSION BILL 289 the Oath of Supremacy so far as to admit the pope's supremacy in spiritual matters. The third dealt with the securities so much insisted on in former years, and especially in Plunket's Bill of 1822, for the loyalty of bishops. A royal commission was to be appointed, but instead of con- sisting in part of laymen and Protestants, as in Plunket's proposals, it was to be selected exclusively from the Catholic episcopate. By this commission the loyalty of any bishop or dean hereafter to be appointed was to be certified. The fourth resolution dealt with intercourse between the priest- hood and Rome, the object of so many chimerical fears. All instruments whatsoever coming from Rome, and dealing with other than purely spiritual matters, were to be sub- mitted to the commission. These proposals were submitted by Burdett to O'Connell, who was then in London, and received his approval. The resolutions were carried by a majority of 247 against 234; and a Bill incorporating them was read a second time on April 21, Canning supporting the measure. Peel opposing it. On May 10 it was read a third time in the Commons ; but a week later it was thrown out in the Upper House. Some excited words used by the Duke of York a few days before^ were long remembered. He spoke of the sanctity of the coronation oath ; he re- minded the House that to the agitation of this question must be ascribed the severe illness and misery which had clouded the existence of his illustrious father, and concluded by asserting that his opposition to the measure was founded on principles imbibed from his earliest youth. By these, so help him God, he would abide to the latest moment of his existence. O'Connell's absence in London, and his intercourse with British politicians, had roused certain doubts in Ireland as to his consistency. It appears clear that, as the price of emancipation, he would have consented to an elevation of the franchise from 40s. to ^5, which would have disqualified the mass of the Irish freeholders.^ He assented also to a ^ April 25. ^ See "O'Connell's Evidence before Committee of 1825" (Commons), pp. 81-84. T 290 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1825 proposal 1 to pay the Catholic clergy — a project fatal to their independence of the State, for which in former years he had striven so zealously. For these backslidings he was bitterl}' denounced by the more zealous of his followers. But the rejection of Burdett's Bill by the Lords rekindled his zeal. On his return to Ireland, his power, never very seriously threatened, soon showed itself unimpaired. His first step was to reorganise the association on lines that should keep clear of the provisions of the Suppression Act. In June a committee was appointed to consider this matter. On July 13, at an aggregate meeting of Catholics held at Charlemont Street Chapel, the report, framed and elaborated by O'Connell himself, was presented and adopted.- The problem was to secure the existence of a body watching over Catholic interest^ without infringing the new law, which forbade the continuance of any association seeking redress of grievances, or change in laws affecting Church and State, for a longer period than a fortnight. O'Connell explained that the work before them must be divided into two sections. Thatjyhich Jhe_]aw,_permitted, the discussion of charitY ^dnrat-inn, grip^rp, rnrnniprrp^ and agriculture, might be undertjik en by a n ew assocLation built on the forrnerlJiLadel. All that related to the redress of grievances and the presentation of petitions must be under- taken by aggregate meetings. Precise rules were framed for the new association. No one was to be excluded on the ground of religion. No oaths of any sort were to be tendered as a condition of membership. All the objects and procedures forbidden in the Suppression Act w^ere formally disavowed. Its first purpose was described as that of promoting concord among all classes of Irishmen. Further objects aimed at were to encourage liberal educa- tion on the basis of Christian charity and fair dealing; to investigate the question of Irish population, with a special view to a religious census ; to build Catholic churches and ^ April 29. The proposal was made by Lord Leveson-Gower, and carried in the House of Commons. O'Connell's letter from London of March 7 (published in Ditblin Evening Post of March 10) shows him prepared to give way on both points. 2 The Report is given in full in the Dubliti Evening Post of July 14, 1825. i 1825] O'CONNELL EVADES SUPPRESSION ACT 291 to establish cemeteries ; to promote science and agriculture ; to encourage Irish manufactures and commerce ; finally, to defend Catholic interests in the press, and especially to refute the imputations contained in many of the hostile petitions recently presented to Parliament. With regard to petitions for redress of grievances, the report indicated that these should come from every parish in Ireland. As an aggregate meeting of the Catholics of Ireland could not by the new law last long enough to pre- pare those petitions, there should henceforth be aggregate meetings for each county, arranging for petitions from the parishes contained in it. The first series of petitions should be for the repeal of the Suppression Act. Such was the policy of the new association, a policy admirably devised for carrying on the work of the old. While the broad issues were kept more vigorously than ever before the provincial population by public meetings held in the principal towns of every county, the eighth section of the Act gave the central association ample scope for the discussion of every detailed grievance, and for setting forth its bearing on the whole state of the nation. It allowed them to talk of agriculture ; and how could agriculture thrive with tenants-at-will liable to arbitrary ejectment, oppressed by tithe-proctors, church rates, and grand jury presentments? Of education; and could edu- cation spread when made hateful to the people by the proselytising zeal of the Kildare Place schools, supported by public grants ? Of commerce and manufacture ; but were these not thwarted by the class conflicts rooted in religious inequality ? O'Connell's scheme was carried out to the letter. The new association met thenceforward weekly like the old, only in far greater numbers. It was the inspiring influ- ence and the central source of information to the county meetings that were now held in constant and rapid suc- cession. These in turn were organised, in the course of the next year, into what were known as provincial meetings. " Each province of Ireland," says Wyse, " was summoned n by requisition. The Catholics invited their Protestant U 292 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1825 friends; both met on an appointed day in a town chosen in rotation in one or other of the counties of the province. The result was most important. It familiarised two sects with each other; it inspired mutual confidence._and mutual respect. The people were incalculably benefited. It was not only a spectacle of great and stirring interest, but a series of impressive political lectures on their grievances and their rights, leaving behind them thoughts which burnt for many months afterwards in the hearts of the peasantry, and gave them a visible and sensible connection with the leading class of their countrymen." 1 The priests now joined eagerly in the struggle. May- nooth had been sending out every year men widely different from those formerly trained in Roman and Belgian colleges, and coming to their duty in ignorance of all but its pro- fessional side ; but these were farmers' and peasants' sons, who had seen their mothers evicted, and had felt the pangs of famine. To their patriotic zeal religious fervour was added ; for a systematic attempt had been made of late years, and was being pushed now more vigorously, to undermine the orthodoxy of their flocks. Reference has been made to the education question discussed by the com- mission of 1824. It may be well to recall its main issues. The hope of solving the problems of Ireland by the simple process of converting her inhabitants to the Pro- testant faith had not been destroyed even by the scandalous failure of the means taken by the EstabHshed Church, under the primacy of Boulter, to attain that object. The State- supported boarding-schools,^ which in 1787 Howard had found to be dismal abodes of ignorance, neglect, and cruelty, still continued in 1824 to receive Government support. Their grosser evils had in most cases, though not in all, been amended. But they still remained in a state of ex- treme inefficiency, and how it was that the Irish administra- tion still continued to support them is hard to understand.^ ^ Wyse, " History of Catholic Association," vol. i. pp. 226-227. ^ Commonly known as Charter schools. 3 See "Report of Education Commission of 1S24" for details of these schools as then found. Some instances of shocking cruelty and neglect, and i8i2-2S] EDUCATION— KILDARE PLACE SCHOOLS 293 Another society had been founded by the bishops of the Establishment in 1792, under the name of the Association for Discountenancing Vice. The schools of this society also had received Government aid since 1800. They numbered about nine thousand scholars when visited by the Commission of 1824, and of these half were Catholics.^ The entire failure of these efforts to deal with the problem of national education led to a third attempt. The commissioners of education, in their annual report of 18 12, recommended that schools should be established in which no attempt should be made " to influence or disturb peculiar religious tenets of any sort or description of Christians." For this purpose they advise that State aid should be given to a society that had been founded in the previous year, for the purpose of " promoting the education of the poor in Ireland." In these schools it was arranged that the Bible should be read without note or comment. Government aid was freely given,^ and the schools known commonly as those of Kildare Place rapidly increased. In 1824 there were nearly fifteen hundred schools, with one hundred thousand scholars. By this time, however, the society had departed from its original principles of non-sec- tarianism. They gave countenance and even pecuniary aid to the clerical society founded in 1792, and to another society called the Hibernian, which had arisen in 1806 for the avowed purposes of conversion. And, independently of this, the reading of the Bible without comment was in flagrant contradiction to the discipline of the Catholic many more of utter inefficiency, are given. One inspector reports them as "well fed and physically comfortable, but intellectually far inferior to the ragged children of the day-schools." Another suggests " that it would be well if the schoolmaster were compelled to take part in the tuition," instead of occupying himself with the cultivation of the school farm. From Clonmel and Stradbally the accounts were even worse. The admissions at this time into the Charter schools were about two hundred yearly. In the ninety years since their institution, they had received rather more than a million in State aid. 1 The grant in twenty-three years was jC77'975- The number of schools (day-schools) was 119. ^ The first grant was of ;^7ooo in 1S14. The offices of the society were moved to Ivildare Place in 181 7. 294 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1825 Church. The Irish people, throughout their times of misery, have shown singular avidity and aptitude for in- struction. In 1 81 2, we learn, from the report of the com- missioners for that year, that two hundred thousand children attended the common " pay-schools," set up by private adventure and unsupported by a farthing of State money. In 1826 that number had doubled.^ The instruction given in these schools was admitted by all parties to be rude and inadequate, but at least it was free from all proselytising taints. The Kildare Place schools threatened to supplant it by better books and more skilled teachers, provided in great part by State funds. A religious crusade was started by English and Ulster Protestants for the conversion of the rising generation. The complicity of many of the Kildare Place schools with the Hibernian Society became palpable, ^ See report of Committee of House of Commons of 1828, to whom this report of the special commission of 1825, and previous annual reports of the official commissioners on State-supported schools, had been referred for con- sideration. The distribution of children in 1826 stood thus : In common pay-schools ....... 394,732 In purely Roman Catholic schools ..... 46,119 In various establishments of private charity . . . 84,205 In schools maintained wholly or partly at public expense 55,246 The Kildare Place schools, which in 1824 hnd 100,000 scholars, had lost half their numbers in the agitation against them which the Catholic Association indirectly stimulated. The pay schools, in which Catholic and Protestant children met freely together, did not profess to give any religious teaching, leaving that entirely to the clergy of each denomination. They had, therefore, solved the religious difficulty by the simple plan of leaving it alone. Practi- cally this spontaneous solution was the basis of the plan recommended by the committee of 1828, and afterwards embodied in the Act of 1831, viz. an edu- cation board in which the three denominations, Catholics, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, were represented, and by which purely secular instruction should be given, leaving religious instruction to be gi%'en at fixed times by each Church authority to its own children. This scheme received the full concurrence of the Catholic episcopate ("Report of Commission of 1825," p. 90). The instruction given in the pay-schools, though it steered clear of the shoals of controversy, indicated more vitality than discipline, and certainly stood in need of some pruning. Among the reading-books found in these schools by the commissioners were Rousseau's " Heloise," " Moll Flanders," "Tristram Shandy," " History of Philander Flashaway," and "The Life of Redmond O'Hanlon, the Robber." In a school in county Sligo, the New Testament, "The Forty Thieves," "The Pleasant Art of Money-catching," and the Mutiny Act were being read aloud by four children simultaneously (see p. 43 of Report of 1825). 1825] O'CONNELL'S MANNER OF WORK 295 and the priesthood took alarm. The rise of the CathoHc Association gave them the machinery they needed for ventilating their grievance ; and their professional instincts roused their human sympathies, and overcame their un- willingness to join a political struggle. The union of the priests and people, for which the memories left by the penal legislation of the eighteenth century had prepared the way, reached maturity; and a social force was created the like of which had not been since the Middle Ages. O'Connell was well rewarded for his firmness in the dark days of the veto, when even his best friends thought he had strained resistance too far. His rule over Catholic Ireland was as undisputed as that of any king. But he never forgot that he was an Irishman first, and only then a Catholic. The inquitous toleration of the Orange Society by a Government that left it free to disobey their own law, which they rigorously enforced, and which O'Connell helped them to enforce, against Ribbonmen, he unceasingly de- nounced. But he never confounded Protestants with Orangemen. He bade Protestants welcome to his associa- tion ; he rejoiced at every sign of their sympathy in the struggle for civic justice, and his joy was profoundly sincere. He was a statesman moulding a nation, not a bigot preach- ing or persecuting a creed. Let us look at him for a moment with the eyes of a shrewd foreign observer, travelling through Ireland in those days, who saw him at work, "The association holds its meetings in an oblong hall surrounded with benches, and arranged nearly in the same manner as the House of Commons. The first time I entered it I saw on his legs a man of about fifty years of age, who, with his hand in his bosom, seemed throwing out his opinion in a negligent manner to about three hundred persons, who were listening with the greatest attention around him. This man was O'Connell. In his person he is tall. His appearance is imposing ; his countenance full of frankness and keenness, though somewhat bordering on coarseness ; and, when he speaks, his physiognomy, as changeable as his imagination, expresses in two minutes 296 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1825 twenty different passions. There is no sort of study either in his gesture or language. With him you feel that thoughts gradually spring upward and develop of themselves ; they seem to take, as he proceeds, if I may so say, the clothing of a tangible and visible form, and words, gesture, accent, all are produced at once, and by a single and simple effort of the will. If he threatens, his entire figure seems ready to follow the defiance which he hurls against the power of England; if he indulges in a trait of humour, before it is yet upon his lips, an expansive gaiety already radiates from all his features. I know of no living orator who communi- cates so thoroughly to his audience the idea of the most profound and absolute conviction. . . . There is not in the ideas of O'Connell so much order as abundance ; one would imagine that in their exertion to escape, and the disorder produced by this internal combat, he had not the power of mastering them. They are young recruits, and ill dis- ciplined ; but what courage, what vigour, what impetuosity ! Known personally to the Irish peasantry, and living with them a great portion of the year, he has something of their manners, their language, even their accent. You should see him, with his cravat loose and waistcoat unbuttoned, in a chapel in Munster. . . . He does not pretend to know anything beyond Ireland. He lends an eloquent voice to the sentiments, the passions, even the prejudices, of six millions of men. Hence his extreme popularity ; hence also his numerous contradictions and inconsistencies. But his contradictions are natural, his inconsistencies patriotic. . . . O'Connell is of the people. He is a glass in which Ireland may see herself completely reflected, or rather he is Ireland himself He has been called an inspired peasant. It ma}' be so ; but that peasant, if he wished it, might have a million more at his back." ^ ^ From Duvergier's letters on the state of Ireland, published in Paris 1S26. I quote from the translation given in the appendix to Wyse, not having been able to find the original of this very remarkable pamphlet in the British Museum, or elsewhere. Duvergier's account of the other leaders of the movement, Sheil, Lawless, /Eneas M'Donnell, and others, including Wyse, its historian, is very interesting. O'Connell's political leanings impressed him as distinctly royalist, rather than republican. That is to say, he was loyal to i826] ELECTIONS OF 1826 297 The Parliamentary events of 1826 were unimportant. Catholic petitions were presented, but no legislation was proposed. The Parliament had lived for six years, and in May it was dissolved. In England, the elections turned partly upon the Catholic question, but this question shared the public interest with the agitation for free trade in corn and for Chancery reform. There were cross-currents then, as since, upon Irish matters. The zeal of the Dissenters for civic justice, which, since the times of the Commonwealth, has been the principal propelling force of English progress, was too often slackened when Ireland was in view, by the disastrous narrowness of their doctrine. They were pro- tected by annual Bills of Indemnity from the disabilities of the Test Acts. But the Test Acts remained ; and Canning, the friend of the Catholics, had persistently opposed their repeal. In Ireland, the issues of the elections were more simple, and the result more momentous. It has been already stated that the bestowal of the franchise on Catholics by the Irish Parliament in 1793 had established in Ireland a near approach to household suffrage. The right to vote was given by a freehold of 40s., this consisting, in the great majority of cases, of a lease for life. The great landholders had vied with each other in the creation of these freeholds. On election days these tenants were brought to the poll by the driver of the estate, like so much live stock conveyed to a the Irish Crown, aiming at independence, but not at separation. Duvergier's judgment of the association was discriminating. He was not blind to its faults: "open to every one, recruited from the bosom of a population for centuries in bondage, it cannot but contain within itself much ignorance, fickleness, and dishonesty. . . . To all these defects I am fully sensible, and yet I think that the association is decidedly of advantage to the country. It rallies the friends of religious freedom ; it keeps up in the people a due feeling of their rights ; forces Catholicity to proclaim the principles of tolera- tion ; fatigues and alarms England ; and rouses the lower classes from that degrading apathy from which they have risen but once or twice in a century to rush into acts of the most atrocious vengeance. In the month of November, the Catholic Association realised per day ;i^50 sterling ; and already more than one Orange landlord, who was prepared to eject en masse his unfortunate tenantry, has been obliged to draw back in alarm before it. In a word, it is a species of new parliament which really represents and is the organ of seven millions of men." 298 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1826 market. The oath as to the value of the freehold was tendered with the same prompt indifference as the vote. Oath and vote were part payment of the rent. A Beresford, a Foster, a Cavendish, would have been as much surprised at their freeholders voting against them as if their horses had exercised choice in whose man's carts they drew. It was a thing hitherto undreamt of. But it was to be heard of now. The Catholic Associa- tion had raised the Irish peasantry from the stage of lawless insurrection to the level of citizens resolute for justice. The time had come when the freeholders were to tolerate the dictation of their landlords no longer. And the county chosen for the first scene of the revolt was one in which the sway of landlords had been most complete and concentrated — the county of Waterford. Over the greater part of this county the Beresfords had ruled for half a century without dispute, their power being imperfectly balanced by the House of Cavendish. In politics their influence had been anti-national. A Beresford had driven away Lord Fitzwilliam in 1795. Throughout the struggle for emancipation the family had been found on the side of strict Protestant Ascendency. Socially they were not unpopular, and in their own neighbourhood their omnipotence was taken for granted. But it happened that in 1825 the Marquess of Waterford had refused to call a meeting on the burning question of the time. The meeting was held, for what he refused had been done in spite of him by twelve Protestant landowners. It was decided to oppose his nominee and brother. Lord George Beresford, after the dissolution ; which, though expected in the autumn of 1825, was actually deferred till the summer of the following year. The delay had this result, that the whole winter and spring were occupied in preparations for the contest. A committee was formed in every barony of the county ; each had its local agents, with a precise registry accounting for every voter in every parish. On Sunday, members were deputed to address the villagers from the altar steps. They read Lord G. Beresford's election addresses, and then they read the Bribery Oath. They asked how Catholics could 1826] IVATERFORD— REVOLT OF FREEHOLDERS 299 take that oath and the money of the Beresfords at the same time. Who were the Beresfords ? and what was their history from their first coming to the time of the Rebelhon, and from the Rebelhon onwards ? When had they spared an opportunity for defeating the CathoHc claims for justice? In resisting them a blow would be struck at the heart of the Protestant Ascendency. These speeches were made, and the resolutions following them were proposed and seconded, not by priests only, but by squires, yeomen, workmen, and peasants. There was no spiritual exorcising in all this ; no machinery of another world called into play.-^ The chapel had become purely and simply the village club, holding meetings in a cause none the less sacred because it was human. Those who talked about priestcraft and abuse of spiritual power forgot that spiritual power unsupported by the secular arm has no permanent vitality but such as springs from the opinion which creates it. Lord Beresford's addresses before the election form a singular exhibition of good-humoured insolence, as of a man half angry with a horse suddenly grown restive. This was no ordinary contest, he said. A few itinerant orators emanating from a scarcely loyal association, aided by a portion of the Roman Catholic clergy subservient to its views, claim a right to impose a representative on the legitimate electors of the county; and temporal power is usurped by a spiritual body whose interference in politics should ever excite the jealousy not only of a Protestant, ^ " It is sufficient answer," says Mr. Wyse, " to such imputations to say that six several petitions, complaining of this abuse, have been successively presented to Parliament, and witnesses procured by means the most discredit- able to support their allegations, but that five of these petitions have been rejected after a deliberate examination by the legislature, and one withdrawn by the petitioners themselves. . . . The arguments used by the priests had no connection with their spiritual power. They were based on the principles of general morality, and applicable to the rights and duties of all classes of citizens. They neither fulminated excommunications nor withheld the Sacra- ments, as is averred ; but they spoke of the crime of perjury, of the oath of the freeholder at the hustings, of the duty of the elector, of the baseness of bribery. . . . The eloquence they used was in the people's hearts, guiding the people the way they had determined to go. They were everything ; had they opposed them, they would unquestionably have beeu nothing " (Wyse, vol. i. pp. 2S6-2S9). 300 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1826 but of a Catholic, people. The Sabbath was profaned and the altar polluted for the almost avowed purpose of exclud- ing the rank, wealth, and intelligence of the county from a share in its representation ; of defrauding the landlord of his influence, and the tenant of his freedom ; and of erecting a spiritual despotism on the ruins of civil and religious liberty. In this strain the address went on.^ When a priesthood is national and popular, tyranny, whether feudal or plutocratic, has always attacked it in the name of freedom. The Cavendishes were not less shocked at this uprising of the serfs than their political rivals. The Duke of Devon- shire issued a manifesto before the election, in which " he refused, as a peer, to interfere with the votes of his ;^50 freeholders, but expected, of course, that his 40s. free- holders would abstain from giving their votes for either of the rival candidates." ^ But such mandates had lost their power. On the day before the nomination, a vast procession, miles in length, barony after barony each bearing its own banner, streamed into Waterford in military array and unbroken tranquillity. Four thousand soldiers had been assembled ; but they helped neither to keep order nor to disturb it. The people cheered them, shook hands with them, and passed on. It had been resolved that there should be no rioting. The butchers of Waterford formed themselves into a guild to patrol the town and to keep order. A vow had been taken of total abstinence from whisky so long as the election lasted. The vow was rigorously kept. At the nomination Lord G. Beresford's proposer enlarged on the cruelty of prevailing on the tenants to set their landlords at defiance. He hoped the tenants would see their true interest and follow the dictates of their conscience. With a loud laugh, the crowd below hurled back the words, " Ay, conscience is all we want ; let us follow but that." The candidate himself assured them he went into Parlia- ^ See address in Dublin Evening Post of June 10, 1826. 2 Wyse, vol i. p. 272. Wyse took part in this election, and his account of it is extremely interesting. l826] THE WATERFORD ELECTION 301 ment unfettered ; he wished the Catholics would meet Pro- testants half-way; he professed not to know quite clearly what emancipation meant. When the popular candidate, Villiers Stuart, had been nominated and had spoken, an old blacksmith of the town, Carey by name, well known and trusted by his fellows, proposed Daniel O'Connell as a fit representative. A thrill of delighted excitement struck through the crowd. The Clare election was not in O'Connell's mind as yet, and all he wanted was an oppor- tunity of speaking. For the next two hours he put forth his full force. The noble lord had told them he would go into Parliament unpledged against emancipation ; and that he did not know what it meant. Not pledged ; not know what it meant ? when he had voted against it steadily for fifteen years. He would tell him what it meant. Emanci- pation meant equality between Catholic and Protestant. " Sacred God ! where is the difference between us that I should not be on an equality with you, here where my children were born, here where my bones shall rest ? " After a speech of extraordinary eloquence, he ended amidst general mirth by saying that for the present, in the cause of general tranquillity, he declined the honour of representing them. O'Connell's eloquence this time was hardly needed. The voters of Kilmacthomas and Portlaw, villages belonging to the Beresfords, had asked some days before to be allowed to come to the poll first, for they had been the first to declare against them. In a few days Lord Beresford gave up the contest, hopelessly defeated by the votes of his brother's freeholders. Such was the Waterford election of 1826; even more important in its consequences than the Clare election, better known in England, two years afterwards. The example given by Waterford was followed by Monaghan, Louth, and other counties. From that moment it was certain that the battle of emancipation was won. It was not less certain that the 40s. freeholders were doomed. Vengeance was taken by many of the landlords at once. But from the worst effects of this they were protected by 302 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1826-7 the New Rent which O'Connell instituted for the purpose of protecting them. Contributions came not from Ireland alone. The stream of emigration to the American conti- nent had begun already, and transatlantic Ireland held her meetings, and sent her proofs of sympathy.^ Parliament assembled in November. Of Ireland the king's speech said not a word. So it was, said Brougham, commenting in the debate on the address on so strange a silence, that, just before the outbreak of the American war, when all eyes were pointed to America, when America was the word which hung upon the quivering lip of every man who thought or felt at all, neither mention nor allusion to it was made in the speech from the throne. On March 5, 1827, Sir Francis Burdett moved "that this House is deeply impressed with the necessity of taking into immediate consideration the laws inflicting penalties on his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects, with the view of re- moving them." In opposition strong statements were made of the spiritual intimidation exercised by priests over their flocks, by refusing the sacraments to men who voted against the popular candidate. "The priests," said Dawson, "had suc- ceeded in bursting asunder the ties which had bound the landlord and the tenant together. They had eradicated all kindness from the former, and all gratitude from the latter. The elective franchise in Ireland was a right conferred by the landlord on the tenant, who for the time was a mere trustee of it for him." 1 The "Report of the Commons Committee of 1825" contains much in- formation about emigration (see pp. 1-27). In 1824 the Irish emigration to Canada was 45,000 ; of these many found their way to the States. The first important meeting to express American sympathy with Ireland was held in New York in 1S25, for the purpose, as stated in the resolution voted, of giving efficient expression to their sympathy for the oppressed, and their indignation at the conduct of the oppressors. An association was formed on the same lines as those of the parent association in Ireland. The organisation spread rapidly ; enthusiastic meetings of the same kind were held in Washington, Augusta, Boston, etc., and " rent " was collected vigorously. General Jackson, at that time president, is stated to have promised the first thousand dollars to the emancipation fund. Ke was of Irish origin, a Protestant. (See Wyse, vol. i. pp. 30S-313.) 1 827] ELECTIONS DISCUSSED IN PARLIAMENT 303 Peel, too, spoke with more warmth than he was wont. " I confess," he said, "that I have a distrust of the Roman CathoHcs, If on a man's faith there be founded a scheme of poHtical influence, then we have a right to inquire into that scheme ; and I cannot contemplate the doctrines of confession and absolution and indulgence without having strong suspicion that these doctrines are maintained for the purpose of confirming the authority which man exercises over man. . . . What is it to me whether that authority be called spiritual or otherwise, if practically it influences man in his conduct to society ? The Catholic priests have been called peacemakers, but they are members of the Catholic Association ; they have never uttered a syllable of reproof of Shell or O'Connell." He concluded by saying that "to admit Catholics within the walls of Parliament would be dangerous to the constitution, would lead to interference in every election between landlord and tenant, and would increase discord and dissension." Peel did not or would not see that the priests and the orators were powerful simply because they spoke the feelings and opinions of the mass of the population. In the battle between opinion and law, had law, so far, shown itself the stronger ? On the other side, it was eloquently urged by Plunket that, when law had mixed politics and religion together, the priesthood of Ireland were not to be condemned for calling attention to the principles of those who were likely to represent them. Had they not the right to say to their parishioners, ** Here is a man wishing to go into Parliament, who will there vituperate you, who will describe you as idolaters, and who will oppose the attainment of your just rights ? " Canning closed the debate. The motion was that the state of Ireland and the Catholics demanded con- sideration. If such a motion were negatived, it would mean that the state of Ireland was unworthy of considera- tion : and he would rather imagine than express the conse- quences which he feared might ensue. The motion was lost by 276 votes against 272. On Catholic Emancipation Canning spoke no more. A few weeks after this debate Lord Liverpool resigned through 304 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1828 illness, and Canning formed a ministry, with Hutchinson and Lord Goderich ; Peel and Wellington refusing to join him. In August Canning died. Lord Goderich held to- gether a coalition ministry for a few months ; but in January 1828 Wellington became prime minister, with Peel as home secretary and leader of the House of Commons. It seemed an anti-Irish ministry. But it was significant that the great strategist and his colleague had not restored the chancellor- ship to Eldon, and had sent Lord Anglesey to Dublin. Two men who could measure the force of wind and tide were at the helm. In May, Burdett renewed his motion of the year before. Peel, as before, opposed it. But it was carried, after three days' debate, by a majority of twelve.^ A conference with the Lords was agreed on. This was held. But in the debate that took place on June 9, Lord Lansdowne's motion in favour of the resolution was rejected by 181 to 137. Throughout the debates both Wellington and Peel had shown a firm front. Only to those who could listen or read narrowly were any signs of yielding visible. The combination between laity and clergy, said the duke, had been going on for thirty-five years, and growing more dangerous ; the aristocracy were rendered powerless ; politi- cal authority was transferred to the people, who were the priests' creatures. Discussion would produce no practical result. He referred to the quiet way in which the elective franchise of 1793 had been conceded. " If the public mind was now suffered to be thus tranquil, if the agitators of Ireland would only leave the public mind at rest, the people would become more satisfied, and I certainly think it would then be possible to do something." ^ The duke, then as always, spoke with the simple sincerity of a strong man. But the interval of peace he wished for was not to be given. 1 " Parliamentary Debates," May 8, 182S. The division was 272 against 260. 2 " Parliamentary Debates," vol. xix. pp. 12S7-1291 (June 10). Welling- ton had seen as far back as 1825 that things could not remain as they were. See "Despatches," new series, vol, ii. p. 602, where he acknowledges that the laws imposing Roman Catholic disabilities have failed. " The moment of their repeal is probably approaching" (Memorandum of December 1S25). 1 828] THE CLARE ELECTION 305 The Parliament that granted the elective franchise was not a British Parliament, but Irish ; it needed now a loud voice to reach across the Channel. A month after these words were spoken, O'Connell was drawn in triumph through the streets of Ennis as the elected member for Clare. The vacancy in that county had been caused by the appointment of Vesey Fitzgerald, who had represented it for more than thirty years, to the presidency of the Board of Trade, It was determined by the Association that his re-election should be opposed. He was a popular man belonging to an old family. His father had opposed the Union ; he himself had favoured the Catholic claims. It was not easy to find an opponent. Two active members of the association, Steele (a Protestant) and O'Gorman Mahon, were sent down to sound the constituency. They found it resolute and enthusiastic for opposition. But it was late in June, and the election began with July. They were beginning to despair of a candidate, when they were astounded by receiving, within a week of the election, copies of O'Connell's address to the electors.^ It began by speak- ing of the oath required of members of Parliament that the Sacrifice of the Mass and the invocation of the Virgin and Saints as practised in the Church of Rome were impious and idolatrous. With that oath he could not sully his soul. But return him to Parliament, and that blasphemous declara- tion would be abolished for ever. After a brief allusion to the vacillations of his rival, he pledged himself, if returned, to vote for revision of the grand jury laws, repeal of the Voters Bill, of the Subletting Bill, and, finally, of the Act of Union. The incidents of the election were similar to those of Waterford two years before. O'Connell's journey from Limerick to Ennis was like a royal progress. So obstructed was it by the vast crowds that went out miles from the town to meet him that he did not enter it till two o'clock in the ^ For details of the election, see Dublin Evening Post, from June 25 to July 6 ; also Steele's account of the election given by Wyse, vol. i. pp. 373-380. U 3o6 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1S28 morning of the nomination day. The election lasted from Monday, June 30, till the Saturday following. The country voters, with their friends and families, camped out in the streets to the number, it is said, of thirty thousand, though heavy and constant rain fell. Milk, potatoes, and oatmeal were distributed by the priests of each parish. From spirituous liquors there was total abstinence ; nor was the peace once broken throughout the week. O'Connell had prophesied, before he left Dublin, that there would be no outrage, no tendency to disturbance. " We will make a lane for the voters of Vesey Fitzgerald," he said, " broad enough to let up ten men abreast if he can get ten to vote for him," There were more than ten, for the battle of temporal and spiritual power was not so easily decided. But the prophecy was fulfilled ; strict order was kept.^ At the close of the first day the numbers were nearly even. But on the day following the issue was clear; and on Saturday the sheriff, after some hesitation as to the law, which his assessor dissipated, declared O'Connell to have been elected by 2057 votes against 982 given to his opponent.^ His exit from the town was even more triumphal than his entrance. Four thousand troops with artillery had been brought into the town, whom the pro- cession, as they passed, saluted with friendly cheers. Five miles from Limerick a vast cavalcade came out to meet him ; and as the stone was reached on which the broken treaty had been signed, "the cheer of fifty thousand voices rang through the air for the entrance of the first Catholic elected since its violation."^ ^ One incident of the election may be noted. A priest, at the close of the poll on Wednesday, told the people of a voter who had yielded to fear and voted against his conscience. An execration was bursting forth. " Silence," said the priest; "kneel down and pray for his soul. This man died last night.' On their knees the multitude fell, and followed the priest's prayer. Nevertheless, the charge of refusing the sacraments to those who voted against their cause was publicly repudiated by the clergy in the most formal way both before and after the election. 2 The law, as the assessor pointed out, said nothing about excluding Catholics ; it simply required members, when taking their seats, to take certain oaths. It was for the House of Commons to see that this was done. ' Correspondent oi Dublin Evening Post, July 8, 1828. 1 828] EFFECTS OF CLARE ELECTION 307 The Clare election produced a profound impression on that large part of the British population who had not followed the course of Irish events. Wellington saw that the moment for action had come. Within three weeks of the election he addressed to the king a memorandum ex- plaining clearly that repressive measures were no longer of any avail, and that emancipation must be frankly con- sidered, though even that might be insufficient. The king replied by a suggestion that Lord Anglesey should be recalled. His reduction to reason was not completed till within a week of the date when the Emancipation Bill was read a first time in Parliament.^ Meantime serious danger was threatening from the north. The Orangemen of Ulster had learnt, during the last two years, how the suppression law of 1825 could be evaded. Brunswick clubs had been formed, preserving the secret sign of Orangemen, and resembling them in every- thing except the oath. And against Orangemen the Arms Act had not been enforced. How far these fanatical societies were from representing the mass of Protestant feeling in Ireland was well proved by the meeting in the Rotunda of January 20, 1829, and by the address of 1500^ Protestant landowners in favour of emancipation ; but the symptom was, nevertheless, one of grave danger. Lawless, one of O'Connell's lieutenants, with much of his power to rouse, none to control, led into Ulster a multitude, so it was said, though with absurd exaggeration, of 140,000 peasants, some of them not wholly without arms. He found himself con- fronted at Ballybay by an armed body of Orangemen, Bloodshed was imminent, and was only averted by his own prompt flight from the scene. Ribbon societies were stirred to new life by the unimpeded growth of Brunswick clubs. And the Catholic Association, though it strove unremittingly to suppress them, was not always successful.^ More troops 1 See " Wellington's Despatches," vol. iv. new series. The memorandum is dated August i, 1828. ^ See the list in Wyse's " History,' vol. ii. Appendix, pp. ccxxvi ct seq. The address to the king adopted at the meeting is also given, pp. cclxii-cclxiii. 3 t< ' When will he call us out ? ' was more than once heard in the streets of Clonmel during the great provincial meeting of last August (1S2S); an 3o8 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1828 were poured into the country, and actual conflict was avoided. It largely contributed to the public safety that the viceroy during that year was Lord Anglesey, a man whose sympathies with the Catholic cause were well known. He was well aware that, if civil war was to be avoided, the question must be settled soon. " If," he wrote to Peel, a month after the Clare election, " I should fortunately be enabled, by the advice and warning I give, to keep this country in a quiet state a little while longer, I most seriously conjure you to signify an intention of taking the state of Ireland into consideration in the first days of the next session of Parliament." ^ In September he again urged the subject on the Duke of Wellington. Wellington replied that the first step was to reconcile the king's mind to any arrangement that might be made. At present nothing could be done but preserve the peace. These communications were, of course, secret. But in December the world was astonished by the appear- ance of a remarkable correspondence, consisting first of the duke's reply to a letter sent to him by Dr. Curtis, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, in which he reiterated his view that the question should be buried for a time in oblivion, and that nothing could be done till Ireland was tranquil ; secondly, of comments upon this letter by Lord Anglesey, to whom Dr. Curtis had shown it. Lord Anglesey said he differed from the duke's view that an attempt should be made to bury the question in oblivion ; this was neither frequently answered with the finger on the mouth, and a significant smile and wink from the bystanders " (Wyse, vol. i. p. 413). At the time of this meeting jn Clonmel, Lawless was at Ballybay. ^ See ("Peel's Memoirs," part i.) correspondence of Peel with Anglesey, 'during August, September, and October 1S28. The danger, according to Anglesey, lay not in processions of unarmed crowds from the south and west, but in the belligerent attitude of well-armed Orangemen in the north. On October 2 he writes (p. 234), " I really think there is no danger of formidable disturbance in the south. ... If the leaders of the Brunswickers could be prevailed upon to set their faces against the organisation and assembly of Protestants, if they would trust to the power of the Government, to the evidence of the king's ministers, and to the judgment of Parliament, instead of attempting to dictate to all, then this unhappy country might hope for comparative rest." i828] LORD ANGLESEY URGES CONCESSIONS 309 possible nor, if possible, desirable. He advised, on the contrary, that the measure should not be for a moment lost sight of; that by every constitutional and peaceful method the cause should be forwarded.^ But before this corre- spondence was published Lord Anglesey had received his letters of recall. On January 18 he left Ireland, amidst signs of regret once paralleled before and once since. Two days afterwards a meeting was held in the Rotunda, at which it was seen how large a mass of Protestant feeling joined with Catholic in urging a reasonable compromise. The meeting resulted in the formation of a society in which Catholic and Protestant were associated on equal terms.2 When Parliament met on February 6, 1829, the king's speech made it clear that a settlement had been arranged. The speech regretted the continuance in Ireland of an association dangerous to the public peace, and advised Parliament to consider the removal of civil disabiHties of Catholics consistently with the maintenance of establish- ments in Church or State. These were institutions which must ever be held sacred in this Protestant kingdom. What the settlement was to be was soon seen. On February 10 Peel brought in a Bill for the suppression of the Catholic Association ; and on March 5 he proposed a resolution that the House should form into committee to consider the laws imposing disabilities on Catholics. His proposals were, first, that the oath required of members of Parliament should be so altered that Catholics should be capable of taking it; secondly, the disfranchisement of the 40s. freeholders. The freehold conferring the franchise must be of the value of £10. It would not be conferred, 1 Lord Anglesey's letter was dated December 23. But it was not published till two or three days after the letter of recall, dated December 2S, had been received (see Wyse, vol. ii. p. 27 ; and Appendix, pp. ccxiii-ccxix. See also "House of Lords Debates," May 4, 1829). Long before this, Peel and Wellington had been dissatisfied with Lord Anglesey's overt sympathies witli the popular cause (see " Wellington's Despatches," 2nd series, vol. iv.). ^ This society, called "Friends of Civil and Religious Freedom," was instituted by Mr. Wyse. The events which followed rendered its continuance unnecessary (see Wyse, vol. ii. p. 57). 3IO TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1829 as hitherto, by a lease for life. And it must be proved by registration before an assistant-barrister.^ In his various speeches on the subject Peel defined his attitude. The time had come, he said, for concession. They must not be afraid of being afraid. The state of Ireland could not be looked on without fear ; to affect not to fear it would be to affect insensibility to the welfare of the country." ** I have for years," he said, " attempted to maintain the exclusion of the Roman Catholics. I resign the struggle because I think it can no longer be advan- tageously maintained. Can we rely on coercion ? We have tried it for three years out of four ever since the Union. In 1825 we passed a law to suppress the Catholic Associa- tion. That law has been futile. Through the law now before us Lord Eldon says he can drive a donkey-cart. What is the inference ? That there exists a spirit too subtle for compression ; a bond of union which penal statutes cannot dissolve. . . . We cannot replace the Roman Catho- lics in the position in which we found them when the relaxation of penal laws begap. We have given them the opportunity of acquiring education, wealth, and power. We have removed with our own hands the seal from the vessel in which a mighty spirit was enclosed ; but, like the genius in the fable, it will not return to its narrow confines, and enable us to cast it forth to the obscurity from which we evoked it." Much to the same purpose, though briefer, were Wel- lington's words in the Upper House. ^ Resistance, he said, meant civil war. The state of things in Ireland could not be touched by force. The leaders of the disaffected knew well that they were not strong enough to wrestle with the king's Government, and, being sensible and able men, and well aware of the materials on which they worked, the state of things might continue for years without an opportunit}^ ^ These proposals were embodied in two Bills. The only offices from which Catholics would now remain excluded would be tnose of Regent, Viceroy, Lord Chancellor of England, and of Ireland, and endowments con- nected with Church patronat;e or universities. ■^ Speech, February 5, 1829. ^ "Parliamentary Debates," 1829, April 2. I 1S29] PEEVS EMANCIPATION BILL 311 of putting it down. And even had he the means of putting it down, he would hesitate. He had seen more of war than most members of the House, and much of it civil war ; and if he could avoid by any sacrifice whatever even a month of civil war in the country to which he was attached, he would yield his life in order to do it. The Bill, embodying Peel's resolutions, was read for the first time on March 10. After two days' debate, the second reading was carried on March 1 8, by 353 to 180; and the third reading on March 30, by 320 to 142. In the Lords, the majority for the Bill on the second reading was 217 against 1 1 1 ; and the Bill was read a third time on April 10. On May 15 O'Connell presented himself in the House, claiming to take the oath newly enacted. A debate took place, and on the iSth he was heard at the bar. It was decided by 190 votes against 116 that, having been elected before the change in the law, he must take the former oath. On his refusal to do this, a new writ was issued, and he was elected by the new constituency in July. Extreme irri- tation, which might well have been spared,^ was caused in Ireland by this delay. The battle was over; what were the losses and the gains ? That a few Catholic landowners should sit in Westminster was not a result so important as to justify the enormous expenditure of energy by which it had been attained. That Irish Catholics could now be members of corporations was far more to the purpose. It was well, too, that a Catholic could now be a king's counsel and a judge, unless, indeed, the prizes of the legal profession were to deaden civic zeal for the mass of social and agrarian reform that yet remained unaccomplished. It was a still greater ^ Peel ("Memoirs," part. i. p. 30S) explains the course taken. "It was not from paltry jealousy or personal pique," he says. The difficulties were very great. " The king was hostile, the Church was hostile, a majority, probably, of the people of Great Britain was hostile to concession." As late as March 4 ministers were summoned to Windsor, and told by the king that he could not possibly consent to an alteration of the Oath of Supremacy. They tendered their resignations and retired. Late that evening the king sent a message to Wellington, requesting them to withdraw their resignations and proceed with the Bill (see " Peel's Memoirs," part i. pp. 2S2 ct so/.). 312 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1829 thing that O'Connell's persistent struggle to avoid the inter- ference of Government in episcopal appointments had been successful, and that the priesthood were not to be emascu- lated by a regium donum. Against these gains, real, though exaggerated, were to be set the disfranchisement of the 40s. freeholders and the suppression of the Catholic Association ; securities, as these measures were called by the Government of the day, though the light that after years have thrown on the facts may lead us to doubt whether they were not rather guaran- tees of insecurity. To Englishmen the disfranchisement seemed a simple and natural course. Of giving agricultural labourers a vote in England or in Scotland no practical reformer dreamed. Why, then, should it be given in Ireland to men equally poor and ignorant ? They did not see that when, of two nations utterly opposed in almost every circumstance of economic and social structure, one was to be governed from the metropolis of the other, the first condition of success was that the opinions and feelings of the distant nation should be accurately represented. The mass of the Irish people consisted of tillers of the soil, holding a peculiar relation both to their priests and to their landlords. The body of small freeholders, forming about a fifth part of the adult manhood of the nation,^ represented this mass without overwhelming other classes and interests. The abuses that had crept into the mode of registering the claim to vote were susceptible of an easy remedy. To annihilate the political existence of this large section of the nation was deliberately to blind the eyes of the governors of Ireland as to the thoughts and desires of those they ruled. Of the suppression of the Association nearly the same may be said. It had acted for five years the part of a local parliament, strictly subordinate to the official Parliament, in London, for whom it performed the invaluable service of telling what the large majority of the Irish nation thought and wanted. It was not, like the Orange society or the ^ Valuable information as to the numbers of 40s. freeholders will be found in Wyse's " History," vol. ii. Appendix, pp. cxi-cxix. 1S00-1829] ESTIMATE OF ITS VALUE 313 Brunswick clubs, knit together by secret oaths or secret signs ; nor was it Hmited, hke them, to a rehgious sect. It willingly received Protestants as well as Catholics ; it held its meetings in the face of day. Outrage had ceased with its establishment, and revived after its destruction. Irritation at the mass of grievances that remained unredressed took shape in secret societies pledged to violence, and Government was reduced to depend for its information on the anonymous press or on the irre- sponsible clerks of the Castle. In suppressing the Association and disfranchising the freeholders, England burnt two of the volumes offered by the Irish Sybil. The full price would be asked for what remained. PART IV FROM THE EMANCIPATION OF THE CATHOLICS TO THE INSURRECTIONARY MOVE- MENT OF 1848 By lord FITZMAURICE and JAMES R. THURSFIELD 1' REFORM AND ITS CONSEQUENCES No sooner was the Catholic Rehef Bill passed, than O'Connell presented himself at the bar of the House of Commons, and claimed to be allowed to take his seat for the county of Clare. His claim was, of course, disallowed, the Act having been purposely drawn so as to exclude him. He went back to Ireland to seek re-election, and at once raised the cr}^ of Repeal. He was again returned for Clare, this time without a contest, though the constituency was totally changed in character by the disfranchisement of the 40s. freeholders. George IV. died in June 1830. Before the close of that year the long reign of the Tory party came to an end, and the Government of Lord Grey was formed. Ireland might now have looked to see Catholic Emancipation made a reality. But the poison of 1829 had begun to work. O'Connell. had already raised the cry of Repeal, and had brought himself into collision with the Irish Government. His violent language had provoked a challenge from Sir 1 The writers desire to express their grateful acknowledgments to Earl Spencer for the permission accorded to them of examining the unpublished correspondence of Lord Althorp. 315 3i6 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1830- Henry Hardinge, the chief secretary, and his attempts to revive the CathoHc Association under a new title were easily defeated by an Executive armed with the powers of the Suppression Act. But in 1830 he was not irreconcilable, and there were many reasons why an attempt should have been made to conciliate him. Ireland was miserable as usual, and its misery was, also as usual, the source of crime. The cry of Repeal, raised by O'Connell, found its support not only in the national misery, but in the French revolution of 1830, and in the successful attempt of Catholic Belgium to separate itself from Protestant Holland. Herein lay the seeds of a powerful agitation. O'Connell's reconciliation with the Whig Government would have been invaluable as showing that Catholic Emancipation was at last to become a reality. But the Ascendency was still powerful, and public opinion in England had been alienated by O'Connell's conduct. Anglesey, the viceroy, recalled by Wellington in 1828, was again appointed by Grey. He was induced to retain the Protestant law officers who had served under his predecessors, and when one of these, Doherty — " Dirty Doherty," as the followers of O'Connell called him — was shortly afterwards promoted to the bench, Blackburne, another Protestant, was appointed. O'Connell had received a pledge that Doherty should not be raised to the bench, and this pledge was violated by Stanley, the chief secretary, without remonstrance from his colleagues. O'Connell him- self, the unquestioned leader of the Irish Bar, was not even offered the dignity of a king's counsel. No single Catholic of note was offered promotion or employment; ^ and Anglesey had not been many weeks in Ireland before he was involved 1 Some years later than this, Lord Wellesley, the Viceroy who succeeded Lord Anglesey, called the attention of the Cabinet, in a confidential letter, to the fact " that the Roman Catholics of Ireland had never yet been admitted to the full benefit of the laws passed for their relief. Entitled by law to admission into almost any office in the State, they had been, and were still, practically excluded from almost every branch of the executive administration of the Government. ... It was impossible to suppose that a whole nation could repose confidence in or act cordially with a Government when so large a portion of the people were practically excluded from all share in the higher offices of the State, while their right to admission was established by law " (Wellesley's " Memoirs," vol. iii. p. 406). 1832] THE POLICY OF STANLEY 317 in a protracted struggle with O'Connell. The details of this struggle are more entertaining than edifying; its results were fatal to the prospects of good government in Ireland. The policy pursued by the Grey ministry towards Ireland was dominated by Stanley, between whom and O'Connell political antagonism had taken the form of personal antipathy and vituperation. Lord Anglesey, who undestood Ireland better than his associates in the Government, often complained that his views were set aside and his policy counteracted by the chief secretary, who occupied a seat in the Cabinet.^ In 1832 ministers were too much occupied with the Reform struggle in England to give the needful attention to the question of social order in Ireland. A starving population was not to be fed, a discontented population was not to be pacified, by a Reform Bill — a measure denounced as in- adequate and illusory by O'Connell and his supporters, and described by so impartial an authority as Erskine May as " the least successful of the three great Reform Acts of 1832," 2 Even the educational reforms of 183 1-2, good in themselves, and accepted by O'Connell and Shell, though resisted by the Ascendency party, were of no avail to touch the real sources of Irish misery and crime. Tithes were the source of disturbance throughout three provinces of Ireland, and this grievance, acting on the chronic misery of the poorer agricultural population, produced a condition of social disorder for which, in 1833, the usual remedy of a Coercion Bill was proposed. The Bill was, of course, carried, though not without prolonged debate and energetic resist- ance. It was the failure of a clumsy intrigue concerning the renewal of this measure in 1834, that brought about the resignation of Lord Grey. He was succeeded by Lord 1 Lord Anglesey to Lord Cloncurry, February i, 1S32: "I cannot quite go your length with respect to S , but I do not think he is very anxious to uphold me, and I do believe he would prefer a more stibmissive master. You must see that I work at a great disadvantage. He knows all my schemes, and I know few of his, until he finds himself in a difficulty. Thus all my projects, when laid before the Cabinet, if he does not go the whole length with me (and half-measures are worse than useless), are probably thwarted by him. He tells his own story, and I have no one to support and back my views" (" Personal Recollections of Lord Cloncurry," p. 367). 2 May, " Constitutional History," vol. i. p. 430. 31 8 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1S30-33 Melbourne, but before the end of the year William IV. had dismissed Melbourne and sent for Peel. Four years of Stanley's policy in Ireland thus sufficed to destroy one of the most powerful ministries that ever held office in England.^ It will be convenient at this point to pass in brief survey the legislation affecting Ireland which was undertaken by the Whig Governmeat of 1830. The Educational measures of Stanlc}^ and the Irish Reform Act have already been mentioned. The great difficulty of the time was the tithe question, associated as it was on the one side with the standing grievance of the Established Church, and on the other with the perennial scourge of Irish agrarian misery. It is unnecessary to waste time in showing that tithe, as levied in Ireland in 1830, was indefensible. That question was settled once for all in 1838, when the Tithe Commuta- tion Act was finally passed. The history of the question goes back as far as 1735, when a Parliament of Protestant landlords had declared agistment land, or land on which cattle were pastured, to be tithe-free. Thus were the richer farmers of Ireland unjustly relieved of a burden which was still imposed on their poorer neighbours. In 1822 and 1823 the composition of the tithe had been made voluntary, and grass-lands had again been made subject to the impost. But this latter provision rendered the measure to a large extent nugatory. In 1832 an Act passed by Stanley made the composition compulsory, and in the same year an Act - was passed which authorised the Government to advance a sum of i^6o,000 to incumbents, who were reduced to the utmost distress by the impossibility of collecting the tithes due to them, and to take the necessary steps for collecting the arrears of tithes. Next year it was found that a sum of ;^i 2,000 had been collected at great cost and some loss of life, while the amount of arrears due throughout Ireland amounted to little short of ;^i, 000,000 sterling. An Amend- ing Act 3 was therefore passed, which empowered the Govern- 1 Stanley was succeeded by Littleton, in 1833, but the policy underwent no material change. * 2 & 3 Will. IV. cap. cxix. ' 3 & 4 Will. IV. cap. c. 1833] SOCIAL ORDER IN 1S33 319 ment to lend a million to the tithe-owners of Ireland, the repayment of the loan to be spread over a period of five years. Ultimately the loan was remitted. In 1834 a Bill was introduced for substituting a land tax for tithe, but was rejected by the House of Lords. So the matter rested when the first reformed Parliament was dissolved. In 1835 Sir Henry Hardinge, Peel's Irish secretary, resolved to abandon the loan of ;^i,coo,ooo advanced in 1833, and in this resolution Lord Morpeth, who succeeded him when Lord Melbourne returned to power in the same year, found it necessary to concur. The further history of the question is included in that of the larger question of the Irish Church, and will be more conveniently discussed hereafter. Thus the Grey administration failed to grapple with the difficulty of tithes. It was not much more successful in its dealings with other Irish questions. The perennial agrarian difficulty it did not attempt to touch. Its solitary measure dealing with the Church was mutilated in the House of Lords, and thereby rendered nugatory as a settlement; and its struggle for the maintenance of law and order very nearly destroyed it in 1833, and ultimately brought about its overthrow in 1834. In the beginning of 1833 the social condition of Ireland was deplorable. Lord Grey, in introducing his Coercion Bill in the House of Lords, enumerated no fewer than nine thousand crimes of violence, chiefly, indeed almost ex- clusively, agrarian, which had occurred in the preceding twelve months. Juries would not convict, murders were rife, and intimidation was almost universal. The authority of the law had practically ceased to exist throughout the greater part of the country. If it was to be restored, a Coercion Act of the most stringent and drastic character was plainly and absolutely necessary. It occurred to some that it might be expedient to inquire whether the social disorganisation and the appalling frequency of crime in Ireland were due to the presence of intolerable grievances which might be removed or at least alleviated ; and whether, if these grievances were removable or susceptible of allevia- tion, it was the duty of Parliament to attempt to redress 320 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1833 them before proceeding to enforce obedience to a law not in itself entitled to respect. These considerations did not weigh, however, with the Government and Parliament of 1833. It was not to be expected that they should. The malady was too acute. It seemed to call for immediate cautery, not for the slow process of remedial healing. Whatever may be thought of the measures then adopted, there is no sort of doubt as to the almost desperate condition of social order in Ireland in 1833. The Cabinet was divided, as usual. Stanley, the chief secretary, was the uncompromising advocate of coercion in its severest form. Lord Althorp, the leader of the House of Commons, was in favour of less coercion and more concession. For a time it seemed as if the Cabinet would break up, and that the Reform Government would never meet the reformed Parliament. Stanley, how- ever, prevailed, not without a struggle — the effects of which were subsequently discernible in Althorp's demeanour in the House of Commons — and Lord Grey introduced into the House of Lords as severe a measure of repression as has ever been proposed, even for Ireland. The Bill, as the prime minister admitted, combined the provisions of the " Proclamation Act, the Intervention Act, the partial appli- cation of martial law, and the partial suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act."