THE MAKING OF THE IRISH NATION. 
 
THE MAKING 
 OF THE IRISH NATION: 
 
 AND 
 
 THE FIRST-FRUITS OF FEDERATION. 
 
 •' Magnum rerum nascitur ordo " 
 
 J. A. PARTRIDGE 
 
 Author of 
 
 ' DEMOCRACY : ITS FACTORS AND CONDITIONS," "FROM FEUDAL TO FEDERAL," " THE POLICV 
 OF ENGLAND IN RELATION TO INDIA AND THE EAST," ETC., ETC. 
 
 T FISHER UNWIN 
 26 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 1886 
 
'F31 
 
 TWO NATIONS 
 
 ^Jnqlaj^d /.nd If^eland 
 
 {the one the elder, the other the more poiverful), 
 
 CONSTITUTING NOW IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND, IN 
 
 CANADA, AUSTRALIA, AND THE COLONIES, 
 
 ONE EMPIRE; 
 
 AND TO THE ETERNAL MEMORIES OF MOLYNEUX, SWIFT, 
 
 FLOOD, CURRAN, GRATTAN, BURKE, FOX, SHERIDAN, 
 
 SHEIL, O'CONNELL, AND MANY OTHERS, 
 
 THE MAKERS AND MARTYRS OF 
 
 IRELAND, THIS VOLUME IS 
 
 CONSECRATED. 
 
PREFACE, 
 
"Sometimes, it is true, a rare individual has appeared among us, raising a 
 degraded country from the condition of a province to the rank and consequence 
 of a people worthy to be the ally of a mighty empire, forming the league that 
 bound her to Great Britain, on the firm and honourable basis of equal liberty 
 and a common fate, standing and falling with the British Empire." — CURRAN. 
 
 "One word upon the legislative independence of Ireland — that which is 
 now called a 'Repeal of the Union.' It is said to be a severance of the 
 empire, a separation of the two countries. Illustrious lady, these statements 
 are made by men who know them to be unfounded ; an Irish legislative inde- 
 pendence would, on the contrary, be the strongest and most durable connection 
 between your Majesty's Irish and your British dominions. It would, by con- 
 ciliating your Irish subjects, and attending to their wants and wishes, render 
 the separation of Ireland from the lawful dominion of your Crown utterly 
 impossible." — O'Connei.l's Memoir Addrased to the Qtieen. 
 
 " I think I can trace all the calamities of this country to the single source of 
 our not having had steadily before our eyes a general, comprehensive, well-con- 
 nected, and well-proportioned view of the whole of our dominions, and a just 
 sense of their true bearings and relations. If we make ourselves too little for 
 the sphere of our duty ; if, on the contrary, we do not stretch and expand our 
 minds to the compass of their object, be well assured that everything about us 
 will dwindle by degrees, until at length our concerns are shrunk to the dimen- 
 sions of our minds. The Parliament of Great Britain sits at the head of her 
 extensive empire in two capacities— one, as the local legislature of this island, 
 providing, &c. ; the other, and I think her nobler capacity, in what I call her 
 imperial character, in which, as from the throne of heaven, she superintends all 
 the several inferior legislatures, and guides and controls them all, without 
 annihilating any." — Burke. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 ' ' Without examining details, the whole of liberal Eui?ope and America is 
 loud in admiration of the initiative taken by the illustrious statesman." — Emile 
 DE Laveleye. 
 
 ' • She follows her physical destination, and obeys the dispensations of provi- 
 dence when she protests like that sea, against the two situations, both equally 
 unnatural — separation and union. She feels her Constitution to be her great 
 stake in the empire, and the empire the great security of her Constitution. If 
 British ministers take away the Constitution, they withdraw at once a great 
 pillar of liberty and empire." — Grattan. 
 
 "Should England not change her conduct, Ireland may still for a long 
 period belong to h^r ; but not always ; and the loss of that country is the 
 death-day, not only of her greatness, but her very existence." — Niebuhr. 
 
 " High politics are like the pyramids, only two sorts of animals reach the 
 top— reptiles and eagles."— D'Alembert. 
 
 We are in a transition state. Yesterday, we were an 
 oligarchic republic (tempered by queen, chaos, and revolu- 
 tion) ; to-day, we are a democratic republic (a pyramid, 
 resting for. the most part on its base) ; to-morrow, we 
 shall be members of an imperial democratic confederated 
 empire, the most stupendous manifestation of order, 
 economy, and power, yet possible on this planet ; and 
 whilst all things are getting forged and fitted to their 
 places, men come up to see and wonder at this great sight, 
 a mighty people, a royal nation, an imperial confederacy, 
 depending not on its creatures, but on itself, nor intending 
 ever again, for all or any of them, to run again the dread 
 inane cycle of blood, ruin, and reaction. 
 
 It is all coming, because come it must. The fact is, we 
 are at the fag end of a slave fight. We have let our 
 overseers, Pitt, Peel, and Co., carry on, since 1782, the 
 
X Preface, 
 
 "hell harrowing" of Ireland, because in 1782 she happened 
 to have, not a captain, but only orators and a parliament ; 
 and because we can't understand till it is licked into us, 
 that any one but ourselves— and Polands and Italys a long 
 way off — have rights. We want Home Rule in England. 
 We can't make England, or Ireland, or the empire, with- 
 out making Ireland, and if we don't begin soon it may be 
 too late. Manhood rules here now, and rules for manhood 
 and empire, not for property, slave-drivers, or things; and 
 besides all that, the Puritans are waking up, and they are 
 the real blood royal of England. 
 
 On the whole, our situation to-day is not unlike that of 
 America, when making up its mind to put down the slave 
 trade and to unite the empire — sketched so well by 
 Wendell Phillips : 
 
 " I divide you into four sections. The first is the ordinary 
 mass, rushing from mere enthusiasm to battle. Behind that class 
 stands another, whose only idea in this controversy is Sovereignty 
 and the flag. Next to it stands the third element, the people — the 
 broad surface of the people, who have no time for technicalities, 
 who never studied law, who never had time to read further into 
 the Constitution than the first two lines, ' Establish justice and 
 secure liberty.' They have waited long enough ; they have eaten 
 dirt enough; they have apologized for bankrupt statesmen enough; 
 they have quieted their consciences enough ; and now they have 
 got their hand. on the neck of a rebellious aristocracy, and in the 
 name of the people mean to strangle it. 
 
 " That I believe is the body of the people itself. Side by side 
 with them stands a fourth class — small, but active — the abolition- 
 ists, who thank God that He has let them see His salvation before 
 they die." 
 
 With us, the slaves and the slave-drivers are not in the 
 same country. With us, the "rebellious aristocracy," and 
 ** the bankrupt statesmen," have hardly yet gone under ; 
 but "thepeoplehave waited long enough, eaten dirt enough, 
 apologized enough, and quieted their consciences enough " 
 
Preface. xi 
 
 for them. All the people are going to do now, however, 
 is to wrench these bankrupt statesmen from the throats of 
 the Irish nation. 
 
 It is our duty now to make to Ireland certain con- 
 cessions, but duty soon will be something else in the 
 world-logic of nation and empire. A little more tom- 
 foolery about Ireland, and events themselves will pro- 
 nounce the philosophers played out, and demand "room 
 for the men of destiny." 
 
 The ultimate facts between us and Ireland are that 
 Ireland must soon hold ten millions of souls, that the ten 
 millions of other Irish elsewhere will soon become twenty 
 millions — subscribing, aspiring, and, if they must, avenging 
 — with cosmopolitan sympathies, with American drill and 
 arms, and Irishmen in England enough to command sixty 
 or seventy boroughs, to say nothing of foreign war. 
 
 Besides all this, England is in a more factitious state 
 than Ireland, which has to fill up and grow in greater 
 ratio than England can. Not one-fourteenth of Ireland is 
 uncultivatable, and she is nearer the west, and with 
 mightier harbours. From Connaught to the Kentish coast 
 is none too wide a base for the world-weighted glories of 
 the empire of Cromwell and Shakespeare, of Wyclif and 
 Milton, of Raleigh, Wesley, Chatham, Cobden, and Burke. 
 
 I recur here to what I wrote " On Democracy " in 1864, 
 and in " From Feudal to Federal " in 1872 : 
 
 " A false conservatism dreads each advance as approaching the 
 final anarchy, but if the progressive universal power in politics be 
 a delusion, then, not development, but restraint is the true gos- 
 pel, and there is a hitch somewhere, not only in democracy, but 
 in creation. Every government tends to some preponderating 
 power or to anarchy, and the organization of democracy is of 
 necessity the problem of every advancing age and people. Thus 
 a true nation itself becomes a unit, and is alone fit to enter with 
 other nations into those grander combinations for which the world 
 prepares. Organizations are really a hierarchy, and must rise from 
 
xii Preface. 
 
 'the local unit of the commune and parish, to county, province, 
 nation, and empire. In all governments there is the virtual pre- 
 ponderating power that is the power which would prevail if things 
 were forced to an issue, and the actual Constitution is or is not in 
 danger, as it is or is not in harmony with the real power." 
 
 In this view of the federal question, Professor Dicey 
 and others have lately talked in a rather helpless vi^ay 
 about our imperial Constitution as binding Australia or 
 Canada ; as though a Constitution, which, in case of strain 
 could not constitute, could settle the principle of any 
 such problem. The question is hardly a political one, 
 even for academicians, " How to arrange so that the 
 preponderating power shall not preponderate " ! 
 
 The intenser nationality question being in principle 
 settled, the broader and supreme remaining question is 
 the constitutional one — What is to be the link between 
 nation and empire ? In other words, the supreme question 
 is the federal one ; and the difficulty is that the Irish 
 question has precipitated the federal, almost before the 
 masses have had time to realize that it is the federal. 
 The one thing certain is that we may take advantage of 
 the situation to make Ireland the first-fruits of federation. 
 Ireland, Canada, Australia, and, let us hope, a South 
 African confederation, have to be brought into working 
 constitutional relations with each other through and with 
 Great Britain. The present chaos between the Lords and '^ 
 the people, between the empires and nations that are to 
 be federated with one another and Great Britain, and 
 the confusion in weak men's minds between local self- 
 government and national self-government — all this has 
 to be altered. The Lords must be made a real Second 
 Chamber, if there is to be one, or if empire is to be repre- 
 sented in it ; and, in any event, some mixed ratio of popu- 
 lation, wealth, and contribution to the general defence, has 
 
Preface. xiii 
 
 to be fixed on as the basis of imperial representation ; 
 whilst local self-government in Scotland and Wales, the 
 counties, and London, must ease the central machine. -^ 
 
 Of all this change, vast in detail, simple though momen- 
 tous in principle, the settlement of the Irish federal 
 question ought to be the first-fruits and defence. 
 
 In America and Canada there were no nations to come 
 together and agree — there were States and provinces, and 
 vast unpeopled wilds. 
 
 In Canada, Australia, Ireland, we have nations already- 
 made, and it is childish to suppose they can be treated as 
 other than what they are. 
 
 The fact is, circumstances such as those we have to 
 consider have never been dealt with, or even existed, 
 before — the distances, the vast territories, the coming 
 enormous population. There are, however, odds in favour 
 of an imperial, and almost a cosmopolitan, unity that 
 never existed before — English traditions and the spirit of 
 English citizenship, unity of race to a great extent, 
 unity of language, unity or similarity of institution, a 
 common history, and the fact that the public thought, 
 life, and opinion of England is to so great an extent the 
 thought, life, and opinion of the civilized world. 
 
 Representatives in London, Ireland must of course have, 
 if only to prepare for federation. There should be 32, 
 because that would constitute at once about the quota 
 due from Ireland when Canada, Australia, &c., are repre- 
 sented in an Imperial Federal Parliam.ent, and because 32 
 woiild give one representative for each county. The 
 32 might be elected either by the Dublin Parliament or 
 by the counties. 
 
 But we must cut our federal coat according to the con- 
 federal cloth, and not pretend that because States may 
 coalesce better than nations, therefore we ought to treat 
 nations as States. 
 
 The principles of all these questions were discussed, 
 
xlv Preface. 
 
 sifted, and acted on by the great men who made the 
 American nation, in a way and with a clearness, sincerity, 
 and depth that make them the best authorities in the 
 world on federal and kindred subjects, whilst Pitt shows 
 beside them as a satyr to Hyperion. 
 Said Hamilton, in The Federalist : 
 
 " However gross a heresy it may be that a party to a compact 
 has a right to revoke that compact, the possibility shows the 
 necessity of laying the foundation of our national government 
 deeper than in the mere sanction of delegated authority. The 
 fabric of American authority ought to rest on the solid basis of 
 the consent of the people." 
 
 Said Patrick Henry, at the Virginian Convention, 1788 : 
 
 " Have they said, ' We, the States ' ? Have they made a pro- 
 posal of compact between States ? If they had, this would be 
 a confederation; it is otherwise, most clearly, a consolidated 
 government." 
 
 Said Chancellor Kent : 
 
 " The plan was submitted to a convention of delegates, chosen 
 by the people at large in each State for assent and ratification. 
 Such a measure was laying the foundation of the fabric of our 
 national polity where alone they ought to be laid, on the broad 
 consent of the people." 
 
 Said Chief Justice Storey : 
 
 "A fundamental law, a supreme rule, which no State was at 
 liberty to disregard, to suspend, or to annul." 
 
 Henry Clay said : " I owe a paramount allegiance to 
 the whole union, a subordinate one to my own State ; " 
 and Madison repeatedly and emphatically declared that 
 "the resolutions were intended to claim, not for an indi- 
 vidual State, but for the United States, the right of 
 remedying its abuses in constitutional ways." 
 
 When States make an empire, ihat is an orthodox, old- 
 
Preface. xv 
 
 fashioned federation ; when the people make it, there is a 
 consolidated government. But no precedent will exactly 
 fit the Anglo-Irish problem. 
 
 Lord Brougham, on the United States Government, put 
 this clearly as to States : 
 
 "The proper federal union is where two or more States, having 
 their separate governments for all domestic purposes, are united 
 by a central government, which regulates their mutual relations 
 as members of a political community, but does not interfere with 
 the functions of the several governments and their authority over 
 the individuals which are their subjects, unless in so far as those 
 functions and that authority may affect the federal relation. 
 There must be certain things which cannot be altered without 
 universal consent." 
 
 And Madison, April 8, 1787, put the converse axiom : 
 
 " I hold it a fundamental point that the individual indepen- 
 dence of the States is utterly irreconcilable with the idea of an 
 aggregate sovereignty. Let the national government have a 
 negative. Without such a defensive power, every positive power 
 that can be given on paper will be unavailing." 
 
 For "national " in Madison, read "imperial " for our- 
 selves ; and that emphasizes the fact that it will never do 
 to consider a priori what makes strong or weak govern- 
 ments, and then say we will have such and such an 
 arrangement, without seeing that we have the correspond- 
 ing materials. If we do, we shall get upset. For in 
 Ireland we have to do with a nation already made, whereas 
 in America, ** the States," as Madison asserted, " never 
 possessed the essential rights of sovereignty, having the 
 power of making by-laws, effectual only, if not contradic- 
 tory, to the general confederation." 
 
 Of course we have to avoid the establishment of that 
 " constituted anarchy " of which Hegel complained in 
 Germany, " a totality, with private rights to contradict the 
 whole." 
 
xvi Preface. 
 
 All this is clear; and as Chancellor Kent explained in 
 his Commentaries, "the incurable defects of all former 
 federal governments were that they were sovereignties 
 over sovereignties ; " that is to say, translated for our own 
 situation — That one nation, the English, should dominate 
 another, the Irish, were an ** incurable defect," no doubt. 
 But then, I repeat, it is not, cannot be, that the English 
 nation will attempt anything of the sort. It is the 
 imperial delegation that will, as De Tocqueville explained 
 of America, dominate the sections : 
 
 "The Constitution rests upon a novel theory, which may be 
 considered a great invention of political science. In all confede- 
 rations formed before 1789, the allied States reserved to them- 
 selves the right of ordaining and enforcing the laws of the union. 
 The American States agreed that the Federal Government should 
 not only dictate the laws, but execute its own enactments. This 
 alteration produced the most momentous consequences." 
 
 All the American State constitutions recognize three 
 things — certain inalienable rights of the people ; the right 
 to change according to pre-established rules by the vote 
 of a certain majority ; and the duty to obey until that 
 change is effected. 
 
 If we deny the first, we strike against the rock of ulti- 
 mate power and appeal. We shall have to settle the mode 
 of change, and to acknowledge the duty to obey. 
 
 The mode and conditions of change were regulated for 
 America by Article 13 of the Confederation, and by Article 
 5 of the United States Constitution : 
 
 " Nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any 
 of them, unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the 
 United States ; and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of 
 every State." ^ 
 
 "The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall 
 deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, 
 
 ' Article 13 of Confederation. 
 
Preface. xvii 
 
 or, on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the 
 several States, shall call a Convention for proposing amendments, 
 &c." ^ 
 
 Madison stated the general principle that organization 
 is a hierarchy, and that all laws contrary to the spirit of 
 the whole must be made and treated only as by-laws : 
 
 " There is a gradation of power in all societies, from the lowest 
 corporation to the highest sovereign. The States have the power 
 of making by-laws effectual only if not contradictory to the general 
 confederation." 
 
 So that the whole question is. Do we want to make a 
 whole or not, and what whole ? Are we to confederate, 
 or to remain defenceless and disorganized in the face of 
 other coming colossal combinations ? 
 
 As I said, the federal question is the supreme one, and 
 it cannot be shelved or shirked. 
 
 Montesquieu long ago explained how, in every combi- 
 nation, there is " a spirit of the whole " which must be 
 conformed to. Are we then to subside, or to seek "the 
 goal of this irresistible urging " ? 
 
 Let Washington wind up this constitutional question: 
 
 " To the efficacy and permanency of your union a govern- 
 ment for the whole is indispensable. No alliance, however strict, 
 between the parts, can be an adequate substitute; they must 
 inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all 
 alliances, in all time, have experienced. 
 
 " The basis of your political systems is the right of the people 
 
 to make and to alter their constitutions of government ; but the 
 
 constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit 
 
 and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon 
 
 all. The very idea of the power and right o/ the people to 
 
 establish government, presupposes the duty of every individual to 
 
 obey the established government." ^ 
 
 ' Article 5 United States Constitution. 
 ^ Washington's Farewell. 
 * 
 
xvlil Preface. 
 
 Now Mr. Gladstone has not appealed to " States " that 
 are to makq a nation, but to nations that are to make an 
 empire, and the futm'e federation will be strong, because 
 living nations make it ; whilst divisions will be avoided or 
 settled by representatives of the great federal communities, 
 informed and inspired by the almost universal spirit of 
 British citizenship. 
 
 American federalists made the future nation by fair, 
 free, and philosophic arrangements, which breathed an 
 exalted and invincible citizenship into the hearts of the 
 millions who were to come to her from every tyranny and 
 every clime. We must take Ireland as she is — about a 
 third the size of Great Britain, with the most intense 
 nationality, a large territory, a sea and ocean frontier — too 
 near to be separate, too far from us to be mechanically 
 united. If we do not want to be wiser than nature and 
 God, we shall get along well enough. Federation may or 
 may not make a weak Government, it all depends. Par- 
 tisans and sciolists are always the victims of words. 
 Gladstone makes a statutory parliament — granted; but 
 who makes Gladstone make it ? Who and what inspires 
 him? The Irish nation, and the spirit of the future, to 
 which he so exquisitely refers. We have tried to destroy 
 that nation, physically, materially, commercially, politi- 
 cally, and spiritually for centuries, and we have found it 
 indestructible. The nation is there, twenty million acres 
 are there, there are her mountains, rivers, harbours, soil, 
 and sea. There is the disposition to be grateful, there is 
 the policy, inherited from Grattan and from Burke, to 
 unite ; here is the opportunity also, and God forgive those 
 who palter with the issues ! It is not "we, the States," 
 who meet together and theorize, and who might form a 
 flimsy superstructure — or weak Government — it is " we," 
 the two nations and the Empire. It is a poli cy of progress 
 and hope, instinct with all the forces and passions God 
 can put into a nation, and based upon ample geographical 
 
Preface. xlx 
 
 political, and material guarantees of real union. " We, 
 the people " of England, make the Irish Parliament, and 
 will make such a parliament as befits the great and 
 glorious nationality that God and the Irish have already 
 made. If we sow thus, we shall reap centralization 
 thorough enough as to foreign policy, and decentralization 
 enough also. The Irish Establishment gone, "the Castle" 
 disendowed, nationality appeased, why should not the whole 
 sacred force and passion of the men of Ireland, England, 
 and the Empire have free course and be glorified ? 
 
 It may be natural for Orange ascendency to dislike 
 Catholic equality, especially with those whom Orangemen 
 have always treated as inferior in race, nationality, and 
 religion ; but the double principles of nationality and 
 equality cannot fail, as they did even in the slave States 
 of America, to win their way. Nationality and equality 
 are the intensest political passions, and once they are 
 given free sway, Protestantism is certainly not a likely 
 principle to help Ulster in repeating the part of the 
 " mean whites " of the South in their slave crisis. 
 
 Neither Orangemen who are not Irishmen, nor Irish- 
 men who are not Ulstermen, need fear English partizan- 
 ship or unfairness, for this simple reason — Irish affairs, 
 when not settled in Ireland, will come to be dominated 
 not by England, but by the Empire. It is the federal 
 power that will interfere when there must be interference; 
 it is the federal power that will mould also imperial federal 
 politics. The sovereignty in imperial matters will pass 
 away from England and Ireland both, to become vested 
 in the delegates of empire. Ireland, of course, must 
 settle her own "by-laws." 
 
 There is, I hope, in these pages, everything really neces- 
 sary to a fair understanding of the essential Irish question, 
 past and present, and of its dawning national and federal 
 
XX Preface, 
 
 future ; there is also, I trust, nothing superfluous or over- 
 laboured to prevent its becoming a handbook for the 
 people. 
 
 Five years ago, seeing the crisis coming, and having 
 always advocated recognition of the principle of Irish 
 nationality, I made a fresh study of the Irish speeches of 
 Grattan, Burke, and Fox. Of course, with these great 
 men, the making of the nation and empire were one 
 cause, process, and question. We find, however, dis- 
 memberment, disruption, and separation charged upon 
 them and ourselves. 
 
 I then read the definite compact and treaty of peace 
 between the two nations conducted by Grattan and Fox, 
 assented to by the four Houses, the Premier and Viceroy, 
 and to which George III. personally pledged himself; but 
 this we are now told had no validity. N-ext came the en- 
 lightened, fair-dealing legislation of Grattan's Parliament, 
 as good as Castlereagh's corruption and Pitt's brutality 
 would let it be, and the evidence of the prosperity 
 which follows freedom. I then traced the stimulated divi- 
 sions between Catholic and Protestant ; the disintegration 
 of the volunteer force ; and finally, to carry the Union, the 
 exchange of Irish troops for English, and the making 
 public meetings felony. But we are told that Grattan's 
 Parliament was a failure, the Union a success, and that 
 the large exports, since 1800, of food the Irish wanted 
 prove the prosperity of Ireland, and the success of the 
 Union ! Next there came the frightful consequences of 
 Pitt's handiwork — his massacres, tortures, evictions, 
 famines ; I reflected on the yearning and striving, ever 
 since Molyneux and Swift, for nationality, their misery 
 for seven hundred years ; but the answer came, " It is not 
 every nation that is fit for self-government," and "the 
 Irish have no political genius or fixed resolve." 
 
 Was there, then, any possible mistake ? How is it that 
 Ireland has not asserted herself? An English Premier 
 
Preface. xxi 
 
 has given the only answer : " The only remedy was revo- 
 lution, and the Irish could not make one." The toad 
 under the harrow had a better chance than Ireland under 
 Whig or Tory. Grattan's Parliament succeeded too much. 
 Catholics were not represented that the Irish Church 
 Establishment might be maintained. The garrison church, 
 province, and junto helped to maintain each other, and 
 Ireland became an English barracks. 
 
 O'Connell said, in 1843, all that was necessary to prove 
 that Ireland was a nation, and that she cannot, ought not, 
 and dare not fail to assert her nationality, and I sum- 
 marize his speech in " The Argument." As to the sectional 
 and superfine gentlemen who learn and remember nothing, 
 it is not necessary to answer them. It is past their pro- 
 vince to settle anything. They are superseded. They never 
 were anything, and never represented anything, and will 
 soon be nothing. Two years ago Mr. Gladstone appealed 
 to a new political world to redress the balances of the 
 old, and two months ago he appealed bodily for a mandate 
 to the English nation. The moment politics came into 
 touch with the aggregate manhood, they came into touch 
 with reality, with the people, with the two nations, with 
 the empire, and also with the federal instinct and prin- 
 ciple. The work of Molyneux, Swift, and Grattan was 
 taken up where they left it, and the English and Irish 
 nations shook hands across the gulf of centuries. Nation 
 always sympathizes with nation, when their common 
 factor manhood can really rule. Politics based on pro- 
 perty and things are used for property and things, and 
 that is what we have been doing in Ireland — farming 
 out law, land, religion, and nation on behalf of pro- 
 perty, and pretences, and against the national man- 
 hood and life. Such politics are radically and eternally 
 illegitimate, for property ruling manhood is the servant 
 ruling his master. The hour has come and the man, 
 whose imperial Radicalism has already turned the old 
 
xxli Preface. 
 
 political world upside down — setting the new one on its 
 base instead of on its apex, and who will soon turn the 
 old political lumber-room of "the Castle" — and other places 
 — inside out. His appeal now is to the disciplined reason 
 of the educated few, and to the undebauched instincts of 
 the whole English people — to those by whom the great 
 principles of nationality and empire are always believed 
 in and always understood. 
 
 Three persistent fallacies confound and perplex the 
 issues of the Anglo-Irish question. The first is that, in 
 the case of Ireland, prosperity followed slavery, and a 
 vast increase of imports and exports, the union. The 
 second is that the province of Ulster, having a majority 
 of Protestants, may become the victim of Roman Catholic 
 tyranny, and has a right to demand separate legislation 
 and autonomy, and to prevent the integration of the nation. 
 The third is that to qualify, to beset with conditions, or to 
 grudgingly admit the nationality of Ireland, is to make 
 her a better or safer helpmate, or a sounder member of 
 our coming confederation ; and we have accordingly rather 
 mixed analogies from the federations of the world, mis- 
 fitted and misapplied to the very special case of England 
 and Ireland. 
 
 The first fallacy is a very old and a very foolish one. 
 As O'Connell argued, w it likely that the sort of relations 
 forced upon Ireland, and the sort of statesmanship applied 
 to her by Pitt and Peel, should promote prosperity ? The 
 figures are admitted — were admitted as soon as they could 
 well be got together — by " Mr. Wm. Irving, Inspector- 
 General of Imports and Exports, dating from his office at 
 the Custom-house, January 15, 1831." The tables all 
 appear in the appendices to Sir Henry Parnell's book on 
 " Financial Reform," and I refer to them in the sequel. 
 The answer to the prosperity theory, founded on increased 
 
Preface. xxiil 
 
 exports, Is, that unless Irishmen are entirely different from 
 other people, it does them no good to have the things they 
 most want sent out of their country. No doubt imports 
 and exports increased from 1790 to 1826 and 1830, and 
 no doubt somebody benefited by them ; but that is not 
 national prosperity, and if it were, what is the wonder 
 that in those forty years, with or without the Union, 
 imports and exports increased ? 
 
 The allegation, on such grounds, of national prosperity, 
 is hardly worth notice. The fact is, the Irish had to send 
 out of the country the things they most wanted, and the 
 better the things were and the more they wanted them 
 the more they couldn't get them. And that is "prosperity" ! 
 and ' it resulted from the Union ! The tables of articles 
 "retained " in Ireland tell a very different story from that 
 of articles sent out of Ireland, which ought to have been 
 kept in. Taking round numbers, and triennial periods 
 from 1790 to 1826 or 1830, the consumption of tea a little 
 more than doubled, that of coffee was multiplied thirteen 
 times, and that of sugar and coals doubled. But then the 
 consumption of coffee began with -only 44,37oIbs. for five 
 or six millions of population. 
 
 The export of oxen, bacon and hams, swine, and sheep, 
 multiplied three, twenty, thirteen, and more than sixty- 
 fold respectively, and that of wheat more than twelve-fold. 
 The only thing to be said is, that this is the sort of pros- 
 perity Tory government generally secures — it takes the 
 good things away from the people. 
 
 With regard to Ulster, I can only here summarize what 
 is shown further on. Pitt deliberately reopened and fos- 
 tered feelings of hostility and division. Ulstermeri were 
 petted and rewarded as partners in, and abettors of, 
 tyranny and proscription. In 1793, sectarian hatred had 
 been cast out, and had died down, till the whole nation 
 demanded that Catholics sit in parliament. Pitt saw 
 what would follow that, and never swerved afterwards in 
 
XXIV Preface. 
 
 his efforts at destroying and dividing the Irish people. 
 At least since Grattan, and specially under O'Connell's 
 teaching, Catholics have been conciliatory and Orange- 
 men dictatorial. I do not, of course, speak of men dying 
 of hunger, or mad with despair. 
 
 With Nationalists a majority in Parliament, with a 
 strong minority of Catholics, with the Home Rule Asso- 
 ciation just formed in Belfast, and considering Mr. Glad- 
 stone's safeguard for minorities, our entire control of army 
 and navy, and that some Irish representatives will no doubt 
 continue to sit at Westminster, there will be nothing for 
 Ulster to fight for. 
 
 The third fallacy is that there is, or can be, anything 
 naturally uncanny, or dangerous, or disloyal in the temper 
 of a nation like the Irish towards conciliatory fellow- 
 citizens, or towards a protecting and friendly neighbour 
 like England. Development, not repression, is the 
 liberal gospel, and development on the right natural 
 lines is the only true conservatism. 
 
 It dilates our conceptions, dim though they may be, 
 vast as they must be, of the mighty unknown future of 
 the coming democratic confederation of all the Britains, 
 into which Ireland, equal among equals, now enters, to 
 believe, as we must, that Ireland's past sufferings are not 
 to be compared with the exceeding weight of glory of her 
 national and of our common federal future — the next step 
 but one, probably, in the world-logic of events, to the 
 founding of the universal commonwealth. As God is 
 faithful, as nations are sacred, as ' humanity is one, we 
 must believe this for Ireland, and we may believe it for 
 ourselves, if, as Gladstone now says, we are faithful to 
 our imperial and not to our Irish traditions. For if man 
 is made of one blood by a Being who foresaw and knew 
 all, a democracy and a civilization wide as the world,, and 
 
Preface. xxv 
 
 part of something even more lasting and universal, is 
 preparing for us. 
 
 The Tories are the Calvinists of politics. Themselves 
 the elect of the Fortunate Isles, they viewv^ith composure 
 the millions of the socially and politically predestined 
 " damned, Vhelmed in the whirling flood ; " and they say, 
 as Macaulay said, as false political economists have said, 
 as Pitt and Peel, and everybody except the thinkers and 
 the people, except Gladstone and the new English nation, 
 and the martyrs and makers of Ireland have said, ** The 
 misery of Ireland is necessary to the mastery of Britain " 
 — the political slavery of the many to the political sal- 
 vation of the few. 
 
 Whigs and Tories fog everything and fetter everything, 
 because they do not know and cannot conceive that a 
 true, real, complete nation is, and must be, a better and 
 truer ally than an incomplete and faulty one. There is 
 no future for their politics, because there is no truth, 
 largeness, or depth in their conceptions either of man- 
 hood, the only political force, or of nationhood, the only 
 political royalty. 
 
 Whigs want a constitutional balance, and cannot con- 
 ceive that there is always a preponderating power which 
 will not balance ; Tories want absolute power, and can- 
 not see that the only power in politics is manhood, its only 
 conservatism a complete and an equable development. 
 
 This is the difference between the men of the dawn and 
 of the night — a greater difference than that between the 
 *' reptiles and the eagles," which both alike in politics 
 re4ch the summit. 
 
 The political past of Tories and Whigs makes for us all 
 the difficulties we now inherit. To get rid of their bias 
 in the opening future would make all the difference 
 between the political heavens and earth. Their career is, 
 however, for Ireland nearly over. The future of politics 
 will soon see their breed extinct, and in the name of 
 
xxvi Preface, 
 
 England and Ireland, both, we address to them words, in 
 this instance as true as they are classic : " Ye have eaten 
 enough, ye have drunken enough, ye have wantoned 
 enough ; it is time for ye to depart ! " 
 
 J. A. PARTRIDGE. 
 Oxford, and Reform Club, S.W. 
 July, 1886. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ►"AGB 
 
 THE ARGUMENT 3 
 
 IRELAND A NATION 29 
 
 IRELAND BETRAYED 59 
 
 NATIONAL RESURRECTION lOI 
 
THE MAKING OF THE IRISH NATION. 
 
 •• The ocean protests against separation, and the sea against union." — 
 Grattan. 
 
 " The great trident that was to move the world must be grasped by England 
 alone. Independence of legislature had been granted to Ireland, but no other 
 independence could Great Britain give her without reversing the order of 
 nature. Ireland could not be separated from England ; she could not exist 
 withoJi her; she must ever remain under the protection of England, her 
 guardian angel." — Burke, in debate, May 19, 1785, on Pitt's resolutions 
 relating to commercial arrangements with Ireland. 
 
 " When a people have the boundaries and history, the separate characters 
 and physical resources, and, still more, the virtue and genius of a nation, they 
 are bound in conscience, in prudence, and in wisdom to assert their indi- 
 viduality, no matter how conciliation may lure or armies threaten." — Tht 
 Teaching of The Nation^''' 1843. 
 
 " I laid down five and five only essential conditions. The first was unity of 
 empire ; the second was political equality ; the third was equitable distribution 
 of imperial burdens ; the fourth was protection of minorities ; the fifth was 
 that the measure should present the essential character of a settlement." — The 
 Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, May 10, 1886 [Ti?nes report). . 
 
 " When it was determined to confer home rule on Canada, Canada was in 
 the precise temper attributed to Ireland. She did not get home rule because 
 she was loyal and friendly, but she is loyal and friendly because she has got 
 home rule." — Sir Charles Gavan Duffy. 
 
 *' Every civilized country is entitled to settle its internal affairs in its own 
 way, and np other country ought to interfere with its discretion, because one 
 country, even with the best intentions, has no chance of properly understanding 
 the internal affairs of another."— J. S. Mill, Letter on the IVestminster 
 Election, 1868. 
 
"A nationality which shall inflame and purify our people with a lofty and 
 heroic love of country — a nationality of the spirit as well as of the letter — a 
 nationality which may come to be stamped upon our manners, our literature, 
 and our deeds — which may embrace Protestant, Catholic, and Dissenter, 
 Milesian and Cromwellian — the Irishman of a hundred generations and the 
 stranger who is within our gzits"— Prospectus of " The Nation" 1843. 
 
 "The real root is the want of national institutions, of a national capital 
 and life. Everything patriotic is rebellious."— Goldwin Smith. 
 
 '^ Union is not unity. Heterogeneous and repugnant things maybe arbi- 
 trarily tied together, but this is not unity. ' Union' has no assimilating power. 
 Closer contact elicits the repugnances which rend all external bonds asunder." 
 — Cardinal Manning. 
 
 "In the case of Ireland, as truly as in that of Poland, a national constitu- 
 tion was destroyed by a foreign power, contrary to the wishes of the people. 
 It was a crime of treachery and corruption. Few things are more discreditable 
 to political English literature than the tone of palliation. Scarcely any element 
 or aggravation of political immorality was wanting, and the term honour, if 
 applied to Pitt and Castlereagh, ceases to have any real meaning in politics. 
 The union, as carried, was crime of the deepest turpitude ; every circumstance 
 of infamy vitiated the whole course of Irish opinion. Generation .after genera- 
 tion, by a slow, steady, fatal process, the nation has been educated into 
 disloyalty, taught to' distrust constitutional means, and to regard outrage as 
 invariable prelude to concession." — Lecky on Grattan^ pp. 182, 183. 
 
 ** Ireland was, in fact, a foreign country ; we preferred to assume that she 
 was an integral part of the empire. ... At the conquest We forced the Irish 
 Church into submission to the papacy. At the Reformation we forced it to 
 apostatize. . . . The theory of our Church Establishment split the garrison of 
 Protestants into hostile camps. A free representative legislature which . . .was 
 not free and was not representative ; a gentry who could not rule ; a Church which 
 could not teach ; laws which could not be enforced. ... If the object was to 
 absorb and extinguishthespiritof Irish nationality, it singularly failed. . . .Had 
 the union been conceded for which the presentiments of the Irish Parliament 
 led them to petition in 1704 ; had trade and manufactures been allowed to 
 develop, and the stream of British Protestant emigration been directed con- 
 tinuously into all parts of the island, the native population might have been 
 overborne or driven out, and the mother country might have retained the affec- 
 tions of a people with whom she would then have been identified in interest 
 and sentiment." — Froude's English in Ireland, book v. pp. 2, 3. 
 
THE MAKING OF THE IRISH NATION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 " Tell your countrymen that your connection with England is the source of her 
 liberty and a means of her greatness ; make them proud of standing by England, 
 Tell thSm that all their passions and interests can be completely gratified, 
 :and that the boldest exercise of freedom is perfectly conformable to the closest 
 bonds of the British connection. Nations are governed, not by interest only, 
 but by passion, and the passion of Ireland is freedom. So much her passion 
 IS, that a wise monarch who loved power would reject the proffer of her servi- 
 tude, and set her free to command her absolutely." — Grattan. 
 
 "We should start upon two principles: first, respect for nationalities — a 
 j)rinciple of justice ; and secondly, the maintenance of the power and greatness 
 of England — a condition essential to the general progress of our Western 
 ■wrorld. Beyond a federal regime, based on a solid foundation. ... I see 
 nothing in the horizon but a war of secession." — M. Emile de Laveleye. 
 
 " In fact, the union ^yas not only a great crime.'but a great blunder." — 
 IvECKY. 
 
 " Pitt's connection with the great Tory party made it easy for him to pro- 
 scribe the Roman Catholics, to torture the suspected, to burn the houses of the 
 peasantry. But when he sought to admit the Roman Catholics to parliament 
 and office, &c., the same Tory party, headed by the king, put an insuperable 
 bar in the way of his endeavours." — Earl Russell's Life and Times of Fox ^ 
 "book iii. p. 141. 
 
 The making of a nation is a greater event than any other 
 can be, save the making of a world. It is the mightiest, 
 most glorious, and most august achievement, and the 
 longest and most difficult process -possible on this planet ; 
 only less august than the making of the planet itself. 
 When such a fact .is really accomplished the world should 
 jrejoice at it, and all nations hasten to acknowledge it. 
 
4 Nation and Empire. 
 
 For it is the supremacy of centripetal, conservative, 
 creative, constructive, social and political forces, over cen- 
 trifugal destructive ones, throughout one of the largest 
 areas, and in one of the most important individualities of 
 the w^orld's great vicinage. Working downv^^ards and in- 
 wards, a nation is built up of its counties, municipalities, 
 communes, the whole being based. upon the free individual 
 manhood of the country : working outwards, a true nation 
 alone can take its place in those vaster conglomerates of 
 economy, freedom, peace, and power, which the fulure 
 must establish, and of which the English Empire is the 
 most conspicuous instance. 
 
 In becoming a willing portion of such an empire, each 
 constituent nation must of course yield something ; but it 
 need never — must never — ^yield that sort of representation 
 which is the vital link and living bond of the whole. 
 
 In falling within the orbit of a star of greater magni- 
 tude, it must of course revolve around it, but it still re- 
 volves on its own axis ; it is more complete within, and 
 more powerful without ; there is cosmos instead of chaos, 
 and sublimer order instead of the crash of colliding 
 worlds. 
 
 All organization is a hierarchy, and as nations can only 
 become self-governing and royal when based upon man- 
 hood, the only political force ; so empires can only securely 
 stand when the nations of which they are made are really 
 royal. 
 
 To make the Britannic Empire, we English mean ta 
 make the Irish nation ; and in making the Irish nation, 
 the Irish will help to make the empire. The two pro- 
 cesses are one, and Gladstone rightly heralded them by 
 basing both on their represented manhood ; but the safety 
 of the rule or order of future life between the two nations, 
 depends first upon seeing clearly that they are two nations 
 who have to settle that rule and order. Words must not 
 be mistaken for things, or forms for force, and practical 
 
The Royalty of Nations, ^ 
 
 men must clear their minds at least of so much cant as is 
 already found out, or likely to be found out, respecting the 
 practical dominant forces of the situation. 
 
 A Constitution is strong and lasting according to the 
 real strength and truth upon which it is based, and states- 
 manship considers and sees what is that strength now, 
 what it is certain to be soon, and what it must be later. 
 The constitutional Convention is the American proviso 
 for change ; ours is a General Election. But we must not 
 forget that force is always the last remedy, nor that when 
 the Senate (two senators for each State) of the great demo- 
 cracy proved too conservative for free men to live with, and 
 when the Chief Justice (Dred Scott and other decisions) 
 became the arch thief of the Republic, the final problem 
 had to be solved — are honest men stronger than thieves, 
 and is truth grounded on the people ? Le droit prime la 
 force ; but if not, nation and right go down together, and 
 the appeal lies to the whole and to the future. The pro- 
 blem of false statesmen, like Pitt, is how to found im- 
 morality upon weakness ; and his solution of it, as it shook 
 hell with laughter, has shaken England and Ireland with 
 revolution ever since. 
 
 After eighty-six years the judgment has come, the books 
 once more are open, and the appeal this time is to the 
 people of both nations. It comes, for us Englishmen, 
 from Pitt and George III., and the three oligarchies of 
 Whig landlord junto, and garrison Church and province, 
 to the nation, to Victoria, and to Gladstone, who has the 
 mandate of both ; and as the wrong will not now be 
 sustained by the English nation, the Irish nation will get 
 its own, as will also the English Empire and people. The 
 problem solving in politics always is how right shall be 
 preserved, or how the policy and the politician shall be 
 destroyed ; the destruction is a provincial question, each 
 country can settle it for itself; the right is an imperial 
 question, providence secures it for the whole. 
 
6 What Ireland Is. 
 
 "To build upon a rock," said Napoleon, "means to. 
 establish government on the democratic principle." " Let 
 no one quote the. old maxim against me," said Machiavel,. 
 " that * whosoever builds upon the people builds upon the 
 sand.' " " The people at large," said Aristotle, " may 
 always quash the vain pretences of the few, by saying,. 
 * We collectively are richer, wiser, and nobler than you.' " 
 And the French poet is no less faithful and strong ; for 
 " each combination of ashes returns to ashes ; all those 
 granites, oligarchy, aristocracy, (if not) theology, are 
 promised to the four winds." We build our future not 
 on the sectional, the superfine, or the superficial ; but, on 
 the eternal granite of the universal people, and on the 
 sense of justice and right, the charity, pathos, sympathy, 
 and love, begotten in their hearts by the daily expenditure 
 of work and effort — that is, of themselves, in keeping, and 
 in helping one another to keep, hearthstone and roof, soul 
 and body together. 
 
 Useless to talk to them of Ireland as anything but what 
 she is and where she is — to draw conclusions of what 
 might be, were Ireland linked to the Continent, or far from\ 
 England, or near to America ; or as if she were one of 
 many united or untied States, or of a new Dominion. Ire- 
 land is a country of over 20,000,000 acres (a fourth size of 
 England) ; has fed 8,000,000 souls, and might soon feed 
 as many as England did when she contended against 
 embattled Europe ; she has a distinct frontier, a fertile soil,, 
 great rivers, splendid harbours, a noble race, and a popular 
 religion ; she is moored alongside England is shielded — 
 she ought to be — by England's mighty headland from 
 mightier dangers elsewhere. She is due west of England 
 sixty-seven miles, and three or four hours from Holyhead ; 
 she is not Belgium or Hanover, or in America or Canada, 
 and she has had the principle of a settlement offered her, a 
 settlement safely and finally based on what she is — a nation 
 — by their man of destiny and of the epoch — Gladstone. 
 
The Link of Nation and Empire. j 
 
 It will be the work now of the two nations to let the 
 future of Ireland translate into politics the hieroglyphics 
 of God, foreshadowed in the facts of nature, and written 
 on the face of history. It may be the attempt of traitors 
 and fools to establish a policy of suicide for England, whilst 
 proffering to our sister nation a policy of revolution and 
 despair. For we also in England have our counterfeit 
 presentments of Senates conservative of wrong, and a 
 party both for and against Home Rule ; we have our House 
 of Lords, we have our shrieking marquis, and another 
 marquis, of right English fibre and intent, but descended 
 from one of those three families that for a century made 
 good government in Ireland impossible. Still, thank God, 
 we have not now, as in 1800, an oligarchy in absolute 
 possession of the resources of the three kingdoms, and, 
 offering, as did the clear-seeing South, "to rend God's 
 moral government from turret to foundation," though 
 doing it not as the South, but in God's own name, and 
 in that of His Church and king. 
 
 The Irish question involves three cardinal questions. 
 The first is Irish nationality — the right of a nation to 
 govern itself from its own capitol, which no Liberal will 
 deny. The second is unity of empire. As nations are 
 made up of free, self-governing sections, and finally of free 
 men, so empires are made up of free nations. The third 
 question is that of the link between nation and empire. 
 Constituent nations can alone join with one another in 
 making their empire, and can alone make their empire in 
 joining with one another. What is to be the link ? What 
 the outward and visible constitutional form ? If there be 
 none for Ireland, then the question is insoluble. For her 
 to assume the present status of Colonial independence is 
 absolutely impossible. She is too near for an independence 
 that is not federal, and she is once for all and for ever a nation. 
 
 The federal question is not ripe, but it is getting ready 
 to ripen, and meanwhile nothing should be done to pre- 
 
8 Govei^ning too Much. 
 
 judice and everything to facilitate federation. Ireland can 
 only join the empire, and the other nations that make the 
 empire, by sending to the imperial senate her quota of 
 imperial representatives. What will be that senate and 
 how many those representatives has yet to appear ; but 
 the principle is certain and definite. The representatives 
 of empire should not be the same men, nor should they be 
 elected in the same way, as the representatives of Irish 
 or other boroughs. They should be elected by the national 
 representatives ; they should be in numbers something 
 like Ireland's future quota to the Imperial Federal Council- 
 chamber, for which the present " upper " chamber will 
 have to be swept and garnished. This, or something like 
 it, cannot fail to come as between our imperial inde- 
 pendencies and England, and it is because it has not 
 come, and yet is coming, that we differ in detail ; it is 
 because it has got to come throughout, and because 
 Ireland may and should now be made the first-fruits of 
 federation, that the principle of the federal link should be 
 foreshadowed and affirmed. 
 