^ This measure was introduced into the House of Lords on February 15, and was read a third time and passed on the 22nd without having produced a single division. Its fortunes in the House of Commons were more chequered. It was debated at intervals for five weeks, and sent back to the House of Lords on April i. On its first introduction it narowly escaped miscarriage. Althorp explained its provisions in a speech characterised by Lord John Russell as " tame and ineffective." He failed to show that the ordinary laws of the land would not be sufficient to put an end to the disturbances. He recounted the tale of unpunished crime which Lord Grey had previ- ously told in the House of Lords. But he added that "a special commission had been issued to try offenders, ^ Walpole, " History of England," vol. iii. p. 153. 1833] STANLEY AND THE COERCION BILL 321 and the result had been completely successful." Where, then, asked his opponents, was the necessity for the Bill ? They pointed to the report of the committee which had sat in the previous session to consider the state of Ireland, and had declared that " the law, when vigorously ad- ministered, is adequate to put down outrages." Althorp's tame and ineffective advocacy had, in fact, placed the Bill in jeopardy. A motion was proposed to postpone its intro- duction for a fortnight, and seemed likely to be carried. Then Stanley spoke. He had witnessed Althorp's failure, and discerned the disposition of the House to lay the blame upon himself. He was known to be committed to coercion ; he was thought to be opposed in his heart to the scanty measure of concession which the Government had embodied in their Church Bill. His own credit and that of the Government were involved in the fate of the Coercion Bill. He gathered up the papers which Althorp had used, and retired from the House to study them. In two hours he came back armed at every point. " He ex- plained," says Lord Russell, *' with admirable clearness the insecure and alarming state of Ireland. . . . The House became appalled and agitated at the dreadful picture which he placed before their e3^es. They felt for the sorrows of the innocent; they were shocked at the dominion of assassins and robbers." Then he turned upon O'Connell, and overwhelmed him with his denunciation and invective. "The House, which two hours before seemed about to yield to the great agitator, was now almost ready to tear him to pieces. In the midst of the storm which his eloquence had raised Stanley sat down, having achieved one of the greatest triumphs ever won in a popular assembly by the power of oratory." ^ After six nights' debate the Bill was introduced and read a first time. It was slightly modified in committee by two amendments, one of which disqualified all officers below the rank of captain from sitting in a military court, while the other required five members of the court to be unanimous before a conviction could take place. A further amendment ^ Russell, " Recolleclions and Suggestions," p. 112. X 322 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1833 was introduced by the Government whereby the jurisdiction of the courts-martial was so far restricted as to withhold from them the cognisance of all offences which were not of an insurrectionary character, and of words or speeches uttered not acccompanied by violence or threats, as well as the decision of the question whether any matter was or was not a seditious libel. These modifications of the original severity of the Bill were voluntarily conceded by the Government. In addition, O'Connell proposed a clause which declared " that it shall not be lawful for the Lord- Lieutenant or other chief governor or governors of Ireland to employ the powers conferred by this Act in any way to any county or district, merely because tithes shall not be paid in such district." The Government contended that these words were superfluous and inoperative, inasmuch as the clause which O'Connell proposed to amend already required a " district to be in a state of disturbance and in- subordination " before the Lord-Lieutenant could apply to it the provisions of the Act. But the Government shrank from the odium which even the semblance of making the Bill a measure for the more effective collection of tithe would have entailed, and therefore they accepted the amendment. When the Bill returned to the Lords, an attempt was made to give logical completeness to the clause amended by O'Connell. Lord Harrowby proposed to add that neither should any district be proclaimed merely for non- payment of rent or taxes. The amendment was rejected by 85 votes to 45. Had it been carried, the irony of the situation would have been complete. The clause would have enabled the Irish farmers to defeat the Government, and to annihilate social order, so far as it depended on the fulfilment of civil contracts and legal obligations, by the simple expedient of a passive and individual refusal to pay tithes, rents, and taxes. As soon as the Act was passed, the county of Kilkenny, the chief seat of disturbances, was proclaimed by the Lord- Lieutenant, and the "Association of Irish Volunteers," of which O'Connell was the head, was suppressed. The 1833] THE CHURCH BILL OF 1833 323 association had previously passed a resolution confiding all its acts and functions to O'Connell himself. It was not found necessary to appoint a single court-martial, even in Kilkenny, and the number of offences throughout Ireland diminished from 472 in the month of March to 162 in the month of May. Crime was diminished, as was to be expected ; but, as was equally to be expected, the malady which paralysed social order in Ireland remained entirely without a cure. An attempt to remedy some of the grievances of Ireland was, however, simultaneously made. On February 12, three days before the Coercion Bill was introduced in the Lords by the prime minister. Lord Althorp had explained the provisions of a measure for the reform of the Church. The Bill was introduced on March 11, and the second reading fixed for the 14th. On that day it appeared, how- ever, that the formalities incident to a Bill dealing with taxation had not been complied with, and accordingly the original Bill was withdrawn, and a series of resolutions was substituted for it. The new Bill founded on these resolutions was read a second time on May 6. To O'Connell and the Radicals, the Bill was only acceptable because it contained an " appropriation clause " — a pro- vision, that is, for the application of the surplus revenues of the Established Church in Ireland to secular purposes. This clause was dropped by Stanley in committee. It could never have had his real approval.' Earlier in the session, ^ It is clear, from Le Marchant's " Memoir of Earl Spencer," that the Cabinet of Earl Grey was only with diiliculty prevented from breaking up on the Irish Church question before the opening of the session of 1833. The unpublished correspondence of Lord Althorp, which the writers have, by the kindness of the present Earl Spencer, been permitted to examine, is still more conclusive on this point. For instance, Althorp writes to Grey on October 20, 1832, in reference to Stanley's Irish Church proposals, " I have seen John Russell, . . . who showed me a letter he had written and intended to send to you. I persuaded him to postpone it, which he readily did after talking to me The letter was to resign. . . . You have in your Cabinet diametrically opposite principles at work, and it will be very difficult to form any plan which can reconcile them." Again, on December 2, 1832, he writes to Grey, " I showed your letter to Stanley to Graham, ns you desired me, and have had a long conversation with him upon it, which has left an impression on my mind that it is rather more likely that Stanley will resign 324 Tiro CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1833 when the Coercion Bill was still in the Lords, and the original Church Bill had been explained by Althorp in the Commons, a suspicion had arisen that the Church Bill was only intended to float the Coercion Bill, and that the measure of conciliation would be dropped as soon as the measure of repression had been carried. In order to dissi- pate this suspicion, Stanley had declared in the name of the Cabinet that the Government were pledged to carry both measures, and that they would regard the rejection of either as equivalent to a declaration of want of con- fidence. It is a delicate problem of political casuistry to determine whether this pledge was consistent with the subsequent abandonment of the appropriation clause, the only portion of the Church Bill for which the opponents of the Coercion Bill really cared. However this may be, the clause was abandoned through fear of the House of Lords. Even so the Bill was strenuously resisted in the Upper House. A demonstration made, however, in the House of Commons by Sir John Wrottesley, who, in defiance both of Peel and Althorp, moved for a call of the House and was defeated by only 160 to 125, and the politic abstention of the Duke of Wellington from active opposition, sufficed to secure a majority of 157 peers against 95 in favour of the second reading. An amendment was moved by the Archbishop of Canterbury in committee, which provided than not." Althorp's own views on the government of Ireland are interest- ing. It should be remembered that he had to bear the whole burden of the Parliamentary struggle, and that he hated Parliamentary life with a hatred which he expressed as follows in a letter written to Grey in November 1833: "If I had my choice I should decidedly prefer anything, death not excepted, to sitting upon the Treasury Bench in the House of Commons ; " and again in a letter to Brougham, written after his father's death, he sa3's, " I never wished, and never, I hope, could wish, to see any one made as unhappy as I have been by politics for any service he could do to me or to other people." With these views he was not likely to be hopeful in regard to the Parliamentary government of Ireland, and, in fact, he sighed for a benevolent despotism. In 1832 he wrote to Grey, " If I had my own way, I would establish a dictatorship in Ireland, until by the increased wealth and intelligence of the people they were become fit for a free government." Five years afterwards, when he had retired from public life, he wrote to Brougham on February 5, 1837, " I have no patience with those Irishmen, and am almost inclined to say that no Government has really done justice to Ireland since Oliver Cromwell." 1833] LITTLETON SUCCEEDS STANLEY 325 that the revenues of a suspended benefice ^ should be allowed to accumulate for the purpose of building a church or glebe-house within the parish. This amendment was supported by Wellington, and carried against the Govern- ment by 84 votes to 82. The Government decided to accept this amendment rather than abandon the Bill, and the third reading was carried by 135 votes to 81. At the close of the session Stanley retired from his chief secretaryship. Lord Durham resigned office, and was succeeded as lord privy seal by Goderich, who became Earl of Ripon, while Stanley succeeded the latter as colonial secretary. Stanley's immediate successor as Irish secretary was Sir John Cam Hobhouse ; but he resigned in a few weeks, having failed to secure his re-election for West- minster, and was replaced by Littleton, afterwards Lord Hatherton, who remained chief secretary for Ireland, though without a seat in the Cabinet, until the Whig ministry was finally dismissed by William IV. in 1834. The Viceroy, Anglesey, resigned soon after the retirement of the chief secretary. Lord Grey was anxious to send Lord Melbourne in his place, but Melbourne, not unnaturally, declined to go. The Marquis of Wellesley, Littleton's father-in-law, towards whom O'Connell was not unfavourably disposed, was appointed in his stead. The year 1834 was an eventful one for Ireland. The Coercion Act was in full force, and it had produced the usual effect at the usual cost. Crime and outrage were diminished, while disaffection and discontent were as rife as ever. O'Connell had again thrown him.self actively into the cause of repeal. The tithe question Vv^as still unsettled, and Parliament was invited in the king's speech to take it once more into consideration. " I recommend to you," said the speech, "the early consideration of such a final adjustment of the tithes in that part of the United Kingdom as may extinguish all just causes of complaint, without ^ A clause in the Bill empowered the Ecclesiastical Commissioners to suspend any appointment to a benefice in which no duty had been done for the three years prtceding the introduction of the Bill. This clause was strenuously resisted in the House of Lords. 326 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1834 injury to the rights and property of any class of my subjects, or to any institutions in Church or State. The public tranquillity has been generally preserved, and the state of all the provinces of Ireland presents, upon the whole, a much more favourable appearance than at any period during the last year.^ But I have seen, with feelings of deep regret and just indignation, the continuance of attempts to excite the people of that country to demand a repeal of the Legislative Union. This bond of our national strength and safety, I have already declared my fixed and unalterable resolution, under the blessing of divine Providence, to maintain inviolate by all the means in my power." ^ The Lord-Lieutenant, Wellesley, wrote as follows to the chief secretary, Littleton, on July 19, 1834: "The country is much more tranquil, except the Orange spirit, which is more furious than ever." On August 7 he wrote, "The truth is, that Ireland will never be quieted by these annual expedients of suspending the laws and constitution of the realm. We must endeavour as soon as possible to return to the ordinary laws, and to be satisfied with a vigorous and pure administration of justice. Until we are fixed on that 7-ock, we shall never know genuine peace nor security " (see " Memoir and Corre- spondence relating to Political Occurrences in June and July 1834," by the Right Hon. Edward John Littleton, first Lord Hatherton, pp. 108 and no). It is curious to note the dissatisfaction with which successive Lords-Lieutenant regarded the vacillating and inconsistent policy which the Governments they represented were compelled by Parliamentary exigencies to pursue. See a very remarkable letter written by Lord Anglesey, Wellesley's predecessor, to Lord Cloncurry, on January 28, 1835: "Can the Peel and Wellington Government stand ? I am sure it ought not, and if there be common honesty and fair dealing in man, it will not. But can any one count upon honesty and fair dealing in these days ? I think not. I strongly suspect what are called the moderate Whigs. I have no faith in them. I believe that in general they are frightened, and only show Liberalism as long as the tide runs that way, and as it turns (if turn it do) they will float back with it. Neither have I any faith in the ultra-Tories. . . . Peel and Wellington will continue to hold the reins, and with a bad grace give all the reforms that were in contemplation by the last Government, and which, if my voice had been attended to, would, as far as the Irish Church is concerned, have been set smooth three years ago. But instead of attending to me, they took the advice of Stanley, and brought forth that notable Bill of his for the recovery of tithes, which I at once pronounced would be a total, and also a very expensive failure, and would cause much clerical blood to flow ; and so it happened, and the Protestant clergy have been bleeding and starving ever since" (Lord Cloncurry, " Personal Recollections," p. 298). Lord Anglesey, it will be recollected, had been viceroy under the two successive Govern- ments of the Duke of Wellington and Lord Grey. 1834] THE TACTICS OF O'CONNELL 327 The session was almost exclusively devoted to the dis- cussion of Irish affairs. O'Connell opened the attack on the Government with a motion for the appointment of a select committee " to inquire into the conduct of Mr. Baron Smith, in respect to the discharge of his duties as a judge, and to the introduction of politics into his charge to a grand jury." Baron Smith was an aged Irish judge, who had in his youth been a friend and correspondent of Burke, and, though taking no part in political agitation, he had been a consistent advocate of the Catholic claims. He had, how- ever, given offence to O'Connell and his followers by his denunciation of their political action in a charge to the grand jury of Dublin. This charge was made the chief ground of complaint ; but it was fortified by the allegation that Baron Smith was in the habit of fixing the business of the Courts to suit his own convenience and the peculiarities of his personal habits. He rarely appeared in court before noon, and on one occasion, at the summer assizes at Armagh, he had sat, with brief intermission, for the trial of prisoners, from eleven o'clock in the forenoon until six o'clock the following morning, no less than fourteen prisoners having been tried during the last twelve hours of this extraordinary sitting. It had been the original intention of the Govern- ment to oppose O'ConnelPs motion, and Littleton, the chief secretar}^, had authorised Shaw, the leader of the Irish Protestants, to inform Baron Smith of this intention. O'Connell, however, slightly altered the terms of his motion, and, much to his surprise, Althorp, Littleton, and Sir John Campbell, the sohcitor-general, who acknowledged the scandal of the judge's proceedings at Armagh, agreed to accept it in its amended form. Stanley supported them reluctantly, though he had not been consulted on their change of front; but Sir James Graham, the First Lord of the Admiralty, warmly opposed the motion. It was carried, however, by a majority of 167 to 74, and Sir James Graham at once tendered his resignation, which was not accepted. A few days afterwards O'Connell's motion was rescinded at the instance of Sir Edward Knatchbull. O'Connell had practically gained his end when the original 32S TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1834 motion was carried, and his resistance to Knatchbull's motion was merely perfunctory. The ministers were divided, their conduct of affairs was discredited, and the authority of the bench in Ireland was impaired. It was clear that the substitution of Littleton for Stanley had introduced confusion into the Irish policy of the Govern- ment. Stanley's policy may have been ill-advised and mischievous, but it was at least vigorous, consistent, and uncompromising. Littleton's was a policy of clumsy and infirm management. "Leave me to manage Dan," he is reported to have said.^ We have seen, and shall shortly see further, how Dan managed him. This was a mere skirmish, though it had enabled O'Connell to show his own skill and to exhibit the weak- ness and indecision of the Government. It was already suspected, and it very shortly became clear, that the Cabinet was torn by internal dissensions. It is probable that its disruption was only averted in 1833 by the aban- donment of the appropriation clause in the Church Tempor- alities Bill. Fear of the House of Lords was alleged as the justification of this policy, which had deeply offended O'Connell and disappointed the English radicals; but the events of 1834 show that no appropriation clause could have been carried by a Cabinet which included Stanley and Sir James Graham. Before the fight on the appropri- ation clause was renewed, O'Connell, who had agitated the question of repeal during the preceding recess in Ireland, brought forward a motion on the subject in the House of Commons. On April 22 he moved for a select committee " to inquire and report on the means by which the dissolu- tion of the Parliament of Ireland was effected ; on the effects of that measure upon Ireland ; and on the probable conse- quences of continuing the legislative union between both countries." The occasion was not well chosen ; but the motives which actuated O'Connell may be readily divined and explained. Five years had elapsed since the emanci- pation of the Catholics. The results of that measure, intercepted by the survival of Ascendency principles, had ^ Greville's " Memoirs," 1st series, vol. iii. p. 103. 1834] THE REPEAL DEBATE OF 1834 329 disappointed the Irish, and they were deeply exasperated by Stanle3''s administration. The great Reform Govern- ment, which had saved England from revolution, had done little or nothing effective to allay the discontents of Ireland. It had ignored the counsels of the man really responsible for the government of Ireland,^ and it h.ad allowed its feeble and temporising remedial measures to be emasculated in deference to Parliamentary necessities and the intrigues of Downing Street. It had played into the hands of O'Connell by leaving grievances unredressed, and it was now verging on dissolution, because it could not assent to measures which its own viceroys recommended. In these circumstances O'Connell's motion in favour of repeal was not unintelligible. The result of a debate on repeal in the House of Commons was, of course, a foregone conclusion. O'Connell made a powerful speech, in which he exhausted the topics applicable to his thesis ; but he spoke to an assembly which would not and could not stultify itself by destroying a constitutional fabric completed only five years ago. It is not to be supposed that O'Connell himself expected his motion to succeed. His subsequent action, during the ministry of Lord Melbourne from 1835 to 1 841, is a proof that, in 1834, he was not himself irreconcilable. O'Connell was answered by Spring Rice in a powerful and length}^ speech, at the end of which the latter moved an amendment for an address to the Crown, to be communicated to the House of Lords for their concurrence, affirming the unalter- able resolve of Parliament to maintain the legislative Union inviolate, and to persevere in applying its best attention to the removal of all just causes of complaint, and to the promotion of all well-considered measures of improvement. This amendment was carried by a majority of 523 to 38, only one English member voting with O'Connell ; and the joint address of both Houses to the Crown was shortly afterwards presented. In this debate, which lasted for several days, ministers were powerfully supported by Peel. Peel's speech ^ The viceroy, Lord Anglesey (see Cloncurry, " Personal Recolleclions," p. 378). 330 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1834 still remains one of the most effective and cogent arguments for the maintenance of the Union which has ever been heard in the House of Commons. In 1834 it was un- answerable; if it be thought to have lost some of its force after a lapse of more than seventy years, the explanation must be sought less in the weakness of the reasoning than in the breaches which time has made in its premises. The cohesion of the ministry was now to be subjected to a more searching trial. The appropriation clause of the Church Temporalities Act of 1833 had been lightly abandoned ; but certain members of the Cabinet were irrevocably committed to its principle, while others were known to be as unalterably opposed to it. These differ- ences were well known, and O'Connell was determined to take advantage of them. In February Littleton introduced a resolution proposing that tithes should be commuted into a land tax amounting to eighty per cent, of the tithe. O'Connell stoutly opposed the resolution, and contended that the substitution of a land tax for the tithe would transfer the odium of collection from the clergy to the landlords. He proposed, as an alternative, the reduction generally of the temporalities of the Church, and the diminution of its tithes by two-thirds ; one-third being left to the Established Church, one-third given to the Catholic Church, and one-third to the State. This proposal was denounced by Lord John Russell as an undisguised act of robbery, and Littleton's resolution was carried by a majority of 190 to 66. Early in May a Bill founded on this resolution was introduced. In the debate on the second reading of this Bill, Shell — who afterv/ards took credit to himself for having " sown the seeds of salutary discord " — pointedly asked the ministers whether they were prepared to maintain or abandon the Church establishment. Stanley replied in language which did not satisfy Lord John Russell ; in point of fact, the differences which had distracted the Cabinet, and had long been acknowledged in private, were now to be publicly exhibited in the House of Commons. Lord John Russell, apprehensive lest Stanley's words should be taken as a declaration on the part of ministers to uphold 1 834] RUSSELL ''UPSETS THE COACH" 331 the Church in its integrity, and not to appropriate its revenues, in any circumstances, to State purposes, answered Sheil's question by a declaration ** that the opinion which he had formerly expressed on the subject of the EstabHshed Church in Ireland had undergone no change. ... If the State should find that the revenue of the Church v/as not appropriated justly to the purposes of religious and moral instruction, it would then be the duty of Parliament to consider of a different appropriation." He went on to say that when the revenue of the Church was once secured by an equitable adjustment of the tithe question, he should feel it his duty to assert his opinion on the appropriation question, even at the cost of separating himself from his colleagues. He had resisted repeal on the ground that Parliament was ready to attend to the just complaints of the people of Ireland, and had thereby contracted an obliga- tion which he could not lightly regard. On hearing this declaration, Stanley wrote his pithy note to Graham, "Johnny has upset the coach." Shell pressed his advantage by asking Althorp whether the other ministers concurred with Lord John Russell, and, though Littleton made a clumsy attempt to temporise and mystify, Althorp frankly admitted that differences existed in the Cabinet. This was no news to well-informed politicians, but it was the first public presage of disruption. The coach was, in fact, upset. But it v/as not Sheil's question nor Lord John Russell's answer that upset it. They were really only the occasion, not the cause of the disruption. It seems certain that Stanley had already made up his mind to go, and ministers in their private conclaves had begun to talk as if the overthrow of the Government was inevitable. Lord Grey had himself lost heart, and he spoke constantly of retirement. No im- mediate result, however, followed Lord John Russell's declaration. The debate was continued, and turned mainly on the question of appropriation and the acknowledged dissensions of the ministry, and in the end the second reading of the Tithe Bill was carried by a majority of 248 to 1:2. 332 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1834 Matters were soon brought to a crisis, however. The seeds of salutary discord sown by Sheil quickly germinated. Ward, the member for St. Albaiis, gave notice of a resolu- tion affirming the principle of appropriation, and moved it on May 27, in a speech which recalls, and perhaps justifies, the epigram of Rogers which embalms his name.^ The resolution was seconded by Grote. It is said that its terms were inspired by Durham, who had no love for the ministry. However this may be, it drove a wedge into the Cabinet. Brougham, in anticipation of its effects, endeavoured to prevent the breach by proposing to the Cabinet the appoint- ment of a commission to inquire into the revenues of the Irish Church and the proportion which its members bore to the population of Ireland. But Stanley saw that the question of appropriation would be raised just as directly by the appointment of a commission and the inevitable character of its report as by the resolution, and he accord- ingly resigned just before the debate on the resolution began. His resignation was followed by those of Sir James Graham, First Lord of the Admiralty; the Duke of Rich- mond, Postmaster-General ; and Lord Ripon, Lord Privy Seal. Stanle^^'s resignation was only definitely known to Althorp, the leader of the House, after the debate had begun. As soon as Grote sat down, the Chancellor of the Exchequer rose to ask the House to adjourn in consequence of circumstances which had just come to his knowledge. Every one perceived that the crisis had come, and the House adjourned till June 2. When the House met again after the adjournment, the new ministers had been appointed. Those of them who were members of the House of Commons secured their re-election, though not without difficulty in some cases. The ministry was severely shaken, but it weathered the storm for a time, and O'Connell subsequently recorded his exultation at the overthrow of Stanley, and his contempt for his slender following, in a happy quotation which is ^ " Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it ; He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it." i834] RECONSTRUCTION OF THE MINISTRY 333 still remembered.^ Althorp announced the intention of the Government to appoint a lay commission of inquiry into the state of Church property and Church affairs generally in Ireland, and, after an ineffectual appeal to Ward to withdraw his motion, he moved the previous question. This was carried, after a long debate, by a majority of 396 to 1.20. Stanley, in his speech, declared his opposition to appropriation in every form, and affirmed that the issue of a commission on the Irish Church " involved a principle destructive of the very existence of an Established Church " ; while Peel used language which was afterwards stated by Lord Grey in the House of Lords to express views identical with those of the Government, and induced Ellice, who had just been admitted to the Cabinet, to observe that Peel should have been Stanley's successor. But the diffi- culties of ministers were not overcome by their victory in the House of Commons. The king and the House of Lords were against them, and the country was irritated and perplexed. On May 28 the king received from the Irish bishops an address of congratulation on his birthday. This address protested against hasty innovations in the Church. The king replied, not with a formal acknow- ledgment, but with a speech directed against his ministers. In the House of Lords a motion was made, and not resisted by the Government, for an address to the king for a copy of the commission, and the debate showed clearly enough the hostile feeling of the House of Lords towards the reconstructed ministry. The ministers were not long to enjoy the repose which they seemed to have secured by the secession of Stanley and his friends, and the appointment of the Church com- mission. The Coercion Act, which had been passed for a single year, had to be renewed. Lord Wellesley, the viceroy, had at first suggested that it should be renewed without modification. But Littleton was convinced that the clauses providing for the suppression of meetings would ^ " So down thy hill, romantic Ashbourn, glides The Derby dilly carrying three insides." Aiiti-Jacohin No. 24, April 23, 1798. 334 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1S34 cause great difficulty, and possibly disaster, to the Govern- ment in the House of Commons. In this conviction Brougham, whom Wellesley had enjoined Littleton to con- sult in the matter, concurred. The two ministers, without consulting their colleagues, wrote separately to Wellesley and urged him to represent to Grey that he was prepared to abandon the meeting clauses. In the meantime, after the letters had been sent, and before answers could be received, the Cabinet resolved to adhere to the clauses, no mention being made by Brougham of the letter he had written to Wellesley. Wellesley repHed to Littleton, " I entirely agree with you, and have written to Lords Grey, Brougham, and Melbourne accordingly." A day or two later he wrote again, " I have looked over the Protection Act, and I think the clauses you enumerate, with the alteration you propose, will answer all purposes." The Irish attorney-general, Blackburne, also concurred with the viceroy as to the expediency of abandoning the meet- ing clauses. Armed with the viceroy's letter, Littleton now consulted Melbourne and Althorp. Melbourne was evidently surprised at what had been going on, and vexed that Wellesley had not, as he apparently intended, written to himself; but he said to Littleton that "there could be no question that the clauses must be given up, as no Government could ask Parliament for an unconstitutional power in Ireland, the necessity of which the Lord-Lieutenant had been led to disclaim." Althorp said that Lord Grey was likely to refuse any concession, and might even retire if it were pressed ; but that the clauses in question would certainly form no part of the new Bill, as he himself was resolved to resign sooner than allow them to be renewed. Littleton then asked Althorp whether it would not be desirable and prudent to see O'Connell and apprise him that the precise form and extent of the measure were not decided upon. "Lord Althorp," says Littleton, in his account of these transactions, "concurred in and sanctioned that step, cautioning me, however, not to commit myself to any detail." Littleton now set himself to "manage Dan." He sent 1834] LITTLETON AND 0' CON NELL 335 for O'Connell to the Irish Office, and '* cautioned him against any unnecessary excitation of the people in Ireland until he should have seen the new Coercion Bill, which would be renewed, but with certain limitations. " He thanked me," continues Littleton, in his narrative, " and promised to consider my communication as strictly private and confidential." This is Littleton's account of the matter. O'Connell, in the House of Commons, declared that the chief secretary's language had been more precise. How- ever, for a few days the negotiation was still kept secret. O'Connell, in consequence of his interview with Littleton and the satisfactory assurances which he thought he had received, withdrew his support from the repeal candidate whom he had started for a seat vacant at Wexford, and cancelled an address to the reformers of England, in which Lord Grey was outrageously vituperated. A day or two after Littleton's interview with O'Connell, the Cabinet met, and Lord Grey laid before it a private letter from the viceroy, in which the latter expressed his readiness to dis- pense with the meeting clauses. Lord John Russell, on hearing this letter read, remarked that it seemed to be written as an answer to some inquiry, and not as a spon- taneous communication, and asked whether any member of the Cabinet had communicated with Wellesley on the subject. Brougham thereupon found himself compelled to acknowledge the share he had had in the transaction. "The oft-tried patience of the veteran chief, on this dis- covery, gave way. He said afterwards, with warmth, that had he been a younger man he would have turned out the chancellor and gone on, as he might very well have done ; but at seventy he did not feel himself equal to the effort, or prepared for the consequences of such a step." ^ Lord Gre}', however, was not at this time aware of Littleton's communi- cations with O'Connell, and Althorp, who had recommended caution, could not suppose that anything like a pledge had 1 "Life of Melbourne," vol. il. p. 3. Wellesley 's letter was regarded by Lord Grey as a private and confidential one, and he persistently refused to allow it to be presented to Parliament. It was first published in the Edin- burgh Review for July 1871, and is reprinted in Lord Hatherton's "Memoir," P- 33- y/o TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1834 been given. The Cabinet was therefore free to consider Lord Wellesley's letter on its merits, and, in view of the fact that he had assented to the withdrawal of the meeting clauses, in defiance of his judgment formerly expressed, rather in consideration for Parliamentary necessities in England than out of regard for the actual condition of Ire- land, it decided, at the prime minister's urgent instance, to renew the Act as it stood with the exception of the court- martial clauses, which had never been put in operation. This happened on June 29.^ On the 30th Littleton crossed the House of Commons and communicated what had happened to O'Connell. What passed between them was subsequently a subject of controversy. "You must resign," said O'Connell, as both parties seem to admit. According to Littleton, his answer made no reference to his possible resignation, but simply urged O'Connell to say and do nothing until Lord Grey had made his statement in the House of Lords. As a matter of fact, O'Connell was silent, but he abandoned a motion for the reprinting of a report made by Sir Henry Parnell on Irish disturb- ances in 1832. This report was unfavourable to coer- cive measures. On July r Lord Grey introduced the new Coercion Bill in the House of Lords. O'Connell now thought himiself absolved from the promise of secrecy which he had given, and on July 3 he told the whole story in the House of Commons. On the 4th Littleton decided to resign, and on the next day his resignation was placed in 1- Some days previously — indeed, immediately after the receipt of Wellesley's letter — Grey had made up his own mind on the point. Wellesley wrote to Littleton on June 25, " I have received a letter from Lord Grey, expressing great aversion to the omission of the meeting clauses, and stating a positive opinion that ' the proposed concession would not facilitate the progress of the Tithe Bill, or of the remaining part of the Coercion Bill, and still less would render it possible to propose any extension of the term of the Coercion Bill.' I should be very unwilling to oppose his opinion, and shall certainly be satisfied with whatever course the Cabinet chooses to adopt " (Hatherton's "Memoir," p. 43). This should have shown Littleton the treacherous character of the ground on which he was standing. He had heard exactly the same from Melbourne and Grey themselves ; but he still persisted in believing that the meeting clauses would be abandoned, and he took no steps to inform O'Connell of the difficulties that had arisen. 1834] RESIGNATION OF LORD GREY 337 Lord Grey's hands. It was not accepted, and a few days afterwards Lord Althorp, in presenting some papers con- nected with the subject to the House of Commons, declared that Littleton had had reason for stating to O'Connell, at the time of his interview with him, that the question was unsettled and under the consideration of the Cabinet. Nothing was as yet known in Parliament of the share which Brougham had had in the transaction, nor of the encouragement which Littleton had received both from Melbourne and Althorp to believe that they would neither of them be parties to the renewal of the meeting clauses. Littleton accordingly represented to Althorp that some further explanation should be given, in order to put the matter in its true light. Althorp, however, was by this time resolved to resign, and in transmitting his resignation to the king Grey accompanied it with his own. The power of his ministry was shattered, and he could no longer bear the humiliation inflicted on him by incompetent subordinates and disloyal colleagues. It is difficult fairly to distribute the blame in this remarkable and most instructive episode in the Parliamentary government of Ireland by England. Grey blamed Brougham, Wellesley blamed Melbourne, Littleton blamed O'Connell and the members of the Cabinet who had not fulfilled their pledges. The historian may perhaps blame all a little, and none much. The great Reform ministry was thus overthrown, and an Irish question had overthrown it. The ministry, it is true, was ultimately reconstructed, but for a time it was dissolved. Lord Grey had resigned, and Althorp, in an- nouncing his own resignation in the House of Commons, at the same time announced that of the prime minister, and stated that in consequence "the administration was at an end." Brougham, however, declared on the same day, in the House of Lords, that he at least had not thought it his duty to retire, and that the only resignations tendered to the king were those of the prime minister and the chancellor of the exchequer. But the ministry was at an end all the same, and if the king had had his way it would never have been reconstructed. On announcing his resignation to the Y 338 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1834 Cabinet, Grey had handed to Melbourne a summons from the king. The king desired Melbourne to undertake the formation of a new Government, but at the same time called upon him " to enter into communication with the leading individuals of parties, and to endeavour at this crisis to pre- vail upon them to afford their aid and co-operation towards the formation of an administration upon an enlarged basis, combining the services of the most able and efficient members of each," and specifically desired him to " communicate with the Duke of Welhngton, with Sir Robert Peel, with Mr. Stanley, and with others of their respective parties, as well as with those who have hitherto acted with himself and have otherwise supported the administration, and to endeavour to bring them together and to establish a community oi purpose." Melbourne, in his reply to the king, pointed out the impracticability of the arrangement suggested, and, having agreed to abandon the meeting clauses of the Coercion Act on which Lord Grey had insisted, he succeeded in per- suading Althorp to resume his place as chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the House of Commons. Althorp's conduct in returning to office was much criti- cised, but it is not easy to see what other course was open to him. Kis dislike of office amounted to a positive hatred. But it is a fundamental maxim of constitutional statesmanship that the sovereign must not be left without a Government, Lord Grey had resigned ; he had long wanted to retire, and it was perfectly clear that his resig- nation was final. After all that had occurred, nothing would have induced him to remain in office and consent to the modification of the Coercion Bill. Althorp knew, what possibly no other of his colleagues knew, that Grey had practically made up his mind to retire even before O'Connell had revealed what had passed between himself and Littleton.! A Tory Government was impossible. The 1 This appears from a letter in the Althorp papers, addressed by Grey to Althorp on June 30, the day after the Cabinet had agreed to adhere to the meeting clauses, but before the Bill had been introduced into the House of Lords, and therefore before O'Connell made his statement in the House of Commons. The letter is too long to give in full, but the following passages may be quoted : " I at present see no way out of our difficulties but that 1834] MELBOURNE PRIME MINISTER 339 king had attempted to bring about a coalition and failed. A reconstruction of the late Government under Melbourne as prime minister was the only remaining alternative ; for this purpose the co-operation of Althorp was indispensable. Accordingly, yielding with the utmost reluctance to the pressure of his colleagues and followers, he agreed to go on, and the ministry was reconstructed. Littleton's determina- tion to retire, lest Grey should think he had played him false, very nearly frustrated the new arrangement ; he was persuaded at the last moment by the personal solicitation of the chancellor, of Melbourne, and of Althorp to resume his place, and the new administration was at last complete. Thereupon Melbourne announced in the House of Lords that the Coercion Bill introduced by Grey would be aban- doned, and a new one introduced which would not contain the meeting clauses. The Tory Lords protested, and the ministers were roundly denounced, for their inconsistency, tergiversation, and unblushing abandonment of principle ; but the Bill was allowed to pass. In the Commons Peel reluctantly consented to support the Government while condemning its action, and O'Connell, who by this time had become reconciled to the Government and made it feel his power, agreed to refrain from active opposition. As soon as the Coercion Bill was disposed of, the Tithe Bill was again taken up. Already great changes had been made in this Bill since it was first introduced. These changes greatly provoked Stanley, who attacked the Government in a vigor- ous and virulent speech, which is still remembered for its "thimble-rigging" metaphor. The Bill as modified was so of resigning the Government. ... I have given up my own opinion on many points, for the sake of preventing the evils likely to arise from a change of administration. But such concessions must have a limit, and I feel that I have great reason to complain that, after a measure had been a^jreed upon, and no doubt existed with respect to it, private communications are made to the Lord-Lieutenant without my knowledge, which induce him to express an opinion inconsistent with that which his own views of the state of Ireland suggested, and chiefly maintained on grounds from which I entirely dissent. . . . The Bill as it has been agreed upon must be maintained stoutly, or I must say to the king that I can no longer conduct the Government." This letter is quoted, though not in full, in Le Marchant's " Memoir of Earl Spencer," p. 498. 340 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1834 complicated that no one seemed clearly to understand its provisions, not even the chief secretary himself. As it never became law, it is unnecessary to explain these in- tricate details. O'Connell endeavoured to persuade the Government to abandon the Bill, or at least to wait until the Church Commission had reported. He accordingly opposed the motion for going into committee. In this he was severely defeated by a majority of 154 to 14. But in committee he retrieved this defeat by proposing that the arrears of tithe, which the Bill empowered the Government to collect, should be abandoned, so that the commutation clauses might be brought into operation at once. The ministers formally opposed this proposal, but allowed themselves to be defeated. Parliamentary politics had, however, by this time resolved themselves into a trial of strength between O'Connell and the House of Lords ; and when the Bill, as amended by O'Connell, was presented to the Upper House, the Lords rejected it by a majority of 189 to 122. Parliament was prorogued a few days after- wards, and in November Earl Spencer, father of Lord Althorp, died. By his death, and the consequent accession of Lord Althorp to the peerage, the House of Commons lost its leader, and the whole ministry was sensibly, perhaps irrecoverably, weakened. The king thought that the time was come for a change, and when Lord Melbourne waited on him at Brighton to take his commands as to the changes necessary, he received an intimation that his Majesty no longer required his services. The king had resolved to have a Tory Government, and Melbourne was entrusted with a message to the Duke of Wellington, summoning the latter to his presence. The Duke provisionally ac- cepted the Government, and kissed hands as Secretary of State while awaiting the return of Peel, who was hastily summoned from the continent. Before the end of the year the new ministry was complete, Peel being Prime Minister, and Sir Henry Hardinge Chief Secretary for Ireland. Par- liament was dissolved, and in the general election the Tories, now calling themselves Conservatives, gained largely, though they did not secure a majority. 1834] THE CONDITION OF IRELAND 341 In examining the treatment of Ireland by the Grey ministry and the Reformed Parliament, it has been neces- sary to dwell at some length on the Parliamentary history of the time. The fate of Ireland for those years, and for many years afterwards, was decided at Westminster. The failure of the Whig Government to bring Ireland to a state of content and tranquillity was due to a variety of causes — to English ignorance of the real condition of Ireland, and the indifference of Parliament to its undoubted grievances ; to the surviving strength of the Ascendency party, which sufficed to make the emancipation of the Catholics an illusory concession ; to the temper and character of Stanley; and to the strength of the Protestant feeling in the English constituencies. The tithe war, as it was called — and in truth it was a warfare, conducted on both sides with the utmost determination — was the direct consequence of Catholic Emancipation, which stimulated certain of the more fanatical of the Protestants to renewed efforts on behalf of their Church. In 1830 a proselytising movement was set on foot, which was known as the New Reformation. It had for its object the conversion of Catholic peasants, and to some extent it was successful. The tithe war arose out of this movement. It had latterly been the custom of the tithe-owners not to demand tithe of the Roman Catholic priests. But a few ardent spirits among the Protestant clergy determined to abandon this politic custom, and the Catholics were more than ever incensed against the exaction of tithes when they found not only that their priests were attacked, but that the money collected was being used for the purpose of proselytism. From this source arose the earlier struggles in the tithe war. The collection of tithe was enforced by large bodies of constabulary and military. In the year 1830, six hundred men were employed to collect the tithes in the parish of Graigue, where a hot- headed curate, Mr. McDonald, had demanded tithe of the parish priest. Father Doyle. In two months only a third of the tithe had been collected, and the troops were then withdrawn. At Newtown Barry, in the same year, a col- lision occurred between the yeomanry and the peasants, in 342 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1834 which twelve of the latter were shot dead and twenty fatally wounded. In this case the sergeant of yeomanry was put on his trial (the grand jury having ignored the bill against the captain), but, as no witnesses came forward, he was discharged. Several other struggles occurred in the same year, the most serious of which was that of Carrick- shock, in which the police were totally routed, with a loss of eleven killed and seventeen wounded. The peasantry also suffered severely. After this, and mainly in conse- quence of the measures already described, which were taken by Parliament in 1831 for the temporary relief of the Protestant clergy, the war was suspended for a time. But in 1832 fresh attempts began to be made to exact tithe from the Catholic clergy. These and similar disturbances gradually brought about that condition of agrarian turbu- lence, accompanied by intimidation, exclusive dealing — known since 1880 by the name of "boycotting," but practised by the Irish people in all periods of conflict — outrage, and general social disorganisation which has so often, in the history of Ireland, seemed to call for and to justify exceptional repressive legislation, We have seen how the Reformed Parliament concocted its judicious mix- ture of coercion and remedial legislation ; how the remedies were adulterated, diluted, and delayed in application till their whole efficacy was frustrated, while the coercion was applied with alacrity, promptitude, and a certain amount of superficial success. Discontent in Ireland was for a time driven beneath the surface. It reappeared, a few years after, in the shape of a formidable agitation for repeal of the Union. For their neglect to strike at the causes of social dis- order in Ireland, the Government of 1830 cannot be excused. Extreme misery is chronic in Ireland. It often takes the acute form of actual famine. When it does, it invariably produces an outbreak of agrarian turbulence. Every griev- ance under which Irishmen have suffered has contributed its portion to the terrible tale of agrarian crime. Every malady which has afflicted Ireland has ultimately assumed that " worst form of civil convulsion, a war for the means of 1834] IRISH GRIEVANCES AND IRISH CRIME 343 subsistence."^ Protestant Ascendency maintained the land laws and supported the power of " une mauvaise aristo- cratiey - The exaction of tithes was an instrument of Protestant oppression. The Established Church was the symbol and fortress of Ascendency. The agitation against all these grievances was accompanied by agrarian turbu- lence. The Union itself was attacked by O'Connell on the ground that the imperial Parliament lacked either the capa- city or the will to extirpate the real causes of Irish misery and discontent ; and throughout the struggles which these grievances engendered, the imperial Parliament and Execu- tive could devise no better policy than to tinker at the grievances while striking savagely at the social disorder which they created. If misery was at once the perennial source of turbulence and the motive-power of legitimate agitation, statesmanship should surely have endeavoured to mitigate the poverty, to cut out the roots of turbulence, and to remove the sources of agitation as well as its pre- texts.^ Why has Irish importunity always been more than ^ Cornewall Lewis, " Irish Disturbances," p. 338. - De Beaumont, L'li-Iande, Socialc, Politique, et Religiettse, vol. i. part i. chap. ii. : " On ne saurait considerer altentivement I'lrlande, eludier son histoire et ses revoUitions, observer ses moeurs et analyser ses lois, sans reconnaitre que ses malheurs, auxquels ont concouru tant d'accidents funestes, ont eu et ont encore de nos jours, pour cause principale, une cause pre7niere, radicale, permanente, et qui domine toutes les autres — celte cause, c'est une mauvaise aristocratic. " •* The literature, both official and private, illustrative of Irish distress and Irish crime in the first forty years of the century is very voluminous. In Gustave de Beaumont {Ulrlande, SociaL; Politique, et Religieuse), and Cornewall Lewis (" On Local Disturbances in Ireland "), the official informa- tion published on the subject down to the year 1836 is ably summarised. Further information will be found in Mr. Barry O'Brien's invaluable work, "Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland, 1831-1881." It is, perhaps, un- necessary to cite extracts. It may be taken for granted that the extreme misery of the Irish people, periodically culminating in famine, was perfectly well known to the English Governments from 1820 to 1845. This is what Carlyle thought about the matter ("Chartism," chap, iv.) : "Ireland has near seven millions of working people, the third unit of whom, it appears by statistic science, has not for thirty weeks each year as many third-rate potatoes as will suffice him. It is a fact perhaps the most eloquent that was ever written down in any language, at any date of the world's history. Was change and reformation needed in Ireland? Has Ireland been governed and guided in a ' wise and loving' manner? A government and guidance 344 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1834 a match for English fortitude ? Because England has always, sooner or later, been compelled to recognise that Irish grievances rested on a real foundation of substantial abuses and chronic misery. The abuses have been slowly, hesitatingly, and reluctantly removed one by one. The misery has always remained. A foreign observer could see at a glance that the secret of Irish misgovernment lay in une maiivaise aristocratic — in an upper class estranged which has issued in perennial hunger of potatoes to the third man extant, ought to drop a veil over its face and walk out of court under conduct of proper officers, saying no word, expecting now of a surety sentence either to change or die. All men, we must repeat, were made by God, and have immortal souls in them. The sans-potato is of the selfsame stuff as the superfinest Lord-Lieutenant. Not an individual sans-potato human scarecrow but had a life given him out of heaven, with eternities depending on it, for once, and no second time ; with immensities in him, over him, and round him ; with feelings which a Shakespeare's speech would not utter ; with desires as illimitable as the autocrats of all the Russias. Him various thrice-honoured persons, things, and institutions have long been teaching, long been guiding, governing ; and it is to perpetual scarcity of third-rate potatoes, and to what depends thereon, that he has been taught and guided. Figure thyself, O high-minded, clear-headed, clean-burnished reader, clapt by enchantment into the torn coat and waste hunger-lair of that same root- devouring brother-man ! " And this is Cornewall Lewis's account of the relation between distress and crime ("Irish Disturbances," p. 98) : "It has been already explained how the Irish peasant, constantly living in extreme poverty, is liable, by the pressure of certain charges or by ejectment from his holding, to be driven to utter destitution — to a state in which himself and family can only rely on a most precarious charity to save them from exposure to the elements, from nakedness, and from starvation. It is natural that the most improvident persons should seek to struggle against such fearful conse- quences as these ; that they should try to use some means of quieting appre- hensions which (even if never realised) would themselves be sufficient to embitter the life of the most thoughtless ; and it is to afford this security that the Whiteboy combinations are formed. The Whiteboy Association may be considered as a vast trades union for the protection of the Irish peasantry, the object being, not to regulate the rate of wages or the hours of work, but to keep the actual occupant in possession of his land, and in general to regulate the relation of landlord and tenant for the benefit of the laH;ter. Certain other objects are added, the chief of which is to prevent the employment of a stranger, the quantity of work being, in the opinion of the labourers, already insufficient for the natives. At times, moreover, the Whiteboys have sought to reduce the rate of tithe, or to prevent its collection, or to lower the priests' dues. These combinations being constantly in existence, and working with weapons which may be turned to any purpose, the objects have, perhaps, somewhat varied ; but in general they have been restricted simply to the occupation of land and the several pnyments immediately connected with it." 1 834] DISCONTENT AND REPEAL 345 from the people and neglecting its duties. Yet for seventy years at least after the passing of the Act of Union, the con- stant endeavour of the imperial Parliament was to govern Ireland through the influence and according to the ideas of this estranged aristocracy. The pity of it is that the evil was wrought less by intention than by inattention. Eng- land strove to do her duty by Ireland, but she knew not how. She would not stoop to listen to those whom she accused — certainly not without reason — of encouraging disaffection and taking advantage of crime. She would not recognise that she had repeatedly taught Ireland the lesson that concession was the reward of violence, and that justice itself was only done when Ireland had to be appeased. The warnings of those members of the dominant order whose integrity and clear-sightedness compelled them to take the popular side were unheeded, and their pleadings were despised.^ Parliament persisted in doing what Englishmen thought good for Ireland, not what Irishmen thought good for themselves. It is quite possible that Englishmen were right and Irishmen wrong. But the whole action of the former was inconsistent with the theory of an incorporating union, and an illustration of the pregnant maxim enunciated by Swift, that "govern- ment without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery." The demand for repeal was at first feeble and might have been transient, though O'Connell himself was always its ardent supporter. It afterwards became the more serious, but still premature and impatient, expression of O'Connell's mistrust of the capacity and good- will of the imperial Parliament to do for Ireland what Irishmen wanted done. In this its earlier form, however, it was temporarily placed in abeyance by O'Connell himself, when the advent of Lord Melbourne's Government to power in 1835 seemed to afford a hope that Ireland was at last 1 See Lord Cloncurry's " Recollections," passi)it, and the remarkable speech delivered by Smith O'Brien on " The Causes of Discontent in Ireland," in the House of Commons, on July 4, 1843. When this speech was delivered, Smith O'Brien was not a repealer, but on October 20 he forwarded a subscrip- tion to the " Loyal National Repeal Association." 346 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1834 about to be governed in accordance with the wishes and necessities of the Irish people. It was only when this hope was frustrated by the action of the House of Lords in England and of the Ascendenc}' party in Ireland, and when the Whig Government of Lord Melbourne had given place, in 1841, to the Tory Government of Sir Robert Peel, O'Connell's lifelong antagonist, that repeal was again taken up in earnest. It was not, indeed, until two years later that Smith O'Brien and others of his class joined the ranks o[ the reoealers. II THE PEEL INTERREGNUM AND THE MELBOURNE REGIME The short interregnum of Tory government under Sir Robert Peel in 1834-5, is only of importance to the history of Ireland in the illustration it offers of the controlling influence exercised by Ireland on the course of English politics. In the general election, which took place in the winter, O'Connell and his followers vehemently opposed the Tory candidates. Their language was so unmeasured and their action so violent that they alienated much sym- pathy in England, and contributed to the overthrow of Liberal candidates throughout the United Kingdom. The result of the elections was to throw the balance of power into the hands of O'Connell and his followers. Peel had a majority in England, but in the United Kingdom a majority, albeit a diminished one, was returned against him. He endeavoured for some months to govern with- out a majority in the House of Commons ; but at last, after a series of defeats, he was forced to give way to his adversaries. He retired from office, and left the whole Irish question very much as he had found it. His chief secretary, Sir Henry Hardinge, introduced a Tithe Bill, framed very much on the same lines as that which had been rejected by the House of Lords in 1834; but the progress of the measure was cut short by the famous resolution on appropriation, which finally overthrew his ministry. The country was willing to give Peel a fair trial ; but the Whigs were exasperated at the treatment which Lord Melbourne had received from the king in 1834, and they were determined, if possible, to make Peel the scapegoat of their resentment. It was necessary, in order 348 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1835 to obtain a majority, to select some question which would combine Whigs and Radicals, and both with the followers of O'Connell. The question of appropriation was selected for this purpose, because it had been made a point of honour by Lord John Russell and the Whigs, was a point of principle with the Radicals, and a point of conscience with O'Connell. It is certain, however, that in respect of this question, and indeed of the whole question of the political and social equality of Catholics and Protes- tants in Ireland, the Liberal majority of 1835 was far in advance of the public opinion of Great Britain. The Pro- testantism of the Protestant religion was, in all religious matters, the characteristic note of the classes represented in the Reformed Parliament. Dissent was barely tolerated by them, and Popery was an abomination. The alliance with O'Connell was never popular in England, and the appropriation clause hung like a millstone round the neck of the Melbourne administration. Yet it is easy to see why it was that this question was chosen by Lord John Russell as the battle-ground on which to join issue with Peel. "As leader of the Liberal party in the House of Commons," says Lord John Russell himself,^ " I had no smooth path before me. To turn the majority into a minority by a direct vote of want of confidence would have been easy. But my object was to keep the majority together ; and in the whole twenty years during which I led the Liberal party in the House of Commons, I never had so difficult a task. The plain and obvious plan of voting the supplies for three months being given up, the question naturally occurred, in what manner could Sir Robert Peel obtain that fair trial which his own partisans and many independent Whigs called for on his behalf? There appeared no question so well fitted for an experi- nientuni cnicis as the question of the Irish Church. The proposal for a commission, made by Lord Grey's Govern- ment, had been considered by four of the leading members of the Cabinet as a test of principle, and the Liberal members of the first Reformed House of Commons had ' " Recollections and Suggestions," p. 134. _ , 1835] O'CONNELL AND THE WHIGS 349 accepted the question of the integrity and perpetual en- dowment of the Irish Church, as marking the frontier-line between Liberal and Tory principles. I therefore pro- posed to bring forward a resolution which, on the one hand, would be supported by Lord Howick, and was, on the other, the basis of an alliance with O'Connell and the Irish members. Compact there was none, but an alliance on honourable terms of mutual co-operation un- doubtedly existed. The Whigs remained, as before, the firm defenders of the Union ; O'Connell remained, as before, the ardent advocate of repeal ; but upon inter- mediate measures, on which the two parties could agree consistently with their principles, there was no want of cordiality. Nor did I ever see cause to complain of O'Connell's conduct. He confined his opposition fairly to Irish measures. He never countenanced the Canadian Catholics in their disaffection, nor promoted a recurrence to physical force, nor used trades unions as a means of discord and separation among classes." This was the genesis of the Melbourne administration of 1835. O'Connell agreed to hold repeal in abeyance on condition that the Whig Government should seriously undertake the redress of Irish grievances. It appears, from the " Life of Melbourne," that O'Connell had reason to expect that he would be invited to take office in the new Government which Melbourne undertook to form on the resignation of Sir Robert Peel. Whether the post of Attorney-General for Ireland was actuall}' offered him is not clear; it is certain that he expected the offer to be made.^ The opposition of the king, however, and the ob- 1 Brougham wrote to Althorp in the spring of 1834, " I so entirely agree with all you say of O'Connell, that were I the master — that is, were I minister — I should degm my reign by making O'Connell attorney-general in Ireland ; that I hold clear. But as that will not now be done, though it will before twelve months pass (mark my words), I am thinking of another means of securing perfect tranquillity, and giving you an easy session and a quiet recess " (Althorp Papers). It was at this time that Mr. Lambert wrote to Lord Cloncurry, "If you want to carry any point with the Government, apply to Mr. O'Connell for his interest ; it will not fail. It is actually rutting season with that great character and our illustrious rulers " (Lord Cloncurry's " Memoirs," p. 387). 350 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1835 jections of certain members of the new Cabinet proved to be insurmountable, and O'Connell silently acquiesced in his exclusion from official life. Lord Mulgrave was appointed Lord-Lieutenant, and Lord Morpeth became chief secretary. The attorney-general was Mr. Louis Perrin, a highly re- spected Protestant barrister; and the solicitor-general, Mr. O'Loghlen, who, next to O'Connell himself, had the highest reputation, and the greatest amount of practice among Catholic lawyers. These appointments were all acceptable to O'Connell, and some of them were probably suggested by him, though he would no doubt have preferred that O'Loghlen, who had previously been solicitor-general, should have been promoted to the higher office. He had full confidence, however, in the moderation and judicial temper of Perrin, and it was noticed that when the writ was moved for the county of Monaghan, which Perrin represented, O'Connell rose, with several of his immediate followers, and crossed the floor, to take his seat on the ministerial side of the House, a position which he retained throughout the whole period of the Melbourne administration. One of Perrin's first acts was to rescind the rule, till then observed by the Crown prosecutors in Ireland, which required that Catholics should be set aside when called on the jury panel. "If we Protestants," he said, "when accused rightly or wrongly of crime, were not allowed to have one of our own creed among the jurors, what sort of loyalists would we be ? " The Ascendency party bitterly resented this act of Perrin's, but it was stoutly supported by Melbourne. It put an end once for all to the worst evils of jury-packing in Ireland. The Crown still largely exercises its right of challenge, but in theory the panel is now constructed on the principles laid down in 1835 by Perrin and O'Loghlen, and when Catholic jurors are now ordered to stand aside, it is, as is always alleged, not on account of their creed, but in order to secure a true and impartial verdict. It is needless to say that the Ascendency party and its organs, both in England and in Ireland, were deeply in- censed by the Irish appointments of Lord Melbourne. The viceroy was at once nicknamed " O'Mulgrave," and de- 1 83 5 J THOMAS DRUMMOND 351 nounced because he was supposed to have conducted the negotiations which secured the support of O'Connell for the Whig Government. He received, probably for the same reason, an enthusiastic welcome from the people of Dublin, and this again gave great offence. The support of O'Connell and the goodwill of the Irish people were, in the eyes of the Ascendency, the worst credentials an Irish Executive could have. Yet the alliance was an honourable one on both sides. On the one hand, it signified that an English Government was at last resolved to make Catholic emanci- pation a reality ; on the other, it implied that the agitation for repeal was to be dropped or left in abeyance, while the imperial Parliament endeavoured to find a remedy for the social maladies of Ireland. It is melancholy to reflect that the weakest Government of this century was the only Government since the Union which persistently strove to make the Union a reality, and that its efforts in this direc- tion were the main source of its weakness. The spirit of the Irish Executive was changed with the change in its personnel. Mulgrave and Morpeth, Perrin and O'Loghlen, were all of them resolved to govern justly, firmly, and impartially, and to break with the old Ascen- dency party ; and to this end it was deemed expedient to appoint a new under-secretary at the Castle, The man chosen for this part was Thomas Drummond,^ an officer of engineers, who, in his professional capacity, had visited ail parts of Ireland in connection with the ordnance survey, and, as private secretary to Lord Althorp, had impressed 1 Drummond, who was born in Edinburgh in 1797, was the son of James Drummond, a Writer to the Signet, and a landed proprietor in Perthshire, known to his contemporaries as " the last Laird of Comrie." His mother was Elizabeth, daughter of James Somers, an Edinburgh gentleman. Mrs. Drum- mond was a woman of great beauty and rare intelligence. Thomas Drummond was educated in Scotland, and early gave proofs of his exceptional powers of mind. In 1813 he obtained from Lord Mulgrave, then Master-General of the Ordnance, a cadetship at Woolwich, and in 1 81 5 he entered the Royal Engineers. P'or several years he was emplo)'ed on the ordnance survey, both in Scotland and Ireland, and his inventive genius and aptitude for scientific studies were shown by his invention, during this period, of the heliostat and of the lime-light, which was long called by his name. He became private secretary to Lord Althorp in 1833, his services on the boundary commission of the Reform Bill having brought him into political notice. 352 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1835 that statesman with unbounded confidence in his integrity, firmness, and sagacity. Drummond had been employed by the Government to make the calculations on which the scheme for the redistribution of seats in the Reform Act was based, and in the discharge of this delicate and difficult task he had given an example of his rare industry and capacity. Perrin insisted urgently on the necessity of a change in the office of under-secretary. " My lord," he said to Lord Mulgrave, " he will be your right eye, and if we have to spend time in plucking old beams out of it, your Government will not go straight." Sir William Gosset, the former under-secretary, was accordingly ap- pointed to the post of serjeant-at-arms, and, on the recom- mendation of Lord Spencer (formerly Althorp), Drummond was appointed in his place. " A dandified coxcomb," Drummond was called by the organs of the Ascendency. No two words in the language could be more thoroughly misapplied. Drummond had been trained in the service of the most unselfish, the most unpretending, the most con- scientious, and not the least sagacious of English statesmen. He was himself a man of rare simplicity of character, whose native equity of temper was never disturbed by faction or clamour, whose courage nothing could daunt, whose judg- ment nothing could disturb, and whose industry and de- votion to duty were such that in five years his life was sacrificed to the service of his adopted country. The history of Ireland under the Melbourne Govern- ment may be summarised in a sentence. It was a history of legislative weakness and failure, of administrative firm- ness and success. The latter proposition may doubtless be questioned. The administration of Lord Mulgrave, for which Drummond was primarily and mainly responsible, was impugned in the House of Lords. It was not accept- able to the Ascendency party. Orangemen and Protestant magnates were not accustomed to find themselves treated as equal, and no more than equal, to their Catholic fellow- countrymen. They regarded a Government which treated Catholics and Protestants in Ireland as equal before the law, and enforced the law firmly and impartially against 1835] DRUMMOND'S ADMINISTRATION 353 both, as little better than an organised anarchy. The House of Lords was in sympathy with them, and to this tribunal they appealed. In the session of 1839, Lord Roden, the grand master of the Orange Society, moved for and obtained a committee of inquir3Mnto the state of Ireland since 1835 with respect to the commission of crime. Before this committee Drummond, who was examined at great length, triumphantly vindicated the principles on which Lord Mulgrave's administration of Irish affairs was con- ducted. The committee made no report, but contented itself with publishing two bulky volumes of the evidence taken before it. In the House of Commons the same subject was debated at great length, and resolutions were passed approving of the principles of the Executive in Ireland. If further proof were needed of the wisdom, firmness, and humanity of Drummond's administration, it would be found in the circumstance that from 1835 to 1841 Ireland, although torn and racked by grievances for which Parliament could find no adequate remedy, and by dissen- sions and crimes which those grievances engendered, was governed without the aid of coercive legislation, and that Drummond is the one ruler of Ireland during the past century whose memory is cherished with affectionate regard by all classes of the Irish people. To the day of her death his widow frequently received tokens of regard from Irish- men and Irishwomen whom she had never personally known, but by whom the name of her husband was revered as that of the man who first taught Irishmen to respect the Government by showing that the Government could be just to them. Drummond was no time-serving ruler who strove to curry favour with the populace. He could and did rebuke O'Connell on occasion as fearlessly and as sternly as he rebuked a turbulent Orangeman. Irishmen respected and loved him not because he flattered them, but because he ruled them quietly, firmly, temperately, and impartially. In the whole history of Ireland there is no more significant example of the sedative influence of impartial justice and kindly firmness on the turbulent and tormented spirit of Irish patriotism. Z 354 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1835 Drummond, however, stood alone. He had only five years to work in, for he died in 1840, and neither the Parliament at Westminster nor the ministers in Downing Street could help him much. The position of the Melbourne administration throughout the whole of its tenure of office was unique in the modern history of English politics. The party which supported Melbourne in the House of Commons consisted, after the general election of 1834-5, of 294 members, of whom forty-four were devoted followers of O'Connell, and twenty-two were nominal Whigs returned for Irish constituencies, who, though not repealers, acted mainl}^ with O'Connell. The Tories numbered 264, so that without O'Connell and his followers Melbourne had no majority, and the balance of power rested absolutely with the fifty or sixty members whom O'Connell could on occasion muster to his standard. In other words, O'Connell was virtually the master of the ministry. This was the secret at once of the vitality and of the weakness of the Melbourne Government. It could not be overthrown so long as O'Connell supported it ; it could not act vigorously, because the support of O'Connell impaired its moral influ- ence in the country and its Parliamentary authority at Westminster. It was confronted with a permanent majority in the House of Lords, which was led with immense autho- rity and relentless antagonism by the Duke of Wellington and Lord Lyndhurst. In the House of Commons the opposition was led with consummate skill by Sir Robert Peel, whom the country was fast learning to recognise as its most capable statesman. The great Reform impulse of 1832 was well-nigh spent. Melbourne himself was an easy-going aristocrat, whimsical and reserved in private life, ostentatiously indolent in public, nonchalant and in- different in council, and too sceptical by nature to care much about progress and radical reform. About Ireland he probably did care; but, sitting in the House of Lords and daily compelled to realise the power of the compact and determined majority which rejected his measures and denounced his policy, he seemed willing enough to leave the conduct of Irish administration in the capable 1835] TITHES AND THE APPROPRIATION CLAUSE 355 hands of Mulgrave and Morpeth, and above all of Drummond. The three great Acts of the Melbourne administration as regards Ireland were the final settlement of the tithe question, the reform of the Irish municipal corporations, and the establishment of the Irish poor law. The tithe question had already been drained to its dregs. Both parties were anxious for a settlement, and even the Ascen- dency and the Orangemen were beginning to see that until it was settled there could be no peace in Ireland. The Government of Lord Melbourne was now to try its hand. It would probably have encountered no serious difficulty if it had been free to adopt the measure intro- duced by Sir Henry Hardinge, Peel's chief secretary for Ireland, and to press it forward in both Houses of Parlia- ment. The Tory party could not consistently have rejected a measure framed by its own leaders, and designed as a final settlement of a question which all parties were now anxious to see settled. But the Melbourne administration was deepl}^ and irrevocably committed to the principle of appropriation. It was this which had " upset the coach " in 1834, when the "Derby dilly," carrying its three insides, had set forth on its independent career. It was this, again, which had consolidated the majority to whose attacks Sir Robert Peel had, after a gallant struggle, succumbed in the spring of 1835. The Tithe Bill of the Melbourne Govern- ment must therefore involve the principle of appropriation. In the discussion of Peel's abortive Bill, O'Connell had declared that no measure of Church reform would satisfy the Irish people unless it contained a proposal for appro- priation. *' That one word," he said, " was worth the whole Bill." That one word had sufficed to overthrow Peel ; and that one word, as the event showed, was destined to be the stumbling-block, and literally the scandal, of the Melbourne administration. However, in 1835 the conscience of the Whigs was still tender. They could not refuse to pronounce in office the one word that had brought them there, and the Tithe Bill introduced by Lord Morpeth, the chief secretary, con- 356 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1835 tained an appropriation clause, or, to speak more strictly, a series of provisions for the appropriation of the surplus revenues of the Irish Church, estimated at ;^58,O0O, "to the promotion of religious and moral education in Ireland." In other respects the Bill did not materially differ from that introduced by Hardinge, just as Hardinge's Bill did not materially differ from that introduced by Littleton in the previous year. Morpeth, following the example of Hardinge, and differing in this respect from Littleton, decided to abandon the hope of recovering a sum of £6^2,000 advanced to the distressed clergy of the Irish Protestant Church out of the million granted by Parliament for that purpose in 1833. Peel, as leader of the opposition, did not dissent in principle from the commutation clauses of Morpeth's Bill, though he endeavoured to persuade the House of Commons to sever them from the appropriation clauses, in order that the latter might be rejected. In this endeavour he was not successful in the House of Commons. But the House of Lords came to his aid ; in committee the appropriation clauses were rejected, and the Bill was abandoned. The immediate consequence of its abandonment was that the Government were legally bound to proceed against Irish clergymen who could obtain no tithe from their parishioners, for the discharge of the liabilities incurred by them under the grants of 1833. The clergy could not pay, of course, and, not being Irish tenants, they were not required to pay, whether they could or not. The ministers introduced and passed a Bill authorising them to suspend the suits which they were legally bound to institute against default- ing incumbents, and this was the only step taken towards the settlement of the tithe question in 1835. To the historian of Ireland in the present century the trite reflection embodied in the quotation, Delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi, must be for- ever recurring. We are now dealing with the third attempt made in the course of fifteen months to settle the tithe question. The first was frustrated because the Tory party and the House of Lords had not yet been educated to the point of recognising the 1835] ENGLISH PARTIES AND IRISH DIFFICULTIES 357 necessity of a settlement. This enlightenment came with office, however, and Peel found himself compelled to ask the House of Commons to do that which his colleagues a few short months before had induced the House of Lords not to do. But by this time the Whigs were ready to return to office, and Ireland furnished the pretext. The appropriation clause was, for reasons which Lord John Russell himself expounded, an admirable question for com- bining together the several fractions of the Whig party in the House of Commons. But it was a question which necessarily and inevitably brought the House of Commons into collision with the House of Lords. The Whig leaders must have known perfectly well that, when they chose this question as the battle-ground of party, they were putting an invincible weapon into the hands of the House of Lords. They ought to have known equally well that the dominant feeling of Great Britain was rather with the House of Lords than with the House of Commons on the question of appro- priation. All parties were willing, and even anxious, in 1835 to settle the tithe difficulty by a measure of commuta- tion. But the Whigs could not so settle it. Accordingl}', Ireland was left for two more years to all the torment and turmoil of sectarian and agrarian warfare. In the end, as we shall see, the appropriation clause was abandoned by the Whigs. If they could have abandoned it in 1835, or, still better, if they had never occupied, in their assaults on Peel, ground which they could not themselves defend in turn against their assailants, the whole subsequent history of Ireland might have taken a different and a far happier course. The Irish gained nothing by the Whigs' attach- ment to the appropriation clause. What they lost is in- calculable. The prolongation of the tithe war was the smallest part of the mischief. The real calamity was that the Irish people and their leaders were reluctantly driven to the conclusion that an English party and an English ministry, really anxious to do their best for Ireland, could not disentangle themselves from the fatal destiny which has so often compelled English parties and their leaders to play the game of politics with the happiness of Ireland for a stake. 358 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1836 The rejection of the Tithe Bill at once put new spirit into the Ascendency party. Tithes, it is true, could no longer be collected by ordinary process. The procedure was costl}^, difficult, and dangerous, and no one would buy goods or cattle seized under distraint for the payment of " the iniquitous impost." Besides this, the Lord-Lieutenant, acting under the inspiration of Drummond, had refused to allow troops and police to be present at tithe sales, or to interfere at all save in the case of actual breach of the peace. A lay association, however, formed under the auspices of the Orange magnates, and presided over by Lords Roden, Enniskillen, and Bandon, now came to the assistance of the clergy. Instead of proceeding by distraint, this association hit upon the expedient of applying to the Court of Exchequer for power to recover tithes, and in December 1835 "more than 600 exchequer bills, for sums varying from ;;^io to IS. gd., had been filed, process being served on the peasants by placarding the original bills in places specified by the court, and sending copies through the post. But the peasants disregarded the bills, and treated the orders of the court with contempt."^ The association then had recourse to an obsolete weapon preserved in the well-furnished armoury of Irish judicial procedure, and obtained writs of rebellion against the defaulters. The effect of a writ of rebellion was to empower a commissioner of rebellion, appointed by the court, to call upon the sheriff, police, and military to arrest the defaulter named in the writ and detain him in prison until he paid. Drummond, however, gave no instructions to the local authorities, and the commissioner of rebellion generally found, when he applied to them for support, that they declined to act without authority from the Castle. Ac- cordingl}', the procedure by writs of rebellion was for the most part abortive. The conduct of Drummond was im- pugned in Parliament, and some of the local authorities were reprimanded by the courts for declining to assist in the service of the writs ; but Shell, supported by the Irish law officers, contended that the process was obsolete and tyran- nous, and that the decision of the Court of Exchequer, in ^ ^ Barry O'Brien, nf sup., vol. i. p. 502. 1836] O'CONNELL AND THE HOUSE OF LORDS 359 holding the police liable for not obeying the mandates of the commissioners, was unsound in law. O'Loghlen, the Irish solicitor-general, stated that the process was described as obsolete in 1770, and cited an opinion formerly given by Joy, the chief baron of the exchequer, who in his judicial capacity had maintained the legality of the writs, to the effect that the Irish police were never bound to act save under the directions of a magistrate, or in cases of actual breach of the peace. Thus Drummond's action was vindi- cated ; but Ireland was still tormented by a state of things which, by placing the law in opposition to justice and good order, the executive in opposition to the judicial body, and one branch of the imperial legislature in opposition to the other, inflamed the antagonism between the two great sections of Irish society. In 1836 the Tithe Bill was again passed by the House of Commons, and again rejected by the House of Lords. The Whigs were still fatally committed to the appropria- tion clause, though it was abundantly evident that public opinion in England would not support them in an attempt to overcome the resistance of the House of Lords to this portion of their measure. O'Connell still supported them, however, and his support, though it tended to keep Ireland quiet, exposed them to the most virulent attacks in England. Lord Mulgrave was denounced by a great English journal as the " stage-struck king of shreds and patches, the frivo- lous novelist, the servile revolutionist, the self-degraded messmate of Daniel O'Connell." But the denunciations of the Ascendency did not shake the alliance of O'Connell with the Government, though O'Connell was beginning to see that it might become necessary for him to take inde- pendent action in Ireland. As early as 1835 he had en- deavoured to rouse the democratic feeling of the north of England against the House of Lords. His denunciations were vehement, and were received with much applause by the audiences he addressed, but they produced little political effect. In 1836, after the rejection of the Irish Municipnl Bill by the House of Lords, O'Connell again attempted to revive his crusade by the issue of a manifesto "To the 36o TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1836 people of England," the object of which, according to the contemporary annalist, " he declared to be to rouse the in- habitants of Britain to show their gratitude to Ireland for the aid which he had lent them in carrying the Reform Act, by destroying the character and rights of the House of Lords." ^ This manifesto, however, had little effect ; it embarrassed the Government without advancing the cause of O'Connell and his countrymen.^ In Ireland itself the popular leaders were more successful. They began to realise the increasing weakness of the Whig Government in England, and to prepare the ground for a renewal of popular agitation in Ireland. With this object, they formed a committee in Dublin for the purpose of organising meetings and petitioning Parliament for the redress of Irish grievances. The committee soon developed into a " National Association," with O'Connell at its head. This association was the apostolical successor of the Catholic Association, suppressed in 1829. It had its local branches and its contributions under the name of "justice rent." Its main objects were the promotion of municipal and tithe reform, and the superintendence — or, as its critics declared, the manipulation — of elections in the popular interest. The ministers avowed in Parliament that thev viewed the establishment of this association with regret and concern ; but the alliance of O'Connell and his followers was necessary to their existence, and no attempt was made either to suppress the association or to restrain its activit3^ It was, indeed, the policy of Drummond and his colleagues ^ Anmia I Register, 1836, p. 229. - It was about this period that Althorp (now Lord Spencer) wrote to Brougham on June 8, 1836 : " I do not at all know what they ought to do about O'Connell. The present state of things is very disagreeable, un- doubtedly, but I am not sure that they would be utterly destroyed by uniting with him more closely" (Althorp Papers). It was probable that this was the view of the Government, though the well-known sentiments of the king must have been an insurmountable obstacle to the offer of public employment to the Irish leader. It seems, however, to be certain that, shortly before the death of the king, in 1837, the offer was actually made and accepted, though it was, for some unexplained reason, immediately withdrawn. The story is told by Mr. John Ball, in a very interesting article on O'Connell, in Mac- millans Magazine for July 1873. 1836] THE ORANGE CONSPIRACY 361 in the Irish Government to govern Ireland firmly, but without resorting to exceptional measures of repression. The toleration of this new association was all the more galling to the Ascendency party because, in the same year, a successful attack had been made in Parliament by the English Radicals and Irish Catholics on the Orange lodges of the United Kingdom. The Orange Association, founded in the last century, had escaped or defied the measures passed against political associations in Ireland in the height of the struggle for Catholic Emancipation. In 1835-6 it had become very powerful in Ireland, and had extended its influence throughout the United Kingdom, and even to the Colonies. It had many lodges in the army. The Duke of Cumberland was grand master, and Perceval, a member of Parliament, who had held office under Peel in 1834, was grand treasurer. A certain Colonel Fairman, who had been very active in establishing regimental lodges, and was roundly accused, before committees of the House of Com- mons, of practices directly treasonable, was deputy grand secretary. The proceedings of the association were in- vestigated by the committees just mentioned, and the result of the inquiries was to disclose the existence of a widespread conspiracy for treasonable purposes, including a project — fomented by the feather-headed Colonel Fairman, but perhaps never very seriously entertained — for changing the succession to the crown in favour of the Duke of Cumberland. What is certain is that, though the Duke of York had withdrawn from the grand mastership of the association on being informed of its illegalit}^ and had, as commander-in-chief, forbidden the formation of Orange lodges in the army, his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, v/ho succeeded him in the grand mastership, had signed warrants for the formation of such lodges. Fairman's share in the conspiracy was never completely elucidated. He refused to produce the records of the society before a committee of the House of Commons, and managed to evade an order of the House, which directed the serjeant- at-arms to apprehend him and seize the book. But enough was discovered to establish the serious character of the 362 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1837 conspiracy. A motion was made by Hume for an address to the Crown, praying for the removal of every judge, privy councillor, lord-Heutenant, magistrate, mihtia officer, in- spector or constable who attended the meeting of any Orange lodge, any Ribbon lodge, or any political club. This sweeping and impracticable motion was successfully resisted by Lord John Russell, who invited the House to "leave it to the king to take such measures as he might deem advisable for the effectual discouragement of Orange lodges, and generally of all political societies." This proved sufficient. The Orangemen, now thoroughly frightened, undertook to comply with the wishes of the Crown. The Duke of Cumberland withdrew from the association. "The Orange lodges were everywhere broken up, and the for- midable organisation, which threatened the peace of every portion of the empire, was terminated." ^ In 1837 the Tithe Bill was again introduced, with a modified and attenuated appropriation clause. To speak more strictly, the appropriation clause was abandoned, and in lieu of it the Government proposed to impose a tax of ten per cent, on the clergy for educational purposes. O'Connell was fain to accept the Bill as an instalment, and as representing the utmost that could be obtained in the existing state of public opinion in England. But the progress of the Bill through Parliament was arrested by the death of the king, and by the dissolution which followed. In the general elections of 1837 the Whigs and Radicals, combined with the followers of O'Connell, still retained a working majority ; but the ministry, already weakened by the miscarriage of its policy in various quarters, was now virtually at the mercy of its opponents. It decided finally to abandon the appropriation clause in return for a con- cession made by the opposition respecting the Irish muni- cipal Reform Bill. The compromise did not secure the passage of the latter measure, though it at last permitted the tithe question to be settled. An attempt was indeed made by the opposition to rescind the resolution concern- ing appropriation which Russell had carried in 1834 against ^ Walpole, " History of England," vol. iii, p. 344. i837] SETTLEMENT OF THE TITHE QUESTION 363 the Government of Peel. But to this humiliation the Whigs declined to submit. They defeated the motion of Sir Thomas Acland, which proposed to rescind the famous resolution, by a majority of 317 to 298 ; but, alarmed by the growing strength of the opposition, they abandoned the principle of appropriation altogether. They even resisted and defeated, with the aid of O'Connell himself, a last attempt made by Ward, the first Parliamentary sponsor of appropriation, to restore its principle to the amended Tithe Bill, which was purely and simply a commutation measure hardly distinguishable from that introduced by Hardinge in 1835. In this shape the Bill at length passed, the rate of commutation being fixed at a rent-charge of 75 per cent, of the existing tithe composition. Thus at last a controversy which had inflamed and tormented Ireland for seven miserable years was settled in 1838, on terms which were obtainable at least as early as 1835, if English parties could have laid aside their antagonisms. The question of municipal reform had still to wait two years longer for a settlement. One of the first measures introduced by the Melbourne Government, when it suc- ceeded Peel in 1835, was a Bill for the reform of municipal corporations in England. This Bill was supported by O'Connell, who expressed his regret that its provisions were not extended to Ireland. The ministers undertook to supply this omission, and a Bill for the reform of munici- pal corporations in Ireland was introduced by Perrin just before the close of the session. This Bill was dropped, however, though it passed through its several stages in the House of Commons without difficulty. A second Bill was introduced by O'Loghlen at the beginning of the next session, a royal commission having in the meanwhile re- ported ver}^ unfavourably concerning the condition of the existing corporations. These close corporations consisted almost exclusively of Protestants, not more than two hun- dred Catholics being admitted to their freedom, although they had been nominally open to Catholics since 1793. They were thus strongholds of the Ascendency, and it was acknowledged on all hands that they were addicted to the 364 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1837 most shameless plunder and peculation. The administra- tion of justice by these close and corrupt corporations was on a par with their executive malversation, and, indeed, so indefensible was the whole system that Peel, as leader of the opposition, frankly declined to defend it. The minis- terial measure of reform was conceived on liberal lines. The opposition did not directly oppose the Bill. They admitted that the existing corporations of Ireland were corrupt, incapable, and indefensible. But they contended that the true remedy was not to assimilate the municipal system of Ireland to that of England — a change for which Ireland was not ripe, and which would have the effect of converting the municipalities into " normal schools of political agitation " — but to abolish the existing corpora- tions, and to entrust the government of towns to commis- sioners and magistrates appointed by the Crown. With this object, Lord Francis Egerton moved, on going into committee, that it should be an instruction to the committee to make provision for the abolition of corporations in Ireland, and for such arrangements as might be necessary on their abolition for securing the efficient and impartial administration of justice, and the peace and good govern- ment of cities and towns in Ireland. This instruction was rejected by a large majority, and the ministerial measure was passed in the House of Commons. In the Lords, however, the instruction rejected by the Commons was carried, and the Bill was transformed, chiefly by the in- fluence of Lord Lyndhurst, into a measure for the abolition of municipal institutions in Ireland, and the substitution of Crown commissioners. The Government declined to accept this change, and the Bill was dropped for the session. It is unnecessar}', and would be tedious, to follow year by year the discussions and struggles which arose over this question of Irish municipal reform. In 1837 each party occupied its own ground, and, neither being ready to make concessions, the question remained in statu quo. In 1838 a compromise, intended to include both the tithe and the corporation questions, was arranged between Peel and 1838] MUNICIPAL REFORM 365 Russell. Peel was now willing to grant corporations to the larger towns at once, and to allow the electors of the smaller towns to apply for a charter of incorporation to the Lord-Lieutenant, provided that in all cases the municipal franchise was fixed at i^io. On this point the compromise broke down. The supporters of the Government, irritated at its surrender on the tithe question, determined to make a stand on that of the municipal franchise, and for two years longer the two Houses of Parliament remained at variance, and the municipal question remained unsettled. At last, in 1840, the Government brought in an emasculated Bill, which was accepted by the opposition in the House of Commons, and, with some additional reactionary amend- ments, by Lyndhurst and the Ascendency party in the Lords. Practically the opposition had triumphed, and the Bill passed in 1840 might probably have passed four or five years earlier if the ministry had then been willing to make the concessions which were ultimately extorted from them. O'Connell was still faithful to his alliance with the Whigs, bitterly as its results had disappointed him. But he had already begun to see that the Melbourne Goverment was doomed, and in anticipation of its downfall he had, in 1839 founded a new political society, to which he had given the curiously infelicitous name of the "Precursor Society" — a name which was intended to impl}^ that, unless equal justice was conceded by the Imperial Parliament, the society was only the *' precursor " to a demand for self-government. This society was the germ of the second repeal movement ; but it was only when Peel returned to power in 1841 that the latter movement became serious. The third great Irish measure of the Melbourne ad- ministration was the poor law. The poverty of Ireland was one of the chief sources of its misery and discontent ; but until the Poor Relief Act was passed in 1838, there was no organised system of public charity, and the opinions of those who knew Ireland best differed widely as to the better mode of dealing with the problem.^ A commission had i See "The Reign of Queen Victoria," vol. i. p. 536, "Ireland," by Sir Rowland Blennerhassett. 366 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1838 been appointed by the Government of Lord Grey in 1833 to inquire into the condition of the Irish poor. The report of this commission was appalling in its revelations of Irish misery, and its materials subsequently formed the staple of two of the best books written on Ireland during the last century — those of Gustave De Beaumont and Cornewall Lewis, to which reference has more than once been made in these pages. But it was not favourable to the intro- duction of the poor law.^ For this reason it was set aside by the Government, and Mr. (afterwards Sir George) Nicholls, an English poor law commissioner, was sent ove to Ireland to institute further inquiries. Mr. NichoUs's report, which was very hastily produced, fully corroborated the statements of the commission as to the deplorable con- dition of the Irish poor, and it recommended as a remedy the extension of the principles of the English poor law to Ireland. A Bill was introduced in 1837, but was suspended by the dissolution of Parliament which followed the demise of the Crown. " It proposed the erection in Ireland of one hundred workhouses, where relief and employment should be afforded to the poor, infirm and able-bodied. The whole country was to be divided into unions, the landlords and tenants or occupiers of each union to be rated in equal shares for the support of the poor within the union. The system was to be administered by local boards of guardians, consisting of elected and ex-officio members, the former not to exceed one-third of all the guardians chosen, and not to comprise clergymen of any denomination. There was to be no law of settlement, and the local boards of guardians were to be placed under the control of a central authority in Dublin, to consist of commissioners chosen from the poor law commissioners in England."^ O'Connell endeavoured, without success, to amend the Bill in several particulars. Smith O'Brien contended that the landlords should be required to pay three-fourths of the rates ; and Sharman Crawford objected to the omission of a law of settlement, and to the total prohibition of outdoor relief. But the ^ Barry O'Brien, " Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland," vol. i. p. 555. , - Ibid., p. 557. 1838] THE POOR RELIEF ACT 367 Government maintained the Biil as it stood, and the only important amendment was introduced by the House of Lords, at the instance of the Duke of Welhngton. Instead of charging the union at large for the maintenance of the poor relieved in the workhouse attached to it, the duke proposed that each union should be subdivided into electoral districts, each district to be chargeable with its own poor, in order that every parish should bear its own burdens. The Bill passed in July 1838, and before the end of 1840 127 unions were declared, leaving only three to be formed, and fourteen workhouses were opened for the reception of paupers. " On the whole, the operation of the poor law must be pronounced to have been successful. There was at once a perceptible diminution of the crowds of beggars which used to be seen on the roads near the villages and towns, and whose numbers and wild and withered appear- ance have been so often described in the writings of men who travelled in Ireland. Those who continued to think it might have been better had no system of legal charity been adopted, and who lived through the years from 1846 to 1852, must have seen grave reasons to modify their opinions. Frightful as were the sufferings of the people during that terrible period, most assuredly they would have been very much worse had there been no poor law in existence."^ It may, however, still be a question whether Irishmen dealing with their own social problems would have solved them in this particular manner. The report of a commission, composed of men who knew Ireland well, was set aside, and that of a Scotchman, who did not know Ireland at all, adopted ; the suggestions and criticism of Irish members of Parliament were uniformly disregarded ; and the working of the whole system was placed for several years exclusively in the hands of English officials. It is true that the Irish poor law was never so unpopular in Ireland as the corresponding measure originally was in England; but it must be acknowledged that the imperial ^ "The Reign of Queen Victoria," vol. i. p. 539. See also the pages which follow for an account of the further working and development of the Irish poor law, and its condition at the present lime. 368 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1838- Parliament and Government did little or nothing to make it popular. It now only remains to consider briefly the social con- dition of Ireland from 1835 to 1841, and the mode ot dealing with it adopted by the Melbourne Government under the inspiration of Thomas Drummond. Of the con- dition of social order as affected by the prolonged struggle over the payment of tithes, and by the extreme misery of the people, enough, perhaps, has been said in the fore- going pages ; but those who wish to see the causes of this deplorable condition set forth, not by an Irish agitator, but by an English member of Parliament, who, almost alone in his day, looked at Irish affairs with unprejudiced eyes, should consult the remarkable letter written in 1834 to Lord Melbourne by Mr. Poulett Scrope, an English land- lord and a most moderate politician, who sat in the House of Commons for many years as member for Stroud.^ A redeeming feature in the social history of the time was the temperance crusade initiated in 1838 by Theobald Mathew, a Franciscan friar, who had spent many years in devoted work among the poor of the city of Cork. Father Mathew was an unselfish and pure-minded enthusiast, with an unrivalled gift for influencing his countrymen, both Catholic and Protestant. His advocacy of temperance was hardly less successful among the Orange Protestants of Ulster than among the Catholics of the south and west. He traversed Ireland in the height of the repeal agitation, and for a time he fused all sects and parties together in an enthusiastic effort to stay the plague of intemperance. His preaching was marvellously successful, and in a few years he had persuaded two millions of his countrymen to forswear the use of alcoholic drinks. But his influence was un- happily transient so far as Ireland itself was concerned. The Ireland which O'Connell ruled and Father Mathew regenerated disappeared in the famine ; but the fugitive ^ See extracts from this letter given in Barry O'Brien, " Irish Wrongs and English Remedies," p. 131. It is a strange satire on the apathy and prejudice of the imperial Parliament that this letter should have been reprinted in 1844 and addressed to Sir Robert Peel. The report of the Devon Commission and the history of the famine are among the proofs of its unanswerable force. 1S41] DRUMMOND AND HIS WORK 369 Irish carried with them to the United States and the British Colonies the principles which Father Mathew had taught and the restraints he had imposed, and to this day temperance societies which bear his name are both numerous and influential among the Irish beyond the seas. In Ireland itself, when the country had recovered from the famine, a generation had arisen which knew Father Mathew only by tradition, and had never felt the magic of his personal presence. The domestic administration of Ireland by Thomas Drummond from 1835 to 1840 is a subject which demands a volume to itself. A brief account of its leading features can alone be given here. Drummond was no demagogue. He was a scientific administrator, cool in judgment, resolute in action, temperate, conciliatory, politic, yet withal inspired with an unquenchable enthusiasm of humanity. He may well be called incomparable, for no ruler of Ireland has ever governed it so justly and yet so firmly, and no man, not born in Ireland nor identified with the national feelings of the people, has ever inspired Irishmen with so passionate and abiding an attachment. Drummond's success was due partW, perhaps mainly, to his own native gifts, but assuredly in part also to his frank association with O'Connell. He knew Ireland well, as well as many Irishmen; his scientific training and his temperament, at once ardent and cool, enabled him to see through the mists of passion and pre- judice which at times clouded the eyes of popular chiefs. When he went to Ireland in 1835, the tithe war was at its height, Ribbonism was rife, faction fights were common, the peasantry were exasperated by two years of coercion, and the Protestants irritated by the threatened loss of their ascendency. He was armed with a modified and facultative coercion Act, but this measure was never put in force. Drummond seems to have thought with Cavour that "any one can govern with a state of siege." We have seen how the Orange conspiracy of the time was dealt with by the House of Commons, but, though this had strengthened his hands, Drummond had still to deal with manifestations of the Orange temper in Ireland. One of his first acts was to 2 A 370 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1838- reorganise the police, and for this purpose a Bill was passed in 1836 which enabled Drummond to place the constabulary on the footing of efficiency, discipline, and loyalty which it has maintained to the present day. The force was freely opened to Catholics, having previously been almost exclu- sively recruited from the Protestant population. The magis- tracy was also reorganised, impartial stipendiaries being substituted in many cases for the unpaid representatives of the Ascendency. Thus before he had been in office two years Drummond had reformed the police, purified the magistracy, rebuked and controlled the Orange temper, and suppressed those faction fights which the Irish peasantry had learnt to regard as a sort of privileged pastime. With Ribbonism and agrarian disorder he grappled vigorously, though the social condition of Ireland was so deplorable that its permanent cure was be3'ond the reach of mere administrative skill. It must suffice here to refer to two public documents which give the most authentic account of Drummond's administrative methods, and of his mature views as to the permanent economical regeneration of Ireland. The first of these is the evidence given before the committee already mentioned as having been appointed by the House of Lords in 1839, on the motion of Earl Roden. The second is the report of the commission on Irish rail- ways, to the preparation of which Drummond devoted so much energy of mind and body that he never recovered from the strain. The report was concluded in 1838; in 1839 Drummond, with health impaired by his incessant labours, and still bearing the whole burden of administra- tion in Ireland, was placed on his defence before the Roden committee. Early in 1840 his health finally gave way, and he died on April 15, a willing sacrifice, but withal an irreparable loss to the cause of Ireland and the empire. The railway report was never acted upon, though the Government was most anxious to carry out the scheme. Peel opposed it on economic grounds, and, in truth, its principles were hard to reconcile with the doctrine of laisser /aire as understood and applied by the reformed Parlia- ment. The true explanation of the failure of Drummond's 1841] PROTEST OF THE TIPPERARY MAGISTRATES 371 comprehensive and statesmanlike proposals to commend themselves to the judgment of Parliament is probably to be found in the following extract from the report of the railway commission : — " Ireland, though for years past a subject of anxious attention and discussion in public, is really very little known to the British people, and the dis- advantage to both countries arising from that circumstance is much greater than is generally supposed." With the death of Drummond the history of Ireland under the Melbourne Government may be closed. Lord Melbourne remained in office until the middle of 1841, but for the last few months of its existence his ministry was discredited and powerless. This chapter may be fitly closed with a brief account of what is, perhaps, the most striking episode of Drummond's administrative career. In April 1838 the magistrates of Tipperary formally ad- dressed the Lord-Lieutenant on the occasion of a peculiarly atrocious agrarian crime, which had just been committed in that county. They insisted in the strongest terms on the disordered state of society in the district where the crime was committed ; declared that neither life nor property was safe in it — that juries were intimidated, and could only be adequately protected by " resorting to the old and wholesome practice of challenging, which, properly acted upon, would be productive of the best effects ; " and con- cluded by calling upon the Lord- Lieutenant to "put in force the strongest powers which the laws of the land permit," and to apply to Parliament for further powers for dealing with the unlicensed possession of arms. This memorial was signed by Lords Glengall and Lismore, and thirty other magistrates of the county of Tipperary. Drummond promptly answered it in a letter addressed to Lord Donoughmore, the Lord-Lieutenant of the county. " His excellency," he said, " has heard with the deepest concern of the lamentable occurrence to which the magis- trates have called his attention, and has not failed to direct the most prompt and vigorous measures to be adopted with a view to bring to justice the perpetrators of so atrocious an act." As to the more general allegations 372 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1838- of the magistrates, he stated that they were so much at variance with the official information in the possession of the Government, that the Lord-Lieutenant considered it necessary "to institute an immediate and careful inquiry, with a view to ascertain in the clearest manner the actual extent of the evils which the magistrates represent to exist, and, so far as may be possible, the immediate causes to which they may be attributed." The results of this inquiry were communicated to the Tipperary magistrates, in a letter addressed to Lord Donoughmore a few weeks later. In this letter the allegations of the memorialists were traversed one by one, and were shown to be at variance with the actual facts of the case, as exhibited in judicial and criminal statistics of unimpeachable authority. " His Excellency," said the letter, " has no reason for believing that the recurrence from time to time of serious outrages in the county of Tipperary is justly to be ascribed to the existing state of the law, or the manner in which it is administered. The Government has been at all times ready to afford the utmost aid in its power to suppress disturbance and crime ; and its efforts have been suc- cessful, so far as regards open violation of the law. Faction fights and riots at fairs, which were generally of a very ferocious character, and the fruitful source of much sub- sequent crime, have been to a very great degree suppressed, though heretofore most commonly suffered to pass un- checked and unpunished ; but there are certain classes of crime originating in other causes, which are much more difficult of repression. The utmost exertion of vigilance and precaution cannot always effectually guard against them ; and it becomes of importance to consider the causes which have led to a state of society so much to be deplored, with a view to ascertain whether any corrective means are in the immediate power of the Government or the legisla- ture." The condition of the cottier class in Ireland is then briefly examined, stress being laid on the significant fact that the number of ejectments in Tipperary in 1837 was not less than double the number in 1833. "The deficiency of a demand for labour, and the want as yet of any legal 1 841] DRUMMOND ON THE DUTIES OF PROPERTY 373 provision against utter destitution, leave this humble class, when ejected, v^^ithout any certain protection against actual destitution. Hence the wholesale expulsion of cottier tenmits is ujifortunately found, zvith the great body of the people^ to enlist the strongest feelings — those of self-preservation — on the side even of guilt, in vifidication of what they falsely assume to be their rights ; and hence a sympathy for persons charged zuitJi crimes, supposed to have arisen from those causes, is still found a lamentable exception to that increased general respect for the laws which has of late years been remarked with satisfaction by those concerned in the ad- ministration of justice. Property has its duties as WELL AS ITS RIGHTS. To the neglect of those duties in times past is mainly to be ascribed that diseased state of society in which such crimes take their rise ; and it is not in the enactment or enforcement of statutes of extraordinary severity, but chiefly in the better and more faithful per- formance of those duties, and the more enlightened and humafte exercise of those rights, that a permanent remedy for such disorders is to be sought." This was language which the magistrates and landlords of Ireland were quite unaccustomed to hear from Dublin Castle. It offended them very much, and disconcerted them even more. Lord Donoughmore declined to publish the letter, and it was not made public until it was laid on the table of the House of Commons, in pursuance of a motion for its production made by Joseph Hume. Before the Roden committee. Lord Donoughmore was asked to explain why he was unwilling to make the letter public. " It was so worded," he said, ** that it threw the blame upon the landlords of having been the authors of the outrages. That was the impression upon my mind, and I did not wish it published. . . . The part of this answer to which I particularly objected was this — * Property has its duties as well as its rights. To the neglect of those duties in times past is mainly to be ascribed that diseased state of society in which such crimes take their rise.' " Well might Gustave De Beaumont say that the curse of Ireland was une mauvaise aristocratic. That aristocracy 374 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1838-41 was soon to give a further proof of its temper. On January i, 1839, Lord Norbury, a popular landlord in the King's County, was shot dead in his own grounds in broad daylight. The murderer was never discovered, nor was the motive of his crime ever revealed. By the landlords and magistrates of Ireland it was attributed indirectly to Drummond's letter to the Tipperary magistrates. Meetings were held, in which peers were found to declare, amid the encouragement and applause of their hearers, that the saying about property having its duties as well as its rights, though innocent enough in itself, was little less than a deliberate and unfeeling insult in the circumstances in which it was uttered. The turmoil was great for a time, and the Irish landlords never forgave Drummond. But the letter to the Tipperary magistrates has made Drummond's name immortal, and marks one of the turning-points in the modern history of Ireland. Ill THE SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF PEEL With the fall of Lord Melbourne, the alliance between the British Administration and O'Connell came to a natural end. Based on the principle of equivalents, it had not proved unfruitful. The Statute-book from 1835 to 1840 was the record of legislation which, though weakened by the threatened hostility of the Tory majority in the House of Lords and by positive opposition in both Houses of Parliament, nevertheless definitely removed some great admitted abuses and moderated others. Far greater, how- ever, than the results of legislation, had been the effects of the official labours of Thomas Drummond at the Irish office, who, as related in the previous chapter, succeeded, undeterred by calumny and misrepresentation, in turning the theoretical equality of Protestant and Catholic, estab- lished by the Emancipation Act, into a practical reality, and in governing without constant recourse to special legislation of a repressive character. But with the death of Drummond and the fall of the Melbourne Government, a new chapter was opened. O'Connell at once realised that he must abandon the part of the political broker, ever offering, on behalf of his clients, to suspend the repeal agitation, in return for the grant of particular reforms ; and that he must appear once more in the congenial part of the. "Liberator" of the oppressed and the champion of the free. As soon, therefore, as the days of the Melbourne Adminis- tration were seen to be actually'- numbered, he decided to refurbish the arms of agitation, and to send round the fiery cross, bidding the Irish people be of good cheer, for that within a short time — a time, indeed, so short that the actual date might almost be named — an Irish Parliament would again be sitting in College Green, with the full 375 376 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1841 control of all the affairs of the country, and with a foreign policy and a separate exchequer. With these objects the Repeal Association was founded on the ruins of the popular organisations, which under different titles and with varying objects, but always under the supreme control of O'Connell himself, had been kept alive ever since the days of the Catholic Emancipation Act, in order to protect the political interests of the Irish people, according to the circumstances of the hour. The new association had its meeting-place on Burgh Qua}^, in tlie city of Dublin, and there O'Connell, with energy unimpaired by the labours of past years and the flight of time, delivered speech upon speech, in which the familiar arguments against the Union were again and again repeated, with an iteration which to the literary critic or the political amateur might perhaps have seemed weari- some, but which drove home with unerring force into the minds of those for whom they were intended, the lesson that the sole cause and origin of all the wrongs, all the misfortunes, and all the poverty of Ireland, was the Union with England, and that this Union he intended to destroy. With practised skill he pointed to the inequalities of the popular representation, which the Reform Act of 1832 had not redressed in Ireland to the same extent as in England ; to the manner in which the franchise given with one hand by an extended suffrage was taken away with the other by means of a vexatious S3^stem of registration ; to the still unreformed system of local government both in town and country ; to the abuses of the Church established by law, which only served a fraction of the people, and was the home of nepotism and every form of abuse; and to the ignorance of the Catholic middle classes, produced by the absence of any system of university or intermediate educa- tion worthy of the name. With equal eloquence, but with less truth, he mourned over the waning manufactures of the island, and told his audience that it was the Union which had ruined them, ignoring the fact that the causes which were transferring the woollen manufactures of Dublin to Yorkshire had had an exactly similar operation in many a country town in tlie south and west of England. 1842] REPEAL AGITATION 377 At first the results produced by the renewal of agita- tion in Ireland were but small. So marked had been the effect of the legislation of the Gre}^ and Melbourne Govern- ments, and of the administration of Drummond, that at the general election of 1841 the Whigs, utterly routed in England, were able to find some slight consolation for their defeats at home in their unexpected successes in Ireland. Not more than twelve repealers, even after counting in some doubtful votes, were returned to Parliament ; the rest of the representation falling into the hands of one or other of the two great parties, the Whigs being especially fortunate in the larger boroughs. O'Connell himself failed to be elected for the city of Dublin, and, though he was immediately returned by another constituency, the defeat of the great repealer, in the Irish capital, was not without effect on the popular mind. And now it might have seemed as if O'Connell and the cause he represented had failed, and many there were who thought so. But what the voice of the tribune and his followers had not yet effected on the hustings, was to be accomplished by the co-operation of a different agency. The pen of the author appeared, and not for the first time in Irish history, as an equally potent instrument with the tongue of the orator in stirring the popular mind. The writers in the Nation newspaper, which was founded in the 3'ear 1842, were the successors — however widely different in style and in method — of the literary champions, such as Swift and Lucas, who in former generations had waged war against the Castle or the British Parliament. It would be impossible, even at this interval of time, to deny a high order of literary merit to some of the productions of the band of young men who founded the new organ of public opinion ; but, judged by the only standard which it is fair to apply to work intended by the authors for immediate effect, and to produce a definite though transient result at a given moment, it is no flattery to say that the writers of the Nation commanded success and, putting aside all political judgments, deserved it. Even if one of their number had not lived to be the chronicler of the events in which he himself once played a 378 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1842 distinguished part, Ireland would, unaided, have accorded a permanent place in her honourable esteem to the memory of Davis, the most eminent of those who, though not desir- ing the title, came to be known as the party of " Young Ireland," of which, next to Davis, Gavan Duffy and Dillon were the most prominent ornaments. But the appearance of the Nation newspaper, and of the Young Ireland party, v.'-as important for another and different set of reasons. It introduced a new element into the ranks of the Irish national party, and O'Connell, from this first appearance, saw that it was so and disliked the movement; as he disliked everything which seemed to clash with his own undivided authority, especially if he recognised the existence of ideas and of thoughts which were not stamped with a mint-mark of his own. "There are in Ireland," says the author of a sketch of the life of Mr. Drummond, " two nations, interfused yet distinct ; with separate traditions, and differing in blood, temperament, and religion." 1 The idea of the Young Ireland party was to get the two nations to work together ; to recognise, as in the daj^s of the United Irishmen, that they were become one people, and that they had common interests, with a common foe in the British Parliament. But O'Connell was the representative of one, and one only, of these two races. He was the representative of the Catholic Celts " in blood, in temperament, and in religion," with their good qualities and their defects alike, bone of their bone, flesh of their flesh. The unbroken hold which he main- tained, from the beginning to the end of his career, on the affections of the Catholic population of the island is the best proof and the highest testimon}^ that he was their natural leader. Though not a fanatic, and with nothing whatever of the religious persecutor in him, his politics were part of his religion, and his religion was part of his politics. If the wrongs of the peasantry afflicted him, it was because, though himself no favourable specimen of the landlord class, the peasantry were mainly Catholics and the landlords were mostly Protestants. The land question, ^ " Memoir of Thomas Drummond,'" by John F, McLennan. 