 The controversy between the English and Irish nations 
 has been interminable, because we have declined to accept 
 the inevitable, and to recognize what must be recognized, 
 whilst attempting to destroy the indestructible and to 
 associate irreconcilables. The two nations are the two 
 indestructible forces that policy alone makes hostile. They 
 can only live together as nations without an attempt at 
 denationalization or factitious union, and according to 
 the laws of nature and providence. Twenty generations, 
 however, of varied attempts at corruption, intimidation, 
 division, of Tnassacre, forture, or war, seem to have taught 
 our statesnien no lessonT .X)etermined to govern Ireland 
 too much, they have learnt nothing and forgotten every- 
 thing ; but they have strained our most gigantic intellects, 
 swept both nations as with the brands of the Furies, and 
 created a situation of appalling danger. 
 
Two Parlia7nents and One Empire. 9 
 
 Given two nations, a large and a little one, parts of 
 one empire, with the seat of empire in the larger country, 
 political science exists to adjust the rights and claims of 
 the two nations and the empire, and not to destroy or 
 ignore either. To maintain that the smaller nationality 
 is irreconcilable with the larger, or with empire, and 
 that the only way is to put down the smaller, is simply to 
 quarrel with facts, to deny nature, and to disestablish 
 politics. Now more than ever we want statesmanship, 
 courage, and ideas, and, above all, the common sense of 
 the universal people, when would-be leaders still challenge 
 the fundamental laws of democracy, and the consensus of 
 universal civilization, denying, first, the right of a con- 
 siderable nation to govern itself from its own capitol, and 
 next, the possibility of doing what has been done over and 
 over again by other people — to develop and reconcile 
 national and imperial rights and interests in two parlia- 
 ments and one empire. 
 
 Constitutional problems, long since familiar to millions 
 upon millions of our youth and race elsewhere, seem 
 strangely to puzzle over- or under-educated Englishmen 
 at home. The first position, however, that against 
 nationality, one may safely leave to the tender mercies 
 of the English or any other people. We all know what 
 we thought of the rights of Italy, Greece, Hungary, and 
 of the wrongs of Austrian and Turk ; and many of us 
 remember the stir there was in England and America 
 "when Kossuth declared that if Hungarian liberties were 
 to go down — 
 
 " A world in blood shall attend the funeral rites." 
 
 Suffice it to say, with President Adams, " there can be 
 no proscription old enough to supersede the law of nature 
 and the grant of God Almighty; Acts of Parliament against 
 the fundamental principles of the British constitution are 
 void ; " or with our own John Bright at Limerick, that 
 
lo What every Englishnan Believes. 
 
 we believe what every Englishman believes of every 
 country but Ireland, that the government of Ireland 
 should be in accordance with the wishes of the majority 
 of its people, and also that what one Act of Parliament 
 established, another Act could repeal.^ 
 It was Burke who said : 
 
 "The spirit of nationality is at once the bond and the safe- 
 guard of kingdoms; it is something above laws and beyond 
 thrones, the impalpable element, the inner life of States ; but anti- 
 nationality is the confusion and downfall of kingdoms ; it is a 
 blight and a mildew to the heritage of the people." 
 
 "We, however, challenge the verdict of the world on this 
 issue in the name also of the universal spirit of humanity,, 
 whose chief champion is the British Empire and race, as 
 well as in the name of the coming democratic confedera- 
 tion of all the Britains, the best guarantee of that empire 
 and of that humanity to the world. 
 
 As a matter of scientific federal adjustment, we might 
 cite the Constitutions of all the American States and the 
 dicta of all her first statesmen, who, with separate parlia- 
 ments in every State, built up out of a mass of divers 
 nationalities, in the name of " we the people," both Con- 
 stitution and nation. The question was well put by 
 Washington, and equally well by Lincoln in his in- 
 augural : 
 
 " This relative matter of national power and State rights is no> 
 other than the principle of Generality and Locality. Whatever 
 concerns the whole, should be confided to the whole ; whatever 
 concerns only the State, should be left exclusively to that State." 
 
 From the voidest view of the " Philosophy of History," 
 Hegel explains how : 
 
 "Each individual national genius is to be treated as only one 
 individual in the process of universal history. The forms which 
 
 ' See " Gladstone's House of Commons," p. 341. 
 
Grades of Progress. i \ 
 
 these grades of progress assume are the characteristic national- 
 spirits of history ; the peculiar tenor of their moral life, of their 
 government, art, religion, and science. To realize these grades is. 
 the boundless impulse of the world spirit, the goal of its irresistible- 
 urging. For this division into organic members and the full 
 development of each is its idea." 
 
 It is therefore but as one of these "grades of boundless 
 impulse and irresistible urging " that the " making of the. 
 Irish nation " and of the Britannic Empire nov^ proceed 
 pari passti on the right lines laid dovi^n by Grattan, Burke, 
 and Fox a century ago. Those who are enemies of the 
 nation are enemies of the empire; but those are the 
 greatest enemies just now of both vi^ho cannot see that 
 whilst empire is imperial, " nation " must be national and 
 royal. A nation that comes into an empire can alone 
 come into it as a nation, because it wills to do so, and not 
 because it must. That is the mistake of those who cannot 
 see that the principle of nationality, the only royalty,. 
 must cover all. 
 
 The sole link of the parliament of Grattan with England 
 was the Crown, and that was then enough ; for had the 
 English let them, Irishmen would have been more English 
 than themselves. But with the century the empire has 
 grown and distance has lessened, and the empire, though 
 not the nation, requires closer riveting and stronger links. 
 Still, after the century inaugurated by Pitt, who bought 
 scoundrels, slaughtered patriots, and made the future 
 difficult, Irish nationality once more towers above all its. 
 friends and foes — the dominant fact of the situation. With 
 it alone and the English nation, and the empire it can, 
 mar or make, we have now to reckon. 
 
 "The ocean still protests against separation, and the. 
 sea against union." On the one hand, we now cross the 
 sea in four hours instead of twenty-two; and, on the 
 other, we have forced Irish emigration from Canada to 
 the United States, where now riearly two millions of Irish 
 
1 2 Confederation and Local Agency, 
 
 live. But then we have Victoria instead of George III., 
 Gladstone instead of Pitt, and federal ideas have germi- 
 nated and spread. We hear everywhere of home rule for 
 London, for Wales, for Scotland, and for the counties, 
 and of a real imperial chamber in London relieved of 
 mere titular noblemen, and made ready, as I for one 
 have for eighteen years been urging, for the delegates of 
 empires and of colonies beyond the seas and beneath the 
 setting sun. 
 
 The treaty of peace and unity between the two nations, 
 which Grattan negotiated, George IIL ratified, and Pitt 
 violated, had, I say, no link of empire but the Crown. 
 But Irish representatives, now led by Parnell, would be 
 far from rejecting such a quota (proportional to the other 
 •colonies, nations, and empires to be represented) of im- 
 perial federal representation as would put Ireland on a 
 fair federal footing. Ireland must come as a king and as 
 a nation, because in democracies all nations are royal, or 
 she cannot come at all. She is ready so to come, and the 
 English and Scottish nations ask so to receive her. Who, 
 then, is he that would say them nay ? Certainly no demo- 
 cratic statesman. 
 
 The Colonies cannot come,, Ireland ought not to come, 
 into a chamber of mere local self-government or vestry 
 statesmanship. But all that is going to be altered in 
 London ; neither Ireland, nor the delegates of our mighty 
 empires beyond the seas, can come as equals and sit down 
 Avith mere titular sons of their fathers, who represent 
 nothing and are nothing; neither can they come into a 
 chamber where, as Burke said, there would be a mere 
 confused and scuffling bustle of local agency. They will 
 all come, as alone they can come, of their own free royal 
 will. The empire depends on this as well as the nations. 
 
 The traitors, then, are those not only to Ireland, but to 
 the whole scheme and scope of Democracy and Federa- 
 tion — of the coming democratic federation of all the 
 
O'Connell on the Nation. 13 
 
 Britains — ^who look only to the new Irish charter for margin 
 whereon to stamp once more the character of besotted 
 Tory coercionists, or of Whig brutality and littleness. 
 
 In 1843 O'Connell brought the entire case on which he 
 relied for repeal before the chief representative body of 
 Ireland, the Dublin Corporation ; and his speech, which 
 lasted the greater part of the 25th February, the opening 
 day, is the whole case. Nobody has ever stated it so well, 
 and I insert here a very compressed summary : 
 
 " Ireland was fit for legislative independerxe in position, popu- 
 lation, and natural advantages. Five independent kingdoms in 
 Europe possessed less territory or people ; and her station on the 
 Atlantic between the old world and the new designed her to be 
 the entrepot of both. She was entitled to legislative independence. 
 The parliament of Ireland was as ancient as that of England, and. 
 had sprung out of the natural rights of free men. 
 
 "After 1782 her commerce was extended, her manufactures 
 fostered, wages rose, and the value of land increased. During 
 parliamentary independence the use of tea increased 84 per cent, 
 in Ireland, against 45 in England ; the use of wine 75 against 22 ;; 
 coffee, 600 per cent, as against 79, and so on the other taxable 
 articles, the use of which measures prosperity. After the union 
 the proportions were reversed. 
 
 " He denied, in the name of constitutional law and public faith, 
 that the union was a compact which the Irish Parliament was en 
 titled to make, or which was binding on the Irish people. The 
 ordinary principles of delegated power ruled the case. Locke, 
 the apostle of the revolution of 1688, distinctly declares that * A 
 legislature cannot transfer the power of making laws into other 
 hands, for, being but a delegated power from the people, they who 
 have it cannot pass it over to others.' They could extinguish 
 themselves, but parliament they could not extinguish." 
 
 On the second branch of the proposition, that the com- 
 pact made by parliament was not binding on the country, 
 O'Connell made out a case of specific fraud and coercion suf- 
 ficient to invalidate a document before a court of law. 
 
14 O'Connell on "the Union'* 
 
 "The union was carried by profligate corruption and naked 
 intimidation. The Irish people were not free agents. The people 
 were prostrate and gagged. Within parliament a majority was 
 bought and paid for \ over a million was spent in secret bribes ; 
 and a million and a half openly. In the army, navy, customs, 
 patronage was distributed as bribes : ;i{^8,ooo for a vote, or an office 
 of ;^2,ooo a year. No less than twenty peerages, ten bishoprics, 
 one Chief Justiceship, and six puisne judgeships, were given to 
 men who voted for the union. Twenty-seven counties out of 
 thirty-two petitioned against the union. The petition from County 
 Down, was signed by 17,000 persons against, and only 415 for, 
 and so in other counties. There were upwards of 700,000 
 petitioners against, including the leading men of the nation ; those 
 for did not exceed 3,000, some only asking for discussion. 
 
 " The union robbed the people of their constitutional right to 
 control the judiciary and executive. It forced them to submit to 
 imperfect representation in the Commons and in corporations, 
 and to see public employments, paid by their money, given to 
 aliens. 
 
 " It was said that an Irish parliament would lead to Catholic 
 ascendency. Since the Reformation they had three times been 
 restored to power, and it was admitted by Protestant historians 
 that they had never persecuted a single individual. In an Irish 
 parliament nine-tenths of the peers would be Protestants. Had 
 the Catholics of Ireland shown any indisposition to elect Protes- 
 tant representatives ? Notoriously they had not." 
 
 An-d then came O'Connell's magnificent peroration, with 
 its solid argument as to self-government and prosperity, 
 and its appeal to the interests and imagination : , 
 
 " Do you know any country submitted to slavery that has not 
 accepted poverty along with it ? and do you know any country 
 risen to liberty without prosperity ? Look to America, Venice, 
 Switzerland. Look to Belgium, a pitiful province of Holland, 
 now a prosperous' nation. Look to Norway, though barren and 
 sterile, which has through d, domestic parliament acquired pros- 
 perity never before known amongst its hardy population. Ours 
 is a country for man to delight in, whilst her people are foremost 
 
Fox and Grattan on Two Legislatures. 1 5 
 
 in every physical and social quality, temperate, moral, religious, 
 hospitable, and brave. That people shall be what they ought to 
 be. The star of liberty shall beam above them. Self-govern- 
 iiient and self-legislation shall be revived amongst them. Their 
 ■allegiance to the throne is unbroken ; but their love of liberty is 
 unextinguished and unconquerable." 
 
 Fox had declared it to be : 
 
 ^*The most arrogant of all pretensions that we car^ legislate for 
 Ireland — that we should understand all her local interests better 
 •than herself. The sovereignty of the people, that. man shall, be 
 his own governor, is the fundamental principle of all well-con- 
 ducted States. To undertake to legislate for persons with whose 
 local interests we must be unacquainted is despotisni, not liberty, 
 and. the attempt to govern for them was the most audacious which 
 |;he history of mankind recorded." 
 
 ,, And respecting the way to make a strong Ireland and a 
 united empire by a separate legislature, Grattan (January 
 15, 1800) was still more emphatic : 
 
 " After fifteen years, and when the Minister has a great army 
 in Ireland, instead of a Constitution which estabhshed peace in 
 Ireland, he revived a principle which produced war in America ; 
 namely, that two independent legislatures are incompatible. This 
 "Was the language of Lord North's sword in the Colonies ; this is 
 the language of Mr. Pitt's sword in Ireland ; and this doctrine of 
 imperial legislature, which lost America and which Great Britain 
 isurrendered to Ireland, takes once more its bloody station in the 
 :speeches of the Minister^ in defiance of faith, and in contempt of 
 ■experience. ... I put this question to my country. Will you fight 
 for a union as you would for a Constitution ; for that Lords and 
 that Commons who took away your trade, as for that King, Lords* 
 .and Commons who have restored both ? 
 
 " How came the Irish Parliament with all its borough members 
 in 1779 to demand free trade — in 1782 to demand a free Consti- 
 tution ? 
 
 " Because it sat in Ireland, in their own country ; because they 
 had a country." ■ ■ •'' ■ ,. 
 
1 6 ^^ Managing the Movement!' 
 
 The allegation that Ulster also is a nation is the re- 
 duetto ad absurdum of ** nationalities." Ulster was a 
 Presbyterian garrison colony, impropriated and planted 
 by force and confiscation on the native soil. Leaving- 
 Belfast out, the Catholics have a majority, and the 
 Nationalists of Ulster have an actual majority in Parlia- 
 ment. A majority in a section has rights, but amongst 
 them no lawyer would include the right to disintegrate 
 the nation. Ulster farmers maintained their rights 
 against landlordism by superior shooting. They were 
 not so loyal and long-suffering as other Irishmen, either 
 to king, landlord, or nation. In Grattan's time they rallied 
 as one man to the national standard, and, as Lecky says,, 
 divisions vanished like a dream. 
 
 As Pitt's Viceroy wrote him in 1782, the movement that 
 had to be " managed " was " the whole of the country,'* 
 not only the Church, law, army, merchant, tradesman^ 
 manufacturer, farmer, labourer, but "the Catholic, the 
 Dissenter, and the Protestant." But Pitt's policy of 
 division, and the "interesting" interviews his Viceroy 
 had with the chief men of Ulster during the tour under- 
 taken purposely to detach the provinces from the nation, 
 met with some success. 
 
 Later on, *' superior shooting " has also had a good deal 
 to do with the exuberance of Orange demonstrations, and 
 one effect of Lord Spencer's idea lately of taking police 
 notes of Orange as well as of Nationalist orations, with 
 the story in the sequel, of sacks full of revolvers dropped 
 on the field at a hint of search — these things are instruc- 
 tive as well as comical. When Lord Spencer began to> 
 keep Orange magistrates and deputy-lieutenants in order, 
 Orangemen left off teaching Nationalists to take revolvers 
 to their meetings. It is true, as is said at p. 520 of " The 
 Parnell Movement," that "the province of Ulster has, 
 with a characteristic ignorance of Irish affairs, been re- 
 garded as a solid mass in favour of English domination. 
 
Wkal Ulster Wants. 17 
 
 But in 1798 the most stubborn resistance to the success 
 of the English forces was made in Ulster. Ulster Pres- 
 byterians gave to the American Revolution its bravest 
 soldiers. Among them the foundation was laid of the 
 'United Irishmen,' the most formidable conspiracy against 
 English rule. In more modern times they formed one of 
 the strongest elements of the tenant-right party. At all 
 times in the history of Ulster, the Catholics formed nearly 
 half of the population, and were Nationalist to a man, but 
 the landlords, the boards, the bench, were from the oppo- 
 site ranks." 
 
 The greater number of Ulster Protestants are tolerant 
 and Liberal, many are Nationalists and Home Rulers, or a 
 majority of Home Rulers would not have been Returned 
 therefrom. What the intolerant portion fear is not faif 
 Home Rule, but that their own unfair Ulster rule may go 
 out of fashion. We know that Protestants have at all 
 times been on Dublin and other town councils, that 
 Catholic constituencies elect irrespective of creed, that 
 Irish national leaders have been (O'Connell excepted) and 
 are Protestants; whilst no Catholics sit on the Belfast 
 Town Council, and hardly any are yet employed by its 
 Corporation. Many Liberal Presbyterians of Ulster 
 helped the Nationalists at the last election, and with 
 independence the national feeling will naturally obliterate 
 provincial distinctions and differences. 
 
 One thing should be said at once, the political unity of 
 the empire never has been in question, and (in this con- 
 nection) never has been endangered, except by the foes of 
 Irish nationality. Grattan, Fox, and Burke, its boldest 
 advocates, always urged Irish autonomy and imperial unity 
 as one question and interest; nor can they be scientifically 
 stated otherwise. I quote three passages from Burke, one 
 from Grattan, and one from Fox ; 
 
 "The great, trident that was to move the world must be grasped 
 
 3 
 
i8 Legislative Independence and Unity. 
 
 by England alone. Independence of legislature has been granted 
 to Ireland, but no other independence could Great Britain give 
 her without reversing the order of nature. Ireland could not be 
 separated from England; she could not exist without her; she 
 must ever remain under the protection of England, her guardian 
 angel." ^ 
 
 " I cannot conceive," said Burke, in 1796, " how a man can be 
 a genuine Englishman without being at the same time a true 
 Irishman. I think the same sentiments ought to be reciprocated 
 on the part of Irishmen, and if possible with much stronger reason. 
 Ireland cannot be separated one moment from England without 
 losing every source of her prosperity, and eVen hope of her future." 
 
 " The whole of the superior, and what I should call imperial 
 politics, ought to have its residence here, and Ireland, locally, 
 civilly, and commercially independent, ought politically to look to 
 Great Britain in all matters of peace or war, and, in a word, with 
 her to live and die." * 
 
 "To appease and allay the great discontent, I proposed the 
 complete independence of Ireland. The principle was above all 
 ... to restore that cordial affection between the two countries so 
 eminently requisite to the preservation and prosperity of both. 
 The more Ireland is under the Irish Government, the more will 
 she be bound to British interests." 3 
 
 " I say the growth of Irish demands was the expression of the 
 time, an agreement to establish for ever the free and independent 
 existence of the Irish Parliament, and to preserve for ever the 
 unity of empire, by precluding the introduction of any further 
 constitutional questions affecting the connection founded on the 
 prudent, the profound, the liberal, and the eternal principle of 
 unity of empire and separation of parliament." 4 
 
 Pitt's union did not succeed because it could not succeed. 
 It undid, destroyed, and reversed a right revolution, and 
 set up a union with every element of dissolution and sepa- 
 
 ' 1785 : Debate on Pitt's resolutions relating to commercial arrangements 
 with Ireland. 
 
 » Burke, 1797. 3 Fox, March 23, 1797. •♦ Grattan, 1800. 
 
Hume and Btirke on iyS2. 19 
 
 ration. Witness Hume and Burke in praise of " 1782,** 
 ^nd Goldwin Smith in condemnation of ** 1801 " : 
 
 "The revolution of 1688," said Hume, "was accomplished by 
 ithe first persons in the country in rank and intellect leading the 
 j)eople. Hence it ended in liberty, not confusion. The revolu- 
 tion in Ireland in 1782 was formed in a similar manner." 
 
 "The revolution to you," said Burke, "that which most in- 
 trinsically and substantially resembled the English revolution of 
 j688 — was the Irish revolution of 1782." 
 
 " The incorporation (1707) of the Scotch nation," wrote Goldwin 
 Smith in 1868 to T^e Daily JVews, " with the English, being con- 
 ducted by the great Whig statesmen of Anne, has been perfectly 
 :successful. The attempt to incorporate the Irish nation with the 
 English and Scotch, conducted on different principles, has failed. 
 The Irish union has missed its port, and, in order to reach it, will 
 have to tack again. The real root is the want of national institu- 
 tions, of a national capital and life. Dublin is a modern Tara, a 
 metropolis from which the glory has departed. In Ireland we can 
 make no appeal to patriotism, because everything patriotic is 
 rebellious. 
 
 " Ulster immigrants were from the Scottish lowlands, Scottish 
 in political and social character. The other three provinces are 
 ■covered with a mass of population formed out of the wreck of broken 
 ■Celtic clans, the immemorial enemies of the English government, 
 .and who never saw a parliament except as the organ of a foreign 
 •oppressor ; who lost their only object of political attachment when 
 their chiefs were struck down, and the clan lands confiscated by 
 the strangers' treason law, whose only political ideas are those of 
 clan devotion to a chief, and to each other; whose notions of 
 land tenure belong rather to the clan age of tribal than of indi- 
 A'idual proprietorship, who are Roman Catholic and Ultramontane 
 in religion, and whose one pervading sentiment is practical hatred 
 of England." 
 
 We must nov^ take the great central idea of Irish 
 nationality, and work from it outwards for our policy, 
 remembering always the motto, *' The sea protests against 
 
2o; Lecky on Disloyalty and Education. 
 
 union, the ocean protests against separation." We could 
 not work this problem out before, because our people were 
 deceived, our statesmen ignorant, and our king — George 
 III. ; because of the minority-garrison Church, and the 
 minority garrison of landlords, of whom three families 
 alone, the Devonshires (Hartingtons), the Beresfords, and 
 the Ponsonbys, were enough at one time to render alt 
 right government impossible. 
 
 Organization is really a hierarchy, ascending from in- 
 dividuals, communes, municipalities, and counties to- 
 nations : " empire " consists of all these united amongst 
 themselves ; and, in our case, all preparing for con-^ 
 federation. 
 
 But before federation we must found the empire, and 
 before the empire the nations ; and we must not mistake 
 local self-government for nationality. I am glad here to- 
 quote some profound remarks of the historian Lecky, on 
 Irish nationality : 
 
 " One of the most alarming features of Irish disloyalty is its 
 close and evident connection with education. It was long cus- 
 tomary to underrate disaffection by ascribing it to transitory 
 causes. The quarter of a century that followed the union was 
 marked by almost perpetual disturbance, but this, it was said, was 
 merely the natural ground-swell. ... It was the work of O'Connell, 
 &c., as if the ^olian harp being shattered, men wrote an epitaph 
 on the wind ! Public opinion (in Ireland) has palpably deterio- 
 rated, and faith in moral force has almost vanished with the 
 failure of his agitation. 
 
 " In no other history especially can we investigate more fully 
 the evil consequences which must ensue from disregarding that 
 sentiment of nationality which is at least one of the strongest and 
 most enduring of human passions. This lies at the root of Irish, 
 discontent. Special grievances become formidable only as far as 
 they are connected with it. 
 
 " Irish emigration is leavening the new world. Irish admini- 
 strators under the British Crown are organizing in no small 
 
Canada as a Precedent. 21 
 
 degree the empires or republics of the future. Emigration is 
 multiplying enemies of England throughout the new world. 
 Disloyalty restricts the flow of capital, and the direction of so large 
 an amount of the enthusiasm of the country in opposition to the 
 law, and the diversion of much more into sectarian channels, 
 vitiates and debases political life. 
 
 " The three requisites of good government for Ireland are that 
 at should be strong, just, and national. No government will ever 
 ■command the real affection and loyalty of the people which is not 
 in some degree national, as in Hungary, Switzerland, Belgium. 
 National institutions alone will obtain the confidence of the 
 nation. To give the greatest amount of self-government com- 
 patible with the unity and security of the empire should be the 
 aim of every statesman. 
 
 " The Irish cared very little on the subject (Disestablishment), 
 but its effects on Protestants have been extremely great. They 
 have been cut loose from their old moorings, ^nd are certainly 
 more disposed than at any period since the union to throw them- 
 selves into the general current of Irish sentiment." ^ 
 
 That any Irish disloyalty previous to a recognition of 
 her nationality should be used as a presumption of dis- 
 loyalty after such recognition is forbidden by the precedent 
 of Canada. 
 
 Canada, said Mr. Chamberlain, is loyal and friendly to 
 this country; Ireland is not. But, replied the Hon. C. 
 Gavan Duffy, in The Contemporary Review for May, to men 
 familiar vi^ith the facts, this is the most stringent argument 
 for Mr. Gladstone's proposal. Canada did not get home 
 rule because she w^as loyal and friendly, but she is loyal 
 and friendly because she got home rule. 
 
 "The differences of race and religion have been paraded as 
 barriers to common action, as if the same had not been overcome 
 in Switzerland, Hungary, and Belgium. Is not difference of 
 pohtical sentiments the basis of responsible government? It is 
 precisely because men differ widely in principle that parliamentary 
 •government is possible and salutary." 
 
 ^ Lecky on " Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland," preface. 1871. 
 
22 Messrs. Froude, Lecky, and Goldwin Smith, 
 
 I venture here to introduce certain invaluable excerpts 
 from Mr. Froude's " English in Ireland : " first, because- 
 his book contains the best summary of facts on the ground, 
 they cover ; second, because those facts are the best vin- 
 dication of Irish nationality ; and third, because they 
 utterly and absolutely nullify all Mr. Froude's assump- 
 tions against it. They are also the best illustration of 
 the way in which such very superior persons are apt to- 
 cry up authority, and cry down the people. 
 
 Messrs. Froude and Lecky both admit the great pre- 
 miss, nationality, and deny the conclusion, self-govern- 
 ment ; whilst Mr. Goldwin Smith — who was wont once 
 to belittle the Britannic Empire because the Colonies did 
 not pay, has now taken that empire under his protection — 
 writes to The Times to say what large views he ; "a 
 Colonist," can take, and shows how little he cares for 
 nationality, self-government, or empire, by belabouring; 
 the greatest man now living in the world, for doing all 
 that one man can to make Ireland, and by making Ireland 
 to make the empire. 
 
 *' Without examining details, the whole of Liberal 
 Europe and America is loud in admiration of the initiative 
 taken by the illustrious statesman," writes M. Emile de 
 Laveleye, in The Pall Mall Gazette of May 6th ; and on 
 the same date The Nation, of New York, thus notices Mr. 
 Goldwin Smith's " indiscretions " in asserting the con- 
 trary as to America. The Nation must know something 
 about America, and it regrets that the international and 
 omniscient professor has abused his trust. The real sen- 
 timents of *'the bulk of the Americans" (against Home 
 Rule and Mr. Gladstone) ** must have been communicated 
 to him in confidence, with instructions to tell no one, be- 
 cause their open professions are all the other way. To go 
 and blurt it all out is an indiscretion. The only way he 
 can atone for it is to die on the field with Mr. Froude, 
 &c., in conquering the Irish." 
 
''Must Tack Again." 23 
 
 Messrs. Froude and Lecky, having amassed with infinite 
 labour an infinitude of facts, miss the mighty generaliza- 
 tions those facts lead to, get lost in their own labyrinths 
 of policy, and fail to master the true perspective of events. 
 Mr. Goldwin Smith wrote in 1868, that what the Irish 
 want is national institutions, the British Government 
 " having missed their port, must tack again ; " and ever 
 since he has been walking away from the inevitable infer- 
 ence. Mr. Lecky, too, in 1871, seemed going straight for 
 nationality and its surroundings. Mr. Froude, however, 
 is the most conspicuous offender. He admits that " Ire- 
 land was in fact a foreign country ; we preferred to assume 
 that she was an integral part of the empire ; " that " if 
 the object of our policy was to absorb and extinguish the 
 spirit of Irish nationality, it singularly failed;" that 
 " Grattan had created a nation," &c. He then recounts 
 how, although " two centuries had been allowed the Saxon 
 intruder to win the affections of the native race, the Irish, 
 still oppressed and in rags, were told that if they wanted 
 more than the privilege of sending one of their Protestant 
 masters to Parliament, they must arml" He then turns 
 round, and complains that " the Irish peasant, if set loose, 
 and told to be his own governor, flies at the hand which 
 has unlocked his chain," and that it " was constitutional 
 government which she wanted honesty to use, which 
 plunged her into a deeper abyss of ruin." ^ He clearly 
 explains in the Duke of Portland's words, that "the 
 House of Commons could not yield because to yield to 
 the clamours of the Irish Catholics was the way to make 
 them irresistible and ungovernable ; must change the 
 constitution of the House of Commons, and with it 
 overthrow the Church Establishment. The House of 
 Commons was composed largely of members for small 
 boroughs erected purposely to maintain the Protestant 
 ascendency. Common sense and human nature forbad 
 
 ^ " The English in Ireland," book v. p. 183. 
 
24 Froude and " Concession.'^ 
 
 that these boroughs could survive the change now^ in- 
 tended ; a Reform Bill might follow, and all the declara- 
 tions and assurances w^hich might now^ be given, could not 
 prevent- a .consequent revolution in Church and State." ^ 
 He sets forth the words of Westmoreland, Viceroy, to 
 Dundas, December 12, 1792, how Catholics and Pro- 
 testants were to be set by the ears because " every step 
 of conciliating the two descriptions of people that inhabit 
 Ireland, diminishes the probability of that object to be 
 wished — a union with England." He then describes the 
 infernal policy by which Ulster, united in 1782 with the 
 nation for independence, seceded from it, conspired against 
 it, and at last broke the arm and the heart of the Pitt- 
 stirred insurrection, and he finishes with attributing all 
 this mischief to concession, in one of the meanest sen- 
 tences in the English tongue. " To such an attitude," he 
 says, " had concession brought the three million loyal 
 hearts and hands, who in the American war, when the 
 penal laws were at their height, had laid themselves at 
 the feet of the best of kings." 
 
 Mr. Froude ends his book by extolling Fitzgibbon (Lord 
 Clare), who, in February, 1789, recommended to the Irish 
 House and nation *' one king, one law, one religion," as 
 the one supremely capable man in the Irish House, and 
 gives "one more extract" to be diligently "studied by 
 statesmen," from the speech of this conspicuous Irish 
 traitor against Irish nationality. The passage so extolled 
 is this : 
 
 "If we are to pursue faction and folly, it were better that 
 Ireland sink in the sea than to remain attached to England on 
 the terms of our present connection. It has been demanded 
 how are we to be relieved by a union ? I answer, we are to bp 
 relieved from British and Irish faction. When I look at the 
 
 ' Duke of Portland to Lord Fitzwilliam, February i6, 1795, second and 
 secret letter. Froude, " The English in Ireland," book viij. p. 133. 
 
Gladstone Epoch and real Unity. q$ 
 
 squalid misery of the- mass of the Irish people, I am sickened 
 with the rant of Irish dignity and independence. I would elevate 
 Ireland to her proper station in the rank of civilized nations. I 
 would advance her from the degraded post of a mercenary pro- 
 vince to the proud station of an integral and governing member 
 •of the greatest empire in the world." 
 
 Here, then, is a marvellous thing for students — ^^that Mr. 
 Froude, in 1874, believed that the union tends to put down 
 faction ; that the union, followed as it immediately was 
 by land laws, which it alone rendered possible, ten times 
 worse than before, has had nothing to do with Irish 
 misery; and that rant, about Irish dignity and indepen- 
 dence consists not in extolling the union which has 
 presented Ireland with perpetual coercion acts, but in 
 promoting that national self-government which, as Burke, 
 Fox, and Grattan argued, would best unite the empire, 
 and understand the real wants and wishes of the nation. 
 And these are the arguments of a great historian for "the. 
 union " ! 
 
 The volunteers were Ireland's opportunity, the division 
 of interests and factions was England's policy, and their, 
 reunion is Ireland's hope and resurrection. That Irisix 
 nationality could come to the birth after six hundred years 
 of such birth-throes, and could rise again after eighty-six 
 years of burial, is all the proof possible of her right, short 
 of a miracle ; and if any will not believe that, neither 
 would they believe though all the millions Pitt and Castle- 
 reagh have murdered, and Froude and Lecky have slan- 
 dered, rose in battalions from the dead ! 
 
 About thirty years ago the policy of repentance and 
 compromise began with the Gladstone epoch. The people 
 of England began to grasp the situation and grapplQ With 
 it; to shake hands with the people of Ireland; to take to 
 heart the mighty words of Burke, Grattan, Fox, and 
 Sheridan, that Irish independence means imperial-unity.;; 
 
26 The Man of the Epoch. 
 
 to believe that you can only make the British Empire by 
 making the Irish nation ; and to see that both nations — the 
 Irish as the English — have commissioned the great man of 
 the epoch, William Ewart Gladstone, and will follow him. 
 
 Gladstone now demands a mandate, and calls on the 
 English nation to play, not the little provincial game of 
 party, but the high, imperial, manly game of politics. We 
 may do this, because we will ; but if not, we shall do it 
 because we must. No longer can " I dare not wait upon I 
 would." We have lost one hundred years, and the ques- 
 tions of nationality and empire will return to-day, to- 
 morrow, and for ever, until they are united by conciliation,, 
 statesmanship, and common sense. 
 
 It is time that the mighty armies of English thinkers, 
 and of the English people, now united, should arise under 
 Gladstone's banner, and wrest the rod of rule and empire 
 from the cut -throats of both — from the ** here-we-are- 
 agains " and '* happy-go-luckies " of the sections. It is 
 time that the preponderating power of this empire should 
 shatter the statesmanship of chaos, thimblerigging, and 
 despair, which calls separation union, and union separa- 
 tion, and pretends that to do justice and conciliate Ireland 
 is to dismember the empire. 
 
 " England has built her everlasting mansion 
 Upon the beached verge of the salt flood." 
 
 We are the universal Venice, and all the waters of the 
 world our streets and thoroughfares ! If justice and con- 
 ciliation do not save us, their absence will help to sink us. 
 If our policy does not unite us with Ireland, it will sepa- 
 rate us from her. The policy which secures alongside us. 
 an open back-door of intrigue for the Bismarcks of the 
 world, which keeps open on our flank the eternal venge- 
 ful sore of Ireland, ceases now to be regarded as a mark 
 of statesmanship or sense. There are now two millions 
 too many voters for that ! 
 
The First Lazv of Politics. 27 
 
 The sum of the matter is that each nation must pre- 
 serve what is essential to itself — Ireland, her nationality ; 
 England, such control over Ireland as will prevent her 
 from being used by enemies of England, or the empire^ 
 and as will secure her as one of the first-fruits of Federa- 
 tion. Self-development and preservation are the first law 
 of politics. 
 
 I endeavour shortly to show : 
 
 1. How Ireland became a nation and got Home Rule. 
 
 2. How that worked. 
 
 3. How it was taken away. 
 
 4. What followed Pitt's union, and has got to follow. 
 
IRELAND A NATION. 
 
 •'It is voted upon question nulla coniradiceitte, that the subjects of this^ 
 His Majesty's kingdom, are a free people, and to be governed only according to. 
 the common law of England, and statutes made and established in this king- 
 dom) of Ireland, and according to the lavyful customs used in the same." 
 
 Irish Commons Jotirnal, July 26, 1641. 
 
 "His Majesty, being concerned to find that discontents and jealousies are 
 prevailing amongst his loyal subjects in Ireland, upon matters of great weight 
 and importance, earnestly recommends to this house to take the same into 
 their most serious consideration, in order to such a final adjustment as may 
 give mutual satisfaction to both kingdoms."— 6^. R., Royal Message to English 
 Covunons, 1782. 
 
 Similar Royal Message to Irish House through the Duke of Portland, April 
 16, 1782. 
 
 "His Majesty commands me to assure you of his disposition to give his. 
 assent to Acts to prevent the suppression of Bills in the Privy Council of this; 
 kingdom, and the alteration of them anywhere ; and to limit the duration of 
 the Act for the better regulation of His Majesty's forces in this kingdom to 
 the term of two years. " — Viceroy to Irish House, May 27, 1 782. 
 
 Statute 6 Geo. I., c*' 5, which declared the dependency of Ireland, was. 
 repealed April, 1782. 
 
 •* That the said right claimed by the people of Ireland to be bound only by 
 lav^s enacted by His Majesty, and the parliament of that kingdom in all cases 
 whatever, and to have all actions, &c., decided in His Majesty's court thereia 
 finally, and without appeal from thence, . . . shall be, and it is hereby declared 
 to be established and ascertained for erer, and shall at no time hereafter be 
 questioned or questionable." — Statute 2^ Geo. III,., c. 28, 1783. 
 
" If any man entertained gloomy ideas, look at the Irish Addresses. The 
 Irish people and parliament were filled with the most earnest desire to support 
 England, to have the same enemy and the same friend ; in a word, to stand or 
 fall with England. Look forward to that happy period when Ireland . . . 
 should become a powerful country ; then might England look for powerful 
 assistance in seamen to man her fleet, and soldiers to fight her battles. England 
 renouncing all right to legislate for Ireland, the latter would cordially support 
 the former as a friend whom she loved ; if this country, on the one hand, was to 
 assume the power of making laws for Ireland, she must only make an enemy 
 instead of a friend. The Irish desired nothing more ardently than proper 
 grounds for being most cordially united to England ; and he was sure they 
 would be attached to this country, even to bigotry." — Fox, 1782. Hansard, 
 V. 23, pp. 27, 28, " Motion to repeal 6 Geo. I." 
 
 " How came the Irish Parliament with all its borough members in 1779 to 
 demand Free Trade, in 1782 to demand a free constitution? Because it sat 
 in Ireland, in their own country ; because they had a country. But the market 
 of St. Stephen opened. These gentlemen of the empire, absent from one 
 country and unelected by the other, suspended between both and belonging 
 to neither, . . . will be adventurers dressed and sold in the shrouds and grave- 
 clothes of the Irish Parliament, and playing for hire their tricks on her tomb, 
 the images of degradation and the representatives of nothing." — Grattan, 
 January 15, 1800. Speeches, v. 3, pp. 364, 365. 
 
 " But for the union," said Daniel O'Connell, reviewing these events in 1843,^ 
 ' ' we should have been emancipated by our Protestant fellow-countrymen long 
 before. In 1778 they restored the Catholics to the equal enjoyment of all 
 property they then held, and enabled them to acquire long terms for years in 
 lands. In 1782, the Irish Protestants restored the Catholics to the capacity of 
 acquiring every species of freehold property, and to enjoy it equally with 
 Protestants. In 1792-3 the learned professions were to a certain extent opened 
 to Catholics — the grand jury box, the magistracy, partial rank in the army, 
 were all conceded by the Irish Protestants to their Catholic fellow-country- 
 men. But, greatest of all, the elective franchise was restored. Under these cir- 
 cumstances, but for the union, full and complete emancipation would have 
 been conceded before 1803." 
 
 * Discussion in Dublin Corporation on repeal of the union. 
 
IRELAND A NATION. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 1782. 
 
 IRELAND A NATION. 
 
 Szvifi, Molyneux, Flood, Grattan, FoXy Bitrke, Charlevionf, and 
 the Volunteers. 
 
 " It was an agreement to establish for ever the free and independent 
 •existence of the Irish Parliament, and to preserve for ever the unity of empire, 
 by precluding then and for all times to come, the introduction of any further 
 constitutional questions affecting the connection which was to rest under 
 solemn covenant, inviolable, impregnable, and invincible, to the intrigue or am- 
 bition of either country — founded on the prudent, the profound, the liberal and 
 the eternal principle of unity of empire and separation of parliament. ... 
 
 " That was the age of the repeal of the penal code, of the Habeas Corpus 
 .Act. The army was made parliamentary ; the revenues annual ; trade became 
 free ; the power of the Irish Parliament who could before only originate 
 petitions, was restored in full, complete, and exclusive authority. . . . 
 
 " I affirm that the blessings procured by the Irish Parliament in the last 
 twenty years are greater than all the blessings afforded by British Parlia- 
 ments to Ireland for the last century, greater even than the mischiefs 
 inflicted on Ireland by the British Parliament." — Grattan. 
 
 The present object not being so much to write history as 
 to bring into one purview the two processes of the division 
 and conquest of Ireland by England, followed and reversed 
 ty the gradual reunion of all Irish forces and parties in 
 border to the final conquest of her liberties, we need 
 pass but lightly over her story until we come to the times 
 
32 Early History. 
 
 of Swift, Flood, and Grattan, the makers of the Irish 
 nation, and of Pitt and Castlereagh, its would-be 
 destroyers. Suffice it therefore to say, that Irish history 
 has for our purposes three substantial epochs — first, 
 from Henry II. and his charter from the Pope to 1782, 
 when Ireland obtained her independence ; the second,, 
 from 1782 to 1801, the period of nominal independence, 
 ended by corruption, massacre, and prostration ; and the 
 third, from 1801, the date of nominal union and onwards, 
 to the Gladstone epoch. 
 
 There is no doubt, as Dr. Johnson said, " Ireland was 
 the school of the West, the great habitation of sanctity 
 and learning;" or even, as Guizot explains, that "of all 
 the countries of the West Ireland was, for a long time,. 
 that in which alone learning was supported, and throve 
 amid the general overthrow of Europe." 
 
 The early history of Ireland is indeed *'lost in the 
 mists of antiquity," but in 1417 at the Council of Con- 
 stance, England obtained the precedence over France on 
 account of the greater antiquity of Ireland ; and the argu- 
 ment was taken from the authority of Albertus Magnus, 
 and Bartholomseus, who state that in the division of the 
 world, Europe was subdivided into four great kingdoms 
 — Rome, Constantinople, Ireland, and Spain. 
 
 Irish records have mostly been mutilated or destroyed,, 
 but ii? J^ymer's Fcedera is a writ to convene an Irish 
 Parliament in 38th Henry III., a.d. 1253 ; a statute of 
 that year is still extant on the roll. There is also an Act 
 of the Parliament of Edward I., the list of whose mem- 
 bers appears in the history of Sir Richard Cox ; and Sir 
 Richard Bolton, the chief Baron, published an edition of 
 Irish Statutes in 1621. 
 
 In the British Museum is a work entitled, "Proceedings 
 of the Parliament in Ireland, beginning March 25, 1689,"' 
 in which Acts were passed, James being present and 
 supporting them, that gave to Ireland a free and inde- 
 
Flood and Burke thereon. '>'> 
 
 pendent Constitution, destroyed the British supremacy, 
 repealed Poyning's law of 1494, abolished appeals to 
 England, and established liberty of conscience. 
 
 In the time of Edward I. the Irish demanded the 
 benefits of British law, and in the time of Charles, an in- 
 dependent parliament. Sir John Perrot, President of 
 Munster in the time of Elizabeth, says, " They will do 
 more at the command of their governor, whom they repute 
 and have found just, than by the constraint of any power." 
 
 Burke said that: 
 
 "Ireland, before the English conquest, had no parliament. 
 But we have all the reason in the world to be assured that a 
 form of parliament such as England then enjoyed, she instantly 
 communicated to Ireland. This benefit I confess was not at first 
 extended to all Ireland, and this was the true cause why Ireland 
 was five hundred years in subduing; and after the vain project of 
 a military government attempted in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 
 it was soon discovered that nothing could make that country 
 English in civility and allegiance but your laws and your forms of 
 legislature. It was not English arms, but the English Constitution, 
 that conquered Ireland. From that time, Ireland has ever had a 
 general parliament. This has made Ireland the great and flourish- 
 ing kingdom that it is, and rendered her a principal part of our 
 strength and ornament." ^ 
 
 And Flood 2 maintained that Ireland had a parlia- 
 mentary Constitution the same as that of England, an 
 hereditary peerage invested with final judicature, and, 
 before the union, a franchise exactly the same as England,' 
 " above three hundred years before any colony in America 
 had a name." 
 
 No one can read Irish history, which is nothing but the 
 harrowing of the Irish, without harrowing his own soul. 
 For details with full authorities, it is best to refer the 
 reader who wants them to Daniel O'Connell's little book, 
 
 ' March 22, 1775, Hansard. = See Irish Debates, vl. p. 422. 
 
34 OConneWs Memoir to the Qtceen. 
 
 dated February ly 1843, and addressed to the Queen. ^ 
 I give here only several short extracts : 
 
 " After Elizabeth's wholesale massacres and deliberately created 
 famine, no spectacle was more frequent in the ditches of the towns, 
 and especially in wasted countries, than to see multitudes of these 
 poor Irish dead, with their mouths all coloured green by eating 
 nettles, docks, and all things they could rend above ground. Mark, 
 illustrious lady, dead, dead in multitudes and none to bury. This 
 was the consummation of the subjugation of the Irish, after a con- 
 test of 400 years. . . . 
 
 "During the 440 years between the commencement of the 
 English dominion in 11 72 and its completion in 161 2, the Irish 
 were known only as the ' Irish enemies ' in royal proclamation, 
 Charters, and Acts of Parliament. It was their legal and technical 
 description. During that time any person of English descent 
 might murder Irish with impunity. If the Irishman had made 
 legal submission, his murder was punishable by a small fine, not 
 for the moral crime of murdering a man, but for depriving the 
 State of a servant. . . . 
 
 "The second period of 13 years was from 1612 to 1625, and 
 in it Irish and English were amalgamated for the purpose of 
 enduring spoil and oppression under the name of Catholics. The 
 entire of Ulster was confiscated, the natives executed or slaughtered, 
 the remnant driven to mountain or bay. Their places were filled 
 with Scotch aliens in blood and religion. . . . 
 
 "From 1625 to 1660 sat the commission to inquire into defec- 
 tive titles. Charles I. claimed the estates of the Irish in three 
 provinces. Strafifordbribedthe judges with 4s. in the ;z^ value. . . . 
 
 "From 1660 to r692 the chief events were the taking by the 
 Duke of York, afterwards James II., of 80,000 acres belonging 
 to Irish Catholics ; and the Treaty of Limerick. The Irish army, 
 30,000 strong, had driven William III. from Limerick. In that 
 war, women bled and fought, and conquered. The treaty restored 
 the Irish nation to England, in consideration of protection of 
 property and liberty, especially of religion." 
 
 From 1692 to 1778 that treaty was carried out by the 
 
 * Duffy, Dublin and London. 
 
Pope Hadrians Charter. Poyning. 35 
 
 utter proscription of the property, the education, the 
 personal rights, and the religion of all Irish Catholics. 
 O'Connell occupies five pages in the mere summary. 
 