1843] O' CONN ELL AND YOUNG IRELAND PARTY 379 which really appealed to his imagination and stirred the depths of his soul, was the ancient expulsion of the old Catholic owners of the soil, and their replacement by Protestants, rather than the existing wrongs of the actual cultivators of the soil, under an uncongenial land system. If he desired a large measure of parliamentary and muni- cipal reform, it was probably far more because he saw in it the only means of enfranchising the Catholic population than from any theoretical liking for popular government. Though in one sense he declined to take his politics from Rome, he desired to see the education of the people, from the university to the village school, subordinated to the bishops of his Church. He had been educated abroad under ecclesiastical influences. As a youth he had seen the horrors of the French Revolution and the downfall of the Church ; this image remained stamped on his memory for ever, and he desired that, when his own earthly career was ended, his heart should rest within the precincts of the holy city, on the banks of the Tiber. To a mind so constituted, the order of ideas which had grown up in consequence of the success of the French Revolution was without attraction. For the leaders in the Irish rebellion of 1798 he was never weary of ex- pressing his abhorrence, and he watched with anxious jealousy the slightest signs of any movement of a similar kind in the ranks of his own followers. Such a movement he detected, or thought he detected, in the Young Ireland party, who were more akin to the European revolutionaries in their literary sympathies and tastes, than to the historic type of Irish Catholic patriotism. For the moment, how- ever, he was forced to accept their co-operation — perhaps he realised that their influence had not the same deep roots as his own — and the agitation, fanned by the fiery speeches of the great tribune, and fed by the brilliant journalism of the writers in the Nation, sprang at once into a formidable activity and covered the land. The Repeal rent flowed in ever-increasing streams into the exchequer of the association, and fresh recruits were constantly being enrolled under its banner. At the same 38o TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1842 time a new and formidable weapon of political controversy was forged. Monster meetings were summoned, which O'Connell dominated by the combined effects of his immense personal prestige and his magnificent voice and presence. Though the enthusiasm was unbounded, perfect order pre- vailed. The effects of the temperance movement, which O'Connell in his speeches was never weary of claiming as his best ally, were conspicuous at these gatherings. At none of them could any worse outrage be discovered to have taken place than the upsetting of the stall of an aged seller of gingerbread, and yet it was said that at the great meeting on the historic Hill of Tara, the ancient seat of Irish royalty, nearly a quarter of a million of persons were gathered together. At the meeting held at Trim on March 16, O'Connell declared that before long "he would either be in his grave or a freeman"; and, alluding to the battles of the Boyne and of Aughrim, he told his audience they must follow his example in choosing betv/een liberty and death. At Mullingar he assured the people of the practically unanimous support of the Roman Catholic bishops ; at Kilkenny he told them the story of a great massacre of the women of that town by the soldiers of Cromwell ; at Mullaghmore he alluded to the massacre in old days of the Irish chieftains by the soldiers of Queen Elizabeth; everywhere he ran the risk of reviving the hatred of the Celt for the Saxon, of the Roman Catholic for the Protestant, and of fanning the embers of the old antagonism of race and religion. These violent and bigoted utterances were noted by others besides the British Government. Outside the ranks of the followers of O'Connell and of the Young Ireland party lay a large mass of floating discontent with the British Government, which found its most prominent adherents among the Presbyterians of the north, whose blood was mainly Scotch, and whose political traditions were not only Whig, but of the Whiggery which looked straight back across two centuries for its traditions to the statesmen of the Commonwealth and to the days of the Solemn League and Covenant. For a Tory adminis- 1842] CRAWFORD AND THE PRESBYTERIANS 381 tration such men could have but scant affection. The grandfathers of the generation then hving had been the backbone of the volunteer movement. Some had taken an active part in the movement of the United Irishmen ; others, at an earher epoch in the previous centur}^, had fled across the Atlantic to recruit the armies of Washington, rather than accept the disabilities which Episcopalian ex- clusiveness had forced on the Presbyterian farmer of the north as well as on the Catholic peasant of the south. In their circles the idea began to be discussed whether, without going as far as O'Connell and repealing the Union, some middle course might not be found, such as had solved the problem of federal union in America, to combine the management of Irish internal affairs by a domestic legis- lature with the retention by Ireland of her position in the Parhament of the United Kingdom. Among the more cultivated Catholics similar views began to appear, and some of those who joined the Repeal Association, such as Mr. O'Hagan and the Bishop of Killala, did so on the understanding that the establishment of a federal relation with England and Scotland, and not absolute separation, were the objects they had in view. Of the Federalist party, the most eminent was Mr. Sharman Crawford, a landed proprietor in Ulster, a man independent in character as well as in fortune, who at that moment was member for Rochdale. His views were apt to be of a somewhat hard and rigid type, and at the time of the tithe agitation, irritated by the overbearing manner of O'Connell, he had openly charged the great Liberator, at one of his own meetings in Dublin, with having sacrificed the interests of Ireland to the convenience of the Government. He was already popular as the author of a Bill — the first legislative attempt of the kind — for securing to the Irish tenant compensation for the unexhausted improvements he might have placed in the soil, a measure which for some time he had vainly pressed on the attention of Parliament. The distrust established in connection with the tithe question between Crawford and O'Connell — each the type of the people whom he represented, and each 382 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1842 unable to appreciate or understand the other — rendered co-operation between them at this juncture impossible; and Crawford, though invited to do as others had done and join the Repeal Association as a federalist, refused to do so, reserving his own liberty of action both inside and outside Parliament. " I conceive," he said, " that the principles of '82 and those of a federal constitution are so essentially different, that it is impossible for the sup- porters of each to work together, unless one gives way to the other." ^ Such were the leaders of public opinion in Ireland, But if O'Connell was the type of the Catholic Celt, and Crawford of the Ulster Liberal Protestant, still more was the minister who had just obtained power in England the incarnation of the prosperous English middle class, to which the Reform Act of 1832 had handed over the control of the empire. At an earlier period of his career he had restored the commercial prosperity of his country by placing the currency on a sound basis ; he had done much towards reforming the criminal law ; and he was now summoned by the voice of the great majority of his country- men to renovate the foundations of the prosperity of the kingdom a second time, by large measures of reform, which were to repair the errors of his predecessors, to liberate the sources of wealth, and to spread the streams of wealth over a thankful land. The acquaintance of Peel with Irish affairs had been long and intimate. When Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, he had allowed but little interference with his office by the Home Secretary. When Home Secretary he had reduced the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant to a mere cypher. He had probed the wounds of which Ireland suffered, and he believed he knew the remedy. To declare, as O'Connell was doing, that the troubles of the country were all owing to the Union, or could be remedied in any way save by the steady process of the maintenance of order and the de- velopment of the natural resources of the soil, appeared to him a tale of little meaning, however strong were the * See Gavan Duffy, " Young Ireland," p. 595. 1842] THE NEW ADMINISTRATION 383 words of the orator in which the lesson was conveyed. Therefore, though O'Connell told vast and acclaiming audiences that 1843 was to be the Repeal year, and must be so without fail, and though the corporation of Dublin — of which O'Connell was in 1842 elected the first Roman Catholic lord mayor — carried a resolution in favour of his views, it was none the less certain that a collision with the British Government must come first, and that unless he was prepared to abide the consequences, and be ready, if necessar}^, to fight, he had better not provoke the contest. But at the moment the magnitude of the coming storm was probably not foreseen, although Peel was reported to have said that he expected Ireland to be his principal difficulty.^ He sent Philip, Earl de Grey, to Dublin Castle as Lord-Lieutenant, with Lord Eliot as Chief Secretary, neither of these appointments being re- garded as indicating any apprehension of specially troublous times or unusually difficult questions. To assist them in the government, Sugden, the most eminent of English equity barristers, went as Lord Chancellor, and of him it might be truly said that his knowledge of the practice of the English Chancery Courts was only surpassed by his ignorance of Irish affairs. This transition from the old to the new administration at once made itself felt by a number of minor appointments, which gave the key-note to the music of the new regime, and by the revival of confidence in the tone of the party of Ascendency. It is, perhaps, difficult to see how a Government which looked for support to the Ascendency party in Ireland could have adopted any different course without alienating indispensable friends, and being denounced as the betrayer in office of those whose goodwill Peel had cultivated while in opposition. Be that as it may, it is certain that O'Connell found his best arguments in the policy of Lord de Grey and Sugden, and the Repeal movement in con- sequence grew daily more and more menacing. By the commencement of 1843 it had become evident to Peel that ^ See " Policy of England towards Ireland," by the late Charles Greville (published anonymously), p. 223. 384 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1843 the British Government was face to face with one of the most formidable of Irish movements, and that, if he was not prepared to act with vigour, the administration would soon slip entirely out of the hands of the representatives of British authority in the island. The language of O'Connell was each day growing bolder, and his denunciation of the "Saxon" louder. His followers began to attend the monster meetings in something approaching military array, and, though it is evident that O'Connell himself never intended to rely on the use of force in order to attain his ends, he probably did believe that he would be able to frighten the Government into granting his terms; his language certainly breathed bayonets and guns, though he intended to use none. His more violent followers in- dulged in the same ominous language, and also intended their words to be followed at the proper moment by armed action. Sugden had attempted to strike the Repeal Association by removing from the commission of the peace the names of several gentlemen of good social position, who had either attended or had announced their intention of attending at the monster meetings. The result was that many of the leading Whigs threw up their commissions; that the ranks of the Repeal Association immediately received numerous influential recruits ; and that voluntary Courts of Con- ciliation began to multiply all over the country, with a view of avoiding having recourse to the established courts of local jurisdiction, in which, it was asserted, no honest man would any longer serve. Meanwhile the agitation on the land question, especially in the south and west, had sprung into renewed activity : the constant handmaid of every political movement, partly nourishing, partly nourished by it, and accompanied, as usual, by hideous outrages and organised intimidation. Neither life nor property was secure. The owner, if resident; the agent, if the owner was an absentee; the farmer who had the courage to resist the mandates of illegal combinations ; the cattle and flocks of unpopular persons ; the magistrate who did his duty on the bench ; — 1843] GROWTH OF AGITATION 385 all alike were in danger. With a view of, in some degree, repressing these disorders, a Bill to regulate the use of arms, continuing and extending the previously existing legislation on the subject, was introduced into the House of Commons by Lord Eliot on May 29, 1843.^ Owing to the absence in Ireland of O'Connell and his principal followers, the opposition to this measure fell chiefly into the hands of the Irish Whigs. Sharman Crawford himself moved the rejection. The debate which followed is the type of those with which the political world has long had a melancholy familiarity. On the one side, the unanswerable plea that the first duty of every civilised Government is to maintain law and order, and the security of life and property : on the other side, the answer, that the outrages were caused by the abuses of the land system ; that measures of reform should precede, or in any case accompany, measures of repression ; and that the extended powers asked for were illusory, and could not be safely entrusted to a Government believed to be under the influence of the old Ascendency party. " Rebecca riots," it was urged, were raging in Wales at this very time, owing to the unpopularity of the turnpike system, and many of the worst features of Irish lawlessness had been reproduced among the Celtic in- habitants of the Principality ; but in Wales the Government had not asked for an Arms Act ; on the contrary, they were about to issue a commission to inquire into the grievances alleged by the people. Why, it was asked, did ^ The history of these statutes is not without interest. The first enactment which related to the importation of arms into Ireland was the 33 Geo. III. c. 2. That Act was renewed by the 35 Geo. III. c. 24 ; by the 36 Geo. III. c. 37; and by the 40 Geo. III. e. 96. All these were Acts of the Irish Parliament before the Union. The last of these Acts expired in 1S07, when it was renewed by the 54 Geo. III. c- 3, which contained in substance the law existing in 1843 on the subject of the importation of arms, with some modifications introduced by the i & 2 Geo. IV., the i Will. IV. c. 44. The possession and registration of arms were regulated by the 36 Geo. III. c. 26; 38 Geo. III. c. 82; 40 Geo. III. c. 96; all Irish Acts; and, finally, by the 47 Geo. III. c. 54, which had been renewed from time to time, but was now about to expire (see Lord Eliot's speech, Hansard, 3rd series, vol. Ixix. p. 997). 2 B 386 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1843 the Government pursue one course in Wales and another in Ireland ? "A great cause of the agrarian offences," said Sharman Crawford, "arose from the circumstances connected with the possession of land, and from the relation- ship between landlord and tenant. That was little under- stood in this country by the country gentlemen. It was the system of oppression by Irish landlords which caused the disposition among the people to agrarian outrages. They could get no justice from the law, and they were compelled to make a law to themselves, and they said, ' We must protect ourselves or starve.' " ^ " It is not to the want of an Arms Bill such as this," said Sheil ; " it is to the imperfect, I am almost justified in calling it the impotent, administration of justice, that the atrocities by which certain districts in Ireland are unfortunately characterised are to be ascribed." - Lord Palmerston, though not opposing the second reading, said he believed that what most excited the people of Ireland was the existence of honourable gentle- men opposite as the Government of the country. ... It was not, however, to the men who governed in Downing Street that the people of Ireland objected. Those to whom they objected were the men who governed in the Castle in Dublin.^ " On what ground," he asked, alluding to a large number of recent evictions, " were these steps taken ? It was said that people ate the produce of the land, and that the landlord could not obtain a fair rent from the tenant. He denied both these propositions, and he maintained that by the close application of their labour to small portions of land they obtained a greater amouut of subsistence from the earth than the best farmer could by the application of any system of agriculture." He acknowledged, however, the inconveniences and drawbacks of the system, and then went on to point out how in many cases "the landlords, feeling these, and not sufficiently reflecting on the injustice which they were inflicting on others — and, as he maintained, on themselves — when they found the leases expire, and also found on their land great numbers of persons born and 1 Hansard, 3rd series, vol. Ixix. p. 1012. 2 Ibid., vol. Ixix. p. 1038. » Ibid., vol. Ixx. pp. 286, 287. i843] DEBATES ON THE ARMS ACT 387 bred there who were exercising their industry in the narrow limits of some two or three acres of land, turned out whole- sale hundreds of families, retaining only that number which in their theoretical and abstract imaginations might be sufficient for the advantageous cultivation of the soil." He dwelt on the facts of the situation which made such conduct the cause of even greater hardship in Ireland than it could be in England, where profitable employment could nearly always be found in the great manufacturing towns, and the poor law was sufficient to prevent absolute destitution and starvation.^ The struggle over the Bill lasted three months, and destroyed the work of the session. The dangers which, under the existing system of procedure, might arise from the species of opposition to which it had been subject, impressed themselves strongly on the mind of Lord Palmerston. " It was hereby shown," he wrote to his brother, "that a compact body of opponents might, by debating every sentence and word of a Bill, and by divid- ing upon every debate, so obstruct its progress througli Parliament, that a whole session might be scarcely long enough to carry through one measure."- Another warn- ing was given during the discussion. Charles Bul'icr in- sisted with great force that tlie deterioration in the quaUty of the potato, on which so large a part of the population depended for their daily food, was the source of a great coming danger; but his words, which were so soon to receive a terrible enforcement, passed unheeded in the confusion of debate. On July 4 Mr. Smith O'Brien moved for a Committee of the whole House to take into consideration the causes of the discontent in Ireland, but the motion was rejected by a large majority. His speech, moderate in form, and telling in substance, was an indictment of the bad use made by the Government of their patronage, which was used for the exclusive benefit of one section of the population ; of the ignorance and consequent neglect of Irish questions in 1 Hansard, 3rd series, vol. Ixx. pp. 281-283. ^ January 5, 1844. " Life of Palmerston," by Mr. E. Ashley. 388 TWO CEXTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1843 the House of Commons ; and it ended with a powerful description of the misery existing in the country, which he traced to the absentee system ; to the want of security for the capital of the cultivator; and to the collateral effects of legislation. "The subdivision of farms," he said, "was first greatly promoted by the efforts of the landlords to obtain political influence through their fort3'-shilling free- holders, and has subsequent^ been checked by their dis- franchisement. The present undue tendency to depopulate small farms has in like manner been augmented by the operation of the subletting Act, and I much fear that it will be still further increased by the proposed enactments of the Bill for the amendment of the Irish poor law." ^ He desired, he said, to maintain the Union ; but if Parlia- ment persevered in its present courses, it would, become impossible to maintain it, as there was no real equality between the two countries. "Session after session, measures which would be hailed with enthusiasm by an Irish Parlia- ment, and which were supported by a large majority of the Irish members, were contemptuously rejected. Session after session, and in this very session, m.easures were forced upon a reluctant nation by English majorities, against the remonstrances of its own representatives. Whenever Ireland asked for the same laws that existed in England, she was told that the circumstances of the two countries were wholly different, and required different treatment ; whenever she asked any deviation from the English system, the estab- lished laws and customs of Great Britain were pleaded as a sufficient answer. With this experience, it was not sur- prising that he should often doubt whether the abstract opinion he had formed in favour of a perfect union, never realised, was consistent with his duty to the country possessing the first claim on his devotion." The Queen's speech at the end of the session announced the unalterable intention of her Majesty to maintain the Union, and O'Connell and the Government were now face to face. On Sunday, October 8, a monster meeting was 1 Hansard, 3rd series, vol. Ixx. p. 671. i843] THE CLONTARF MEETING 3«9 announced, on the historic plain of Clontarf, on the northern shore of the Bay of DubHn. Here, in an age long gone by, the national hero, Brian Boroimhe, had gained a great triumph over the Danes, dying himself in the hour of victory, while striking a heavy blow at the power of the invader. The famous spot, it was announced, was now to see an Irish gathering before which the Saxon was to flee away, like the Dane of old ; and if the Castle interfered, so much the worse for the Castle and all connected with the Castle, as their tyrannical behests would not be obeyed. Such, at least, was the interpretation placed, by friend and foe alike, on the language used by O'Connell. The right of the conservators of the peace to prohibit and disperse a meeting which threatens insurrection or a breach of the peace, or from which reasonable and well- grounded apprehensions are entertained by law-abiding persons, is unquestioned, and after some hesitation the Irish Government resolved to exercise it; and prove the necessity, if called upon to do so, in a Court of law. The meeting was at the last moment prohibited, and Clontarf itself and the approaches were occupied with troops. Masses of people were already pouring in, before the pro- hibition was known. The question was if the leaders would persevere in holding the meeting. The fiery voices of the Young Irelanders were for resistance and action ; but the legal instincts of O'Connell prevailed, and he directed his lieutenants to persuade the people to yield to the order of the Government and to disperse. He was obeyed. What the consequences would have been had he taken a different course, it is difficult to determine. It is hard to believe that serious bloodshed would not have resulted. But the Government thought they owed O'Connell no gratitude, and a few days after the prohibition of the meeting, he and his principal platform associates in the agitation were arrested on a charge of conspiracy; or, in other words, for a combination and agreement to do un- lawful acts and to effect purposes, whether lawful or not, by unlawful means. And now the battle was transferred into the Courts, 390 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1844 where O'Connell, aided by the flower of the Irish bar, was in his element. The crime of conspiracy, being a misdemeanour, can be tried by a special jury; and in regard to the composition of the list of special jurors, and the striking of the panel and the selection of the jury from it, a long and fierce struggle took place, which resulted in the exclusion of every Catholic, in a case where already the four judges appointed to try it were each and all Pro- testants. " If," said the Lord Chief Justice of England in the following year, in words which have become a familiar quotation, " such a practice should be allowed to pass with- out a remedy, trial by jury will be a mockery, a delusion, and a snare." The indictment itself, which consisted of eleven counts, was of inordinate length, and subsequently received the severe condemnation of the high authority just quoted, for its confusion, and for the consequent impossi- bility in which the defendants were placed of understanding what the charge really was to which they had to reply. Eventually the jury gave a verdict against the defendants, finding them guilty on five counts, and also guilty of separate and distinct conspiracies on two others ; the remaining counts being dismissed as either too comprehensive or for other technical reasons. The judgment against each of the de- fendants was general : " that the party for his offences aforesaid shall be fined and imprisoned." A criminal appeal, properly so called, is unknown to the English law; but a new trial may be moved for in respect of points of law. Grounds for obtaining a new trial would, it was thought, exist here, if it could be shown that the presiding judge, Pennefather, had admitted improper evidence ; that he had misled the jury on the effect of the evidence properly admis- sible ; and that he had displayed a general bias unfairly hostile to the defendants throughout his summing-up and charge. It was noticed that, in the course of his charge, he had spoken of the counsel for the traversers as "the gentlemen on the other side." But the Court of Queen's Bench, though not unanimously, refused to grant the motion, and on May 30, 1844, O'Connell was called up for judgment. The court had previously refused a motion in arrest of judg- i844] TRIAL OF O' CON NELL 391 merit, made on the ground that certain counts of the indict- ment were bad in law. But under certain circumstances a writ of error might be moved for, grounded on some sub- stantial defect apparent on the face of the record of the trial, and such an error one of the counsel for the defendant believed could be shown to exist. It was for this reason that the motion in arrest of judgment was made in the Court of Queen's Bench in Dublin, in order to lay the foundation of a writ of error in the House of Lords. Among others the following points had attracted attention. As each of the eleven counts in the original indictment charged one un- lawful agreement, and no more than one, it was now argued that it was not competent to the jury to find some of the defendants guilty of a conspiracy to effect one or more of the objects stated, and others guilty of a conspiracy to effect others of those same objects ; for that was to find several conspiracies on a count which only charged one. The finding of the jury, therefore, though good on some counts, might be bad on others ; and so, and even more, it turned out to be. O'Connell and his colleagues, owing to the procedure then in existence, though since reformed,^ had already been imprisoned when a judgnjent of the House of Lords, given on September 4, had the effect of destroying the whole result of the proceedings; and on September 7, 1844, the prisoners were released, amid scenes of indescrib- able rejoicing. The conduct of the O'Connell trial led to severe animad- version in Parliament, as well as by the highest judicial authorities in the land, and the whole condition of the methods of government and administration in Ireland again came under review in connection with it. " In England," said Lord John Russell, " the Government is a Government of opinion; in Ireland it is notoriously a Government of force ; " and from the benches on the opposite side Mr. Disraeli declared that " a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, an alien Church, and the weakest executive in the world, — this was the Irish question." But the defeat of O'Connell at Clontarf, and the 1 8 & 9 Vict. c. 68. 392 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1844 decision of the Lords, which deprived him of the aureole of political martyrdom, had struck a severe blow at the influence of the great agitator. Meetings indeed continued to be held, and the repeal rent was stiil paid, though in ever-diminishing amounts. O'Connell's health also was now beginning to fail, and his differences with the Young Ireland party were daily becoming more marked. An attempt to work in harmony with the leaders of the Federal party, who, since the failure of the Repealers, Vi^ere beginning to be more active, proved abortive, and only led to dissensions and to mutual recriminations. The events which followed still further accentuated the difficulties of the situation. It had become apparent to the receptive mind of Peel that, unless he shook himself clear, at least to a certain degree, of the influence of the Ascendenc}^ party, the effects of his recent victory would be but short-lived. A change of measures and of men was resolved upon. Before the end of 1843 a commission was issued to inquire into the land question, with Lord Devon, a large landowner of moderate views, as chairman, supported by experienced colleagues, and an attempt was shortly after made to carry out some of their recommenda- tions in the interest of the tenant, but without success. In 1844 the grant for elementary education was increased, and a Bill enabling Roman Catholics to hold property and accept bequests for charitable and religious purposes was passed. Lord Heytesbur}'-, a peer of diplomatic experience and conciliatory manners, was sent out to succeed Lord de Grey, whose health had for some time been failing; and Lord Eliot, having succeeded to the peerage as Lord St. Germans, by the death of his father, was replaced as Chief Secretary by Sir Thomas Fremantle. But more important than any of these changes was the decision to turn the small annual vote of ^^"9000 a 5'ear to the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth, originally given by the Irish Parlia- ment before the Union, into a grant of ;^26,000 a year, charged on the Consolidated Fund — a proposal which, though fiercely assailed by English Churchmen and Scotch Presbyterians, nevertheless passed into law. Maynooth, i845] POLICY OF PEEL 393 at the time of the grant, was not intended to be a college for the education of the priesthood only, and some of the governors were laymen. The weakness of subsequent administrations allowed the implied conditions of the original grant to be tampered with, till Maynooth became a purely ecclesiastical seminary, and as such was dis- endowed in 1869. It was also decided by Peel to found and endow three colleges, of an entirely undenominational character, to be erected at Cork, Galway, and Belfast. The English Church party united tiiemselves with the most bigoted section of the Roman Catholics, to denounce this plan as "a gigantic system of godless education," just as they had joined the most bigoted section of Protestant opinion to denounce the endowment of Ma}^- nooth. But the opposition proved equally fruitless in either case, and the Bill passed into law in 1845, ^o t)^ nullified like its twin brother before the century was over, through the ever-changing views of Parliamentary majori- ties and Irish chief secretaries as to the proper model of educational polic3\^ The proposals for the foundation of the Queen's Colleges brought to a head the long smouldering feud between O'Connell and the Young Ireland party. O'Connell thought that he saw in the Bill the cloven hoof of secu- larism, of the French Revolution, and of everything he most distrusted. Davis and Duffy, though criticising the details, recognised that in principle an important step was being taken to secure that union of the Catholic, the Presb^'terian, and the English Churchman which they desired to see in Ireland. The feud was long and fierce. O'Connell attacked Davis on the platform ; Davis re- taliated, and, though the quarrel was patched up, the Association was shaken from top to bottom. But events were now at hand in comparison of which the endowment of Maynooth and the "godless" colleges were the details of an unimportant struggle. The popula- tion of Ireland in 1845 was over 8,000,000, of which it was calculated that about one-half were dependent on the ^ These colleges were subsequently made into a university. 394 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1846 potato for subsistence. The introduction of this cheap root had never encountered the same unpopularity as in other European countries, where it was for a long time believed to be the cause of several deadly diseases. Par- mentier had to devote the labours of a lifetime to surmount these prejudices in France ; and at the time of the Revo- lution he is said to have been refused a municipal office, owing to the electors believing that he had invented the potato, and would compel the people to eat it. In Ireland the feeling was of an exactl}^ opposite character. Cobbett, from the other side of the water, might, if he chose, de- nounce it in his coarse but vigorous language, as Ireland's "lazy root," and even as Ireland's "infernal root; " but in Ireland itself his warnings found no echo, and he was even ridiculed in consequence by a national poet as a " blood- thirsty corporal," who objected to honest peasants finding a pleasant way of supporting life. The potato enabled a large family to live on food produced in great quantities at a trifling cost, and, as the result, the increase of the people had been gigantic. There had, however, been no corre- sponding improvement in their material and social condi- tion, but the opposite. The census commissioners of 1841 divided the house accommodation of the country into four classes. The lowest or fourth class comprised all mud cabins having onl}' one room. This class admittedly con- sisted of buildings unfit for human habitation, according to the ideas of civilised society ; yet it appeared that in Down, the best-circumstanced county in this respect, twenty-four per cent, of the population lived in houses of this class, whilst in Kerry the proportion was sixty-six per cent. The average of the whole population of Ireland, as given by the census commissioners, showed that in the rural districts above forty-three per cent, of the families, and in the urban districts above thirty-six per cent., inhabited houses of the fourth class. They were the houses of the cottier and the labourer — the class which depended for a precarious exist- ence on the cultivation of a mere patch of land, and on the receipt of uncertain wages, mostly obtained by harvest work in England. Their sufferings, borne with exemplary 1846] CONDITION OF THE IRISH PEASANTRY 395 patience, were, in the opinion of the Devon Commissioners, greater than the people of any other country in Europe had to sustain.^ Mr. Griffiths, in his Report on the state of Ireland, made in connection with the valuation carried out under his direction, stated that there were no less than 1,300,000 acres of waste land capable of being brought into successful cultivation and tillage, and 2,400,000 acres that might be made profitable for pasture. The poor law commissioners of 1836 gave it as their opinion that the produce per acre of land in Ireland, as compared with the produce of land in England, scarcely amounted to one-half in value, and that there were employed upon it a number of labourers more than double the number per acre employed upon the land in England. The total number of cultivated acres in England was 34,254,000; in Ireland, 14,603,000; but the net produce per acre in England was £4., ys. 6d. ; in Ireland, £2, 9s. 3d.; and yet there were 100,000 more labourers employed in raising the latter than the former. The census of 1841 showed similar results; but of 1,140,000 tenements rated to the poor in Ireland, 629,000 were valued at less than ;^5 a year. Neither in the size or tenure of their holdings, nor in the crops which they cultivated, nor in industry, did they bear the faintest resemblance to the peasant proprietors of the Continent, whose industry was said to have turned sand and rocks into gold. In comparison with the evils arising from this condition of affairs, the unequivocal symptoms of improvement in wealth and in the methods of cultivation which the Devon Commissioners observed amongst those of the agricultural classes who really deserved to be described as tenant- farmers, and the efforts of a certain number of improving landlords to introduce better methods of cultivation and more orderly habits of transacting business, were but a drop in the ocean, and, if anything, made the surrounding misery appear even greater by the force of contrast. ^ Vol. i. p. 126; vol. ii. p. 1 1 16; "Report of the Census Commissioners" (1841), p. 14. 396 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISR HISTORY [1846 No fact was more clearly established before the Devon Commissioners than that the employment for the agri- cultural labourers was utterly insufficient, and their re- muneration in consequence miserably low. " In the counties of Antrim, Armagh, Down, Londonderry, Tyrone, and Carlow, the most general rate of daily wages appeared to be lod. a day in winter, and is, in summer. In Donegal, Fermanagh, Monaghan, Kildare, Kilkenny, King's County, Louth, Meath, Queen's County, Westmeath, Wexford, and Wicklow, 8d. in winter and lod. in summer; and in all the other counties, except Dublin, where is. per day was usually paid, the general daily pay seemed to be 8d." ^ Where the labourers received food from the farmers their pay was even less, and sometimes fell as low as 4d. Occa- sionally in harvest-time wages rose as high as is. 2d. or IS. 6d. a da}'-, which was the maximum; and it was a common thing for wages to be given in the shape of rent- free potato-ground, and for no money to be paid at all. If the landlord trampled on the farmer, the farmer ground down the labourer under a still more pitiless tyranny. Outside agriculture, the means of employment went on diminishing, under the influence of the withdrawal of the bounties by which, in the previous century, a few Irish manufactures had been stimulated into an artificial life, and through the same causes which in England were trans- ferring the seats of industry and enterprise to the districts where iron and coal, lying in close proximity to each other, gave their possessors the advantage over every competitor, even over the possessors of the best water-power. Except in Ulster, where the linen industry held its own, great masses of the population of Ireland v/ere in consequence thrown back on the soil for subsistence, and over a large portion of the country, owing to the ever-increasing sub- division of holdings, had nothing except a few potatoes between themselves and starvation. Without going back beyond the existing century, it was known that there had been severe famines in 1822, 1831, 1835, 1836, and 1837, sufficiently awful in themselves, yet suggestive of ^ " Digest of Evidence," part i. pp. 475, 476. 1846] VIEWS OF DRUMMOND AND LEWIS 597 still more terrible possibilities. " The multiplication of the people," Sir George Lewis wrote during the last of these visitations, and foreseeing the yet heavier cloud of danger that was evidently looming up on the horizon, '* goes on with perpetually increasing velocity. Every year adds to the number of claimants for potato-gardens, and by further subdividing the land diminishes the means of employ- ment, thus tending slowly, but inevitably, to that worst form of civil convulsion — a war for the means of sub- sistence." ^ Drurnmo nd and L ewis both recognised that it was t h e irregu larity of employment which made the land a necessity (jHife ; that the necessary change which the population had to go through was the transition from the state of pauper tenants to that of independent labourers, and that if the demandjbr labour wasspmehow not permanently incr aaagd , or t]ie_ten dency to , .s ubdivide checked, or the populatio n jrn me nse ly._d im iglske^ by. e migration or otlierw ise, a soc i a 1 cala mity of un preceden ted m agnitudejvag. simply_a ijUPS^^ i o n of time. The corn laws, amended in 1842, were still fixed on the principle of the sliding scale ; in other words, the duty varied with the price. Wheat in 1845 was at 64s. a quarter, which meant an 8s. duty ; and at this price a cheap supply of bread, even if the population had had wherewithal to buy it, could not be brought into the country were the potatoes to fail. It has been seen that in the debates of 1843 Charles Duller had pointed out that the admitted deteriora- tion in the quality of the popular root was likely to be followed by serious consequences. The soil, exhausted by the crop, and unrefreshed by any wise system of husbandry, was every year producing a weaker and weaker plant, inviting, if it did not actually produce, the attack of the disease, which in September 1845 again began to appear in different parts of the country, and by the end of the year was making terrible ravages in the southern counties. The possibility of another famine began to be discussed, as, owing to the impossibility of storing potatoes for any ^ " On Local Disturbances in Ireland," p. 338. 398 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1846 lengthened period, there was and could be no large stock of them in the countr}'-, by which the difficulty could be tided over till a good harvest again appeared ; and there would also be difficulties in the transport to the places where they were needed, owing to the weight and bulk of the article. Peel for a great portion of his career had been a believer in the doctrine, taught by some of the earlier economists, that the rate of wages varied with the price of corn, and that therefore the workman is compensated for the high price of the necessaries of life by the receipt of a high salary. It appears that he had become doubtful for some time past of the truth of this doctrine, and when the crushing calamity with which he had to deal in Ireland stared him in the face, his remaining scruples about bring- ing in cheap food disappeared, and the leader who had come into power on the shoulders of the Protectionists, declared himself a convert to the views of Mr. Villiers, Mr. Cobden, and Mr. Bright. How his administration was broken up in consequence ; how the Whigs in 1845, owing to internal dissensions, were unable to form a Government; how Peel, with the loss of several of his colleagues, returned to power; and how a new distribution of parties was the result, are amongst the best-known pages of recent English political history. But the details of these events lie outside the scope of this narrative, which is only concerned with their influence on Ireland, At the head of a reconstituted ministry, Peel, on January 22, 1846, met Parliament with two great measures : the one for the repeal of the corn laws ; the other for the restora- tion of order in Ireland, where, notwithstanding the Arms Act, agrarian crime was again rampant under the combined influence of material distress, the exactions of the land- owners, and the machinations of secret societies. The Arms Act was about to expire, and it was determined to renew and extend it. In a proclaimed district additional police and magistrates were to be appointed, at the expense of the localities ; pecuniary compensation was to be awarded to the victims of outrage from the local rates ; persons out 1846] FALL OF PEEL 399 of doors between sunset and sunrise were to be liable to penalties ; and offenders against the clause were made liable to transportation. This last proposal immediately became the object of much comment, the attack on it being opened by Lord Grey in the House of Lords, in a speech of great power,^ The Crimes Bill, however, did not stand absolutely unaccompanied with an attempt at remedial legislation. The new Chief Secretary, Lord Lincoln, introduced a measure providing that in certain cases compensation for future unexhausted improvements made by the tenant should be paid by the landowner on resuming possession. The opposition consisted of two bodies : the regular Whig opposition, and the Protectionists led by Bentinck ; they were united by a common hatred of the ministry. By a coalition recalling in some of its features the famous coalition of 1783, they joined forces in the House of Commons to overthrow the ministry on the Crimes Bill, which was thrown out on the same day that the Corn Bill received the assent of the Crown in the Upper House. Peel at once resigned, and Lord John Russell, being sent for by the Queen, succeeded in overcoming the difficulties which had bafQed him in the previous year. In July 1846 he accordingly became the head of a Whig ministry, which, relying on the divided condition of the Conservative party and the open support of Peel, was able to look forward without apprehension, so far as Parliament was concerned, to the prospects of public business, however appalling the prospect might be in Ireland itself. The conduct of Lord John Russell in thus taking advantage of the Parliamentary situation in order to oust Peel and his colleagues will always be the subject of much controversy. Between these two statesmen there was a rooted distrust, founded mainly on incompatibility of temper, and accentuated by the distrust always felt by a true Whig brought up in a consistent if somewhat narrow school for statesmen capable of such political gyrations as those by which the emancipation of the Catholics and the abolition of the corn laws were finally brought about. "The idea of Peel and the good govern- ^ Hansard, vol. Ixxxiv. p. 696. 400 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1846 merit of Ireland," the new premier had written in 1843 to Lord Lansdovvne, *' appears to me a contradiction in terms ;" and therefore, in his view, his first and last duty in 1846 was to get rid of Peel. "The remedy," in his opinion, was a "good administration of the law, based on the assent of the sober and enlightened amongst the people. A mere party of officials can have neither authority nor affection." ^ "The principle on which Mr. Huskisson professed to act, of stipulating for certain measures without regard to the men who were to carry them into effect," was, he thought, "a most mischievous innovation on old-established rules for the conduct of the statesmen of this country." - With these views he had little difficulty in justifying to himself his own conduct in the present crisis. To the attacks of adversaries and to the criticisms of candid friends he turned an indifferent ear. The final debate on the Crimes Bill was memorable as the occasion on which O'Connell made his last important utterance in Parliament. The effects of labour and anxiety had begun to leave their mark on his once iron constitution and powerful frame. The vigour had departed from his lips, and the lustre from his eye. The author of the " Life of Lord George Bentinck," who was present, describes him as " a feeble old man muttering before a table." He was soon after known to be suffering from a mortal disease, from the ravages of which he sought the refuge of a southern climate. His wish was to reach Rome, but death overtook him at Genoa, on May 15, 1847. His body was removed to Ireland, his heart, in accordance with his last wishes, being taken to Rome. 1 Lord John Russell to Lord Lansdowne, January 4, 1829. 2 Ibid., January i, 1846. IV THE FAMINE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES When the Russell administration was being formed, the idea of abolishing the Lord-Lieutenancy was discussed, with a view of appointing a responsible Secretary of State for Ireland. But great difficulties were found to exist : the prejudices of English Conservatives and of Irish Nationalists being both opposed to the plan, which had in consequence to be abandoned. The new Lord-Lieutenant was Lord Bessborough, a large landed proprietor in the south-eastern counties of Ireland ; a man of liberal views, and standing peculiar amongst the viceroys of Ireland in this — that he possessed an intimate knowledge of the country over which he was called upon to rule. As Lord Duncannon he had held high office, and was known amongst the members of the Melbourne ministry as one of the most active supporters of the policy of co-operation with O'Connell. He took with him as Chief Secretary Mr. Labouchere, a man of enlightened opinions and considerable administrative experience.^ The problem with which Lord Bessborough was face to face was how to feed a nation. It resembled in magnitude those which in later days have taxed to the utmost the re- sources and the humanity of the Government of India; but in Ireland it came on a country with no organisation which could be readily adapted to meet the dangerous emergency which had arisen. In order to cope successfully with sudden but temporary distress, a Government ought to do nothing to interfere with the action of private enterprise, either in the supply of food or of employment; it ought carefully to avoid encouraging idleness by an unwise distribution of charity; and it should have at its command persons com- ^ The best account of the famine is to be found in the Edinburgh Review, vol. Ixxxvii. (1848), in an article now known to be from the pen of Sir Charles Trevelyan. 401 2 C 402 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1847 billing local knowledge with experience in the treatment of the poor. It should also have easy means of access to the afflicted districts. None of these conditions at this time existed in Ireland. The Irish poor law, recently passed, only provided for the administration of relief in the work- house, and the workhouses, which could not hold the starv- ing population, became overcrowded pest-houses and scenes of unutterable misery. The Government had not yet enlisted any large body of persons trained up to conduct the existing system, such as it was, on reasonable principles ; and the means of communication, especially with the most distressed districts in the south and west, were lamentably deficient. "The people," says Mr. Stuart Trench, "died on the roads, and they died in the fields; they died on the mountains, and they died in the glens ; they died at the relief works, and they died in their houses, so that little streets or villages were left almost without an inhabitant; and at last some few, despairing of help in the countr}^, crawled into the town, and died at the doors of residents and outside the union walls. Some were buried underground, and some were left unburied on the mountains where they died, there being no one able to bury them. . . . The descriptions which have been given me of these scenes by trustworthy eye-witnesses would appal the stoutest heart, and are far too horrible to relate. . . . All this took place because there was no one there with sufficient administrative capacity to import corn in time, and to bring the food and people together." 1 Mr. Vandeleur Stewart summed up his evidence before the Poor Law Commissioners by saying that Ireland was on the point of becoming one vast lazar-house. " Have we ever known or read of anything surpassing it ? " Mr. Horsman exclaimed in the House of Commons; "a rich empire in a Christian age ! One inspector likens it to a country devastated by an enemy : it is more as if the destroying angel had swept over it — the whole population struck down ; the air a pestilence ; the fields a solitude ; the chapel deserted; the priest and the pauper famishing 1 " Realities of Irish Life," p. 134. 1 847] MEASURES TO COPE WITH THE FAMINE 403 together ; no inquest, no rites, no record even of the dead ; the high-road a charnel-house, the land a chaos ; a ruined proprietary, a panic-struck absconding tenantry ; the soil untilled, the workhouse a moral pest ; death, desolation, despair, reigning through the land." ^ ^ Such was the condition of the country. It is scarcely a matter of wonder if, considering the novelty of the problem, the efforts of the Government to cope with it are an un- \ satisfactory record of varying experiments and changes jiiJ plan. The administration of Sir Robert Peel, by buying up large quantities of Indian corn and then retailing it at low prices, and by establishing relief works under a Labour Rate Act, one-half of the cost of which was eventually to be repaid by the localities,^ had turned the edge of the famine at the outset ; but it was contended in some quarters that these different agencies had checked the importation of cheap food through private enterprise, and the establishment of public works by the local authorities. When, therefore, In 1846, it became evident that the worst of the famine was yet to come, the Russell Government decided to stop the further sale of Indian corn, to throw the whole of the ultimate repayment of the loans for public works on the localities themselves, and to extend the duration of the -Labour Rate Act. In March 1847, 734,000 persons were employed on the public works. Nevertheless in the remote districts, where the famine was at its worst, men, women, and children were dying of hunger by scores, owing to the difficulties of communication. Owing also to the pressure of the circumstances of the time, to the lack of accurate information, to the clamour which arose on all sides, and the love of jobbery, which made itself felt even at this most solemn moment, a great absence of practical utility and of suitable character was observed in many of the works actually adopted. The Baronial Sessions proposed works with alarming recklessness ; and these the Board of Works had to approve in frequent ignorance of the true circum- stances of the case. No less than 5000 separate under- ^ Hansard, 3rd series, vol. cv. p. 609, May 17, 1849. 2 9 & 10 Vict, c I. 404 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1847 takings came up to be reported upon ; there were 12,000 subordinate officers to be superintended on the works actually approved ; and, as the hand of every man was against the Government, into whose pocket all parties claimed an unlimited right of plunging, many mistakes were [ inevitable. No attempt was made — perhaps none was possible — to carry out the construction of any large plan of permanent benefit to the country, such as Drummond's scheme of railway construction. The result was that, while in some cases good results were obtained, in others — enormous sums were wasted. Roads were laid out that led from nowhere to nowhere ; canals were dug into which no drop of water has ever flowed ; piers were constructed which the Atlantic storms at once began to wash away. An enormous canal was, for example, planned to connect Lough Mask and Lough Corrib, by piercing the narrow neck of land which divides those two great sheets of water. It was thereby intended to make a continuous waterway from the centre of Connaught to the sea at Galway — a splendid and useful scheme. But when the canal was completed, it was found to be utterly incapable of holding water, being made of a porous limestone ; and it remains to this day a source of wonder and amusement to every traveller who happens to pass through Connaught. ^amorous demands were also made, and with difficulty i resisted, that people, instead of being employed on the roads, should be employed on their own farms, and paid out of the Government funds. Such being the state of affairs, it was decided, at the end of 1846, to stop the I relief works, and after March 1847 to substitute the 1 action of relief committees, administering relief in kind I through funds supplied in the first instance by the Govern- Ivinent, but to be eventually repaid by the localities them- selves. By August 1847, when the second and worst period of the Irish famine may be said to have terminated, /the public works were wound up, and while their extent / was being gradually reduced, the destitute, amounting to I about three millions of persons, were kept alive by the Inaction of the relief committees, materially aided by the 1 847] THE RELIEF COMMITTEES 405 (splendid munificence of British charity, which fortunately Wdh this occasion fell into the hands of skilled distributors.^ The condition of the Poor Law now demanded attention. The reasons which appear to recommend a poor law are that the tendency of population, to increase more rapidly than the means of subsistence, coupled with the unforeseen disasters caused by sickness and accident, and the un- willingness or the inability of the mass of the population to provide against them, will always produce a certain number of destitute persons in every community. What the proportion of such persons to the whole population will be, must depend on the greater or less degree of efficiency of the checks existing on the increase of popu- lation. Limiting the number of children to a marriage, putting off marriage till a comparatively late period of life, and emigration, have been the principal means by which, through voluntary action, the increase of the unemployed and destitute beyond all control has been checked in most European countries. But, notwithstanding these restraints, pauperism will still continue to exist, and society has had the choice of relieving it, through the agency either of charitable institutions or of a compulsory poor law. t— -T-The Roman Catholic Church had attempted, but with / only partial success, to found " asylums in which should / be treasured in trust for the indigent, the accumulations L_of piety : cheaply feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, educating the ignorant, and affording consolation under every infirmity that affects human nature." ^ The colder genius of the Reformation only saw the disorders which clustered around the administration of these asylums. It abolished the monasteries, and in their stead founded a poor law, by which the means of actual subsistence were secured to every person in the community, but with a corresponding obligation on the part of the able-bodied to work. What the subtle causes have been which as a rule have caused a compulsory poor law to grow up in most 1 More especially as regards that portion of the funds which passed through the hands of the Society of Friends. ^ Address of the Romr^n Catholic prelates to the viceroy, October 1847. 4o6 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1847 Protestant countries, but not to flourish as a rule in Roman Catholic communities, is a problem which commands atten- tion. It may be that the exaltation of the doctrine of works by the Roman Church, and the undue depreciation of it by the early Calvinistic reformers — though in both cases founded on a misapprehension of the very texts which each side quoted — is at the root of the difference. Be that as it may, England had, from the time of Elizabeth, been in possession of a poor law, while Ireland had not ; the Protestant conquerors of the latter country finding it convenient in this matter, but in no other, to adopt the views of the Church whose property they had seized, while paying but scant regard to the trusts on behalf of the poor, which in many cases had attached to the " accumulations of the piety" of bygone ages. The English poor law was part of a system of which the law of settlement, the vagrancy laws, and a firm but just local administration of iustice are the supports, the object of these measures being Ito enable the persons liable to poor rate to set some limit to the class who can claim it. None of these things existed in Ireland in any shape till the fourth decade of the last century, when, in the teeth of the combined opposition of O'Connell, the Roman Catholic bishops, and [the Orange party, whose prejudices were averse from or whose interests were opposed to the proposed reform, the Poor Law Bill of 183 8, as alr eady_stated, was passed -4«to law. Under this Act, one hundred and thirty work- houseSj under as many Boards of Guardians, were estab- lished. Relief could not under any circumstances be given out of the house ; it could in no case be claimed as a right ; and it threw the whole rate on the occupier within a small union of parishes called an " electoral district." In 1846 it became clear that the arrangements then made were totally inadequate to meet the existing destitution, and three Acts of Parliament were passed, one of which dealt with vagrancy, while by the others relief out of the house was allowed to be given to the sick and infirm, and food to the able-bodied if the house was full ; the number of workhouses and boards was increased ; the area of the 1 847] THE QUARTER OF AN ACRE CLAUSE 407 electoral district was reduced : the boards were compelled to appoint medical and relieving officers ; and the owners of land were made liable to contribute to the rate.^ On r the other hand, the tests of destitution were increased by the provision that no occupier of more than a quarter of an acre of land was to be entitled to relief As a general rule of administration in ordinary times, the rule was per- fectly sound ; but whether it was wise to introduce it at this particular moment may well be doubted. " If," Lord (—Bessborough wrote to his colleagues, " a poor law test is insisted on before employment can be given, I fear you will very much demoralise the whole agricultural population ,'^of Ireland, who have a particular dislike to be considered 1^ paupers, and to depend on workhouse subsistence. If I thought that the measure of rehef to be given would be always to such an extent required as it is at this moment, I should indeed be in despair of making any provision for destitution, and should be bound to acknowledge that the poorhouse must be the test. My belief, however, is that, fsuch is not the case. The poor man possessing one, two,' or perhaps three acres, depended for the subsistence of i himself and his family entirely on his potatoes. His / potatoes have failed, and he is destitute. He will have no ' inchnation to run the risk again by trying a potato crop next year, if he has the seed ; but he has it not, and he must resort to some other crop to supply its place. A grain crop will not give him half the provision on the same quantity of land that potatoes have done. Turnips, parsnips, mangel-wurzel, carrots, are not above two-thirds of the same provision for his family. In the transition, then, from the potato to some other crop, and from being what he is now — a small farmer — to be a labourer, he will suffer great I distress, and must have assistance. It is under such cir- ! cumstances that I should very much prefer some Barony \ Court to arrange for the distress of the unemployed in the I barony, rather than throwing the whole population under ^poorhouse registration." ^ 1 10 & II Vict. c. 84 ; 10 Vict. c. 31 ; 10 & 11 Vict. c. 90. - Lord Bessborough, December 10, 1846. 4o8 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1847 The " quarter of an acre " clause undoubtedly encouraged the tendency " to force off the Irish cottiers in masses from the soil, with a view of leaving it free for a new race of agriculturists."^ The heart of the energetic improver of land, looking into the future and seeing a prospect of im- proved husbandr}^ increased wages, and better dwellings, rejoiced at the prospect. But there was another side to the picture. "There are many people," said a competent [witness, "whom I have heard dilating upon the advantage Ito Ireland of the failure of the potato crop, and the blessing it would be to the people to have cereal food substituted. It seems to me, however, that those who thus express themselves are not aware that it is absolutely impossible all at once to increase the growth of cereal crops to the extent required to feed the present population upon that \ diet. Before this can be done, there must be an increased quantity of land in a state fit to yield corn crops. This can only be done by an increased growth of green crops ; /'and this, again, requires an increased stock of manure; so . that, even if it can be accomplished at all, it must be a work of time. And what is, in the meanwhile, to become of the I hundreds of thousands who have hitherto depended on the \ conacre potatoes ? It is fearful to contemplate the misery (_that must take place before any good can arise from the failure of the potato." ^ The Devon Commission, which reported in 1845 — almost simultaneously with the outbreak of the famine — pointed out that the Act of 1793, having extended the 40s. franchise to the Roman CathoHcs, " the landowners and the middlemen found the importance of a numerous following of tenantry, and subdivision and subletting, being by the law indirectly encouraged, greatly increased. The war with France raised the profits of the occupier, who was thus enabled to pay a large rent to the mesne lessee. These causes produced a class of intermediate proprietors, known by the name of middlemen, whose decline after the cessation of the war and the fall of prices in 18 15 brought with it much of the evils ^ Edinburgh Review, vol. cvi. p. III. ^ Mr. Blacker's evidence before the Devon Commission. i847] REPORT OF THE DEVON COMMISSION 409 witnessed of late years. Many who during the long war had amassed much wealth had become proprietors in fee ; others who had not been so successful struggled in after years to maintain a position in society which their failing resources would not support. The sub-tenants were unable to pay war-rents. The middleman himself, who had come under rent during the same period, becam^e equally unable to meet his engagements. All became impoverished. The middleman parted with his interest, or underlet the little land he had hitherto retained in his own hands; himself and his family were rapidly involved in ruin. The landlord in many cases was obliged to look to the occupiers for his rent, or, at the expiration of the lease, found the farms covered with a pauper, and it may be a superabundant, population. Subsequently the Act of 1829 destroyed the \ political value of the 40s. freeholders, and, to relieve his property from the burden which this chain of circumstances brought upon it, the landlord in too many instances adopted what has been called ' the clearance system.' " ^ It was the renewal at this crisis, in several instances, of this system of clearing estates which now came to add to the difficulties of the hour. "Disease and want," said Dr. Doyle, ** soon carry off the greater number. They die in a little time. Thirty families came into the town i in which he lived, from some ejectment. In one twelve- 5 month twenty out of the thirty families — z'.e. two-thirds of ', them — have died." - Alluding to some evictions which had { taken place in the Kilrush union, Sir Robert Peel declared, ^in the House of Commons, that he did not think that the records of any country, civil or barbarous, presented materials for such a picture as was set forth in the statement of Captain Kennedy, one of the poor law sub- commissioners, which had been laid before Parliament, and I he indignantly scouted the notion — which it had been rather weakly sought to put forward — that the law itself, and .the Parliament which had passed it, could be held respon- ^ "Report of the Devon Commission," vol. ii. pp. 1109, 11 10. 