 "In 1792 Republicanism was eagerly caught up amongst the 
 Protestants, and especially among the Presbyterian population of 
 the north. Belfast was its warmest focus. Government set itself to 
 conciliate Catholics, and separate them from the republican party 
 of Ulster, as it has since often tried to separate Ulster from Ireland." 
 
 In 1155, Henry II. sought permission of Pope Hadrian 
 IV. to enter Ireland, in order, as he put it, to " enlarge 
 the bounds of the Church, to restrain the progress of vices, 
 to correct the manners of the people, to plant virtue among 
 them, and to increase the Christian religion." This was 
 complied with on the terms that Henry should compel every 
 Irish family to pay a carolus to the Pope, and that he 
 should hold the island as the Pope's fief. 
 
 In 1465 was passed the celebrated Head Act ; by which 
 any Irish found " going or coming, having no faith- 
 ful man of good name and fame in their company in 
 English apparell," it was lawful to kill, cut off heads, and 
 put it on spear in castle of Trim ; and levy by his own 
 hand, as his reward, of every man with one ploughland in 
 the barony, 2d., of half of one ploughland, id., some others 
 were to pay Jd. 
 
 Henry VII. preserved the Irish Parliament, but de- 
 stroyed its independence. 
 
 He sent Sir Edward Poyning to Ireland as his deputy, 
 and in 1494 convened a parliament, and passed what has 
 since been called Poyning's Act, which enacted that there 
 should be no parliament unless the Lieutenant and Council 
 there certify under the Great Seal the causes and considera- 
 tion, &c. ; also, that no legislation was valid unless approved 
 by the king and the English Council under the Great Seal 
 of England. Thus the approval of the Irish Council, and 
 that of the English Privy Council, was made necessary 
 
^6 The Islana confiscated Three Times. 
 
 before Acts could be even submitted to the Irish Parlia- 
 ment ; and the Irish Constitution consisted of the King, 
 the Irish Lords and Commons, the Irish Lieutenant and 
 Council, and the English Privy Council. 
 
 Before 1542 English kings were only lords of Ireland, 
 but the " identity and inseparability of the Crown of the 
 two countries" was then enacted, and that "kings of 
 England be always kings of this land of Ireland." 
 
 In 1541 the first Irish National Parliament was con- 
 vened by Henry VIIL, Irish as well as English lords 
 being summoned. 
 
 Queen Mary granted vast tracts to English immigrants 
 who could hold against the Irish ; the latter being driven 
 out and exterminated, and two counties added to the 
 *' English pale." 
 
 In 1609-12, under James I. (who made forty nominee 
 boroughs, and on remonstrance said, " Suppose I had 
 made four hundred, the more the merrier ! "), Ulster was 
 replanted by Scotch and English Protestants; 511,405 
 acres being cleared, and the natives exterminated. 
 
 In 1688 was the contest with the English parliamentary 
 forces, in which 200,000 Irish are said to have perished. 
 Mr. J. S. Mill states that : 
 
 ''The whole land of the island had been confiscated three times 
 over. Part had been taken to enrich powerful Englishmen and 
 their Irish adherents ; part to form the endowment of a hostile 
 hierarchy ; the rest had been given away to English and Scotch 
 colonists, who held, and were intended to hold it, as a garrison 
 against ,the Irish. The manufactures, except the linen, which was 
 chiefly carried on by these colonists, were deliberately crushed, 
 for the avowed purpose of making more room for those of England. 
 The vast majority of the native Irish, all Roman Catholics, were 
 in violation of the faith pledged to the Catholic army at Limerick, 
 despoiled of all their political and most of their civil rights, and 
 left in existence only to plough and dig." ^ 
 
 ' See " England and Ireland," 1868. Longmans. 
 
Molyneux and the Nation. 37 
 
 Under the Celtic tenure of gavelkind, a chief was only 
 joint owner with the clan ; by the change English states- 
 men at last accomplished, the chief became absolute 
 proprietor, and in case of attainder, forfeited to the Crown, 
 not a life interest only, but the estate. In good time 
 three-fourths of the soil of Ireland was thus confiscated to 
 the Crown. The sept, from joint owners of the tribal 
 lands, became mere tenants at will, though their title was 
 better than that of Elizabeth to the throne, and tenants 
 at will they have mostly remained to this day. 
 
 In Lord Clare's speech, February 10, 1800, in favour of 
 union, he said that "7,800,000 acres of land were set out 
 under Act of Charles II., nearly to the total exclusion of 
 the old inhabitants ; " and one of the best-known remarks 
 of Lord Clare is that " 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 adventurers, who poured into this country at the ter- 
 mination of three successive rebellions — confiscation is 
 their common title." 
 
 " In 1698, when the measure for destroying the Irish wool trade 
 was under deliberation, Molyneux, one of the members of Trinity 
 College, an eminent man of science, and the ingenious friend 
 mentioned by Locke in his essay, published his famous case of 
 Ireland. He maintained that the parliament of Ireland had 
 naturally and anciently all the prerogatives in Ireland which the 
 English Parliament had in England, and that the subservience to 
 which it had been reduced was the result of usurpation. His 
 arguments were chiefly historical, and were those which were 
 afterwards maintained by Flood and Grattan, and which even- 
 tually triumphed in 1782. By order of the English Parliament 
 his book was burnt by the common hangman." ' 
 
 The Treaty of Limerick, October 3, 1691, guaranteed 
 to the Catholics to retain such estates as they possessed 
 before James II. came to the throne, and to enjoy their 
 
 * Lecky on Swift, p. 43. 1871 Edition. 
 
38 Treaty of Limerick. 
 
 religion as they had under Charles II. But when the 
 flower of the Irish army had withdrawn to France, and 
 the remnant could be hanged without ceremony, the con- 
 cession began to look inordinate. 
 
 At the time of the Reformation, Ireland was the only 
 northern country in which the reformed truth never made 
 way. Elizabeth, the great representative of Protestantism, 
 was less anxious to propagate it than to destroy Irish na- 
 tionality. Cromwell followed ; and the last great Protestant, 
 William III., is identified with the destruction of Irish 
 trade, and with the broken Treaty of Limerick, which had 
 guaranteed Catholic privileges as in the reign of Charles II. 
 
 " The beginning of the Irish Penal Code was a law passed in 
 1 69 1 by the English Parliament for excluding all Catholics from 
 the Irish one;" but, adds Lecky, "the spirit in which Ireland was 
 systematically governed in the early part of the eighteenth century 
 was well illustrated by the speech of the Lords Justices to the 
 Parliament in 1 7 1 5 : ' We must recommend to you in the present 
 conjuncture such unanimity as may once more put an end to all 
 other distinctions in Ireland than that of Protestant and Papist.' " 
 
 Burke described the code as 
 
 •' Well digested and well described in all its parts, a machine of 
 wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppres- 
 sion, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the 
 debasement in them of human nature itself, as any that ever 
 proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." 
 
 Yet Arthur Young asserts that the proportion of 
 Catholics had not diminished. It was stated in Parlia- 
 ment that only 4,055 had conformed in seventy-one years, 
 and according to Lecky, "the poorer classes emerged from 
 the long ordeal penetrated with an attachment to their 
 religion almost unparalleled in Europe." 
 
 In 1703 the Irish Parliament petitioned for a union, but 
 their overtures were rejected by the queen's ministers. 
 
yonathan Swift and the Nation. 39 
 
 The Irish idea seems to have been that the union would 
 have brought more equality and material advantages ; but 
 Mr. Froude says : 
 
 " The offered union was thrown away in the meanest and basest 
 spirit of commercial jealousy. Those responsible persuaded them- 
 selves that the union would make Ireland rich, and that England's 
 interest was to keep her poor. Opportunities occur in the affairs 
 of nations which, if allowed to pass, occur no more."^ 
 
 In 1720 Jonathan Swift published anonymously an 
 admirable pamphlet on Irish manufactures, in which he 
 urged the people to meet restrictions on their trade by 
 burning everything that came from England *' except the 
 coal ; " \concluding by an earnest appeal to landlords to 
 lighten rents. 
 
 Then came his famous Drapiers letters against Wood's 
 patent half-pence, the patent being granted by the in- 
 fluence of the king's mistress, who was to receive a large 
 share of the profits. It was the fourth letter which turned 
 the agitation into the national channel. Swift defined 
 boldly the limits of prerogative, asserted the independence 
 of Ireland, and the essential nullity of measures without 
 the sanction of the Irish legislature. He avowed his 
 entire adherence to the doctrine of Molyncux, and asserted 
 that Ireland was rightfully a free nation. This letter was 
 sustained by other pamphlets, and by ballads sung in the 
 streets, and brought the agitation to the highest pitch. 
 Walpole was compelled to yield and withdraw the patent. 
 The age of Grattan and O'Conhell had begun. Afterwards, 
 in 1727, Swift published his " Short View of the State of 
 Ireland." When Walpole talked of having him arrested, he 
 was asked if he had ten thousand men to spare. When 
 Primate Boulter charged Swift with exciting the people, 
 he retorted, " If I were only to lift my finger you would be 
 torn to pieces." 
 
 ' " The English in Ireland," book ii. pp. 303, 304. 
 
40 Octennial Bill and Free Ti^'ade. 
 
 Swift first taught the Irish people to rely upon them- 
 selves. The cause of free trade and legislative indepen- 
 dence never again passed out of their minds, and 1782 
 was the development of his policy. 
 
 When occasion arose in 1757 for the more direct asser- 
 tion of the national idea, the fruits of Swift's and others' 
 teaching at once became apparent in the fury to which 
 Dublin was lashed by the mere rumour, put forth by the 
 English Whigs, of a union with Ireland ; and when, in 
 1767, the Octennial Bill was transmitted and became law, 
 the sixteen months made to elapse between the dissolution 
 of the old parliament (elected for the life of the king) and 
 the meeting of the new were employed by the Viceroy in 
 in'^fluencing the latter. The new Irish Parliament, how- 
 ever, could not be bribed to allow the English Council to 
 originate money bills, and the Viceroy postponed the 
 meeting of parliament by a series of prorogations until 
 1771, when lavish corruption by money and honours 
 secured a majority. That parliament was dissolved be- 
 cause it rejected a money bill altered in the Privy Council, 
 and with the next parliament in 1777 came the patriotic 
 Militia Bill for national defence, and the volunteers. 
 
 Ireland then, having an army at her back, turned her 
 attention resolutely to Free Trade. It was broached in 
 the English Commons in 1779, and in the Irish House 
 by amendment on the address, that Free Trade alone 
 
 could save the nation from ruin. " Free Trade or ," 
 
 was labelled on the volunteer cannon. An amendment was 
 carried to vote supplies for only six months, in November; 
 and in February, 1780, Government yielded as to the Irish 
 right to export woollens, and to trade with the British 
 Colonies. But as it became evident that only a free 
 parliament could secure a free trade, Henry Grattan 
 moved in April that ** the King, Lords, and Commons of 
 Ireland are alone competent to enact laws to bind Ireland." 
 Both parties exactly understood the situation. The 
 
Flood and the Nation. 41 
 
 Mutiny Bill for six months was sent to England as usual. 
 The Privy Council made it perpetual, and a purchased 
 majority in the Irish Commons passed it. The issue now 
 was absolutely clear. Bribery had disposed of parliament. 
 Force and fraud were to be tried with the volunteers and 
 the nation, and in twenty years force and fraud prevailed. 
 
 "A majority in the House of Commons," said Froude,^ "was 
 at this time, 1753, returned by four great families, the Fitzgeralds 
 of Kildare, the Boyles, the Ponsonbys, and the Beresfords — the 
 political sovereigns of Ireland. The government was carried on 
 by their assistance, and they received in return the patronage of 
 the State. The Viceroy understood the meaning of the vote. 
 Patriot orators were silenced by promotion. Opposition to 
 England's initiation of money bills was suspended till the great 
 families were again hungry, and fresh expectants of promotion 
 were in a position to be troublesome." 
 
 Flood entered parliament in 1759, when it was very 
 largely corrupt and subservient, and his eloquence and 
 position soon made him the leader of a party to abridge 
 the corrupt influence of the Government, and to establish 
 the independence of parliament. 
 
 According to Edmund Burke's " Tracts on the Popery 
 Laws " the lands of Papists were divided between their 
 male children, and every child might compel his popish 
 father to disclose property, and immediately to set apart 
 a third to the child. Catholic families were thus reduced 
 to impotence in William's reign. Catholics could not buy 
 land, although they might get a long lease of fifty acres of 
 bog with half an acre to build a house on. Under this 
 head of the acquisition of property the law met them on 
 every road of industry. Only Established Churchmen 
 could enter the Universities. Popish schoolmasters were 
 proscribed. It was felony to teach in a private house, and 
 outlawry to go abroad for education. A Roman Catholic 
 
 ' "The English in Ireland," book v. pp. 5, 6. 
 
42 Protestant Landlords and Catholic Tenants. 
 
 could hold no office of trust or profit, no vote, no corpo- 
 rate privilege, no gun, could not be a barrister or solicitor. 
 There was, said Burke, " universal, unquahfied, unlimited 
 proscription." 
 
 A statute was fabricated in 1699 by which saying mass 
 was forged into a crime punishable with perpetual im- 
 prisonment. Lord Chancellor Bowes and Chief Justice 
 Robinson stated, that " the law does not suppose any such 
 person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic." The first 
 object was to create a class tyranny and a religious tyranny. 
 The people acquired the vices of slaves, and were educated 
 through generations into hostility to law, and taught to 
 look for redress to illegal violence or secret combinations. 
 The second object of the penal laws was to reduce Catho- 
 lics to extreme and brutal ignorance. The ownership of 
 land producing loyalty. Government sought to make 
 Protestants landlords and Catholics their tenants. Hence 
 class hatred, religious hatred, the vices of slaves, and the 
 necessities of conspirators. Sir G. C. Lewis's *' Local 
 Disturbances in Ireland," published in 1836, describes the 
 combinations of peasantry to shake off their burdens. As 
 a Catholic landlord would have become the natural poli- 
 tical leader of his Catholic tenants, and would have 
 neutralized the hatred of his co-equals, both contingencies 
 were avoided by law. But this desperation of Protestan- 
 tism was carried further still (as is explained by Lecky), 
 for every marriage by a Catholic priest between a Catholic 
 and a Protestant was made null and void, and the priest 
 who officiated was hung. Sydney Smith, writing as Peter 
 Plymley, declared : 
 
 "There was an universal agreement to continue every species 
 of internal persecution ; to deny at home every right, to pummel 
 the Dissenters, and to treat the Catholics of Ireland as though 
 their tongues were mute, their heels cloven, their nature brutal, 
 and their subjugation providential." 
 
 As Burke wrote in 1782, "they," the English usurpers. 
 
Burke and yacobinism. 43 
 
 "had already almost gone through every contrivance 
 which could vaste the vigour of the country ; but they pro- 
 duced the shocking Act about marriages which tended to 
 finish the scheme for making the people not only two 
 distinct parties for ever, but two distinct species in the 
 same land." And in 1795 he laments the impolicy of 
 those ''two hundred years, dreadfully spent in experi- 
 ments to force that people to change the form of their 
 religion. The Catholics form the great body of the lower 
 ranks of your country, and no small part of those classes 
 of the middling that come nearest to them. The seduc- 
 tion of that part of mankind from the principles of religion, 
 morality, subordination, and social order is the great 
 object of the Jacobins." The Catholic religion was then, 
 argued Burke, '' the most effective barrier, if not the sole 
 barrier, against Jacobinism. You have now your choice — 
 for full four-fifths of your people— of the Catholic religion 
 or Jacobinism." 
 
 ^ "As late as Chesterfield's Viceroyalty (1747), though legitimate 
 discontent had been often expressed in the House of Commons, 
 there had been little systematic opposition to the English con- 
 nection. So long as a combination with the Catholics against 
 English rule was undreamt of, an Irish Protestant patriot was 
 conscious at bottom that he could not maintain himself without 
 England's help. So long as his Protestantism lasted as a real 
 principle, he endured the injuries of his country as a lighter evil 
 than compromise with his old enemy. As the century waned, 
 community of injury created a sympathy of resentment. The 
 steady increase of Irish misery formed a contrast every year more 
 marked with the growing splendour of England ; and if material 
 progress was to be the chief aim, there was no conceivable reason 
 why Ireland, Protestant or Catholic, should be denied a share in 
 it." ^ 
 
 The reign of George III. however comprises the rise 
 and fall of the Irish nation. He began by turning out 
 
 ' See Froude, " The English in Ireland," book iv. pp. 605, 606. 
 
44 Arthur Young. 
 
 Lord Chatham and bringing in Lord Bute. Kis principle 
 was absolute power, and his practice w.s to choose 
 ministers for their capacity for failure. The empire was 
 lost when he was in his senses ; its only chance was 
 when he was out of them. After four coalitions, he was 
 beaten out of Europe. Lord North lost him America ; 
 Pitt lost him Europe ; had he lived, Percival would have 
 lost him England. It was saved by Wellington, an Irish- 
 man. When the Irish offered the Crown to the Duke of 
 Lorraine in the time of Charles I., and when they sought 
 French support in 1797, they committed an irretrievable 
 error, which latter had Grattan's utmost opposition, but 
 they had to fight against slavery. 
 
 From 1766 to 1820, Burke in the English, or Grattan 
 in the Irish or English Parliaments maintained the people's 
 cause, and the Irish came to their standard. 
 
 In June, 1776, we find Arthur Young writing of his 
 twenty-two hours' trip from Holyhead to Dublin : 
 
 " There is very good society in Dublin in a parliament winter, 
 two gentleman's clubs, and an unsuccessful attempt at Italian opera. 
 I often frequented the gallery of the House of Commons. Mr. 
 Grattan (and others) are reckoned high among the Irish orators. 
 I heard many very eloquent speeches, but I cannot say they struck 
 me like the exertion of the abilities of Irishmen in the English 
 House of Commons, owing perhaps to the reflection both on the 
 speaker and auditor^ that the Attorney-General of England, with a 
 dash of his pen, can reverse, alter, or entirely do away the matured 
 result of all the eloquence and all the abilities of this whole 
 Assembly." 
 
 In 1778 came the first fruits of the growing national 
 unity, the Act of 1704 was annulled, and Catholics might 
 be granted leases for 999 years. They also conquered 
 free trade with the Colonies. 
 
 In 1779 the religious test was loosened, and it became 
 possible for Catholics to be official. England was afraid 
 
The Nation United. 45 
 
 of losing Ireland, and Protestants feared a Catholic rising. 
 Concession after concession was extorted by Grattan. 
 
 Grattan first moved for parliaments of seven years, 
 v^^hich the English, who then wanted 3,000 more men, 
 granted by altering to eight years. In 1775 the echoes of 
 Bunker's Hill aroused anew the feelings of Irish nation- 
 ality. In 1778 there was an enrolled army of volunteers 
 of at least 150,000, officered by the gentry of the country; 
 and Catholics who could not be enrolled paid for the 
 muskets of those who could. As the Irish Parliament 
 alone could raise Irish revenue, that was made a lever of 
 concession. 
 
 On the despatch of 4,000 Irish troops to America, and 
 the futile demand of the Mayor of Belfast for a garrison 
 against the French, there " arose," says Lecky, on Flood 
 (p. 80), " one of those movements of enthusiasm that 
 occur two or three times in the history of a nation. The 
 cry to arms passed through all the land, and was responded 
 to by all parties and creeds. Beginning among the Pro- 
 testants of the North, the movement soon spread, though 
 in a less degree, to other parts of the island, and the war 
 of religions and of castes that had so long divided the 
 people vanished as a dream. They rose to defend their 
 country from the invasion of a foreign army, and from the 
 encroachments of an alien legislature. Conspicuous 
 among their colonels was Flood ; and there too was he 
 before whose genius all other Irishmen had begun to pale 
 — the patriot of unsullied purity, the statesman who could 
 fire a nation by his enthusiasm and restrain it by his 
 wisdom, the orator whose burning sentences became the 
 very proverbs of freedom — Henry Grattan." 
 
 " England," writes Froude, " had so#n with poison weeds the 
 draggled island which lay in thereat of her imperial domain. The 
 crop ' had sprung up and ripened, and now (1776) the harvest was 
 
 ' "The English in Ireland," book vi. p. 189. 
 
46 The Castle and the Volunteers. 
 
 to be gathered. England had discharged her sovereign duties to 
 Ireland by leaving her to anarchy masked behind a caricature of 
 the forms of her own Constitution. With an insolent mockery 
 she had refused her request for incorporation in the empire. She 
 had left her the name of a separate kingdom and a separate 
 nationality as her excuse for withholding from her equal rights. 
 The nationality was to become a thorn in England's side. The 
 Irish Parliament became the arena for the partition of the spoil. 
 The English Cabinet retained the pension list for corruption, and 
 the high offices of State as sinecures. Public interests went to 
 ruin. The harbour defences crumbled and disappeared, the 
 military stores were stolen." ' 
 
 " Townshend and Harcourt had broken the power of the great 
 nobles by bribery, and had taught independent members that the 
 service of the Castle was a safer road to fortune than the service of 
 the Leinsters and Ponsonbys. The established communion had 
 divided Protestantism in two, and had ostracised the most energetic 
 section of it. It drove the Presbyterians into republicanism and 
 disaffection. High offices in the Church were the most effective 
 instruments of political influence and party service. England had 
 forced Ireland into a contraband trade which enlisted half her 
 population in organized resistance to the law. By definite acts of 
 unjust legislation they were forcing the entire people to abandon 
 themselves to the potato, and to sit down to brood over their 
 wrongs in a paralysis of anger and despair." ^ 
 
 Every sound and honourable mind' in Ireland was now 
 convinced of the necessity of a change, and a knot of 
 gentlemen remained at home whose abilities and character 
 would anywhere have marked them for distinction. Grattan 
 became the voice of his people, and on February 7, 1778, 
 moved an address to the Crown, which was lost, 143 to 66. 
 War had now been declared against France ; the country 
 professed its willingness to provide for its own defence, 
 either by volunteer corps or militia ; Parliament preferred 
 the volunteers, and the Viceroy was of the same opinion. 
 The cost of militia would fall on the treasury, which was 
 
 ' " The English in Ireland," book vi. pp. 190, 191. * Ibid. p. 198. 
 
George III. and Stai^uation. 47 
 
 empty ; and if the lords and gentlemen of Ireland were 
 willing to raise independent companies at their own ex- 
 pense, it would be a pity to reject their liberality.^ Lord 
 North and the Viceroy had determined that Dissenters' 
 disabilities should be maintained to punish the Presby- 
 terians for their American tendencies. ^ The Irish grand 
 juries represented that the fields and highways were filled 
 with crowds of wretched beings half naked and starving. 
 They besought the king to procure them leave to export 
 and sell at least the coarse frieze blankets and flannels 
 which the peasant's wives and children produced in their 
 cabins. Eloquence and entreaty were alike in vain. 3 
 
 When in 1779 the House went in a body to present their 
 Free Trade petition to the Lord-Lieutenant, the volunteers 
 lined the road and presented arms to them as they passed. 
 Lecky says : 
 
 " England could scarcely have resisted an organized body of 
 more than 100,000 soldiers commanded by the men of most 
 property and influence in the country, and supported by the 
 enthusiasm of the nation. I venture to think that the probabilities 
 were, on the whole, in favour of the peaceful dispersion of the 
 force when its work had been accomplished." ♦ 
 
 Ireland was allowed free export of all her productions 
 except woollens — the great clandestine trade that had 
 been the chief support of the spinners and weavers ; and 
 Ireland, now desperate and determined, and treading 
 ominously in the steps of America, resolved, as had been 
 recommended by Swift, to exclude from the Irish market 
 every article of British manufacture. 
 
 Meanwhile Ireland was arming. The movement spread 
 as if the whole country had a purpose. The session was 
 to open on October 12, 1779, and Grattan moved " that 
 it was not by temporary expedients, but by a free export, 
 
 * " The English in Ireland," book vi. p. 211. ^ Ibid, p. 217. 
 
 •'' Ibid. p. 222. 4 " Flood's Life," pp. 95-7. 
 
48 A Univei^sal Surrender. 
 
 that the nation was to be saved," which amendment was 
 carried unanimously.^ 
 
 "If the expectations of this kingdom are not received with 
 lenity," wrote the fluttered imbecile, the Viceroy, " * every species of 
 disorder may be apprehended ; ' but no relief coming, Grattan's 
 motion against new taxes was carried 170 to 47; and when 
 supplies were asked for two years, as usual an amendment passed, 
 138 to 100, for a six months' money bill.^ . . . This short 
 money bill," says Froude, " opened the eyes of ministers at last, 
 and, in December, 1779, the repeal of the restriction Acts was pro- 
 posed on the spot, and swept through the House with extraordinary 
 spirit." 3 
 
 On April 19, 1780, Grattan moved the Irish declaration 
 of rights : 
 
 " I. The king, with the consent of the Parliament of Ireland^ 
 was alone competent to enact laws to bind Ireland. 
 
 "2. Great Britain and Ireland were indissolubly united, but 
 only under the tie of a common sovereign." 
 
 On an appeal to Irish generosity the House adjourned 
 without a division. 
 
 On November 13, 1781, Grattan's motion to repeal the 
 Mutiny Bill was lost by a large majority. 
 
 " What was the consequence " — of their policy attacking Irish 
 interest, and yet hoping to maintain imperial unity ? argued Burke, 
 in his great Bristol speech of 1780, made to defend against Bristol 
 merchants his vote against the destruction of Irish trade. 
 " Ireland was in a flame, 40,000 men were raised and disciplined 
 without commission from the Crown. Two illegal armies were 
 seen with banners displayed at the same time and in the same 
 country. They demanded freedom of trade with arms in their 
 hands. The British Parliament made a universal surrender. 
 A sudden light broke in upon us all through the yawning chasms 
 of our ruin." 
 
 ^ Froude's " The English in Ireland," book vi. p. 239. 
 "" Ibid. p. 244. - 3 Ibid. p. 247. 
 
The Dujtgannon Resolutions. 49 
 
 "I deny," said Sydney Smith, writing as Peter Plymley in 1808, 
 *' I deny that any voluntary concession was ever made by England 
 to Ireland. Ask Lord Auckland if he remembers the fatal conse- 
 quences of trifling with such a people as the Irish. When Ireland 
 demanded rights with the voice of 60,000 armed men, they were 
 granted with every mark of consternation. Ask Lord Auckland 
 if he has forgotten that memorable evening when, as secretary to 
 the Lord-Lieutenant, he came down to the House, booted and 
 mantled, about to set off for Ireland that night, and declared 
 before God if he did not carry with him a compliance with all 
 their demands Ireland was for ever lost to this country." 
 
 In 1780, at a meeting of Dublin Volunteers, it had been 
 resolved : " That the King, Lords, and Commons of Ire- 
 land only are competent to make laws binding on this 
 realm, and that we will not obey any others." 
 
 Before 1782, the principles of the Irish revolution had 
 extended throughout all parts of the kingdom ; the volun- 
 teers had augmented nearly to 80,000 men, and later to 
 100,000; the representatives of 143 corps had, in Feb- 
 ruary, assembled in Dungannon, and passed at that cele- 
 brated convention resolutions of which the three most 
 essential were : 
 
 '* That a claim of any body of men other than the King, Lords, 
 and Commons of Ireland, to make laws to bind this kingdom, is 
 unconstitutional, illegal, and a grievance. 
 
 " That the powers exercised by the Privy Council of both king- 
 doms, under, or under colour or pretence of, the law of Poyning 
 are unconstitutional and a grievance. 
 
 "That a Mutiny Bill not limited in point of duration from 
 session to session is unconstitutional and a grievance." 
 
 To these Grattan added the following, in order to draw 
 all parties and sects into the movement : 
 
 "Resolved, That we hold the right of private judgment in 
 matters of religion to be equally sacred in others as in ourselves ; 
 that we rejoice in the relaxation of the penal laws against our 
 
 5 
 
50 Grattan and Religious Equality. 
 
 Roman Catholic fellow- subjects, and that we conceive the measure 
 to be fraught with the happiest consequences to the union and 
 prosperity of the inhabitants of Ireland." 
 
 These resolutions were universally made known and 
 adopted in Ireland. 
 
 Flood was not sensible of the importance of concessions 
 to the Catholics, who had at that time (as Lecky, in his 
 *' Irish Leaders," explains) neither education, leaders, nor 
 ambition, and were perfectly peaceful, and indeed quies- 
 cent, and the process of emancipation would probably 
 have been carried out silently and tranquilly. The most 
 obnoxious of the penal laws had already been repealed, 
 and Lecky adds the following remarks on Grattan's reso- 
 lution : 
 
 "It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the importance of this 
 last resolution. It marked the solemn union of the two great 
 sections of Irishmen for the purpose of obtaining the recognition 
 of their country's rights. It showed that the old policy of govern- 
 ing Ireland by the division of her sects had failed, and that if the 
 independence of parliament were to be withheld, it must bfe with- 
 held in opposition to a nation united and in arms" (p. 112). 
 
 In March, 1782, Lord North was displaced. Fox 
 became Minister, and the Duke of Portland came over as 
 Lord-Lieutenant. 
 
 On March 14th Grattan moved and carried in the Irish 
 House the following emphatic resolution of summons : 
 
 " Ordered, That this House be called over on Tuesday, the i6th 
 April next, and that the Speaker do write circular letters to the 
 Members, ordering them to attend that day, as they tender the 
 rights of the Irish Parliament." ' 
 
 Fox now presented to the English House of Commons 
 the following message : 
 
 " His Majesty being concerned to find that discontents and 
 
 ' "Grattan's Life and Times," vol. ii. p. 213. 
 
George III. and ''Final AdjiLstmenty 51 
 
 jealousies are prevailing amongst his loyal subjects in Ireland 
 Tipon matters of great weight and importance, earnestly recom- 
 mends to this House to take the same into their most serious 
 consideration, in order to such a final adjustment as may give 
 mutual satisfaction to both kingdoms. 
 
 "G. R." 
 
 Before April i6th, various attempts at delay had been 
 made ; but Grattan replied, once for all, that " no answer 
 ^would be taken as a refusal." Lecky thus describes the 
 :scene : 
 
 "On April 16, 1782, amid an outburst of almost unparalleled 
 ■enthusiasm, the declaration of independence was brought forward. 
 A large body of volunteers were drawn up in front of the old 
 Parliament House of Ireland. Far as the eye could stretch the 
 morning sun glanced upon their weapons and on their flags, and 
 it was through their parted ranks that Grattan passed to move the 
 emancipation of his country." 
 
 All expected a successful termination to the long 
 ■struggle, and as soon as the Speaker had taken the chair, 
 the Secretary of State delivered for the Lord-Lieutenant 
 ■the following message from the English Premier : 
 
 " Portland, — 
 
 " I have it in command from His Majesty to inform this 
 House that His Majesty being concerned to find that discontents 
 and jealousies are prevailing upon matters of great weight and 
 importance. His Majesty recommends it to this House to take the 
 same into their most serious consideration, in order to such a final 
 adjustment as may give mutual satisfaction to his kingdoms of 
 Great Britain and Ireland." 
 
 A message of a similar nature had, on April 9th, been 
 presented to both Houses of the British Parliament. 
 
 Mr. Hutchinson, the Secretary of State, said he had no 
 authority to say anything further from the Lord-Lieu- 
 tenant, but that his appointment was for purposes no 
 ■doubt beneficial for Ireland ; that the great public objects 
 
52 Liberty and a Constitution. 
 
 so eagerly sought for were likely to be successful ; they 
 could only be obtained by the spirit of the nation, and 
 now that this spirit was universal, it was the duty of the 
 representatives to repeat that public voice and conform to 
 the determined spirit of the nation. He alluded to Mr. 
 Grattan in terms of great respect and admiration, and 
 recommended to the House unanimity and firmness. 
 Mr. Grattan rose and spoke as follows : 
 
 " I am now to address a free people : ages have passed away, and' 
 this is the first moment in which you could be distinguished by 
 that appellation. I have only to admire by what heaven-directed 
 steps you have proceeded until the whole faculty of the nation is 
 braced up to the act of her own deliverance. 
 
 " I found Ireland on her knees ; I watched over her with an 
 eternal solicitude ; I have traced her progress from injuries to 
 arras, and from arms to liberty. Spirit of Swift ! spirit of Moly- 
 neux ! your genius has prevailed ! Ireland is now a nation ! In. 
 that new character I hail her ! and, bowing to her august presence,. 
 I say, * Esfo perpetiia ! ' 
 
 "She is no longer a wretched colony, returning thanks to her 
 governor for his rapine, and to her king for his oppression ; nor is 
 she now a squabbling, fretful sectary, perplexing her little wits and 
 firing her furious statutes with bigotry, sophistry, disabilities, and 
 death, to transmit to posterity insignificance and war. . . . 
 
 " His Majesty's late ministers imagined they had quelled the 
 country when they had bought the newspapers ; they represented 
 us as wild men, and our cause as visionary, and pensioned 
 wretches to abuse both ; but we waited and we watched, until the 
 minority became Ireland. Let those ministers now go home and 
 congratulate their king on the redemption of his people. What 
 was the cause ? The upper orders, the property, and the abilities 
 of the country, formed with the Volunteer. This united Protestant 
 with Catholic, and the landed proprietor with the people. There 
 was still more than this : there was a continence which confined 
 to limited and legitimate objects ; all this kept them innocent, 
 it kept them rational; no vulgar rant against England. They 
 were asserting liberty, according to the frame of the British Con- 
 
" You can get a King anywhere." 53 
 
 ■stitution, to be enjoyed in perpetual connection with the British 
 Empire. Connected by freedom as well as by allegiance, the two 
 nations, Great Britain and Ireland, form a constitutional con- 
 federacy, as well as one empire ; the Crown is one link, the Con- 
 stitution another, and, in my mind, the latter link is the most 
 powerful. 
 
 " You can get a king anywhere ; but England is the only country 
 with whom you can participate a free Constitution. This makes 
 England your natural connection, and her king your natural, as 
 well as your legal, sovereign, a connection not by conquest, but 
 by compact, and that compact a free Constitution. 
 
 " Suffer me now to state some of the things essential to that free 
 Constitution. I will never consent to have men (God knows 
 whom) ecclesiastics, &c., men unknown to the constitution of 
 parliament, and only known to the minister who has breathed into 
 their nostrils an unconstitutional existence, steal to their dark 
 •divan to do mischief and make nonsense of bills which their lord- 
 ships, theHouse of Lords, or we, the House of Commons, have 
 thought good and fit for the people." ^ 
 
 Mr. Grattan then moved, by way of amendment, to lay 
 l)efore His Majesty the causes of Irish discontent, 
 namely, to assure His Majesty that the Commons of 
 Ireland do most sincerely wish that all bills which become 
 law in Ireland should receive the approbation of His 
 Majesty, under the Seal of Great Britain ; but that yet we 
 do consider the practice of suppressing our bills in the 
 Council of Ireland, or altering the same anywhere, to be 
 another just cause of discontent. " That an Act * for the 
 better accommodation of His Majesty's Forces,' being 
 unlimited in duration, is another cause," &c. 
 
 These amendments were carried unanimously, and the 
 House adjourned for three weeks, to wait for His Majesty's 
 answer, which arrived on May 27, 1782. 
 
 After Grattan's speech of the i6th of April, 1782, the 
 Duke of Portland wrote to Lord Shelbourne on the 26th ; 
 
 ' " Grattan's Speeches," edited by his son. Longman, 1822. 
 
54 ^^ Parliament to be Managed,'' 
 
 " The parliament of Ireland that is to be managed or attended 
 to, it is the whole of this country. It is the Church, the law, the 
 army, the merchant, the tradesman, the manufacturer, the farmer, 
 the labourer, the Catholic, the Dissenter, the Protestant. My 
 opinion is that we should concede to this country the full enjoy- 
 ment of a free and independent legislature, but that a line should 
 be drawn to prevent their interference in matters of State and 
 external commerce. The consequences of rejecting or delaying, 
 would be an end of all government." 
 
 On the 28th of April, 1782, Rockingham, with Fox and 
 Shelbourne, being in power, the Duke of Portland wrote 
 to Mr. Fox from Dublin Castle as follows : 
 
 " These two points — independence and Mutiny Bill — ceded, and 
 an engagement for settling the judicature and Poyning's law, 
 would incline the Irish to adopt measures and modes of treating, 
 without which I do not see the possibility of settling the business.. 
 I foresee very considerable difficulty in drawing the line of that 
 independence which I advised to be conceded, and the embarrass- 
 ment will increase every day the question is left open. If you 
 delay or refuse to be liberal, government cannot exist here in its. 
 present form, and the sooner you recall your Lieutenant, and 
 renounce all claims to this country, the better. But if you concede 
 largely you may make any use of this people and of everything^ 
 they are worth that you can wish; happy for them that the 
 government shall be in hands that will not take undue advantage 
 of their intoxication." 
 
 On the 6th of May, 1782, the Duke wrote to Lord 
 Shelbourne : 
 
 •' Under the impression of the unavoidable necessity of con- 
 ceding all the points required, for the sake of deriving any real! 
 advantage from the possession of this country, I do recommend 
 that positive assurances be given, that the alteration of the Mutiny 
 Bill, and the modification of Poyning's law, shall be conceded to 
 them in the form required by their address ; that the 6th Geo. I. 
 shall be repealed, and that writs of error shall no longer be 
 
^^ Limits of Ltdependencey 55 
 
 received by our Court of King's Bench ; but that, as Great Britain is 
 desirous not only of satisfying the expectations of the Irish upon 
 all constitutional points, but of preventing every possible source of 
 future jealousy and discontent, . . . also to settle the precise 
 limits of that independence that is required, the consideration that 
 should be given for the protection expected, and the share it 
 would be proper for them to contribute towards the general 
 support of the empire, in pursuance of the declaration contained 
 in the concluding paragraph of their own address. . . . Unless 
 the object is to go fairly to the bottom of the business, and to 
 form a new system of relation between the two countries upon the 
 basis of their mutual interests, the character of the present admini- 
 stration will be lost, and the English Government must be prepared 
 to renounce all pretensions to respect or influence in this country." ^ 
 
 On the 6th of June, 1782, there is another letter from 
 the same to the same, touching an Act he hoped shortly 
 to produce securing '* the superintending power and 
 supremacy of Great Britain in all matters of State and 
 general commerce;" and on the 22nd of June, about a 
 week before Shelbourne (with Pitt) came into power, 
 another expressing the Duke of Portland's '* disappoint- 
 ment and mortification by unexpected changes ; " and it 
 appears from a subsequent letter, January 28, 1800, from 
 General Fitzpatrick, whowas Secretary at the time to Mr. 
 Grattan, that this very letter of the Duke of Portland's 
 about "imperial and commercial superintendence" was 
 written " within three days of the Duke's instructing the 
 General publicly to disavow any intention of further 
 measures grounded on the second resolution of the British 
 Parliament ! " The General then denounces the transaction 
 as " incredibly absurd and puerile," and expresses his " ab- 
 horrence of the most shameful and unprincipled violation 
 of a, compact, as sacred as history can furnish an example 
 of, between two independent nations." He refers to " what 
 was emphatically styled the final settlement of 1782; and 
 
 ' See " Grattan's Life and Times," by his son. 
 
56 Concessions and Repeal. 
 
 is i:eady to bear testimony. He, however, fears " the 
 death-blow to the liberties of Ireland " cannot be averted, 
 and that " the power of corruption will succeed in that 
 measure of outrageous profligacy." ^ 
 
 On the 17th of May, the English House went into 
 Committee on the Irish address of April i5th, and Mr. 
 Fox moved a repeal of 6 Geo. I., which was approved 
 by Burke, passed, and received the royal assent on the 
 2ist of June. 
 
 On the 27th of May the Irish House met, and the 
 Viceroy, after expressing the utmost satisfaction that 
 immediate attention had been paid, &c., informed them 
 that the British legislature had concurred in a resolution 
 to remove the causes, &c., and " His Majesty commands 
 me to assure you of his disposition to give his assent to 
 Acts to prevent the suppression of bills in the Privy 
 Council of this kingdom, and the alteration of them any- 
 where ; and to limit the duration of the Act for the better 
 regulation of His Majesty's forces in this kingdom to the 
 term of two years." 
 
 *' On my own part," continued the Duke, ** I entertain 
 not the least doubt but that the same spirit which urged 
 you to share the freedom of Great Britain will confirm 
 you in your determination to share her fate also, standing 
 and falling with the British nation." 
 
 Mr. Grattan in moving an address in reply said : 
 
 " He understood that Great Britain gave up in toto every claim 
 to authority over Ireland. He then suggested that _;^ioo,ooo 
 should be voted, and 20,000 men, to support the British navy ; 
 and moved an address, stating that the unqualified repeal of 6 
 Geo. I. would form a pledge of amity ; that they would prepare 
 bills to carry into execution the desires of the people, and that, 
 gratified in these particulars, no constitutional question could exist 
 that would interrupt their harmony." 
 
 » " Grattan's Life and Times," vol. ii. p.' 298. 
 
Independence Recovered. 57 
 
 After appointment of a day of public thanksgiving, the 
 following measures were proposed, and passed without 
 opposition. 
 
 Grattan brought in a Bill to punish mutiny and deser- 
 tion, and to repeal the perpetual Mutiny Act. Also to 
 reverse erroneous judgments and decrees (this included 
 writs of error, and settled the final judicature of Ireland). 
 
 Mr. Yelverton brought in a Bill to repeal Poyning's law. 
 
 Mr. Forbes brought in a Bill for securing the indepen- 
 -dence of the judges, and the impartial administration of 
 justice, bymaking their commissions during good behaviour. 
 
 Then the delegates from the volunteers of the four pro- 
 vinces of Ireland assembled and declared on the i8th of 
 June, 1782, that they accepted this " complete renuncia- 
 tion." 
 
 The Ulster volunteers specially met on the 12th of 
 June and agreed on a similar statement, to be sent to the 
 king ; but adding a request for a more equal franchise.^ 
 
 In 1783, the statute 23 Geo. III. c. 28 re-enacted Irish 
 independence. All these measures became the law of the 
 land; and thus was effected without bloodshed a great 
 revolution. The political situation of Ireland underwent 
 a total change, and her liberties and independence ap- 
 peared finally recovered. 
 
 "That was," said Grattan — to whom its success was mainly 
 •due, " the age of the repeal of the Penal Code — of the Habeas 
 Corpus Act. The army was made parliamentary ; the revenues 
 were made annual, which before had been in greater proportion 
 the perpetual inheritance of the crown ; trade became free, it had 
 before by English acts been restrained and annihilated; trade 
 with British colonies became direct ; the power of the English 
 Privy Council to originate and alter Irish bills was annihilated ; 
 
 ' " Grattan's Life and Times." 
 
58 A Fruitfzil Epoch. ■ 
 
 the power of the Irish Privy Council to alter, originate, and suppress 
 Irish bills was annihilated ; the power of the British Parliament to 
 make laws for Ireland was relinquished ; the power of the Irish 
 Parliament, who could before only originate petitions, was restored 
 in full, complete, and exclusive authority." 
 
IRELAND BETRAYED. 
 
 Non regnum, sed magnum latrociniiim."— Burke. 
 
 "There is no object which a cornipt minister will not finally ruin- 
 morality. Constitution, commerce, manufactures, agriculture, industry. A 
 corrupt minister issues forth from his cabinet like sin and death, and senates 
 first wither under his footsteps ; then he consumes the treasury, and then the 
 capital, the constitutional life, and the moral system ; and, at last, the whole 
 island is involved in one capacious curse from shore to shore, from nadir ta- 
 zenith." — Grattan. 
 
 "When the warfare of the nations ceased, that of the parliaments began. 
 England then established her supremacy by profligacy on the one side, and 
 prostitution on the other, at the cost of a degraded population, a hireling 
 aristocracy, and a corrupt government."— Sydney Smith. 
 
 " The House was composed largely of small boroughs erected purposely to- 
 maintain the Protestant ascendency, and which (if concessions were made) 
 could not survive the intended change, hence a revolution in Church and State- 
 would ioWow."— Private Letter, Portland to FitzzvHliain, February i6 1701: 
 S. P. O. ' >- . /y^. 
 
 "Eveiy step of conciliating the two descriptions of people that inhabit 
 Ireland, diminishes the probability of a ' union' with England."— Westmore- 
 land to DuNDAS, December 12, 1792. 
 
 " The union of a shark with its prey."— Lord Byron on Pitt's meastire. 
 
 " As a shark and dogfish wait. 
 Under an Atlantic isle. 
 For the negro ship whose freight 
 Is the theme of their debate, 
 Wrinkling their red gills the while." 
 
 Percy Bysshe Shelley on Castlereagh and Clare. 
 " That Jacobinism which is speculative in its origin may be kept under, but 
 that which arises from penury and irritation, from scorned loyalty 'and 
 rejected allegiance, has deeper roots. They take their nourishment from the 
 bottom of human nature, and the unalterable constitution of things. Their 
 roots will be shot into the depths of hell, and will at last raise up their proud 
 tops to heaven itself." — Burke. 
 
"The measures of coercion introduced by the Irish Government, the total 
 rejection of all Mr. Grattan's motions for reform, and, finally, the recall of 
 Lord Fitzwilliam, drove all the more ardent lovers of freedom to despair. 
 * Non regnum, sed magnum latrocinium,' was the character Burke gave of the 
 Irish Government, and of the system which he said would drive the Irish into 
 Jacobinism. Such, however, was the system which Pitt sanctioned, a system 
 of proscription, corruption, and cruelty." — Earl Russell's Life and Times 
 of Charles fames Fox, vol. iii. p. 139. 
 
 "There would be no possibility of giving the Irish Church Establishment 
 :security in any other way than by a complete incorporation with that of Great 
 Britain. While the present system continued, one minister might wish to up- 
 hold the present Establishment, another the system of exclusion, and a third 
 might be desirous to open the Establishment to every claimant. Under such 
 a policy the country would never be quiet. But the Establishment being 
 incorporated, tlie Protestant would feel himself supported," &c. — Castlereagh 
 in proposing the Union, February 5, 1800. 
 
 " Before next week it will be impossible for us to take into consideration 
 the different propositions respecting the provisions for Roman Catholic and 
 dissenting clergy, . . . and tithes." — DuKE OF Portland to Lord Corn- 
 WALLIS, September 2'^, 1800. Comiaallis Correspondence^vdi. iii. pp. 293, 294. 
 
 " Lord Holland says, ' Lord Hobart told me that both he and Lord Clare 
 had been deceived by Mr. Pitt, and that he would have voted against the 
 Union had he suspected any project of extending concessions to Catholics. ' " 
 — Memoirs of the Whig Party, vol. i. p. 162. 
 