2 Bishop Doyle quoted by Mr. Poulett Scrope, June 12, 1S46, in the House of Commons (Hansard, vol. Ixxxvii. p. 393). i; 4IO TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1847 sible for the terrible acts recorded in it,^ and the burden of blame be thereby conveniently shifted from the shoulders of the perpetrators to those of the House of Commons and the Government. Such pleas had to be ruled out of court. ^n the other hand, the attempt made in some quarters to place the sole responsibility for the disasters of the period, and for the loss of so many lives, on the shoulders of the landlords, and to represent every cottier who fled from his blighted and barren potato-plot, and every peasant who emigrated from districts which, under no conceivable cir- cumstances, could maintain their population in anything beyond a condition bordering on intermittent starvation, as the direct victims of the deliberate oppression of the landed and governing classes, was equally exaggerated and juisleading. Many of the landlords evinced conspicuous self-sacrifice and individual heroism; one-third of their number were absolutely ruined by the famine. The owner nd the occupier too often sank together in a common ruin. It was stated in Parliament that there were persons of position who, at the outset of the famine, were members of the relief committee, and before it was over were reduced to begging for a dole of Indian meal wherewith to support ife. The period was indeed one of those " which revealed the mingled baseness and heroism of human nature."- To put a check upon these clearances an Act was passed in 1848, compelling landlords to give eight-and-forty hours' / notice to the poor law guardians of their intention to carry out an eviction, so as to allow provision to be made j in the workhouse for the reception of the persons who had L been deprived of home and shelter. fBy the end of 1847 cheap supplies of food began to be brought into the country by the ordinary operation of the laws of supply and demand, at far cheaper rates, owing to an abundant harvest abroad, than if the Government had tried to constitute itself the sole distributor. The potato harvest of 1847, if not bountiful, was at least comparatively ' Hansard, 3rd series, vol. cv. pp. 1287-1317, where extracts from Captain Kennedy's report are given. '■^ " Irish Emigration and the Tenure of Land," by Lord Dufferin, p. 52. r. 1 847] END OF THE FAMINE 411 good ; and the refusal of the Government to employ men on their own farms caused the ordinary market for labour to be again opened at the earliest moment, and the work of the relief committees to be slowly but surely brought to a conclusion. By March 1848 the third and last period of the famine may be said to have terminated. But, though I the direct period of distress was over, the economic problems which remained for solution were of overwhelming magni- I tude. The actual cost of the famine, measured by the sums spent out of the taxes, the poor rates, or collected by private charity, had been enormous. No exact calculation of the amount has been or perhaps ever will be made. But I the mischief of the situation lay, not in the large expenditure of the past, but in the future outlook. The introduction of out-relief had filled the Irish landowners with alarm. The gross rental of Ireland was estimated at seventeen millions, of which nine, it was said, had to be paid over to mort- gagees, and the remaining eight, it was calculated, would be more than swallowed up bj^ the measures proposed. The famine, as already pointed out, had indeed ruined a large portion of the Irish landowners as well as their tenants. rThe poor law, it was epigrammatically said, had "beggared I the proprietor, had ruined the farmer, and did not support 1 the poor." Complaints were loud of " the benevolent in- tentions and mischievous legislation" of the government.^ ^A million and a half of the people had disappeared. The land was devastated with fever and the diseases which dog the steps of famine, and a bitter cry arose from all classes of the community, when, the worst period of distress being now over, men began to look around them, and to take stock of the situation. The waters of the great deep were indeed going down, but the land was seen to be without form and void. On May 16, 1847, the day following that on which O'Connell had breathed his last at Genoa, Lord Bess- borough expired. It was generally recognised that he had done all that was possible to surmount the difficulties of an almost impossible situation, and had laboured with unsur- 1 Hansard, 3rd series, vol. cv. pp. 1289-1291. f 412 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1847 passed energy amid circumstances which would have over- come any but a statesman of the most robust fibre. After some renewed discussion as to the possibiHty of abohshing the office of Lord-Lieutenant, Lord Clarendon, the president of the Board of Trade, was appointed to succeed him; and Mr. Labouchere, having succeeded to the office vacated by the new Lord-Lieutenant, was replaced as chief secretary by Sir W. Somerville. r^ But a change, far greater than any changes of men, or (even of measures, had passed over Ireland in the last two [years. The population, which had hitherto been constantly increasing, was now rapidly decreasing. Fever ca me in the wake of famine, and continued_to__decimate_th£_£ppu- (lation long alter the potato jdiseasehad^ceased. Unde r these colnbrned disasters thegreat jnovemen t of emigra tion from Ireland to the United States of America began, which hXs^onEmied" ever^smoe. Its fuTTeffect may be seen" in tTTefoITo^lag" tables of the rise and fall of the population (jduring the last century : — DING YEARS. • 6, • 5> • 5^12,377 • 5> 1 74,836 ASCENDING YEARS. DESCEM 1801. . . 5, 395456 1851 181I . . . 5,937,856 I861 182I . . . 6,801,827 187I ^831 . . . 7,767,401 1 88 1 ^,552,385 / 5,798,564J \j 1841 . . . 8,175,124 In the early years of the famine emigration on a large scale was a novelty, and in too many instances the arrange- ments were hopelessly inadequate for the comfort of the emigrants. Except where a few wealthy and benevolent landlords, whose efforts in this respect were referred to in Parliament with approbation by Sir Robert Peel, were able to see that the proper conditions were fulfilled, the horrors of the journey to America recalled those of the middle passage. Mr. de Vere took his passage in the steerage of an emigrant ship, and he remained on board two months. His letter, describing what he saw, was adopted as a public document by the Colonial Office. He related how he had seen "hundreds of poor people — men, women, and children, of all ages, from the drivelling idiot of ninety to the babe just born — huddled together without light, without air, 1848] THE EMIGRATION 413 wallowing in filth, and breathing a fetid atmosphere, sick in body, dispirited in heart ; the fevered patients lying between the sound, in sleeping-places so narrow as almost to deny them the power of indulging by a change of position the natural restlessness of the disease ; by their agonised ravings disturbing those around, and predisposing them through the effects of the imagination to imbibe the con- tagion ; living without food or medicine, except as ad- ministered by the hand of casual charity; dying without the voice of spiritual consolation, and buried in the deep without the rites of the Church. The food," he went on to say, " is generally ill-selected, and seldom sufficiently cooked in consequence of the insufficienc}'^ and bad con- struction of the cooking-places. The supply of water, hardly enough for cooking and drinking, does not allow washing. In many ships, the filthy beds, teeming with all abomi- nations, are never required to be brought on deck and aired; the narrow space between the sleeping-berths and the piles of boxes is never washed or scraped, but breathes up a damp and fetid stench, until the day before arrival at quarantine, when all hands are required to scrub up and put on a fair face for the Government inspector and the doctor. No moral restraint is attempted ; the voice of prayer is never heard ; and drunkenness, with its consequent train of ruffianly debasement, is not discouraged, because it is profitable to the captain, who traffics in the grog." ^ By the end of 1849 it was said the Irish tenants looked as if they had just come out of their graves, and the land- lords as if they were going into theirs. Seventy-one unions in Munster and Connaught were bankrupt; the out- standing debt and the annual expenditure together amount- ing to ;^592,0O0. The population of the Castlebar union was 61,000; the persons who in 1847 had received relief were 46,000. The rateable value of the Clifden union was ;^I9,986, but three-fifths of the whole had been thrown up in consequence of the inability of the owners and occupiers to meet the demands for poor rates, and of un- ^ See the passage as quoted in Sir Robert Peel's speech, March 30, 1849, " Speeches," vol. iv. p. 797. 414 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1848 willingness to incur future charges. Under these circum- stances, the Government proposed to make the whole landed property of Ireland contribute to a national poor rate, and a Bill known as the Poor Laws Rate in Aid Bill was brought in with that object. On the second reading of this measure, Peel delivered a great speech on the policy which should now be pursued. He reverted to the condition of the Highlands of Scotland after the events of 1745, when rebellion and material distress had both done their fell work ; and he suggested that, in regard to the distressed districts of Ireland, the precedent might be followed with advantage. Under an Act passed in 1752, the Scotch forfeited estates had been annexed to the Crown, and placed under the management of a Com- mission, whose duty was to pay off all creditors, and establish a method of management, applying the rents and profits to civilising and improving them, and prevent- ing disorders in future. "These are my suggestions," he went on : " to seek the relief of the present distress by encouraging draining and the improvement of the land ; by opening up roads through inaccessible districts ; by erecting piers for the accommodation of the fisherman ; by promoting emigration without interfering with voluntary emigration ; above all, by facilitating the transfer of property from in- solvent to solvent proprietors ; and by abandoning the present injurious system of giving gratuitous relief, whether in exchange for labour or not, and reverting gradually to the principle of the Act of 1838, of applying the only effectual test — the workhouse test — as a proof of destitution." ^ Peel, at the time he was speaking, had ceased to be a minister of the Crown, but he carried more weight with the nation at large than any of those who sat opposite to him. Although the Rate in Aid Bill was passed as a tem- porary measure, his proposals were accepted as indicating the policy to be pursued in future. The first result was the establishment of the Encumbered Estates Court Com- mission, to carry out the sale of the estates of embarrassed owners, which in the previous year had been entrusted by ^ Peel, " Speeches," vol. iv. p. S02. 1848] THE ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT 415 a Government Bill to the Court of Chancery, a jurisdiction which Peel wished to see ousted altogether. The Land Improvement Act followed, by which a Commission was established with funds at its disposal to be advanced to the landlords for the improvement of land, to be repaid within limited periods ; the poor rate was gradually brought back within reasonable limits ; and a grant of ^^620,000 in aid of the construction of railways was voted. Sir W. Somerville also introduced a measure similar in conception to that of his predecessor, Lord Lincoln, for giving compensation in future to improving tenants on quitting their holding, and for the increased value they might give to their holdings. But the Bill, being viewed with dislike by the landowners, and received with disappoint- ment by the tenantry, made no progress ; and the danger of which the Devon Commission had warned the owners of the soil, that the tenants' equitable interest was constantly increasing, and a sort of embryo copyhold was in conse- quence growing up, remained unheeded, to breed trouble for the next generation. In 1849 the Navigation Acts were finally repealed, and by this measure, second only in im- portance to the repeal of the corn laws, the last obstacle to the cheap importation of food supplies was removed from the Statute-book; and a slight extension of the suffrage indicated the returning trust of Parliament in the people. The disasters of the famine, however, had stimulated the tendency to agrarian outrage, and the Russell Government had not long been in office before they had to decide on what course they would pursue in regard to it. Amongst the members of the administration was Lord Campbell, the eminent lawyer, who at this moment was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, with a seat in the Cabinet. He had been solicitor-general in the Governments of Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne, and for a short time had held the Great Seal of Ireland. To the whole subject of Irish disaffection he had applied the resources of his vigorous and independent intellect. He has left it on record how, when solicitor-general, he read the Coercion Bill of 1833 "with amazement and grief," and devoted all 4i6 TIVO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [18^8 his energies to getting it modified ; and how, when Peel's Coercion Bill was passing through the House of Lords in 1846, he "kept up an incessant fire upon it in all its stages, and, by damaging it in public opinion, prepared the opposition which was fatal to it in the other House." As a member of the Russell Cabinet, he now "strongly combated 'coercion,' for which there was a demand in all quarters." " I preached up," he writes in his autobiog- raphy, " a more vigorous exercise of the existing powers of law to prevent, to detect, and to punish crime." But he also feared " that some new measure must be resorted to in disturbed districts against the conspiracy to commit murder and systematically violate the rights of property." This, he trusted, would be rather in the nature of a police measure than a violation of the constitution. "We should ask for coercion," he argued, " with a very bad grace, having come into power upon a division for refusing it to Sir Robert Peel." ^ The measures now brought forward bore the stamp of his mind more, perhaps, than that of any other member of the Cabinet. It was not proposed to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus, or the right to trial by jury, or to terrorise the country by unusual punishments. To prevent outrage and disturbance, the provisions of the Arms Act were simply renewed, with amendments which empowered the Lord-Lieutenant to proclaim districts and to increase the police force in them, charging the cost on the ratepayers. There was yet, however, to be a final wrestle with the forces of rebellion, and between rebellion and agrarian disturbance the Cabinet knew how to distinguish. The advocates of armed insurrection saw in the sufferings of the masses of the population a fresh argument in their own favour. The Russell Government, which the results of the general election of 1847 had materially strengthened, soon became aware that the extreme section of the Young Ireland party had got the upper hand, represented by men who denounced Dillon and Duffy for their moderation, just as the latter had found fault with O'Connell for what they considered his backsHdings. They were reinforced at this 1 "Life of Lord Campbell," vol. ii, pp. 27, 199, 232. 1848] THE REVOLUTION PARTY IN IRELAND 417 moment by Thomas Francis Meagher, whose oratory, in the opinion of competent judges, recalled the eloquence of the great days of the former century ; and by John Mitchel, who took the place on the Nation rendered vacant by the death at this juncture of Davis. The policy of action hitherto advo- cated by the Nation was too mild for the new contributors, and they founded a newspaper of their own, the United Irishman, which, in sympathy with the Continental move- ment of the time, openly advocated " revolution " as the sole remedy for Irish wrongs. Smith O'Brien had now definitely thrown in his lot with the Repealers ; and, having convinced himself that justice was not to be expected from Parliament, he went on a deputation to France, with a view of interesting Lamartine, then at the head of the recently formed republican government, in the Irish cause. The armed assistance of France had long been the dream of patriotic Ireland, especially of that section of it which was imbued with the revolutionary legend, and looked back with fond regret to the days of Wolfe Tone and Hoche. Lamartine had declared, with that fatal facility for sonorous but misleading phrases for which he was famous, that France was the friend of all oppressed nationalities; but when brought face to face with his own declarations on the one hand, and the responsibilities of government on the other, he decided in favour of the latter, and gave but cold comfort to the deputation of his enthusiastic Irish admirers. The party of action, however, were not discouraged. The year 1848 had seen the greatest crowned heads of Europe escaping from their capitals, and ministers of ancient fame and reputation flying for their lives. Why should not similar events, the}' argued, be seen in Ireland, and the walls of Dublin Castle fall down before the blast of the trumpet of the Irish Revolution ? The Chartist movement was daily becoming more and more formidable in England, and an Irishman was taking the leading part in its direction. Why, they thought, should not the two movements go hand- in-hand, and the two peoples be liberated simultaneously ? Of all these things there was a great deal of talk in Ireland, and that a rebeUion was seriously planned there can be no 2 D 4i8 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1848 reasonable doubt. Equally little doubt is there that serious preparations for a rebellion there were none ; and that the heads of the movement, deceived by what they had seen passing on the Continent, altogether underrated the strength of their antagonists. With clear evidence of the intentions of Smith O'Brien and his allies in their possession, the Government deter- mined to prosecute them for conspiracy, and to take pre- cautions against rebellion. The provisions of the English Acts of 1796 and 18 17, amending the law of treason, were made to apply to Ireland, and the provisions of the Alien Acts were temporarily renewed. In the first instance, the proceedings against Smith O'Brien and his colleagues proved abortive; but in a further prosecution against Mitchel alone the Crown lawyers were more successful, and Mitchel was sentenced to transportation. A general rising was appre- hended in consequence, and it was therefore deemed advis- able to take the further precaution of suspending the Habeas Corpus Act till the ist of March 1848. But no real pre- paration for rebellion had been made by the so-called party of action, and they were discouraged by the collapse of the Chartist movement in England in the month of April. After the suspension of the Act, Smith O'Brien, Meagher, and Dillon departed into the country from Dublin, and went through some of the forms of raising a revolt; but nobody joined them. There was an encounter with the police in Tip- perary, at a place called Ballingarry, on August 5. Smith O'Brien was arrested, and the abortive rebellion was over. In the trial which followed, Smith O'Brien and the principal leaders were condemned to death ; but the sentence having been commuted, O'Brien and Meagher, together with John Martin, M'Manus, and O'Docherty, followed Mitchel to Van Diemen's Land. Such was the end of the " Young Ireland " party in Ireland. In other countries, many of their number proved that they had talents, which a wise administration would have known how to conciliate or to use for the service of the state at home. Thomas Davis, the ablest and most statesmanlike of his party, had been spared the pain of witnessing this failure. 1848] FAILURE OF THE REBELLION 419 With the view of restoring confidence, the Queen visited Ireland in 1849. The enthusiastic welcome she received from all classes of the population would, it might be sup- posed, have been a reason for the repetition of an ex- periment which had proved so successful. But it proved otherwise, and, with one exception, no attempt was made in the succeeding period again to evoke the sentiment of personal loyalty to the throne on the side of law and the existing system of government. Ireland had been hard stricken by the famine ; but the famine, by removing the unemployed population and the class of spendthrift landowners, had administered a bitter but effectual medicine to the principal evil of the country. The policy advocated by Sir Robert Peel began to bear fruit sooner than many had dared to anticipate. A period of growing material improvement succeeded ; and it became apparent that before long it would no longer be necessary for Ireland to sue zu forma pauperis for the redress of her grievances, and to be perpetually enacting the part of Lazarus at the gate. In the year 1841, according to the census report for that year, the waste lands of Ireland amounted to 6,489,971 acres. In the year 1881 the amount was only 4,729,251 acres. In other words, 1,760,720 acres of the whole surface of Ireland had been reclaimed in forty years, notwith- standing the immense diminution of population which was going on simultaneously.^ A great change began in the ^ See the notes in the Appendix to the " Report of Lord Cowper's Com- mission on the Statistics of Waste Land," by Dr. Grimshaw, registrar-general. "The decrease of waste land," he says, "between 1841 and 1851 was 1,073,652 acres ; between 185 1 and 1861 it was 828,228 acres ; and between 1861 and 1871 it was 277,050. Between 1871 and 1881 an apparent increase of 418,210 acres took place, and the natural conclusion arrived at by any one testing the question in this manner, and without going into details, would be that during the last decade land in Ireland to the extent of nearly half a million of acres had fallen out of use. If a more detailed examination of this question is made, it will be found that up to the year 1876 the statistics show a general decrease of waste lands, with slight variations from year to year, sometimes showing a slight increase. From the year 1876 up to the present year the returns apparently point to a steady increase of waste land, and from this apparent fact the lamentable conclusion has been arrived at that 420 T[VO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1848 agriculture of the country, the land under tillage diminish- ing from 4,612,543 acres in 185 1 to 2,939,708 in 1886, while the land under meadow and clover rose from 1,246,408 acres in 1851 to 2,094,138 in 1886, and the land under grass from 8,748,577 to 10,160,292. The landlords and tenants both largely increased their investments in the soil, and improved methods of cultivation and raising cattle began to come into general use. The number of oxen, bulls, and cows exported from Ireland to Great Britain rose, between 1847 and 1885, from 186,483 to 588,170; the number of calves from 6363 to 52,300; the number of sheep and lambs from 259,257 to 629,090; many of the inter- vening years, such, for example, as 1873 and 1882, showing even a higher return. A steady rise of wages continued over the same period, and the labourer and landlord both shared in the increasing prosperit}' of the farmer. It was not until a succession of wet seasons, at the close of the period on which we are now entering, had depressed the tillage farmer by the partial destruction of his crops, and the sudden increase of foreign competition had lowered the prices which the grazier and stock-farmer could obtain for his beasts, that the era of serious agrarian trouble again commenced in Ireland. But, as will be seen, there was another side to the picture; for though calmed by Ireland is steadily ' going back to bog and waste.' The real facts of the case are these : — In the earlier days of the collection of agricultural statistics it was thought unnecessary to go into too minute detail ; and thus if a grazing farm on a mountain-side had a strip of barren mountain-land at the top, and a little bit of marsh at its lowest level, the whole area would be probably put down as grass. No doubt nearly all was grass, but the stony part and the marshy part were practically useless, and therefore the area of such a farm should have been divided among all these elements, and only the usable grass included as pasture. For some years prior to 1876 greater care was enjoined on the enumerators, and land not actually used for grazing or other purposes was, unless of good quality, classed as waste. In 1877, in accordance with the increased accuracy demanded by advancing knowledge, a still further detail was insisted on, and the enumerators were required to ascertain, as nearly as possible, the amount of land available for use, and how it was em- ployed, and also how much bog and marsh, barren mountain-land, etc., was actually in the area of each farm. It has been this picking out of little scraps of waste of all kinds that has during the past few years apparently so diminished the land in use in Ireland." 1848] IRELAND AFTER THE FAMINE 421 natural prosperity, nevertheless under the surface the mutterings of the everlasting land-question were from time to time still to be heard, warning the world of its continued life and existence. While the cheers which greeted the ship which bore the Queen back to the shores of England were still echoing, the first steps for the formation of a tenant-right league, which was to unite the farmers of the north and south, were being taken. The leaders of the Federalist party were also asking themselves whether they might not succeed, even if both the repealer and the revolu- tionist had failed, in securing an alteration in the constitu- tional relations which bound Ireland to the rest of the United Kingdom, and whether an increase of the wealth and the education of the country would not afford a stronger basis for a claim to confidence in the powers of the people for self-government than the appeal from rags, poverty, and destitution. It has been seen that Mr. Sharman Crawford and many of the northern Protestants, as well as some of the more moderate Catholic laity and clergy, had expressed their adhesion to this order of ideas. O'Connell himself had evinced a desire, after the failure of the Repeal movement, to direct the energies of his countrymen into this channel, but had been frightened by the denunciations of Davis and the Young Ireland party into a rapid abandonment of the new platform. Amongst the antagonists of Repeal a pro- minent position had been occupied by Mr. Isaac Butt, a man of great eloquence and varied abilities. Like Grattan, Mitchel, and so many other Irish leaders, he was a Pro- testant. He had been educated at the University of Dublin, where at one time he had held the professorship of political economy ; he was the author of a " History of Italy"; he had rapidly obtained a leading position at the Irish bar, and had defended Smith O'Brien and his companions in the recent State Trials with consummate skill. On the other hand, he had led the opposition in the Dublin town council to the motion brought forward by O'Connell in favour of repeal, in a speech of marked ability, after hearing which O'Connell is said to have declared that 422 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1848 the day would come when Isaac Butt would be found on the popular side. He was now devoting his great capacity to the construction of a plan for the future relations of Ireland and Great Britain, which he believed would com- mand assent on both sides of St. George's Channel, and might even find acceptance with the Conservatives of Ire- land, to whose ranks he still considered himself to belong. The ideas which inspired him and others came to be known as those of " Home Rule for Ireland," and, though as yet but vague and shadowy in outline, began to substitute themselves for the cry of Absolute Repeal as the expression of the national discontent. " Ireland," said Thomas Reynolds, one of the followers of O'Connell, after the decision to abandon the great meet- ing at the scene of Brian Boroimhe's victory, " was won at Clontarf, and she is going to be lost at Clontarf." The cause of Absolute Repeal certainly never recovered that famous day. It remained to be seen whether some other solution was possible, which, modelled on the experience of the United States, mighty satisfy the legitimate aspirations of Ireland without alienating the support of the British people. Meanwhile the rulers of Great Britain had de- termined to govern Ireland on what appeared to them to be just and liberal principles, without reference to the views of the popular leaders. It would seem that Lord John Russell and Lord Palraerston had been profoundly impressed by the fall of the Melbourne administration having been mainly due to the unpopularity in England of the alliance with O'Connell, and they were determined to avoid repeating that error. With the death of Lord Bessborough, the principal advocate of the old policy had disappeared ; consequently, though the Whigs were now in office, it was Peel's policy which prevailed — the policy of trusting to the material development of the country, and to even justice, administered by a highly centralised administration, as the remedy for agrarian and political discontent. PART V FROM THE INSURRECTIONARY MOVEMENT OF 1848 TO THE LAND ACT OF 1870 By G. p. MACDONELL I THE ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT — THE TENANT- RIGHT LEAGUE In following the course of Irish events during the past forty years, we feel at every step that we are moving in the shadow of the famine. Lapse of time has not effaced the impression made upon the Irish mind by that great catas- trophe. In the widespread discontent, never far below the surface even during the tranquil years before the Fenian outbreak, we can thenceforth observe a fresh ele- ment of bitterness and hate. The feeling that prompted coroners' juries to return verdicts of "wilful murder against John Russell, commonly called Lord John Russell," still breaks out when Irishmen recall the " black forty-seven " ; while a like feeling, carried away with them by streams of emigrants, cherished by them, and transmitted to their children, brought about that close relation between America and Ireland which in recent years has been one of the strongest forces of Irish agitation. On English opinion the famine produced an effect much less enduring, but hardly less important. It seemed to have altered the whole problem of governing Ireland, and even after the memory of its horrors had grown dim we can trace its influence in the long and successful resistance to Irish demands, and in the sanguine hopes that were entertained of peopling 424 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1849 the country with Protestant Saxons in the room of Catholic Celts. Before we continue the story, it may be well to sum up a few of the more immediate and obvious results of an event which has thus been regarded on the one side as a great crime, and on the other as a terrible remedy for a desperate disease. In 1841 the population had been 8,175,124; in 185 1 it was reduced to 6,552,385. The census commissioners calculated that if the ordinary rate of increase had been maintained, the population in 185 1 would have been 9,018,799, or about two and a half millions more than it was in fact. In Leinster the population diminished 15.25 per cent.; in Ulster, 15.70; in Munster, 22.47 > ^^^ ^^ Connaught, 28.81. For every square mile in Ireland there were 49 fewer persons in 185 1 than in 1 841. In county Mayo the number per square mile of arable land fell from 475 to 225; in Kerry, from 416 to 216 ; in Monaghan, from 428 to 288. In 1841 there were 1,328,839 houses in Ireland, and in 185 1 only 1,046,223, and the decrease took place only in the lowest of the four classes into which houses are divided in Irish statistics. There were 355,689 fewer mud cabins with a single room than in 1841; in Ulster, the decrease was 81 per cent.; in Connaught, 74; in Munster, 69; and in Leinster, 62. In 1841 there were 697,549 holdings under 15 acres, and in 185 1 only 307,665 ; on the other hand, the number of holdings over 15 acres increased from 127,967 to 290,401. The landlords and the poor law, as well as disease and starvation, were clearing the rural districts. In the years 1847, 1848, and 1849, the number of ejectment processes in the superior courts and the assistant-barristers' courts was 32,531, the plaintiffs obtaining judgment in 25,739 cases. The constabulary returns of evictions begin in 1849; and we find that, in the four years 1849-1852, 58,423 families were evicted, or 306,120 men, women, and children. The poor law, while it increased the burdens of landowners, provided also an effective means of clearing their estates. The "quarter- acre clause" left the peasants no choice. So great was their necessity that its effect was to make them abandon 1 849] AFTER THE FAMINE 425 their holdings, and not to lessen the amount of pauperism. If the Act of 1847 had been purposely framed for the weeding out of the Irish cottiers, it could not have been more effectual. The actual diminution, as distinct from | the shifting, of the population was mainly due to death and "^ emigration. FxailL -_i846 to iSi;! nearly a million persons died, ancj more tha n a million e mi grated . With the favour- able season of 1850 the death-rate declined, but emigra- tion continued steadily to drain the country. So far from requiring to be driven to it, the people grew more and more eager to depart. This feeling "pervades every class," wrote Sir G. Nicholls in 1853, "and is strongest with the best educated and most intelligent. I found this to be the case with the boys in the workhouse schools. The y sharp, active, intelligent lads were all eager to emigrate. It was only the more dull, feeble, and inert who appeared content to remain at home." ^ In 1852 the emigrants numbered 220,000; and in 1853, 192,000. From 1852 to 1 86 1, the number was 1,123,000. About 40 per cent, of these were between twenty and thirty years of age, and about 75 per cent, were between ten and forty years. Hardly less striking than the magnitude of the emigra- tion was the fact that, after the first years of panic, it was accomplished mainly by the people themselves and by their friends. Between 1848 and 1864 the Irish in America sent home, either in the form of prepaid passages or of money, more than ;^i 3,000,000 to enable those who re- mained to rejoin them.^ That this great sum should have been saved for such a purpose is a marvellous testimony to the strength of the family tie among the Irish people, but it proves also how hopeless, in the opinion of the earlier T emigrants, the situation had become. - — ' If Ireland had been afflicted by nothing else than the overcrowding of the rural districts, disease, eviction, and emigration would have gradually worked an effectual cure. 1 Letter quoted in his " Irish Poor Laws," p. 401. 2 The figures for each year, from a return of the Government Emigration Board, are given in Lord Dufferin's "Irish Emigration and Land Tenure," p. 36. There were also considerable contributions from Australia. 426 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1849 We shall find, however, that the relief was to prove only partial and temporary. The poison of other evils remained. The previous story has made clear that in a great measure those were right who attributed the distressful condition of the country to English misgovernment. " Bad legislation, careless legislation, criminal legislation, has been the cause of all the disasters we are now deploring;" so said Mr. Horsman in 1849,^ and the substantial truth of the charge was not disputed by any English statesman out of office. Not less certainly could the misgovernment be traced to the dominating influence of the Protestant and landlord minority, for whose benefit an English Church was main- tained by the State, in whose interest an English land system was artificially propped up, whose voice alone was heard in the administration of the law, and whose per- sistent opposition made nearly every reform impossible. Notwithstanding recent changes, that minority still prac- tically held political supremacy in Ireland, and they gave no sign that their temper had altered, or that they clung less tenaciously than of old to their position of privilege. Thus the thinning of the cottier population did not touch many of the roots of Irish disaffection. What it did was to bring the country into a situation eminently favourable for a reversal of the old and discredited policy. On the one hand, the great diminution of the population averted many of the dangers which must attend a sudden inter- ference with even the worst social arrangements ; while, on the other hand, the ordinary excuse of English apathy and prejudice could not be pleaded as a reason for post- poning the work of reform. Popular feeling had been roused in England by the action of Irish landlords. English newspapers denounced them in language of extra- ordinary vehemence, and with scarcely any reserve or qualification declared them responsible for the miserable condition of the peasantry. Seldom have any class of men been visited with public condemnation so general and unsparing. The blame, indeed, was not theirs alone. Even their persistent neglect of the duties of property could not ^ Hansard, July 23, 1849. 1849] A LOST OPPORTUNITY 427 have brought the country to such a pass but for the coun- tenance of English Governments and the indifference of the EngHsh people. Nevertheless, whether the blame was fairly apportioned or not, the prevailing indignation gave an opportunity which a great statesman would have been quick to seize. The opportunity passed away almost unused. Except the Encumbered Estates Act of 1848 and 1849, ^^ serious effort was made during Lord John Russell's administra- tion to deal with the condition of Ireland. Several feeble attempts to settle the question of tenants' improvements came to nothing. In 1848, Mr. Sharman Crawford's Bill for extending the Ulster custom was rejected ; as already stated, a Bill introduced by Sir William Somerville, and containing the same provisions as Lord Lincoln's Bill of 1846, was referred to a select committee and no more heard of. In 1849 nothing was done. In 1850, Sir William Somerville's and Mr. Crawford's Bills again appeared, and were again dismissed. There the question remained until Irish agitation compelled a Tory Government to take it up with some show of resolution.^ The Encumbered Estates Act, finally passed on July 28, 1849, was certainly a measure of real importance, and it exercised a profound influence on Irish land-holding. The impoverished state of many Irish landlords had long been notorious. With their estates mortgaged up to the hilt, and weighted by settlement charges, they were bad landlords because they could not afford to be good land- lords. Lack of means prevented them from effecting im- 1 In 1 85 1 the position of the tenants was rendered more insecure than ever by an important change made in an Act to regulate the procedure in the Irish county courts. Up to that year the remedy of ejectment for rent in arrear was not applicable to tenancies from year to year not created by written agreement. It was necessary for the landlord to determine these tenancies by notice to quit, and the delay which this involved was a very great protection to the tenants. By the Civil Bill (Ireland) Act, 185 1, sect. 73, this protection was taken away from yearly tenants whose rent was under ;^50 ; they were placed in the same position as tenants under a written agreement (see Richey's "Irish Land Laws," p. 41). In 1851 there were 608,066 holdings in Ireland, and probably not more than 30,000 of these were over ;^50. 428 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1849 provements, and the conduct of such of them as behaved with indulgence and liberahty to their tenants in times of distress must be considered as unusually meritorious. Neither they nor their creditors could end the difficulty by a sale, so long as the various encumbrances and other interests had to be dealt with before the estates could be transferred. Mortgagees might get a decree for sale in the Court of Chancery, but the tedious and costly process of working it out often made the decree worse than useless. A great part of Irish land was thus practically unsaleable. The Devon Commission had strongly recommended the adoption of some means of facilitating the sale of such estates, and after their report the famine and the repeal of the corn laws had enforced their argument by plunging the landlords deeper than ever into insolvency. Parliament passed the Encumbered Estates Act simply as a measure of desperate necessity. Shortly stated, its object was to enable the court, on the petition of a creditor or of the landlord himself, to sell the encumbered estate and to give an indefeasible title to the purchaser; so that persons who before had a claim on the estate should now have a claim only on the purchase-money.^ This was very strong legis- lation to come from a Parliament the majority of whose members regarded Mr. Sharman Crawford's Bill to legalise the Ulster custom as a proposal of confiscation. With good reason could Mr. Butt point to the Encumbered Estates Act as a striking instance of interference with the rights of property. " In many of its provisions," he said, in his vigorous language, " that Act entirely disregarded vested rights. It set aside the most solemn contracts. It com- pelled creditors to submit to a sale, who had an express contract that no one should ever disturb them in their claim on the land except by paying off that claim. It forced properties to a general auction, to be sold for what- 1 The Act was temporary, but four later Acts continued the Encumbered Estates Court till 1858, when the whole system was revised. In that year the Landed Estates Court was established, with jurisdiction to carry out sales and give an indefeasible title in respect of any kind of interest in land, whether encumbered or not. i849] THE LANDED ESTATES COURT 429 ever they could bring, at a time when legislation had imposed new and unheard-of burdens upon landed property. At a time of unprecedented depreciation of the value of land, it called a general auction of Irish estates. I have always believed, I still believe, that English history records no more violent legal interference with vested interests than the provisions by which this statute forced the sale of a large proportion of the landed property of Ireland, at a time when no prudent man would have set up an acre to be sold by public competition. It exterminated, no doubt, many insolvent proprietors, but it ruined many solvent ones ; and in the process it beggared many, both proprietors and creditors, who but for its operation would now be independent, in the possession of the properties of which it deprived them."^ The full practical effect of the measure was not clearly foreseen, but as to its real character there could never have been any mistake. The emphatic rejection of a proposal to apply it to England as well as to Ireland showed that it was regarded as a bold and exceptional measure. It is well to keep this in mind ; for in some degree it relieves the landlords and those who espoused their cause in Parliament from the reproach, to which in discussing the question of legislative interference on behalf of the tenants they laid themselves open, of adhering with pedantic rigour and in defiance of circum- stances to a narrow theory of the rights of property. Mr. Butt did not exaggerate the disastrous working of the Act in its early years. The court was crowded ; the land market was glutted ; and estates were sold at prices which did not cover the mortgages, and which left the owners penniless. Nothing could have demonstrated more clearly how utterly rotten the whole land system in Ireland ^ " Land Tenure in Ireland," 3rd edition, p. 78. " The effect of that single Act of Parliament," said Mr. Fitzgibbon, " was to take from landowners, and their creditors, property worth twenty-five millions to which they had a title as perfect as law could make it, and to transfer that property to new owners for about ten millions, thus confiscating Irish property in land, to the extent of fifteen millions, by legislation ex post facto, a species of tyranny unexampled in any other free country in the world " (" The Land Difficulty of Ireland," p. 55)- 430 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1849 had been. As time went on, the pressure relaxed, and the Act worked with less harshness. Looking at its results as a whole, Professor Cairnes was of opinion that " of all measures passed in recent times it is that one of which the beneficial effects have been most widely and cordially recognised " ; and he enumerated among its results the large elimination of needy petty squires, the exclusion of insolvency generally from the landlord body, the introduc- tion of self-made men, purchasing land as a pecuniary investment, and prepared to manage properties on mer- cantile principles with a view to profit, and the greater equalisation in the size of estates, and by consequence a more equal distribution of wealth among landowners.^ But the matter had another side. The new landlords who bought their land with a view to profit proved to be very hard masters. Purchasers were attracted by the know- ledge that the old landlords had not used their powers to the full. The advertisements of sales frequently stated that the property could bear a much higher rental, and the rents were raised accordingly. The Law Life Insurance Company, for instance, acquired a large estate in Conne- mara for ;^ 180,000, and, after reahsing ;^70,ooo by sales, were said to be drawing more than ;^ 10,000 a year from the residue, a sum considerably exceeding the rental of the previous owner for the whole property.^ All this meant a disregard of the customs by which, in various parts of the country, the tenant had established, if not a right of posses- sion in his holding, yet at least a strong and recognised claim upon his landlord. The court did not, and as the law stood could not, take account of these customary rights; and the new purchasers had no scruple in over- riding them whenever they dared. This circumstance is of vital importance in the history of the struggle for the legalisation of tenant-right. The most bitter opposition came, not from the old race of landlords, between whom 1 "Political Essays," pp. 173, 179- 2 Coulter, " West of Ireland" (1862), p. 95. Mr. Coulter adds that they did not spend a shilling on improvements. See also Mill, "Political Eco- nomy," book ii. ch. x, § 2. 1849] THE NEW RACE OF LANDLORDS 431 and their tenants the tribal sentiment was not yet effaced, but from the men who bought their property in the En- cumbered Estates Court. Another matter deserves mention. It was expected that English and Scottish purchasers would come forward, and that gradually a great part of Irish land would fall into their hands. In this respect the Act entirely failed. Up to the time of the creation of the Landed Estates Court in 1858 the number of purchasers was 8952, of whom 8528 were Irish; the purchase-money amounted to ^23,161,093, of which £20,000, y6g were Irish capital. In this case, as in so many others, the hope of reforming Ireland by intro- duction of English habits came to nothing.^ The Whig administration, whose general policy was to leave things alone as much as possible, is distinguished by no other Irish measure of importance. The Franchise Act of 1850 was less a reform of representation than an exhi- bition of the way in which the representative system was caricatured in Ireland. While in Great Britain the electors were twenty-eight per cent, of the male adult population, in Ireland they were less than two per cent. The Bill as intro- duced by the Government would have raised the percentage to fifteen ; an amendment carried in the House of Lords brought it down to eight ; and in its final form the Bill left the percentage at about ten.^ The measures passed for the maintenance of order need not detain us, as they show no variation from the common forms of Irish coercion. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended for six months in 1849 ; the Crime and Outrage Act of 1848 was renewed in 1850 for eighteen months ; and the Unlawful Oaths Act was con- 1 Miss Martineau has another complaint against the Act. " What a pity it is," she says, " that the Quakers cannot purchase in the Encumbered Estates Court I . . . The arrangement about tithes precludes their buying those estates" ("Letters from Ireland,"' 1852, p. 148). ^ On the state of the Irish franchise in comparison with that of England, and on the Act of 1850, see Barry O'Brien, " Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland," vol. ii. pp. 153-171. The number of registered electors after the Act was — in counties, 135,245 ; in counties of cities and towns, 20,255; in boroughs, 8046: total electorate in Ireland, 163,546 (Parliamentary Paper, June 6, 1851). In 1868 the borough franchise was lowered to £4, and the lodger franchise instituted. 432 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1850 tinued in 1851. These Acts formed part of the permanent machinery of Irish government. Nor need we dwell upon Lord John Russell's Durham letter of 1850, and the Eccle- siastical Titles Act of 185 1, which raised so great a tempest of religious passion. The Act was never enforced, but, as the subsequent agitation showed, a worse service was never rendered to the cause of Protestant Ascendency in Ireland than by this renewal of the " No Popery " cry. Of greater significance than any completed measure was a very remarkable and almost revolutionary proposal made by Lord John Russell in 1850, in the shape of a Bill for the abolition of the office of Lord-Lieutenant, and for placing Irish affairs in the hands of a new Secretary of State. It was not, indeed, a novel suggestion. At one time the abolition of the viceroyalty had been generally regarded as a necessary consequence of the Act of Union, to be carried out in some favourable period of tranquillity. Sir Henry Parnell had continued to urge it strongly ; and M. De Beaumont, though he did not dispute the necessity for a special Irish Government, failed to see why the seat of that Government should not be in London. Mr. Joseph Hume had already twice brought the subject before the House of Commons, in 1823 and 1830, and on the second occasion had received considerable support. At length, in 1847, Lord Clarendon, in accepting the post of Lord- Lieutenant, made it a condition that the Government should take the first opportunity of removing the anomaly, and in fulfilment of the promise then given, Lord John Russell introduced the Bill of 1850. His argument was that Ireland required a minister in the Cabinet, always at hand to consult with his colleagues ; that the necessity of having an executive officer in Ireland was now obviated by the improved means of locomotion ; that, as things stood, the Lord-Lieutenant, though having the semblance, had not the immunity of royalty, and was constantly subjected to personal attack ; and that his removal would tend to greater harmony of administration " by mixing and con- founding the administration of Ireland with the general administration of the United Kingdom." He indicated 1850] BILL TO ABOLISH THE VICEROY ALTY 433 also that the queen intended to visit Ireland from time to time, and that the viceregal lodge in Phoenix Park was to be maintained as a royal residence. The measure was supported by Mr. Joseph Hume, very hesitatingly accepted by Sir Robert Peel, and treated with scoffing indifference by Mr. Disraeli. On the Irish side it met with strong opposition. Mr. Grattan, son of the great Grattan, regarded the viceroyalty as " the remnant of Irish dignity and nationality " ; and Mr. Napier, one of the least pre- judiced of Tories, protested against the vain notion of identifying Ireland with England. The second reading was carried by 295 to 70, and there the Bill ended. No Government has ever since renewed the proposal. The failure of the attempt was regretted by many persons, and particularly by a section of the Anglo-Irish colony, who longed to bring their country into the English current. " Abolish it," said Lord Rosse to Mr. Nassau Senior in 1852. "... It is a mere hotbed of jobbery, corruption, and maladministration. The queen is neutral ; but in Ireland, as if there was not enough of party-feeling already, her representative is always a strong party-man. It ought not to have survived steam ; that it should be co-existent with the electric telegraph is monstrous." ^ Mr. Senior fre- quently heard the same opinion from Archbishop Whately, who declared that " the abolition of this phantom of in- dependence is the first step towards the consolidation of the two countries." 2 In England, however, the scheme dropped almost entirely out of political discussion. In 1857 and 1858 it was again pressed on Parliament by Mr. Roebuck, but on both occasions his motion was rejected, though scarcely a single English member disputed the principle for which he contended. Why was the scheme abandoned ? On account of the practical difficulties, said Lord John Russell in answer to Mr. Roebuck, of finding a substitute for the viceregal 1 "Journals, Conversations, and Essays relating to Ireland," vol. ii. p. 34. Party-feeling ran so high that, it was said, the law officers on one side did not meet in private society the law officers on the other side. " Ibid., pp. 60, 138, 265, 2 E 434 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1850 system: they were greater than he had realised in 1850. In other words, the circumstances of the two countries differed so profoundly that the policy of mixing and con- founding the administration of Ireland with the general administration of the United Kingdom proved to be un- real and impossible. To have made Cork like York, as the phrase went, would have been to give up the system of extreme centralisation by which Ireland was governed, and would have brought about a greater revolution than the most ardent repealer had ever dared to dream of — a revolu- tion of which the abolition of the viceroyalty would have been a mere incident, and a comparatively unimportant one. Lord John Russell meditated no revolution when he made the proposal in 1850. So far from being a step towards a real assimilation, the removal of the seat of government from Dublin to London would have had the effect of forcing Ireland more completely into the English mould. For this reason it found no favour with those who believed that the more conspicuous were the outward differ- ences between England and Ireland, the more likely were the needs of the latter country to compel attention. II THE TENANT-RIGHT LEAGUE — THE IRISH CHURCH MISSIONS — THE NAPIER LAND BILLS Meanwhile Ireland was in a state of political, social, and religious ferment. A vigorous land agitation was proceeding, which, though itself fruitless, anticipated and facilitated the successful agitation of a later time, for a brief period brought the south into alliance with the north, and showed that for their common interests Catholic and Protestant might work heartily together. The founding of the Callan Tenant Protection Society in October 1849 may be said to have first given a definite shape to the tenants' demands. A great part of Callan belonged to the Earl of Desart, concerning whose property at this time it has been stated that " the ordinary fences along the road and through the fields consisted too often of bedsteads and fragments of broken furniture." ^ The place was thus not ill-chosen for the founding of a society whose members' cards, Sir Gavan Duffy tells us, bore as motto Thomas Drummond's famous saying, " Property has its duties as well as its rights." ^ Other districts quickly followed. Tenant Protection Societies sprang up through- out the south and west, and early in 1850 the tenants of Ulster, who at the beginning of the famine had formed a general Tenant-Right Association, adopted the same plan of local defence. The next need was a central authority which should give a definite aim and policy to these scattered bodies. On May 11, 1850, a conference was summoned " to devise some specific measure of legislation to be sought for, and some plan of united action for its 1 " Life of Frederick Lucas," vol. ii. p. 219. 2 "League of North and South," p. 20. See Sir Gavan Duffy's work generally on the tenant-right agitation of this period. 436 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1850- accomplishment." The conference, which met in Dublin on August 6, presented such a spectacle as Ireland had not witnessed since the years when Protestants and Catholics met together to condemn the Union. Let one who was present, and who has a just pride in the part which he played in those days, describe the gathering. " Reserved stern Covenanters from the north," says Sir Gavan Duffy, " ministers and their elders for the most part, with a group of brighter recruits from a new generation, who came after- wards to be known as Young Ulster, sat beside priests who had lived through the horrors of a famine which left their churches empty and their graveyards overflowing; flanked by farmers who survived that evil time like the veterans of a hard campaign ; while citizens, professional men, the popular journalists from the four provinces, and the founders and officers of the Tenant Protection Societies, completed the assembly." ^ No dissenting voice was heard when an Ulsterman and Presbyterian, Dr. McKnight, the editor of the Ba/iner of Ulster^ who had for years been pleading the tenants' cause, was chosen as president. After three days' discussion, marked by earnestness, spirit, and harmony, the conference resolved upon a bold and distinct programme, the terms of which have since become house- hold words in Ireland. Fair rents determined by valua- tion ; the exclusion of tenants' improvements from the valuation ; security from disturbance of possession so long as the valuation rent was paid ; and a provision of relief with regard to arrears of rent which had accrued due during the famine — these were the chief points which the delegates decided to press upon Parliament.^ The conference con- cluded by formally establishing the Irish Tenant-Right League, and by appointing a general council of the four provinces. From the existing Parliament, in which Ireland 1 "League of North and South," p. 49; and see SulHvan's "New Ireland," chap. xiii. ^ In the address issued to the Irish people by the council of the Tenant League, February i, 1852, it was said, " Their entire aim was (l) to ascertain by fair arbitration what is a fair rent, and {2) to secure the occupier who pays it from capricious eviction." I 1852] TENANT-RIGHT LEAGUE 437 had few representatives sympathetic to the movement, nothing was expected, and for the next two years the leaders devoted themselves mainly to popular agitation. Deputations were sent to all parts of the country to spread the principles of the league, to enrol new members, and to form local organisations, Presbyterians went to preach the cause in the south, and Catholics to preach it in the north. Everywhere the meetings were enthusiastic. By the new hope held out to them, the whole people were roused from the state of lethargy into which they had fallen. Not less remarkable than the energy of the mis- sionaries of tenant-right was the ability with which the cause was pleaded in the press. The Natio7i had lost none of its vigour by adopting the " constitutional " methods which excited Mitchel's bitter contempt ; while week after week in the Tablet, which had been transferred to Dublin in 1850, Lucas appealed for justice to Ireland in such words of passion as can hardly be matched in journalism. So far as it depended on Irish opinion the triumph of the league seemed to be assured. It was a league of north and south, but only partially a league of Protestants and Catholics. The Presbyterian leaders stood with the people, but the Episcopalians were mostly ranged on the landlords' side. We should omit one of the most important facts of the time, and fail to under- stand the enthusiasm with which the priests threw them- selves into the strife, were we to disregard the fresh outburst of religious passion which followed the famine. The priests were fighting their own battle in fighting that of the tenants, and, if they displayed an excess of zeal, not they, but the Protestants of the Established Church should be called the aggressors. There existed in England a general belief that the evils of Ireland could be traced to the Roman Catholic religion, and to the power exercised over the people by a peculiarly ignorant and grasping priesthood. Most of the English visitors to Ireland returned with the same tale. Sir Francis Head wrote his experiences in order to show that the priests were the cause of Irish misery. Miss 438 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1850- Martineau has hardly a good word for them. Pamphlets innumerable were written to expose the tyranny under which the people were groaning. The conviction became more firmly rooted than ever in the English mind, that rather from habit and through intimidation than from faith or affection did the people cling to the Roman Catholic Church ; that they could be won over by a zealous effort ; and that the time so long foretold had at length come for making Ireland Protestant. " The walls of Irish Romanism," said one of the chief proselytisers, "had been circumvented again and again, and at the trumpet-blast that sounded in the wailings of the famine they may be said to have fallen flat. This is the point of hope in Ireland's present crisis." ^ " Within a couple of years," said Sir Francis Head, "there can exist no doubt whatever that the Protestant population of Ireland will form the majority."- It needed the census of 1861 to dispel this extraordinary delusion. Since 1818 the Irish Society had been labouring to spread the Irish Bible among the Roman Catholics, and it was said to have achieved a very gratifying success. In the famine years a more determined attack was made under the leadership of the Rev. Mr. Dallas, formerly an officer in the army. He organised a small band of lay missionaries called " messengers," whose duty it was to move about among the people, to distribute tracts, to spread the Bible, and to seek opportunities of discussing the demerits of Roman Catholicism. Ample funds were furnished by zealous friends in England, as much as ;^io,ooo being collected in one summer, and the Society for Church Missions to the Roman Catholics of Ireland was established to carry on the work on a large scale. This aggressive policy led to retaliation. The Catholic ^ "The Point of Hope in Ireland's Present Crisis," by the Rev. A. R. C. Dallas, p. 148. ^ " A Fortnight in Ireland," p. 393. For a fine example of the anti- Catholic literature of the time, see " The Mystery Solved : or, Ireland's Miseries ; the grand Cause and Cure," by Dr. Dill, Secretary of the Scottish Reformation Society: a book which was distributed among members of Parliament in 1852. 1852] PROSELYTISING 439 Defence Association publicly declared that a systematic plan was on foot of proselytising the Catholic poor by corruption and intimidation. With remonstrances and threats the priests appealed to the people in public and in private. The people themselves expressed their resent- ment by refusing to have any dealings with the converts, and by subjecting them to various other forms of persecu- tion.^ This was not mere intolerance ; it was a protest against the means by which the conversions were obtained. "The fact that their great success dates from the famine," says a friend of the missions, " seems to point very plainh' to the relief given in connection v/ith the Protestant mis- sions as one great cause of the reception of Protestant teaching; for, as well as one can understand the facts in the absence of clear information, it appears that relief was given in connection with mission schools b}' another asso- ciation." ^ An indignant denial met those who questioned the purely spiritual character of the conversions. Mr. Dallas challenged Mr. Wilberforce, the secretary of the Catholic Defence Association, to produce before a court ot arbitration a single instance in which anything had been proved that could be characterised as bribery and intimi- dation on the part of the Irish Church Missions.^ It is ^ A society for the protection of the rights of conscience was formed to deal with such cases. Nominally, it offered protection to persecuted persons of any religion. See Whately's account of it: Senior, "Conversations," vol. ii. p. 161. 2 "Essays on the Irish Church," p. 286. The absence of clear informa- tion is very remarkable. In the "Incidents in the Life and Ministry of the Rev. A. R. C. Dallas," by his widow, the interesting part of the story is passed over lightly. See, however, as to the charge of bribery and the denial, the "Correspondence between Rev. G. Webster and Revs. H. C. Eade and A. R. C. Dallas" (1864). * See article on the " New Reformation in Ireland," in Qtiarterly Review, June 1852. The following story was told by Mr. Corbally, M.P., at a meet- ing of the Catholic Defence Association: — "A man in his locality, who was now a soldier, has been generally reported as a convert. It had been said that he had read his recantation for the purpose of earning what he called an 'honest livelihood.' He met the man, and asked him had he turned? the reply was, ' Yes, your honour, and I was very badly paid for it. I read my recantations in six churches in seven weeks, and I have nothing for it but the right of fishing in Lough Sheelin " {Freeman's Journal, January 30, 1852). 440 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1850- difficult to decide between the accusation and the denial, inasmuch as the history of the missions has never been told with the fulness and candour to be expected from men engaged in the spread of truth. The opinion of the people themselves, however, should go for something in such a matter, and that opinion is preserved in the con- temptuous names of "jumpers," or " soupers," by which converts were known. If, moreover, Dr. Byrne's state- ment is correct, that conversion was undertaken by one society and relief administered by another, Mr. Dallas's challenge was a very safe one.^ Be this as it may, the missions did incalculable mischief. They absolutely failed of their purpose. So far from Protestantising Ireland, they made it more intensely Catholic than ever. They aggra- vated the religious strife which Englishmen were never weary of describing as the curse of the country, and in so doing they widened the gulf between rich and poor. With their barely honest statistics of conversion, they fostered the notion that the growth of Protestantism would of itself solve all Irish questions. Lastly, they made it impossible for Protestants and Catholics to co-operate in carrying out the undenominational system of education. The close of the educational truce was one of the most direct results of the outburst of religious zeal. That section of the Roman Catholic clergy, of which Archbishop McHale had been the chief, and which had all along been opposed to the non-sectarian plan, had now, as a consequence of Protestant aggression, acquired the predominating in- fluence. Dr. Cullen, who had been appointed to the see of Armagh on the death of Dr. Crolly in 1849, refused to continue the arrangement under which Dr. Murray and Archbishop Whately had worked together. He declared it to be " contrary to the spirit and practice of our Holy Church to sanction united religious instruction, or to sanc- tion any instruction in matters connected with religion given to Catholics by persons who themselves reject the '•■ It should be stated that Dr. Killen, whose " Ecclesiastical History of Ireland" has the rare merit of general fairness, regards the charge as "a baseless calumny" (vol. ii. p. 504). 