 " I believe that half of our majority would be at heart as much delighted as 
 any of our opponents, if the (Union) measure could be defeated." — Lord 
 CORNWALLIS, Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 228. 
 
 "It was necessary to create some semblance of popular opinion, and 
 •Castlereagh began his campaign by drawing;^5, 000 from the secret service fund, 
 and expended the greater part of it in bribing young lawyers to write pam- 
 j)hlets in favour of a union." — Lecky's Graitan, p. 168. 
 
 "Ireland in 1795 ^^^^ singularly easy to govern, had it been governed 
 Jionestly, and by honest men." — Lecky. 
 
 " It has been said in so many words, it were to be wished the people would 
 rebel. Here is the system, and the principle. From corruption to coercion, 
 •and so on to military execution." — Bi'RKE. 
 
IRELAND BETRAYED. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 IRELAND BETRAYED. 
 
 Pitt, Castlereagh, and " The Union.'' 
 
 " I missed on the scaffold the right honourable gentleman. The treason of 
 the minister was infinitely worse than the rebellion of the people." — Grattan. 
 
 *' I met murder on the way, 
 He had a masque like Castlereagh, 
 Very smooth he looked, yet grim, 
 Seven bloodhounds followed him." 
 
 Shelley's Masque of Anarchy. 
 
 "The Irish Government might have crushed the rebellion, but they let it go 
 on, on purpose to carry the union." — Lord Clonmel's dying statement. 
 
 " His devil went forth. He destroyed liberty and property. He consumed 
 the press ; he burned houses and villages ; he murdered and he failed." — 
 Grattan o?i Pittas terror. 
 
 " Wretches transferred from the table to the dock, and from the dock to the 
 pillory, worked on by fear of death and hope of compensation ; who would 
 dip the evangelists in blood, and swear without mercy and without end. You 
 have seen the drunken, worn-out, terrified jury give a verdict of death." — 
 CURRAN. 
 
 " The sale of peerages is as notorious as the sale of cast horses in the Castle- 
 yard ; the publicity is the same, the terms not very different, the horses not 
 warranted sound, the other animals warranted rotten." — Curran. 
 
 " A government of panders and runners. Our adjutant sends to the infirmary 
 for the old, and to the brothel for the young — the representatives of the 
 people ! " — Grattan. 
 
 "Well, the minister has destroyed the Constitution. To destroy is easy. 
 The edifices of the mind, like the fabrics of marble, require an age to build : a 
 common labourer and a pickaxe may destroy the one, a little lawyer, a little 
 pimp, and a wicked minister the other." — Grattan on Lord Clare and Pitt. 
 
 Thus Ireland settled the question of independent legisla- 
 ture with a moderation, thoroughness, and nobleness 
 
62 ''Solemnly, Finally, and fo7^ ever Established^ 
 
 similar, as Hume and Burke opined, to the manner in 
 which England achieved her revolution of 1688. 
 
 The independence of 1782 was indeed " a fundamental 
 law," but it was more : it was an international engage- 
 ment, pledged by the word of the king, by four premiers — 
 Pitt, Shelbourne, Portland, and Fox— and approved by 
 Sheridan, Townshend, Grenville, Grattan, as well as 
 by all, or almost all, the judges. Irish independence was 
 as between nation and nation solemnly, iinally, and for 
 ever guaranteed, ascertained, and established. If this was 
 not so, then no nation, no king, no parliament, law, or 
 judge, can ever guarantee anything — force becomes the 
 only remedy, and fraud the only right. 
 
 Mr. Fox (debate December 19, 1782, in the English 
 House) declared that his intention "was to give a full, 
 complete, absolute, and perpetual surrender of the British 
 legislature and judicial supremacy over Ireland." 
 
 Moreover, as the proceedings adopted by Lord Clare- 
 mont and Mr. Grattan threw the whole into the form of 
 a treaty, the country got national as well as legal security, 
 and parliament was put in covenant. Fox, as Grattan 
 wrote in 1818, ** wished sincerely for the liberty of Ireland 
 without reserve. He was an enemy to an union, and 
 wished the freedom of Ireland to be annexed to his name." 
 
 The transaction was, in fact, a treaty between the two 
 countries. First came the resolutions of the Irish House 
 of Commons, and of the volunteers ; next a message from 
 the King of England to both houses of the British Parlia- 
 ment ; then his message to both houses of the Irish Par- 
 liament ; fourth, their declaration of rights ; fifth, their 
 address to the King, setting forth the rights and claims of 
 Ireland ; after which all was submitted to both Houses 
 of Parliament in England ; seventh, came the repeal, on 
 the motion of Fox, of the 6 George I. (which had 
 declared the dependency of Ireland) ; afterwards several 
 Irish Acts repealing Poyning's law, regulating the trans- 
 
The International Treaty. 63 
 
 xnission of bills to Great Britain, and securing the final 
 judicature to Ireland ; and ninthly, on the 22nd January, 
 '^I'^Zi " the Renunciation Bill," the motion for which, for 
 removing all doubts concerning the exclusive rights of the 
 Parliament and Courts of Ireland, in matters of legislation 
 and judicature, passed without a division. Mr. Town- 
 shend moved it, Mr. — afterwards Lord — Grenville 
 seconded, Mr. Fox approved, and Mr. Pitt " was happy 
 to find the House unanimously agreed." 
 
 It was a national contract, binding not only parlia- 
 Tnents, but countries ; it was a solemn treaty, and not 
 only a statute of either country. A statute binds the 
 people, but not the parliament. According to the law of 
 nations, a treaty binds both. As Burke said, " This I call 
 making Ireland free with a vengeance." Fox consulted 
 Mr. — afterwards Lord — Kenyon and Mr. Lee, who were 
 Attorney- and Solicitor-General in England in 1782, when 
 the Bill passed, and their opinion was that the simple 
 repeal had terminated all British jurisdiction over Ireland. 
 Lord Camden said to Grattan, " It is folly talking of 
 simple repeal, the business is done." Thus the Chief 
 Justices of the three courts, the two judges, together with 
 the English authorities. Lords Camden, Kenyon, and 
 JErskine, Mr. Lee, Sir Arthur Piggott, and Sir Samuel 
 Romilly, all agreed in opinion with Mr. Grattan, Lord 
 'Charlemont, and Mr. Fox. And when the Duke of Port- 
 land prorogued the Irish Parliament on January 27, 
 1782, he stated in his speech that " to settle the Constitu- 
 tion of Ireland on a secure foundation, and to unite its 
 interests and affections with those of Great Britain, was 
 the principal object of his administration ; and he was 
 happy to learn that Parliament considered these objects 
 as accomplished." 
 
 At a meeting of the Whig Club in London, May 6, 
 1800, Fox said : 
 
 " It was the most arrogant of all pretensions to pretend that we 
 
64 Freedom and Prosperity. 
 
 can legislate for Ireland — that we should understand all her local 
 interests better than herself. The sovereignty of the people — 
 that man shall be his own governor — is the fundamental principle 
 of all well constituted states. To undertake to legislate for per- 
 sons with whose local interests we must be unacquainted is 
 despotism, not liberty ; and the attempt to govern for them was. 
 the most audacious which the history of mankind recorded." ^ 
 
 The vi^itnesses as to the healing and redeeming effect of 
 the eighteen years of Irish legislation, one and all testify 
 to the same effect. " Her laws," said Lord Plunket, of 
 this 1782-1800 period, " were well arranged and adminis- 
 tered — a Constitution fully recognized and established ; 
 her revenues, trade, manufactures thriving beyond hope 
 or example of any other country of her extent : " and Lord 
 Clare affirmed that " no country in the world ever made 
 such rapid advance in cultivation and commerce, agricul- 
 ture and manufactures, with the same rapidity in the 
 same time." 
 
 The bankers and merchants of Dublin, the Mayor in 
 the chair, resolved in meeting, December 18, 1798 : 
 
 "That since the renunciation in 1782 by Great Britain of the 
 right to legislate for Ireland, commerce and prosperity have emi- 
 nently increased. That we attribute these blessings to the Irish 
 Parliament. That we look with abhorrence on any attempt to 
 deprive the people of Ireland of their parliament. That legislative 
 union would be highly dangerous and impolitic. That the Lord 
 Mayor sign these resolutions, and that the same be published in 
 all the public papers." 
 
 And the Right Hon. John Foster, Speaker of the Irish 
 House of Commons, declared, April 11, 1799, that 
 
 " The Constitution has showered down upon you more blessings, 
 trade, affluence, than ever fell to your lot in double the time. 
 Will you be cajoled, duped, or threatened into a surrender ot 
 it?" 
 
 ' " Grattan's Life and Times," vol. v. p. 197. Colburn, 1846. 
 
Freedom mid Prosperity. 65 
 
 In those eighteen years, 1782-1801, the nation sprang 
 into manhood at once, the population 1782-1803 increased, 
 the country had become cuhivated. During that period 
 no nation advanced so much in cultivation, commerce, 
 agriculture, and manufactures. Irish exports had in- 
 creased one-half, and population one-third. Her agri- 
 culture fed her people. In 1782 Ireland exported 
 ;^3,300,ooo ; in 1792 £11,000,000. In 1784 24,000,000 
 yards of linen ; in 1792 45,000,000 3'ards. 
 
 Irish labour was cheap, her water power enormous, and 
 the climate eminently suited the cotton manufactoiy. 
 English Acts of Parliament destroyed Irish' manufactures, 
 especially the woollen, and then crushed out all industrial 
 enterprise, excluded the mass of the people from all other 
 means of existence than agriculture, and produced the 
 land hunger which has caused disturbance and distress.' 
 
 " Is Ireland," asked Burke in 1778, " united to the 
 Crown of Great Britain for no other purpose than to 
 counteract the bounty of Providence in her favour ? " 
 
 "Its journals" (Irish Parliamentary), says Lecky, "show a 
 minute attention to industrial questions, to the improvement of 
 means of communication, to the execution of public works. In 
 the last years of the Irish Parliament the material progress was 
 rapid and uninterrupted. In ten years from 1782 the exports 
 more than trebled." 
 
 " At present (1785)," said Lord Sheffield, " perhaps the 
 improvement of Ireland is as rapid as any country ever 
 experienced." 
 
 In 1818 Messrs. Whitelaw and Walsh, Protestant 
 clergymen, in a history of Dublin, showed the ruin in- 
 evitably wrought on Dublin itself by this union : 
 
 "When it possessed a parliament it had a press, which the 
 union practically destroyed. Of dd newspapers, 54 were then 
 
 * See " Life and Death of the Irish Parliament." 
 
 6 
 
66 Freedom and Loyalty. 
 
 extinct, and the efifect on university and city, intellect and life, 
 was as deplorable as the departure of the temporal and spiritual 
 peers, and of the 300 ordinary members." 
 
 Colonel Hutchinson, on June 14, 181 1, said in the 
 English House that *' a free trade, upon no duties, or 
 equal ones, was the principle of the Union. Would they 
 restore to Ireland all she had lost by the degrading and 
 abominable measure of the Union ? " Upon this the 
 Speaker remarked : *' Such is not the language which it 
 becomes this House to hear of a grave and solemn act of 
 parliament." Colonel Hutchinson then proceeded: "When 
 the Union was first proposed I foresaw in it danger to 
 England, and in the danger, degradation, and ruin of 
 
 Ireland." 
 On the commercial as well as political advantages of 
 
 Irish independence O'Connell is an important — perhaps 
 
 the most important — witness. ^ 
 
 " The admission of the Catholics to the tenancy of lands in 1778 
 increased considerably the rents of the Protestant landlords in 
 Ireland. The permission to Catholics, in 1782, to purchase estates 
 enhanced enormously the value of the property of all the Protes- 
 tants of Ireland. Conciliation and prosperity went hand in hand. 
 . . . The Irish Parliament, which asserted the legislative indepen- 
 dence of Ireland, was not only the most advantageous to its con- 
 stituents, but was, at the same, time, the most loyal to the British 
 Crown and the most useful to the British power. It was that Par- 
 liament which voted and paid the 20,000 Irish Catholics who 
 rushed to man the British fleets, and contributed to Rodney's 
 victory. Ireland never had a parliament more attached to British 
 connection than the Irish Parliament which asserted Irish legis- 
 lative independence. 
 
 "Ten years fpUowed of great and increasing prosperity in 
 Ireland. . . . No country ever rose so rapidly in trade, manufac- 
 tures, commerce, agricultural wealth, and general prosperity, as 
 Ireland did from the year 1782 until the year 1798, when the 
 ' fomented rebellion ' broke out." 
 
 ' Memoir, dedicated to the Queen, pp. 23-26. 
 
Gove7^nment by " Creatu7''es." 6y 
 
 But two-thirds of Irish land was held by the grantees of 
 confiscation. Twenty-five landowners commanded the 
 votes of 1 16 members of parliament. The Irish pension 
 list amounted to j^i, 020,000 a year. Three families — 
 Devonshire, Ponsonby, Beresford — commanded 60 mem- 
 bers of parliament. It was this irresponsible Protestant 
 oligarchy that ruined the nation. 
 
 "The English Government," said Burke, in 1796, "has farmed 
 out Ireland to the little narrow faction that domineers there. It 
 is little less than a breach of order even to mention Ireland in the 
 Commons of Great Britain. If the people of Ireland were to be 
 flayed alive by the predominant faction, it would be the most 
 critical of all attempts to discuss the subject." 
 
 From 1782 to 1800 the Irish Government consisted 
 practically of the Lord-Lieutenant, who was a creature 
 of the English Prime Minister, and his Secretary — the one 
 generally an English Member of Parliament, the other an 
 English nobleman. There was no Irish Government re- 
 sponsible to the Irish Parliament and nation. 
 
 "The country was placed," as Grattan said in 1790, "in a sort 
 of interval between the ceasing of a system of oppression, and the 
 forming of a system of corruption. The latter will take time to 
 propagate all its poisons into the mass of the country ; but go on 
 for ten or twelve years," said he, in words that have proved pro- 
 phetic ; " go on as you have the last five ; increase in the same 
 proportion your number of parliamentary places ', increase, as you 
 have done, your annual charge every five years of peace ;!^i 83,000 ; 
 get every five years new taxes, and apply them as you have done, 
 and then the minister will find that he has impaired the trade and 
 agriculture, as well as destroyed the virtue and the freedom of the 
 country." ^ 
 
 To understand the triumph of Pitt's Government in this 
 business, it must be borne in mind that Lord North, the 
 worst minister England ever had, and who lost America, 
 
 ' " Grattan 's Speeches," edited by his son. Longman, 1822. 
 
68 Grattan on Westmoreland. 
 
 was in power from 1770 to March, 1782. The Marquis of 
 Rockingham, with Fox and Lord Shelbourne Secretaries 
 of State, and Burke in the administration, was Premier 
 from March to the ist of July, 1782, the day of his 
 lamented and sudden death. Him the Earl of Shelbourne, 
 with Pitt for Chancellor, succeeded until December; the 
 Coalition Ministry, Portland, North, Fox, and Burke, 
 coming in only until April, 1783, to be followed by Pitt's 
 long administration. 
 
 On the 5th of January, 1790, Lord Westmoreland came 
 over to Ireland to govern by corruption. He avowed it, and 
 he practised it, and his appointment, says Alison, ^ was the 
 signal for fierce contests between the Government and the 
 people. The Dissenters of the North coalesced with the 
 Roman Catholics in a loud and menacing demand for 
 reform. Grattan met the situation by a series of tre- 
 mendous attacks bearing on the menace of Westmoreland's 
 mission, the first of which was delivered on the ist of 
 February, 1790 : 
 
 " Above two-thirds of the returns of this House are private pro- 
 perty — of those returns many actually this very moment sold to 
 the minister ; the number of placemen and pensioners sitting in 
 this House equal near one-half of the whole efficient body. The 
 minister will defeat the attempts of parliament by corruption, and 
 deter the repetition of her attempts by threatening the repetition 
 of the expenses of corruption. Having been long the bawd, 
 corruption will become the sage and honest admonitress of the 
 nation. She will advise her no more to provoke the minister to 
 rob the subject — she will advise her to serve in order to save. 
 Parliament, that giant that purged these islands of the race of 
 tyrants, whose breed it was the fortune of England to preserve, 
 and of Ireland to adopt ; parliament, whose head has for ages 
 commerced with the wisdom of the gods, and whose foot has 
 spoken thunder and deposition to the oppressor, will, like the 
 sacred giant, stand a public spectacle shorn of his strength, for the 
 
 ' " Life of Castlereagh," vol. i. pp. 26, 27. 
 
Sale of Peerages and Seats. 69 
 
 amusement of his enemies, and do feats of ignominious power to 
 gratify an idle and hostile court; and these walls, where once the 
 public weal contended, and the patriot strove, will resemble the 
 ruin of some Italic temple, and abound not with senators, but with 
 animals of prey in the guise of senators, chattering their pert 
 debates, and disgracing those seats that once belonged to the 
 people. You have no adequate responsibility in Ireland, and 
 politicians laugh at the sword of justice, which falls short of their 
 heads, and only precipitates on their reputations." ^ 
 
 On the 20th of February, 1790, Grattan moved for a 
 select committee to inquire into the sale of peerages and 
 the purchase of seats. 
 
 " Sir," he said, " we persist to combat the project to govern this 
 country by corruption. The sale of honours is an impeachable 
 offence, but they have applied the money arising from such sale 
 to model the House of Commons. This is another impeachable 
 offence. The minister who sells the honour of one House to 
 model the representation of the other, makes them auxiliary, not 
 to support, but to contaminate one another, and corrupt also the 
 dispensation of justice, and the fountains of the law. The 
 ministers of the Crown have introduced a traffic and brokerage of 
 honours. The minister first will buy the question, and then 
 favour you with the forms of debating it. He will cry up parlia- 
 ment when venal, and cry it down when it feels remorse. The 
 minister will soon procure a legislature to adopt any measure 
 according as the divan of the Castle shall give its janissaries here 
 the word of command. Ireland was sold for^ 1,500,000 formerly, 
 and, if opposition persists, will be sold again." 
 
 "Sir," said Grattan, on the 26th of the same month— "I 
 said that His Majesty's ministers had sold the peerages, for 
 which offence they were impeachable. I said they had applied 
 the money for the purpose of purchasing seats in the Commons 
 for the servants and followers of the Castle, and were impeachable 
 as public malefactors, and I dared them to inquiry, I repeat 
 those charges now ; and if anything more severe was expressed 
 ' See " Life and Times," vol. iii. pp. 445-8. 
 
70 Ministers Impeachable. 
 
 I will again repeat it. Why not expel me now ? Why not send 
 me to the bar of the House of Lords ? Going out of this house 
 I shall repeat my sentiments, that His Majesty's ministers are' 
 guilty of impeachable offences ; and advancing to the bar of the 
 Lords, I shall repeat those sentiments ; or if the Tower be my 
 habitation, 1 will there meditate impeachment, and return not to 
 capitulate, but to punish."^ 
 
 "The Irish Government," said Grattan, in 1791, "is a cypher. 
 The control exclusively placed in the Lord-Lieutenant's Secretary 
 on that bench, makes him more forcible than Demosthenes, more 
 persuasive than Tully — like Solomon in all his glory, sitting among 
 his State concubines. 
 
 " The people of Ireland would not consent to be governed by 
 the British Parliament ; an expedient was devised — let the Irish 
 Parliament govern the people of Ireland, and Great Britain 
 govern the Irish Parliament. 
 
 "The path of treachery in a principal country leads to the 
 block, but in a nation governed like a province, to the helm. 
 
 " By this trade of parliament the king is absolute. Both 
 houses are as much an instrument in his hand as a bayonet in the 
 hands of a regiment. Like a regiment, we have our adjutant, 
 who sends to the infirmary for the old, and to the brothel for the 
 young, and men carted thus into the house are representatives of 
 the people ! Suppose General Washington to ring his bell, and 
 order his servants out of livery to take their seats in Congress. 
 The trade in parhament is like original sin, it operates through all 
 political creation. 
 
 " Of three hundred members above two hundred are returned 
 by individuals, forty to fifty by ten persons : several boroughs 
 have no resident elector ; some but one. The great majority are 
 chosen by individuals, and a great proportion afterwards endowed 
 by the Crown." ^ 
 
 On January ig, 1792, the session began which, at Pitt's 
 bidding, was to open the sluices, and make rebellion 
 inevitable. So far (April) the Catholic committees had 
 
 ' "Grattan's Life and Times," vol. iii. p. 457. 
 
 ^ See "Grattan's Speeches " — Reform in Parliament, 1793. 
 
Pitt mamifacttcring Rebellion. 71 
 
 trusted to expectations held out by England. Their 
 petition had been flung back in their faces. Pitt, if still 
 in their favour, was unable or unwilling to force his 
 wishes on the Parliament. Neither the Chancellor nor 
 Lord Westmoreland had any doubt of their power to 
 check this new movement on one condition, that they 
 could be sure of being backed by the Cabinet. There 
 needed still (October") but a firm word from England for 
 faction to slink into its den, and that word was not 
 spoken ; but on January 23, 1793, Dundas wrote to 
 Westmoreland that the Catholics were less likely to con- 
 cur 'in disturbing the existing order of things when they 
 participate in the franchise. 
 
 Pitt was vexed and offended with Ireland on account of 
 her conduct in 1785 on the commercial proposition, and 
 in 1789 on the Regenc}^, when the Irish Parliament wished 
 to concentrate the right regal power in the hands of the 
 Regent, instead of putting so much in those of Pitt. He 
 thought one parliament would be more handy than two, 
 and his direct object (as shown in his letter to the Duke 
 of Rutland, October 7, 1784), was "to unite the Protestant 
 interest in excluding the Catholics from any share in the 
 representation or government of the country." Pitt 
 managed the king by threatening to " let loose Fox upon 
 him," and thus made the king too strong. As soon as 
 the king, in 1801, found this out, he turned Pitt out, and 
 Pitt only regained power by a private pledge to the king, 
 in 1804, against the Catholics. 
 
 "The aspect of affairs in 1793," says Alison, "became so 
 threatening that Earl Fitzwilliam was sent over in December, 
 1794, to succeed Lord Westmoreland, and he came over avowedly 
 as the organ of a conciliatory policy, his mission ... to concede 
 Catholic emancipation, and such a measure of parliamentary 
 reform as might be consistent with the preservation of order, and 
 of the monarchical constitution in Church and State. These 
 
72 " What! Never be Free?" 
 
 favourable dispositions were increased by the offer to Grattan of 
 an important place in the administration, on whose motion the 
 House of Commons voted ;j^3, 000,000 to the English Govern- 
 ment to carry on the war — a very large sum for a country whose 
 revenue was only ;^i, 800,000." 
 
 English Protestants, however, took alarm at Grattan's 
 proposed concessions to Roman Catholics; and the English 
 Government disavowed those proposals, and after the 
 three million vote had passed both Irish Houses, recalled 
 Fitzwilliam, and the whole liberal Irish administration 
 went out of office. Lord Camden succeeded Lord Fitz- 
 william. Lord Westmoreland wrote to Dundas, December 
 12, 1792, that " Every step of conciliating the two de- 
 scriptions of people that inhabit Ireland, diminishes the 
 probability of that object to be wished — a union with 
 England ; " and Mr. Froude writes on that as follows : 
 
 " The language in which Westmoreland speaks of the union 
 seems to show that it was already the object at which the Cabinet 
 was aiming. If the object most to be feared was the drawing 
 together of Catholics and Protestants, the readiest way for England 
 to prevent it was to force emancipation upon the present parlia- 
 ment, and to make the Catholics feel that they owed their relief 
 to the English ministers. The union might then be accomplished 
 in time to prevent serious mischief. This interpretation renders 
 conduct explicable which otherwise might have appeared 
 dehrious." ' 
 
 The Catholic question was the supreme one. The 
 Catholics had enjoyed the suffrage till 1727, and Grattan 
 insisted that *'the removal of their disabilities is necessary 
 to make the Catholic a freeman, and the Protestant a 
 people." On February 20, 1792, he said : 
 
 " I now press upon you the final and external doom to which 
 
 some propose to condemn the Catholic. What ! never be free .? 
 
 Three million of your people condemned to everlasting slavery! 
 
 Never to be free ! do you mean to tell the Roman Catholic, in 
 
 ' " The English in Ireland," book viii. p. 79. 
 
Death to the Vohmteers. 73 
 
 vain you take oaths of allegiance, it will make no difference as to 
 your emancipation. Go to France, go to America, carry your 
 property, industry, manufactures, and family to a land of liberty. 
 This is a sentence which requires the power of a God, the 
 malignity of a demon." 
 
 Grattan, however, was defeated by 208 against 25 ; and 
 later, when Pitt had deliberately availed himself of the 
 popularity of supposed concessions and of Lord Fitz- 
 william, and the Irish Parliament had voted heavy 
 burdens and great military establishments, then Pitt 
 abandoned his principles, deceived, used, and recalled 
 Lord Fitzwilliam, and prepared for the insurrection and 
 the Union. 
 
 Pitt's Act of 1793 gave CathoHc freeholders the fran- 
 chise, but Government feared that the union of Catholics, 
 Presbyterians, Dissenters, and Republicans would change 
 the Constitution from a mixed monarchy into a republic, 
 or a monarchy in which the real power was vested in the 
 people who might tamper with the' Church.^ The real 
 crux was Grattan's motion that Catholics sit in parliament. 
 Earl Camden, the new Lord-Lieutenant, took the final 
 stand (1793), that Catholics should not sit, and thus 
 he wrote privately to Lord Castlereagh,^ who was ap- 
 pointed Chief Secretary April 17, 1799, having performed 
 the duties, however, for two years previously. 
 
 "On February 4, 1793, Major Hobart proposed to admit 
 Catholics to the franchise, magistracy, and grand juries. The 
 day after, a Bill was introduced forbidding the possession of guns 
 or powder without license. This Act was sentence of death 
 to the volunteer corps. On February 6th, a militia was moved 
 for, which would produce 16,000 men, and at the same time a 
 proposal made to increase the regular army to 20,000 men."3 
 
 ' Alison's " Life of Castlereagh," vol. i. p. 19. 
 
 = February 4, 1793, MS. "Londonderry Papers" and "Castlereagh 
 Correspondence," vol. i. p. 12. 
 
 3 Froude, "The English in Ireland," book viii. p. 90. 
 
74 Sending '^Masters'' to Parliament. 
 
 " So armed, Hobart was able to insist. The second reading 
 passed with only three dissentients, but the proposal in committee 
 to admit Catholics to parliament was defeated 163 to 69. Those 
 in the House who would have given the Catholics nothing were 
 by far the largest number. Had the Castle offered a full measure 
 of emancipation, the profligate Whig aristocracy would have rallied 
 the country on the Protestant cry against perfidious England. 
 Had the Catholic petition been rejected in London, they were 
 ready to open their arms to their oppressed fellow-citizens, . , . 
 and so reign themselves." 
 
 On July 8, 1793, Fitzgibbon introduced the Convention 
 Bill into the Lords, declaring the assemblage of bodies of 
 men calling themselves representatives, under any pre- 
 tence, illegal. 
 
 " The landlords had sown the wind, and were to reap the whirl- 
 wind. The Irish nation, as it is passionate and revengeful, so 
 beyond most others it is malleable by just authority. The Celtic 
 earth-tiller will repay his liege lord for kindness and generosity 
 with romantic fidelity. Two centuries had been allowed the 
 Saxon intruder to win the affections of the native race. The 
 Irish peasants remained in rags like their ancestors ; lodged under 
 one roof with their pigs and cows ; paying rent to masters who 
 had no care for their bodies ; paying tithes to clergy who cared as 
 little for their souls ; maintaining gallantly in the midst of their 
 wretchedness their own hedge schools and priests. So it had 
 gone on till they were told their chain was broken, . . . and that 
 if they wanted more than the privilege of sending one of their 
 Protestant masters to parliament, they must arm." ^ 
 
 On a few pages further on (p. 113) Mr. Froude's sympa- 
 thies have veered right round, for he proceeds : 
 
 " The Irish peasant, if let loose and told to be his own governor, 
 flies at the hand which has unlocked his chains. Pitt had taken 
 a step which made the union a certainty, but no less certainly a 
 desperate and bloody insurrection, . . . 
 
 ' Froude, " The English in Ireland," book viii. i^p. 107, 108. 
 
*' Pitt will Cheat Your 75 
 
 "In 1794 the Cabinet was modified by the accession of the 
 moderate Whigs, and in August Grattan and others were invited 
 to London, and saw Pitt, who let Grattan go away with the im- 
 pression that although the admission of Catholics to parliament 
 would not be made a Government measure, it would not be opposed. 
 Pitt was thinking of an union, but his ignorance of the country 
 must have been extraordinary, even in an English Prime Minister, 
 if he could dream that Catholic Ireland, in constitutional posses- 
 sion of the power which the majority would confer, would then be 
 persuaded to part with her ascendency." ' 
 
 In August, 1794, Lord Fitzwilliam, on his coming 
 appointment to succeed the Duke of Portland, wrote to 
 Grattan for his assistance, saying, " Except during the 
 administration of the Duke, I believe you never have ap- 
 proached the Castle in confidence." Grattan remarked 
 that " Ireland was not handy enough for Pitt; " he could 
 not easily manage her. 
 
 In October, 1794, Pitt made overtures to Grattan ; but 
 the latter's old friend, Denis Daly, Muster-Master-General, 
 who had been in office under Pitt, said he " was a bad 
 minister for Ireland." Gerald Hamilton said, ** I would 
 not trust Pitt ; he'll cheat you." Mr. Sergeant Adair said, 
 " If you have any dealings with Pitt he'll cheat you ; I 
 never would act with him except I had pen, ink, and 
 paper." Grattan told Pitt the essential question was the 
 Catholic. Pitt replied, - If Government were pressed to 
 yield it." "Such," Grattan said, - were the identical 
 expressions." Grattan declined office. Lord Fitzwilliam 
 was satisfied he had full powers on that question, and said 
 so to Burke. Pitt threw obstacles in the way of arrange- 
 ments with Lord Fitzwilliam ; and the Duke of Portland 
 told Grattan that the jobs or appointments made by Pitt 
 were " scandalous." Lord Fitzwilliam, however, was 
 appointed, and arrived in Dublin.^ His answers to ad- 
 
 • Froude, "The English in Ireland," book viii. p. 123. 
 '' Grattan's Life and Times," vol. iv. pp. 178-182. 
 
 2 ( 
 
76 The Real Difficulty, 
 
 dresses seemed to promise a period of conciliation and 
 progress in strict accordance with arrangements made in 
 London by Pitt, Portland, Fitzwilliam, and Grattan. 
 Measures accordingly were eagerly looked for by the 
 people, when Lord Fitzwilliam's recall began to be 
 rumoured. 
 
 Parliament opened on January 22, 1795 ; and on Feb- 
 ruary 14th even Fitzgibbon wrote Pitt that nothing but 
 the Catholic Relief Bill could save the country. The 
 real difficulty was explained in the private letter from 
 the Duke of Portland to Lord Fitzwilliam, February i6th 
 (State Paper Office), that |to yield must change the con- 
 stitution of the House of Commons, which would then 
 overthrow the Church Establishment. The House was, 
 composed largely of members for small boroughs erected pur- 
 posely to maintain the Protestant ascendency, and which could 
 not survive the intended change, hence a revolution in 
 Church and State would follow. 
 
 On Lord Fitzwilliam's departure the people drew his 
 carriage to the water-side, shops were closed, the houses 
 hung in mourning. Grattan's Bill was out-voted ; insur- 
 rection came on ; Protestant ascendency organized ; and 
 in 1798 the Orange organization had broken the right arm 
 of insurrection. 
 
 September 3, 1794, Burke wrote to Grattan from 
 Beaconsfield respecting Robert Burke, his son, lately 
 deceased : 
 
 " His eye was fixed on Ireland to the last hour of his life, and 
 his eye was fixed on you as the only man who could serve it 
 essentially — as the only man who could save it. He never spoke 
 to any one on the subject without expressing this sentiment ; nor 
 have I ever spoken, nor shall I ever speak any language than his, 
 because it was always the language of truth and wisdom. You 
 have given to Ireland the great, but critical and perilous, blessings 
 of Hberty and independence." 
 
Burke on Fitzwilliam. 77 
 
 In 1795 Burke also wrote of the hopes of the new Irish 
 session, and of his confidence in Lord Fitzwilliam's noble 
 views, and in Grattan's opposition leadership ; and he dis- 
 tinguishes between the constitutional and political inde- 
 pendence of Ireland. 
 
 " I could not pray to God for a, greater security to you for 
 everything you hold dear; for in that time Lord Fitzwilliam's 
 virtues (the greatest and most unmixed that I have known in 
 man) would bring the leading men of the nation into habits of 
 moderation, lenity, equity, and justice, which the practice of some 
 hundreds of years, and the narrow hard-heartedness of a monarchy, 
 have banished from the minds of many of them. Ireland consti- 
 tutionally is independent, politically she never can be so. It is a 
 struggle against nature. She must be protected. France has not 
 the means of either serving or hurting her that are in the hands of 
 Great Britain. 
 
 " If Grattan, by whom I wish the Catholics to be wholly ad- 
 vised, thinks differently from me, I wish the whole unsaid. You 
 see Lord Fitzwilliam sticks nobly to his text, and neither abandons 
 his cause nor his friends, though he has few indeed to support 
 him. Surely Great Britain and Ireland ought to join in wreath- 
 ing a never-fading garland for the head of Grattan." 
 
 And March 3rd Burke wrote to Grattan himself: 
 
 " I feel as much joy as my poor broken heart is capable of 
 receiving from the manner in which the Irish session has opened. 
 Ireland resolved to live and die with Great Britain. More troops 
 were raised and greater sums voted than before was ever known. 
 I really thought everything was settled. Please God, whilst one 
 link hangs to another I will not be untrue to you. The monarchy 
 is as much obliged to you, at leasts as any subject the king has." 
 
 Yet Lord Fitzwilliam stated in the English Lords, " For 
 having connected myself with Mr. Grattan, I am dis- 
 missed ; for it was obviously on that account, chiefly, that 
 I incurred the hostility of the English minister ; " and 
 April 21, 1795, Grattan declared in the House that 
 
78 ''Panders and Rtmners^ 
 
 *' Catholic emancipation was not only the concession of 
 the British Cabinet, but its precise engagement." He 
 moved then for a committee on the state of the nation. 
 Pitt's perfidy was about to be proved by the man 
 who had treated with Pitt, and whose word and whose 
 principles were sacred, and a division of 158 to 48 against 
 the exposure was Pitt's only possible answer. 
 
 At this time, 1795, the debt of the Irish nation was 
 5^3,820,000 ; five years later, at the union, ;£'25, 000,000 ; a 
 few years after, £150,000,000 ; and in 1816 Ireland was 
 proclaimed bankrupt. 
 
 Mr. Pitt's Government had passed a Convention Act, a 
 Riot Act, an Arms Act, a Gunpowder Act, an Insurrection 
 Act, an Indemnity Act, and a suspension of the Habeas 
 Corpus Act ; they imprisoned without bail and transported 
 without trial ; spies and informers swarmed, the prisons 
 overflowed, riot defied *' the terror," a military despotism 
 was established, and Grattan, in the Irish House, could 
 only muster 16 against 127 ; Fox could only muster 84 
 against 220. 
 
 " The Government," said Grattan, " renounce economy, trample 
 on rights, laugh at opinion, sell the peerage, model the representa- 
 tion, and not only practise, but avow the arts of corruption. If 
 the most ambitious aristocracy were to become the Ministry, they 
 would possess at least one advantage, they would be a Govern- 
 ment of gentlemen." 
 
 Listen now to the great advocate, Curran, as in 1797 
 and 1798 he describes some of the meaner of Pitt's 
 instruments : 
 
 ** Let me ask you honestly, what do you feel when called on to 
 give a verdict which every man of you knows to be utterly and 
 absolutely false ? I speak not of those wretches so often trans- 
 ferred from the table to the dock, and from the dock to the pillory. 
 I speak of the miscreants who avowed upon their oaths that they 
 had come from the very seat of government — the Castle — worked 
 
Btirke on Pitt's Jacobinism. 79 
 
 upon by the fear of death and the hope of compensation to give 
 evidence ; from these catacombs of living death, where the wretch 
 IS buried a man and is then dug up a witness. I have heard of 
 assassination by sword, pistol, and dagger; but here is a wretch 
 who would dip the evangelists in blood, ready to swear without 
 mercy and without end. If he will swear, let it be on the knife, 
 the proper symbol of his profession. ... 
 
 " You have seen the drunken, worn-out, and terrified jury give 
 a verdict of death, and when returning sobriety brought back 
 their consciences, prostrate themselves before the humanity of the 
 Bench, that mercy might save their consciences from eternal self- 
 condemnation, and their souls from innocent blood." ^ 
 
 In 1797, a secret committee of the English House of 
 Commons reported disunion, and England, that is, the 
 English minister and the Castle junto, had resolved on 
 the downward course. 
 
 And now, in 1796, came the closing words, as of judg- 
 ment and doom, from the mighty master, Burke. They tell 
 us— what now we have learnt and know from events— of 
 the necessary results of England's folly, and they came 
 almost from Burke's own death-bed, as certainly from the 
 death-bed of Irish loyalty : 
 
 " That Jacobinism . . . which arises from penury and irritation, 
 from scorned loyalty and rejected allegiance, has deeper roots. They 
 take their nourishment from the bottom of human nature, and the 
 unalterable constitution of things. Their roots will be shot into 
 the depths of hell, and will at last raise up their proud tops to 
 heaven itself" 
 
 " In what all this will end," added Burke, '' it is not 
 impossible to conjecture, though the exact time cannot be 
 fixed as you would calculate an eclipse. Lord Fit^william 
 could not live long in power because he was a true patriot." 
 
 In 1797, to assist the union, parliamentary reform 
 had been rejected in order to bring the Irish Parliament 
 
 ' " Grattan's Life and Times." 
 
8o ''His Devil zuent Forth!' 
 
 into contempt, and parliamentary corruption had the like 
 effect. Grattan demanded the right to elect representa- 
 tives and freedom of religion — " Reform parliament, and 
 let the king identify himself with his people. Try this 
 plan, as the ultimate consequence of a union will be 
 separation." 
 
 Pitt was becoming unpopular in England. It was the 
 same Pitt who said, " Take the children for the factories, 
 that the men may go to the wars." The seamen at the 
 Nore mutinied; his arms and negotiations failed; even his 
 attempt to hang his early friends. Home Tooke, Hardy, 
 and others, failed; and upwards of thirty counties and cities 
 in England passed addresses praying the king to remove 
 Pitt from the royal councils for ever. Irish addresses 
 concluded with the same prayer, after arraigning Pitt's 
 policy " before their country, the whole British Empire, 
 before the king, in the face of the world, in the presence 
 of God." Similar resolutions passed unanimously at a 
 meeting of the bar, all present (74) signing; but Pitt's 
 answer was to suppress by the soldiery all meetings. 
 
 In " A Letter to my Fellow Citizens," Grattan concluded 
 his exposure of Pitt's iniquities thus : 
 
 "The half million, said the minister, that is my principle of 
 attraction. Among the rich I send my half million, and I despatch 
 my coercion among the people. His devil went forth — he de- 
 stroyed liberty and property, he consumed the Press, he burned 
 houses and villages, he murdered, and he failed." 
 
 The same sentiments we find re-echoed by Lord Byron, 
 on the 2ist of April, 1812, in one of the three speeches 
 which were all he ever delivered in the English House of 
 Lords : 
 
 " That union, so called, as lucus a non lucendo, a union from 
 never uniting, which in its first operation gave a death-blow to the 
 independence of Ireland, and in its last may be the cause of her 
 eternal separation from this country. If it must be called a union, 
 
Sir L. Parsons Amendment. 8t 
 
 it is the union of the shark with his prey ; the spoiler swallows up 
 his victim, and they become one and inseparable. Thus has Christ 
 Britain swallowed up the parliament, the constitution, the inde- 
 pendence of Ireland." 
 
 On the 15th of January, 1797, Sir Lawrence Parsons, 
 afterwards Lord Rosse, moved an amendment against 
 *' Union." He argued that : 
 
 "The minister had recommended an incorporating union with 
 England. He had prevented the House from giving an answer to 
 His Majesty in the preceding session by a sudden prorogation, 
 and he now wished to prevent their giving an answer at all. He 
 had employed the most unwarrantable means to pervert the senti- 
 ments of parliament on the subject, appointing places to corrupt 
 and pack the House of Commons, while the country was covered 
 with armies greater than were ever known before, while martial 
 law prevailed, and English ministers hoped to destroy the inde- 
 pendence of Ireland. The internal legislation of Ireland had been 
 secured by the original contract of Henry IL, and by the Great 
 Charter of King John ; it had been ratified by Henry III., con- 
 secrated by a usage of six hundred years, and confirmed by the 
 final settlement of 1782: absentees would be increased by a 
 union, and Great Britain lose her best security. The country 
 was too great for an external parliament. He moved the following 
 amendment : 
 
 " ' Humbly to assure His Majesty that this kingdom is insepa- 
 rably united with Great Britain, and that it is the sentiment, wish, 
 and real interest of all, tliat it shall ever so continue in the full 
 enjoyment of the blessings of a free constitution, in the support of 
 the honour and dignity of His Majesty's crown, and in the preser- 
 vation and advancement of the welfare and prosperity of the whole 
 empire,' " &c. 
 
 The supporters of this amendment contended that the 
 settlement of 1782, instead of tending to separation, 
 cemented the connection between the two countries. 
 That in 1782, when more than 80,000 volunteers were 
 
 7 
 
82 Foxs Summary. 
 
 in arms, when invasion was threatened, and when England 
 had lost her American empire, Ireland did not think of 
 separation, she stood firm by England, she stood by her 
 parliament ; by that body obtained the Octennial Bill, 
 the Mutiny Bill, the repeal of Poyning's law, the inde- 
 pendence of her judges, the restoration of her appellant 
 jurisdiction, her free trade, and, finally, her free constitu- 
 tion ; that the local and internal improvements of the 
 country were owing to her resident parliament and re- 
 sident gentry. They further stated that, while the Habeas 
 Corpus Act was still suspended, and martial law was still 
 in existence, and an overwhelming military force in the 
 country, such a measure should not be brought forward. 
 
 On January 22, 1797, in the Irish House, Mr. G. 
 Ponsonby moved the following amendment to the address : 
 
 " That it is the undoubted birthright of the people of Ireland 
 to have a free and independent legislature resident within the 
 kingdom, such as was asserted by the parliament of the kingdoms 
 in 1782, and acknowledged and ratified by His Majesty and the 
 Parliament of Great Britain upon the final adjustment of the 
 differences between the two countries." 
 
 But why, it may be asked, after independence was 
 granted, did Irish disorders increase ? 
 
 On March 23, 1797? came Fox's summary in the English 
 House of the causes of Irish discontent. Let him answer 
 the question. The terms of his motion on the state of 
 Ireland were, " that an humble address, &c., and to adopt 
 such healing and lenient measures, &c., and to conciliate 
 the affections of all descriptions of His Majesty's subjects." 
 He argued that it must appear to many very extraor- 
 dinary that since 1782 discontent has gone on increasing. 
 It was clear that the people had not that influence in the 
 House of Commons which should exist in a free constitu- 
 tion. The defect arose from the vicious state of the 
 representation. Five-sixths of the inhabitants were Roman 
 
Foxs Summary. 8 
 
 o 
 
 Catholics, and excluded. An opinion prevailed that the 
 influence of the Executive counteracted the benefits which 
 the legislative branch of the Constitution had obtained. 
 In 1789 the Lord-Lieutenant and the Irish Parliament 
 had differed, and the Lord-Lieutenant was censured by 
 the Irish Parliament, upon which the influence of the 
 Executive was in a most unconstitutional manner openly 
 and corruptly exerted, and Parliament unsaid all it had 
 said before. It was matter of notoriety that a regular 
 system was then devised for enslaving Ireland. 
 
 " To appease and allay the great discontent, I proposed the 
 complete independence of Ireland. The principle was, above all, 
 ... to restore that cordial affection between the two countries 
 so eminently requisite to the preservation and prosperity of both.', 
 
 Fox then goes on : 
 
 " A systematic plan of corruption. The measure of 1782 had 
 been rendered completely inefficacious. Ireland was .placed in a 
 state of degradation beyond any former period. Persevering and 
 avowed system of duplicity. My abhorrence of such a truly 
 diabolical maxim. Mankind are not to be treated in this manner. 
 If you do not allay their discontent, there is no way but force, — 
 to risk a civil war. I would have the whole Irish government re- 
 gulated by Irish notions and prejudices. The more Ireland is 
 under the Irish Government, the more will she be bound to 
 British interests." ^ 
 
 " A person of high consideration (Lord Chancellor Clare) was 
 known to say that half a million had been spent in quelling oppo- 
 sition, and that half a million more should be expended. Peerages 
 had been sold ; proof offered ; Parliament refused to listen. The 
 independence of the Irish Parliament was but a name. ' The 
 Executive was everything; the people nothing.' " 
 
 In 1794, he continued. Earl Fitzwilliam was sent over 
 
 ^ Fox's motion on the state of Ireland, 1797. Hansard, vol. xxxiii. pp. 
 140-55. 
 
84 Foxs Summary. 
 
 as Lord-Lieutenant, the most popular ever sent. After 
 known preparations for complete emancipation of Roman 
 Catholics, he was of a sudden dismissed, and the entire 
 system changed ! 
 
 Then commenced a course of violent measures against 
 the people, and inordinate powers were used, until every 
 principle of law and the constitution was effaced, and 
 military force became the desperate resort. 
 
 Pitt pretended that to pass this motion would be to 
 menace the independence of the Irish Parliament already 
 destroyed by his policy. 
 
 Dr. Duigenan, one of his creatures, moved on May 3, 
 1797, that Fox's speech was a false, scandalous, and 
 malicious libel on the Irish Parliament. 
 
 On May 3, 1797, Grattan delivered his famous defence 
 of independence, and eulogy of Fox's speech of March 23, 
 1797. 
 