1852] THE EDUCATIONAL CONTROVERSY 441 teaching of the Catholic Church."^ And this in substance was a condemnation of the national school system and of the Queen's Colleges. That he expressed the general Catholic opinion appears from the fact that the condem- nation of the colleges was unanimously agreed to by the Synod of Thurles in 1850, In exciting this opposition Archbishops Cullen and McHale exercised great personal influence, but its real strength was due to the profound distrust excited by the methods of the Anglican Church. The national schools, it was felt, were, contrary to agree- ment, being used for the spread of Protestantism, and the experiment of united education was discredited. From that time denominational education became one of the chief of the Catholic claims.^ Thus, while the land question overshadowed every other, behind it stood the questions of the Church and of educa- tion; and in different forms they each involved a struggle of the bulk of the people against the ascendency of a minority. They were bound up together. In each case the opposing parties were the same. Success or failure in one direction meant strength or weakness in other direc- tions. On the land question, which was by far the most urgent, the priests, both by birth and the circumstances of their life, would in any event have been led to the tenants' ^ Quoted in Seddall's "Church of Ireland," p. 159. ^ The history of the educational controversy in Ireland would require a volume to itself, so great has been the difference of opinion on the simplest matters of fact. A few dates, however, might be given. In 1850 the Synod of Thurles unanimously condemned the Queen's Colleges. In the same year the Queen's University was founded, with the power of granting degrees to students who had completed their studies in the Queen's Colleges of Belfast, Cork, and Galway. In 1853 the commissioners of national education decided to discontinue, as offensive to Roman Catholics, certain religious books, which had been in use in the schools, and which had been presumed to be of a non- controversial character, and Archbishop Whately, Lord Chancellor Black- bunie, and Ilaron Greene at once resigned, alleging somewhat strangely that the Roman Catholics had broken faith. In 1854 the Roman Catholic Uni- versity was founded, under the presidency of Dr. Newman. In i860, after many complaints of the way in which the schools were used for proselytising, some changes favourable to the Roman Catholics were made on the board, the chief being that the number of members was raised to twenty, of whom ten were to be Catholics. 442 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1850- side. But the fervour with which so many of them joined in the agitation of tenant-right can be explained only by their well-grounded belief that in breaking down the power of the landlords they were taking the first and a necessary step towards breaking down the power of the landlords' Church. It was for a religious cause that the priests entered into politics in 1826, and it was for their religion that they fought in 1852. In the election of 1852, the league laboured with extra- ordinary energy to secure the return of a strong tenant- right party. Their first aim was to keep out the Whigs. Nothing could be lost by so doing, and much might be gained, for a Derby administration might have a more generous, and could not have a less sympathetic, Irish policy than that of Lord John Russell.^ But the contest did not proceed on mere Whig and Tory lines. The can- didates were pledged not only to advocate tenant-right in Parliament, but to adopt a policy of independent opposition, holding themselves aloof from both English parties and supporting no Government which refused to grant a satis- factory tenant-right measure. In Catholic constituencies they were required to press for a repeal of the Ecclesiasti- cal Titles Act, to support a measure for appropriating the revenues of the Established Church to useful national pur- poses, and to oppose every ministry which did not actively favour their objects. In some cases even a pledge was required that the candidate, if elected, would resign his seat when a majority of his constituents called on him to do so. Extreme pressure was put upon the electors by both sides. It is difficult to find the truth in the exaggerated statements of the time, but there is no doubt that landlords and priests freely used their great powers. A Protestant pamphleteer, indeed, went so far as to say that in the counties "we have evidence that there were no free elections ^ The Nation, in announcing the fall of the Russell administration, said, The most villainous administration that ever marred Irish affairs is hope- lessly foundered. We thank God very heartily for their downfall. Old and bitter enemies of Ireland fill their places. But if it were Satan himself, instead of Scorpion Stanley, who became Premier of England, the change would be a welcome one to the Irish people " (February 28, 1852). 1852] THE ELECTION OF 1852 443 where the priesthood meddled;"^ and he quotes some inte- resting examples of their violent language. " If there be a Catholic elector of this borough," said the Rev. John Maine, addressing a meeting at Tralee, " who will dare to go forward and register his vote for an English enem}', pass him by with scorn and contempt; do not be seen to walk with him, to talk with him, or associate with him. Let him fester in his corruption ; be not you contaminated by any contact with a wretch so base and degraded. Despise him ; if you meet with him on the high-road, pass over to the other side. Have no dealing with him. Make him to understand that he cannot afford to brave the honest indig- nation of his fellow-countrymen." If this man were dying, and no other priest were in the way, Mr. Maine admitted that he should be bound to attend him ; " but I confess to you I should be sorry from my heart to attend the death of such a being." ^ This has been very fairly called an awful commination, and it could be paralleled by a good many other speeches made about the same time. But excited Protestants have erred greatly in asserting that the Irish priesthood as a whole thought or spoke in such a fashion. Many of them refused altogether to take part publicly in political agitation ; and it is an interesting fact that, accord- ing to a witness before the Maynooth Commission of 1853, " persons who have examined the matter statistically find that of the priests who have interfered rather prominently, and perhaps unwarrantably, in politics, the average majority were not educated at Maynooth." ^ The teaching of May- nooth was that priests should interfere in politics only in exceptional cases, and in a spirit of charity. Of course there were violent priests in 1852, as in O'Connell's time; but it is idle to say that the agitation was their work. The true lesson of their speeches is, not that the priests coerced the people, but that such violent language could not have been used except to persons already in accord with the ^ "Popery Unmasked at the Recent Elections in Ireland," by a clergy- man of the Established Church, p. 21. ^ Ibid., p. 23. This speech, with others like it, is quoted also in Head's "Fortnight in Ireland." * Lord, "Digest of the Maynooth Commission Report," p. 16. 444 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1852 speaker. This, however, is by the way. Whether for good or evil, the influence of the priests was a striicing feature of many of the election contests of 1852. Some fifty members were returned pledged to tenant- right and independent opposition. To all appearance, the league had been so far successful that they had formed a party strong enough in numbers to turn the scale either on the Whig or the Tory side. In order to determine the course of action, a conference was held in Dublin two months before the meeting of Parliament. The principles of Crawford's Bill, with some additional clauses, were unani- mously^ declared to be the minimum that could be accepted ; and it was also resolved that the tenant-right members "should hold themselves perfectly independent of, and in opposition to, all Governments which do not make it a part of their policy, and a Cabinet question, to give to the tenantry of Ireland a measure fully embodying the principles of Sharman Crawford's Bill." A very determined spirit animated the conference, and the friends of tenant-right looked forward with confidence to the meeting of Parliament. The Derby ministry fully appreciated the political im- portance of the Irish members, and were prepared to go a good way to conciliate them. For the first time, what seemed a really serious effort was made to give effect to the recommendations of the Devon Commission. In November 1852 Mr. Napier, the Irish attorney-general, introduced four Bills which closely followed these recom- mendations, and which admitted the principle of nearly everything claimed by the league. It was proposed to encourage a thorough system of drainage and other sub- stantial improvements, by enabling owners to borrow money on favourable terms, and by charging the expenditure for a certain number of years on the land ; to give landlords with only a limited interest the right to bind their successors by leases and by agreements for special improvements ; to consolidate, simplify, and amend the general law of landlord and tenant, and to place the relation between the two parties thenceforth on the basis of contract; and, in the absence of specific agreements, to give a legal right of com- I8S2] THE NAPIER LAND BILLS 445 pensation for improvements made by the tenant on his holding. This new code (for the Bills were nothing less) was drawn, as every one acknowledged, with singular ability and thoroughness, and, especially in regard to the consolidation of the existing law, had a lasting value. But the real significance of the proposed legislation consisted in the recognition of the fact that English and Irish tenants stood in different positions, and in the admission of the principle, then so hotly contested, of " retrospective com- pensation." These two points being established, the whole question became one of degree and circumstances. That was perfectly understood, and it explains why Mr. Napier's useful and moderate code was doomed to failure. His four Bills, together with the Bill of the Tenant-Right League, were referred to a select committee. In the House of Lords, the Earl of Roden asked whether, by consenting to this course, the Government meant to give their sanction to " propositions of so communistic a nature," a question which Lord Derby evaded by summarising the Napier code without comment, and by declaring that he entirely agreed with his noble friend in thinking the Bill of the Tenant League, then in charge of Mr. Shee, to be destructive of the rights of property. Not a word was spoken by any member of the Government to indicate that they had taken up the matter in real earnest. As we learn from the Greville Memoirs, Mr. Disraeli was inclined to play with the Irish members a little longer, and was bargaining with them for the promise of their support to his Budget ; but his chief repudiated the transaction. We must admit Lord Derby's position to have been a difficult one, seeing that, whichever course he took, he was bound to be defeated either in one House or the other. It was natural, therefore, that he should decide to fall in maintaining rather than in compromising the principles which at heart he believed to be offended by the Irish claims. The fall of the ministry quickly followed Lord Derby's disavowal of the Crawford Bill of Mr. Shee. Every Irish member who had pledged himself to the policy of inde- pendent opposition was bound to stand on the other side, 446 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1852 and on Mr. Disraeli's Budget the Government were defeated by nineteen votes. The effectiveness of an independent poHcy was strikingly demonstrated. Had the Irish party remained united, and had they harassed ministry after ministry, there is no doubt that they would soon have forced Parliament to concede their demands. But the defeat of Lord Derby was their only achievement. From this time forward the league met with nothing but disappointment and disaster, and the cause lay as much in their own weakness as in the capacity of resistance of any English Government. The fidelity of certain members of the Irish Parliamentary party, particularly Mr. Keogh and Mr. Sadleir, had already been suspected, and, indeed, openly challenged. But so vehement had been their protestations that they succeeded in making the suspicions appear the outcome of a groundless jealousy. Had they not fought strenuously in Parliament against the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill ? Had they not pledged themselves to tenant-right ? Had they not vowed opposition to every ministry that denied the principles to which they were pledged ? "I declare myself, in the presence of the Bishops of Ireland and of my col- leagues in Parliament," said Mr. Keogh, in the spring of 1852, " that, let the minister of the day be whom he may — let him be the Earl of Derby, let him be Sir James Graham, or Lord John Russell — it was all the same to us, and, so help me God, no matter who the minister may be, no matter who the party in power may be, I will support neither that minister nor that party, unless he comes into power prepared to carry the measures which universal popular Ireland demands." ^ The year in which these high words were spoken was not out before the speaker had taken office in the coalition Government of Lord Aberdeen, and had become the political colleague of the author of the Durham letter. Mr. Keogh was made Solicitor-General for Ireland ; Mr. John Sadleir became a lord of the treasury ; and Mr. O'Flaherty, pledged in like manner, was made a commissioner of income-tax. It was reported that the Government had privately promised to deal favour- 1 Quoted in Sullivan's " New Ireland," chap. xiv. i8s2] DR. CULLEN'S HOSTILITY 447 ably with the Irish claims, and that they had taken office on this understanding, but Lord John Russell expressly denied that there had been any promises or stipulations whatsoever. There was not a redeeming feature in what is one of the most dramatic and disgraceful desertions in political history. For audacious shamelessness it is without a parallel. The subsequent fortunes of these adventurers hardly concern us. Suffice it to say that Mr. Keogh became a judge, that he presided at the trials of Fenian prisoners, and that he was cut in Dublin society ; that Mr. John Sadleir had to resign, or rather was dismissed, within a year, that he was found to be a forger and swindler, and that he committed suicide on Hampstead Heath ; that his brother, another of the gang, was expelled from the House of Commons; and that Mr. O'Flaherty escaped conviction for forgery by flight to Denmark. The desertions shattered the league. So well had these men played their parts, that not even the acceptance of office could convince some members of the council that their pledges had been broken ; and it was urged, especially by the northern members, that they should not be con- demned without giving the new ministry a fair trial. The division in the ranks gradually became more and more marked. Several influential members of the league, and honest believers in its principles, found out that it was impossible to keep aloof from English parties, and that undiscriminating opposition was a bad poHcy. To some, among whom were Mr. Crawford and Mr. Shee, it seemed more important that a tenant-right measure should be passed than that the measure should be a thorough one. All unity of action had gone, and with it all real power in Parliament. Scarcely less serious was the divided state of the Catholics of Ireland. While the league possessed a tower of strength in Dr. McHale, the Archbishop of Tuam, they had to contend against the steady opposition of Dr. Cullen, backed by the authority of the Holy See. Persuaded that the Church was endangered by the exist- ence of secret societies, and that its safety required the priests to keep apart from disaffection, he regarded the 448 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1855 policy of the league with strong disapproval. When Sadleir and Keogh sought re-election, his influence was found at work in their favour. Father Keefe and Father O'Shea, who had distinguished themselves by founding the Callan Tenants'* Protection Society, and who still remained active in agitation, were prohibited from interfering in politics. The exclusion of priests from politics was his steady aim, as it was the constant desire of English politicians, and he persevered long enough to crush the national party. An appeal was made to Rome. Mr. Lucas was deputed to lay the case before the Holy See, and he strove untiringly to counteract Dr. Cullen's influence. In a memorial which he prepared at the request of the pope, and the greater part of which appears in his recent biography, he justified the action of the priests. Nevertheless, the archbishop pre- vailed. Lucas returned in 1855, broken in health and spirit, and died a few months afterwards. Mr. Gavan Duffy, feeling that for the time the struggle was at end, resigned his seat and left the country. Within three years of the election of 1852, when the prospect seemed so bright with hope, the league had undergone an absolute col- lapse. An CConnell might have averted the disaster. He might have overcome desertion, hesitation, and the coldness of the Church. But it was the misfortune of Ireland throughout this period to possess no leader capable of uniting the people or even their representatives. Ill REFUSAL OF REDRESS As year by year the league was thus ceasing to be a power with which Enghsh poHticians had to reckon, its principles, having nothing but their own merits to recom- mend them, could not make way. The details of the story, which we have somewhat anticipated, may be hurried over. In 1853 ^^^ select committee to which the Bills had been referred rejected that of Mr. Shee, and reported in favour of those of Mr. Napier with some alterations. The Napier Bills passed through the House of Commons, which thus formally sanctioned the principle of retrospective compensa- tion. In the House of Lords they were read a second time, and then, on account of the opposition which they excited, abandoned for the session. Lord Roden expressed the utmost indignation that the Tenants' Compensation Bill should have passed the House of Commons ; and the Marquis of Clanricarde implored the Government, for the sake of their own character, not to force the Bills through Parliament so late in the session. " He ventured to assert " — the passage is interesting, as showing what an Irish landlord thought of his fellow-landlords — " that if the Bills passed, the tenantry of Ireland would be kept in many places under a notice to quit from quarter to quarter, and the hanging gale would be always hung hi terrorem over their heads, for fear that they should take advantage of the clauses of this Bill." It is a sad commen- tary on the scrupulous care which was thus shown for the rights of property that the Crime and Outrage (Ireland) Bill of this year appears to have passed through the House of Lords without a word of discussion, although the Irish secretary had in the other House offered his congratulations on the peace, prosperity, and general condition of Ireland, 449 2 F 450 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1854 embracing every point except the existence of Ribbonism. The only other matter of interest in the Padiamentary history of the year was the extension of the income-tax to Ireland in the face of the strong opposition of most of the Irish members, who maintained that their country already contributed more than a fair proportion of the revenue.^ Amid the clouds of war gathering from the east of Europe, the prospect of ever seeing a tenant-right measure carried grew fainter still in 1854. A select committee of the House of Lords reported in favour of three of the Napier Bills, and against the Tenants Compensation Bill ; and, the most offensive part of the code being out of the way, the House of Lords amended and accepted the other measures. The Government, however, decided that it was inexpedient to proceed further, and the whole question again dropped for the session. For the future, little hope was held out, Lord John Russell repeating what he had said again and again, that the most useful measure that could be provided would be a measure giving power and force to voluntary contracts and a simple remedy for the breach of these con- tracts. But although the tenant-right cause made no advance in 1854, the debates of the year may very usefully be studied in order to appreciate the dead weight of pre- judice against which the tenants' friends had to contend. Lord Monteagle, for instance, told his fellow-peers that they might as well take the foundation of legislation on the subject from Domesday Book as from the Devon Report ; and gave his opinion that in the whole history of legislation there was scarcely any violation of principle like that pre- sented by the Bills before the House. Referring to a clause which, with many restrictions, would have given tenants ^ " It appears from Parliamentary papers that the gross revenue collected within Ireland was, in the year ended January 5, 1853, £4,414,413, 3s. 2d. ; in the year ended March 31, 1S57, ^^7,008,555, 9s. 8d. ; and in the year ended March 31, 1862, ^6,781,088, i6s. 8d. ; and, taking the receipts of ordinary revenue of Great Britain and Ireland respectively, in the five years ended March 31, 1862, the proportion of Irish Revenue to British was one-ninth " (Thorn's " Directory," 1888, p. 673). A comparison for the same five years of the annual values assessed under all the income and property tax schedules in Great Britain and Ireland respectively gives a proportion of about 13^ to !• 1854] THE LAND BILLS IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS 451 compensation for their improvements in certain cases, the Marquis of Bath declared that it would destroy the only ground upon which a stand could be made against radi- calism and socialism. Even on the part of those who assented to the Bills, we seldom find any clear recognition or admission of the justice of the tenants' case. It was prudent to exhibit a conciliatory disposition, especially as it could not be denied that there had been cases of hardship ; and on that account a good many cautious men like Lord Campbell refrained from opposition, but washed their hands of all responsibility. In breadth of view and open-minded- ness one speech stood out in remarkable relief, and deserves the more to be remembered that in later years the speaker came more often to be quoted for his criticisms than for his modified approval of tenant-right. A single passage may be quoted, so very justly does it describe the essential features of the question : " The argument, then, which I would venture to urge in support of the tenants' claim for legislative interference is simply this," said Lord Dufiferin ; " from circumstances over which the tenantry of Ireland had no control, and for which they were not responsible, it became necessary for them to execute improvements on their farms of a permanent character without being able previously to protect themselves by any adequate contract. To a certain extent, however, a degree of security almost tantamount to that guaranteed by a contract was afforded to them by an understanding or custom which, though differing in its modus operandi in different parts of Ireland, was nevertheless, in one shape or another, almost universally prevalent. Latterly, however, in consequence of the great revolution, and the breaking-up of the old state of things which has taken place, these semi-feudal and ill-defined understandings which once existed between a former race of landlords and their tenants are no longer found to give the necessary security, and the tenantry are therefore anxious to substitute for an equitable right under an uncertain custom a legal right under a definite law." ^ This is a calm ^ Hansard, February 28, 1854. The speech is summarised in Barry O'Brien, '* Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland," vol. ii. pp. 283-287. 452 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1854 statement of the case, based, as most people will now admit, upon plain fact. But, for all the impression which he pro- duced, Lord Dufiferin might as well have been pleading for the whole programme of the league. The majority of his fellow-landlords were as far from accepting his view as he himself was in 1867 from accepting Mr. Butt's. Disestablishment, or even a large measure of Church reform in Ireland, seemed even more remote than a land settlement. In 1853 Lord John Russell declared that the Government had no intention of introducing any measure relating to the Irish Church except in respect of ministers' money. This was a tax amounting to about ;^i2,5oo levied on the occupiers of Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Limerick, Kilkenny, Drogheda, Clonmel, and Kinsale, for the support of Protestantism in these towns, and on account both of its purpose and of the fact that it was levied on old valua- tions, and was therefore most unequal in its incidence, it had long been a cause of great irritation. With con- siderable difficulty, the Bill for its abolition was carried in 1854. In the same year Mr. Shee raised the larger question in a Bill for the suspension of 395 benefices, with few or no Church adherents, and for transferring part of the funds of the Church to the Roman Catholics and the Presbyterians. The Bill was rejected by a large majority. English feeling went wholly against any interference with a Church " the merits of which," said Mr. Newdegate boldly, " were daily acknowledged by the accession to it of hundreds of thousands of the people." After the re- jection of Mr. Shee's Bill, the question was left untouched till the census of 1861 dispelled a great many delusions, and called attention to the indignity which the Establish- ment placed upon the Irish people. In the intervening years, indeed, Mr. Spooner and Mr. Newdegate, by an annual motion for an inquiry into the v/orking of May- nooth College, and by speeches of heated Protestantism, did their best to keep the religious controversy alive. A royal commission had been appointed in 1853, and in 1855* after collecting a great mass of evidence, it reported against interference with the arrangement of 1845. Mr. Spooner 1856] RELIGIOUS INEQUALITIES 453 and his friends treated the inquiry as " a mockery, a dehision, and a snare," and demanded that in the interest of " this great, because Protestant, country," the grant should be discon- tinued.^ It is creditable to Enghsh ministers that they gave no countenance to a demand urged in so narrow a spirit. The years between 1854 and 1861 may be passed over quickly; as regards Ireland their Parhamentary histor}' is barren and dreary. In 1 85 5, when Lucas died, and Duffy threw up his seat in despair, some members of Lord Palmerston's new Government went so far as to express a theoretical approval of the tenants' claims. Sir R. Bethell, the solicitor-general, defended the principle of retrospective compensation as one well established in Roman law, and even in the law of England ; and Lord Palmerston himself, who had not yet found the maxim that tenant-right is landlord wrong, agreed to accept the principle, provided a limit of twenty years should be adopted. But again nothing was done, and Mr. Napier gave the true reason when he said that " it is notorious that the House of Lords will pass no such measure, and that for a Government to propose it to them, or pretend to support it, is an imposture and a sham." In 1856 the Tenant League, which still met from time to time, resolved, after their Bill had failed for the year, to clear it of its most objectionable clauses — those legalising the Ulster custom, the valuation clauses, the O'Connell clause providing that improvements should be presumed to be the tenant's till the contrary was proved, and others which were likely to be resisted. It is needless to say that they gained nothing by this half-hearted move. The mutilated Bill met with even less respect than its predecessors had done, and the question of tenant-right almost ceased to excite any political interest. There could hardly be stronger proof of this than that in the letters written to his Bradford constituents in 1857 by General Perronet Thompson, one of the few men of that time who was not blinded by a behef in the general righteousness of English policy, there is only a single short reference to the question of tenant-right in 1 Lord, *' Digest of the Maynooth Commission Report," pp. 239, 244. 454 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1856- Ireland. He sympathises with the tenant, and sees the gravity of the case. "The question," he says, "will require a statesman, when there is one to spare." But he is plainly speaking on a subject to which Englishmen were paying little heed.^ The future of the question, however, depended not so much on the will of the landlords at Westminster as on the conduct of the landlords in Ireland, the less worthy of whom were doing a more effectual service to the cause of tenant-right than the league itself. Individual cases of injustice, indeed, or even a general knowledge that the absence of security prevented Irish tenants from improving their position, would not have sufficed to produce any change in the Irish policy of English Governments. The answer was always ready that English tenants prospered under land laws almost the same as those of Ireland, and that consequently the people, and not the laws, were in fault. It was an insufficient and inaccurate answer, ignor- ing the manner in which the law had been made and administered in the interest of the Irish landlord, the different circumstances of the tenantry in the two countries, and the different part which landlords took in cultivation ; but at the time of which we are speaking it satisfied English politicians. What did impel them to attend to Irish grievances was not the hardships of the tenants, but considerations of social order. Year by year, amid con- gratulations on the general tranquillity of the country — it is now " one of the most tranquil countries in Europe," said the Marquis of Clanricarde in i860 — the presence of a shadow was always felt. The existence of Ribbonism furnished the only ground on which ministers justified the renewal of the Peace Preservation Act. Now, whatever may have been its nature formerly, Ribbonism had become at this time almost purely agrarian. "There is nothing political or religious," says Mr. Senior, in the journal of his last visit to Ireland, "... in the Ribbon code. It is simply agrarian. It recognises the obligation on the part of the tenant to pay rent, but no other obligation. It ^ Letters of a Representative to his Constituents, letter xlv. i86o] LAND GRIEVANCES AND RIBBON ISM 455 resents all interference by the landlord in the use of the land." ^ He quotes the opinion of Mr. Stuart Trench, who for the best part of his life had been a land agent, as to the contrast between English and Irish crime. "The Irish- man," said Mr. Trench, " murders patriotically. He murders to assert and enforce a principle — that the land which the peasant has reclaimed from the bog, the cabin which he has built, and the trees which he has planted, are his own, subject to the landlord's right by law to exact a rent for the result of another man's labours. In general he pays the rent, generally he exerts himself to pay it, even when the payment is difficult to him ; but he resolves not to be dispossessed. He joins a Ribbon lodge, and opposes to the combination of the rich the combination of the poor."^ Mr. Trench loved exaggerated effects, as every one knows who has read his " Realities of Irish Life," and when he speaks of a patriotic element in Ribbon crimes his words must not be pressed. Nevertheless, it is true that these outrages, however brutal and cowardly, were not quite of the lowest form of crime. The victim received at least the form of a judicial trial — he was sentenced, and members of the lodge were deputed to carry the sentence into effect. In nearly every case the offence related to land ; a landlord had evicted a tenant, or a farmer had taken land from which a tenant had been evicted. With all their baseness there was thus what may be called a public side to the agrarian crimes of these otherwise tranquil years, and the peasants, in sheltering the criminals, recognised this fact. Though the Crime and Outrage Act of 1848 had been renewed from year to year, and still existed, substantially unmodified, under the title of the Peace Preservation Act, the law had hitherto utterly failed to crush out this widespread con- spiracy, simply because in Ribbon districts the popular sympathy was with the criminal, and not with the law. In 1859, over the whole of Ireland, fifty-three persons ^ "Journals, etc., relating to Ireland," vol. ii. p. 214. 2 Quoted in Barry O'Brien, "Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland," vol. ii. p. 265. On the preponderance in Ireland compared with other countries of "exemplary or preventive" crimes over those committed from merely personal motives, see Cornewall Lewis, " Irish Disturbances," chap. iii. 456 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1856- were acquitted out of every hundred committed for trial, while in England and Scotland the percentage was only twenty-five. Of every one of the agrarian murders it was believed and asserted, and it was probably true, that the people of the district knew the murderer perfectly well. Trial by jury is a weak instrument in such cases, and strong proposals were made for amending the system. In a series of letters on the state of Ireland published in 1856 we find this bold suggestion : " In all cases of Ribbon trials, where murder has taken place, either Roman Catholics should be by law excluded, on the ground of their sympathy going to screen their co-religionists on trial for murder; or, in case they wish to be on the trial of Ribbonmen, for the murder of Protestants, let the verdict of the majority be taken, instead of the unanimous verdict which is now required by the law." ^ By such foolish plans for raising the percentage of convictions was the real meaning of the immunity of Ribbon murderers obscured. In a country where the calen- dar of general crime was exceptionally light, the popular condemnation of crime meant that, barbarous as the Ribbon code may have been, it dealt with a real injustice in the land system of Ireland. The peace of Ireland did not suffer from Ribbonism alone. The town of Belfast was the frequent scene of scandalous riots caused by the savage intolerance of the Orange Society. So dangerous to the peace of the country did this organisation appear, that in 1857 Lord Chancellor Brady, in a letter to Lord Londonderry, gave notice that for the future he should require from every person holding the commission of the peace an assurance that he was not, and would not while he held the commission become, a member of the society. His bold declaration raised a storm of indignation ; but it seemed for a time as if the Government would stand firm and support him. Early in 1858 a deputation of Irish Conservatives, introduced by Mr. (afterwards Lord) Cairns, waited on Lord Palmerston to present a memorial of protest against the chancellor's 1 " The Highlands of Cavan," by a Looker-on, p. 271. The adoption of the Scotch jury system had frequently been pressed upon the Government. i86o] RIBBONISM AND ORANGEISM 457 declaration, and were met with words of chilling discourage- ment. Lord Palmerston was at a loss to understand the use of the association, and gave his opinion that nothing could be more desirable for the real interests of Ireland than its complete abandonment. There the matter ended. The Brady letter led to nothing, in spite of the fact that the ministry entirely agreed with it. Many people in Ireland asked whether their action would have been the same if Limerick instead of Belfast had been the scene of religious outrages, and a Catholic priest had played the part of the Rev. Dr. Hanna.^ The truth was that for political reasons no English Government had the courage to declare open war on Orangeism. But the agrarian discontent of which Ribbonism was the outcome could not safely be neglected. Feeling this, the ministry of Lord Palmerston, which took office in the summer of 1859, determined that something must be done to place the law of landlord and tenant on a better footing. In the following year they introduced two very imposing measures, which, in spite of a good deal of opposition, they succeeded in carrying through Parliament. The first of these, the Landed Property (Ireland) Improve- ment Act, dealt with the existing restrictions on the powers of limited owners, and with the improvements effected by certain classes of tenants upon their holdings. Subject to judicial sanction, limited owners were enabled to charge the inheritance with the cost of specified improvements, and to bind their successors by leases for specified periods. Simple agricultural leases for a term not exceeding twenty-one years could be given by the limited owner without judicial intervention, but every improvement lease required the sanction of the chairman of the county in which the lands were situated. To tenants who should carry out certain specified improvements on their holdings, the right to com- pensation was granted, either in the form of continued possession or of an annuity charged on the land ; provided 1 Before the commission of inquiry into the Belfast riots of 1857, Dr. Hanna was questioned as to open-air preaching : "And would you consider it your duty to preach when you believe riot would ensue? — I would, sir. Our most valuable rights have been obtained by conflict ; and if we cannot main- tain them without that, we must submit to the necessity" (Q. 7904). 458 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [i860 that before improving there had been an agreement with the landlord, or that the tenant had given notice of his intention, and the landlord had not within three months notified his disapproval. His disapproval excluded all right to compensation. In both cases the sanction of the chair- man of the county was required. An amendment had been strongly pressed by which an appeal would have been given from the landlord to the chairman, as had been provided for in Lord Stanley's Act of 1845, in Lord Lincoln's of 1846, in Sir W. Somerville's of 1850, and in Mr. Napier's of 1852. Mr. Monsell (afterwards Lord Emly), Mr. Butt, Lord Fermoy, and others, urged that without such a restraint on the exercise of the landlord's power the Bill would be good for nothing. Mr. Conolly, an Irish landlord himself, said that "he would compel the landlord in certain cases to make improvements. He knew there were landlords who would prefer to sit down with their hands in their pockets, and very little else in their pockets besides their hands, rather than comply with the just requirements of the tenants."^ But the amendment was negatived by 192 to 48. The principle of retrospective compensation, of course, was not admitted. The second Act, the Landlord and Tenant Law Amend- ment Act (Ireland), consolidated and amended the law. Like the corresponding Napier Bill, on which it was modelled, it declared that the relation should be deemed to be founded on the express or implied contract of the parties, and not upon tenure or service. It cleared awa}^ a great number of inconvenient rules concerning the assignment of tenancies. It confined the remedy of distress to the recovery of the rent of the last preceding year. In various ways it also simplified'and rendered less costly the process of ejectment.^ Few Acts have ever more completely failed. Scarcely a single landlord applied for judicial sanction to projected ^ Hansard, June 29, i860. 2 One of the most important changes was in requiring the writ in eject- ments for non-payment of rent to be served only on the persons in actual pos- session of the lands as tenants or sub-tenants (sect. 55). In De Moleyns's " Landowner's and Agent's Practical Guide," the Act will be found set out with the changes in the law noted in the margin. i86o] THE LAND ACTS OF i860 459 improvements; scarcely a single tenant took advantage of the compensation clauses ; and the number of leases con- tinued steadily to decrease. Landlords and tenants alike were deterred by the necessity for having judicial sanction at almost every step. The second Act made the tenant's position worse than before. " Every improvement in the real property law," says Professor Richey, " has been in- jurious to the tenants ; to a man in possession, a defendant in ejection, no system of law is so advantageous as one hopelessly entangled and incomprehensible." ^ The legisla- tion of i860 carried a stage further the process of improv- ing away the tenant's safeguards, which had steadily been going on since 18 16. Reporting in 1866 on the causes of failure, Dr. Hancock said that the simplification of pro- cedure in regard to recovery of possession diminished the tenant's security for compensation, as formerly compensa- tion was often given in order to avoid legal proceedings. It has been said that the Acts were passed in the tenant's, rather than in the landlord's, interest ; but, whether this was so or not, it is remarkable that almost the only im- portant alteration in the law which really worked was that which practically increased the landlord's power. The evils which were stirring up the land war in Ireland had not been so much as touched. The first Act came into operation on November 2, i860; the second on January i, 1861. On November 20, i860, began the notorious evictions on the Partry estate of Lord Plunket, the Bishop of Tuam, which the Times described as " a hideous scandal," reminding one of " a closed drain or some other nuisance." Most people believed, though Lord Plunket denied it, that the tenants were evicted because they refused to send their children to the Irish Church Society's School; and nothing in the Acts of i860 would have prevented such an exercise of a landlord's power. Equally legal and equally harsh were the evictions carried out by Mr. Adair at Derryveagh, in Donegal, commonly referred to as the Glenveagh evictions, which divided the general indignation with those of Lord Plunket. " Twenty- 1 "The Irish Land Laws," p. 44. 46o TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1860- eight houses were unroofed or levelled ; 46 houses evicted ; 47 families, comprising 37 husbands, 35 wives, 159 children, 13 other inmates, making a total of 244 persons." That was the official report as quoted in the House of Commons in 1861. What was the reason in this case? Mr, Adair's manager was murdered one November night in i860, and the murderer could not be found. On the supposition that he lived in the district, against which there was at least a strong presumption, the district was cleared.^ Mr. Adair acted on a principle sanctioned about a year before by Lord Derby himself. A murder had been committed on his estates at Doon, county Limerick. The murderer could not be found. Lord Derby served notices to quit on eight or nine tenants near the place of the crime, and defended his action on the ground that " it is the duty of a landlord, if he has reason to believe that persons on his property are conniving at the suppression of evidence or the conceal- ment of facts with respect to a brutal murder — not, indeed, to punish the innocent for the guilty ; but to say to those persons, 'You and I — you standing under this grave sus- picion, and I being responsible for the interests and happi- ness of the district — you and I shall not hereafter stand in the relation of landlord and tenant.' " ^ Public remonstrance prevented Lord Derby from carrying out his threat. But so far as the law was concerned, he might have done as Mr. Adair did. We have not to search far in order to discover why the legislation of i860 failed. It was never intended to deal with such cases as we have referred to. It was, in short, an elaborate attempt to accomplish an impossibility, namely, to meet the grievances of tenants without sensibly dimin- ishing the rights of landlords. It was even a backward step. It conceded less than had been admitted in the Derby, the Newcastle, and the Napier Bills. It was based on a more rigid doctrine of the right of property in land, and showed less consideration for the facts of the Irish ^ The previous history of Mr. Adair's relations with his tenants, and the details of the evictions, will be found related in Mr. Sullivan's "New Ireland." 2 Speech at Liverpool, Times, October 31, 1859. 1865] CASES OF OPPRESSION 461 tenants' position. Thie one clear good that it effected was to show the hopelessness of settling the question on the prin- ciple that a landlord can do as he pleases with his land. This was a lesson which had to be taught by other methods than Parliamentary argument. From i860 to 1865 things were allowed to drift, Parliament occupying itself more with the affairs of Italy and the misgovernment of Poland than with the condition of Irish peasants. Yet in Ireland it was an anxious and critical time. A series of adverse seasons, beginning in 1859, gave a sudden check to the steady though slow progress which had been made since the famine, and straightway the old misery and dis- content returned. Agrarian crime broke out with renewed violence, employment grew scarce, and the number of emi- grants rapidly increased. Excessive rain brought back the potato blight, and the people had to endure great hardships for the want of fuel. It was said that half the inhabitants in the barony of Erris, county Mayo, had not enough to eat. Cases were quoted where whole families stopped in bed all day to allay the cravings of hunger. Coroners' juries returned verdicts of death from want. Famine-fever, and other diseases caused by unwholesome food, again appeared, as in 1847 and 1848. Nor was it alone the poorest class who were affected by the prevailing distress. Many small farmers, who in the good seasons had paid their rents with regularit}', were now obliged to borrow in order to procure the simplest necessaries, and thought themselves fortunate if, with the assistance of relatives in America, they could find means of quitting the country. Even if we allow for much exaggeration,^ it is evident that great distress existed, and that in parts of the west the people were living on the verge of famine. In 1862 the conditions of poor relief were made some- what less stringent by an Act passed in accordance with the recommendations of a committee appointed in the pre- vious year to inquire into the Irish poor law system. The 1 See reports of poor law inspectors on the condition of the poor in Ros- common, Sligo, Galway, and Mayo (1S62) ; and correspondence relating to the Skibbereen and Castletown Unions (1862). 462 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1865 most important change consisted in a modification of the " quarter-acre " clause. The Bill originally provided for the simple repeal of the clause, but the House of Lords decided that it should still be maintained as regards out-door relief.^ Believing that the poor law could now cope with the distress, the Government washed their hands of responsibihty. The existence of any real grievances which Parliament could redress was strenuously denied. The Acts of i860, indeed, had admittedly failed ; but to go further in the way of con- cession to the tenants would be simply to legalise robbery. Though Lord Palmerston's ministry were not greatly occu- pied with the matter, their evident opinion was that politically the land question had been settled. As for the Church, which had so long been left undisturbed, an attack was at length made in 1863 by Mr. Dillwyn and Mr. Bernal Osborne ; but it led to nothing — not even to an inquiry. The then Irish Secretary pledged the Government to an uncompromising defence of the establishment. " I shall be found," he said, " ay, and acting under the advice and guid- ance of the noble lord at the head of the Government, — I shall be found contending on behalf of those principles which for two centuries have ever been — and God grant they may long continue to be ! — the centre of loyalty to the throne, and the bulwark of civil and religious liberty." ^ 1 On the defects in the law which the Act of 1S62 failed to remedy, see " A Comparison between the English and Irish Poor Laws with respect to the Conditions of Relief," by J. K. Ingram, LL.D, [Journal of Statistical Society of Ireland., May 1864). - Hansard, June 29, 1863. IV FENIANISM In respect of both the great Irish grievances, the Church and the land, it needed a violent revolt to change the current of English opinion. Since 1858 that revolt had been in preparation. For ten yearsa fter the Young Ireland trials the cause of Irish nationality seemed to have been abandoned. So secure did the Government feel, that in 1854 a pardon was granted to Mr. John Martin, Mr. Smith O'Brien, and Mr. O'Doherty on condition of not returning to Ireland, and in 1856 the pardon was made unconditional. But disaffection had not died out, as was plainly shown by the strong anti-English feeling excited during the Crimean War. Especially in the small towns, whose prosperity was declining, a state of unrest prevailed. They were filled with men and women from the country districts, who had been unable to emigrate, and whose own misfortunes made them ready listeners to denunciations of English rule. Meanwhile Stephens and O'Mahony were plotting in Paris, and keeping up communication with friends in Ireland. The first step was taken in 1858. Stephens went to Ireland, and O'Mahony to America. In the little town of Skibbereen, a club, called the Phoenix National and Literary Society, had recently been started by a number of young men, of whom the most prominent was Jeremiah Donovan, afterwards known as O'Donovan Rossa. Ex- cited by Stephens, who visited the place in May 1858, and who won them over by promises of American support, and by pointing out the favourable opportunity which the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny had given to Ireland, the members of the Phoenix Society set about 463 464 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1858- preparations for a rising. Fresh recruits were found in Bantry and Kenmare ; and during the summer and autumn reports went forth of their secret meetings, their oaths, and their drilHng. The Government had accurate information of these doings, but held their hand for a time. In December they suddenly pounced upon the society, and within a few days some twenty members were arrested. A special commis- sion was issued for the trial of the prisoners. By the aid of an informer, and after two trials, a national school teacher, Daniel O'Sullivan, was convicted by a jury from which every Roman Catholic had been studiously excluded, and was sentenced to ten years' penal servitude. The other trials were postponed, some of the prisoners being let out on bail. After eight months' imprisonment, the rest, including Donovan, agreed to plead guilty, and were released on their own recognisances of ;^200 to come up for judgment on a fortnight's notice. By these vigorous measures the Government crushed the "Phoenix conspiracy," but the movement of which it was only a part went on. In America O'Mahony's mission had graver conse- quences. There a secret association was established in 1858, whose aim sufficiently appears from the oath of membership : " In the presence of Almighty God, I solemnly swear allegiance to the Irish Republic, now virtually established, and to take up arms when called on to defend its independence and integrity. I also swear to yield implicit obedience to the commands of my superior officers." This was the Fenian, or the Irish Revolutionary, Brotherhood. Nowhere could the anti-English feeling be found more bitter than amongst the Irish in America, who, with a firm persuasion that they had been driven from their own country by English tyranny, eagerly enrolled themselves in the new association.^ But for a good many years Fenianism, as a distinct form of the national move- ment, had comparatively little influence in Ireland, and it 1 " So far as I have been able to learn, my belief is, that among the Fenians in almost every State of the Union, there are many thousands of the very cream of the Irish population " (Maguire, " Irish in America," p. 592). 1863] THE FENIAN BROTHERHOOD 465 never was embraced by more than a small section of the people, though the enthusiasm excited by the first great Fenian demonstration, the McManus funeral in 1861, showed that in the towns there was a field ripe for the revolutionist. The Roman Catholic Church, ever hostile to secret societies, strove hard to prevent the spread of Fenianism. Men like John Martin, Smith O'Brien, and A. M. Sullivan, who believed in open agitation, strenuously opposed it ; and it long seemed as if it could serve no other end than to create dissension, jealousy, and weakness among Irish Nationalists. Yet the Nationalist cause was yearly gaining strength. Even English politicians and English newspapers gave it an indirect assistance by their strong utterances on the right of the people of the Papal states of Italy, as of every people, or at any rate every nation, to choose the form of their own government.^ Let this principle be applied to Ireland as well as to other countries : so it was urged in a petition presented to the Queen in i860, which is said to have borne more than half a million signatures. In like manner were the Nationalists quick to apply to their own case the almost universal condemnation excited in England by Russian tyranny in Poland. The civil war in America followed, and again did many English- men dwell with fervour on the right of revolution and seces- sion. Fresh vigour was given to the Fenian movement by the convention which met at Chicago, under the presidency of O'Mahony, in November 1863, in order to prepare for a more determined and systematic agitation in Ireland. In the same month Stephens started in Dublin a journal called the /m/^ People, under the direction of three men of remark- able ability and character — O'Leary, Luby, and Kickham. They persistently and contemptuously opposed the con- stitutional methods of the Nation as methods which had hitherto led to discreditable failure. To quote from one characteristic article : " Ireland to-day has one chance and ^ " The destiny of a nation ought to be determined, not by the opinions of other nations, but by the opinion of the nation itself. To decide whether they are well governed or not ... is for those who live under that government " {Times, November 18, 1859). 2 G 466 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1865- strength which no subject nation save herself ever pos- sessed. She has not only a new nation, as it were, of her sons outside her own soil, but countless thousands of those sons have been trained to arms in the fierce combats of the present American war. These Irish soldiers (both officers and privates), having already revived the military prestige of Ireland in Transatlantic fights, are impatient to signalise their valour still more in nobler battles at home." ^ The Government knew that the American agitation in Ireland had increased after the convention of Chicago ; but for two years no sign of interference was made, and the Iris/i People was allowed to go on preaching the policy of force. It found its strongest supporters among the Irish of the English and Scotch towns. The inaction of the Government showed that in Ireland there was no immediate danger of its revolutionary advice being taken. The close of the American war in 1865 at once changed the aspect of affairs. Members of the brotherhood, who had served in the war, now came over to Ireland in considerable numbers, and busied themselves in making recruits. At the beginning of September the Government obtained information that a rising was being planned. An informer handed over a letter, written by Stephens, under an assumed name, in which it was said, "This year — and let there be no mistake about it — must be the year of action. I speak with a knowledge and authority to which no other man could pretend ; and I repeat the flag of Ire- land — of the Irish Republic — must this year be raised." The Government decided to take action. Suddenly, on September 15, a descent was made on the office of the Irish People. O'Leary, Luby, O'Donovan Rossa, and some subordinates were arrested, and many incriminating docu- ments seized. Two months later Stephens was secured, but in less than a fortnight he escaped from prison, and, ^ Quoted in " Memoir of A. M. Sullivan," p. 73. See an interesting article entitled "'82 and '29 " (quoted by Barry O'Brien, "Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland," vol. ii. p. 212), the drift of which is that English concessions have been more harmful to Ireland than open hostility. i866] SUSPENSION OF HABEAS CORPUS ACT 467 after remaining concealed for several months in Dublin, succeeded in reaching France. The rest were tried and sentenced to terms of penal servitude. The sentences were severe, not to say harsh ; and their severity was rendered the more odious by the fact that one of the two presiding judges was the renegade Keogh, the friend of Sadleir, the man who had himself been charged with having, in the election of 1852, openly recommended assassination. This first decided step taken by the Government, so far from crushing the conspiracy, had the effect of awakening popular sympathy, and of assisting the Fenian recruiting agents. Every day the situation became more grave. In England there prevailed a feeling of anxiety, all the more intense that no certainty existed as to how far the dis- affection had spread. The new Parliament were accord- ingly met with the demand for a suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, and a letter was read from Lord Wodehouse declaring the urgent necessity of giving the Executive fresh powers. Great numbers of Fenian agents, he said, were engaged in swearing in members; fully five hundred were known to the police ; they had three manufactories of arms in Dublin ; and they were working hard to seduce the troops. Parliament responded to the appeal with the alacrity usual in such cases. The Bill was brought in on Saturday, February 17 ; the standing orders were sus- pended ; it was carried through all its stages in both Houses in the evening ; and it received the royal assent early on the Sunday morning. This was the first Act passed by the new Parliament of i865. During the six months' suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act 756 persons were arrested, many of whom were released after a short term of imprisonment, while a great number of others escaped arrest by fleeing the country. In August a further suspension was readily agreed to. A Fenian raid in Canada in the month of May ; the continued importation of arms into Ireland ; and a proclamation from Stephens, who had now gone to America, that the general rising would take place before the year was out, kept both England and Ireland in a state of alarm throughout the autumn 468 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1867- and winter. In America, on the other hand, Stephens's continued inaction had lost him the confidence of his colleagues. He was formally deposed, and men of less caution were sent over on the wild errand of preparing simultaneous risings in different parts of Ireland. After much blundering in the arrangements, and after an attempt to seize Chester Castle, which but for an informer might have been successful, the long-expected rising at length took place in March 1867, and proved an even more pitiable failure than could have been anticipated. The informer had again been beforehand, so that the Government had full knowledge of the plan of operations. A few police barracks were captured ; there were some encounters with the police ; and in two or three days the affair was at an end. Most of the leaders were arrested, put on trial, convicted, and sentenced, some to death, and some to penal servitude for life or for long terms of years. The sentence of death was afterwards commuted in each case to penal servitude. Few men in England were at that time able to view these events with ordinary calmness or fairness of mind. The most exaggerated and false accounts of the Fenian plans — for instance, that a general massacre had been intended — were repeated without a shadow of evidence ; the severity of the sentences not only was regarded as necessary in the interest of society, but was hailed with indecent exultation ; with general approval the convicted men were treated as ordinary criminals. Yet the English mind, which had often been stirred by tales of foreign tyranny, was familiar enough with the distinction between political offences and ordinary crimes. On May 3, 1867, a moderate petition was presented to the House of Commons, praying, among other things, that the sentences might be revised and the Fenians treated as political prisoners. Its strongest words were these : ** that in the consequent appa- rent hopelessness of a remedy for the evils which press on their country, honourable Irishmen may, however erroneously, feel justified in resorting to force ; that, in a word, there is legitimate ground for the chronic dis- i868] MANCHESTER RESCUE 469 content of which Fenianism is the expression, and therefore palHation for the errors of Fenianism." The statement, which now would hardly be contested, was declared to be a justification of treason. A protest was raised against the reception of so disloyal a petition, and only two members had the courage frankly to state that they agreed with its spirit — Mr. Bright, who presented it, and Mr. John Stuart Mill.i The Habeas Corpus Act had already been suspended in February; it was again suspended for a further period in May. The summer passed in comparative quiet, and the readiness of juries to convict, and of judges to deal out the full measure of punishment, did much to set at rest the minds of Englishmen, Their passions and fears, how- ever, were renewed by the Manchester rescue on September 18, and by an attempt on December 13 to release two Fenian prisoners by blowing down the outer wall of Clerkenwell Prison. The impression produced in Ireland by the Manchester incident has given it historical import- ance. While two Fenian leaders who had been captured in Manchester, Colonel Kelly and Captain Deas}^ were being conveyed to the county gaol at Salford, the police van was stopped by a band of men, the prisoners were rescued, and during the struggle Sergeant Brett, the police- man in charge of the van, was shot dead.^ Some sixty persons were arrested. Twenty-six were eventually put on trial in batches, and a verdict on the charge of murder was obtained against the first five. One of them, Maguire, a soldier in the Royal Marines, was afterwards pardoned and restored to the service ; it was obvious he had been convicted, as he himself said, " on a mistaken identity." Another, Condon (or Shore), was reprieved; there was no evidence that he had been armed during the affray, and he was an American citizen. It was strongly contended that ^ See Hansard, May 3, May 6, and June 14, 1867. - There is no ground for saying that Brett was deliberately shot. Shaw, a policeman who saw the shot fired, admitted in cross-examination that " it was his impression that Allen fired to knock the lock off" {Annua/ Register, 1867, p. 197). 470 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1868 all five had been wrongly convicted, and that in point of lav^ the crime was not murder, but manslaughter; ^ but the judges who tried the case would not admit any doubt, and the Home Secretary declined to interfere. The sentence of death was accordingly carried out against three of the five, Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien (or Gould, the name under which he was tried). The execution caused a storm of indignation to sweep over Ireland. In Dublin a great funeral procession took place, one of the organisers being Mr. A. M. Sullivan, who had hitherto exerted all his influence against the Fenian movement. It added only fuel to the flame when Mr. Sullivan and others who had joined in the procession were put on trial for taking part in a seditious assembly. The jury disagreed; but Mr. Sullivan had already been convicted of publishing a seditious libel in his paper, the Weekly Neius, relating to the Manchester executions, and for this he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the pro- found impression which these events produced in Ireland. They have never been forgotten. The prayer with which Condon concluded his speech from the dock is the theme of the Irish national hymn, 'God save Ireland'; and their countrymen still speak of Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien as the Manchester martyrs. By the beginning of 1868 the violent phase of Fenian- ism was nearly at an end. But the spirit of Feni^mism remained, profoundly affecting Irishmen of all classes, and steadily increasing in strength. It is true that the actually enrolled Fenians were probably never very numerous, that they included few occupiers of land,^ and that, as the English press constantly pointed out, no Irishman of the position of *^ The question arose from a doubt whether Kelly and Deasy were in legal custody when the rescue took place ; if they were not, it was argued that the crime of killing Brett in the act of rescuing them did not amount to murder. See the statement, signed by the counsel for the prisoners, which was sub- mitted to Mr. Justice Blackburn and Mr. Justice Mellor, and the answer of the former, Times, November 21, 1867. " Of 752 persons arrested under specialpowers up to December 1866, only 35 were farmers; of 265 arrested between Jannary i, 1867, and January 31, 1868, only II were farmers (Hansard, February 21, 1867, and February 14, 1868). STRENGTH OF FENIANISM 47 1 Lord Edward Fitzgerald or O'Connell or Smith O'Brien joined in the movement. Nevertheless the germs of Fenianism were everywhere. "If the truth must be spoken," it was said in 1870, by one not given to exaggera- tion, " there are few Irishmen to be found at this moment (save those in place or seeking it) who have not hidden within their bosoms a soupcon of that which, in its concen- trated form, constitutes the chief characteristic of Fenian- ism."