 "What an idea has Mr. Fox disclosed as just and applicable to 
 Ireland ? an Irish Legislature and an Irish Government, a genuine 
 Executive and a genuine Parliament. Major rerum nascitur ordo. 
 No clerk government, no trade in boroughs, no trade of parlia- 
 ment, no trade of blood, no half million, no sale of peerages, no 
 Insurrection Bill, no military executions, no civil wars. As an 
 Englishman he would strengthen the connection by removing the 
 motives of separation. This is an idea worthy a comprehensive 
 statesman. He applies to great passions and great principles for 
 the government of a great country. Measure his abilities by the 
 gigantic proportions of the calamities he would have prevented — 
 by the American Empire which his advice would have preserved; 
 by the 250 millions sterling debt for two wars his advice would 
 have saved. He stood against the current of the Court ; he stood 
 against the tide of the people ; he stood against both united. He 
 was the isthmus lashed by the waves of democracy, and by the 
 torrent of despotism, unaffected by either, and superior to both ; 
 the Marpesian rock that struck its base to the centre, and raised 
 its forehead to the skies ! " ^ 
 
 ' " Grattan's Speeches," vol. iii. pp. 329, &c. Longman, 1822. 
 
" Certain Ruin Coming onT 85 
 
 Throughout this period the Castlereagh correspondence 
 was secretly expressing Castlereagh's absolute conviction 
 that nothing could carry the union but a determination to 
 carry it at all hazard, and by every means. 
 
 On the 7th of April, 1797, Fox wrote to Grattan, that 
 in his speech on the affairs of Ireland he had proceeded 
 principally upon the facts and arguments with which 
 Grattan furnished him — that the likeliest " chance of 
 salvation would be a general expression of a wish for 
 Pitt's removal. Ruin almost certain is coming on. I 
 really think the existence of the funded property of 
 England, and the connection between our two countries, 
 depend upon the measures to be taken in a few, a very 
 few, months." 
 
 As Grattan said five months later, " Pitt is more likely 
 to depose the king of England than restore the king of 
 France." 
 
 Lord Moira, in his motion, November, 1797, declared 
 that men were — 
 
 " Tortured on suspicion, picqueted once till they fainted, twice 
 till they fainted, a third time till they fainted. That they were 
 hung up till half hanged to make them confess. Thirty houses 
 had been burnt of a night, because the suspected arms were not 
 brought forth. If the system was not changed he believed Ireland 
 would not remain connected with this country five years longer." 
 
 Sheridan's description of the march of Hastings best 
 describes that of the commander in Ireland : " Terror was 
 in his front, rebellion in his rear ; for wherever the heel of 
 oppression was raised, trodden misery sprang up and 
 looked around for vengeance." 
 
 In March, 1797, Burke thus wrote : 
 
 " My poor opinion is that the closest connection between Great 
 Britain and Ireland is essential to the well-being — I had almost 
 said to the very being — of the two kingdoms. For that purpose the 
 
86 " Things mttst take their Course!' 
 
 whole of the superior, and what I should call imperial politics, 
 ought to have its residence here ; and that Ireland, locally, 
 civilly, and commercially independent, ought politically to look 
 up to Great Britain in all matters of peace and war, and, in a 
 word, with her to live and die. At bottom Ireland has no other 
 choice — I mean rational choice. 
 
 "I think, indeed, that Great Britain would be ruined by the 
 separation of Ireland, but it would fall the most heavily on Ireland. 
 By such a separation Ireland would be the most completely un- 
 done country in the world." 
 
 On the 5th of June, 1797, Burke wrote his last letter : 
 
 *' I have done with this topic, and perhaps for ever ; but I do 
 not wish it concealed that I am of the same opinion to my last 
 breath. The government of Ireland becomes every day more 
 difficult, and the incapacity of the jobbers more and more evident ; 
 but as long as they can draw upon England for men and money, 
 they will go on in their jobbing system. Things must take their 
 course." 
 
 Burke died gth of July, 1797, aged 67 years. Irish 
 independence ceased some three years later. Things did 
 take their course, and Grattan also thought he had done 
 with it for ever ; and three weeks before Burke's last word 
 on Ireland, we find Grattan retiring in despair from the 
 representation of Dublin and the Irish House of Commons, 
 and thus explaining his withdrawal : 
 
 " What is the Irish rebellion ? Unanimity against despotism. 
 Two remedies occurred — coercion and conciliation. We opposed 
 the former, we proposed the latter. The Ministry proposed to 
 make the people quiet by a system of laws and proclamations 
 which, had they been quiet before, would have rendered them 
 distracted. The power of limited monarchy was not to be pre- 
 served by constitutional action, its natural ally ; but by despotic 
 power, its natural death and dissolution. The cause of the Irish 
 disturbance of 1797 was the endeavour to establish by unlimited 
 bribery absolute power. The system of coercion was a necessary 
 
" Grattan would be put to Deaths S7 
 
 consequence and part of the system of corruption ; and the two 
 systems would have estabhshed a tyranny tremendous and intoler- 
 able, imposed on the Senate by influence and the people by arms. 
 " We have offered you our measure, you will reject it ; we 
 deprecate yours, you will persevere. Having no hopes to per- 
 suade or dissuade, and having discharged our duty, we shall 
 trouble you no more, and after this day shall not attend the House 
 of Commons." 
 
 The leaders of the opposition then seceded. Parliament 
 was prorogued, and then dissolved. 
 
 Insurrection broke out. Addresses against the Union 
 were voted from all parts, meanwhile every engine was 
 set to work— there were threats and promises; sheriffs 
 refused to call public meetings; the military interfered 
 with meetings ; the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, 
 and martial law proclaimed; a Rebellion Act had been 
 passed in the preceding session for summary arrest and 
 trial, and all these measures broke the spirit of the nation. 
 
 In 1798 the order of the day was to get one man to 
 swear against another, and lodge him in gaol. " Will no 
 one swear against Grattan ! " was the cry, and efforts 
 were made by his friends to get him out of the country. 
 When he was in England, according to a memorandum 
 left by his wife, she was privately advised that " if he 
 returned he would certainly be put to death." 
 
 The position was thus boldly analyzed and explained in 
 the English House by Sheridan in June of this year : 
 
 " When conciliation was held out to the people of Ireland, was 
 there any discontent ? When the Government of Ireland was 
 agreeable to the people, was there any discontent? After the 
 prospect of that conciliation was taken away, after Lord Fitzwilliam 
 was recalled, after the hopes which had been raised were blasted, 
 w/ien the sj>irii of the people was beaten down, insulted, despised, I 
 will ask any gentleman to point out a single act of conciliation 
 which has emanated from the Government ol Ireland. 
 
88 Independence succeeded too Much. 
 
 "It is the fashion to say, and the address holds the same 
 language, that the rebelhon which now rages in the sister kingdom 
 has been owing to the machinations of ' wicked men.' It is indeed 
 to the measures of wicked men that the deplorable state of Ireland 
 is to be imputed. It is to those wicked ministers who have 
 broken the promises they held out, who betrayed the party they 
 seduced into their views to be the instruments of the foulest 
 treachery ever practised against any people. It is to those wicked 
 ministers, who have given up that devoted country to plunder, 
 resigned it a prey to their faction by which it has so long been 
 trampled on, that we owe the miseries into which Ireland has been 
 plunged, and the dangers by which England is threatened." 
 
 Thus the murder of a nation was once more resolved on. 
 Ireland had asserted her liberty. " Unanimity had shut 
 the gates of strife, providence had opened those of com- 
 merce," and the use of articles of luxury and comfort by 
 the people had increased enormously. Irish independence 
 had, in fact, succeeded too much. Mis-representation was in 
 danger; the minority Church was in danger; the monopoly 
 of English merchants was in danger; everything weak, 
 wicked, treacherous, and unjust was in danger from a 
 strong self-governed nation ; and so, in 1800, by force, 
 fraud, and bribery, the Irish Parliament ended, and the 
 life and light of Ireland, and the peace of England with it. 
 Ireland was once more to be put into the vivisector's trough. 
 It was this time to be a scientific destruction. The mean- 
 ness and malignity of the British Government triumphed, 
 persecutors of the people were put in power, and Catholics 
 and Protestants were set by the ears once more ; incessant 
 Coercion Acts have signalized the " Union," and the 
 public life of both nations has ever since been degraded 
 and poisoned. 
 
 The union was conceived in murder, perjury, and 
 treachery, born in corruption, and baptized in blood. 
 Placemen, pensioners, or officers on the staff, packed all 
 seats Government could command. The bribes were 
 
Fit£s " War against Nine-tenths'' 89 
 
 enormous, and military terrorism was rife, yet Government 
 could only get 5,000 to sign petitions for the union against 
 707,000 the other way. 
 
 The stand made by the opposition raised the price of 
 hirelings in the market. One of them, M'Donald, de- 
 manded 5,000 guineas, and got them. Charles Bushe 
 and others were assailed with offers so splendid that they 
 staggered them. Grattan used to say " there were only 
 seven men on one side of Government who were not 
 bribed." On the trial of Kirwan, it appeared that the 
 list of the jury came from the pocket of the Under Secre- 
 tary at the Castle, Sir Charles Saxton.' The plan was to 
 spend a million and a half in the purchase of boroughs, 
 5^15,000 being awarded for each, and commissioners ap- 
 pointed. 
 
 On the 25th of March, 1798, the funded debt amounted 
 to ^^9,275,000 ; the next year to £"14,920,000 ; and on 
 ist of January, 1801, to ;£'26,84i,ooo ; in January, 1804, 
 ^^43, 000,000, and ^£"52, 500,000 the same year. On the 
 other hand, under the rule of the Irish Parliament, the 
 debt of the nation had diminished from jr2,477,ooo in 
 1789, to £2,219,000 in 1793. 
 
 In 1798, October 17th, Lord Cornwallis remonstrated 
 with Pitt against " the desperate measure of waging eternal 
 war against Papists and Presbyterians, about nine-tenths 
 of the community."^ Pitt intended to grant emancipation 
 after the union, but knew that even corrupt Protestant 
 members of parliament might not vote for the union with 
 emancipation included. At this time, October 16, 1798,3 
 Lord Clare wrote that " he had seen Mr. Pitt, Lord 
 Eldon, and the Duke of Portland about this damnable 
 country," that emancipation would be left out of the Act 
 of Union, and that Pitt was "fully sensible of the neces- 
 
 ' '* Grattan's Life and Times," vol. v. p. Ii8. ' 
 
 "^ See " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. ii. pp. 418, 419. 
 3 " Castlereagh Correspondence," vol. i. pp. 393, 394. 
 
90 Tariff of Seats. 
 
 sity of effectual civil control over the Popish clergy, . . . 
 best effected by moderate stipends and Crown licenses for 
 ecclesiastical functions on pain of perpetual banishment." 
 
 The opposition was so threatening that Castlereagh 
 went to London (December, 1798) to personally explain. 
 Great efforts were made to extend the time of service of 
 the militia, and Lord Cornwallis wrote the Duke of Port- 
 land (December i, 1798),^ that if the militia were with- 
 drawUj the union must be abandoned. The English 
 militia regiments in Ireland were thoroughly disgusted 
 with their duty there, and insisted on returning home. 
 
 Castlereagh wrote the Government, November 12, 
 1798, that " if the Catholic and Republican party can 
 convince the Protestant landholders that it is for their 
 interest to join in effecting a separation, the thing is done. 
 Great Britain, with all her naval superiority, could not 
 keep this country. We must not sit with our arms across, 
 and muse and talk as the Scotch did. The matter must 
 be finished in a session."^ 
 
 "The most formidable opposition was among the barristers and 
 citizens of Dublin, the country gentlemen all over Ireland, and 
 the lower ranks of the Orangemen and Protestants of the North. 
 With most of them it was not mere resistance, but absolute 
 horror." 3 
 
 Castlereagh, who managed every detail, sent home a 
 tariff of seats at 5^1,455,000. 
 
 " Opposition became more formidable as the time approached, 
 especially in the North, the stronghold hitherto of Protestantism 
 and attachment to the British connection. 
 
 "Cornwallis and Castlereagh in vain exerted themselves to 
 the utmost to win over or neutralize the Protestant magnates, 
 hitherto the chief supporters of Government. Pitt exerted him- 
 
 ' " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. ii. p. 454. 
 =" " Memoir on Union," Correspondence, vol. i. pp. 442, 443. 
 3 Alison's " Life of Castlereagh. "See also " Castlereagh Correspondence," 
 vol. ii. p. 51. 
 
Martial Law. gr 
 
 self personally to win over or neutralize the most important 
 opponents, but with very little effect. . . . 
 
 " Martial law was proclaimed in Antrim and Mayo, and on 
 the 23rd of January, 1799, a majority of one— 106 to 105— 
 passed the address, reversed two nights after, on Sir L. Parson's 
 motion, by a majority of five. Dublin was thrice illuminated, and 
 the blaze of bonfires was seen far and wide on the mountains. 
 Delay was then resorted to, and a tour to the North was arranged 
 by the Lord-Lieutenant and the Court, who held private interesting 
 conferences with leading opponents." ^ 
 
 " Nothing short of the entire destruction of their opponents 
 would satisfy either of the parties. The whole of the South is 
 prepared to rise the moment a French soldier sets his foot on 
 shore. The union agitation had alienated the Orangemen and 
 Protestants." ^ 
 
 The merchant Guild of Dublin, an ultra-Protestant 
 incorporation, issued an address calling on all classes and 
 sects to unite against the union, and returning their 
 warmest thanks to their Roman Catholic fellow-citizens 
 in Dublin for their manly and patriotic conduct. 
 
 Lord Cornwallis wrote (February 4, 1800) : ** The 
 capital quite in an uproar. Some of our unwilling sup- 
 porters in Parliament decline giving further support. God 
 only knows how the business will terminate ; but it is so 
 hard to struggle against the private interests, and the 
 pride and prejudices of a nation, that I shall never feel 
 confident of success till the union is actually carried." ^ 
 And Castlereagh wrote (March 7th) : " We have against 
 us 120 M.P.'s, well combined and united, many of them 
 of the first weight and talent in the House; zi of them 
 are members for counties. Dublin is almost unanimous 
 against it." According to the '' Cornwallis Correspon- 
 dence," " every despatch written during the last eighteen 
 months fully apprised the English ministers that the 
 
 ' Alison's " Life of Castlereagh," vol. i. p. 105. 
 
 ^ Ibid. vol. i. pp. 109-112. 
 
 3 " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 177. 
 
92 " Fee-simple of Irish Corruption.'' 
 
 measure could only be carried by influence. 3^1,260,000 
 was ultimately awarded for seats lost, &c. Lord Down- 
 shire got ^^52,500 for seven ; Lord Ely, ;^45,ooo." ^ 
 
 Lord Cornwallis had been " the person to buy out and 
 secure to the Crown for ever the fee-simple of Irish cor- 
 ruption. It would have been fatal to the measure if the 
 objections, or even the disinclination of ministers to any 
 professed arrangement, had transpired." ^ 
 
 When Castlereagh either feared or found that the king 
 would not grant the consideration on which Catholics had 
 agreed , to the union, he wrote a strong remonstrance to 
 Pitt, in which the following occurs — that the statement 
 he had personally made to Pitt was that " the majority 
 was of very doubtful materials, the Protestants badly 
 divided, and the Dublin and Orange societies against us, 
 the Catholics holding back ; that the measure could not 
 be carried if they embarked in active opposition, and that 
 their resistance would be unanimous and zealous " — with- 
 out the expected concession — because ** the union itself 
 might give ministers additional means of disappointing 
 their hopes. I stated that attempts had been made by 
 leading Catholics to bring Government to an explanation, 
 which had of course been evaded. That the friends of 
 Government, by flattering the hopes of the Catholics, had 
 produced a favourable impression in Cork, Tipperary, and 
 Galway. That his Excellency was enabled to accomplish 
 his purpose without direct assurances to Catholics, but 
 foresaw the awkward circumstances to which the trans- 
 action was likely to lead." 3 
 
 In the following month (February 7th), the king him- 
 self wrote to the Hon. Henry Dundas: 
 
 ' " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. iii. pp. 266, 323, 324. 
 
 * Lord Castlereagh to Mr. Cooke, June 21 and 25, 1800. " Cornwallis- 
 Correspondence," vol. iii. p. 267. 
 
 3 Castlereagh to Pitt, January i, 1801. " Castlereagh Correspondence," 
 vol. iv. pp. 8, 12. 
 
•' The King Regrets'' -^His " Mindr 93 
 
 "I cannot but regret that I had not been treated with more 
 confidence previous to forming an opinion which, to my 
 greatest surprise, I learned on Thursday from Earl Spencer, has 
 been m agitation ever since Lord Castlereagh came over in 
 August, yet of which I never had the smallest suspicion till within 
 these very few weeks; but so desirous was I to avoid the present 
 conclusion, that except ... I have been silent on the subject, 
 and, mdeed, hoping that Mr. Pitt had not pledged himself on 
 what I cannot with my sentiments of religious and political duty 
 thmk myself at liberty to concur." ' 
 
 To get out of this dilemma, Pitt resigned on February 
 5, 1801, and Lord Castlereagh privately wrote that Pitt 
 had proceeded in favour of the Catholics, thinking the 
 king's mind would not give way, but that now during his 
 life there was no hope.2 On the 12th the king's mental 
 alienation became decided, his symptoms not being so 
 much those of entire derangement as of mental oppression 
 and anxiety, which often found relief in tears.^ 
 
 George III., in answer to Pitt's recommendation in 
 letter January 31, i8oi, that ''Catholics and Dissenters 
 be admitted to offices, and Catholics to parliament," 
 pleaded his coronation oath and sacramental obligation 
 to the contrary : 
 
 "My inclination to a union with Ireland was principally founded 
 on a trust that the uniting the Established Churches of the two 
 kingdoms would for ever shut the door to any further measures 
 with respect to the Roman Catholics." 4 
 
 The king also wrote of the 
 
 "Fundamental maxims on which the Constitution is placed- 
 namely, the Church of England being the established one, that 
 
 " Cornwallis Correspondence," vol. iii. p. -^t^t^, 
 
 " Castlereagh Correspondence," vol. iv. pp. 39, 40. 
 3 AH Geo. III.'s published letters on this subject are at the appendices of 
 stanhope s five volumes on Pitt. 
 ■» Stanhope's Pitt, vol. ii. appendix. 
 
94 Earl Rttssell on the King. 
 
 those who hold employment in the State must be members of it, 
 and, consequently, obliged not only to take oaths against popery, 
 but to receive the holy communion agreeably to the rites of the 
 Church of England." 
 
 " The king's mind," said Earl Russell in his letter (1868) 
 to Mr. Fortescue : 
 
 " Had been poisoned by his Chancellor, Lord Loughborough, and 
 influenced by the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury ; and 
 their opinions had been brought to weigh upon the king's decision 
 by artful intrigues before the large and wise view of Mr. Pitt had 
 been allowed to reach him. 
 
 " Besides the fury of the Irish Protestants, maddened by the 
 fear that their monopoly was in danger, Mr. Pitt had to persuade 
 George IIL Nine years afterwards, my father, returning from Ire- 
 land where he had held the office of Lord- Lieutenant, had an 
 audience of the king, but representing that the admission of 
 Roman Catholics to the office of sheriff would give confidence, 
 the king got into so violent a state of excitement, that my father 
 was obliged to desist. It is an alliance thus made, cemented by 
 cruelty, violence, and corruption, which is now said to be so sacred 
 that no tittle of it can be altered without sacrilege and robbery ! " 
 
 At the close of 1799 Grattan returned from the Isle of 
 Wight almost broken-hearted, but in mind unsubdued. 
 Immediately a deputation pressed him to enter parliament, 
 but he declined. Soon after there was a death vacancy, 
 but Grattan said he would be no party to the union which 
 was an act of suicide. Mrs. Grattan — Henrietta Grattan 
 — whose narrative I follow, urged him to take the seat — 
 that he ought to spend his money or shed his blood for 
 the people. 
 
 "Unable to bear noise, we avoided hotels and went to Mr. 
 Austen's, in Dublin, to await the election, which, the sheriff being 
 friendly, was managed after 12 o'clock on the night of the 15th of 
 January, 1800, the last session of the Dublin Parliament. At 
 five o'clock in the morning Mr. Tighe arrived on horseback in 
 
''As one prepared for Battley 95 
 
 Dublin, and we heard loud knocking. Grattan was ill in bed and 
 said, ' Why will they not let me die in peace ? ' He grew quite 
 wild. I told him he must go to the House, and helped him down- 
 stairs, when he went into the parlour and loaded his pistols, for 
 he apprehended assassination by the Union party. We wrapped 
 a blanket round him in the sedan chair, and I stood at the door 
 uncertain whether I should ever see him again. Mr. M'Can said 
 that Grattan's friends had determined to come forward if he were 
 attacked. I said, ' My husband cannot die better than in defence 
 of his country.' " 
 
 Then came Sir L. Parsons' amendment and the debate. 
 
 "At 7 o'clock in the morning Grattan entered. He could 
 scarcely walk, and was supported on either side. Ministers were 
 not aware that the writ could have been returned. The House 
 and galleries were breathless, and a thrilling sensation, a low mur- 
 mur pervaded the whole assembly, as this emaciated figure, sick 
 in mind and body— the founder, eighteen years before, of Ire- 
 land's independence— now came forward, apparently almost in his 
 last moments, to defend or fall with his country. His friends 
 crowded round to assist. Bowes Daly, seeing he had his hat on, 
 mentioned it. 'Don't mind me,' said Grattan, ' I know what to 
 do.' He was dressed, this soldier of '82, in the volunteer uniform 
 —blue, with red cuffs and collar. He had placed his cocked hat 
 square to the front, till he advanced half way up the floor. He 
 then stopped and looked round the House as one prepared for 
 battle ; then approached the table, took off his hat, took the oath, 
 and his seat, and as Mr. Egan sat down Grattan rose, and, obtain- 
 ing leave to speak sitting, to the astonishment of every one, spoke 
 for upwards of two hours, going through the whole question." » 
 
 This great speech proved incontestably that : 
 
 " The one great, capital, fundamental cause of Irish discontent was 
 the interposition of the Parliament of Great Britain in the legisla- 
 tive regulation of Ireland, the interference of that or any other 
 parliament, save only the King, Lords, and Commons of Ireland. 
 
 ' " Grattan's Life and Times." 
 
96 Separation and Union, 
 
 The minister denies, in the face of the two nations, a public fact 
 registered and recorded, and he disclaims the final adjustment of 
 1782. 
 
 " The Parliament of Ireland have ever since their emancipation 
 concurred with England on the subject of war ; but before their 
 concurrence was barren, since it has been productive. In 1783 
 they voted a sum for British seamen, and on the apprehension of 
 a war with Spain, in 1790, they voted another, and in the present 
 war, a third. So much more beneficial are the wild offerings of 
 liberty than the squeezings, and eviscerations, and excruciations of 
 power. 
 
 " Ireland considers the British Empire a great western barrier 
 against invasion from other countries. 
 
 "She hears the ocean protesting against separation, but she 
 hears the sea likewise protesting against union ; she follows there- 
 fore her physical destination, and obeys the dispensations of provi- 
 dence when she protests, like that sea, against the two situations, 
 both equally unnatural — separation and union ; but then she feels 
 her Constitution to be her great stake in the empire, and the 
 empire the great security of her Constitution. We give our strength 
 to this western barrier for the security of our liberty ; but if British 
 ministers should do that very mischief which we apprehend from 
 the foreigner, namely, take away the Constitution, they take away 
 with that our interest in the British dominions, and thus withdraw 
 at once a great pillar of liberty and empire. 
 
 " That Constitution has been the inheritance of this country for 
 six hundred years. The Constitution the minister destroys is the 
 condition of our connection; he destroys one of the pillars of 
 the British Empire — the habitation of Irish loyalty. I say of her 
 loyalty as well as her liberty, her temple of fame as well as of free- 
 dom, where she had seated herself, as she vainly thought, in modest 
 security and a long repose." ' 
 
 " Well, the minister has destroyed the Constitution. To destroy 
 is easy. The edifices of the mind, like the fabrics of marble, 
 require an age to build, but ask only minutes to precipitate ; and, 
 as the fall of both is of no time, so neither is it a business of any 
 
 ' "Tract." Jordan, Fleet Street. 1800 : " Grattan's Speeches." Edited 
 by his son. Longman, 1822. 
 
^'A little Pimp and a wicked Minister.'^ 97 
 
 strength. A pickaxe and a common labourer will do the one, 
 a little lawyer, a little pimp, and a wicked minister the other. . . . 
 
 " I have done with the pile which the minister batters. I come 
 to the Babel which he builds, and as he throws down without a 
 principle, so does he construct without a foundation. This fabric 
 he calls a union. It is no union, for it excludes the Catholics. It 
 is an extinction of the Constitution, and an exclusion of the people. 
 He has overlooked the people, as he has overlooked the sea. 
 
 " I afifirm that the blessings procured by the Irish Parliament 
 in the last twenty years are greater than all the blessings afforded 
 by British Parliaments to Ireland for the last century, greater even 
 than the mischiefs inflicted on Ireland by the British Parliament. 
 
 " He, the minister, ' his budget with corruption crammed,' pro- 
 poses to you to give up the ancient inheritance of your country, 
 to proclaim an utter and blank incapacity to make laws for your 
 own people, and to register their proclamation in an act which in- 
 flicts on this ancient nation an eternal disability, and he accompanies 
 these monstrous proposals by undisguised terror and unqualified 
 bribery." 
 
 At ten in the morning the House divided ; majority 
 against amendment and Grattan, 42. 
 
 On the 2ist of January, 1800, Castlereagh proposed that 
 10,000 volunteers from the Irish militia should serve in 
 Europe at a large bounty; and that English militia should 
 take their place. 
 
 On February 5th the union question w^as brought 
 on, and Lord Castlereagh, in proposing resolutions in 
 favour of union, made it evident that the maintenance of 
 the Irish Church Establishment was one great object of 
 the union. He said : 
 
 " There would be no possibility of giving the Irish Church Estab- 
 lishment security in any other way than by a complete incorpo- 
 ration with that of Great Britain. While the present system 
 continued one minister might wish to uphold the present Estab- 
 lishment, another the system of exclusion, and a third to open the 
 Establishment to every claimant. Under such a policy the country 
 
98 Grattans Defiance and Forecast. 
 
 would never be quiet. But the Establishment being incorporated, 
 the Protestant would feel himself supported," &c. 
 
 On that occasion Grattan declared : 
 
 " The question is not now such as occupied you of old — not 
 old Poyning's, not peculation, not plunder, not an embargo, not a 
 Catholic Bill, not a Reform Bill — it is your being, it is your life to 
 come." 
 
 The majority against Grattan was 43. 
 
 Corry then for the third time attacked Grattan per- 
 sonally, but ,this time Grattan — who said to Foster, " I 
 see they wish to make an attack on my life, and the 
 sooner the better" — could reply, and his reply electrified, 
 almost appalled, the House. There in the hall of his 
 former glories, amidst the dying embers of his country's 
 freedom, he strove to snatch from the sacred pile a brand 
 that might light her to resurrection ! He arraigned the 
 Government; they conspired against the country; they 
 were corrupt and seditious ; they sold themselves, and 
 they sold the Constitution. Two parties were in arms 
 against the country — the rebel who deserved to die, and 
 the right honourable gentleman whom he missed from the 
 scaffold. 
 
 " I have returned to protect that Constitution of which 1 was 
 the parent and the founder from the assassination of such men 
 as the right honourable gentleman and his unworthy associates. 
 They are corrupt, they are seditious, and they at this moment are 
 in a conspiracy against their country. ... I dare accusation. I 
 defy the honourable gentleman. I defy the Government. I defy 
 their whole phalanx ; let them come forth. I tell the ministers 
 I will neither give them quarter nor take it." ^ 
 
 On May 26th .Grattan thus brought up the climax : 
 
 " The Constitution may for a time be lost, but liberty may 
 ' "Life and Times," vol. v. pp. 103, 104. 
 
" Thou are not Conquered. ' gg 
 
 repair her golden beams, and with redoubled heart animate the 
 country. I see her in a swoon, but she is not dead 
 
 ' Thou art not conquered ; beauty's ensign yet 
 Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks ; 
 And death's pale flag is not advanced there.'" 
 
 On the 6th of June, 1800, a protest of twelve closely 
 printed pages was presented against the union, but' the 
 majority for the union was 58. 
 
 Lord Castlereagh then moved that the Bill be engrossed. 
 Mr. O'Donnell moved as amendment, '' that the Bill be 
 burned ; " and Colonel Tighe added, " by the common 
 hangman." Twenty-four Irish peers protested against the 
 union, but the Act passed on the ist of January, 1801 (40 
 Geo. III., c. 67).! 
 
 ' In "Grattan's Life and Times," vol. V. pp. 188-196, are the original "red and 
 black lists " of 150 and 140 respectively, showing those members of parliament 
 who could and could not be corrupted by Castlereagh, and what the former 
 got for their votes ; wherefrom it is evident that 25 were purchased shortly 
 before the second division in 1800, making a difference of 50. 
 
 The appendix to the last volume also contains the protests of Irish lords against 
 the union, and that drawn up and moved in the Commons. 
 
NATIONAL RESURRECTION. 
 
 " Thou art not conquered ; beauty's ensign yet 
 Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks ; 
 And death's pale flag is not advancM there." 
 
 — Quoted by Grattan. 
 
 " Grattan sat by the cradle of his country, and followed her hearse ; it was 
 left for me to sound the resurrection trumpet, and to show that she was not 
 dead, but sleeping." — O'Connell. 
 
 " The angels of martyrdom and of victory are brothers ; but it is only when 
 from epoch to epoch their eyes meet between heaven and earth, that creation 
 is embellished with a new life, and a people arises, evangelist or prophet, from 
 the cradle or the tomb." — Mazzini. 
 
 "But I go back to the consideration of the great question of national self- 
 government for Ireland. We cannot ask for less than the restitution of Grattan 's 
 Parliament with its important privileges, and wide and far-reaching Constitu- 
 tion." — Mr. Parnell at Cork, January 21, 1885. 
 
 " The connection with England thus becomes the cause of the present state 
 of Ireland. If the connection with England prevents a revolution, and a 
 revolution is the only remedy, England logically is in the odious position of 
 being the cause of all themiseiy in Ireland. What, then, is the duty of an English 
 minister? To effect by his policy all those changes which revolution would 
 do by force. That is the Irish question in its integrity." — D'Israeli, 
 February 16, 1844. 
 
 " To this act of union must be attributed the three famines since 1800, with 
 their million and a half of deaths, the exile of nearly three millions of Irishmen, 
 and in eighty-five years three rebellions and eighty -four Coercion Bills." — 
 T. P. O'Connor, M.P., The Fame 11 Movement. 
 
 " New and terrible diseases sprang up ; children were growing idiots. . . . 
 a new race with only a distant and hideous resemblance to humanity. I saw 
 these accursed sights, and they are burned into my memory for ever. Poor, 
 mutilated, debased scions, of a tender, brave, and pious stock — martyrs in the 
 battle of centuries for the right to live in their own land." — The Hon. C. 
 Gavan Duffy, on the results of Pitt's masterpiece. 
 
 "When numbers, means, and opposition are considered, the Parnell testi- 
 monial equals, or more than equals, that raised for Cobden. The desire for 
 nationality is at the root of Irish discontent. Home Rule means improved 
 union. When there are already eighteen independent parliaments in the British 
 dominions, it is only prejudice to contend that another would make the 
 difference between union and dismemberment." — ^Joseph Cowen, M.P., 1883. 
 
" I still retain my opinion that Mr. Gladstone, encountering great risks, and 
 provoking bitter animosity, has aimed at the welfare of his country in the 
 mighty struggle in which he has engaged. If he should aspire to perform a 
 permanent and immortal service to his country, to reconcile England and 
 Ireland, then indeed he will be enrolled among the noblest of England's 
 statesmen. I feel sure Mr. Gladstone will not propose to take a leap in the 
 dark. The wreath ob civem servaiuin will be a million times deserved by the 
 minister who shall knit together three nations." — Earl Russell, 1869. 
 
 " I ask you to examine the state of Her Majesty's Government for the last 
 thirty-five years. From 1794 there has been disunion in the Government on 
 account of the Catholic question, and the administration of Irish affairs. The 
 consequences have been most unfavourable to the administration of the affairs 
 of this country (England). The Cabinets have in general been equally 
 divided ; . . . jealousies, suspicions between honourable men. 
 
 " Let us now turn to the legislature. Eachparty can paralyze the other. .. . 
 But what becomes of Ireland if these party conflicts without a result shall 
 continue ? For scarcely one year since the Union has Ireland been governed 
 by the ordinary course of law." — Sir R. Peel, on Results of the Union, 
 March 5, 1829. Hansard. 
 
 "The ananner in which and the terms upon which Mr. Pitt effected the 
 union, made it the most fatal blow ever levelled against the peace and pros- 
 perity of England." — S. T. Coleridge, 1831. 
 
 "This nation was to reap marvellous blessings from the Union ; but of what 
 benefit is the junction of four or five millions of traitors — such as I tell you they 
 are not — a grosser outrage upon tiuth, a greater libel upon a generous people, 
 never before was uttered ! Sir ! I love the Irish nation. There is not one 
 feature more predominant than gratitude and sensibility to kindness. Change 
 your system towards that country, and you will find them another sort of men. 
 Let impartiality, justice, clemency, take the place of prejudice, oppression, and 
 vengeance, and you will not want the aid of martial law." — Fox's Speeches, 
 V. 6, p. 448. 
 
NATIONAL RESURRECTION. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE COMMERCIAL, NATIONAL, AND IMPERIAL BANKRUPTCY OF THE UNION ; 
 
 AND THE 
 
 NATIONAL RESURRECTION. 
 
 (9' Connelly — Farneli, — Gladstone. 
 
 "The landlords' power has been increased exceedingly since 1800. The 
 supply of land is not equal to the demand. The tenant is obliged to take the 
 land at any price. If things go on as they do, murders will accumulate, and 
 fixity of tenure will be conquered from the landlord by fear. Before 1800 no 
 power to eject, except, &c. Since 1800 power of selling and distraining 
 growing crops was given. I don't think there is anything in nature by which 
 greater oppression can be practised. By seizure nothing is left to subsist on. 
 If he digs he is sent to gaol, and his family left to starve. The wilful trespass 
 act gives a frightful dominion to the landlord class, maddening stimulants to 
 crime." — Daniel O'Connell's evidence before Devon Commission, 1845. 
 
 " A landlord of straw can grind to powder a tenant of steel." — Lord Clare. 
 
 "The land question contains, and the legislative question does not contain, 
 the materials from which victory is to be manufactured. Victory follows that 
 banner and no other. There can be no right of property in eight thousand 
 against the property, security, independence, and existence, of eight millions — 
 to take their food and give them famine, to take their home and give them the 
 workhouse. Such rights are the code of the brigand, and can be enforced 
 only by the hangman." — ^James Fintan Lalor, in The Irish Felon, 1848. 
 
 " The principle I state, and mean to stand upon, is this — that the entire 
 ownership of Ireland, moral and material, body, land, and soul, up to the sun 
 and down to the centre, is vested of right in the people of Ireland. The entire 
 soil of a country belongs of right to the entire people. I will put Ireland in 
 the van of the world, and set her aloft in the blaze of the sun." — Ibid. 
 
 " I have done with the pile which the minister batters ; I come to the Babel 
 which he builds." — Grattan. 
 
 From Molyneux, Swift, Flood, Grattan, and Shell, to 
 
I04 The Commercial, National, and Imperial 
 
 Parnell and Gladstone, we see, first, the dawn of national 
 self-consciousness, the beginning of the making of the 
 Irish nation, and the drawing together of its elemental 
 powers — consecrated from 1770 to 1800 to one pro- 
 longed supreme endeavour after national life ; next, the 
 apparent sudden arrest, but real concentration and ex- 
 asperation of all these factors and forces by Pitt, the 
 unmaker, the divider, the undoer, the deceiver, the 
 destroyer, and the destroyed ; then the first great national 
 victory since the Union, under O'Connell; the establish- 
 ment of a national propagandism and organ by'C. Gavan 
 Duffy, and the men of The Nation in 1843 ; the fusion 
 of the land and nation questions by James Fintan Lalor, 
 in The Irish Felon of 1848; the disendowment of a 
 Protestant sect by Gladstone ; the establishment of an 
 Irish party of action in the English House; the Anglo- 
 Irish -American -Australian agitation amongst the ten 
 millions, started by Davitt and Parnell ; and now the 
 coming restoration of the land and nation to itself, the 
 crowning of the edifice by Gladstone — the resurrection blast 
 for Ireland, and Pitt's day of judgment. 
 
 What has happened is that Pitt with his mechanics 
 challenged nature and destiny, with the usual result. 
 He saw well enough the separate forces with whose 
 jealousies he calculated on dividing and conquering, 
 namely, the English garrison Church, the Irish landlord 
 junto, the Orangemen and the Roman Catholics; but he 
 forgot to reckon with George III. and the Irish nation, 
 and the first stultified him whilst the last has extinguished 
 him. If it be true that the only deadly, unpardonable sin 
 of nations is not to revolt against injustice, Ireland has not 
 committed that sin ; if it be true that the unpardonable 
 sin of statesmen is to attempt to destroy a nation, that 
 sin Pitt is guilty of. The fault of Pitt's policy, as a policy, 
 was not that it was not wicked enough, but that it was too 
 wicked in this part of the world to spread or to last. He 
 
Bankruptcy of the Union. 105 
 
 ought also to have been able to corrupt, enslave, or 
 destroy, and that for ever, the moral sense of England. 
 
 By instructing Lords Cornwallis and Castlereagh to 
 persuade the Catholics of that which he, Mr. Pitt, knew 
 to be untrue, or did not know to be true, namely, that their 
 emancipation would accompany the Union, he could just 
 carry the Union — which he did at the cost of the poor 
 honest king's reason, and of the personal honour of all 
 concerned. Lord Cornwallis confessing ^ that most of the 
 bought votes in the House would be only too delighted if 
 they were voted down. 
 
 Pitt, however, had to reckon with another enemy, neither 
 mortal nor gullible — the Irish nation. Pitt never saw 
 this : Pitts don't. Statesmen go, and kings and cabinets 
 with them, but nations remain and are eternal. Pitt's foe 
 was as indestructible as the poor king's honesty, and as is 
 Pitt's dishonour. It was the alpha and omega, the first 
 and the last and the whole of Ireland. It is to-day 
 trampling under foot all that is left of Pitt and his policy. 
 What Pitt defied was the only primordial, indestructible 
 force in Ireland, namely, Ireland herself; and granted that 
 fact and time — the rest was destiny. 
 
 Pitt's " Union" — the concentrated essence of all trickery, 
 folly, falsehood, and disunion — was forsooth to checkmate 
 the nation — God's work and nature's stronghold. There 
 remains now of the Union and of Pitt, poor histrio ! only his 
 bagful of tricks found out, his " emancipation " marked 
 card, his properties, stage effects, and pretences, a century 
 of vengeful memories, an imperishable contempt, and a 
 certain Act of Parliament which never acted. 
 
 " The painted jay comes smirking down the tree, 
 Like a gay gallant from a ruined maiden." 
 
 The Act of Union was, in fact, what would have been 
 termed later, "a Slave State Extension Act." A preserve 
 
 ' See " Cornwallis Correspondence." 
 
io6 The Commercial^ National, and Imperial 
 
 was wanted off the English coast, where the king's writ 
 should overrun as many of the ten commandments as 
 were inconvenient to the minority, just as another pre- 
 serve was wanted lately in the American " Territories " for 
 another felon flag to fly on. Pitt and Castlereagh's 
 minority struck under cover of religion and law, and plea 
 of tender conscience, by bailiffs and agents, and by statutes 
 passed four hundred miles away. 
 
 The Union was, as we have seen, essential to. the con- 
 tinuance of the Irish Protestant Establishment, which 
 in the aggregate United Kingdom electorate was no 
 longer a minority Church. The Union was also imme- 
 diately used, as it was meant to be used, to enormously 
 increase landlord power, and laws were enacted scarcely 
 possible in a national parliament, to set the tenant naked 
 and shelterless before all the blasts that blow, until even 
 Lord Clare confessed that "a landlord of straw could 
 grind to powder a tenant of steel." It was this very 
 injustice that enabled the Irish leaders, later, to link 
 together in propagandism Irish nationality and land, in 
 order to free the one and make the other ; an attempt 
 which, succeeding, will emerge to the equal advantage of 
 the English and Irish nations and the Britannic Empire. 
 
 We have to consider how the factors of Irish legislative 
 independence accumulated, whilst Whig and Tory nos- 
 trums failed to keep the two nations, with their great ideas 
 of union, justice, peace, aggregate strength, and empire, 
 entirely in the background. 
 
 The key to the situation has been the gradual and real 
 " union " of the Irish people amongst themselves, 
 inspirited and led by O'Connell, The Nation, Lalor, 
 Davitt, and Parnell, and supported by the Irish emigration, 
 and the advantage which the English parliamentary 
 system gives to agitation as a science of progress. We 
 have witnessed Catholic emancipation which destroyed 
 the greatest enemy of national union, and are witnessing 
 
Bankruptcy of the Unio7i. 107 
 
 the emancipation of the land. We see even now the 
 representatives of the great Whig Protestant junto, which 
 formerly commanded 116 Irish members of parliament, 
 discredited, left out, and left behind; whilst the statesman- 
 ship of common sense and international morality stimu- 
 lates and shares the irresistible advance of the principle of 
 Irish nationality. 
 
 The Irish nation had found a voice, had had an army, 
 controlled its own revenue, knew what it wanted, and was 
 proceeding to unite and enfranchise its citizens, who 
 would then free its trade. Church, and land. This did not 
 suit Pitt, whose ruling minority in Ireland would have 
 been destroyed by it. The only plan to keep things as 
 they were — the Establishment up and the nation down — 
 was to swamp the Irish electorate with the English, to 
 remove its representatives from Ireland, to separate the 
 bane, bad government, from the antidote, public opinion, 
 by hundreds of miles, and, as it has turned out, a century 
 of time. 
 
 The century has gone ; Pitt's day of judgment has come 
 and gone too, and nothing but the nation and its future 
 remains. 
 
 The history of this one hundred years is the history of 
 the preservation of everything Pitt tried to paralyze and 
 corrupt, and of the paralysis and destruction of all he tried 
 to establish. Where is the Irish minority Church ? 
 Where is the Protestant landlords junto? What has 
 been the discipline, subordination, and union of " the 
 Union " ? What its help to the empire ? Where is his 
 Protestant ascendency ? 
 
 " The fierce and infinite laugh at things that cease " — 
 
 has long since answered these questions. It only now 
 remains to sweep away Pitt and all his lumber into the 
 everlasting dustbin. 
 
 Lord Holland says, "The fact is incontrovertible that the 
 
io8 The Commercial, National, and Imperial 
 
 people of Ireland were driven to resistance by the free 
 quarters and excesses of the soldiery, which were such 
 as are not permitted in civilized warfare, even in an 
 enemy's country." ^ . 
 
 Sir Ralph Abercrombie, who knewwell, stated respecting 
 the army in Ireland, that " it was in a state of licentious- 
 ness which must render it formidable to every one but the 
 enemy. The Government were the jealous and watchful 
 advocates of military rule, and of the uncontrolled license 
 of the troops."^ 
 
 "The Irish Government in 1798 might have crushed the rebel 
 lion, but they let it go on on purpose to carry the Union, and that 
 was their design. One letter in particular showed their duplicity. 
 When Lord Clonmel was dying, he stated this to Dean Scott and 
 made him destroy the letter. He further added that he had told 
 the lieutenant that as they knew the proceedings of the disaffected, 
 it was wrong to permit them to go on, but should crush them and 
 prevent the insurrection. He was coldly received. Lord Clare's 
 advice predominated, and in consequence he, Lord Clonmel, was 
 not summoned to (future) Privy Councils on business of State." 3 
 
 With a national or any electorate that understood the 
 matter, the frightful landlord legislation which followed 
 the Union would have been simply impossible. These 
 laws "^ involved cheapened ejectment and a lower class of 
 tenant ; shortened notice of process ; possible distress or 
 ejectment by paramount landlord for rent already paid ; 
 destruction of all sacredness of possession ; legal and un- 
 just eviction for want of stamps on agreement ; the sale 
 and distraint of growing crops, the daily food of the 
 peasant, who had to starve or " rescue distress ; " and the 
 wilful trespass Act, which annihilated all the smaller rights 
 of the peasant. 
 
 ' "Memoirs of the Whig Party." Longmans, 1852. 
 = Memoir, by his son, p. 93. 
 
 3 " Grattan's Life and Times," vol. ii. pp. 145-6. 
 ^ See O'Connell's evidence, Devon Commission. 
 
Bankrtcptcy of the Union. 109 
 
 The only benefits which the Union conferred on Eng- 
 land were those which men like Pitt abominate. They 
 were conferred by the co-operation of Irish representatives 
 with the English part}' of progress in the English House, 
 and are recorded by the great antagonist of his policy, 
 O'Connell, in that most faithful and pathetic memoir 
 addressed by him to the Queen : 
 
 " I desire these four facts to be remembered : 
 
 " ist. That the Irish representatives turned the scale of victory, 
 and carried the English Parliamentary Reform Bill. 
 
 " 2nd. They equally, and by the same act, carried the Scotch 
 Reform Bill. 
 
 " 3rd. They equally, and by inevitable consequence, carried the 
 English Municipal Reform Bill. 
 
 " 4th. They equally carried the Scotch Municipal Reform Bill " 
 
 (P- 34). 
 
 "Illustrious Lady, the rebellion of 1798 itself was almost 
 avowedly, and beyond a doubt probably, fomented to, enable the 
 British Government to extinguish the Irish legislative indepen- 
 dence, and to bring about the Union" (p. 26). 
 
 " We feel and understand that if the Union was not in existence, 
 if Ireland had her own parliament, the popular majority would 
 have long since carried every measure of salutary and useful re- 
 form. Instead of being behindhand with England and Scotland, 
 we should have taken the lead, and achieved for ourselves all and 
 more than we have contributed to achieve for them. 
 
 " If there were no Union, Ireland would be the part of the 
 British dominions in which greater progress would have been made 
 in civil and religious liberty than in any other part, subject to the 
 British Crown. If the Union had not been carried, Ireland would 
 have long since paid off her national debt, and been now almost 
 entirely freely from taxation. 
 
 "The Union, and the Union alone, stands in the way of our 
 achieving for ourselves every political blessing. 
 
 " Injustice, degradation, comparative weakness, widespread 
 poverty, unendurable political inferiority — these are the fruits of 
 the Union, . . . 
 
no The Commercial, National, and Impeinal 
 
 " Upon a population of eight millions, there are two millions 
 three hundred thousand individuals dependent for subsistence on 
 casual charity ! ! ! And this in one of the most abundantly fertile 
 countries on the globe ! " (p. 39). 
 
 Yes, this is the crowning test of that wonderful pros- 
 perity which men disloyal to Ireland, and patriotic against 
 their own country, now allege to have followed the Union 
 — more than a fourth of the population paupers ! 
 
 As though rational men require to have it argued that 
 a trade of Irish cattle and produce to England, stimulated 
 by the high prices of the French war, whilst Irish western 
 harbours were kept empty and Irish peasants starving, 
 was no proof of prosperity ; as if it were possible that a 
 dependent country, exploited by an alien, irresponsible, 
 dominant oligarchy, could be, or would be allowed to be, 
 benefited thereby ! 
 
 These extra-patriotic and loyal gentlemen prove too 
 much. If their nation was really so uneasy under such 
 unbounded prosperity as to want a Coercion Act every year, 
 what were they uneasy about ? Not about material pros- 
 perity. That, it seems, they had ; no, it must have been 
 their intense yearnings after national existence that made 
 them scorn the Whig manna and the Tory honey spread 
 for them in the wilderness of the Union, that made them 
 turn with loathing from the fat pastures of Castlereagh, 
 and the flesh-pots of Pitt and Peel, and strain their eyes 
 towards the promised land of independence, and the Zion 
 of nationality they had left ! 
 
 An Irish National Debt raised from two or three millions 
 to ^^150, 000,000 in seventeen years of union, is a further 
 proof — if any more were wanted— of its wonder-working 
 advantages ! 
 
 As early as the 19th of March, 181 1, Sir John Newport, 
 in the English House, moved three resolutions : 
 
 I. "That the funded debt of Ireland had trebled within ten 
 years, and was on the 5th of January, 181 1, ^89,208,000, occa- 
 
Bankruptcy of the Union. 
 
 Ill 
 
 sioning an annual permanent charge for interest, sinking fund, and 
 management of ;^4,273,ooo ; and that the ordinary revenue of 
 Ireland had been last year only ^3,614,000." 
 
 Nothing came of this, or of the other resolutions, but a 
 committee and an elaborate report. 
 
 Before the Union, and under the superintendence of a 
 national resident Parliament, the debt of the nation had 
 din^inished from ;^2,477,423 in 1789, to ;^2, 219,694 in 
 1793. In 1799, when the Union had for some years been 
 determined on, and Pitt's Viceroys had begun to carry out 
 his system of corruption, the debt was thirteen millions, 
 and in 1800 twenty-four millions. In 1814 it was 116 
 millions, and in 1817 it became bankrupt, and the debts 
 and exchequers were consolidated. After that the Irish 
 revenue for forty years rather declined than otherwise, for 
 in 1803 it was ;^4,337,269, in 1804 ;^3,7i7,942, and in 1841 
 ^^4, 107,066.1 
 
 Since the Union, the minister found it necessary to 
 establish a force of io,doo armed police, and a regular 
 army of 20,000 and upwards in time of peace. As to 
 destitution and pauperism, the Commissioners of the Land 
 Inquiry of 1845 reported that " a large proportion of the 
 entire population comes within the designation of agri- 
 cultural labourers, and endure sufferings greater than those 
 of the people of any other country in Europe." Prior to 
 that report, the commissioners, in the railway report laid 
 before Parliament, stated that the number of destitute 
 persons found annually in Ireland amounted to 2,300,000.^ 
 In 1816 distress was rapidly increasing throughout 
 Ireland. The general decline of manufactures was aggra- 
 vated by the absence of the nobility and gentry from 
 Dublin, and even its citizens became almost unable to pay 
 ordinary taxes. The evil consequences of the Union were 
 spreading, and national bankruptcy approaching. In 
 
 ' " Grattan's Life and Times," vol. v. pp. 181, 187. 
 ^ Ibid. vol. V. p. 187. 
 
1 1 2 The Commercial, National, and Imperial 
 
 April Sir John Newport proposed an address to the Prince 
 Regent, depicting the poverty and distress, the civil and 
 religious discord, Catholics excluded, Orangemen sup- 
 ported by the Government. 
 
 In the debate Mr. Plunket said that soon 40,000 soldiers 
 would be required in Ireland. Mr. Grattan said that her 
 debt was ;£"i5o,ooo,ooo, her interest above ;^6,ooo,ooo, her 
 revenue ^5,000,000. 
 
 Peel, who was Irish Secretary from 1813 to 1819, 
 evaded the motion, but bankruptcy could not be evaded. 
 The Chancellor could not collect the assessed taxes, and 
 even in the North of Ireland — the wealthiest part — notices 
 were served that carriages, horses, servants, cars, &c., 
 would be given up — 3,000 notices of this sort in one year. 
 
 On the 20th of May resolutions were submitted by the 
 Chancellor, of which the third was " that the annual 
 revenue of Great Britain and Ireland be consolidated." 
 
 Mr. Leslie Foster, afterwards one of the Barons of 
 Exchequer, said that Ireland's contributions these fifteen 
 years were £103,000,000, and the whole amount of avail- 
 able revenue in that period was £12,735,000. The Union 
 imposed an expenditure on Ireland eight times greater 
 than her revenue. In nine years Irish taxes had doubled ; 
 in 1800, £2,440,000 ; in 1816, £5,752,000.' 
 
 " It is to be observed that in 1785, when the British manufac- 
 turers formed their committee in England, the evidence stated 
 that if the Irish continued their exertions they would rival the 
 British in foreign markets ; as a remedy, they asked for a union 
 — and the decay of Ireland followed." ^ 
 
 " What the island chiefly produced was food, which was ex- 
 ported to richer countries to enable the cultivator to pay an 
 inordinate rent; harbours looking towards the East were occupied 
 only by ships which carried raw produce and human food to 
 England, The food of the peasant was potatoes, with a little milk 
 
 ' "Grattan's Life and Times," vol. v. pp. 525-7-8. 
 * Ibid. vol. V. p. 98. 
 
Bankruptcy of the Union. \ 1 3 
 
 or salt ; flesh meat he rarely tasted. The country was famous for 
 the production of butter, and the growth of beef and mutton, and 
 especially of pork; but butter, beef, mutton, and pork were nearly 
 as unknown as an article of diet among the peasantry as among 
 the Hindoos." ' 
 
 It is the exportation of this cattle, &c., away from the 
 peasantry to England, "to enable them to pay an in- 
 ordinate rent," which shows how well off these peasants 
 must have been ! Risum teneatis ! The same sort of logic 
 that proved the Irish were not hungry, might have been 
 used with as great advantage to show that Tantalus was 
 never thirsty. 
 
 The sudden paralysis of intellectual, parliamentary, 
 social, and commercial life inflicted by the Union on 
 Dublin, affected the whole nation : 
 
 " The prosperity of Dublin prior to the Union partook in far 
 more than a proportionate degree of the rapid advances which 
 Ireland made in population, commerce, civilization, and literature, 
 in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and yet more particularly 
 at the period of legislative independence. Within that half-cen- 
 tury all the public institutions of utility or elegance, all those 
 embellishments and improvements which still exist, were com- 
 pleted or commenced. The reason of the decline is sufficiently 
 obvious. Prior to the Union, between four and five hundred 
 families of rank and opulence, residents, are no longer to be found 
 m Dublin. London, that overgrown and bloated capitol, absorbs 
 all the wealth and talents of the sister metropolis and kingdom." ^ 
 
 In Sir H. Parnell's able work on '* Financial Reform "3 
 are given (appendix 8) tables which show undoubted 
 apparent prosperity in Ireland from 1790 to 1826. But 
 he adds to them (pp. 259-60-63) the statement, that 
 
 "It may be long before the condition of the labouring class 
 will become much better than it now (1832) is— wages not keep- 
 
 ' See "Young Ireland," pp. 139, 141. 
 
 ^ Whitelaw and Walsh, 1818. 
 
 3 Murray, 1832. 4th edition. 
 
 9 
 
1 14 The Commercial^ National, and Imperial 
 
 ing pace with the price of food. . . . Industry and accumulation 
 of wealth must have been greatly obstructed by agitation. 
 Malthus remarks with great force, that among the most important 
 causes that influence the wealth of nations must be jjlaced politics 
 and morals. Security of property depends upon the political con- 
 stitution and administration. But the law which deprived several 
 millions of Catholics in Ireland of their civil rights, established 
 hostility to laws and general discontent. Ireland's opportunities 
 have been thrown away. From 1802 to 1816, the demand for 
 her productions was so great and the prices so high with reference 
 to the cost of production, that had it not been for the defect in 
 her political and moral condition, she must have become a very 
 rich and flourishing country. Had she possessed free and tolerant 
 laws, and the same habits, as England, Scotland, Holland, Switzer- 
 land, and the United States, an immense accumulation of wealth 
 would have been secured before the fall of prices which took place 
 subsequent to 181 6." 
 
 The official tables quoted by Sir H. Parnell show that 
 the annual average amount of the imports and exports of 
 Ireland for the triennial periods ending as follows, were : 
 
 
 Imports. 
 
 Exports. 
 
 1790 
 
 •• ^3>535,588 ... 
 
 ••• ;^4,i25,333. 
 
 1800 
 
 .. ^4,299,493 ... 
 
 ... ^4,015,976. 
 
 I8I0 
 
 .. ^6,535,068 ... 
 
 ... ^5>27o,47i- 
 
 1820 
 
 .. ;^6,oo8,273 ... 
 
 ... ^6,291,275. 
 
 1826 . 
 
 .. ^7,491,890 ... 
 
 ... ;^8,454,9i8. 
 
 But the question is, how many of the good things implied 
 in the doubling of imports and exports, even in thirty-six 
 years, were enjoyed by the people themselves ? and Sir H. 
 Parnell's tables showing the articles " retained for home 
 consumption " during the same period in Ireland are very 
 precise and full, and of far more consequence than those 
 inconsequential figures supplied by the ** loyal and 
 patriotic " statisticians of the present hour. I take only 
 three principal articles : 
 
Bankruptcy of the Union. 115 
 
 Tea (lbs.) Coffee (lbs.) Sugar (cwts.) 
 
 5790 1.732,374 ••• 44,370 ••• 216,106. 
 
 iSoo 2,773,070 ... 73,262 ... 241,224. 
 
 1820 3,316,321 .;. 405>i86 .... 317,833. 
 
 ^'^^^ 3*548,293 ... 277,465 ... 406,789. 
 
 The ratio of advance in the articles retained for the 
 people's own use is nothing like that of cattle, &c., sent 
 abroad. One of the reasons was that the artificial prices 
 caused by the war, ceased with it. The rents raised by 
 war prices were not reduced when war prices fell. The 
 population was then six millions, and had to compete for 
 land, and a policy little short of extermination was re- 
 vived. Peel was Irish Secretary, and a new constabulary 
 force was organized in 1815, and also a series of cheap 
 ejectment Acts. Moreover, in 1816, a committee to 
 inquire into the state of Ireland was moved for, but suc- 
 cessfully resisted by Peel. An inquiry would have re- 
 vealed starvation, and reform might have been substituted 
 for coercion. 
 
 Pitt had poisoned the well-springs of Anglo-Irish national 
 life. He slackened the bonds and palsied the power of 
 empire ; he dissolved the Irish social system ; he has been 
 the Mephistopheles of the Irish assassin and of the Irish 
 landlord, presenting the one with a reduced rent roll, and 
 the other with a loaded blunderbuss and landlord law ; 
 his iron entered into the soul of the peasantry, making 
 vengeance and despair their familiar spirit. He slaughtered 
 150,000 of those who asked only to be most loyal subjects 
 on the face of the earth ; he broke the spirit of a noble 
 people, and kept the Catholic question sweltering for 
 thirty-five years. 
 
 "The union," wrote O'Connell, ''entitled the Catholics of 
 Ireland — that is, emphatically the people of Ireland — to religious 
 equality with the English and Scotch. It was thus distinctly, and 
 in writing, avowed by Pitt in his negotiation with Catholic peers 
 
1 1 6 The Commercial^ National, and Imperial 
 
 and others who called themselves the leaders of the Catholic 
 people." ' 
 
 Pitt bought the Irish birthright for the price of emanci- 
 pation, and then did not emancipate ; as Mr. Lecky says, 
 *' Lords Cornwallis and Castlereagh had purchased the 
 support of the leading Catholic prelates by a distinct 
 intimation that in their opinion the union would be a pre- 
 lude to emancipation." Pitt's Irish policy was a gigantic 
 confidence trick all round, played not in a tavern, but with 
 empire. He befooled one people and their sovereign that 
 he might abscond with the nationality and parliament of 
 another. He misled the king, tricked the Irish people, 
 dissimulated with the Irish landlords, and used and partly 
 deceived Castlereagh. He nearly murdered his sovereign 
 and Ireland. 
 
 These two, religion and nationality, the one the greatest 
 force in Ireland, the other the greatest force in the 
 universe, Pitt elected to combine against a union which 
 was not a union, and which was based only on corruption 
 and physical force. 
 
 Pitt directly caused the rebellion by the peremptory 
 recall of Fitzwilliam. As Mr. Lecky remarks : 
 
 " A careful examination will show that at every period of Pitt's 
 career he sacrificed or subordinated political principles to party 
 ends. The steady object of his later Irish policy was to corrupt 
 and to degrade, in order that he might ultimately destroy the 
 legislature of the country; and he was guilty in Ireland of a 
 system of corruption before which the worst acts of Newcastle 
 and Walpole dwindle into insignificance. The rebellion of 
 1798, with all the accumulated miseries it entailed, was the direct 
 and predicted consequence of Pitt's policy.^ Ireland in 1795 
 was singularly easy to govern, had it been governed honestly and 
 by honest men. Pitt sowed in Ireland the seeds of discord and 
 bloodshed, of religious animosities, and social disorganization, 
 
 ' Memoir, p. 40. 
 
 * " Lecky on Grattan," p. 147, edition 1871. 
 
Bankruptcy of the Union. 117 
 
 which paralyzed the energies of the country, and rendered possible 
 the success of his machinations." 
 
 In his letter, October 7, 1784, to the Duke of Rutland, 
 Lord-lieutenant, he wrote : 
 
 " I own to you the line to which my mind at present inclines is 
 to give Ireland an almost unlimited communication of commercial 
 advantages, if we can receive some security that her strength and 
 riches will be for our benefit ; to be ready, by acceding to a pru- 
 dent and temperate reform of parliament, . . . and may unite the 
 Protestant interest in excluding the Catholics from any share in 
 the representation or government of the country." 
 
 In another unpublished letter, January 6, 1785, Pitt re- 
 marks that local advantages should be relinquished for the 
 general benefit of the empire; and "this cannot be done 
 but by making England and Ireland one country in effect, 
 though for local concerns under distinct legislatures." ^ 
 
 But Pitt was vexed and offended with the conduct of 
 Ireland in 1785 on the commercial propositions, and in 1789 
 on the Regency, when, as O'Connell has said, he wanted to 
 make himself the virtual king. When the Catholics in 1793 
 were not satisfied with his leave to them to vote for Pro- 
 testant masters ; when he saw that any conciliation that 
 gave the Catholics too much would offend the Whig oli- 
 garchy, then he bent his mind to the union ; and it was his 
 money, his martial law, his bribery, his rebellion, his troops 
 that forced it on. Pitt was cunning, always afraid of being 
 overreached, and sure to sow distrust. He did so with 
 Grattan and the volunteers in 1783 ; with Grattan and 
 Fitzwilliam in 1795 ; with Catholics and Protestants in 
 1800. Pitt was insincere, unconstitutional, desperate, 
 profligate, and violent ; with flogging, strangling, and free 
 quarters, by the pitch-cap, the triangle, the lash, and by 
 an abominable set of agents, he governed Ireland and de- 
 stroyed her unity with the empire. 
 
 ' " Grattan's Life and Times," vol. v. p. 183. 
 
1 1 8 The Commercial, National, and Imperial 
 
 Mr. Grattan urged the question of Catholic Emancipa- 
 tion on the occasion of his first speech in the Imperial 
 Parliament, 1805, which Pitt applauded, and Byron de- 
 scribes, and when the majority against was 212. He 
 urged it in his last speech in 1819, when the majority 
 against was only two. It was not however till O'Connell's 
 election for Clare, in 1828, that Peel and Wellington yielded 
 to the Irish people, as in the following year they also 
 abandoned the penal code. They then excluded O'Con- 
 nell, who had been elected, and disfranchised the 40s. 
 freeholders who had elected him. 
 
 But listen (it is worth while) to Peel's indictment of his 
 master's policy : 
 
 " I ask you to examine the state of His Majesty's Government 
 for the last thirty-five years. ... I begin with 1794. From that 
 period there has been disunion in the Government on account of 
 the Catholic question, and the administration of Irish affairs. The 
 consequences have been most unfavourable to the administration 
 of the affairs of this country (England). The cabinets have been 
 in general nearly equally divided. Ireland has been governed, 
 almost inevitably, upon the same principle — at one time a Lord- 
 Lieutenant adverse, and a Secretary favourable. The law offices 
 of Ireland divided; the subordinate members also. What has 
 been the consequence ? Jealousies and suspicions between honour- 
 able men embarked in the same cause, and subject to the same 
 responsibilities. 
 
 " Let us now turn to the legislature. . . . What is the result ? 
 Each party can paralyze the other ; nothing effectual can be done, 
 either by the means of coercion or relief. But what becomes of 
 Ireland if these party conflicts without a result shall continue ? I 
 will not presume to affirm that the dissensions in our councils 
 and the distractions of Ireland stand to each other in the exact rela- 
 tion of cause and effect, but they have been very nearly concurrent. 
 
 " Let us cast a rapid glance over the recent history of Ireland, 
 trace it from the Union. What is the melancholy fact? That for 
 scarcely one year during the period that has elapsed since the 
 Union has Ireland been governed by the ordinary course of law. 
 
Bankruptcy of the Uniojt. 119 
 
 " In 1800 we find the Habeas Corpus Act suspended, and the 
 Act for the suppression of rebelHon in force. In 1801 they were 
 continued. In 1803 both Acts were renewed. In 1804 they were 
 continued. In 1806 the west and south of Ireland were in a state 
 of insubordination, which was with difficulty repressed by the 
 severest enforcement of the ordinary law. In 1807 the Act called 
 the 'Insurrection Act' was introduced. It gave power to the 
 Lord-Lieutenant to place any district by proclamation out of the 
 pale of the ordinary law ; it suspended trial by jury, and made it a 
 transportable offence to be out of doors from sunset to sunrise. 
 In 1807 this Act continued in force, and in 1808-9, and to the 
 close of the session of 1810. In 1814 the Insurrection Act was 
 renewed: it was continued in 1815, '16, and '17. In 1822 it 
 was again revived, and continued during the years 1823, '24, and 
 '25. In 1825 the temporary Act intended for the suppression of 
 dangerous associations was passed. It continued during 1826 and 
 1827, and expired in 1828. The year 1829 has arrived, and with 
 it the demand for a new Act to suppress the Roman Cathohc 
 association." ' 
 
 " Put down," exclaimed Lord Palmerston, " the Association ! 
 They might as well talk of putting down the winds of heaven, 
 or of chaining the ceaseless tides of the ocean. . . .. The 
 Catholic Association was the people of Ireland. Its spirit was 
 caused by the grievance of the nation ; and its seat was the bosom 
 of seven millions of its population. It was therefore idle to talk 
 of putting down the Association except by removing the cause to 
 which the Association owed its existence." ^ 
 
 It must be a prosperous country truly that needs yearly 
 coercion Acts, and where it is a transportable offence to be 
 out between sunset and sunrise ! 
 
 But the desperate policy of Pitt became the desperate 
 policy of Peel, who declared (1827) he would never alter 
 it ; but who (in 1829) found that a policy desperate for 
 Ireland would speedily become desperate for himself, and 
 then suddenly despaired of it and revoked it. But then he 
 
 ' Mr. Secretary Peel, March 5, 1829. Hansard, 
 ^ February 10, 1829. Hansard. 
 
I20 The Commercial, National, and Imperial 
 
 had gone too far. The danger of Irish relenting was 
 passed. O'Connell had roused the national spirit. The 
 English conscience began to get informed, and emanci- 
 pated Catholics and emancipated reforming Protestants 
 in both countries were drawn together. Peel disfranchised 
 Ireland, till O'Connell stopped him. He starved England 
 till Cobden stopped him. When the bread of office could 
 " no longer be leavened " with starvation and proscription, 
 he preferred office ; and when he tried to get away with the 
 laurels of Free Trade, Disraeli stopped him, and stripped 
 them from his brow. 
 
 "The Precursor Association declared," says O'Connell, "in the 
 name and with the assent of the Irish people, that they might 
 have consented to the continuance of the Union, if justice had 
 been done them, if the franchise had been simplified and much 
 extended, if the corporations had been reformed and continued, 
 if the number of Irish members had been augmented in a just 
 proportion, and if the tithe system had been abohshed and con- 
 science left completely free. But, on the other hand, these just 
 claims being rejected. ... the Irish people are too numerous, 
 too wise, and too good to despair or to hesitate on the course 
 they should adopt. The restoration of the national legislature 
 is, therefore, again insisted on. . . . No honest man ever despaired 
 of his country . . . Ireland will assert her rights for herself, 
 preserving the golden and unonerous link of the Crown, true to 
 the principles of unaffected and genuine allegiance, but deter- 
 mined, while she preserves her loyalty to the British throne, to 
 vindicate her title to constitutional freedom for the Irish people." ^ 
 
 Peel prevented the danger of compromise, if it ever 
 existed, and held on to obstructions, till O'Connell's great 
 work was irrevocable and secure. 
 
 With the foreign and Irish policy of Pitt, with George III., 
 never so much out of his senses as when he was in them, 
 with the Irish not united, and the English not in- 
 structed, little was or could have been done at first, for 
 
 ' Memoir, pp. 41, 42. 
 
Bankruptcy of the Union. 121 
 
 famine and injustice could not fail to officer and form the 
 Irish army of agitation or vengeance. Even the Emanci- 
 pation Act of 1828 contained " Church protection clauses 
 for the suppression of the Catholic ecclesiastical orders," 
 armed, at the instance of the Protestant Church Estab- 
 lishment party, with penalties of banishment and trans- 
 portation ; and the national bankruptcy of Ireland con- 
 sequent on the Union ; the futile Report, never acted on, 
 of the great Devon Land Law Commission of 1845 ; the 
 famines and the three insurrections ; the vast increase of 
 American-Irish, and the establishment of the first Irish 
 national press — all have combined with English apathy, 
 ignorance, and obstruction, and especially with the 
 infatuation of the English House of Lords, to work up 
 Ireland to that white heat of desperation of which James 
 Fintan Lalor, in his organ, The Irish Felon, began to 
 avail himself in 1848, and by which alone, according to our 
 former way of ruling, great national reforms become 
 possible. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, in the debate on his Statutory Parliament 
 Bill for Ireland, says that — 
 
 " Irish history on these matters in his time divided itself into 
 three great periods. . . . The first was the Repeal period 
 under Mr. O'Connell, which began about the time of the 
 Reform Act, and lasted until the death of that distinguished man. 
 The second period was that between the death of Mr. O'Connell, 
 and the emergence of the subject of Home Rule. That was 
 the period in which physical force and organization were con- 
 ceived and matured, taking effect under the name generally of 
 what is known as Fenianism. In 1870 or 1871 came up the 
 question of Home Rule." ' 
 
 The Premier's division can be followed as regards the 
 O'Connell period, the direct ending being marked by his 
 death, although influences that never die can hardly be 
 
 ' May 10, 1886, T/ie Times report. 
 
122 The GConnell Period. 
 
 said to have a period. But " the period of physical force 
 and organization," and of preparation for Home Rule, are 
 one, and, whatever vv^e hope or fear, will last until the 
 triumph of the principle of Irish nationality. The disin- 
 tegration of Enghsh parties, the decomposition of imperial 
 politics, and the confusion and postponement of the first 
 fruits of confederation, will last exactly the same time. 
 
 The degradation of Protestant landlordism had been 
 one of the results of earlier penal legislation, and the sub- 
 stitution of priests for landlords as leadei's of the people was 
 one of the direct consequences of Pitt's Catholic exclusion, 
 and was organized and systematized by O'Connell, whose 
 great Catholic association was formed in 1824, ramified the 
 whole country, and was directed in every parish by the 
 priest. At last, the whole mass of the people were 
 organized like an army, and assembled in every part of the 
 country on the same day. In 1828 it was conputed that in 
 a single day two thousand meetings were held. O'Connell's 
 object was to inspirit the people by a tone of unmeasured 
 defiance and exaltation, and his Church entered into the 
 conflict triumphant and unshackled — an object of fear not 
 of contempt. 
 
 " Of all possible measures," says Lecky, "Catholic Emancipation 
 might, if judiciously carried, have been most efficacious in making 
 Ireland permanently loyal. The Irish Parliament governed chiefly 
 by corruption, the landlords who controlled most of the votes 
 were beyond all others exposed to temptation. They were also 
 subject to the same demoralizing process as that which degrades 
 the slave-owner. ' A landlord in Ireland,' said Arthur Young, 
 * can scarcely invent an order which a servant, labourer, or cottier 
 dares refuse to execute.' The penal laws (which gave tiie whole 
 estate of a Catholic to any son who abjured his religion) seemed 
 ingeniously contrived to secure a perpetual influx of unprincipled 
 men into the landlord class." 
 
 When at last reform, greatly helped by O'Connell, 
 triumphed in 1832, the new parliament began by a stringent 
 
Measures Against Protestant Ascendency. 123 
 
 Irish Coercion Bill. Secret societies ramified the country, 
 the bonds of society were broken, law was discredited, and 
 class warfare and religious animosity became supreme. 
 
 In 1833, '^^ y^ar in which O'Connell showed so noble 
 and large-minded an example, by seconding the motion in 
 the English House for the abolition of the Corn Laws, there 
 was not in Ireland a single Catholic judge or stipendiary 
 magistrate. The chief towns were in the hands of narrow 
 and corrupt corporations. The Irish Secretary, Mr. Stanley, 
 was intensely hated,and all tended to turn the people's minds 
 to Repeal. The poorest Catholic cottager was compelled to 
 pay something to support the hostile and aggressive Church 
 of the rich minority. In one parish 222 tithe defaulters owed 
 one farthing each, and a very large proportion throughout 
 the country not more than is. each. At last a conspiracy 
 to refuse payment spread over the land. Government 
 advanced ;^6o,ooo in 1832, and undertook to collect the 
 tithes of 1831, the arrears being ^^104,000. After much 
 bloodshed it recovered ;£'i2,ooo, at a cost of ^£'15,000; more 
 than 9,000 crimes were perpetrated in Ireland in 1832 
 connected with the disturbed state of the country, and 
 among them nearly 200 cases of homicide. It was at this 
 time, says Mr. Lecky, that O'Connell talked of the " base, 
 brutal, and bloody Whigs," men with "brains of leg-d, and 
 hearts of stone, and fangs of iron." Lord Grey retired 
 from office, and Lord Melbourne came in with O'Connell's 
 support. The great subject then discussed was the Irish 
 Church, and the Church Temporalities Act of 1833 
 made the Establishment more defensible, by which ten 
 bishops and Church rates were abolished. O'Connell 
 appears to have settled on a tithe plan, explained in a 
 letter to Mr. Sharman Crawford in 1834, which was later 
 adopted by Mr. Gladstone. The tithes composition 
 measure of 1838 was also conceded to violence, and has 
 not proved final, but has eradicated much crime and allayed 
 a dangerous agitation. 
 
124 '^^^ GConnell Period. 
 
 In 1831-2 a system of national education was founded 
 in Ireland, which continues, though seriously modified, to 
 this day. It was intended to give the whole people a 
 united secular education, while offering facilities for 
 separate religious teaching. The liberal education policy 
 of the Whigs was fully adopted, and extended by the 
 Tories and Sir Robert Peel. In 1838 the Irish Poor Law 
 was enacted. In 1835 Lord Melbourne brought in an Irish 
 Corporation Bill, but the Lords wanted to abolish all 
 Irish municipal government and to substitute State 
 functionaries, and the Bill was not passed till 1840, when 
 fifty-eight corporations were abolished. This Bill gave the 
 inhabitants of towns the right to elect town councillors, 
 and O'Connell was the first Catholic Mayor of Dublin, 
 but the choice of the sheriff who had charge of the jury 
 lists was in the hands of the Viceroy. All these measures 
 were passed under the influence of the movement against 
 Protestant ascendency. 
 
 " In agitating for Repeal, O'Connell," writes Mr. W. A. O'Conor,' 
 " made his country potentially a nation. He gave it the power of 
 rising to the voice of one man. He infused the spirit that keeps 
 the pulses of Irishmen in all parts of the globe beating to one 
 measure. He took the cause of independence out of the hands 
 of a faction, and made it the life of the country." 
 
 " In the emancipation struggle, the Presbyterians of the North 
 and the Reformers of England became O'Connell's natural allies. 
 The intellects of England and Ireland found a common platform. 
 O'Connell had always placed fixity of tenure among the first results 
 of repeal of the Union, but the commission of landlords, appointed 
 in 1844, condemned tenant right, and recommended consolidation 
 of lands and emigration. 
 
 " A constitutionalist by nature, and shocked, in the dawn of 
 his manhood, by the excesses of France where he was educated, 
 O'Connell chose moral agitation for his country's deliverance. But 
 his peaceful struggle was conducted with shout and onset of the 
 
 ' " History of the Irish People," p. 280. Heywood, London, 1886. 
 
O'Connelfs " SkotU and Onset.'' 125 
 
 warrior. He roused, united, and informed his countrymen. He 
 inspired one soul into Ireland. He taught the people their power, 
 and lifted them to a height of courage and consentaneous action 
 from which they have never fallen. He made them one mass, 
 inspired by one mind, and capable of following one chief. At the 
 same time, he powerfully appealed to the reason and sympathy of 
 Englishmen, and contributed to the growth of English liberties. 
 The tyrants of both nations he dared and defied. His gait as he 
 trod the streets was a challenge to those who demanded servile 
 demeanour. We can scarcely now estimate his towering character, 
 as he stood alone in the valley white with the skeletons ot 
 centuries, and prophesied upon them, and covered them with flesh 
 and sinew and skin, and called the breath of freedom from the 
 four winds to breathe upon them till they stood on their feet an 
 exceeding great army. The magic of his sonorous voice, pealing 
 over a desert, is lost to us who know of him only when his accents 
 are drowned in the million echoes they have created. Emancipa- 
 tion was made not a sectarian question. O'Connell, with the mind 
 and voice of the people, proclaimed a universal principle, and 
 demanded for every religion absolute spiritual freedom." 
 
 " An association was formed at Birmingham on the exact model 
 of the Catholic association in Dublin, and reform was won, 
 O'Connell giving it every assistance in his power. Thus we find 
 O'Connell at one and the same time contending with England 
 when she opposed justice in Ireland, and co-operating with her, 
 heart and soul, when she struggled for the deliverance of her own 
 people, and for human rights in any part of the globe." 
 
 When Walter Savage Lander addressed a petition to 
 the Queen for a free pardon for O'Connell and the other 
 Irish State prisoners, the reasons he adduced were as 
 follow^s : 
 
 "The act of union was brought about by practices which would 
 disfranchise any borough in England; because Ireland at the 
 present moment was treated with less liberty in regard to religion 
 than Greece under the dominion of the Turks; because two 
 millions of British subjects in America, who had incomparably less 
 cause of complaint than Ireland, were driven to sever themselves 
 
126 The GConnell Period. 
 
 from the dominion of England, whereas Ireland contained seven 
 millions, and the nearest and most powerful nations sympathized 
 with her cause ; because O'Connell had alone restrained the 
 passions of his countrymen, and had maintained a state of tran- 
 quillity which no other man for six hundred years had been able to 
 establish." 
 
 "In no instance," says Lecky, "did O'Connell's meetings de- 
 generate into mobs. He worked with Father Mathew, and 
 considered the teetotalers as his policemen. He had no rival. 
 He transformed the whole social system of Ireland; almost 
 reversed the relative positions of Protestants and Roman Catholics ; 
 remodelled by his influence the representative, ecclesiastical, 
 educational institutions ; created the elements of his own power, 
 governed the people absolutely and long, made the Liberal party 
 in Ireland synonymous with the Catholic party, and created a 
 public opinion that surpassed the wildest dreams of his prede- 
 cessors. He anticipated very accurately the Bill which has 
 recently passed, saying, ' Nothing will do but giving some kind of 
 fixity of tenure to the occupier, and especially an absolute right of 
 recompense for all substantial improvements.' " ^ 
 
 " The great contrast between O'Connell's influence now cul- 
 minating and that of ' Young Ireland ' was that he was supposed 
 not to be prepared to countenance bloodshed. He prepared, 
 however, for the coming of ' Young Ireland ' by his lifelong attempts 
 to break or weaken the landed classes, and by making priests the 
 pohtical leaders of the people. If, at the present moment, the 
 antagonism of classes and creeds is stronger in Ireland than in 
 any other country in Europe, this is to be mainly attributed to 
 the policy of Pitt, and to the agitation of O'Connell."^ 
 
 The ** Young Irelanders " were chiefly Protestants, were 
 more independent of priests, sympathized rather with 
 1798 than 1782, and were prepared to stand either without 
 the law or within it. 
 
 Sir Charles Gavan Duffy thus introduces O'Connell's 
 summary, given in]i843, of the injuries of the Union, which 
 must be noted here : 
 
 ' Lecky, pp. 297-9, 1871 edition. '^ Lecky on O'Connell, p. 310. 
 
O'Connell on the Union. 127 
 
 " Every one knew that the ancient seat of industry in the 
 liberties was now a pauper-warren, that the stately edifices erected 
 by an Irish parliament for international commerce were the 
 offices of tax-gatherers, that the palaces of the resident nobility 
 had become museums and mendicities, and the Woollen Hall, 
 from which the produce of five thousand looms was once 
 circulated, a poor-house crowded with weavers without work." ^ 
 
 And then he quotes O'Connell : 
 
 " The Union was a profitable compact for one of the parties. 
 England found a market for her fabrics, a recruiting field for 
 her army, a partner in her public burthens, and by making 
 absenteeism a necessity for members of parliament and their 
 train, she drew from Ireland an annual tribute of five or six 
 millions rent. 
 
 •' But for the other partner it was a disastrous compact. Before 
 the Union Ireland was the seat of flourishing woollen and silk 
 manufactories. The woollen trade had taken root prior to the 
 revolution of 1688, but on the demand of the English Parliament, 
 though in the hands of Protestants, it nearly disappeared. A 
 hundred years later, when Grattan had established legislative 
 independence, the trade sprang up under the care of a free 
 parliament, and at the period of the Union the cloth loom was at 
 work in Dublin, Kilkenny, Limerick, Carrick-on-Suir, Roscrea, 
 and several smaller towns. The population of Ireland was then 
 only four millions, of whom one hundred and fifty thousand were 
 employed in silk and woollen manufactures. In 184 1 the popu- 
 lation had increased to eight and nine millions, but the number 
 of these artizans had shiunk to a handful— fewer than eight 
 thousand. The mills in the provincial towns were all closed ; in 
 Dublin, where ninety master manufacturers had given employment 
 to five thousand artisans, the former had diminished to twelve, 
 and the latter to less than seven hundred. The fate of the 
 remainder might be learned from the mendicity society." 
 
 "At the commencement of the French war the Irish National 
 Debt was two millions and a quarter, that of England two hundred 
 and forty millions. An Irish debt was created in her name 
 ' "Young Ireland," p. 29. Cassell. 
 
128 The O'Connell Period. 
 
 during the war by undue military expenditure, by a pension list 
 on which English courtezans and favourites, spies and jobbers, 
 were silently quartered by Royal authority, and by the trick of 
 charging as Irish national expenditure the money employed by 
 English statesmen to purchase votes in favour of the Union. She 
 suffered the fate of men and nations who entrust their interests to 
 strangers. 
 
 "To protect and continue this system it was necessary to 
 diminish the political power of Ireland, and Parliament was 
 deliberately packed. Scotland, by the Reform Act, got an 
 increase of one to five of her existing representatives, Wales one 
 to six, Ireland one to twenty. In 1834 Irish corporations were 
 exclusively in the hands of Protestants, and were reeking with 
 corruption. Ireland was contemptuously refused corporate reform. 
 The union had ruined merchants, traders, and artisans \ and the 
 peasantry fared no better. The Poor Law Commissioners com- 
 puted the number of agricultural labourers to be over a million, 
 and ascertained that one-half of these were out of employment 
 for thirty weeks in the year." 
 
 And Sir C. Gavan Duffy adds : 
 
 " Harbours looking towards the prosperous Western world were 
 completely vacant ; harbours looking toward the East were occu- 
 pied only by ships which carried raw produce and food to England. 
 There was no foreign trade : the wines of Spain and Portugal, 
 the silks of France, the drugs and spices of the East, the timber 
 of the North only reached the island through England. The 
 noble quays of the Liffey, which would rival the Lung d'Arno of 
 Florence, were the seat of a national government, and held only a 
 few canal barges and fruit boats. There was scarcely a county 
 which could not show some public work begun before the union, 
 and now a ruin. 
 
 "The great proprietors were two or three hundred, the mass 
 of the country was owned by two or three thousand others, who 
 lived in splendour. Rent meant the whole of the produce except 
 a potato pit. If the farmer strove for more his master could 
 carry away his implements of trade, and habitually seized the 
 stools and pots in the cabin, the blanket that sheltered the children, 
 
'' Ireland Across the Seas'' 129 
 
 the cow that gave them nourishment. The mild Berkeley spoke 
 of Irish proprietors as vultures with iron bowels." "^ 
 
 " The Irish landlords made a law that when the tenant planted 
 a tree it became his master's property; and the established practice 
 of four-fifths of the Irish landlords, when the tenant established 
 such property as a garden or a whitewashed cottage, was to raise 
 his rent." 
 
 And referring to O'Connell's difficult position, Mr. John 
 Morley lately thus retorted on a " Unionist" debater : 
 
 "Where you had in O'Connell's time a constituency of 150,000, 
 and a population of 8,000,000, you have now nearly 750,000 
 voters in a population of less than 5,000,000. O'Connell died in 
 1847. That was the era of the famine. The famine was followed 
 by the great emigration and the wholesale eviction — a chapter of 
 which we have not yet come to the last page. That was a dis- 
 memberment and a dispersion which planted in every quarter of 
 the globe an enemy to your rule. That is the most important of 
 all the changes, because the growth of an Ireland across the seas 
 has given the Irish at home a self-confidence and a moral power, 
 and a command of material resources of which O'Connell never 
 dreamed." ^ 
 
 There were but three possible ways in which O'Connell, 
 or any one else, could contend with England. The first 
 was the Parliamentary franchise, but the Irish voters were 
 simply outnumbered and lost in the multitude of their 
 opponents ; besides which, on O'Connell's election, Peel 
 and Wellington at once disfranchised the 40s. freeholders 
 who had returned him. The second would have been a 
 great soldier with an armed nucleus, but Pitt and 
 Wellington had crammed 35,000 soldiers into Ireland, and 
 ships of war were all round the coast.3 The third method 
 would have been that now used by Mr. Parnell — the Par- 
 liamentary followers ; but O'Connell had only the 26. 
 Moreover, in his time, the native press had not much 
 
 ' See "Young Ireland," pp. 139-140, and 142. 
 ^ Times report, June 4, 1886. 
 3 See "The Parnell Movement." 
 10 
 
130 The O'Connell Period. 
 
 ability, and when a really able paper appeared, it advo- 
 cated more direct and drastic measures than his. 
 
 Now, taking the Irish census for the decades 1821-31-41, 
 we find thci population increase from 6,800,000 to 7,700,000 
 and 8,100,000 ; and in the three and a half months in 
 1841, from May 13th to August 31st, 57,651 persons 
 migrated from Ireland to Great Britain (presumably for 
 work in the hay and corn. harvest), whilst during the latter 
 decade (ending 6th of June, 1841) 214,647 went from home 
 (most of them, namely, 189,225, to British America), and 
 only 19,775 to the United States. But before 185 1 every- 
 thing seems changed. From 1845 to 1868, three millions 
 would probably not be an over-estimate of Irish emigra- 
 tion to the United States, and the census shows the popu- 
 lation gone back to 6,500,000 — actually below that of 1821 
 (and 1,600,000 less than that of 1841). 
 
 Here, then, were the bases for agitation. The landlord 
 class continued to deny their duties with a brow of brass, 
 and to exact their rights with a hand of iron. The potato 
 famine of 1846-7-8 was followed by the insurrection of 
 1848, and emigration increased in numbers, and was 
 diverted from British America to the United States. Five 
 years also had elapsed since the Devon Commission began 
 to sit, three since it had reported, and none of the recom- 
 mendations had been acted on. 
 
 The Protestant Church established and the Whig Pro- 
 testant landowning junto were yet too strong; nor had the 
 Irish found their fulcrum. 
 
 " When O'Connell had made up his mind to raise the repeal 
 cry once more, he sent for Mr. Ray, and told him, * I sent for you, 
 Ray, to tell you I have done experimenting on the British Parlia- 
 ment. I shall now go for repeal.' But he still postponed this till 
 Easter, 1840, and did not establish his new association until Lord 
 Stanley had outraged the people of Ireland by his Bill to still 
 further diminish their restricted franchise." ^ 
 
 ^ Daunt's " Personal Recollections of O'Connell," vol. i. p. 59. 
 
" The Resit-rrection Trumpet." 131 
 
 In 1843 came the year of O'Connell's monster meetings, 
 Sir R. Peel having declared that there was "no influence, 
 power, or authority, which the prerogative of the Crown 
 and existing laws gave the Government, which should not 
 be exercised for the purpose of maintaining the union." 
 The organization of the repealers was almost perfect, and 
 reached its full dimensions. The rents were collected 
 through the clergy, and repeal wardens, under O'Connell, 
 managed the district. Usually these vast meetings were 
 held on Sunday upon the hillside, the mighty throng 
 kneeling on the green-sward around their priests with their 
 hundred altars. O'Connell had almost reversed the relative, 
 positions of Catholics and Protestants. This achievement 
 is best described by his own grand book: " Grattan sat 
 by the cradle of his country, and followed her hearse ; it 
 was left for me to sound the resurrection trumpet, and to 
 show that she was not dead, but sleeping." 
 
 Any who fancy that the present movement is epheme- 
 ral, or not national, should read Sir Charles Gavan Duffy's 
 account from notes written shortly after, of " The Muster 
 of the Nation at Tara," in 1843 ; and the letters written 
 more than a generation since, in The Morning Chronicle, by 
 Sir Charles Trevelyan, who, trained to vigilance amongst 
 a dangerous population in India, went to Ireland regarding 
 repeal as a gigantic piece of blarney, but found intense 
 desire and genuine belief— found a people singularly sober, 
 advancing in industry, good order, and respect for the 
 laws. Though O'Connell might mean peace, the people 
 meant fighting. At that time, moreover, a number of 
 Presbyterian and Congregational clergymen, constantly 
 travelling as missionaries in Munster and Connaught, 
 declared that no sectarian passions were at work, and a 
 few years later, Presbyterian ministers went as political 
 missionaries to the South, and Catholic priests and the 
 remnant of young Irelanders to the North, for the pro- 
 motion of a common purpose— a secure tenure for the 
 tenant farmers. 
 
132 The OConnell Period. 
 
 " At nine in the morning," writes Sir C. Gavan Duffy (greatly 
 compressed by me), " a small train of private carriages, containing 
 O'Connell and a few friends, set out from Merrion Square. 
 Carriages containing members of the Corporation in their robes 
 of office, and other notable citizens, fell silently in at various 
 points, and in the suburbs a long line of jaunting cars, and the 
 cortege became a procession. Through a succession of villages, 
 hamlets, and towns the entire population was afoot in holiday 
 dress, and the houses were decorated with banners on evergreens. 
 Each local muster, headed by its local band, took its place. At 
 three toll gates 1,300 vehicles paid toll, and 10,000 horsemen 
 attended O'Connell. A dozen miles from the historic hill large 
 crowds were met with, who had come from distant places during 
 the night and bivouacked in the green pastures of Meath under 
 the August sky. A little later, the repealers of Kells, Trim, and 
 Navan joined, each town preceded by its band in the national 
 uniform of green and white, and by banners, mustered by mounted 
 marshals, horsemen four deep, footmen six deep, marching as in 
 battalions. Three miles from the hill the vehicles had to be left. 
 Around the base the bands and banners were mustered — the 
 bands forty, the banners past counting. 
 
 " The procession, however, was but as a river discharging itself 
 into the ocean. The whole district was covered with men. The 
 population within a day's march began to arrive shortly before 
 daybreak, and continued to arrive, on all sides by every available 
 approach, till noon. It was impossible from any one point to see 
 the entire meeting. Hill and plain were covered with a multitude 
 countless as the bearded grain. Such a muster never before 
 assembled in one place in Ireland, and they met and parted with- 
 out offence, altercation, or accident. Three-fourths were probably 
 teetotalers, kept in discipline not only by cool brains, but by pride 
 of class. Three loiterers, twenty miles from the hill, admitted 
 that the teetotalers of the parish would not let them march 
 because they had broken the pledge. Women probably formed a 
 fifth, and their presence was a further restraint. At least, all knew 
 that there on the hill stood the council palace of Irish princes ; 
 that there St. Patrick had preached, and men of Irish birth fought 
 for national independence. 
 
''A Nation of Eight Millions r 133 
 
 " Before O'Connell's arrival successive troops visited the 
 'Mound of the hostages,' the 'Stone of destiny,' and the site 
 of Temara, but the deepest enthusiasm was reserved for the 
 'Croppie's grave.' Twenty banners were planted around it, and 
 the people knelt down bareheaded, praying for the souls that had 
 died for Ireland. On his arrival the bands saluted O'Connell 
 vi^ith triumphant music, and blessed him who typified their desire 
 to be once again a nation. . . . 
 
 " There were more men present than possessed Scotland when 
 Wallace raised the standard of independence, or Athens in the 
 days of her world renown. They were possessed by the intense 
 conviction that made irresistible soldiers of farmers and farm 
 labourers under Cromwell and Washington, and a new nation 
 might have been born that day. 
 
 " Peel would not fight (said clubs and gtiidtiuncs). Thirty meet- 
 ings had (on Sunday, October 5, 1843, the day for the Clontarf 
 meeting) been held. The nation so long without a senate, a flag, 
 an army, a judiciary, or a Government, had recreated a national 
 organism with the rudiments of all these institutions. A virtual 
 Government sat in Conciliation Hall; a popular and trusted 
 magistracy had begun to administer justice in the Arbitration 
 Courts; a fund equivalent to a poll tax was regularly paid by 
 voluntary contributions ; and an army in numbers, obedience, and 
 almost in discipline, gathered round the green flag wherever it was 
 hoisted. The executive of the United States had at its head an 
 avowed repealer. Foreign nations tendered that passive and 
 active sympathy which is so formidable, and which enabled the 
 Netherlands in the seventeenth century, and the North American 
 Colonies in the eighteenth, and Greece and Belgium in the nine- 
 teenth to triumph. 
 