^ To such a pass had English Governments brought the country by their indifference to Irish grievances and their contempt of Irish opinion. ' " Irish Nationality in 1870," by a Protestant Celt, 2nd edit. p. 39. DISESTABLISHMENT The Fenian movement, and the widespread sympathy which it evoked, administered a rude shock to English optimism. To fair-minded men, who had clung as long as they could to the idea that the famine had swept away the causes of the Irish trouble, it became clear that disaffection so deep and general could not spring from mere wantonness of spirit, but must be due to the pressure of real grievances. There was still talk, it is true, of further and more zealous repression. In letters to the Times, the Government were urged to place Ireland under martial law. But teaching of a wiser and more temperate nature happily prevailed. " The Fenian movement," wrote Mr. Goldwin Smith on the day of the Manchester executions, " is not religious, nor radically economical (though, no doubt, it has in it a socialistic ele- ment), but national ; and the remedy for it must be one which cures national discontent. This is the great truth which the English people have to lay to heart." ^ " If there is anything sadder than the calamity itself," wrote Mr. Mill in 1868, referring to Fenianism, "it is the unmistakable sin- cerity and good faith with which numbers of Englishmen con- fess themselves incapable of comprehending it. They know not that the disaffection, which neither has nor needs any other motive than aversion to the rulers, is the climax to a long growth of disaffection, arising from causes that might have been removed." - " Surely nobody can think it won- derful," said Mr. John Morley in the same year, " that the Irish farmer and the Irish peasant associate the name of England . . . with all that is miserable and oppressive. 1 "The Irish Question " (1S68), p. 5. - " England and Ireland," p. 6. 472 i865] PARLIAMENTARY REFORM 473 And nobody can believe that England is fully alive to her duty as the imperial nation. The landlords harp continually on their right to do as they will with their own ; and the alien clergy, in just the same strain, together with their confederates in this countr}', declare that their rights are in danger. I have never heard of either the one or the other saying a word of their duties. The idea of political duty is not known to them. And it is this fact which impresses an Irishman." ^ Even Earl Russell, the last man to be carried away by any unpractical enthusiasm, was driven to acknow- ledge that the Irish tenant and the Irish Roman Catholic had grievances that should be redressed. " If, then," he said, " we can find a man with the brilliant oratory of Canning and the sterling honesty of Althorp, it is to such a man that the destiny of this country and the prospects of Ireland ought to be consigned. The University of Oxford, overflowing with bigotry, might indeed reject such a man, but I feel persuaded the great county of Lancaster would never fail him, nor would the country at large cease to cele- brate his pure and immortal fame."- The county of Lan- caster did fail the man thus summoned to a great work ; but the country at large went heartily with him in 1868 and 1869 in carrying out an even bolder policy than Earl Russell advised. When Lord Palmerston died in October 1865, every one felt that, his restraining influence being gone, times of great political change were at hand. For the next three years the question of Parliamentary reform engrossed attention. Failing to carry their Bill, Earl Russell and Mr. Gladstone were succeeded in July 1866 by Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, whose Reform Act of 1867 established the house- hold franchise in boroughs. In the following year Scotland received a similar measure, while Ireland was put off with a reduction of the ;^8 rating franchise to £4. The field was now clear, and Ireland claimed and compelled the undivided attention of Parliament. 1 " Ireland's Rights and England's Duties," lecture at Blackburn in 1S68. 2 "A Letter to the Right Honourable Chichester Fortescue on the State of Ireland," p. 83. 474 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1869 Of Irish grievances, the most urgent, at any rate in respect of the ripeness of opinion, was the existence of the Protestant Episcopal Church as an estabhshed and endowed bod3^ The case against the Irish Church can be stated very briefly. It was the Church of a small fraction of the people ; it had failed to spread Protestantism in Ireland ; and its presence was a permanent cause of irrita- tion, jealousy, and dissension. The census of 1861 showed the population of Ireland to be 5,788,415. The members of the Established Church numbered 693,357, or less than one-eighth of the total population ; the Roman Catholics, 4,505,265, or about ten out of every thirteen of the people of Ireland. Observing how the members of the Established Church were localised, we find the disproportion still more remarkable. For while in Ulster the proportion of Angli- cans to population was twenty per cent., in Leinster it was eleven, in Munster five, and in Connaught four.^ The figures for the different dioceses were as follows : — Province of Armagh. Armagh and Clogher Derry Down and Connor Kilmore . Meath Tuam 23.2 14.3 21.3 9-7 6.4 3-37 Province of Dublin. 7. Dublin . 8. Ossory . 9. Cashel . 0. Limerick 1. Cork 2. Killaloe . 18.4 8.5 3-7 3-8 8.2 4-7' Of the 693,357 Anglicans, 417,011 were found in the three dioceses of Armagh, Down, and Dublin. There were 114 benefices, with a total revenue of ;:^i8,735, in none of which did the Church membership exceed 25.^ Five benefices were remarkable for having each only one member.^ In 199 out of 2428 parishes in Ireland there was not a single Anglican.^ The total gross revenue of the Church was estimated at about ^^700,000 and the commissioners of 1868 1 Barry O'Brien, "Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland," vol. ii. pp. 191, 192. ^ Ibid., vol.ii. pp. 192-200 ; Dr. Lee, " Facts respecting the Present State of the Church in Ireland," Appendix D, p. 31. 2 Godkin, " Ireland and her Churches," p. 484. ■* " Report of Commissioners," Appendix, p. 234. ^ See the list in Brady, " English State Church in Ireland," p. 159, note. 1869] THE CHURCH OF A MINORITY 475 fixed the net revenue at £616,840; and of this amount the two archbishops and ten bishops received a gross income of £7^,794, or a net income of ;^58,03 1. The income of all the beneficed clergy was ^^438, 317 ; their net income, £393)^33'^ The Church of a small minority, comprising the most prosperous inhabitants of Ireland, thus received an annual subsidy of more than half a million sterling, while the rest of the people were left to provide for their own religious wants. In no sense was it the Church of the people, and no unbiassed person believed that it ever would be. Great pains, indeed, were still taken, as in the years of the famine, to find some foundation for the fable that a great wave of conversion to Protestantism had swept over the west of Ireland. Had it not been for the religious census of 1861, the argument would have been much more effective, for undoubtedly the Established Church had strained every nerve in proselytising. But the facts did not bear out the plea. In 1834, when the previous religious census was taken, the members of that Church were a little less than a ninth of the population; in 1861 they were a little less than an eighth. In several parishes the total number of Anglicans was found to be less than that of the alleged converts. When we remember that the famine and the great emigration intervened, and that the Roman Catholics suffered far more in proportion than the rest of the people," the progress from a ninth to an eighth furnished small evidence for the opinion that the Established Church, as one of its advocates put it, had been quietly making its way in all parts of the country. " You call it a missionary Church," said Mr. Lowe; "if so, its mission is unfulfilled. As a missionary Church it has failed utterly. Like some exotic, brought from a far country with infinite pains and useless trouble, it is kept alive in an ungrateful ^ Brady, "English State Church," pp. 174 et seq. Killen, "Ecclesiastical History," vol. ii. p. 534. The Appendix to the Commissioners' Report, p. 249, gives their amended estimate. The ecclesiastical commissioners of 1864 had estimated the gross revenues of the church at ;i^586,428. 2 Obvious as it is, even this has been disputed. " The effect of emigra- tion," wrote Sir J. Napier in 1863, " has told more against us " (Ewald, " Life of Napier," p. 245). 476 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1865- climate and ungenial soil. The curse of barrenness is upon it ; it has no leaves, it bears no blossoms, it yields no fruit. Cut it down ; why cumbereth it the ground ? " It had not only failed of its purpose ; it had produced in Ireland a bitterness of religious feeling scarcely to be paralleled else- where. As it was not a church of the people in respect of its numbers, neither was it a Church of the people in zeal for their welfare. It has been well described as an endowed party rather than an endowed system of religion. The Churchmen who had once applauded Dr. Cullen for his efforts to keep priests out of politics, themselves rushed into political strife whenever their interests appeared to be threatened ; but on no occasion were they found on the popular side. As they had opposed emancipation, so they were now opposing tenant-right. The establishment was thus the favoured institution of a minority, performing no public service, and doing much to widen the gulf between rich and poor. Such, in brief, was the case against the Church. To review in detail the defence would take too long, though it would be instructive ; and only a short summar}' of the principal arguments can be given. The Church should be maintained, it was said, because its doctrines were true, while the Roman Catholic doctrines were false.^ Disestablishment and disendowment would increase ab- senteeism, for what inducement would be left to the Pro- testant landlords to reside in Ireland ? The country would be deprived of the civilising influence exercised by the presence among an ignorant people of the intellectual and educated clergymen of the Irish Church. Protestantism, dependent on voluntary effort, would speedily lose its power. The religious feud, which was repeatedly asserted to be the cause of Irish troubles, would increase in bitterness. Dis- endowment would be an act of confiscation and robbery, an act exceeding the right of the state, which, as it did not give, ^ "This," as Mr. Gladstone said, "was the only principle on which it could be properly and permanently upheld" ("Chapter of Autobiography," p. 19) ; and this principle, as he rightly urged, could not be held by those who approved of the Maynooth grant (p. 30). 1869] PLEAS FOR THE CHURCH 477 so it could not take away. It was not, moreover, a mere Irish question ; for the existence of the Church in England was at stake also, and the Liberation Society would not rest till they had completed the work of confiscation. The plea that the Irish Church was the Church of a minority was met with exceeding boldness. When the famous 114 benefices with a total membership of 1589 were cited, the answer was that these were the very cases where the Church did most good. " It may seem paradoxical," said Dr. Lee, one of the ablest opponents of disestablish- ment, " but in many parishes in Ireland the smaller and the more widely scattered the Church population, the more necessary it is to maintain the Church there." Remove it (the admission was remarkable), and in a few years these parishes would become religiously and politically Romish.^ Thus not only was the Irish Church a missionary Church, but the success of its missions, which was magnified with much statistical courage, depended on its connection with the state. Dr. Lee went further, and urged that it was a mistake to treat the Catholics as forming the great majority. " Why, in discussing the Irish Church question," he asked, "is Ireland always considered as a separate country, and not as an integral part of the United Kingdom ? " and he showed with much satisfaction that, while the Catholics might form seventy-seven per cent, of the population of Ireland, they formed only eighteen per cent, of the popula- tion of the United Kingdom. With like ingenuity did Dr. O'Brien, Bishop of Ossory, protest against the statement that the Church in Ireland was the Church of the minority; "to treat it as separate from that of England," he said, "was to repudiate the fifth article of the Act of Union." ^ Round this fifth article the political controversy raged most fiercely. After declaring the unity of the Churches of England and Ireland, the article provided " that the continuance and preservation of the said united Church as the Established Church of England and Ireland shall be deemed and taken to be an essential and fundamental part of the Union." To ^ " Facts respecting the Present State of the Church in Ireland," p. 18. ^ "Case of the Established Church in Ireland," p. 48. 478 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1865- touch that provision affected England as well as Ireland, and raised grave constitutional as well as religious ques- tions. It would be more than to change an Act of Parlia- ment ; it would involve the breach of a solemn compact — in short, it meant nothing more nor less than repeal. " You cannot," said the Rev. Mr. Oulton, Rector of Keady, "de- stroy that which is essential to a thing without destroying the thing itself. A sphere can no longer be a sphere if you destroy its sphericity. . . . Whenever the Church in this country shall be disestablished, the Act of Union between the two countries shall be ipso facto abrogated."^ " Ireland," said Bishop Gregg, '* is an integral part of the United Kingdom. The Church in Ireland is an integral part of the United Church. If the Church in Ireland be destroyed, where will be the integrity of the United Kingdom ? " ^ " If," said Dr. Lee, " we do away with an essential and fundamental part of the Act of Union, what will that which remains be worth ? " ^ In almost every speech and pamphlet of the time this argument formed a chief part of the case for establishment, and if the Union and the Act of Union were one and the same thing it would have saved the Irish Church. But it was only the verbal argument of men who shrank from facing the real facts of their posi- tion. Seriously to contend that the Union depended on the continuance of the Establishment was to make the most damaging admission in favour of repeal. Dark indeed were the prospects of English rule in Ireland when the Anglo- Irish colony believed, with the first Lord Plunket, that the Protestant Establishment was the very cement of the Union, and that, if it were destroyed, the foundations of public 1 "The Repeal of the Union," by Rev. Richard Oulton (1868), p. 13. "True," he said also, " a British Parliament may retain the civil union when the ecclesiastical, once declared essential to the Act, shall have been abro- gated ; but such would be an exercise of tyranny, not of legitimate power " (p. 32) 2 " Charge to the Clergy of Cork, Cloyne, and Ross," by John Gregg, D.D., October, 1867. One step in the argument Dr. Gregg, as a bishop, was entitled to assume and to omit : " the united Church is an integral part of the United Kingdom." 3 " Facts respecting the Present State of the Church in Ireland," p. 13. 1 869] PLEAS FOR THE CHURCH 479 security would be shaken, the connection between England and Ireland dissolved, and private property annihilated.^ These and other arguments - were passionately urged both within and without Parliament. For two or three years it rained pamphlets in defence of the Irish Church. Its members strained every nerve to enlist sympathy, and to identify their case with that of the Church in England, of the constitution, and even of the institution of private property. Through all their utterances ran a note of most unchristian rage, and a sombre sense of impending ruin made manifest their belief that they were fighting a losing battle. How vehement was the language used may be judged from one example : " Should the British Parliament consent to degrade the weaker sister Church in Ireland to a level with the Church of Rome, as a recognised teacher of the people, it will spit in the face of the English Church, who must share in the degradation which the other suffers ; it will do violence to justice and reason, and will disown the constitution of the kingdom, which inseparably links the supreme government of the realm with the Protestant religion." These were the words of Dr. Verschoyle, Bishop of Kilmore, in a charge to the clergy of his diocese.^ Towards the end of the struggle, when the inevitable result was foreseen, excited Orangemen lost not only their temper, but their respect for the law as well, and talked plain sedi- tion. A certain Rev. Mr. Flanagan particularly distin- guished himself by his warlike tone. " If they ever dare," he said, " to lay unholy hands upon the Church, 200,000 Orangemen will tell them it never shall be. . . . Protestant loyalty must make itself understood. People will say, ' Oh, 1 Plunket's " Life and Speeches," vol. ii. p. 256. ^ The following remarkable proof of the popularity of the Church deserves to be recorded: — " It had been said the Irish Church was the bane of the country. He denied it. Who ever heard of a Protestant minister — the representative of the Church — being shot in Ireland? He thought that fact furnished an unanswerable argument that the people did not regard the Church with disfavour" (Speech of Mr. Walter Boyd, Freeman's Journal, May 29, 1869). ' " A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the United Diocese of I\ilmore, Elphin, and Ardagh," by Hamilton Verschoyle, D.D. 1867. 48o TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1865- your lo3^alty is conditional.' I say it is conditional, and it must be explained as such. . . . We must speak out boldly and tell our gracious Queen that if she break her oath, she has no longer any claim to the crown." ^ A glance through the columns of any Irish newspaper for 1868 and 1869 will furnish many examples of similar utterances. 2 In short, Great Britain appeared to be on the brink of a bloody war with Ulster. Of course, no one contended that the condition of the Church was satisfactory, and many who held disestablish- ment and disendowment to be sacrilege declared that they \vere anxious to see a reform of the Church. Archdeacon Stopford, who denounced the destructive policy, had for many years advocated reform. Dr. Maziere Brady went even so far as to recommend a reform which amounted practically to disendowment. No one was bold enough to say that things should be left as they were. Desirous at all hazards of maintaining the Establishment, a considerable number of Churchmen put aside the argument based on the truth of the Anglican doctrines, and advocated concurrent endowment. Sydney Smith had advised the payment of the Roman Catholic priests. Archbishop Whately had been strongly of opinion that this would do more than anything else to free the Irish people from that priestly influence which he held to be the chief cause of discontent. In the volume of ** Essays on the Irish Church " it was recom- mended as *' the most beneficial and healing measure which could possibly be passed for the United Kingdom in general and for Ireland in particular." ^ Earl Russell believed that the withdrawal of state grants would be a misfortune to Ireland, checking civilisation and arresting the progress of 1 Northern Whig, March 21, 1868. 2 The common form of Orange rhetoric was in this style: "They would not suffer themselves to be robbed of their blood-bought rights. They were animated by the same spirit as broke the boom, as closed the gates of Derry ; by the same spirit as chased the craven followers of James like timid sheep into the Boyne ; and if one of the two parties should go to the wall, it would not be the Protestants" (Speech of Rev. Nash Griffin, Freeina7i' s Journal, June 15, 1869). " First Essay, by Rev. James Byrne, p. 35. 1869] REFORM PROPOSALS 481 society in the rural parts. His scheme was for the endow- ment of the Roman CathoHc Church and of the Presbyterian Church, and for the reduction of the Protestant Episcopalian Church to one-eighth of its existing revenues.^ In 1866 Earl Grey submitted to the House of Lords certain resolutions recommending the adoption of a similar plan. Many of the Presbyterians in Ireland would have gladly accepted an arrangement which would have involved a great increase in the Regium Donum, and which was asserted to be necessary for the maintenance of religious liberty.^ But, whatever may have been the merits of the proposed arrangement, there was one fatal objection ; the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland would have none of it. The National Association, which may be regarded as re- presenting Roman Catholic opinion, distinctly rejected it. In this state of feeling the proposal lost all importance, and gradually dropped into the background. Earl Russell, while retaining his opinion that it offered the best solution, afterwards admitted that it could not usefully be pressed,, and accepted the scheme of general disendowment.^ The willingness of the Church to correct its worst abuses, and the offer of concurrent endowment, were too late. Things had gone too far for compromise. Already in 1865 it had been apparent that Mr. Glad- stone was prepared for disestablishment, and that the Irish Church was tottering to its fall. On March 28, 1865, Mr. Dillwyn moved " that in the opinion of the House the position of the Irish Church Establishment is unsatisfactory, 1 Letters to Mr. Chichester Fortescue, 3rd edit. p. 66. The proportion of one-eighth was determined on the basis of population. See also " Recollec- tions and Suggestions," p. 295. ^ " This right can only be secured by endowment, which would encourage, and not supersede, voluntary contributions, and which should be dealt out equally to the pastors of all denominations" (" Ireland and her Churches," by James Godkin, p. 557). Mr. Godkin was editor of the Derry Standard, and had been one of the leading members of the Tenant League. ^ "I at once discard any preferences of my own, and seek for general disendowment " (Speech in St. James's Hall, April 16, 1868). Earl Grey still believes that concurrent endowment was possible, and that the Roman Catholics objected only to being made stipendiaries of the State ("Ireland,"' 1888, p. 61). 2 II 482 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1869 and calls for the early attention of Her Majesty's Govern- ment." The remarkable feature of the debate was the ground on which the Government opposed the motion. They did so, not because in principle they could dispute Mr. Dillwyn's contention, but because by assenting to the motion they would be bound immediately to bring in a Bill to give it effect. The motion, as Mr. Gladstone said, contained two propositions ; first, that the position of the Irish Church was unsatisfactory, and second, that it called for the early attention of the Government. " For my part," he said, " I confess that I cannot refuse to admit the truth of the first, and perhaps most important, of the proposi- tions ; " and he proceeded to give what in effect were most convincing reasons why the Church should be disestab- lished. An institution so defended was hopelessly doomed. In 1868 the warning was uttered in plainer terms. On March 10 of that year, speaking on Mr. Maguire's motion for an inquiry into the state of Ireland, Mr. Gladstone, as leader of the Liberal opposition, pronounced his memorable sentence of death on the Irish Church. " In order to the settlement of the question of the Irish Church," he declared, " that Church, as a state Church, must cease to exist," Following up this declaration, on March 30 he carried, by 330 votes against 270,^ a motion for a committee of the whole House to consider the Acts of Parliament relating to the Irish Church. A month later he carried against the Government, by 330 to 265, a resolution "that it is neces- sary that the Established Church of Ireland should cease to exist as an establishment, due regard being had to all personal interests and to all individual rights of property." Two consequential resolutions having been carried, a sus- pensory Bill, with respect to new appointments in the Church and the proceedings of the Ecclesiastical Commis- sioners, was introduced and carried through the House of Commons ; but the House of Lords rejected it by a large majority. Parliament was dissolved in November. The 1 Every one of the Ulster members voted with the minority. Of the other Irish members, 65 voted for the motion, and 16 against (Barry O'Brien, " Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland," vol. ii. p. 240). 1 869] DISESTABLISHMENT 483 general election placed Mr. Gladstone in power, and on March i, 1869, he introduced a Bill for the disestablishment and disendowment of the Church of Ireland. After long and fierce debate, it was read a third time in the House of Commons by 361 votes to 247. Modifications were made in accordance with amendments carried in the House of Lords, and the Bill passed into law on July 26. The chief provisions of the Act were as follows : — From January I, 187 1, the union of the Church of England and the Church of Ireland was to be dissolved, and the latter Church disestablished. Its property was vested in a tem- porary body called the Commissioners of Church Tempo- ralities, who were charged with the administration of the Act; while provision was made for incorporating by charter a body appointed by the clergy and laity to re- present the disestablished Church. Persons deprived by the Act of permanent incomes were declared entitled to annuities equal to such incomes, and lay patrons to com- pensation for the loss of their rights. The Regium Donum and the Maynooth grant were to be discontinued, compen- sation being given. The surplus proceeds were to be appropriated, as Parliament should direct, " mainly to the relief of unavoidable calamity and suffering, yet not so as to cancel or impair the obligations now attached to property under the Acts for the relief of the poor." In the working out of the Act, the representative body, which was incorporated in 1870, has received, besides other sums, about ^^"9,000,000 for commuted salaries, and ;^500,ooo in Heu of private endowments; to lay patrons has been paid a sum of ;^778, 888 ; and the compensation for the Regium Donum and other payments to Noncon- formists was fixed at ;^769,599, and that for the May- nooth grant at ;^372,33i. Out of the surplus Parliament has appropriated to intermediate education in Ireland, ;^ 1, 000,000; to a pension fund for national school teachers, ;^i, 300,000; for distress works, ^^1,271,500; under the Arrears of Rent Act, 1882, ;^95O,O0O; and for sea-fisheries, ;^250,000. In disposing of Church lands, the commis- sioners were directed to give the preference of purchase 484 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1881 to the tenants, who might leave three-fourths of the pur- chase-money on mortgage at four per cent. The ordinary tenants of the Church numbered 8432, and of these up to November i, 1880, 6057 had become owners of their holdings at an average price of 22§ years' purchase.^ They have repaid their loans with remarkable regularity, and the change in their position has been observed to produce an immediate improvement in point of contentment and industry. In 1881 the powers and property of the com- missioners were transferred to the Irish Land Commission. Having concluded their labours, the commissioners gave striking testimony to the ability with which the Act of 1869 had been framed. " It might have been expected," they said, "that in administering a measure so intricate, and which dealt with such a variety of interests, we should have discovered many omissions, and that cases would have constantly arisen that were unprovided for in its clauses. Without asserting that there were no such cases, we can state they were extraordinarily few in number, and that the skill and foresight with which the statute was drawn up were very striking as it came to be practically carried out." 2 ^ See a detailed account of the administration of the Act in Thorn's Directory (1888), pp. 641-644. On the reorganisation of the Church and the internal dissensions to which it gave rise, see " Letters and Memorials of Archbishop Trench" (1888), vol. ii. pp. 102 et set/. ^ " Report of Church Temporalities Commission for 1880," p. 20. VI THE LAND QUESTION The land question, bristling with even greater difficulties than that of the Church, had next to be faced. Certain aspects of the land grievance have already presented them- selves, but we have hitherto seen merely the surface. Let us now look more closely at the position of a typical tenant, with a holding of fifteen acres, more or less.^ He was probably born on the land. He or his fathers had reclaimed it from bog and waste, had built the wretched ^ Compare the interesting sketch of a representative Irish farmer in Brodrick, " The Irish Land Question, Past and Present," pp. 29 et seq. That, in spite of the great clearances, Ireland was still a country of small holdings is shown by the following table : — ^-■- ^ under"' -° 5 acres. 5 to IS acres. IS to 30 acres. Over 30 acres. 184I , 135,314 1851 37,728 1861 40,080 1871 48,448 310,436 88,083 85,469 74,809 252,799 191,854 183,931 171.383 79.342 141,3" 141,251 138,647 48,625 149,090 157.833 159.303 On these figures we may remark : i. The change in Irish holdings was nearly completed in 1851. 2. The increase in the larger holdings took place, not by the introduction of a new class of farmers, but by annexing a vacant holding to another holding near it. " A ten-acre farmer has been converted into one of twenty acres by the Procrustean device of stretching him" (Mr. Dalton in reply to Lord Dufferin : quoted in Butt, "The Irish People and the Irish Land," p. 134). 3. The ill success of the attempts to cultivate larger farms with the capital of smaller farms may explain why, after 1 851, the process of consolidation did not go further. "An examination of counties that may fairly be compared," said the Times correspondent in 1869, "shows that the resources of Ireland have increased most where the small-farm system has not been invaded, and that they have increased less where there has been an effort to introduce hastily the large-farm system" (O'Connor Morris, "Letters on the Land Question of Ireland," p. 286). 485 486 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1849- homestead, and had made the rude fence. It was he, and not his landlord, who had brought the soil into cultivation ; for, as the Duke of Newcastle happily expressed it, "in England and Scotland the landlords let farms ; in Ireland they only let land." ^ He and his family tilled the land, very rarely with any outside assistance, so that we might fairly place him in the class of labourers rather than in that of farmers. His rent was almost always in arrear ; in fact, he had probably agreed to pay more than the condition of the land warranted because he knew that punctual pay- ments were scarcely expected. To all appearance, and very likely in truth, he was a man without capital beyond what he may have sunk in purchasing the goodwill of his holding. If he accumulated a little store, he did not dream of expending it on the land, but hoarded it up. "As soon as the poor tenant has brought his farm to that degree of fertility which enables him to pay a rent and live, all further improvement is studiously avoided, as a thing which the tenant believes will only increase his labour to produce a larger rent for the sole benefit of the landlord, whom he regards as a vigilant spy upon every symptom of ability to pay more rent. . . . He therefore avoids every exhibition of prosperity and comfort, in his dwelling, in his dress, and in the condition of his wife and children. He believes that his safety lies in the deplorable appearance of his hovel, his family, and his rags. This feeling is not 1 Hansard, August 9, 185 1. On this point the classical passage is in the Devon Report : "It is admitted on all hands that, according to the general practice in Ireland, the landlord builds neither dwelling-house nor farm-offices, nor puts fences, gates, etc., into good order, before he lets his land to a tenant. The cases in which a landlord does any of those things are the exceptions. The system, however, of giving aid in these matters is becoming more prevalent. In most cases, whatever is done in the way of building is done by the tenant, and, in the ordinary language of the country, dwelling-houses, farm- buildings, and even the making of fences, are described by the general word ' improve- ments,' which is thus employed to denote the necessary adjuncts to a farm, without which, in England or Scotland, no tenant would be found to rent it " ("Digest," p. 1 123). When the system of giving aid became more prevalent, the landlord generally charged five per cent, on his advance, and added it to the rent. For building the landlord often gave the slates and timber (see " Reports from Poor Law Inspectors on the Relations between Landlord and Tenant," 1870). 1870] A TYPICAL IRISH TENANT 487 confined to the poor reclaimers of bog and mountain; it pervades the great majority of tenants from year to year of all the land so held in the country." ^ In the eye of the law, the landlord had virtually absolute dominion over the land. The tenants had no security that they would be left in undisturbed possession. It was wholly at his discretion whether they should stay or go. The law required, indeed, that he should not remove them save in certain prescribed ways ; but the tendency of land legislation for Ireland had been to facilitate and cheapen the process of removal, and some of the restrictions were capable of easy evasion. Thus the old rule that a tenant from year to year, not holding under a written agreement, could not be evicted for non-payment of rent without a six- months' notice to quit expiring with his year of tenancy, was got over by the device of an annual notice to quit.^ That the tenant had improved his holding was not material, and the landlord was not bound to recognise any claim on that account. He might have looked on and given no warning while his tenant expended time and money on the land ; he could still appropriate the result.^ For the land was his, and all that adhered to it was his. Quidquid plantatur solo, solo cedit, or, in Mr. Shee's happy translation, ^ Fitzgibbon, " Land Difficulty of Ireland," p. 28. Mr. Cotter Morison, in " Irish Grievances," p. 43, says, " One of the most distinguished of the scientific men of Ireland recently told me the following anecdote : Seeing a farmer whom he knew to be not without means clad in the most shabby and tattered garments, he asked him the reason. ' Sure,' said the other, ' the last new coat cost me 2s. 6d. an acre more rent.' " 2 See Devon Commission Digest, chap. xx. On many estates every yearly tenant was regularly served with a notice. Even after the law was changed, the practice was not abandoned. As late as 1870 the whole body of Lord Leitrim's tenantry were said to be served every April with notices to quit (" Report of Poor Law Inspectors," etc., p. 15). * The English Law was not different, but it was applied in wholly different circumstances. It would not be easy to parallel on an English estate the case of G'Fayv. Btirke(2> Ir. Ch. Rep., pp. 225 and 511), a case^in which the Master of the Rolls expressed his regret that he was compelled by law to administer injustice ; or the story of the demolition of Kilkee by the Marquis of Conyngham. The story is well told in a pamphlet entitled " Tenant Wrong illustrated in a Nutshell" (1867), by the Rev. Sylvester Malone ; and the accuracy of Mr. Malone's account is confirmed by the criticism of the Marquis of Conyngham on some points of detail (see Mill's " England and Ireland," 3rd edit. p. 8), 488 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1849- " Tenants' improvements are landlords' perquisites." There- fore, so far as the law was concerned, the landlord was lord and master, and his tenants were dependent on his fortunes and personal character. He might add the obligations of decency and honour to those of law ; but, on the other hand, he might make his legal rights terrible weapons of tyranny, selfishness, and bigotry. Over nearly the whole of Ulster, and in a much weaker and less definite form in the rest of Ireland, prevailed a custom of tenant-right which mitigated the harshness of the law. The essential features of Ulster tenant-right ^ were two : first, that so long as the tenant kept to the con- ditions of his tenancy and paid his rent, he should be left in undisturbed possession : and, second, that on giving up possession, whether voluntarily or through inability to pay the rent, he should be entitled to sell his interest in the holding. The landlord might periodically revise the rent, though a rack-rent by extinguishing the tenant's saleable interest would have been a breach of the custom ; he might refuse, but only on reasonable grounds, to accept the proposed new tenant ; and when he himself took over the farm, he had to buy the tenant-right at a fair value. All arrears of rent due by the outgoing tenant were de- ducted from the price of the tenant-right. The custom varied on different estates. On some there was practically free sale ; on others the price was regulated by-the landlord, either at so much per acre or at so many years' purchase. In Londonderry it is said to have varied from five to twenty years' rent, or £6 to ;^24 the Irish acre ; in Antrim and Down, to have been seven or eight years' rent, or from £:^0 to ;^40 the Irish acre. Cases were known where it sold for seventy or eighty years' purchase. Over the whole province the tenant-right was estimated to have a selling value of i^20,000,000. Yet this valuable form of property was absolutely unprotected by law. Unlike so many English ^ In addition to the account of the custom in the Devon Report, see Judge Longfield's Essay in the Cobden Club volume on " Systems of Land Tenure," chap. vi. ; Dufferin, "Irish Emigration and Land Tenure," p. 308; Donnell, " Land Reports : " introduction ; Richey, " Irish Land Laws," p. 100 ; Barry O'Brien, " Parliamentary History of the Irish Land Question," p. 131. iSyo] ULSTER TENANT-RIGHT 489 customs, which the courts have enforced, "a custom Hke that of Ulster, to pay to the tenant the value of his occupancy upon the legal determination of his tenancy, was one contradictory to the nature of the estate created, and excluded by the terms of the contract itself."^ It depended solely on public opinion, which in the last resort was enforced by violence. So firmly was the custom established that not even with the consent of his tenant could a landlord safely ignore it, a tenant who yielded and waived his claim being deemed to have committed an offence against his fellows. That the custom was bene- ficial is hardly in dispute. It benefited even the landlord ; for while rents in Ulster ran as high as elsewhere, they were paid much more regularly, and on a change of tenant the landlord could come upon the purchase-money for arrears due to him.- To the tenant it gave the inestimable advantage of security. He bestirred himself, and expended money and labour on the improvement of the land, having the assurance that he was protected against both disposses- sion and an arbitrary raising of rent. The system had cer- tainly a less favourable side. Judge Longfield pointed out that the high price of tenant-right required the incoming tenant to have about double the capital that would other- wise have been necessary ; that where a great depreciation of land took place, as in 1848, the loss fell entirely on the 1 Richey, " Irish Land Laws," p. loi. The explanation is not quite satisfactory. One cannot but think that, if it had estabhshed itself in Lincoln- shire or Gloucestershire, English judges (at least in earlier days, when the law retained an elasticity which it has since largely lost) would not have refused to recognise it. The reasonableness of a custom that a tenant should have the waygoing crop on the expiration of his term, was put by Lord Mansfield in the leading case of Wigglesworth v. Dallison, on the simple ground that " he who sows ought to reap, and it is for the benefit and encouragement of agriculture." Of course, the Ulster custom is very different in character from any of the English agricultural customs, but the principle on which the latter were recog- nised was wide enough to cover the former. We may go further, and say that if their case had been decided at an earlier period, the Ulster tenants would have acquired fixity of tenure, like the copyholders of England or the " kindly tenants " of Scotland. 2 " Tenant-right in Donegal ... is acquiesced in and encouraged by many agents and landlords, because they look on it as the best security they can have for the payment of the rent " (Coulter, " West of Ireland" p. 319). 490 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1849- tenant ; and that the recognition of the tenant-right, bought at a full price, depended too much on the will of the land- lord. "A landlord who would not venture altogether to destroy the tenant-right, has still the power to make a very great reduction in its value. The tenant holds a valuable property at the mercy of another, who has an interest in taking it from him.^ There is no doubt, moreover, that other causes besides this custom, particularly flax-growing, contributed to the comparative prosperity of Ulster. But the evidence of every competent witness, of landlords and tenants who lived under it and of strangers who studied it, is clear, that in so far as the custom placed the tenant in a position of security it exercised a strong and beneficial influence. Where the system was fairly tried outside Ulster it produced similar effects. In 1842, when the Portsmouth estate in Wexford was in Chancery, the receiver, a native of Ulster, encouraged its introduction, besides giving leases freely, with the result that the Portsmouth estate, which formerly was like other Irish estates, has been since dis- tinguished for the industry and prosperity of the tenantry.^ The idea of tenant-right, moreover, not only was familiar to the peasantry in other parts of Ireland, but seemed to them necessarily involved in the relation of landlord and tenant. Throughout the agrarian agitation of this time landlordism itself was not assailed. The right to a fair rent was not questioned.^ But so long as he paid the fair rent, the tenant, though in law holding from year to year, considered himself entitled to security of possession. Accustomed to this view, he would will and bequeath " the whole of my land and stock " ; he would charge his tenancy with dowers and portions ; he would use the word " seized " in describing his interest. In short, he assumed in every act of his life that he had a right of property in the land. ^ " Systems of Land Tenure" (edit. 1881), p. 40. " O'Connor Morris, "Letters on the Land Question of Ireland," pp. 136-145. 2 " I think highly of Irish tenants as a class ; and I have never met with, and seldom have heard of, a tenant who is unwilling to pay a reasonable rent " (W. J. Hamilton in " Poor Law Inspectors' Reports on Relations between Landlord and Tenant" (1870), p. 79). 1870] TENANT-RIGHT OUTSIDE ULSTER 491 The persistent efforts of the landlords to root out this idea, aggravated by frequent cases of harshness in the exercise of their legal rights, furnish a sufficient explanation of the land war in Ireland. " The foundation of almost all the evils by which the social condition of Ireland is disturbed," it was said in the Devon Report, " is to be traced to those feelings of mutual distrust which too often separate the classes of landlord and tenant, and prevent all united exertion for the common benefit." The clearances which followed the famine, and the hasty zeal of improving landlords, deepened the tenants' feelings of distrust and insecurity. Doubtless the new class of landlords who came through the Encumbered Estates Court acted with least consideration of the tenants' claims, but the unhappy result was not due to them alone. Such a change of policy as took place when the Earl of Leitrim succeeded to his property in 1854 was not uncommon, though in point of rigorous administration the Leitrim code probably stood alone. "Since 1854," the earl frankly de- posed, in resisting the application of the Land Act of 1870 to his estate, " he had made it an inflexible rule to prevent subdivision or subletting. During that time no tenant-right custom had been permitted. If any tenant sold his interest to another, he would evict the parties." ^ The action of many good landlords, who, with the best intentions, and from a sense of duty, strove to transplant English habits into Ireland, tended in the same direction. Proceeding with undue haste to revolutionise the habits of the people, they succeeded in so shaking the confidence of the tenants that an improving landlord came to be more unpopular even than an evicting landlord. Still more baneful than such exceptionally high-handed acts as those of Glenveagh and Partry, because it was a feature of the tenant's common lot, was the steady downward pressure, which took away from him nearly every inducement to industry. Without security of possession, and feeling that prosperity meant increase of rent, he saw no advantage in being industrious and enterprising. Giving evidence on the causes of emigra- ^ Frielv. Earl of Ltitnm : Donnell, "Land Reports," p. 207. 492 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1849- tion before a committee appointed in 1865 to inquire into the failure of the land legislation of i860, Mr. M'Carthy Downing said, " The tenants go because they find that, no matter how the}^ may work and slave in their own country, they do not reap the benefits of it," ^ "I have no doubt whatsoever," said the Bishop of Cloyne, " that the present state of the land question is the root of it all." ^ "I never yet heard," he repeated several times, " that a single farmer left the country and became an emigrant who had a lease." ^ And again, " Those who go attribute their being compelled to go to the want of good legislation ; to the existence of bad legislation or bad government, according to their belief. Yes, and their disappointment is, I may say, made more bitter in consequence of all that has been done, or rather in consequence of all that has been discussed now for the last twenty years or more."^ " Under the present system," said Judge Longfield, " where the tenant has so few rights, and the law is so hard against him, a great part of the tenant's prudence or cunning is to conceal his capital."^ " The real grievance," as he wrote afterwards, " was not that the tenant frequently lost the value of his improvements, but that his Hability to this loss generally prevented him from making those improvements which would have been profitable to himself and useful to the country." ® Irish landlords, indeed, cannot be held directly respon- sible for everything done in their name. Where the estate was large, the landlord was often merely a rent receiver, seldom seen by his tenants, and ignorant of their feelings and wants." The agent, not the landlord, was the real governor. " The agent over a large estate like this," said Mr. Trench, referring to the Marquis of Bute's property, "must necessarily, in almost all disputed cases, become the arbitrator between the interests of the landlord and the tenant." It was in the nature of things that the 1 Minutes of Evidence : Q. 3143. See also Q. 2447, 2461. 2 Ibid., Q. 3400. ^ Ibid., Q. 3401, 3425, 3808. ^ Ibid., Q. 3408. •5 Ibid., Q. 292. ^ " Systems of Land Tenure," p. 57. ^ " Had they (Irish landlords) bestowed ordinary attention on their own affairs, half the present evils of Ireland could not have existed" ("The Irish Difficulty," by an Irish Peer, p. 11). i87o] RESULTS OF INSECURITY 493 agent should incline to the landlord's side, and that he should often be a hard master. " The chief charac- teristic of landlord power," said Mr. Godkin, "as felt by the tenant, is arbitrariness. The agent may make any rules he pleases, and as many exceptions to every rule as he pleases. He may allow rents to run in arrear ; he may suddenly come down on the defaulter with a fell swoop ; he may require the rents to be paid up to the day; he may, without reason assigned, call in 'the hanging gale'; he may abate or increase the rents at will ; he may inflict fines for delay, or give notices to quit for the sole purpose of bringing in fees to his friend or relative, the solicitor." 1 Many estates were too large even for an agent to supervise, and a further delegation of duties was made to sub-agents and bailiffs. The agent was often not resident on the estate at all, but managed it from his Dublin office. " I could mention many cases coming before me," said Judge Longfield, " in which an agent who had been for years agent could not give me the slightest idea of the boundaries of the farms over which he was agent." ^ A worse system could not have been devised. The landlord's power, which was tolerable only on condition of being used temperately and sympathetically, was delegated to men whose training and personal interests led them to use it in a hard, narrow, and oppressive way. The position of the tenant thus depended on the land- lord's forbearance, and the safeguard had proved insuffi- cient. The question which Parliament had now to decide was whether Irish landlords could any longer be safely entrusted with the legal powers which they possessed. The arguments against interference involved two very strong propositions : first, that the landlord owns the land as he owns any other kind of property ; and, second, that the land laws of England must be the land laws of Ireland. To a Parliament of landlords and of business men these propositions seemed self-evident. To deny them, as they were denied in every Tenant-Right Bill, was simply to ^ Godkin, " Land War in Ireland," p. 415. '^ Committee of 1865: Q. 306. 494 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1849- eiicourage dishonesty. "The leading principle of this Bill," said Lord Palmerston of the moderate proposal of 1858, " is to transfer the property of one set of persons to another and a different class." Permit this laxity in regard to land, and what kind of property would be secure ? Concede the rights of tenants in Ireland, and how can you resist a similar claim when made by tenants in England ? It was natural that, seeing things in this light, English landlords should make the cause of Irish landlords their own. Nothing, indeed, is more evident (and it is an instructive fact) than that the real strength of the opposition to the various tenant-right measures was in England, not in Ireland. It was men whose experience was confined to the English agricultural system who urged most strongly that the tenants' claims were incompatible with the rights of ownership. They refused to recognise that Irish ex- perience had already settled the point. To the Irish mind there was no incompatibility ; the only question was whether it had become necessary for the State to interfere on behalf of the tenant.^ But the fears or the prejudices of the landlords were not the only obstacles in the tenants' way. Men of business joined the landlords in condemning a policy which apparently conflicted with the principles of free trade, asserting that it was as mischievous to protect a tenant against his landlord as to protect both against foreign competitors. Political economy, though the greatest political economist of the time thought differently, thus seemed to confirm the landlord instinct. The Whigs, who found, in the financial debates of i860 and 1861, that the battlefield of free trade had not yet been finally won, took this high ground of principle in opposing all forms of tenant-right. The straitest school of Radicals, free from 1 " The landlords themselves meet you, not by asserting their right to do what they will with their own, but by saying that they never do evict without satisfying the tenant. In short, I find that whatever a man may be, landlord or no landlord, if he is only an Irishman, there is no difficulty in fairly discuss- ing the question with him. It is not in him to scout the tenants' claim as utterly monstrous and unreasonable" ("The Irish Land," by Sir George Campbell, p. 103). i87o] ENGLISH OPPOSITION TO TENANT-RIGHT 495 the emotional influence which made Mr. Bright champion the Irish cause, saw the matter very much in the same light, and believed that half the evils of Ireland were due to the bad business arrangements between landlords and tenants. " They must trust in Ireland to private bargain- ing," said Mr. Joseph Hume, "and the only practicable tenant-right would be in passing laws to remove every impediment which precluded fair and equal dealing between landlord and tenant." It is indeed a noteworthy, though not a surprising, fact that the Tory party, in which the landed interest was so strong, had all along been much more inclined than their opponents to treat the tenants' claims in a sympathetic spirit. Lord Derby, who on one occasion confessed that he had "burnt his fingers with tenant-right,"^ was frequently denounced for playing with revolutionary ideas. In 1859 the Saturday Review de- clared that " Derbyism has ever since 1846 been in more or less friendly association with the communists of the Irish Tenant-Right League," and there is no doubt that in some degree the leaders of the Tory party deserved the credit of the reproach. It was natural that the old defenders of protection should be thus less rigid than the new advocates of free trade. They certainly believed tenant-right to be landlord wrong, but they were little hampered by economical scruples, and could hardly feel that the tenants' claims were any the worse for apparently conflicting with free-trade principles. Except in 1852, however, if even then, their leaders never took any serious interest in the subject. 1 Shee, " Papers, Letters, and Speeches on the Irish Land Question," p. 210. VII THE LAND ACT OF 1870, AND THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT The failure of the legislation in i860 and the increasing dis- tress in Ireland opened the whole question. Mr. Maguire succeeded in getting a select committee appointed to inquire into the working of the Improvement Act of i860. Very valuable evidence, to which we have already referred, was given on the position and prospects of Irish tenants ; all the more valuable because no witness was examined who held extreme views on either side of the question. The weight of evidence was distinctly in favour of strong legislation in the tenants' interest, not one of the six witnesses maintaining that things could be left as they were; but the committee decided otherwise. They re- ported that, though certain modifications in detail were expedient, "the principle of the Act of i860. . . . that compensation to tenants should only be secured upon the improvements made with the consent of the landlord, should be maintained." Further evidence was collected by a committee of the House of Lords, appointed in 1867 to report on a Bill introduced by Lord Clanricarde, the aim of which was to encourage voluntary contracts between landlords and tenants. Meanwhile both a Liberal and a Conservative Government had attempted a settlement. In 1866 Mr. Chichester Fortescue introduced a Bill by which tenants not holding under existing leases would have been entitled to compensation for specified improve- ments in cases where the improvements were not pro- hibited by a written agreement between the parties. In 1867 Lord Naas produced another scheme, of which the chief feature was that the tenant might submit his plans of improvement to a public commissioner ; if the 496 l87o] LAND PROPOSALS 497 commissioner approved them, they could be carried out, notwithstanding the landlord's dissent. These measures went a long way beyond the Act of i860, and involved principles which in i860 had been strongly opposed. But they had come too late. They were the last attempts, as Mr. Butt said, " to remedy the most flagrant evils of the insecurity of tenure without interfering with the landlord's absolute dominion." ^ The question was now not whether the landlord's rights should be restricted by law, but what the restrictions should be. Innumerable plans were suggested. Mr. Butt, for instance, proposed that occupiers of agricultural tenements should be entitled to hold for a term of sixty-three years at a fair rent, to be fixed by the chairman of the Civil Bill Court, the landlord having full power of eviction on non- payment, and being entitled to prohibit sub-letting.^ Judge Longfield's scheme would have given to Irish tenants power to purchase a parliamentary tenant-right at a definite price, based upon the rent of their holdings ; the landlord of a parliamentary tenant would then be restrained from evict- ing, except for breach of covenant or non-payment of rent, and if the rent were raised the tenant would be entitled to surrender his holding, and to receive from his landlord the value of his tenant-right.^ In addition to such proposals for the protection of tenants, the creation of a farmer pro- prietary began to excite considerable attention. We do not dwell upon these and other schemes except to note that it had become almost a commonplace of the subject that a satisfactory measure must be retrospective.* No one, from ^ "The Irish People and the Irish Land," p. 220. ^ " Fixity of Tenure; Heads of a Suggested Legislative Enactment, etc.," (1866). Mr. Butt intended his plan to be temporary; as soon as an inde- pendent tenantry could be created, freedom of contract was to prevail. ' " Systems of Land Tenure," chaps, vi., xiii. ; and see Professor Cairnes's exposition of the scheme in Barry O'Brien, " Parliamentary History of the Irish Land Question," p. 196. A strong feeling existed that the Longfield scheme did not receive sufficient consideration ; its advocates claimed for it the merit of giving security to the tenant with the least possible disturbance of Irish ideas. * " In considering the question of tenants' improvements, it appears to me that a satisfactory settlement for the past is even a greater desideratum 2 I 498 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1870 reading the debates of 1870, could imagine what an outcry used to be raised against the retrospective clause in the Bills of the Tenant League. So rapidly had opinion ripened that Mr. Gladstone's Bill, though it underwent some important alterations, passed through Parliament without meeting any very serious opposition. The Land Act of 1870 has often been called a revolutionary measure, and yet nothing is more remarkable than the care with which it was laid on Con- servative lines. " In appearance," as Professor Richey said, " it gave the tenants no new rights, nor in anywise deprived the landlord of any ; but attempted to effect its object in a circuitous manner by affixing what was essentially a penalty to the exercise of rights which it admitted to be legal." ^ In this attempt can be found the chief cause of the failure of the Act, though it must be remembered that the application of a bolder and more direct method would certainly have resulted in the re- jection of the measure by the House of Lords. The leading provisions may be shortly summarised. The Act gave legal force to the Ulster custom and to similar usages prevailing in the other provinces, but did not by definition or otherwise establish uniformity of tenant-right. Customary tenants might elect to renounce the custom and claim the new statutory rights, but this meant de- scending to a much less favourable position. A non- customary tenant, when disturbed in his holding, could claim by way of compensation or damages a sum not exceeding so many years' rent, the number of years vary- ing inversely with the Government valuation of the holding, and the sum in no case exceeding ^^250. Ejectment for non-payment of rent was not to be deemed a disturbance, except in cases where more than three years' rent had been allowed to fall into arrear, or in the case of tenancies the than the most favourable arrangement for the future " (Dufferin, " Irish Emigration and Land Tenure," p. 271). Lord Dufferin, it should be noted, was ready to reverse the presumption of law that what is affixed to the soil belongs to the landlord (p. 256). ^ " The Irish Land Laws," p. 64. 1870] SUMMARY OF THE LAND ACT OF 1870 499 rent of which did not exceed ;^i5, if the court should certify that the rent was exorbitant. On quitting his holding, a tenant could claim compensation for improve- ments — that is to say, for works which added to the letting value of the holding and were suitable thereto, and also unexhausted tillages, manures, and other like farming works ; and with certain exceptions all improvements were to be deemed, until the contrary was proved, to have been made by the tenant or his predecessors in title. With the express or implied consent of his landlord, a tenant might sell the goodwill of his holding. Tenants of holdings valued at or over ^50 per annum could contract themselves out of the Act as regards compensation for disturbance and for improvements ; while, as regards compensation for disturbance, the restriction on other tenants was to remain in force only for twenty years from January i, 1871. Lastly, in what were known as the Bright clauses, the Act contained provisions for enabling tenants to become owners of their holdings, the Board of Works being empowered to advance two-thirds of the purchase-money, repayable in thirty-five years. The Act was thus designed on the one hand to give greater security to tenants, and on the other hand to in- crease the number of landowners, but in neither direction did it produce satisfactory results. A select committee appointed in 1877 ^o inquire into the working of the Bright clauses, reported that while there was a general desire on the part of the tenantry to become absolute owners of their farms, only seven sales had been effected under the Act up to the close of 1877. The fundamental difficulty had been the inconsistent duties imposed upon the land judges of consulting the interests both of the tenant-purchasers and of the vendors; and the committee recommended the creation of an independent body, entrusted with sufficient funds to enable them to purchase suitable estates with the view of afterwards selling to the occupying tenants. The Act failed equally to effect its main purpose of protecting the interests of the tenant, because it left the landlord's rights practically undiminished. An Irish county court 500 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1870 judge has thus expressed briefly and truly the cause of the failure: "Under the Land Act of 1870, as a general rule, the rights of the tenant could be only realised on eviction and when he was leaving the land ; and experience soon showed that, as the Irish peasant, rather than face eviction and quit his home, was willing to forego the benefits of the law, and to submit almost to any hardship, the statute proved in a great measure useless."^ Against an unjust increase of rent the tenant had no real protection. He submitted, fell into arrear, and thereby became liable to eviction without being able to claim the statutory com- pensation. On many estates tenants of holdings of over ^50 were forced to contract themselves out of the Act, or to accept leases which excluded compensation for dis- turbance. At first some good results appeared. Tenants were stimulated to improve, though at the same time land- lords' improvements were checked. But when the working of the Act became better known, and the amounts awarded in compensation were seen to fall far short of the high expectations which had been raised, there followed a re- lapse into the old ways. A feeling of disappointment pre- vailed among the tenants. The promised security turned out to be delusive. A great increase in the number of evictions from 1878 onwards, during years of failing crops and deep distress, brought into strong light the weak places in the Act ; and once more the land question was forced upon Parliament by the revival of agitation in Ireland.