 ''In 1843 the occasion for a stand in defence had come if it 
 ever could come. The two main conditions existed — there were 
 intolerable wrongs for which a peaceful remedy was scornfully 
 refused, and there were solid grounds for expecting success. A 
 nation of eight millions fighting to keep their country is an 
 immense force. Nine-tenths of the men capable of bearing arms 
 were repealers, and flushed with the passionate belief that theirs 
 was the wonder-working cause of Divine and human justice. 
 
134 ^'^^ O Connell Period. 
 
 " But on Saturday, at noon, the committee of the association 
 met at the Corn Exchange to await the threatened proclamation 
 and prohibition. Government made no sign other than the arrival 
 of five fresh regiments from England and Scotland. The grey of 
 evening came, and at half-past three the proclamation. In two 
 hours it could not be read. At dawn the masses would move, 
 and already repealers had come from Manchester, Liverpool, and 
 Belfast, and other places remote." ' 
 
 O'Connell's proclamation to submit was posted within 
 twenty miles of Clontarf during the night, and at dawn 
 his agents and the Catholic clergy explained and enforced 
 it. When day dawned, Conquer Hill, a site overlooking 
 the ancient battle-field, was occupied by horse, foot, and 
 artillery, the latter unlimbered and with lighted matches. 
 
 The cause was lost for that time. To have brought the 
 repealers to this pass was described as a masterstroke of 
 Peel's. 
 
 "As for Wellington, we learn from Raike's diary," says Sir 
 Charles Gavan Duffy, " that he muttered several times, as he went 
 into dinner, much elated at the news : 
 
 Pour la canaille 
 Faut la mitraille. 
 
 "The barracks were pierced with loopholes, and became foit- 
 resses against insurrection. Forts and martello towers were put in 
 a state of defence. Garrisons were strengthened, the supply of 
 arms and materiel of war were largely increased, and war steamers 
 were stationed on the sea coast and navigable rivers. The soldiers 
 who attended Catholic churches went in marching order, with 
 guns, bayonets, and knapsacks ready for immediate service." 
 
 As to O'Connell, his mighty soul racked with agony, 
 and possibly at this point commencing to suffer from that 
 brain softening of which he died, he exclaimed to the one 
 or two intimates with whom he dared unbend, " My God, 
 my God, what shall I do with this people ! " 
 
 ' Pp. 344-7. 
 
"Two Torment07'sl' and the ''Nation!' 135 
 
 In his duel with Peel, O'Connell won the nation's soul, 
 and lost for a while its body, which was delivered over to 
 the two tormentors — Irish landlords and an English Par- 
 liament ignorant of Ireland — for another of Lord Salisbury's 
 epochs. 
 
 Things went on to the next stage, according to the logic 
 of events "and weapons." The British Cabinet swept 
 the field clear of moral influence, and have seemed con- 
 siderably surprised ever since at something else taking 
 it. 
 
 On October 12, 1842, appeared the first number of The. 
 Nation, Mr. C. Gavan Duffy being the proprietor, and 
 John Mitchell and John Dillon amongst its writers. A 
 tremendous power was exercised by the first national press, 
 now managed with conspicuous ability. Events were 
 getting far beyond O'Connell's influence, and John Mit- 
 chell's United Irishman, and later on John Martin's Irish 
 Felo7t, became the Irish American classics. Their ulti- 
 mate aim was Home Rule ; their immediate means, an 
 Irish party in the English House, and not reliance on an 
 English party. 
 
 The last clause of the prospectus of The Nation is worth 
 remembering : 
 
 " Nationality is the projectors' first great object — a nationality 
 which will not only raise our people from their poverty by 
 securing to them the blessings of a domestic legislation, but 
 inflame and purify them with a lofty and heroic love of country — 
 a nationality of the spirit as well as the letter — a nationality 
 which may come to be stamped upon our manners, our literature, 
 and our deeds — a nationality which may embrace Protestant, 
 Catholic, and Dissenter, Milesian and Cromwellian — the Irishman 
 of a hundred generations, and the stranger who is within our 
 gates ; not a nationality which would prelude civil war, but which 
 would estabhsh internal union and external independence — a 
 nationality which would be recognized by the world, and sanc- 
 tioned by wisdom, virtue, and prudence." 
 
136 The Home Rttle Movement. 
 
 And also the teaching of The Nation : 
 
 " Every law which produced on the whole more misery than 
 happiness was wicked, and ought to be abolished or resisted. 
 But resistance often meant death by cold and hunger. It was 
 time to inquire why should landowners in Ireland be the only 
 class of creditors possessing the power of life and death. 
 
 " To win and sustain her rank as a nation, Ireland must pos- 
 sess the elements that constitute a nation in a high degree. la 
 position, climate, coasts, and soil, she had them in the highest, 
 and in population and wealth sufficiently high. But she wanted 
 an ample supply of pubUc men, and she wanted literature and art 
 
 " When a people have the boundaries of history, the separate 
 character, and physical resources, and still more, the virtue and 
 genius of a nation, they are bound in conscience, in prudence, 
 and in wisdom to attest their individuality, no matter how conci- 
 liation may lure or armies threaten." 
 
 In 1845 we come to the report of the famous Devon 
 Commission. It sat for two years, examined over mo 
 witnesses, visited every county in Ireland and ninety-six 
 towns, was embodied in fourteen volumes, and might as 
 well, for all the English cared or knew, have been buried 
 in an Irish bog or in bottomless Hades. It recommended 
 certain precise and practicable remedies, declared the 
 evidence "conclusive, pressing, and portentous," and that 
 the safety of the country called for immediate adjustment 
 of interests. This commission thus examined, concluded, 
 recommenced, and vanished into space more than a gene- 
 ration ago, and it is time for another to sit and vanish. 
 Nothing came of it ; but a good deal came of that nothing. 
 It was duly succeeded by famine, desolation, evictions, 
 assassination, war — but all these were Irish. It was not 
 till Englishmen of eminence and rank were murdered that 
 England woke up to the fact that " something must be 
 done." 
 
 Daniel O'Connell, M.P., was examined on January 28, 
 1845. He was the moth witness ; his evidence appears 
 
The Devon Commission and GConnell. 137 
 
 in the report under that number, and it relates back to 
 the Union, the objects and intention of that Union, and 
 onwards to its consequences. He said : 
 
 '* There are two prominent causes of distress in Ireland : first, 
 insecurity of tenure ; second, the enormous power of working out 
 his will which the landlord has by statute law — a power which 
 has increased exceedingly since i8oc. The landlord is all-power- 
 ful, and as to legal redress, even against a plainly unlawful act, 
 there is none, I may say, for the peasant. An attorney would 
 cost more than he has got together during his life ; and then, as 
 laid down by Chief Justice Pennefather, the law contemplates the 
 interests of the landlord alone. 
 
 " The supply of land is not equal to the demand. The tenant 
 is obliged to take the land at any price. If things go on as they 
 do, murders will accumulate, and fixity of tenure will be con- 
 quered from the landlords by fear. It was a phrase of Lord 
 Clare's that ' a landlord of straw could grind a tenant of steel,' 
 and since his time the power of the landlords has been very 
 much increased. There was, before 1800, no power to eject 
 tenants except through expensive process in superior courts, cost- 
 ing ;^i8 to :£\S'^. That operated as a caution to be more select 
 in their tenants. [It also must have given comparative fixity of 
 tenure.] But now for a few shillings a tenant can be ejected, and 
 there is no sacredness of possession." 
 
 According to other evidence on this head, an occupying 
 tenant could be ejected or distrained on by the paramount 
 landlord for rent already paid to the immediate landlord ; 
 and notice of process had been reduced from thirty days 
 to fifteen. 
 
 " And," continued O'Connell, " then there are the stamp 
 duties, and a man is legally, but unjustly evicted. I know a 
 district whg-e not one tenant has a valid lease because of the 
 want of the stamp. The horrible massacre of the Sheas in Tip- 
 perary was thus occasioned. An entire family were surrounded 
 in their house, and most were burnt to death ; such as attempted 
 to escape were slaughtered outside. 
 
13^ The Home Rule Movement. 
 
 " It is since 1800 that power of selling and distraining growing 
 crops was given in Ireland. 
 
 " I don't think there is anything in nature by which greater 
 oppression can be practised. The growing crop seized generally 
 consists of the daily food of the peasant. It is seized in the month 
 of September, for example. Before the seizure he digs a certain 
 portion for his daily meal ; by seizure nothing is left for him to 
 subsist on. If he digs, it is * rescuing a distress,' or wilful tres- 
 pass, and he is sent to gaol and his family left to starve. 
 
 "Another great cause is the Wilful Trespass Act, which gives 
 a frightful dominion to the landlord class. In truth, it has anni- 
 hilated all the smaller rights of passage, turf-cutting, sea-weed cut- 
 ting below low water mark ; also the right of drawing sand and 
 using footways oi long standing. This is one oi the maddening 
 stimulants to crime." 
 
 What, then, did this commission find, and what did it 
 recommend ? 
 
 It found that there had been thirteen committees and 
 reports before its own, and not one acted on ; that one- 
 fourth or one-fifth of the population was out of employ- 
 ment, and badly housed, clad, fed, and paid ; it found the 
 great and enduring patience of the people ; it found a total 
 area in acres of 20,808,271, of which there were 6,295,735, 
 or nearly one-third, uncultivated, and 1,486,764 only, or 
 one-fourteenth of the whole, absolutely useless by nature. 
 
 It found no arterial drainage, and no quays or roads ; 
 superfluous fish, but no fishing piers. 
 
 It found 65,000 tillage farms under one acre ; 600,000 
 farmers, and that 500,000 of them were tenants-at-will. 
 
 It found that it was not the custom for the landlord to 
 build dwelling-houses, or farm offices, or to make drains, 
 fences, or gates; that the peasant's usual house was one 
 room, and that the usual family included cow and pigs ; 
 that potatoes were often the only food, water the only 
 drink ; that the cabin let in wet, that bed and blanket 
 were rare luxuries ; that any advantage the peasant 
 
The Natio7i in Mud Huts. 139 
 
 wrested from fate was due almost entirely to temper- 
 ance. 
 
 It found by evidence abundant, overwhelming, por- 
 tentous, that the safety of the country demanded an 
 immediate adjustment of landlord and tenant rights. 
 
 It found that with high coast lines, vast interior plains, 
 humid climate, all Ireland except the rocks, was one vast 
 sponge, — the soil cold, and even the sun going wrong, 
 because it has to evaporate moisture instead of ripening 
 crops. 
 
 It found methodized war all over Ireland for the Ulster 
 tenant-right. A tenant-right was prevalent in the three 
 southern provinces, but the price paid by the incomer was 
 not large, and consequently the landlord could not select 
 his tenant as in Ulster, nor could either party be so 
 secure. 
 
 It found — for in Appendix No. 89 it quotes the census 
 of 1841 — that there were four classes of house accommo- 
 dation ; the fourth being mud cabins with only one room ; 
 the third, mud cabins with from two to four rooms : and in 
 the 32 counties of Ireland, over 42 per cent., or nearly 
 one-half of the population, occupied the fourth class, that 
 is to say, mud cabins with only one room, and 80 per 
 cent., or nearly the entire labouring population, dwelt in 
 the third or fourth class. 
 
 The Devon Commission recommended a good many 
 things, but chiefly and simply : (i) the registration of 
 agreements as to improvement, and, in default of such 
 registration, (2) power to ascertain and certify the maxi- 
 mum cost and value of them not exceeding three years' 
 rent ; and (3) valuation in case of ejectment. 
 
 The English Government took no action on the Devon 
 Commission, and soon the famine was upon them. 
 
 With the famine came the occasion which showed what 
 was the Union, and where were the real representatives of 
 
140 The Home Rule Movement. 
 
 Ireland. The Corporation of Dublin implored an early 
 meeting of parliament, and the use of public money in 
 public works. The Duke of Leinster, the Lord Mayor, 
 O'Connell, and others, waited on the Viceroy and recom- 
 mended the opening of the ports to foreign corn, the 
 stoppage of the distillation from grain, &c. Their advice 
 Peel did not take.' 
 
 Later on, the" Young Irelanders," led by O'Brien, formed 
 themselves into the Irish confederation, and separated from 
 O'Connell, their avowed object being armed insurrection, 
 and not moral force. 
 
 If we look at the dates of English administrations at 
 this time, we shall see that Peel and our own Corn Laws 
 were in in 1841, Earl Russell in 1846, Lord Derby in 
 1852, and the Earl of Aberdeen also, and that Palmerston 
 came in in 1855. All these statesmen had things more 
 important than our home empire to attend to. Their 
 eyes were on the ends of the earth, with the result 
 mentioned by Solomon in the Book of Proverbs. They 
 were bolstering up Turkish and Austrian tyranny ; be- 
 traying Hungary ; bullying China into buying Indian 
 opium ; keeping back the penny newspapers, whose pro- 
 moters said, "Let us have light; " and turning out Cobden 
 and Bright, who said, " Let us have peace and non-inter- 
 vention abroad, and vigilance and freedom at home." For 
 these good reasons they neglected real English and Irish 
 questions : to needy English tax-paying knife-grinders, 
 who wanted abatements, they made Canning's reply; and 
 to Irish appeals for bread, they offered " Devon " stones. 
 
 The value of the Devon Commission was, not that it 
 recommended anything extraordinary, but that having 
 probed the Irish mischief simply and profoundly, its 
 suggestions were adequate, had they been acted on then, 
 to stay the plague of famine, desolation, and war, that has 
 since paralyzed England, and outraged the moral sense of 
 
 ' " The Parnell Movement," p. 281. 
 
Famines, Evictions, and Fenianism. 141 
 
 the world. As it was, the famine came, and conquered 
 and altered all things. 
 
 " Under the Soup Kitchen Relief Act," said the Hon. Gavan 
 Duffy, m July, 1847, " 3,020,712 persons received separate rations 
 in one day. The famine swallowed things more precious than 
 money or lives— the temperance reformation, the political train- 
 ing of a generation, the self-respect, the purity and generosity 
 which distinguished Irish Protestants. New and terrible diseases 
 sprung up, and children were growing idiots. In eight of the 
 worst unions, the contract colifin left the workhouse seventy times 
 a week. There were two thousand cases of ophthalmia within 
 ten months in the Tipperary Union, and as many in the Limerick 
 one. In Connaught the famine created a new race with only a 
 distant and hideous resemblance to humanity, and a traffic of wild, 
 idle, lunatic-looking paupers— women struggling and screaming for 
 coin like monstrous and unclean animals. I saw these accursed 
 sights, and they are burned into my memory for ever. Poor 
 mutilated, debased scions of a tender, brave, and pious stock ; 
 martyrs in the battle of centuries for the right to Hve in their own 
 land." ' 
 
 I here take two stories of evictions, the first in Septem- 
 ber, 1847, the same year as the famine, near Mount Nugent, 
 Co. Cavan : 
 
 " Seven hundred human beings were driven from their homes 
 on this one day. There was not a shilling of rent due on the 
 estate at the time, except by one man. The sherift's assistants 
 employed to extinguish the hearths and demolish the homes 
 of those honest industrious men stopped suddenly, and recoiled 
 from two dwellings where was typhus fever. The agent in- 
 sisted that these houses should come down, but ordered a 
 large winnowing-sheet to be secured over the beds of the de- 
 lirious fever victims, and then directed the houses to be unroofed 
 cautiously and slowly. I administered the last sacraments to 
 four of the victims next day, and save the winnowing-sheet, there 
 was not then a roof nearer than the canopy of heaven. The 
 
 ' See *' The Parnell Movement," p. 122. 
 
142 The Home Rule Movement. 
 
 wailing of the women, the screams of the children, the agony of 
 the men, wrung tears from all. I saw the officers and men of a 
 large police force who were obliged to attend on the occasion cry- 
 like children. The heavy rains descended in torrents through the 
 night. ... I visited them next morning, and rode from place to 
 place. The landed proprietors in a circle all round, and for many 
 miles in all directions, warned the tenantry against admitting 
 these poor people to even a single night's shelter. Many at last 
 graduated from the workhouse to the tomb, and in little more 
 than three years nearly a fourth of them lay quietly in their 
 graves." ^ 
 
 It is useless to allege that these are rare occurrences. 
 Unjust evictions are the natural history of Ireland. Even 
 Sir Robert Peel was appalled at them, and said so in the 
 House at the time of the Clare extermination : 
 
 " I must say I do not think the records of any country, civilized 
 or barbarous, ever presented such a statement as that presented to 
 the House in a letter by Captain Kennedy. This gentleman, an 
 officer I beheve in Her Majesty's Service, states that in one union 
 — at a time of famine within one year, 15,000 persons have been 
 driven from their homes; and that within the last month 1,200 
 more persons have had their houses levelled to the ground." 
 
 The second specimen I shall give is a narrative by- 
 Ellis Carr : ^ 
 
 ** Under the rain stood a group of stalwart peasants, fiercely ex- 
 cited. Emerging from the road was a long double file of consta- 
 bulary with fixed bayonets. On they came, two by two, gradually' 
 forming a half-circle round the cottages. Execrations rent the 
 air ; but a single look from the priest, and ' remember your pro- 
 mise, boys,' calmed the tumult. 
 
 "Already the women had come out of the cottages, and their 
 sons and husbands had commenced to remove the household 
 goods. But seated on a low chair, at the side of the empty hearth, 
 was a very old man, and when the first piece of furniture was taken 
 
 ' Summarised from the narrative of Dr. Nulty, Bishop of Meath (see " New 
 Ireland," vol. i.). ^ Gill, Dublin. 
 
Families, Evictions, and Feniaiiism. 143 
 
 out a change came over him, and he sat crying, wringing his hands, 
 and rocking himself to and fro. First came the old camp bed- 
 stead, in which he and every child of his had smiled and wept in 
 infancy, then the faded patchwork quilt, and the dresser his wife 
 used to boast of. Then the spinning-wheel, on which the old man 
 gazed, and in fancy saw half a century back his young bride at 
 work, and he listening to her song as she kept time to the hum- 
 ming of the wheel. As his grief grew greater his granddaughter bent 
 over him, and twining her arms round his neck like a mother 
 soothing a child, stroked his aged head which rested on her 
 breast. In a few minutes the old man was seen at the door lean- 
 ing on the priest's arm, another moment and all would be over, but 
 on the door-step he flung himself with a faint cry on his knees, 
 clinging to the door-post, and pressing his lips again and again to 
 the hard wood in despair and agony. In vain Molly used every 
 endearment to coax him away. In vain the priest, who saw that 
 the crowd would soon be beyond his control, spoke of the sorrows 
 of Him who had not whereon to lay His head, and gently threw 
 his arms round the old man to make him yield. Mat's lips moved 
 convulsively, but no speech came from them. Then he gasped 
 heavily, and with a deep sigh fell back dead." 
 
 One cannot help asking whose property was that door- 
 post and that cottage, and the cottages in the preceding 
 story ? According to the usual custom, the tenant reared 
 those cottages, and paid rack-rent for that land. We have 
 only to turn to Arthur Young's account of the reclamation 
 by Whiteboys of an Irish mountain under a liberal land- 
 lord, to see and feel how loyal and good are the Irish with 
 fair treatment ; and we have only to imagine Sir William 
 Osborne's successors to be rack-rented, to trace the inevit- 
 able results in outrage and reaction : 
 
 " Sir William Osborne owned a mountain in Waterford. The 
 tenant thought it useless, and offered it him back without deduction 
 of rent. Sir William met a beggar with a wife and six children in 
 rags, built a cabin for him, gave him five acres and as much lime 
 as he would come for. The man flourished, repaid the ;^4, and 
 soon got twelve acres under cultivation, and in twelve years stock 
 
144 The Home Rule Movement. 
 
 worth /TSo. Others applied, and Sir William fixed them on the 
 same mountain, with terms ending with the lease of the farm ; and 
 they kept coming, though when Young visited the place only two 
 years had to run. Thus Sir William has fixed twenty-two families, 
 the meanest growing rich, and their industry has no bounds, nor is 
 the day long enough for their incessant labour. He has told them 
 that at the end of the lease a rent will be charged, and some have 
 marked out thirty or forty acres which they wish to have on those 
 terms. Nine-tenths of them were Whiteboys. In time they will 
 take the whole mountain of nine hundred acres. The children work, 
 and the women spin. The villainy of the greatest miscreants is 
 all situation and circumstance. Give them property and the fruit 
 of their labour. This Sir W. Osborne has done with the refuse of 
 the Whiteboys. Yet in spite of such facts do the lazy, trifling, 
 negligent, slobbering owners of Irish mountains leave them to the 
 grouse and foxes." ^ 
 
 Mr. Wilfrid Blunt occupies a whole page in The. Pall 
 Mall Gazette of April 5, 1886, in telling the story of a 
 similar mountain rack-rented, and how^ a landlord distrained 
 and evicted his tenant because he owed his tenant 
 jTgS 17s. 3d. His accuracy has been questioned, but 
 condensing a good deal, and using Mr. Blunt's own words, 
 this is how he says the trick is done : 
 
 "Just men would be shocked to find how the case runs between 
 the Celtic peasant and the English peer. Some fourteen miles 
 from Boyle is a tract of mountain land, and the little whitewashed 
 houses of the tenants dot the landscape close to each other right 
 up to the crest of the hills in plots of five to ten acres. The 
 Celtic population, driven from the fatter lands of the plains, have 
 reclaimed the soil at their own cost, and built these dwellings 
 with their own hands. Although evictions had taken place after 
 the famine, and the better lands been assumed by the landlords 
 [this seems to have been universally the case in the famine time], 
 the hill - tenants had not been very badly treated till recent 
 years. The peculiarity of the Celtic peasantry, and what puts 
 
 ' Arthur Young, " Mountain Improvements in Waterford by Whiteboys, 
 1787," pp. 326-8. 
 
Famines, Evictions, and Fenianism. 145 
 
 them at the mercy of their landlords, is that they submit to 
 almost any injustice rather than be driven away. Land acquires, 
 for an unscrupulous landlord, many times its commercial value, 
 and the peasant may be despoiled over and over again before he 
 will quit his holding. The agent not only raised all the rents, 
 but in many cases decreased the acreage. The figures of a 
 greater number shows increase of 50 per cent, double and some- 
 times nearly three times the old rent. The fancy demands of 
 the landlords were met out of earnings in England, or pious 
 offerings of relations who had crossed the Atlantic. The Land 
 Act of 1 88 1 seems to have brought little relief. The few who 
 could afford to apply got their rent lowered. Now they are being 
 evicted for a year or only half a year's rent. 
 
 *' Drained by rack-rent, they have nothing to fall back upon. 
 The price of stock has fallen, and the cost of rearing increased; 
 yet on this Kilrouan estate I cannot discover that till last autumn 
 the huge rents were greatly, or indeed at all, in arrears. In many 
 instances, only the last half year. Father Reddy assures me that, 
 except in one instance, he is absolutely certain that poverty alone 
 is the cause of the present non-payment. 
 
 " Father Reddy, finding last autumn the tenants could not pay 
 the whole rent, made an appeal for reductions ; the tenants waited 
 on the agent, and were served with writs at a cost of £1. 
 Twelve tenants have been evicted a month ago, in the midst of 
 the severe weather, with the aid of 180 constabulary, and three 
 constables to each house are now guarding the ' emergency men ' 
 or caretakers. Next week fifty-three more households are 
 threatened. 
 
 " I will now give you the commercial case between Pat McMann 
 and the Earl of Kingston. 
 
 " Pat McMann is a little old man of seventy, much bent and 
 bowed, but cheerful, born in 'the house yonder, where the 
 soldiers are.' I found him in a neighbour's house. His house 
 had been built by his father, who had originally taken five acres. 
 Thirty years ago, he himself reclaimed two and a half acres more 
 from the mountain, going to the valley for the lime and carrying 
 it up in baskets on his head at a shilling the basket. He had 
 paid ;^2o for the tenant right of another bit of eight acres, 
 
 II 
 
146 The Home Rule Movement. 
 
 which the very next year the landlord had taken away without 
 any compensation whatever. He paid ;^ 5 rent all but 2d. for the 
 seven and a half acres. People advised him to go to the court, 
 but where was he to get the money? In the autumn he was 
 sued for rent ;!^ 2 9s. iid. and ;Q\ fine, andnow;^3 12s. lod. cost 
 of eviction. He and his father had paid rent for seventy years. 
 He believed, like Job, in the justice of God, and that he would 
 get back one day before he died into his own house. The fields 
 were of the poorest sort, the house built with his own father's 
 hands, solid and weather-tight. His bed was occupied by the 
 ' emergency man ' and the three constables, who were cooking the 
 old owner's potatoes. 
 
 Pat owes Landlord ... 
 
 Costs 
 
 Per Contra. 
 A house 
 
 Two and a half acres reclaimed 
 EigTit acres resumed without compensation 
 Fines 
 
 105 o o 
 " Balance of Pat's loss ^^98 17s. 3d.— that is to say, Pat, after 
 seventy years' honest labour, is to die in the workhouse because 
 the landlord owes him £,()Z 17s. 3d." 
 
 This reminds one of Swift's recommendation to a 
 parson whose church was dilapidated, to " give it to the 
 Papists, and when they had repaired it to take it back," 
 and which was much improved on by the landlord, who 
 used at one time to hire naked land to the Papists, and 
 when they had put it in working order took it back at 
 his discretion. 
 
 In 1850 the Irish Tenant League was formed, Duffy 
 and Frederick Lucas its chief journalists. In 1852, Lucas 
 wrote of the Irish peasantry : *' There is not in the world 
 
 £ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 2 
 
 9 
 
 ir 
 
 3 
 
 12 
 
 10 
 
 6 
 
 2 
 
 9 
 
 70 
 
 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 
 
 20 
 
 
 
 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 
 
Famines, Evictions, and Fenianism. 147 
 
 a people for whom a man of any heart or conscience 
 would sooner lay down his life." 
 
 Fifty tenant-right members were now returned to parlia- 
 ment, pledged to oppose all Governments that did not 
 allow the principle of tenant-right for all Ireland. 
 
 Between 1845 and 1885 emigration and hunger reduced 
 the population one-half, and the half left was the worse. 
 Seventy-five per cent, of the emigrants were between 
 fifteen and thirty-five years of age. During seven months 
 of 1863, wrote The Times, 80,000 young men and women 
 left Ireland with money in their pockets, and strong limbs 
 and stout hearts. They left behind them the ailing, the 
 weak, and the aged. 
 
 "This island," wrote The Nation, "isbeingquietly cleared— with 
 its sixteen harbours, fertile soil, noble rivers, and beautiful lakes, 
 fertile mines, and riches of every kind— is being quietly cleared 
 for the interests and luxuries of humanity." ^ 
 
 Nemesis, however, was at hand, and from 1855 to 1S65, 
 and especially after the funeral of McManus in 1861, an 
 active policy became more apparent. The civil wars in 
 America had brought many thousands of exiled Irish into 
 actual warfare, and made them familiar with the idea of 
 liberating Ireland by arms. McManus was one of the 
 1848 leaders, and died at San Francisco in 1861. It was 
 resolved to bury him in Ireland, and after a conflict with 
 Archbishop Cullen and other authorities, a demonstration 
 of 50,000 followed the remains, and at least as many 
 lined the streets. The procession paused solemnly, with 
 uncovered heads, at every spot sacred to Ireland, slacken- 
 ing in silent and stern defiance opposite the Castle. From 
 this time the advance of Fenianis-m was rapid.^ 
 
 Organizers went all over Ireland swearing in men by 
 dozens or scores every night. It often happened that 
 
 ' August 26, 1865. 
 
 " "The Pamell Movement," p. 208. 
 
148 The Home Rule Movement, 
 
 regiments passing through country towns cheered loudly 
 in open air for the Irish Republic. By 1865 they had 
 enrolled 15,000 men in the British army alone. 
 
 On June 24, 1848 (six years after The Nation), appeared 
 the first number oJF The Irish Felon, a title intimating that 
 liberty could only be conquered against law, in which 
 James Fintan Lalor went for the absolute independence 
 of Ireland. 
 
 "The principle," he said, "I state, and mean to stand upon, is 
 this : that the entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up 
 to the sun and down to the centre, is vested of right in the people 
 of Ireland ; that they, and none but they, are the landowners and 
 lawmakers of this island, and that this right of ownership may 
 and ought to be asserted and enforced by any and all means 
 which God has put in the power of man. The entire soil of a 
 country belongs of right to the entire people. The land question 
 contains, and the legislative question does not contain, the 
 materials from which victory is to be manufactured. Victory 
 follows that banner, and no other. This island is our own, and 
 have it we will. There can be no right of property in eight 
 thousand, against the property, security, independence, and 
 existence of eight millions, to take their food 'and give them 
 famine, to take their home and give them the workhouse.'' Such 
 rights are the code of the brigand, and can be enforced only by 
 the hangman. War to their destruction or my own." 
 
 In the second number of The Irish Felon, Lalor de- 
 clared for two objects — the abolition of the British 
 Government, and the formation of a national one. 
 
 *' Link repeal to the land, like a railway-carriage to its 
 engine ; ages have prepared it. Thus repeal will carry 
 itself, like a cannon-ball down hill." 
 
 In the third number, July 8, 1848, Lalor rehearsed 
 the " Faith of a Felon " : 
 
 " Refuse all rent, except what remains after subsistence. Defy 
 ejectment. The English Government must then either surrender 
 the landlords, or support them with the armed power of the 
 
Famines, Evictions , and Fenianism. 149 
 
 empire. , If it surrenders the landlords, then the people are lords ; 
 if it supports them, and attempts to carry the whole harvest of 
 Ireland, we must oppose passive resistance, break up roads, break 
 down bridges, and on occasion try the steel. Such a war would 
 propagate itself throughout Europe. 
 
 " The right of the people to make laws was the first great moral 
 earthquake. 
 
 " The right of the people to own land is the next. 
 
 " I will place Ireland in the van of the world, and set her aloft 
 in the blaze of the sun." 
 
 The Irish People, on the same lines, was started in Dub- 
 lin by James Stephen, in 1863, and suppressed in 1865. 
 It urged the masses to give even their clergy the go-by, 
 and trust to themselves. ** There were three questions in 
 Ireland — the Church question, the education question, the 
 land question. The Church was an English question, 
 education a Roman question, the land the Irish question." 
 
 In 1865, the American War ended, and a large number 
 of disbanded Irish soldiers came to Ireland, and joined 
 Stephen's movement. 
 
 In 1864, negotiations had been entered into to effect an 
 alliance between Irish and English Liberalism, and the 
 National Association of Ireland was founded for the Dis- 
 establishment of the Irish Church and alteration of the 
 Land Laws ; and in 1866 Mr. Bright was entertained at a 
 public banquet in Ireland. Irish Nationalists and English 
 Liberals were never on more cordial terms. 
 
 In 1868, Mr. Gladstone declared that " Ireland must be 
 governed by Irish ideas." 
 
 In 1869, Mr. Gladstone's Disestablishment Bill was 
 passed ; and in 1870, the Peace Preservation Act and 
 Land Bill. 
 
 In the autumn of 1871, Mr. Gladstone said at Aberdeen 
 of Mr. Butt : 
 
 " When that learned gentleman makes his appearance in parlia- 
 ment, we shall all be very glad, and we shall be very anxious to 
 
150 The Parnell Movement. 
 
 discuss all about this matter of Home Rule. It will be an im- 
 mense advantage in dealing with this question that its chief advo- 
 cates should be there. It is in that way that in this country we 
 deal with all political questions." 
 
 On September i, 1871, "The Home Government 
 Association," to include all parties, met in Dublin. On 
 the 20th, Mr. Isaac Butt, leader of the Home Rule 
 movement, v^^as elected by Limerick, and in 1873 the pro- 
 gramme of the party requiring an Irish parliament was 
 published. The population vi^as now (April) 5,400,000. 
 
 In 1871 and in March and July, 1874, and in 1875, 
 motions for Home Rule were defeated in Parliament ; on 
 August 6, 1875, on the occasion of the centenary of 
 O'Connell's birth, there was much dissension between the 
 clerical and Home Rule parties, and in November the 
 centenary committee was dissolved. 
 
 "The Gladstone Ballot Act" (1872), says Mr. T. 
 P. O'Connor in "The Parnell Movement" (p. 225), 
 " transcended in importance any other of the great acts of 
 his first premiership ; it gave the real voice of Ireland 
 some opportunity of making itself heard." 
 
 At the 1874 election, the Home Rule advocates were 
 seated in ParHament, under the generalship of Mr. Butt.. 
 It, however, became more and more apparent that if the 
 Irish were to do any good in the House, they must form 
 an Irish party outside and above all English parties. 
 
 In 1875, the man began to come to the front who has 
 always known what was, from the Irish standpoint, the 
 right thing to do, and how to do it. He it was who made 
 English government incompatible in the same House with 
 Irish misgovernment. He it was who would not permit 
 English home rule without Irish. He roused, and helped 
 others to rouse, the ten millions of Irish elsewhere, by his 
 mission to America, his address to their House of Repre- 
 
Parliamentary Hysterics. 151 
 
 sentatives, and the movement in Australia. After the 
 three bad harvests, and the '* exterminations," he taught 
 even House of Commons Christians that Irishmen are of 
 as much value as cattle and acres. He made Ireland a 
 continuous Cabinet question, by making it a question of 
 breaking Cabinets up ; he wrought and welded the Irish 
 phalanx into unity, till they rendered possible home rule 
 for both nations, brought down to the meanest apprehen- 
 sion the difference between the ** provincial " conception 
 of local self-government and the glorious one of national 
 self-government, and at last, having dictated terms in the 
 capitol, makes them terms of peace between the two 
 nations. 
 
 The great characteristic, however, of the Parnell move- 
 ment is, that whilst it makes the land the basis of the 
 movement in Ireland, it makes a policy of parliamentary 
 action and obstruction the basis in England. 
 
 Mr. T. P. O'Connor best states the all-important Irish 
 point of view as to the policy of obstruction in the House, 
 and the question of land and rent : 
 
 *' One of the great forces which had inspired the hope and 
 strength which made the new movement possible, was the spirit 
 excited throughout Ireland by the attitude of Mr. Parnell and 
 Mr, Biggar in the House. The scenes — vexatious, indecorous, 
 wanton, or boorish, as they appeared to the English public — were 
 to the people of Ireland the electric messages of new hopes. 
 Every word of those scenes was read with fierce and breathless 
 eagerness. The representatives of a country trodden under foot 
 for centuries were seen in the citadel of the enemy, aggressive and 
 defiant. The Parliament that trampled upon every Irish demand 
 for so many generations was seen raging in hysteric and impotent 
 fury against two determined men. The movement that starts 
 from 1879 will not be understood unless the fact is grasped that 
 Ireland at that moment was living under the burning glow of 
 parliamentary obstruction. The temper which this fact produces 
 was the original impulse in preventing the farmers of 1879 from 
 
152 The Parnell Movement. 
 
 lying down dumb, helpless, and cowering under eviction, famine, 
 and plague, as had been done by their fathers in 1846-7. 
 
 " Mr. Parnell was rapidly becoming the idol of the people, who 
 could fuse their passions and affections into a united and mighty 
 effort. 
 
 "How was the emergency of deepening distress, of ever-ad- 
 vancing famine, and ever-increasing eviction to be met? And 
 now I have come to one of the cross-roads of my story. All that 
 I have written will have failed if the reader do not see the road 
 to take at this crisis, clearly marked out as with an iron finger. 
 1846-7 are the background of 1879-80. 1846-7 left two 
 memories — of terrible suffering, and how it was submitted to. 
 There has been no feeling so bitter as that much of the awful 
 suffering could have been prevented if the people only had had 
 courage to act in self-defence; to refuse to allow food to be 
 exported from a starving nation ; to refuse impossible rents that 
 one man might luxuriate in the hour of national cataclysm, and 
 that tens of thousands might perish in the agonies of hunger and 
 of typhus fever ; to refuse submission to decrees of eviction, death, 
 or exile from lands brought to fertility by their toil, from houses 
 built in their own sweat and blood and tears. The principle 
 involved is indeed one that has passed from the region of debate 
 to that of the jurisprudence of more than one nation. Anybody 
 who will take the trouble to read the debates on the Compensa- 
 tion for Disturbance Bill will find instances given from the laws 
 of Rome, Scotland, and Canada, in which stress of season is held 
 to modify all contracts for rent. In the case of Ireland the 
 whole controversy resolves itself into the question — rent or 
 nation ? " ^ 
 
 Mr. Parnell (Charles Stewart) was born in 1846. Sir 
 John Parnell, his great-grandfather, held for many years 
 the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Irish 
 Parliament, and resigned rather than vote for the Union. 
 Sir Henry (Sir John's son) served many years in the 
 English Commons, and became Lord Congleton in 1841. 
 
 In 1875, Mr. Parnell was returned to Parliament, and 
 
 ' " The Parnell Movement," pp. 303-5. 
 
''Rent or Nation^ 153 
 
 in 1876 engaged in one or two stubborn conflicts with the 
 Government. In February, 1877, he introduced ''The 
 Irish Church Act Amendment Bill," to facilitate purchase 
 of their holdings by the tenantry of the disestablished 
 Church, and was beaten by 150 to no. 
 
 In the Prison Bill, the Mutiny Bill (flogging clauses), 
 and again in the South Africa Bill, he developed thoroughly 
 the " active," or " obstructive," policy in the House. 
 
 At a conference of the Irish party, in January, 1877, 
 when Mr. Butt's policy was compared with Mr. Parnell's, 
 the latter said that : 
 
 •" If we had to deal with men capable of listening to fair argu- 
 ments, there would be every hope of success for the policy of 
 Mr. Butt, as carried out in past sessions, but we are dealing with 
 political parties who really consider the interests of their political 
 organizations as paramount beyond any other consideration." ^ 
 
 At the annual convention of the Home Rule Confedera- 
 tion, at the close of this year, Mr. Butt was deposed and 
 Mr. Parnell elected in his place. 
 
 It was the habit of many farmers of Mayo, Galway, and 
 Donegal to go to England for the harvest, earning about 
 3^100,000, which went not to their wives and families, but 
 to the landlord. The loss of these men in 1877 is calcu- 
 lated by Dr. Wilson Hancock at ^^250,000. 
 
 In 1878 Mr. Davitt promulgated his plan to drive 
 owners of property out of the island by constitutional 
 agitation on the principles of labour, but the most im- 
 portant part of Davitt's scheme was to get possession of 
 local bodies throughout Ireland. 
 
 Butt's federal plans were now dismissed as absurd. 
 Land, it was said, must be the basis, and let occupiers be 
 allowed to purchase their lands or relegate landlords to 
 another solution. They should begin with absentees (" the 
 country swarmed with them "), especially with the Eng- 
 
 ' " The Parnell Movement," p. 279. 
 
154 1^^^ Parnell Movement. 
 
 lish lords, and the London Companies, and stop evic- 
 tions. 
 
 Davitt also instituted his enormous Vigilance Com- 
 mittees, following up his important scheme of 1878, to 
 get possession of local bodies throughout Ireland. Davitt 
 and Co. v/ere going a longer journey than most Irish 
 politicians, and on November 9, 1879, Messrs. Davitt, 
 Daly, and Killen were arrested for seditious language. 
 
 It is best to resort to the same Irish writer as before, 
 for a vindication which seems to me ample, of Mr. Parnell's 
 conduct and policy at this crisis : 
 
 "After two famines," writes Mr. T. P. O'Connor, "the country 
 was approaching a third. The following figures show the depre- 
 ciation in the potato crop. 
 
 Value. ^ 
 
 1876 ;^i2,464,382. 
 
 1877 5.271.822. 
 
 1878 7,579,512. 
 
 But value in 1879 was only ^^3, 341, 028. In 1878, said the 
 Registrar-General, the estimated quantity of potatoes in Ireland was 
 50,530,080 cwts., the average for ten years being 60,752,918 cwts., 
 whereas the estimated yield for 1879 was only 22,273,520 cwts. 
 
 Compare with this the official figures of eviction. 
 
 1876 1269 
 
 1877 1323 
 
 1878 1749 
 
 1879 2667 
 
 The landlords of 1879 justified their traditions, the 
 deeper the distress the more the evictions, and, as a 
 climax, Mr. James Lowther was then Irish Chief Secre- 
 tary. 
 
 The question was, under all these misfortunes, what 
 should be done ? 
 
 " Did the fact," says Mr. T. P. O'Connor, "justify a movement 
 ' Thorn's Directory. 
 
" Grip on Homesteads." 155 
 
 against rent and eviction ? If the farmer gave all the rent to the 
 landlords, they would allow themselves to perish ; if not they 
 were subject to eviction- wholesale starvation and wholesale 
 eviction." 
 
 The first land meeting Mr. Parnell attended was at 
 Westport, June 8, 1879. The resolution he spoke to was 
 that : 
 
 "Whereas many landlords by successfully asserting in the courts 
 their power to increase rents, irrespective of the value of the hold- 
 ings, have rendered worthless the Land Act of 1870 as a protec- 
 tion to tenants ; not only political expediency, but justice and 
 the vital interests of Ireland, demand such a readjustment of the 
 land tenure-based on the principle that the occupier shall be 
 the owner— as will prevent further confiscation." 
 
 "In Belgium, Prussia, France, and Russia, the land," said Mr. 
 Parnell, "has been given to the people-to the occupiers in some 
 cases by revolution ; in Prussia the landlords have been purchased 
 out. If such an agreement could be made without injury to 
 the landlord it would benefit the country." ^ 
 
 This, he said, was the final settlement. The immediate 
 point was to resist eviction. He declared that a fair rent 
 had been transformed by the failure of the potato into an 
 exorbitant rent. '' xNow what must we do, in order to 
 mduce the landlords to see the position ? You must show 
 the landlords that you intend to hold a firm grip on your 
 homesteads and land." = 
 
 In December, 1879, Mr. Parnell sailed for America, to 
 raise funds for relief, and for the new organization; 
 lectured before several State legislatures, and the House 
 of Representatives at Washington, Lafayette, Kossuth, 
 and another having alone had that honour before him. 
 
 In his manifesto to the people of America, he said, that 
 now for the first time in history the landlords and the 
 tenants of Ireland stood face to face. The next two 
 
 ' " The Parnell Movement," p. 307. 
 ' Freeman's Journal, June i, 1879. 
 
156 The Parnell Movement. 
 
 months would tell whether the conduct of the landlords 
 would deprive them of all claim to the sympathy of 
 civilization. If attempts at evictions were made on a large 
 scale, it would take a thousand men to enforce the land- 
 lords' claims. If the prosecution were successful, and the 
 leaders incarcerated, the peasants might despair of con- 
 stitutional remedies. 
 
 The following extracts from Mr. Parnell's speeches in 
 America and Ireland ^ show the policy of his mission, the 
 power of his appeal, and the sympathy with which 
 America responded : 
 
 " Well, we sailed for New York, and it was only on my entry to 
 New York that I first commenced to appreciate the undeveloped 
 power that is available for your succour, not only in the matter of 
 charity, but in other matters of a very different nature if you call 
 upon them. I feel confident that if you ever call upon them in 
 another field and in another way for help, and if you can show 
 them that there is a fair chance of success (enthusiastic cheering), 
 that you will have their assistance, their trained and organized 
 assistance." ^ 
 
 "We stand to-day in the same position that our ancestors 
 stood. We declare that it is the duty of every Irishman to free 
 his country if he can. We refuse to inflict needless suffering on 
 the masses of our people. We will work by constitutional means 
 as long as it suits us (great cheering). We refuse to plunge this 
 country into the horrors of civil wars when she has not a chance ; 
 but I ask any true Irishman, priest or layman, whether he would 
 not consider it the first duty to do what he could to enable his 
 country to take her place among the nations of the world — to give 
 their lives to the country that gave them birth. I call for no vain, 
 no useless sacrifice ; our present path is written within the lines of 
 the constitution. England has given us that constitution for her 
 purposes ; we will use it for our own (loud cheers)." 3 
 
 " It has given me great pleasure, during my visit to the cities of 
 
 ' See Mr. Arnold Foster's "Truth' about the Irish Land League," 1882. 
 
 ^ At Galway, October 25, 1881. 
 
 3 At Waterford, December 6, 1881, Freemati^ s Journal x&^oxi. 
 
Parnell in America. 157 
 
 this country, to see the armed regiments of Irishmen who have 
 frequently turned out to escort us. I thought that each of them 
 must wish, * Oh, that I could carry these arms to Ireland ! ' Well, 
 it may come to that some day or other." ' 
 
 " The fiendish works of eviction is still pursued, but from the 
 blood of the brave Connemara women who resisted the home 
 destroyers shall spring up a power which will sweep away not only 
 the land system, but the infamous Government that maintains it."^' 
 
 " With your help in keeping our people alive this winter we shall 
 kill the Irish landlord system, and when we have given Ireland to 
 the people of Ireland, we shall have laid the foundation upon 
 which to build up our Irish nation. The feudal tenure and the 
 rule of the minority have been the corner-stone of English misrule. 
 Pull out that corner-stone, break it up, destroy it, and you under- 
 mine English misgpvernment." 3 
 
 On the 24th of September, 1881, The United Ireland said, 
 "The convention has thrust Mr. Gladstone's Act aside. 
 The Land League resumes its sovereignty and its purpose. 
 If the Land Courts do its bidding, v^^ell ; if they refuse to 
 do it, better still ; " and, Mr. T. P. O'Connor added, 
 *' Landlordism is dead. Gladstone's policy was to fix a 
 relation between the landlord and tenant ; the policy of 
 the League was to abolish the relation." 
 The Land League placard was headed : 
 
 TO THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND. 
 
 Pay no Rent. 
 
 Avoid the Land Court. 
 
 hold the harvest, 
 
 How can they distrain for rent or tithes of a million of 
 
 tenants ? 
 
 " Now what are you to do to a tenant who bids for a farm from 
 which his neighbour has been evicted ? (Various shouts, * kill him,' 
 ' shoot him.') I wish to find out a better way which would give 
 the lost sinner an opportunity of repenting. Shun him — on the 
 
 ' At Cleveland, Ohio, January 26, 1881, 
 
 ' At Pittston, February i6th, 3 At Cincinnati, Febri'.ary 26th. 
 