- The defects of the Act of 1870 pointed to the necessity of more direct interference on the part of the state, in order to secure to the tenants fair rents, fixity of tenure, and free sale. These three points (the three F's, as they were called) were more or less fully conceded in the Land ^ O'Connor Morris, Contemporary Review, February 1884, p. 178. ^ On the operation of the Act of 1870, see the reports and minutes of evidence of (i) Lord Lifford's Committee (1872), (2) Mr. Shaw-Lefevre's Committee (1878) on the Bright Clauses, (3) the Royal Commission on Agriculture (the Duke of Richmond's, 1879-1881), and especially (4) the Royal Commision on Irish Land (Lord Bessborough's, 1 880-1 881). i88i] THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT 501 Act of 1881 ; and thus, after a long and bitter struggle, Parliament was at length driven to accept the principles laid down by the Tenant-Right Convention of 1850. To follow the fortunes of the Act of 1881, and to relate how the scheme of judicially regulating rents has been affected by the subsequent fall in agricultural prices, would be beyond the scope of this history, and would bring us within the range of present politics. The increasing influence of the Irish party in Parlia- ment, and the progress of the national movement, are likewise subjects which cannot be disentangled from the controversies of the day. Yet a history of Ireland should not conclude without some indication of the steps by which an English political party were led to inscribe Home Rule for Ireland in their programme ; and so much can be done without touching on disputed matters. In the autumn of 1870 was formed in Dublin the Home Government Asso- ciation of Ireland, a body in which Conservatives and Liberals, Protestants and Catholics, were brought together by their common belief in self-government as the remedy for Irish evils. The scheme of the association (which was reconstituted in 1873 under the name of the Home Rule League) provided for an Irish parliament, which should manage the internal affairs of Ireland and have control over Irish resources and revenues, subject to the obligation of contributing a just proportion towards imperial expen- diture, Ireland continuing to be represented on imperial questions in the Imperial Parliament. At the general election of 1874, nearly sixty Home Rulers were returned for Irish constituencies ; and year after year, Mr. Butt, who became leader of the party, brought the proposal before the House of Commons. But for the most part he preached to deaf ears. This failure of calm argument led to a division in the Home Rule ranks. The main body, under Mr. Butt, and after his death in 1879 under Mr. Shaw, still favoured a moderate policy ; while a minority, led by Mr. Parnell, convinced of the uselessness of the old method, determined to carry on a vigorous agitation in Ireland, and in the House of Commons to use every weapon of parlia- 502 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1886 mentary procedure in order to make their influence felt. In 1879 the increase of evictions led to a renewal of the land war. The Land League, an association organised by Mr. Davitt, was formally established under the presidency of Mr. Parnell, its objects being, first, to bring about a reduction of rack-rents, and, second, to facilitate the obtain- ing of the ownership of the soil by the occupiers. The league soon acquired a position of popular power such as no organisation had ever held in Ireland before ; but owing to the state of the franchise, it had not a representation in Parliament of corresponding strength. Though the general election of 1880 increased the Home Rule vote to sixty- four, not more than a half of this number joined with Mr. Parnell, either in the agrarian revolt which he headed, or in his continuous and violent resistance during the Glad- stone administration to the severe repressive measures that preceded and accompanied the new land legislation. The parliament of 1880 was dissolved in 1885, having passed the Reform Act which estabUshed the household franchise in Ireland. This great increase in the electorate enabled Mr. Parnell to carry all before him ; and in the result, out of the total Irish representation of a hundred and three, eighty-five members were elected on a strict pledge to follow him. Even in Ulster seventeen out of the thirty- three seats'^ were gained by the Nationalists. Early in 1886, Mr. Gladstone, who had been defeated on the budget of the previous year, returned to power, prepared to accept the large nationalist majority as a clear indication of the will of the Irish people. In April he introduced a Bill providing for the creation of an Irish parliament to manage Irish affairs, and accompanied it with another bill for the buying out of the Irish landlords. The secession of a consider- able number jof Liberal members (who have since been known as Liberal Unionists) caused the defeat of the Government on the Home Rule Bill. An appeal to the country followed in the summer. Again were eighty-five Nationalists returned for Irish constituencies ; but in England the election resulted in a great majority against Mr. Gladstone, though it is a matter of some doubt whether THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT 503 the Home Rule Bill or the Land Purchase Bill had most to do with this defeat. Since the general election of 1886, the Irish question, still unsettled, but changed in character by the alliance of one of the two English parties with the Nationalists of Ireland, has continued supreme in political interest and urgency. VIII CONCLUSION It remains only to take a brief retrospect. Whether we regard the material well-being of the Irish people or their political relations with England, the period following the famine must fill the mind with a sense of depression. Looking back from the point which has been taken for the conclusion of our historical survey, namely, the year 1870, we can observe, indeed, some signs of material pro- gress, though in dwelling upon them we run the risk of exaggerating their importance. The total wealth of the country had greatly increased. The rate of agricultural wages had risen considerably,^ and more regular employ- ment could be obtained. The houses of the people had improved, or, to speak more correctly, the number of one- roomed mud cabins had greatly diminished. Their food was better and more varied ; and except in the poorest districts of the west, where the peasants still remained dependent on the potato, the danger of general famine had, to all appearance, finally passed away. Here and there some bright feature thus appears to relieve the sombre aspect of the period, and to convince us that the mass of the people had risen to a higher level. Nevertheless, the level was still miserably low. Judged by no ideal test, but 1 If we take, as the first point of the comparison, some year just before the famine, we may say that the rate had doubled ; but from 1851 to 1869 the rise is comparatively slight. Professor Cliffe Leslie, writing in 1S68, says that he "has for many yearg been collecting statistics of prices in connection with a different question, and can affirm that wages have remained at is. a day throughout the greater part of Ireland since 1859" ("Land Systems of England, Ireland, and the Continent," p. 98). In 1878 the average was 8s. or 9s. a week {Irish Statistical Society!' s Journal, vol. vii. p. 308). See also, on the subject of Irish wages, Lord Dufferin, " Irish Emigration and Land Tenure," p. 276; Murphy, "Ireland," p. 204; Butt, "Irish People, etc." p. 146. 504 1849] RETROSPECT 505 by the realised prosperity of neighbouring nations and other parts of the United Kingdom, the condition of Ireland was dark and cheerless, suggesting rather stagnation than healthy vigour. Her progress, moreover, had been sud- denly arrested. The second of the two decades which we have reviewed added little to what had been accomplished during the first. The onward movement, which began after the famine, was stopped by the unfavourable seasons of 1 860-1862, and there had been no recovery from the sudden check which agriculture then received. There is little exaggeration in saying that the Ireland of 1869 was scarcely a step in advance of the Ireland of 1859.^ Lastly, the improvement can for the most part be attributed to the thinning of the population. On this point the evidence of so unprejudiced an observer as Sir James Caird is very valuable. Writing in 1869, he says, "I visited the worst and most distressed, and also some of the best districts of that country in 1849, immediately after the famine, and on recently traversing nearly the same tract, after an in- terval of twenty years, I cannot say that its agriculture presented much evidence of general improvement. The people are better clothed, better housed, and better fed, not because the produce of the ground has been materially in- creased, but because it has become of more value, and is divided among two-thirds of the numbers who shared it then. Most of the wet land is still undrained. The broken, worn, and gapped hedges remain too much as before. Except in Ulster and the eastern seaboard of the country, there is little appearance of any investment of capital in cultivation. What the ground will yield from year to year at the least cost of time, labour, and money is taken from it. The change consequent on the diminution of the population has been followed by an equivalent decrease of the area under corn, and the substitution of live stock in about the ^ See the passage from Dr. Hancock's pamphlet on " The Alleged Pro- gressive Decline of Ireland," quoted by Lord Dufferin, " Irish Emigration, etc.," p. 341 ; and compare Judge Longfield's account of the progress of Ireland in his address to the Social Science Association (Dublin, 1861) with any description of the state of the country a few years later. 5o6 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1849- same proportion. The produce is thus more secure, and obtained at less cost, and being divided among a smaller number of people, they have each a larger share. But there is little spirit or enterprise, and scarcely a sign over a large portion of Ireland of that immense stride which has marked the progress of agriculture in England and Scotland during the same period." ^ The progress which Ireland had made was due, in short, rather to a mechanical than to an organic change. A third of the people had gone : but the habits, the fortunes, and the hopes of those who remained were not essentially altered. Nor was the stag- nation in agriculture, the staple industry of the country, compensated by advance in other directions. The flax trade, indeed, had received a great stimulus from the stoppage of American cotton supplies during the war, but on the whole Irish manufactures remained in a very feeble condition. "In 1868," says Mr. Murphy, "Great Britain had 6205 spinning and weaving factories, in which were 44,179,050 spindles, 532,709 power looms, and 781,280 persons em- ployed ; while in Ireland there were only 198 such factories, numbering 938,381 spindles, 13,910 power looms, and 72,963 persons employed." Of the 72,963 persons em- ployed, 57,050 were engaged in the linen manufacture.- Is the political retrospect brighter ? The story told in the previous pages should give the answer. So far, indeed, as a judgment of the conduct of England towards Ireland is involved, we must bear in mind what is often forgotten — the extraordinary difficulty of the task imposed upon English statesmen after the famine. It was the task of governing a country which for centuries had been treated as a half- conquered province, whose aristocracy were unpatriotic, largely non-resident, and unmindful of the duties of pro- perty, and whose artificial land system had at last suddenly collapsed ; a country where the rich were of one religion and the poor of another, where there existed a strong national feeling but no national institutions, and where the bulk of the people, having lost faith in English good- 1 "The Irish Land Question" (1869), p. 19. ^ See statistics of Irish manufactures in Murphy, " Ireland," pp. 32-56. 1870] FAILURE OF ENGLISH POLICY 507 will and English wisdom, had come to hate English rule. It was, in short, the remaking rather than the governing of Ireland that English statesmen had to undertake, and no judgment would be just which ignored the formidable difficulties that confronted them. But the actual result is not altered by accounting for it. Twenty years ago a fair-minded Englishman, reviewing the Irish policy of his countrymen, would have been bound to admit almost universal failure. The English land laws had failed. The English Church had failed. The English administration had failed. Disaffection had so increased that, outside the circle of the Castle, the Church, and the landlord class, hardly a single Irishman of intelligence could be found who did not believe government by the English Parliament to have hopelessly broken down. The causes of failure were not far to seek. Ireland had serious and manifest grievances. In a great measure they were capable of legis- lative remedy ; yet no earnest and spontaneous effort was made to deal with them, and so long as it was safe they were almost contemptuously put aside. But for the alarm which Fenianism excited, and the fierce light which it threw on the state of Ireland, the disestablishment of the Church might have waited for long years, and a Parliament of landlords would not have sanctioned what they had often called a plan of robbery. English politicians clung to the idea that things would right themselves. The old bad system under which the peasants' passion for land had become a hunger and a disease, seemed to be crumbling away before men's eyes ; the power of the priest, which alone, according to a common belief, kept the people from Protestantism and prosperity, was thought to be declining ; and time, it was said, would complete the work. The hope of Whig and Tory alike lay in the denationalisation of Ireland. They sought to remove everything that fostered a dangerous patriotism, to weed out irregular customs which checked the progress of agriculture, and gradually to win the country over to English ideas and English habits. It was an impossible policy, exhibiting not only ignorance 5o8 TWO CENTURIES OF IRISH HISTORY [1870 and prejudice, but an utter lack of imagination. Its in- evitable effect was to confirm the people in their attachment to the Roman Catholic Church, to make a settlement of the land question more difficult than ever, and to revive the sentiment of Irish nationality. INDEX Abercrombie, Sir Ralph, commander- in-chief of the army, 158, 161 Aberdeen, Lord, prime minister, 446 Adair, Mr., and his tenants (Glenveagh evictions), 459 Agrarian crime. See Rebellion, Coer- cion, etc. Agriculture. See also Famine, Land, Tithes, etc. progress of, 115, 419, 420 Althorp, Lord (Earl Spencer) — leader of the House of Commons, 320 resigned, 337 returned to office, 338-340 on the Coercion Bill of 1833, 320, 321 on the Church Bill of 1833, 323, 324 American War of Independence, 82, 83 Anglesey, Lord, viceroy, 304-309, 316-325 on the need of concession, 308, 309 Appropriation question. See Land (Tithes) Arms Acts. See Coercion Army. See also Volunteers, Navy native Irish excluded, 3, 13 enlistments for the service of France, 54. 55 Nevill's corruption and jobbery, 76, 77 Irish troops sent to America and foreign mercenaries refused in their place, 82 Irish soldiers at the service of Eng- land, 94 a Militia Bill passed, 131 Ireland and the English war with France (i79S)._i3S. I37 an armed association for the defence of the country against invasion, i 50 General Lake's tyranny in Ulster and Carhampton's military out- rages. See Coercion Sir R. Abercrombie's attempts at reorganisation, 158-161 General Lake commander-in-chief, 161, 167 Army — continued. foreign mercenaries sent over by England, 171 Athlone, siege of, 5,6 Aughrim, battle of, 6 B Bath, Marquis of, on tenant right, 451 Baths for the poor subsidised, 95 Bedford, Duke of, viceroy, 232 Beresford, Lord G., candidate for Waterford, 298-301 Beresford, Mr., dismissed, 134-137 restored to the Revenue Board, 142 Berkeley, Bishop — on the coinage, 51 on Irish grievances, 55, 56 Bessborourgh, Lord, viceroy, 401-41 1 on a poor law test, 407 Bolton, Duke of, viceroy, 46 Boulter, primate, 43-58 Bounty system, 106, 116 Boyle " patriots " pensioned, yy Boyne, battle of the, 5 Bribery. See Corruption Brougham on the Catholic Association, 285 Burgh, Hussey, 84, 85 Burke, Edmund — on the penal code, 39 on the relaxation of slavery, 59 on Ireland's loyalty, 137 on the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, 139 Butt, Mr. Isaac, Home Ruler, 421 on the Encumbered Estates Act, 428, 429 on tenant right, 497 Cairnes, Prof., on the Encumbered Estates Act, 430 Camden, Lord, viceroy, 143-169 Campbell, Lord, on coercion, 415, 416 509 5IO INDEX Canning, George — and the Irish question, 246, 247 on the CathoHc Association, 287- on CathoHc Emancipation, 303 Canters, 64, 65 Capel, Sir Henry, lord justice, 17-23 Caravats, 237, 258, 259 Carders, 258, 259 Cavhampton's militar}- outrages, 147, 14S, 154, 156-158 Carlisle, Lord, viceroy, 86 Carlyle on Irish misery, 343-344 Castle government. See also Coercion, Corruption, Viceroyalty, etc. the junto replaced by a representa- tive ministry, 132 Castlereagh, Lord, secretary, 152-276 and the Union (corruption and intimidation), 174, 175, 177, 178, 180-202 on the Presbyterians, 220 on clauses 6 and 7 of the Act of Union, 254 on Orange societies, 267 Catholics. See also Native Irish, Oath question. Coercion, Education, etc. penal legislation. See Coercion Concessions to, 82 Mr. Gardiner's three Bills, 88, 89 freehold leases granted to, 115 Popish plots rumoured, 112 the "Catholic Committee" move- ment, 79, 80, 125-127 a petition to the English Parliament rejected, 125, 126 the projected union with Great Britain denounced, 140, 141 a Catholic convention demands the repeal of the penal code, 127, 1 28 statistics in 1790, 124 Langrishe's Franchise Bill, 126 the Franchise Act of 1793 passed, 129 complete emancipation urged, 134- 140 Grattan's Relief Bill denounced and rejected, 143, 144 small salaries granted to priests, 172 their position in 1799, 189, 190 protests against the Union, 140, 141 190-194 "Promoted Addresses" repudiated, 191, 192 Anti-Union declarations, 192, 193 Orangemen and Catholics combine, 193. 194 their political status at the Union, 219 Catholics — contimied. Pitt's desertion, 224 Pius VII. and Dr. Troy, 229 the struggle for emancipation after the Union, 229, et seq. the petition renewed in 1808, 237 the veto controversy, 239-243 other petitions presented by Grattan 245, 246 a representative committee elected, 246 inquiry refused, 246 Grattan's Bill dropped, 248 other attempts unsuccessful, 248-268 the Catholic Board, 278 the Catholic Association organised by O'Connell and Shell, 279-284 O'Connell prosecuted for seditious language, 284 the Suppression Bill, 286-288 reform promoted, 289 the Association reorganised, 291- 296 suppressed, 2S6-288, 309, 310, 312, 313 the National Association organised, 360 the education question (1824), 288, 293-295 the Emancipation Bill passed, 311 Catholics not promoted by the Grey ministry, 316 Stanley's policy, 317 Catholics not to be excluded from juries, 350 Repeal agitation. See Union Catholics enabled to hold property and accept bequests for religious purposes, 392 the grant to Maynooth College increased, 392, 393 the administration of charity, 404 Irish Church missions to proselytise the Catholics, 438-441 the priests and the tenants, 443 the priests and the election of 1852, 443 . . a commission of inquiry into the working of Maynooth College (1853-55), 452, 453 Cattle plague, 63 Charlemont, Lord, commander-in-chief of the volunteers, 86 Charter schools founded, 52, 53 Chartist movement in England, 417 Chesterfield, Lord, viceroy, 58, 59 Chisholm, Mr., on Irish taxation, 252 254 INDEX 511 Church Establishment in Ireland. See also Tithes the High Church party, 22 the Church Bill of 1833 passed, 323-325 a Church Commission appointed, 332 the Ecclesiastical Titles Act of 1S51, 432, 442 failure of the Church missions, 438- 441 a Ministers' Money Bill passed in 1853 and abolished in 1854, 452 Mr. Shee's Suspension of Benefices Bill rejected, 452 Disestablishment, 472-484 the case against the Irish Church, 474-476 the defence, 476-479 the Union and, 478-480 concurrent endowment, 480, 481 Mr. Dillwyn's motion in 1865, 481, 482 Mr. Gladstone's motion in 1868, 482 Mr. Gladstone's Bill passed in 1869, 483, 484 Citizens' Journal. See Dr. Lucas Clanlirassil, Lord (Earl of Limerick), 60 Clare, Lord. See Fitzgibbon Clare election (1828), 305-307 Clarendon, Earl of, viceroy (168S), i, 2 Clarendon, Earl of, viceroy (1847), 412 " Clearance system," 409-411 Cloncurry, Lord (Hon. V. B. Lawless), 153. 155 . Clontarf meeting, 389 Coercive and repressive measures. See also Evictions, Rebellion Irish Papists disarmed, 18 the Foreign Education Act, 18, 20, 32. 33 two Acts concerning the observance of holy days and Sundays, 20, 21 Papists exercising ecclesiastical juris- diction banished, 25 Papists not to intermarry with Protestants, or be solicitors, 26 ; or vote at elections for members of Parliament, 27 oaths to be more strictly exacted, 27, 28 no Catholic bishop or priest to teach or to exercise religious functions, 29 the Resumption Acts, 29, 69 no Papist to purchase land or to send his children to be educated abroad, 29; Coercive and repressive measures — contimied. priests from abroad not to enter the kingdom, 31 Popish clergy to be registered, 31, 32, 35 . the Articles of Limerick and Galway altered, 33 Poreign Education Act made more stringent, 32, 33 an Act to prevent the growth of Popery. 32 land held by a Protestant not to come into the possession of a Papist, 32 Catholics not to vote at elections, 27> 33, 51 the Sacramental test clause, 33-35 informing against Papists an honour- able and lucrative trade, 36 Catholics not to act as grand jurors, 37 the Popery Act as amended rejected by the Irish colonists, 3^ a second Act to prevent the growth of Popery passed and the penal code completed, 38-39 fresh legislation recommended, 43 Catholics conforming to the Estab- lished Church not to practise as solicitors until after a seven years' probationship ; the Bill lost, 43, 44 a Bill with a five years' probation- ship passed, 44 Papists prevented from voting at the elections of M.P.'s and magistrates, 51 the Charter Schools, 52, 53 Mr. Saul's case, 59, 60 another Bill for the registration of priests quashed in the Privy Council, 60 Papists disqualified from purchasing resumed forfeited lands, 70 the Popery Laws reinforced, 78, 79 penal legislation relaxed. See Catholics effect of penal legislation, 124, 125 repeal demanded, 127, 12S the Gunpowder Bill and the Con- vention Act passed, 130, 131 Catholic peasants expelled from Armagh, 145-147 the Insurrection Act, 148-15 1 Carhampton's military outrages, 147, 148, 154-158 Gen. Lake's cruelties, 150, 151 512 INDEX Coercive and repressive measures — continued. martial law, 166-170, 182 free discussion prevented, 186 Waterford and Tipperary proclaimed, 188 petitioning against the Union for- bidden, 193 intimidation and corruption, 194- 199 the Union measure carried, 200 the Insurrection Act of 1796 renewed, 205, 225, 226 Habeas Corpus suspended, 205, 225, 226, 227, 230, 274, 467 an Indemnity Act for all acts of martial law since 1793, 205, 226 the Arms Act of 1807, 222 rebels to be tried by court-martial, 227 the two Coercion Bills re-enacted, 228-233 another Insurrection Act and a Bill authorising magistrates to search houses for unregistered weapons, 236, 237 the Convention Act of 1793 to be enforced, 245 Sheridan and Kirwan, of the Catholic Representative Committee, prose- cuted, 246 the Superintending Magistrates Bill, 258 _ the Insurrection Act of 1807 revived, 260, 261, 267, 274, 278 the Ejectment Act of 18 16, 263, 265 the Seditious Meeting Act of 1817 inapplicable to Ireland, 267 inquiry refused, 278 the Catholic Association Suppression Bill, 285-288, 309, 310 the Coercion Bill of 1833, 319-322 the county of Kilkenny proclaimed p and the " Association of Irish Volunteers " suppressed, 322 the renewal of the Coercion Act and the suppression of meetings clauses, 333-336 a new Coercion Bill without the meeting clauses, 339, 340 the Clontarf meeting proclaimed, 389 the Arms Acts of 1843, 385-387 O'Connell and others arrested and found guilty, 389, 390 released, 391, 392 an extension of the Arms Acts re- jected, 398-400 Coercive and repressive measures — continued the Arms Act renewed (1848), 416 the Rebellion of 1848 crushed, 418, 419 the Alien Act renewed, 418 sentences on Smith O'Brien and others, 419 the Crime and Outrage Act of 1848 renewed, 431 the Crime and Outrage Bill of 1853, 449 the Peace Preservation Act renewed {i860), 454 oppression under the Land Acts of i860, 459, 460 the Fenian movement. See Fenian- ism Coinage — James II. 's brass coinage, 3 the coinage (1724-29) deficient and debased, 48 Wood's copper coinage, 49, 50 Dean Swift's " Drapier's Letters," SO the patent withdrawn, 50, 51 the difficulty intensified, 51 Colonists. See also Protestants Protestants of English or Scottish origin, 3 rejected a money Bill and a mutiny Bill in the Irish House of Com- mons, II, 12 their "grievances" discussed in the English Parliament, 12 growth of a national sentiment, Jl, 74,91 colonists and natives united, 83 statistics in 1 790, 124 Commercial questions. See also Coin- age, Finance, Free Trade, Land, Agriculture, Famine, Manufac- tures the commercial treaty between England and Ireland, 108-111 prosperity, 1 83-1 84 depression, 200-201 the state of Ireland, 1801-17, 249- 256 Compensation to tenants. See Land Concordatum list reduced, 135 Coningsby, Lord Justice, impeached, 17 ConoUy, Mr., on landlords and im- provements, 458 Constitution, Irish, 70 Convention Act of 1793, 131, 245 Corn and flour (English) imported into Ireland, 106 INDEX 513 Cornwallis, Lord, viceroy, 169-226 and the Union (bribery and intimi- dation), 175-203 his tour in the south and through Ulster, 187, 188 Corruption and intimidation, 1 14, 118- 122 bribery and corruption to carry the Union, 174, 175, 180-182, 185- 188, 194-196, 198-200 the escheatorship of Monster, 185 Coshier, 212 Craddock, Col., 146, 147 Crawford, Mr. Sharman, leader of the Federalist party, 381, 382 on the Arms Act of 1843, 385, 386 and tenant-right, 427, 444 Crime. See Rebellion, Coercive Measures, Fenianism Crimes Bill. See Coercion Cuffe, Mr., on Ireland in 1795, 142 Cullen, Dr., Archbishop of Armagh, 440,441 his hostility to tenant-right, 447 Curran on Parliamentary reform, 152 D Dallas, Rev. A. R. C, Church mis- sionary, 438-440 Davitt, Mr. M., formed the Land League, 502 Declaratory Act, Ti repeal moved, 89-91 " Defenderism," 147 Derby, Lord, prime minister, /\,\/\ -446 Derry taken by the English, 2 besieged by the Irish, 3, 4 Devon Land Commission (1843-45), 207, 392, 395- 396, 486, 487. 491 the report, 408, 409 Dillwyn, Mr., on the Irish Established Church, 481, 482 Disraeli, Mr., and the Irish question, 3.91 Doddington, Mr. George, Pembroke's secretary, 37, 38 Doherty's promotion to the bench, 316 Dopping, Bishop, 2 preached on the Treaty of Lime- rick, 8 a privy councillor, 9 examined in Committee of the House of Commons, 17 Dorset, Duke of, viceroy, 75, 76 Downshire, Marquis of, and the Union, 187, 188, 198 " Drapier's Letters," by Dean Swift, 50, 51, 73, 74 Drummond, Thomas, under-secretary, 351-374 on the duties of property, 373, 374 on the distress, 397 Dublin city — improvements, 95, 1 14, 115 depression after the Union, 201 the corporation's dispute with Shrewsbury's Government, 42 Dufferin, Lord, on tenant-right, 451, 452 Duffy, Sir Gavan, on the Tenant-Right Conference (1850), 436 Duigenan, Dr. — on Irish atrocities, 230 on the Irish Catholics, 230 Dungannon Convention, 87, 88, 90 Durham letter of Lord John Russell (1850), 432 D'Usson, Major-General, 5 Duties on imports. See Free Trade Duvergier's description of O'Connell, 295-296 E Eden, Mr., moved the repeal of the Declaratory Act, 89 Education. See also Penal Legislation against Catholics the question discussed in 1824, 288, 293-295 the elementary education grant in- creased, 392 the grant to Maynooth College in- creased and three other undenomi- national colleges founded, 392, 393 effect of the Church missions, 440 Ejectment Act. See Evictions Electoral. See also Catholics, Corrupt Practices Papists not to vote at elections, 27, 33, SI reform rejected (1783-84), 98, 99 tests for candidates, 1 18 the Catholic struggle for emancipa- tion, 134-141 Langrishe's Franchise Bill, 126 the Franchise Act of 1793, 129 Grattan's Relief Bill, 143, 144 the Catholic struggle for emancipa- tion after the Union, 229, et seq. Waterford election (1826), 298-301 Clare election (1828), 305-306 elections discussed in Parliament, 302 2 K 514 INDEX Electoral — continued the Catholic Emancipation Act passed, 311, 315, 316 the forty-shilling franchise, 207, 210, 213 extended to Roman Catholics in 1793, 408, 409 the forty-shilling freeholders dis- franchised, 312, 409 the Reform Act of 1850, 431 the election of 1852, 442-444 the rating franchise reduced to ;^4, 473 the Reform Act of 1884, 502 Eliot, Lord, chief secretary, 383, 392 Elliott, Mr., on the need of inquiry into the state of Ireland in 1803, 228 Emancipation Acts. See Catholics, Union, Parliamentary, Electoral Emigration, 9, 54, 55, 62, 125, 302 1801-81, 412 1848, 412 •1852-61, 425 money supplied by the Irish in America, 425 Emmett's insurrection,. 226, 227 Encumbered Estates Act, 414,427-431 Evictions — returns from 1849, 424 evictions in Ulster, 61 the Ejectment Act of 18 16, 263, 264 " the clearance system," 409—410 the ejectment remedy, 427 oppression under the Acts of i860; evictions by Lord Plunkett, Mr. Adair, and others, 459, 460 Exports. See Free Trade F's, three, 436, 501 Famine — 1729, 52 1741, 55, 56 1817-19, 265, 266 1822, 274 1846-48, 401-41 1 relief works, 402-404 relief committees, 404-406 tests of destitution, 407 Ireland after the famine, 41 1-414 distress, 1860-65,461,462 Federalist party, 381, 382 Fenianism, 463-471 The Phoenix Society, 463, 464 O' Donovan Rossa, 463-466 Fenianism — continued the Phcenix conspiracy crushed, 464 the Fenian Brotherhood in America, 464-466 the Irish People prosecuted, 466, 467 a rising in 1867 suppressed, 468, 469 Kelly and Deasy, Fenian leaders, rescued from the police at Man- chester, and a police sergeant murdered, 469 many arrests, and three men (" the Manchester martyrs") executed, 470 Finance, national. See also Coinage, Pensions the Irish House of Commons and the right of originating money Bills, II, 42, 70 the Bank of Ireland created, 96 Parliament and the revenue, 71, 72, 75-77 the Responsibility Bill, 130 the cost of revenue collection di- minished, 135 a surplus applied to national objects, 136 the National Debt in 1795. 136 the Irish Budget (1801), 224 clauses 6 and 7 of the Act of Union. 249 the National Debt in 1801, 249, 250, 270 consolidation of Exchequers (18 17), 251-257 income tax extended to Ireland {1853), 450 Financial questions, miscellaneous. See Commerce, Free Trade, Manu- factures, Land, etc. Fingall, Lord, Catholic leader, 233, 237, 238, 246 Fisheries, 107 Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, arrested, Fitzgerald, Vesey, appointed President of the Board of Trade, 305 his re-election defeated, 305, 306 Fitzgibbon, Lord Chancellor, charged with Jacobinism, 163 P'itzgibbon, Mr., on the Encumbered Estates Act, 429 Fitzgibbon, Mr., attorney-general, 102 Fitzherbert (Lord St. Helens), secre- tary, 119-121 Fitzpatrick, General, and the Union project, 179 INDEX 515 Fitzwilliam, Lord, viceroy, 133-134, 141 as a landlord, 211 Fletcher, Judge — on the Orangemen, 222 on "outrages" (charge to the grand jury at Wexford), 261, 262, 263 Flood, Mr., and Irish legislative inde- pendence, 86, 91, 98, 109 Foreign education. Sc-e Coercion Foreign influences, 123 Foster, Mr., lord chancellor, 102 Foster, Mr., speaker on freedom and prosperity (1799), 183, 184 Fox, Mr., 89-233 moved the repeal of the Declaratory Act, 90 on Irish discontent, 89 on the commercial settlement with England, 109 on the regency question, 117, 118 and the Catholic Emancipation, 232, 233 France and Ireland, 4, 5, 135, 137, 139, 164, 165, 417,418 Franchise. See Electoral Freeholds. See Land Free trade and protection. See also Commerce, etc. free trade agitation in 1775, 82, 83 Hussey Burgh's amendment carried, 84, 85 resolutions for the relief of commerce, ^5 protective duties needed, 100 smuggling from Ireland into Great Britain, 103 non-importation leagues, 103-105 English goods imported, 104 the import into Great Britain of Irish goods prohibited, but Irish ports opened to English goods, 104, 105 Irish linen imported into England, 105 Lord Sheffield's table of import duties payable in England and in Ireland, 106 British corn and flour imported, but no reciprocity, 106 a commercial treaty between Eng- land and Ireland, 108-111 Fremanlle, Sir Thomas, secretary, 392 G Galway, Earl of (De Ruvigny), lord justice, 23 Gardiner, Mr. (Lord Mountjoy), 88, 89 George IV. visited Ireland, 272-274 Ginkel, Baron de, commander of the British forces at Athlone, 5, 6 Gladstone, Mr.— carried his disestablishment motion (1868), 482 prime minister (1869), 483 Gosford, Lord, on the Catholic perse- cutions in Armagh of 1795, 146 Goulburn, secretary, 276, 277 Grafton, Duke of, viceroy, 43, 44 recalled, 50 Grant, secretary, 275, 276 Grattan, Henry, 83-270 entered parliament, 83. See also Parliamentary tributes to, 94 in London, 133 favoured war with France, 135, 139 refused re-election in the Union Parliament, 157 charged with treason, 163 returned to Parliament to protest against the Union, 197, 200 returned to Parliament at West- minster, 231-270 presented the Catholic petition, 239, 24s and O'Connell, 241, 269 died, 268-270 on Ireland's liberty, 91 on ministerial corruption, 121, 122 on the Catholic persecutions in Armagh, 146 on the charge of insurrection against Ulster, 150, 151 on the Parliamentary Reform Bill of 1797, 153 on tithes, 215-216 on the Catholic Emancipation struggle, 231, 232 Grenville, Lord, 229-232, 235 Grey, Lord, prime minister, 315-319 resigned, 337 Grey, Philip, Earl de, viceroy, 383- 392 Griffith's land valuation, 395 Gunpowder Bill passed, 130 H Habeas Corpus. See Coercion Hanna, Rev. Dr., on open-air preach- ing, 457 Harcourt, Lord, viceroy, 257 Hardinge, Sir Henry, secretary, 316, 340 Hardwicke, Lord, viceroy, 226-232 5i6 INDEX Harrington, Lord, viceroy, 75 Hearth tax, 2o6 abolished, 135 Heytesbury, Lord, viceroy, 392 Hibernian Association, 294, 295 High Church party, 22 Hoadly, Primate, 58 Holy Day Observance Act, 20 Home Rule, 422, 501-503 The Home Government Association (1870) and the Home Rule League (1873). 501 Mr. Gladstone's Bill (1886) defeated, 502 Horsman, Mr. — on the famine of 1846-47, 402, 403 on English misgovernment, 426 Howick, Lord, 235, 236 Hutchinson, Colonel, presses for an inquiry into the state of Ireland (1803), 227, 228 I Imports. See Free Trade Income tax extended to Ireland (1853), 450 Indemnity Acts. See Coercion Insurrection Acts. See Coercion Insurrections. See Rebellion Irish in America. See Emigration, Fenians IrisA People started (1863), 465 Irish Union (United Irishmen) — charge of treason in Belfast, 151, 152, 154 arrests, 159 societies formed in Belfast and in Dublin, 164 the Dublin society dispersed by the Government, 164 a secret and military organisation formen, 164, 165 an insurrection, 165-170 an Act of Amnesty, 169 Irvine, Colonel William, chairman at the Dungannon convention, 87 Jacobites, Z7 ^ 132 James II., 1-5 landed in Ireland and summoned a Parliament at Dublin, 2 defeated in the battle of thelBoyne, 5 died, 30 Judicial reforms, 95 Juries, "jury-packing," 48, 246, 277 grand juries and the county rate, 217, 218 Catholics to serve on juries, 305 K Kendall, Duchess of, and Wood's coinage, 49 Keogh, John, Catholic leader, 125-127, 140, 233 Keogh, Mr., and the Tenant-Right League, 446, 447 Kildare Place Schools, 293-295 Knox, Alex., on Ulster (1803), 221 Knox, George, on the Catholic Relief Bill of 1795, 144 Labouchere, Mr., secretary, 401-412 Labour Rate Act, 403, 404 Lake, General, sent to crush the " in- surrection " in Ulster, 150, 151 commander-in-chief, 161, 167 Lamartine and the Irish cause, 417 Land question. See also Agriculture, Famine, Evictions, Coercion, Tithes, etc. a chaotic state of ownership, 10 a Court of Claims established, and the colonists dissatisfied with William's confiscations, 10, 11, 14-16 the subject taken up by the English House of Commons ; a commission of inquiry appointed, and a second Act of Settlement passed, 14 Outlawries Bills, 23-25 evictions in Ulster, 61 condition of the south of Ireland, 63-67 enclosures of the common land re- sisted by Levellers and White- boys, 64 the tithe grievance, 64-66 the sad lot of the Irish peasant in the first half of the eighteenth century, 66 Whiteboys, 64, 67 Oak and Steel Boys, 61, 62, 6-j the Resumption Act passed, and Papists disqualified from purchas- ing resumed forfeited lands, 69 INDEX 517 Land question — continued reform of the tithe system needed, 113. "4 freehold leases, 1 1 5 land tenure at the Union, 207 the relation between landlord and tenant, 208 middlemen, 210, 21 1, 260 forty-shilling ireeholds, 207, 213, 214 value of land, 210, 211 letting liy auction, 211 rack-renting, 21 1, 212 rents paid in labour and wages in kind, 214, 215 tolls, 215 tithe proctors, 211; -2 17, 237 Mr. H. Parnell's Tithe Bill, 245 the county rate and grand juries, 217, 218 the magistracy and the Irish peasants, 218 debate on the distress in 1822, 275 tithe reform, 276 history of tithes, 3 1 8 appropriation, 330-332, 348, 349, 355-357, 359 \ a Church commission, 332 the tithe war of 1S38, 341, 342 the Court of Exchequer and tithe collection, 3 5 8, 359 the tithe question settled (1S38), 362, 363 the land agitation of 1843, 384-387 the potato introduced, 394 condition of the peasantry in 1846, 394, 400 Mr. Griffiths's report, 395 the Devon Commission (1843-45), 207,'392. 395, 396,486, 487,491 report, 408, 409 English landlords and absentees, 257 the state of Ireland (1812-14), 256- 259 Judge Fletcher's charge (18 14), 259, 261-263 the Ejectment Act of 1816, 263, 265 revolt of freeholders, 298-301 forty-shilling freeholders, disfran- chised, 312, 409 tithe grievance, 317-319 the corn laws, 397 repealed, 398, 399 potato disease and famine (1845-47), 397-421 compensation to tenants for some improvements to be allowed, 399 effect of the "quarter of an acre" clause, 408 Land question — contunied " the clearance system," 409, 410 an Act in 1848 to compel landlords to give two days' notice of in- tended evictions to poor law guardians, 410 the ejectment remedy, 424-427 the Land Improvement Act passed, 451 the Tenants' Improvements Bill re- jected, 415 waste land reclaimed (i 841 -81), 4 19, 420 improvement in agricultural methods, 420 landlords denounced, 426, 427 Mr. Sharman Crawford's Bill (1848) rejected, 427, 444 the Encumbered Estates Act, 414, 427-431 a new race of landlords, 430, 431 the Landed Estates Court (1858), 428 the priests ami the tenants, 442 tenant-right associations, 435 a tenant-right conference (1850), 435, 437 fifty M.P.'s pledged to tenant-right in 1852, 444 the four Napier Land Bills, 444, 445, 449, 450 three Napier Land Bills passed in 1854, 450 the Tenant-Right League betrayed by Mr. Keogh and others, 446-448 Dr. Cullen's hostility and collapse of the Tenant-Right League, 448 prejudice against tenant-right, 450- 454 the Landed Property Improvement Act and the Landlord and Tenant Law Amendment Act of i860, 458, 459 evictions by Lord Plunket and Mr. Adair, 459, 460 the land question, 1849-70,485-495 the position of a typical tenant, 485- ^487 Ulster tenant-right, 488 tenant-right outside Ulster, 490-493 results of insecurity, 493, 494 English opposition to tenant-right, 494, 495 inquiry into the working of the Im- provement Act of i860, 496 two Compensation Acts, and other attempts to remedy existing evils, 496, 497 5i8 INDEX Land question — continued Mr. Gladstone's Land Act of 1870, 498-500 summary of, 498, 499 the Bri<;ht clauses, 499 failure of, 500 the Act of 1 88 1 and the three F's, 500, 501 the Land League, 502 Langrishe, Sir Hercules — his Franchise Bill, 126 on legislative independence, 98, 99 Latocnaye, M. de, on Ireland in 1798, 160, 161 Lauzun, Comte de, 4, 5 Lawless, Hon. V. B. See Lord C Ion- curry Lee, Dr., on disestablishment, 477, 478 Legislative independence won, 91, 93. Continued under Parliamentary Leinster, Duke of, commander of the volunteers, 84 Leinster, Duke of, commander of the Kildare Militia, 154, 155 Levellers, 64 Lewis, Cornewall, on distress and crime, 343, 344 Lewis, Mr. Frankland, on the relation between landlord and tenant, 208, 209 Lewis, Sir George, on Irish discontent, 397 Liberal Protestants, 221 Limerick besieged, 5, 6 Limerick, Treaty of, 6-12, 24, 69 signed and confirmed, 6-8 its provisions, 6-8 an omission rectified, 7> 8, 11 disarmed Irish, ill-treated by the sheriffs and magistrates, embark for France, Q the confiscation of estates, 10, 12, 13-16 an attempt by the English Parliament to set aside the articles of the treaty, 12 an Act to confirm (rather to frustrate) the articles of the treaty, 24 violation of, 69 Lincoln, Lord, secretary, 399 Linen, Irish, imported into England, lOS Littleton, Mr. E. J. (Lord Hatherton), secretary, 32 5-339 Liverpool, Lord, premier, 246-303 Longfield, Judge, on tenant-right, 489, 492, 493, 497 Lords justices, government of, 44 Lowe, Mr., on the Irish Established Church, 475 Lucas, Dr., published his Citizens^ Journal, 56, 57, 75, 78 his reforms, 80 Lucas, Mr., and the political action of Father Keefe and Father O'Shea, 448 " Luttrellades," 147, 156 M McAulay, Alex., on pensions, 72 McHale, Archbishop, 440, 441, 447, 448 McKnight, Dr., president of the tenant- right conference, and editor of the Banner of Ulster, 436 McManus's funeral (1861), 465 Magistrates and the Irish peasants, 218 Drumniond's reforms, 369 Maguire, Mr., on the working of the Improvement Act of i860, 496 Malone, Anthony, chancellor of the Exchequer and a privy councillor, 77, 78 Manufactures, progress of, 97, 98, lOo, 104, 105, 183, 184, 200, 201, 506 English and Irish manufactured goods, 100 manufactures in 1868, 506 Mathew, Father, temperance mission of, 368, 369 Maynooth College grant increased, 392 Melbourne, Lord, prime minister, 318, 338-340, 349 Middlemen and tenants. See Land Military questions. See Army, Navy, Volunteers Mill, John Stuart, on Fenianism, 472 Milner, Bishop, 238-240 Missions, Irish Church, 438-441 Moira, Lord, on Ireland in 1797) ^^5^ Molyneux, Wm., on colonial inde- pendence, 68, 69 Money Bills. See Finance Monteagle, Lord, on tenant-right, 450, Moreton, Bishop, preached on the Treaty of Limerick, 9 Morley, Mr. John, on England's duty to Ireland, 472, 473 Morpeth, Lord, secretary. 350 Mountcashel, Lord, sent to France, 4 Mountgarret, Lord, on the Irish com- mercial distress, lOO INDEX 519 Mountjoy, Lord (Mr. Gardiner) — his Catholic Relief Bills, 88, 89 Mulgrave, Lord, viceroy, 350 Municipal reform, 363-365 Munster escheatorship given to Union- ists only, 185 Mutiny Bills. See Coercion N Napier, Mr., Irish attorney -general, 444 Napier Land Bills, 444, 44S. 449> 4SO Nation newspaper founded, 377, 417 National Association organised, 360 National debt. See Finance National finance. See Finance National poetry, 30 National sentiment engendered, 1"^,, 74, 91 Nationalist cause, 465. See also Catholics, etc. Native Irish. See also Catholics excluded from the army, 3, 1 3 and from Parliament, 1 1 their condition in 1 700, 15 excluded from the galleries of the House of Commons, 41 excluded from his;h offices, 47, 48 concessions to, 83 colonists and natives united, 83, 84 Navigation Act repealed, 415 Navy, Irish seamen for the common defence of the empire, 94 Nevill, A. J., surveyor-general, misap- propriated public money, 76, Tj Newfoundland founded by Irish Catho- lics, 107 Newport, Sir J., 255, 260, 267, 275 Nonconformists. Sec also Presbyterians, Protestants their position in 1695, 21, 22 their attitude towards the penal code, 39 the Test Act imposed on them, l},, 39, 40 persecutions, 41 emigration, 54 North, Lord, moved free trade resolu- tions, 85 O Oak Boys, 61, 62, 67 Oaths— the Oath of Supremacy abrogated in Ireland, 1 1 Oaths — continued the Oaths of Allegiance and Abjura- tion substituted, 22 the Catholics and, 28 a Modification Bill rejected by the Lords, 289 the oath enacted by the Catholic Relief Bill, 311 the Unlawful Oaths Act continued in 1851,431, 432 O'Brien, Mr. Smith, repealer, 417 arrested on a charge of conspiracy, 418 on the discontent in 1843, 387, 388 O'Connell, Daniel, 191, 221,222,233- 400 his rise and progress, 233, 234 secretary of the Catholic Committee, 241 Duvergier's description of, 295, 296 and the Waterford election (1826), 301 elected for Clare, 306-308 not allowed to take the new oath, 311 re-elected, 315 moved tithe amendment to the Co- ercion Act of 1833, 322 and Grattan, dissensions, 242, 269 and the Catholic Board, 279 and the Catholic Association, 279- 284 prosecuted for seditious language, 284 excluded from official life, 349, 350 founded the Repeal Association, 376 defeated in Dublin, 377 and the Young Ireland Party, 378- 393 elected Lord Mayor of Dublin, 383 and the Clontarf meeting, 389 arrested on a charge of conspiracy, 389-391 died at Genoa in 1847, 400 on the Catholics and the Union, 19 1 on the Orangemen, 221, 222 on the Catholic struggle for emanci- pation, 235 on the veto, 242, 243 on Ireland after the Union, 244 on Catholic Emancipation, 268 on Irish independence, 272, 273 O'Connor, Charles, 79 October 23rd anniversary thanksgiving discontinued, 3 O'FIaherty, Mr., on the Tenant-Right League, 446, 447 O'Mahony and the Fenians, his mission to America, 463-466 520 INDEX Orangemen, 164, 165 and the Union, 175, 176, 193, 194 Orange associations, 220-222, 261, 262, 267 the November celebration prohibited and a riot at Dublin Theatre, 277, 278 Brunswick clubs, 307 the Orange lodges broken up, 361, 362 Belfast riots of 1857, 456, 457 the Brady letter and commissioners of the peace, 456, 457 and disestablishment, 479, 480 Orde, Mr., secretary, 102, 108 Ormond, Duke of, governor, 31, 37 Outlawries Bills, 23, 24, 25 Paine's " Rights of Man," 1 32 Palmerston, Lord, 247 prime minister (1859), 457 died, 473 I on the discontent in 1843, 386, 387 on tenant-right, 453 Papist. See Catholics, Native Irish, Coercion, etc. Parliamentary — 1689. James's Parliament, 2 1692. William's first Parliament, II, 12 exclusion of the native Irish and attitude of the colonists, 1 1 prorogued, 12 1695-1771. Penal legislation direc- ted chiefly against the Catholics. See Coercion, Land Question 1719. A declaratory Act affirming the authority of the English Parliament to make laws for Ireland, 73 the right to dispose of surplus revenue, 75-77 1753. The king's consent. 76 disputes about money Bills, 76, 7^ 1756. The purchase of members, yy pension resolutions, 78 1765. A Septennial Bill, 80 a Bill to prevent the sale of offices of administration and justice lost, 80 1767. An Octennial Bill passed, 81 1769. A money Bill, originating in the English Privy Council, re- jected by the Irish House of Commons, 81, 82 Parliamentary — continued 1771-75. ConcessionstoCatholics, 82 1771-S2. The English Parliament and Irish legislative indepen- dence, 69, 70 the Irish House of Commons and money Bills, 70-72 1779. Henry Grattan, the champion of the natives and the colonists, 83, et seq. Hussey Burgh's free trade amend- ment carried, 84, 85 resolutions for the relief of Irish commerce passed by the English Parliament, 85 1782. ConcessionstoCatholics; two of Mr. Gardiner's Bills passed, 88, 89 Grattan's motion for a declaration of rights carried, 90 repeal of the Declaratory Act moved by Mr. Eden, 89 ; and by Mr. Fox, 90 Grattan's address in reply, 90 Mr. Flood's amendment defeated, 91 A Bill to settle the question passed and Irish legislative indepen- dence won, 91 Grattan's Parliament ; the Military Act limited in duration, 93 the independence of judges se- cured, 95 the Bank of Ireland created, 96 Habeas Corpus Act passed, 96 Parliamentary reforms, 96 1783. Social and commercial legis- lation, 97 electoral reforms, 98, 99 other Reform Bills rejected, 99 1784. Fifty-six Acts passed in the first session of Grattan's Par- liament, lOI 1785. The English revised commer- cial proposals denounced. III 1789. The regency question, 119 the viceroy censured, 119, 120 a short money Bill, 120 the attorney-general and the Act of Settlement, 120 1790. Grattan and the ministerial corruption, 121, 122 a dissolution and a new Parliament, 124 1 79 1. Reforms resisted by the Gov- ernment, 124 1792. Langrishe's Bill granting con- cessions to Catholics passed, 126 INDEX 521 Parliamentary — conn' fitted. 1793. Catholic questions specially considered and the Emancipa- tion Act passed, 128, 129 the Responsibility, Pension, and Place Bills passed, 1 30 A Gunpowder Bill and the Con- vention Act passed, 130, 131 1795. The pension list reduced, the cost of revenue collection di- minished, measures to restrain the use of spirituous liquors passed, the Police Act remo- delled, and the hearth tax abolished, 135 complete emancipation ^of ;the Catholics urged, 134, 136-14: ; but postponed, 137-139 a short money Bill passed, 138, 139 votes of thanks moved in the Irish Parliament to Lord Fitzwilliam on his recall by the English Cabinet, 139 Grattan's Catholic Relief Bill moved, denounced and rejected, 143. 144 1796. Grattan's commercial equality amendment declared "sedi- tious," 148 ; and rejected, 149 a Bill to indemnify magistrates and others passed, 148, 149 a Bill to prevent insurrections passed, 148, 149 Curran's motion for an inquiry into the condition of the poor re- jected, 149 Grattan's emancipation amend- ment rejected and Habeas Cor- pus suspended, 150 1797. Grattan's motion for the recall of General Lake's proclamation in Ulster lost, 150, 151 George Ponsonby's motion for the repeal of the Insurrection Act lost, 151 report on the treasonable papers of the United Irishmen, 151 W. B. Ponsonby's Parliamentary reform resolutions defeated, 152, 153 ; and followed by protest and secession, 153, 154 1798. The last Irish Parliament met, 156, 157 1799. The Union project introduced in the Irish Parliament, 1 76-1 78 protests, and a division giving a majority of five to the National party, 176-178 Parliamentary — continued 1799 — continued. The Union pro- ject in the English House of Commons, 179 Castlereagh's calculations, 180-182 Mr. Foster's address on freedom and prosperity, 183, 184 the Regency Bill postponed, 185 the House closed, 185, 186 1800. The case against the Union, 197, 198 return of Grattan, 197, 200 the Act of Union passed, 200 1 80 1. On January 22 Parliament met at Westminster and one hundred Irish representatives took their seats. 205 the Insurrection Act renewed and Habeas Corpus suspended, 205, 225, 226 a Bill of indemnity for all acts of martial law since 1793 passed, 205, 226 the Irish Budget, 224 1803. A Bill for the trial of rebels by court-martial passed and the two Coercion Bills re-enacted, 227, 228 Colonel Hutchinson's motion for inquiry negatived, 228 1804. Inquiry pressed, but refused, 228, 229 1805. The first Catholic petition for emancipation refused by Pitt, 230 _ _ the petition presented by Grenville and Fox, 230, 231 Grattan's speech, 231, 232 Fox's motion defeated, 232 1806. A policy of reconciliation, 232, 233 1807. O'Connell and the new peti- tion, 233-235 Lord Howick's Bill for opening commissions in the army and navy to Catholics, 235 a new Parliament, 236 another Insurrection Act and a Bill authorising magistrates to search houses for unregistered weapons passed, 236, 237 Sheridan's motion for inquiry re- jected, 237 1808. The Catholic petition renewed and entrusted to Lord Fingall, 237,238 the petition presented by Grattan, 239 C22 INDEX Parliamentary — continued 1808 — continued. The veto contro- versy, 239-243 1809. Mr. H. Parnell's Tithe Com- mutation Bill, 245 18 10. Another petition presented by Grattan and a motion for a com- mittee defeated, 245 181 1. The petition again presented by Grattan and a committee refused, 245 18 12. Lord Morpeth's motion for inquiry lost, 246 Grattan's annual petition lost, 246 Canning's motion for the considera- tion of Irish affairs carried, 247 18 13. A new Parliament, 246, 247 Canning's motion renewed by Grattan and carried, 247 18 14. The Superintending Magis- trates Bill passed, 258, 259 the insurrection of 1807 revived, 259 18 1 5. Sir H. Parnell's motion for inquiry rejected, 248 1816-19. The motion repeated by Grattan, but without success, 248 1 8 16. A Bill for the consolidation of the British and Irish Exchequers passed, 254, 255 Sir J. Newport's motion for inquiry and Peel's amendment carried, 260, 261 an Ejectment Act passed, 263-265 1817. Another Consolidation Act, 255,256 the Seditious Meeting Act inap- plicable to Ireland, but the In- surrection Act extended, 267 1821. Plunket's resolutions dealing with the Catholic questions carried, 271, 272 Plunket's second Bill, denounced by O'Connell, passed by the Lower House, but thrown out by the Lords, 272 1822. Habeas Corpus suspended and the Insurrection Act renewed, 274 debate on the state of Ireland, 275 Goulburn's Public Works Bill, 276 1823. Tithe reform, 276 the Insurrection Act renewed, 278 1824. A commission on Irish educa- tion and committees to consider the stale of Ireland appointed, 288 Parliamentary — continued. 1825. The Catholic Association Sup- pression Bill passed, 285-287 the Bill for the modification of the oaths disqualifying Catholics from membership of Parliament or corporations thrown out by the Upper House, 289 1826. Parliament dissolved, 297 1827. Ireland omitted in the king's speech, 302 elections discussed, 302, 303 Sir F. Burdett's motion for inquiry lost, 302, 303 1828. Burdett's motion renewed and carried, but Lord Lansdowne's motion rejected, 304 1829. Ireland in the king's speech, 309 the Catholic Association Suppres- sion Bill passed, 309, 310, 312, a committee on the disabilities of Catholics, 309, 310 the Catholic Emancipation Bill passed, 311 forty-shilling freeholders disfran- chised, 312 1830. The Education Act and the Irish Reform Act, 317, 318 1832. The composition of tithe made compulsory, 318 1833. A Coercion Bill passed, 319- the Church Temporalities Bill passed without the appropriation clause, 323-325 1834. A Bill for substituting a land tax for tithe rejected, 319 an inquiry into the conduct of Mr. Baron Smith, judge, moved, 327, 328 a repeal debate, 328-330 a Bill to commute tithes into a land tax, 330, 331 Ward's appropriation motion, 332- 333 resignations and reconstruction of the ministry, 332, 333 a Church commission appointed, 333 the renewal of the Coercion Act, 333-336 the suppression of meetings clauses and overthrow of the ministry, 333-337 a new Coercion Act with no meet- ing clauses passed, 339, 340 INDEX 523 Parliamentary — contiiiued. \%li,—conthiued. The Tithe Bill again taken up, 341, 347 the Peel interregnum, 341,347, 348 1S35. The appropriation question renewed by Lord John Russell, 348, 349 Lord Melbourne's government, 349 appropriation clauses rejected by the House of Lords, 3 3 3-35 6 suits against defaulting incumbents suspended, 356 1836. The Tithe Bill again passed by the Commons and rejected by the Lords, 359 reform ofthe police and magistracy, 370 1837. 1838. The lithe question settled, 362, 363 1837-40. Municipal reform settled, 363-365 1838. The Poor Relief Act passed, 365-368 1843. The Arms Bill debates, 385- 387 inquiry refused, 387, 388 1844. The elementary education grant increased, and a Bill for enabling Catholics to hold pro- perty and accept bequests for religious purposes passed, 392 1845. The grant to Maynooth College increased and three undenomi- national colleges founded, 392, 393 1846. Repeal of the Corn Laws, 398, 399. extension of the Arms Act re- jected, 399, 400 compensation to tenants for im- provements to be provided, 399 fall of the Peel ministry, 399, 400 three Acts dealing with vagrancy, poor law relief, etc., passed, 406, 407 1848. An Act to compel landlords to give two days' notice of intended evictions to poor law guardians, 410 Poor Laws Rate in Aid Bill passed, 414 the Encumbered Estates Act and the Land Improvement Act passed, 415 the Arms Act renewed, 416 the Alien Act renewed, 418 1 849. The Navigation Acts repealed, 415 Parliamentary — continued. 1850. The Franchise Act, 431 the Crime and Outrage Act re- newed, 431 a Bill to abolish the viceroyalty abandoned after the second reading, 432, 433 1851. The Unlawful Oaths Act con- tinued, 431 the Ecclesiastical Titles Act, 432 1852. 1853. The four Napier Land Bills and fall of the Derby ministry, 434-446, 449 1853. The Crime and Outrage Bill passed, 449 the income tax extended to Ireland , 450 1854. Three Napier Land Bills passed, 450 the Ministers' Money Bill of 1853 abolished, 452 Mr. Shee's Bill for the suspension of 395 benefices rejected, 452 i860. The Landed Property Im- provement Act and the Landlord and Tenant Law Amendment Act passed, 457-459 1862. The "quarter of an acre" clause modified, 462 1866. Habeas Corpus suspended, 467, 469 Mr. Dillwyn's Irish Church Estab- lishment motion, 481 1868. Mr. Gladstone's disestablish- ment motion carried and a sus- pensory Bill rejected by the Lords, 482 1869. Mr. Gladstone's Disestablish- ment Bill carried, 483, 4S4 1870. Mr. Gladstone's Land Act, 498-500 1881. Another Land Act, 501 1884. The Reform Act passed, 502 1886. Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill and defeat of the Govern- ment, 502 Parnell, Mr. C. S., 501, 502 Parnell, Mr. Henry, and tithe commu- tation, 245 Parnell, Sir H., on the history of coercion from 1796 to 1823, 278 Parsons, Sir Lawrence — on the postponement of the Catholic Relief Bill, 137, 138 on the Union project, 177, 197 on the Catholic Relief Bill of 1795, 144 " Patriots," 57 524 INDEX Pauperism and the poor law — the Poor Relief Act of 1838 passed, 365-368, 406 the Poor Law Commissioners and the famine of 1846-47, 402 the poor law v. charity, 405, 406 three Acts passed in 1847, 406 the " quarter of an acre " clause, 407, 408 modified, 462 the Poor Laws Rate in Aid Bill, 414 Peasantry. See Land Peel, Sir Robert, secretary, 246-267 prime minister, 318, 340, 346, 347, .382, 398 his policy, 422 on agrarian disturbances, 260, 261 on Catholic Emancipation, 303, 316 on the evictions in 1848, 409 on the relief of distress, 414 Pelham, Mr., secretary, 142-159 Pembroke, Earl of, governor, 37 Pensions, 72, 77, 78, 112, 113, 121 a Pension Bill passed, 130 reduction of the pension list, 135 Perceval assassinated, 246 Perrin, Mr. Louis, attorney-general for Ireland, 350 Phoenix Society. See Fenians Pitt, Wm., Irish policy of, 109-232 introduced the Union project, 179 deserted the Catholics, 224 resigned office, 224 resumed office, 229 rejected the Catholic petition, 230 died, 232 his commercial proposals for Ireland, 109, 1 10 his perfidy, 137 on the regency question, 117, 118 on the dismissal of Mr. Beresford, 136, 137 Place Bill passed, 130 Piunket, Lord, Bishop of Tuam, and his tenantry (evictions), 459, 460 Piunket, Lord, on the Union project, 177 Piunket on the Catholic Association, 287 on Catholic Emancipation, 303 Poetry of the Irish people contrasted with the Jacobite poetry of Scot- land, 30 Pole, Wellesley, secretary, 245, 246 Police — the Police Bill, 112, 113 remodelled, 135 reform under Drummond, 370 Ponsonby, George, attorney-general, 134 on coercion, 1 5 1 on Parliamentary reform, 152 on the Union project, 177 Ponsonby, W. B., moved Parliamentary reform resolutions, 152, 153 Poor law. See Pauperism Population statistics, 206, 394, 424, 425, 474, 475 Porter, Sir Charles, lord justice, ^im- peached, 17 Portland, Duke of, viceroy, 89 Portland, Duke of, secretary, 133-141 pressed the postponement of the Catholic Relief Bill, 137, 140 ; and desired the Union of Ire- land with Great Britain, 140, 141, 143 perfidy of, 140, 141 his orders to Lord Camden, 14 Postal reforms, 98 Potato disease, 397, 398. See also Famine Potato introduced, 394 Powerscourt, Lord, an enemy of the Union, 176 Fr^emumre, 19, 27, 29, 39 "Precursor Society," 365 Presbyterians. See also Nonconform- ists William III.'s grant (Regium Do- num), 22, 220, 221 withdrawn, 41, 483 a Toleration Bill, 46 their position at the Union, 219 Pretender. See Jacobites Privy Council, Irish, 70 Proctors. See Tithes Protestants. See also Church, Colonists, Nonconformists, Presbyterians, Ulster Associations tolerance, 143 Ulster charged with an insurrection- ary spirit, 150, 151 Public meetings prohibited, 154, Public works, 266 Goulburn's Bill, 276 relief works in 1847, 403, 404 Quarantotti, Monsignor, and the veto, 241, 242 Queen Victoria visited Ireland in 1849, 419 INDEX 52s R Railways, Drummond's report, 370 Rebellion, insurrection, agrarian crime, etc. .?irf also Coercion, Fenianism, Whiteboys, Orangemen " Rebellion," a war in which the Irish are belligerents, 25 rioting under the Militia Bill and sectarian disturbances in Armagh (i7?3-:94), 131 sectarianism stimulated and rebellion provoked {1795-98), 144-170 " Defenderism," 147 " Luttrellades," General Carhamp- ton's outrages, 147, 148, 154, 15S the charge against Ulster and General Lake's tyranny, 150, 1 51 Sir R. Abercrombie in the "disturbed districts" (1798), 159, 160 General Lake's cruelties, 161, 167 the " United Irish " insurrection (1798). 165-170 Emmett's insurrection (1803), 226, 227 the Threshers' war, 233 Shanavests, 237 Caravats, 237, 259 famine and disturbances (1821-22), 273-275 agrarian disturbances (18 14), 257 (1823), 278 (1830), 342 (1843), 384-387 (1848), 416 (1860-65), 461-462 Carders, 258, 259 Ribbonism, 222, 283, 455, 456 social disorder (1832-33), 319, 320 " outrages " in Tipperary and the magistrates' protest ( 1 84 1 ), 37 1-374 the rebellion of 1848, 417-419 Orangeism. See Orangeism Fenianism. See Fenianism Redesdale, Lord, 260 Reform. -See also Electoral, Parlia- mentary Reform Bill (English) of 1832, 317 Regency question (1788), 1 17-122 Regium Donum. See Presbyterianism Reickavallos, 218 Relief committees. See Fa.minQ Relief works. See Public Works Religious questions. See Church, Catholics, Coercion, Nonconform- ists, Presbyterians, Protestants Repeal. See Union Repressive measures. See Coercion Responsibility Bill passed, 130 Resumption Acts, 29, 69 Revenue, hereditary and temporary, 71. See also Finance Ribbonmen, 222, 283, 455, 456 Richey, Prof., on tenants' improve- ments, 459 Richmond, Duke of, viceroy, 236 Rochester, Earl of, retired, 31 Rockingham administration, 89 Rossa, O'Donovan, Fenian, 463-467 Rosse, Lord, on landlords and tenants, "5. Royal Irish Academy founded, 115 Russell (Emmett's insurrection), 227 Russell, Earl, on Irish grievances, 473 Russell, Lord John, prime minister, 399-442 on Peel's interregnum, 348, 349 on coercion, 391 on the abolition of the viceroyalty, 433.434 Rutland, Duke of, viceroy, 102-113 Sadleir, Mr. John, and the Tenant- Right League, 446, 447 St. Patrick order of knights created, "5 St. Ruth, Lieut. -General, commander- in-chief of the Irish army, killed at Aughrim, 5, 6 Salt from Ireland smuggled into Great Britain, 103 Saul, Mr., prosecuted for harbouring a Catholic relative, 59, 60 Saurin on the Union project, 172, 173 Schomberg, 4 Secret service money from England to bribe and corrupt, 174, 175, 195, 196 Secret societies. See Ulster Associa- tions, Irish Union, Fenianism, etc. Sectarianism, policy of See Catholics, Coercion, etc. Settlement, Act of, to be maintained, I, 2 repealed, 3, 9 a second Act of Settlement passed, 14 intimidation, 120 Shanavests, 237 Shee, Mr., and tenant-right, 445-452 on "tenants' improvements, land- lords' perquisites," 488 526 INDEX Sheffield, Lord, on Irish manufactures, 105, 106 Sheil on the Church establishment, 330 Sheridan and coercion, 225, 237 Sherlock v. Annesley, 73, 89 Sidney, Lord, viceroy, 10-17 Smith, Mr. Baron, judge, inquiry into his conduct moved, 327, 328 Smith, Mr. Goldwin,on Fenianism, 472 Smuggling from Ireland into Great Britain, 103 Soap and candles, trade in, 103, 104 Social condition of Ireland — at the Union, 205-222 1830-34, 341-346 1835-41. 368-374 1848, 413 1870, 504-508 Social legislation of Grattan's Parlia- ment, 97, 98 Social prosperity, 115 Somerville, Sir W., secretary, 412 South of Ireland. See also Whiteboys Its condition, 1700-1750,63-67 Stanhope, Lord, 260 Stanley, Mr., secretary, 316-325 on the Coercion Act of 1833, 320, 321 . . on the tithe and appropriation ques- tion, 330-333 Steel Boys, 61, 62, 67 Stephens and the Fenians, 463-468 started the /risk People, 465 arrested, 466 went to America, 467, 468 Stone, Primate, 58-80 Sugden, Lord Chancellor, 383 Sullivan, Mr. A. M., and the Fenians, 470 Sunday Observance Act, 21 Supremacy, Oath of, abrogated in Ire- land, II Swift, Dean — published his " Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufac- tures," 47, Tl, 74 published the " Drapier's Letters," 50, 51, 7Z^ 74 on free trade, 82 " Swiss guards " bribed, 195, 196 Taafe, Rev. D., on the Catholics and the Union project, 141 Tal>/ei and justice for Ireland, 437 Talbot, Richard. See Tyrconnel Temperance. Father Matthew's mis- sion, 368, 369 Temple, Lord, on the need for inquiry into the state of Ireland (1804), 228-229, 230 Tenant right. See Land Test Acts. See Coercion Threshers, 233 Tithes, 64-66 proctors, lithe farmers and canters, 64, 65, 214-216, 237 reform needed, but a sanguinary law passed, 113 more tithes granted, 113 Grattan's resolutions for the modifi- cation of the tithe system met by the premature prorogation of Par- liament, 1 14 Mr. H. Parnell's Bill (1809), 245 Tithe Reform Bill passed (1822), 276 history of, 318, 319 composition of the tithe made com- pulsory, 318 the collection of arrears, 318 an Amending Act passed, 318 O'Connell's amendment to the Coer- cion Act of 1833, 322 a Tithe Commutation Bill and the question of appropriation, 331- 333, 340 a Church commission, ^^^ origin of the tithe war (1830), 341, 342 the appropriation question renewed, 348, 349, 355-357, 359 the Court of Exchequer and the col- lection of tithes, 358, 359 the tithe question settled (1838), 362, 363 Toleration Act defeated, 22, 23 Tone, Wolfe, 164 and the United Irishmen, 162, 163 Townsend, Rev. Mr., on letting land by auction, 211 Townshend, Lord, viceroy, 81 Treaty, commercial, with England. See Commercial Treaty of Limerick. See Limerick Trench, Mr. Stuart — on the famine of 1846-47, 402 on English and Irish crime, 455 Troy, Dr., Pius VII. 's agent, 229 Tyrconnel, Duke of (Richard Talbot) — commander-in-chief of the army, i viceroy, 2 INDEX 527 U Ulster associations, 60. See also Irish Union Oak Boys and Steel Boys, 61, 62, 67 Ulster declared insurrectionary, 150, 151 Ulster tenant right, 488 Union of Ireland with England — proposed, 36, 2,7, 7°, 7i) HO, I44, 14s resisted by the Catholics, 140, 141 petition against, 153 the Pitt-Portland Cabinet's proposal, 171 protests, 173 corruption and intimidation, 174, 175 the measure introduced, and a majority of five for the national party, 176-178 the measure introduced by Pitt into the British House of Commons, 179 Sheridan's proposal voted down, 179 the resolutions passed, 179 Castlereagh's calculations, 180, 181 corruption and intimidation, 174, 175, 180-182, 185-187, 194- 196, 196, 198, 199 Lord Cornwallis'stour in the south and through Ulster, 188 Catholic protests, 190-193 Catholics and Orangemen com- bine, 193, 194 the project in the Irish Parlia- ment, and return of Grattan, 197-200 the Bill passed, 200 Union Parliament. See Parlia- mentary (1801) resolutions in favour of repeal, 432 clauses 6 and 7 of the Act of Union, 249 agitation lor repeal, 315, 326 the repeal debate of 1834, 328, 329 the Repeal Association founded by O'Conncll, 376-380 the Young Ireland party, 378, 379 the Presbyterians and Federalism, 380, 381 Union of Ireland with England — con- tiiitied the prospects of repeal in 1848,421, 422 disestablishment and, 477-480 the Home Rule movement, 501-503 Union of Ireland with France feared, 140, 142 Union of Scotland with England, ^6 United Irishnian advocates revolution, United Irishmen. See Irish Union. V Vere, Mr. de, on his experiences on an Irish emigrant ship, 412, 413 Veto controversy, 239-243 Viceroyalty — abolition proposed and abandoned {1850), 432-434 former proposals, 432 the scheme renewed (1857-58) and rejected, 433 Volunteer movement, 83-88, 94 free trade won, 84, 85 the convention of Dungannon, 87, 88 the volunteers and Parliament, 98, 99 W Wakefield, Mr. Edward, on Ireland, 206, 207, 208, 210, 21 1, 212, 214, 260 Waterford election (1826), 298-301 Wellesley, Sir Arthur. See Welling- ton Wellesley, Marquis of, viceroy, 325 Wellington, Duke of (Sir Arthur Wel- lesley) — ■ secretary, 236 viceroy, 276 prime minister, 304 on Catholic Emancipation, 308, 309, 310, 311 Westmorland, Lord, viceroy, 121 on a union with England, 145 Wharton, Thomas, Earl of, governor, 38-41 Whately, Archbishop, on concurrent endowment, 480 Whig Club founded, 123 Whig opposition to commercial pro- posals, 1 10, III Whiteboys, 64, 67 5- INDEX William of Orange — proclaimed king in Derry, 2 landed in Ireland, 4, 5 returned to England, 5 died, 30 Winchester, Marquis of, lord justice, Wogan, Sir Charles (chevalier), on the treaty of Limerick, 8 Wolfe, attorney-general, raised to the peerage, 134 Women publicly whipped, 66, 76 Wood's coinage. See Coinage Woollen manufactures — not to be exported, 69 exports (1780-83), 104 Wyse on the priests and the electors, 299, 300 Y Young, Arthur, on the Whiteboy risings, 67 Young Ireland party, 378, 379, 416-418 THE END Printed by Ballantvne, Hanson &^ Co. Edinburgh &" London 4^ Date Due fE[\S'31 :H; :::.i3':s oci -G£v :j t-f I A ^^--^ /^ '«-• '-b ^.0 \9S9 IAN 1 5 ^' MAY I'M / BOSTON COLLEGE 3 9031 01638776 3 TT^JiT^rvrT^ BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS CHESTNUT HILL, MASS. Books may be kept for two weeks unless other- wise spe'"ified by the Librarian. T'vo cents a 'ay is charged for each book kept overtime. If you cannot 4,>'Ou want, ask the Librarian who will b>. ^ y .elp you. The borrower is responsible for books drawn in his name and for all accruing fines.