158 The Pm'nell Movement. 
 
 roadside, in the streets, at the shop counter, in the fair and market, 
 and even in the house of worship, by leaving him alone as if he 
 were a leper of old." ^ 
 
 " The objects of the Land League are very simple. First, to 
 prevent rack-renting ; second, to enable tenants to become owners 
 of their own farms by paying a fair rent for a limited nnmber of 
 years ; third, to facilitate the working of the Bright clauses of the 
 Land Act." ^ 
 
 "The present Chief Secretary, who was then all smiles and 
 promises, would not have proceeded very far before he would have 
 found that he had undertaken an impossible task to govern 
 Ireland, and that the only way to govern Ireland is to allow her 
 to govern herself. The English Government know that if they 
 fail in upholding landlordism here — and they will fail — their power 
 to misrule Ireland will go too." 3 
 
 " The National Land League has plenty of money at its disposal 
 for the purpose of defending the tenantry of Ireland in the court 
 of law. Your fellow-countrymen in America will send you as much 
 money as you want. Everywhere throughout the States I found 
 the greatest anxiety to keep you. The day is dawning when we 
 shall have taken the first great step to strike down British misrule, 
 and the noble dreams of Grattan and of every Irish patriot ought 
 to be brought to a triumph." '^ 
 
 " Now we are a party occupying an independent position in the 
 House of Commons, pledged to remain aloof from every English 
 party who will not concede the right of home government. We 
 can push the policy just as far as we like. It is as sharp and 
 potent for a party against the present Whig ministry as it was for 
 a party of seven against the last Tory government." s 
 
 " They cannot suspend the Habeas Corpus Act without an Act 
 of Parliament. They cannot pass a Coercion Act without an Act 
 
 ' Mr. Parnell at Ennis. 
 
 ^ Mr. Parnell, Hansard, January 7, 1881. 
 
 3 Mr. Parnell at Gal way, October i, 1881. 
 
 •t Mr. Parnell at Beaufort, May 16, 1881. 
 
 5 Mr. Parnell at Cork, October 4, 1881. Irish Times report. 
 
Beaconsfield, Hartington, Gladstone. 159 
 
 of Parliament, and as long as we are able to stand in Parliament I 
 will undertake to say they will pass neither the one nor the other 
 (loud and prolonged cheering)." 
 
 On March 8, 1880, a dissolution of Parliament was 
 announced, and there followed manifestoes from the three 
 leaders. Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Hartington, and Mr. 
 Gladstone, which defined the issues, stamped the spirit in 
 which they have been since fought out by the Whig and 
 Tory parties, but left the future open to the democracy of 
 the three nations. 
 
 On the 9th, the Prime Minister's letter to the Duke of 
 Marlborough, then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, proceeded 
 as follows : 
 
 " Nevertheless, a danger scarcely less disastrous than pestilence 
 or famine now distracts Ireland. A portion of its population is 
 now attempting to sever the constitutional tie which unites to Great 
 Britain. It is to be hoped that all men of light and leading will 
 resist . . . this policy of decomposition. 
 
 "The power of England and the peace of Europe will largely 
 depend upon the verdict of the country." 
 
 On the nth, Lord Hartington issued his address. " He 
 knew of no policy of decomposition. He believed Irish 
 Home Rule to be impracticable and mischievous, and 
 should continue to oppose it." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's appeal to the nation partly fore- 
 shadowed his policy. He said : 
 
 "That those who endangered the Union with Ireland were the 
 party that maintained there an alien Church, an unjust Land Law, 
 and franchises inferior to our own; and the true supporters of the 
 Union were those who firmly upheld the supreme authority of 
 Parliament, but exercised that authority to bind the three nations 
 by the indissoluble tie of liberal and equal laws." 
 
 The election soon after swept the Conservatives from 
 power by the greatest defeat that ever befell an English 
 political party. 
 
i6o The Parnell Movement. 
 
 On May 20, 1880, the Queen's Speech announced 
 ** the Peace Preservation Act for Ireland expires on the 
 ist June. You will not be asked to renew it"; and that 
 the borough franchise in Ireland would be extended. 
 
 On March 31, 1880, Mr. Gladstone at Midlothian 
 thought the " condition of Ireland one of peculiar pros- 
 perity," and spoke of the absence of crime and outrage ; 
 and Mr. Forster said we could govern Ireland by the 
 ordinary appliances of the law. 
 
 Thenewsofthe dissolution reached Mr. Parnell on March 
 8th, when speaking at Montreal. Hastening home, Mr. 
 T. P. O'Connor says that from the moment he landed in 
 Ireland he proceeded to fight the election with an energy that 
 seemed diabolic. He rushed from one part of the country 
 to another, made innumerable speeches, and interviewed 
 most of the candidates, was elected for three consti- 
 tuencies, and chose Cork city. 
 
 " In England and Scotland," writes Mr. T. P. O'Connor, " the 
 general election had returned Mr. Gladstone to power. The 
 masses of the Irish received the news with intense joy. The anti- 
 Irish manifesto of Lord Beaconsfield had suggested the defeat of 
 the Tories as the first duty of Irishmen everywhere. The leaders 
 of the Home Rule confederation in England and Scotland issued 
 a manifesto calling on the Irish electors to go solid for the 
 Liberals. ' I went without my dinner,' said a Poplar Irishman to 
 me, 'to vote for Mr. Bryce, and now he votes for coercion.' 
 Liberals overflowed with affection for Ireland ; but Mr. Parnell 
 was no party to this blind adhesion to Liberals." 
 
 In July, 1880, the " Compensation for Disturbance Bill," 
 the object of which was to check evictions, restrain land- 
 lords, and benefit tenants, passed the Commons, 295-217; 
 but, on August 3rd, was rejected by the Lords, 282-51. 
 By this Bill " any tenant of not more than ^^30 yearly rent^ 
 unable to pay by reason of bad harvests, and who could 
 give security to the satisfaction of a County Court judge 
 
Salisbury s ''Feeding Wild Beasts!' i6i 
 
 for payment of rent, should not be evicted for eighteen 
 months." Lord Salisbury characterized this as " the 
 measure of a mind not strongly impressed with reverence 
 for the rights of property, and who desired to make his 
 own path smooth by feeding wild beasts whom he is not 
 strong enough to tame." 
 
 The rejection of his Disturbance Bill, with every mark 
 of contempt from the Lords, together with the extra- 
 ordinary number of evictions in that year, seem to have 
 united Mr. Gladstone's heart for Ireland. In his great 
 speech on this occasion the Premier establishes the follow- 
 ing propositions: (i) Evictions increased with bad harvests; 
 were a sentence of starvation ; and that the bad harvests 
 of 1877, '^'^, and '79 put the nation back to its state before 
 the Land Act. (2) England had " legislated against the 
 Irish tenants," and for their landlords, in a way unknown 
 in England or Scotland, and which was almost a fraud on 
 the Irish." (3) Fifteen thousand persons would be ejected 
 in 1880, and in " enforcing processes by armies of State 
 agents we were dangerously near civil war." (4) That 
 crime diminished after the Land Act of 1870, and that the 
 value of landlords' property improved. 
 
 Why, indeed, "in the circumstances," should Her 
 Majesty's Government be carried on to supply English 
 landlords with Irish rack-rents and victims ? 
 
 The Whigs, however, thought the measure an inroad 
 on the rights of property ; and the death of the Bill pro- 
 duced the resignation of Lord Lansdowne ; and, moreover, 
 had a great effect on public opinion as to the House of 
 Peers. 
 
 In September, 1880, Mr. Parnell proposed that tenants 
 should become owners, after paying thirty-five years' rent. 
 Mr. Parnell then appears to have thought he could 
 force the hand of Parliament, and redoubled the Land 
 League organization and agitation. 
 
 At Clonmel, October 24, 1880, Mr. Leamy declared 
 
 12 
 
1 62 The Parnell Movement. 
 
 that there were *' three great obstacles to national inde- 
 pendence — Catholic disabilities till 1829, Protestant 
 ascendency till 1870, and now foreign land tenure." 
 
 Mr. Bright, at Birmingham, on November 17th, argued 
 that " force was no remedy " ; and Mr. Chamberlain, 
 on the Lord Chancellor's remark at the Mansion House, 
 that ** liberty and law were the two pillars of the State," 
 said that " there were some men who would destroy liberty 
 in order to preserve law. There was widespread dis- 
 affection in Ireland ; there never was so much widespread 
 disaffection in any country ; but there was some just 
 ground of grievance behind it." 
 
 On October 24, 1880, Mr. Parnell "took his coat off" 
 for legislative independence ; and on December 6th 
 boasted that " in five or six years we shall have broken 
 the power of the English Government to govern Ireland." 
 
 From 1879 to 1881 there was an enormous propagandism 
 of American ideas ; and American-Irish brains and gold 
 helped the Irish agitation. The famine of 1847-8 had 
 caused a vast increase of American-Irish, of whom the 
 second generation became Americans first and Catholics 
 afterwards ; in fact, the abortive insurrection of 1848 
 changed the base of Irish revolution from Ireland to 
 America. 
 
 With Irish home government, Irish interests would be 
 to be quiet and loyal as part of the Britannic Empire, but 
 by perpetuating an unreal union we risk a real separation. 
 So early as twenty-three years after the Mayflower landed 
 in 1620 at Cape Cod, the Irish emigration became 
 numerous ; hatred for England of course emigrated too, 
 and, according to evidence got by Edmund Burke in 
 Committee of the House of Commons, Washington's chief 
 supporters in 1775 were Irishmen, born or descended. 
 The Anglo-Irish policy of Whigs, clericals, and landlords, 
 lost England the American Empire, and they are now 
 endeavouring to lose our own. 
 
Ofice more Grattans Treaty. 163 
 
 In January, 1881, there were 25,000 English soldiers 
 in Ireland, besides the so-called " Royal Irish Consta- 
 bulary," which is not a constabulary at all, but an army 
 of eleven to thirteen thousand of the finest troops in the 
 world. 
 
 The year 1881 was perhaps the turning-point of Irish 
 destiny, for acts of coercion and conciliation, of arrest 
 and release, seemed to contend with one another, and in 
 that year Mr. Parnell roused the American-Irish world, 
 returned home a" leader, was arrested, and came forth 
 from prison, not to dictate terms to Government, for he 
 did more — he took up the treaty of peace between 
 England and Ireland— that treaty signed, sealed, and 
 delivered by Grattan and England in 1782, and pre- 
 sented it again to the English Premier and nation for 
 ratification. 
 
 On January 6, 1881, Parliament assembled, and the 
 Queen's Speech stated : 
 
 "The social condition of Ireland has assumed an alarming 
 character. The administration of justice has been frustrated, and 
 an extended system of terror established. Proposals will be im- 
 mediately submitted for entrusting me with additional powers. 
 The Irish Land Act of 1870 has been productive of .great bene- 
 fits. I recommend the further development of its principles, both 
 as regards the relation of landlord and tenant, and with a view to 
 giving to a large portion of the people, by purchase, a permanent 
 proprietary interest in the soil. This will require the removal of 
 all obstacles arising out of limitations on the ownership of property. 
 A measure will be submitted for county government in Ireland." 
 
 A message of peace and also a measure of coercion were 
 then brought forward, the latter allowing arrest and im- 
 prisonment on suspicion. To the former, which was the 
 Land Act, over eight hundred amendments were offered 
 by the Irish Party, and on the 3rd of February thirty-six 
 Irish members were suspended. 
 
 The Coercion (protection to life and property) Bill, and 
 
164 The Parnell Movement. 
 
 the Arms Bill, became law on the 3rd and 2nd of March 
 (1881) respectively. Proclamations were posted in 
 Dublin and elsewhere, advising the people to discontinue 
 partial outbreaks until the hour of action came. In the 
 Manchester Free Trade Hall, Mr. Dillon declared that 
 unless England changed her policy. Irishmen would be 
 dogs and slaves if they did not long for the day when they 
 could join another nation and send their representatives to 
 Washington. At Trafalgar Square were great meetings 
 against the Coercion Bill, and on the 20th of February 
 Mr. Parnell said at Clare that if Mr. Forster wished to im- 
 prison all who favoured the land movement, his prisons 
 would have to accommodate an enormous number, whilst 
 the public opinion of the Irish people was fast becoming 
 that of the world. 
 
 On April 7, 1881, Mr. Gladstone introduced his new 
 Irish Land Bill. The old Bill of 1870 had done good service, 
 but wanted development. There were three divisions of 
 the subject, he said — the transfer and devolution of the 
 land, the relations of landlord and tenant, and a group of 
 matters requiring funds of the imperial exchequer. Land 
 courts were inevitable, and judicial rents must be fixed for 
 fifteen years without power of resumption by landlord, 
 except by compulsory sale of the tenant's right. 
 
 Mr. Parnell recognised the Bill as an advance, as 
 recognizing the principle of joint proprietorship between 
 landlord and tenant. The Conservatives accused Mr. 
 Gladstone of playing into the hands of the Land League 
 and Mr. Parnell ; they would keep to contract, free or 
 forced, and trust to rack-rents and the Royal Irish Con- 
 stabulary. In the eviction war of 1881, 17,341 persons 
 were evicted. Over 30,000 soldiers were quartered in 
 Ireland. 
 
 In May no less than six flying columns of troops sup- 
 ported authority in the disaffected districts, and in June 
 Mr. Chamberlain, at Birmingham, said that : 
 
" Talk, Agitation, and Jelly-fishr 165 
 
 " The Land Bill has been accepted by the representatives of Ire- 
 land, but that Mr. Parnell never concealed the fact that their chief 
 object was not the removal of grievances, but separation of Ireland 
 from England, and he would never have joined the Land League if 
 he had not thought it would help him in the Nationalist and 
 separatist movement. ... Our talk never slackens ; neither does 
 agitation in Ireland." 
 
 When the Land Bill reached the Lords, the Duke of 
 Argyll made his famous "jelly-fish " speech : 
 
 " His noble friends on the Government benches reminded him 
 of a row of jelly fish, creatures beautiful in appearance, but desti- 
 tute of backbone, and who, when seeming to be swimming, were 
 only floating with the current." 
 
 In June the population was found by the census to have 
 diminished one-ninth in ten years. In August the Land 
 Bill passed. On November 5th, 2448 persons were 
 in prison, but by November 12th, above 40,000 appli- 
 cations had been made to the Land Courts. 
 
 On August 27th Parliament was prorogued, and the 
 Queen said ; 
 
 "I warmly appreciate the zeal . . . maturing a measure for 
 improving the relations between owners and occupiers of land in 
 Ireland. It has been my study to use the exceptional powers con- 
 fided to me in Ireland, by two Acts of this session, with vigilance 
 and firmness, but with discrimination," 
 
 On the 26th of September Mr. Parnell made a triumphant 
 entry into Dublin, and at a great torchlight procession of 
 100,000 people an address was presented to him : 
 
 "Honoured and beloved leader, in the name of the united 
 people of Ireland, &c. As the great God who shapes the destinies 
 of man has endowed you with wisdom, courage, and other attri- 
 butes of a leader, we ask you to lead us on to that glorious con- 
 summation of national independence." 
 
 On October 13, 1881, Mr. Parnell was thrown into 
 gaol; and on January 6, 1882, wrote from Kilmainham 
 
1 66 The Parnell Movement. 
 
 prison to acknowledge the freedom of the city of Dublin 
 just presented to him and to Mr. Dillon. 
 
 There is no doubt that the Irish leaders had attempted, 
 as Mr. Gladstone said at Leeds, "to intercept the operation 
 of the Land Bill," but as Mr. Chamberlain explained at 
 Leeds on the 25th of October, " the original objects of the 
 Land League were legal, even praiseworthy. To stifle 
 the agitation at that time would have been to have pre- 
 vented reform." 
 
 Mr. Cowen so thoroughly and ably represents the cul- 
 tured democracy of England, by which I mean the opinions 
 and the will of the real thinkers and workers of England, 
 that there need be no apology for introducing here several 
 short extracts touching his views on Irish nationality v. 
 English and un-English policy. 
 
 In 1881 he wrote as follows against Mr. Forster's 
 coercion measures : 
 
 " I mean to oppose the Coercion Bill on every occasion and at 
 every point. When all opportunity of defeating the principle has 
 gone, I will strive to delay the operation by every fair, honourable, 
 and legitimate process. When that resource is exhausted, I 
 will assist in mitigating the harshness and minimising despotic 
 powers. The Ministry will embitter the relations between England 
 and Ireland." 
 
 The Irish Land Bill he heartily supported, repeating 
 that the only safe way was to turn occupiers into owners. 
 Writing to Mr. Parnell, April 14, 1881, he said he had 
 read Mr. Gladstone's speech with pleasure. " If what 
 was done and said during the coercion debates could be 
 forgotten, I would be more sanguine of success." 
 
 Even in 1882, when Mr. Forster confessed that that 
 measure failed through the influence of secretsocieties, 
 when Government had reversed their coercion policy, and 
 relieved Mr. Davitt and Mr. Parnell, and assassination 
 threw back the country on the Prevention of Crime in 
 
Ckamberlam aitd Cowen. 167 
 
 Ireland Bill, Mr. Cowen " faced the music " and said 
 (May 23rd, p. 70 of his " Speeches "), '* our Government 
 of all governments may rest assured that their attempts 
 to repress the legitimate and necessary expression of 
 popular opinion will end in equal disaster. They can win 
 the Irish people's hearts by just laws." 
 
 Mr. Cowen remarked (at Newcastle, on January 3, 1881, 
 p. i8g of his " Speeches ") on Irish nationality and charac- 
 ter, and on British misrule, as follows : 
 
 " The desire for nationality is at the root of Irish discontent. 
 There are at least 150,000 tenants on holdings, the annual 
 average produce of each of which is not more than ;^ 2 5 ; but one 
 bad season brings trouble, a second want, and a third starvation 
 and insurrection. The affection of the Irish people may be won, 
 There is less crime, as crime is commonly counted, than amongst 
 any other people in Christendom. There is no race whose 
 daughters are so virtuous or whose sons more valiant. The 
 annals of France, Spain, Austria, England, and America are 
 crowded with the achievements of brilliant captains sprung from 
 the Irish stock. No people are more prosperous away from their 
 own country, and few have a higher sense of veneration. Yet 
 this race we cannot manage. I urged an Irish friend to go home 
 and help Lord Bessborough to collect information. *I will go 
 home,' he said, 'but not to help any English constituted com- 
 mission.' The literature on the subject is illimitable. ' I will go 
 home and help to organize the most determined agitation, and 
 then your government will perhaps utilize their pigeon holes. We 
 will not conspire nor forget, but agitate. Many of us will be 
 arrested, some imprisoned, and all decried as cowards and ruffians. 
 But out of our imprisonment reform will come. Your selfish and 
 soulless politician and your venal and ignorant press may howl till 
 the crack of doom. If such be the result, our sufferings will be 
 our countrymen's salvation.' " 
 
 On February 17, 1882, the Queen's Speech stated : 
 "The condition of Ireland shows signs of improvement. 
 Intimidation shows a diminished force. Have not hesitated 
 
1 68 The Parnell Movement. 
 
 to employ largely the exceptional powers for protection of 
 life and property by the Acts of last session." 
 
 The Government had regarded as necessary both the 
 suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the extension of 
 peasant proprietary, and the reclamation of waste land. 
 
 In the debate on the Address, Mr. P. J. Smith moved an 
 amendment in favour of the legislative independence of 
 Ireland. Mr. Gladstone took part in the debate. I refer to 
 his speech later on. It was on this occasion Mr. Mitchell 
 Henry said that " this was probably the first time a 
 responsible Minister of the Crown — certainly the Prime 
 Minister — had really shown a desire to grapple with the 
 difficulties of the question of self-government for Ireland." 
 The Times next morning rated Mr. Gladstone for broach- 
 ing the question of Irish legislative independence. Mr. 
 Healy was discharged at the Cork Assises, and de- 
 clared that the movement for the abolition of land- 
 lordism was but preliminary to the overthrow of British 
 government in Ireland ; and Mr. T. P. O'Connor averred 
 at Liverpool that landlordism was at its last gasp. The 
 Executive proclaimed a number of districts, and nearly 
 700 men in authority, magistrates up to lord-lieutenants of 
 counties, signed a declaration that law could not cope with 
 lawlessness. 
 
 In this year the appointment of a Select Committee to 
 inquire into the working of the Land Act was carried in 
 the House of Lords by the Conservative party. Lord 
 Salisbury was on the committee, and the report proposes a 
 scheme of land purchase larger than that Mr. Gladstone 
 has since put forth, and on terms more risky to the 
 British taxpayer. 
 
 Mr. W. H. Smith also gave notice of a motion for 
 legislation " to provide facilities to enable tenants in 
 Ireland to acquire the freehold of the land in their 
 occupation on just and reasonable terms" — those of the 
 Lords' report. 
 
Tory Land Purchase. 169 
 
 In April, 1882, Mr. Parnell wrote to Captain O'Shea, 
 one of the Irish members, and indirectly to the Govern- 
 ment, that if the question of arrears could be introduced 
 by way of relieving the tenants of holdings, and lessening 
 greatly the number of evictions, and providing the pur- 
 chase clauses of the Land Bill could be discussed, steps 
 might be taken to lessen the number of outrages. The 
 Kilmainham treaty followed, Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and 
 Kelly, were released on May 3rd, and Mr. Forster, who 
 refused to be a party to "blackmail to lawbreakers," 
 resigned. 
 
 After the assassinations of the 6th of May, the Crimes 
 Act was passed and assented to on July 12th. 
 
 On the 30th of June there had been a long discussion in 
 the Commons on this Bill, when twenty-three Irish 
 members were suspended; and in July Mr. Parnell and the 
 Home Rulers withdrew. About the 30th of that month 
 seventeen counties were proclaimed. " There is a moral," 
 writes Mr. T. P. O'Connor (July 8, 1882, " Gladstone's 
 House of Commons," p. 236), commenting on the 
 abstinence of the Irish members, and the consequent 
 defeat of Government on the Crimes Act — "there is a 
 moral in the whole business for the Irish people. The 
 strong position taken up by some dozen determined 
 and able Irish members made one of the greatest adminis- 
 trations and most powerful ministers bite the dust. If 
 twelve good men could do so much, what would be the posi- 
 tion of Ireland in Parliament if the Irish members repre- 
 sented truly the sentiments of the Irish nation and race ? 
 Let Ireland give Parnell seventy or eighty men at the 
 next general election, and Parnell will be lord and master 
 and dictator of the British Parliament ! " 
 
 In 1882 Mr. Parnell took an active part in passing the 
 Arrears Act ; and in 1883, the Tramways and Labourers 
 Acts. 
 
 The Arrears Bill passed on the nth of August. 
 
I/O ' The Parnell Movement. 
 
 In August and September there was considerable dis- 
 affection, insubordination, and disorder amongst the 
 police in Dublin, Cork, and Limerick. 
 
 On the 17th of October, the new Irish National League 
 for self-government and land law reform held a national 
 conference in Dublin. 
 
 On the 24th-27th of April, 1883, an Irish convention 
 was held at Philadelphia, when Mr. Parnell's policy was 
 adopted, and that of the dynamiters defeated. In September 
 the National League invaded Ulster. 
 
 A convention of Irish delegates meeting in Melbourne, 
 of which The Times gives the following account, showed 
 how the question spread : 
 
 "A convention of Irish delegates from each of the Australian, 
 colonies was held in Melbourne in November, 1883, and over 
 two hundred delegates, catholic dignitaries, members of the Vic- 
 torian Parliament, of the Queensland Legislative Assembly, of the 
 Legislative Assembly of Tasmania, and about twenty justices of 
 the peace attended, and resolutions were passed affirming Home 
 Rule, amendment of the Land Act of i88i to facilitate the 
 growth of a peasant proprietorship, equalization of the franchise 
 to that of England and Scotland, and elective county govern- 
 ment." ' 
 
 "At the end of December, 1883,^ Mr. Parnell arranged to hold 
 a series of conferences with his colleagues at the beginning of 
 1 884, as to extension of organization in Great Britain and Ireland, 
 the policy of the party, electoral contests, and equalization of the- 
 franchise." 
 
 The Times also reports the Parnell demonstration and 
 banquet of the nth of December, the subscription to the 
 tribute being 5^36,000, besides the American fund and the 
 contribution from Australia. The Parnell testimonial^ 
 however, amounted to ;£'38,ooo. 
 
 ' Times Index, 1883, J. i, 10, e. 
 " See Thncs, December loth. 
 
Mr. Gladsto7ies Retrospect. 171 
 
 In 1884, the Irish National League Convention was 
 held at Dublin, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, chairman, who urged 
 renewed agitation against the Government. 
 
 On the 28th of February Mr. Gladstone introduced the 
 Franchise Bill, adding to England 1,300,000 voters, to 
 Scotland 200,000, and to Ireland 400,000, which, after 
 great excitement, became law, together with the Redistri- 
 bution Bill. On the 25th of June, 1885, a royal message 
 proclaimed the triumph. 
 
 On the ist of August, 1885, Mr. Forster stated at 
 Bradford his belief that had the Compensation for Dis- 
 turbance Bill passed the Lords, the whole question of 
 the land would have been easier dealt with, the fierce- 
 ness of the agitation would have been removed, and a 
 final measure might have been passed without much 
 difficulty. 
 
 The day however for expedients was done, as Mr. 
 Gladstone convincingly set forth in May, 1886, by the 
 following historical retrospect : 
 
 "We have tried expedients, our first repression or coercion; 
 it is a medicine which we have been continually applying in 
 increasing doses and with diminishing results. We have tried 
 remedies. I refer now to the removal of religious disabilities, to 
 the disestablishment of the Church, to the reform of the land 
 laws, and to the removal or mitigation of the intolerable grievances 
 under which Ireland used to labour with respect to education. 
 We have not failed, for we have not finished. There is now a 
 notion that something might be done by judicious mixtures of 
 coercion and concessions ; the very thing that we have tried. Go 
 back to Catholic Emancipation. The Duke of Wellington proposed 
 to open the door of Parliament to the Roman Catholics of Ire- 
 land, but at the same time disfranchised the 40s. freeholders. 
 Sir Robert Peel in 1843-4 put O'Connell on his trial, but en- 
 larged the endowment of Maynooth by an important Act for 
 facilitating the grants of charitable bequests to the Roman Catholic 
 Church, and by a third Act for the foundation of undenominational 
 colleges. The whole course of the Governnient that came in in 
 
172 The Parnell Movement. 
 
 1880, and was put out in 1885, was one rigid and incessant effort 
 of judicious mixtures.""^ 
 
 The following documents and extracts, Mr. Glad- 
 stone's Home Rule for Ireland Bill, together with the 
 certain response of the country, sufficiently show the drift 
 of the situation. The making of the Irish nation and the 
 consolidation of the Britannic Empire are one cause, and 
 the greatest step towards both has now been irrevocably 
 taken. 
 
 " I pledge myself, that in the event of my election to Parlia- 
 ment, I will sit, act, and vote with the Irish Parliamentary party ; 
 and if at a meeting of the party convened upon due notice 
 specially to consider the question, it be determined by a resolution 
 supported by a majority of the entire Parliamentary party, that I 
 have not fulfilled the above pledge, I hereby undertake forthwith 
 to resign my seat." ^ 
 
 ^^ New York, August 16, 1885. The Committee 6f the Irish 
 National League state that Mr. Parn ell's party will be increased 
 to eighty, and that it will then be enabled to establish a free 
 Parliament in Ireland." 3 
 
 '* Boston. The leading Irish democratic organ, The Pilot, pub- 
 lishes plans for raising ;!^45,ooo at January Convention next, to 
 enable Mr. Parnell to pay ninety Irish members ;!£"ioo each 
 annually for five years." * 
 
 " But I go back to the consideration of the great question of 
 national self-government for Ireland. We cannot ask for less than 
 the restitution of Grattan's Parliament with its important privileges 
 and wide and far-reaching constitution." s 
 
 ** Conscientiously opposed to a separate Parliament for Ireland, 
 believing as I did and do that it would be absolutely ruinous to 
 
 ' Times report. 
 
 ' Parliamentary pledge of Parnellite members, Times Index, 1885, 26 d., 5 d. 
 3 Times Index, 1885, 17 a., 4 c. 
 * Ibid. 25 s., 5 f. 
 
 5 Parnell's speech at Cork, January 21, 1885, Times Index, 1885, 22 j., 
 10. 8. 
 
Mr. Chambe7''lain on Separate Parliaments, i 'j'^^ 
 
 the best interests of Ireland as well as dangerous to the security 
 of England, I cannot alter my conviction on the main point." ^ 
 
 " In demanding the Disturbance Bill," says Mr. T. P. O'Connor, 
 in " The Parnell Movement," " Mr. Gladstone alleged the horrible 
 events attending the eviction of 15,000 people, but in 1881 17,341 
 persons were so deprived, and the greater proportion thrown on 
 the roadside. Horse, foot, and artillery took part in the work of 
 eviction, and sometimes the blue-jacket and the war vessel. A fit 
 of frenzy passed over Ireland during the winter of 1881 and the 
 spring of 1882. The country — with speech and writing and 
 organization suppressed — stood at bay, and a wild and horrible 
 wave of crime passed over it. The whole legislation of the 
 Ministry had broken down ; the Coercion Act had not put down 
 crime ; the Land Act had not closed the Land Question. The 
 leaders of the Land League had declared all along that peasant 
 proprietary was the only final and practical settlement of the 
 Land Question. 
 
 " Conservatives then began to propose hostile motions against 
 both measures, and endeavoured to 'filch and adopt' the Irish 
 leaders' land scheme. The failure of coercion was acknowledged. 
 Mr. Forster and Lord Cowper resigned, and *Mr. Gladstone 
 received the proposals of Mr. Redmond's new Land Bill with 
 favour'" (p. 486). 
 
 Mr. Trevelyan's description of Orange demonstration is 
 that: 
 
 "At their last meeting at Dromore sackfuls of revolvers were left 
 behind, the reason . . . that an officer was seen to search the 
 Orangemen. The Orange meetings, therefore, were bodies of 
 armed men, many prepared to use their arms ; some prepared to 
 make a murderous attack upon the Nationalists. So far as the 
 Government knew, it was not the custom of the Nationalists to 
 go armed to their meetings until the bad example of the Orange- 
 men." 2 
 
 The inference surely seems, as Mr. T. P. O'Connor puts 
 
 ^ Letter from the Right Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, Times Index, 29 s., 6 b. 
 ^ Hansard, vol. cclxxxiv. p. 383. 
 
1 74 The Parnell Movement. 
 
 it, that the Government that allowed such things was 
 rather a stimulus to civil war than an obstacle. 
 
 Mr. O'Connor develops at some len^h his showing how 
 the Lord-Lieutenant, Deputj'-Lieutenant, and magistracy 
 cf Ulster were allowed to proclaim incitements and to 
 make preparations that would lead to murder; and how 
 at last, when Lord Spencer woke up, he sent police short- 
 hand writers to some of the Orange meetings as previously 
 to all the Nationalist meetings, and how the peers and 
 magistrates at once abandoned their tone. He even 
 ordered a body of police to prevent a breaking up of a 
 meeting by Orange rowdies. 
 
 Thus the last effort at English ascendency in Ireland 
 passed away, and the measure for enfranchising Ireland, 
 described a year before by Lord Hartington as little short 
 of madness, was passed, through Mr. Brodrick's folly in 
 pressing an amendment, by 332 to 137, •'' probably the 
 largest majority ever recorded in favour of an extension 
 of popular liberties," Mr. Forster then suggested to reduce 
 the nimiber of Irish representatives from 103 to Si.^ 
 
 From the day of Mr. Forster's Coercion Bill, the Irish 
 members, saysMr. T. P. O'Connor, had set before their 
 minds the destruction of the Liberal Ministry as their 
 first political duty. In 1880, Liberals stood at 351; 
 Conservatives, 23S ; Home Rulers, 63 ; but the Home 
 Rulers did not remain a united party. In 1882 the 
 Cloture Division left ministers a majority of 39. On 
 May 13, 1SS4 (Vote of Confidence), it sunk to 28, and 
 on Febraar}- 27, 1SS5, to 14. On May 13, 1SS5, Mr. 
 Gladstone announced the proposed re-enactment of certain 
 provisions of the Crim.es Act of 1SS2, and on June 8th 
 (on the Budget) his Government ceased to exist. 
 
 Mr. John Morley then wrote ^ of " the peremptory- dis- 
 sipation of favourite illusions as to the Irish vote not 
 counting." 
 
 * MacmiBan's MagasitUi p. 233, July, 1885. 
 
Mr. yoh7t Morley 07i the Sihiatioji. 175 
 
 " The notion that the two English parties could establish an 
 agreement, that if either of them should be beaten by Irish 
 auxiliaries, the victors should act as if they had lost, had been 
 cherished by some not exactly simpletons. This fancy must be 
 banished to the same limbo as the similar dream that Ireland 
 could be disfranchised, and reduced to the rank of a crown colony. 
 As for the new government, Pamell's vote has installed them, it 
 can displace them ; it has its price, and the price will be paid. 
 The Irish not only count ; they almost count for everything." 
 
 " Mr. Pamell and his part>' had," says Mr. T. P. O'Connor, 
 *' always declared that the destruction of the Liberal Ministry 
 would mean the mitigation or abandonment of coercion, but when 
 overthrown, a number of Liberal ministers were transformed from 
 coercionists to enemies of coercion. On June 8th the Govern- 
 ment had been overthrown. On June 17th Mr. Chamberlain, at 
 Holloway, denounced the whole system of government in Ireland ; 
 although Mr. Gladstone, writing to Sir ^L Hicks Beach, announced 
 that the Ministry had practically agreed on coercmg Ireland before 
 their expulsion .' " 
 
 " 1885 came to be one of those years which bring the Irish face 
 to face with ruin. Once more the great primordial battle of Irish 
 life had to be fought out — the battle of rent, and under the Crimes 
 Act every blow against the exaction of the uttermost farthing of 
 rent would have been checked by coercion magistrates." 
 
 On November 14, 1885, the Parliament of iSSo was 
 dissolved, and Mr. Pamell declared henceforward for one 
 plank only — legislative independence. Mr. Chamberlain 
 declared for the acquisition and distribution of land by 
 local bodies, for free schools, and disestablishment. For 
 two years previously the most energetic efiforts had been 
 devoted to the organization of the Irish vote in England, 
 and it was a powerful factor in lessening the Liberal 
 majority. Lord Richard Grosvenor said: 
 
 " The main cause is the Irish vote. They (the Tories! know 
 that but for the imperative orders of Mr. PameU and his friends, 
 the Liberal majority would have been near 100." 
 
176 The Parnell Movement. 
 
 To this add Mr. Parnell's portentous disclosure, made 
 on the 8th of June, of the last elections' secret history : 
 
 "We had every reason to know that the Conservative party- 
 would have offered Ireland a statutory legislature, with a right to 
 protect her own industries, and that this would have been coupled 
 with the settlement of the Irish Land Question, on a lease of 
 purchase, on a larger scale than that now proposed by the Prime 
 Minister," ' 
 
 Mr. Gladstone is the only statesman since Fox who 
 has had the will, the capacity, and the occasion to grapple 
 with the Irish danger, and to construct where others have 
 destroyed ; and the storm of misrepresentation and untruth 
 which met the mere hint three or four years ago should 
 have taught us what to expect now. It was during the 
 session of 1882 that Mr. Gladstone uttered these much 
 canvassed and ominous words : 
 
 " I wish to point out to hon, gentlemen that neither they, nor, 
 so far as I know, Mr. Butt before them, nor O'Connell before him, 
 ever distinctly explained the manner in which the real knot of this 
 question was to be untied. ' The principle on which they profess 
 to proceed is that purely Irish matters are to be dealt with by a 
 purely Irish authority, imperial matters to be left to the imperial 
 authority of a Chamber in which Ireland is to be, represented. 
 But they have not told us by what authority it is to be determined, 
 which matters are Irish and which are imperial. Until they lay 
 before the House a plan, in which they go to the very bottom of 
 the question, and give us to understand in what way that decision 
 is to be accomplished — the practical course of this subject cannot 
 really be arrived at, and I know not how any effective judgment 
 upon it can be pronounced." 
 
 Thrice before, in the House of Commons, Mr. Gladstone 
 had referred to the same subject, besides doing so in his 
 Guildhall, Midlothian, and Aberdeen speeches, and Lord 
 Hartington during the present year, at the Eighty 
 
 ' Times report, 8th of June. 
 
Bttying-out Schemes. lyy 
 
 Club, acknowledged that especially after the " increased 
 definiteness" of his later speeches, no one could be 
 surprised at his present tone. 
 
 But Mr. Gladstone gave still further emphasis in his 
 manifesto when he declared that : 
 
 " I believe history and posterity will consign to disgrace the 
 name and memory of every man, be he who he may, and on which- 
 ever side of the channel he may dwell, that having the power to 
 aid in an equitable settlement between Ireland and Great Britain, 
 shall use that power not to aid but to prevent or to retard it." 
 
 And at Edinburgh he made the famous declaration that : 
 
 "When once the wishes of Ireland shall be constitutionally ascer- 
 tained, it would be not only allowable but beneficial to the three 
 countries, and to the empire at large, that everything should be 
 given to Ireland in the way of local self-government which is 
 consistent with the maintenance of the unity of the empire, and 
 the authority of Parliament connected with the unity of the 
 empire." 
 
 With regard to the cost, difficulties, and indignity of 
 carrying on Irish local investigation and local government 
 m Westminster, they are at once endless and inappreci- 
 able except to those concerned in them. They are ably 
 set forth in the Rev. Malcolm MacColl's pamphlet.' The 
 Lords had already committed themselves, in 1882, with 
 the concurrence of the whole Liberal party to a consider- 
 able Land Purchase Scheme, and in 1885 Lord Salisbury's 
 Government passed a Land Purchase Act empowering the 
 Treasury to borrow ;r5,ooo,ooo, and advance it to the 
 Land Commission for the purchase of Irish estates, that 
 sum being only an instalment. 
 
 All parties are, therefore, committed to the principle of 
 a Land Purchase Scheme, and when two-thirds of Irish 
 rental is spent elsewhere, what so great hardship can 
 
 ' Pp- 32, 33- 
 13 
 
178 The Gladstone Epoch. 
 
 there be in compelling the landlords concerned to change 
 their investments ? 
 
 The Domesday Book of 1876 shows that 292 persons 
 hold 6,459,000 Irish acres, and the report of 1872 shows 
 that of landlords owning over 100 acres each, nearly half 
 or 4,842 were non-resident, and 5,589 resident. 
 
 The principle of the Tory measure of 1885 was that the 
 process of sale should go on as long as there were land- 
 lords willing to sell, and tenants to buy. The Gladstone 
 scheme of this year specially excludes mansions, demesnes, 
 woodlands, grazing lands, &c., meeting the only valid 
 objections to forced sales. When there is, on the one hand, 
 a nation in ruin and insurrection for want of land, and 
 when, on the other, the buying out of 292 persons would 
 return 6,459,000, or one-third of the national acreage, to 
 the nation; and when, moreover, out of 10,431 owners of 
 over 100 acres each, 4,842 are already non-resident, it is 
 obvious that more than half the national acreage is merely 
 a question of investment, and that 292 persons cannot 
 stand in the way of the nation. Such a scheme can hurt no 
 man living, and offend no man's liking or love for the soil. 
 During the Gladstone epoch, the question has already 
 passed through various stages, all of increasing intensity. 
 By postponing the settlement of the land, we bound the 
 question of nationality and land together irrevocably, and 
 envenomed both. "We have quietly seen accumulate in 
 Ireland, and we have helped to accumulate, all the 
 elements of unity, and yet have ignored or obstructed their 
 necessary consummation. , 
 
 We have had to abandon the landlords because we 
 would not abandon their monopoly, and we have had 
 fixity of tenure conquered, as O'Connell warned us nearly 
 forty years ago it would be conquered, " by an accumula- 
 tion of murders." 
 
 It was the American Irish, that is, the " Irish emigra- 
 tion," sent there by our tyranny, that beat us out of 
 
England's Trilateral. 179 
 
 America. The remittances to Ireland from Irish settlers 
 in the United States and British North America have 
 amounted between 1848 and 1884 to 5^29,776,977 ; and the 
 1880 census shows 1,854,571 natives of Ireland then living 
 in the United States. 
 
 The English people have risen to the full height of the 
 reason of State, plain enough ninety years ago to the in- 
 tellects of Grattan, Burke, Fox, and Sheridan, that what we 
 have to do is to make sound and heart-whole the Irish 
 nation, as a nation, because without that, our triune 
 home empire, the basis of our vast imperial superstruc- 
 ture, is not broad enough to carry it. England's mighty 
 trilateral — England, Scotland, Ireland — is as yet fatally 
 incomplete, and in a great war would infallibly let in the 
 foe. Let us understand that implacable question, or 
 rather that supreme fact and factor, of Irish nationality, 
 and not dream that because we have freed the Catholics, 
 Ireland is less united, or less a nation, or that because we 
 have partly freed the land, Irish nationality is less strong, 
 or that Ireland is less free to demand her freedbm. The 
 more united and free Ireland becomes, the stronger be- 
 comes her nationality. What then shall we do with it ? 
 Her nationality is herself. You must exterminate it or 
 exalt it. For what are we prepared, if not to give her 
 some constitutional guarantee that her existence as a free 
 and equal sister nation is recognized ? 
 
 Nationality and the land, then, have been and remain the 
 supreme motives of Ireland, and we have met them with 
 a policy of bankruptcy for the one, and a policy of despair 
 for the other. In all nations there is a direct indefeasible 
 relationship between the land and the people. Unless the 
 latter possess the former, it cannot he constituted, for together 
 alone they form one normal whole. 
 
 On Mr, Parnell, Home Rule, and the situation, hear 
 Mr. Joseph Cowen, M.P., as he spoke at Newcastle-on- 
 Tyne, December 22, 1883 : 
 
i8o The Gladstoite Epoch. 
 
 " Can agitators light fire without fuel, or sustain a revolution 
 without reason ? It never was done. It never will be .done. . . -. 
 To convict the people is to condemn the Government. .... 
 
 " If we tried crown colony rule, remonstrances would come 
 thick and fast from America and the Colonies. If these were dis- 
 carded, something more serious might follow. There is an invi- 
 sible power in Irish politics which no Coercion Acts can reach. 
 . . . The steady active hatred of eight or ten millions of Irishmen 
 wielding great political power in America might involve us in a 
 time of trouble. Home Rule means improved union, not separa- 
 tion. When there are eighteen independent parliaments in the 
 British dominions, it is only prejudice to contend that another 
 would make the difference between union and dismemberment. 
 We have tried to rule Ireland by army. Church, and landlords, and 
 failed. Let us now try to rule her by her own people." 
 
 It is also vv'orth while to read Mr. Blake's speech on 
 Canadian Home Rule and Imperial Federation, April 20, 
 1883. It was a speech made by him as leader of the 
 Liberal party in Canada, and on the Irish question shows, 
 as Mr. McCarthy says, how 
 
 " The magical influence of self-government has converted Canada 
 from the distracted home of conflicting and disaffected popula- 
 tions, torn by religious animosities and political hatreds, and only 
 approaching a common feeling in their animosity to the English 
 Government — has converted Canada from that miserable hopeless 
 condition into one of the best ordered, most prosperous, most 
 rising, and most united countries on the earth." 
 
 Yet the British North America Act for the Federation 
 of the Dominion of Canada came into operation as late 
 as 1867. 
 
 England and Ireland both want and must have some- 
 thing that shall first make sure the salvation of our home 
 nationalities, and then make certain our premiership of the 
 world. We want and will have that which shall glorify 
 the spirit of the Irish nationality, and make the nucleus of 
 
The Nucleus of Empire. 1 8 1 
 
 our mighty empire eternally safe and free. England 
 without Ireland, it has gone forth to the world ; England 
 without Ireland, or with Ireland justly estranged, is no- 
 thing, rather, as Montalembert said," an eternal avenging 
 death-sore." Such an Ireland, moored as she is alongside 
 England, would be in the next great war but a landing- 
 place for our foes, whence old England would be raked 
 from stem to stern, with an invincible nationality, a fourth 
 of our territory, and a seventh of our population against 
 us ! 
 
 On the whole of this land-logic and nation-logic, note 
 the words of John Bright : 
 
 " It is in the eternal decrees of providence that so long as the 
 population of a country are prevented from the possibility of pos- 
 sessing any portion of their native soil by legal enactments and 
 legal chicanery, these outrages should be committed, were they but 
 as beacons and warnings to call the legislature to a sense of the 
 duties it owed to the country which it governed." 
 
 Or again, as he said at the Rotunda in Dublin, " A better 
 parliament can alone improve Ireland. If there were lOO 
 more members of parliament for large and free constitu- 
 encies, your voice would be heard. 105 united members 
 of parliament might do anything." 
 
 Let us, then, give to Ireland what every state in America 
 has, what every province in Canada has, and what our 
 Colonies practically have. 
 
 The Irish are what the English made them. Irish 
 misery is Whig and Tory statesmanship ; Irish happiness 
 will now be the people's statesmanship. Omission and 
 commission have done their worst. Not only, for instance, 
 were we sinking and wasting half a million in a Thames 
 tunnel whilst a quarter million would have formed a har- 
 bour in Galway, with depth and security to make it the 
 Liverpool of Ireland ; hut we should at one time have at- 
 tempted even to destroy any existing Liverpool in Ireland, as 
 
1 82 The Gladstone Epoch. 
 
 we did destroy every form of Irish industry that could 
 compete with its fellow in England.^ 
 
 What, then, do these seven hundred years of incapacity 
 and outrage prove? What do those eighteen years, 1782- 
 1801 prove ? What do all things prove, but that Ireland 
 can, and that England cannot, rule Ireland ! 
 
 It is no business of mine to analyze the motives or 
 asperse the conscience of those with whom it is to be 
 hoped will be the Liberal future ; but Mr. Chamberlain of 
 all men ought to have known that the essence of the Irish 
 question is her nationality. Without that, mere local self- 
 government can have neither mission, nor mandate, nor 
 vital force. Mr. Chamberlain has emphatically repudiated 
 Home Rule counsels in the shape of " a separate parlia- 
 ment for Ireland. I cannot alter my convictions on the 
 main point." 
 
 All federal schemes between nation and empire can only 
 be practically worked out by representation in an imperial 
 parliament, and here Mr. Chamberlain is undoubtedly 
 right. 
 
 In not subordinating Ulster to Ireland, however, he 
 was, or is not, federal. For when nations and empire are 
 to be federated, the more national the nations the more 
 imperal will be the empire. Before unity you must have 
 the units, and the sounder and completer the units the 
 stronger the unity. Mr. Chamberlain cannot grasp this, 
 or fails to act on it. 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain's fault throughout — the beginning and 
 the end of his misconception — is here. 
 
 A nation is socially, politically, historically one. It is 
 a sacred and indestructible essence. It has its sufficing 
 unities of boundary, race, institutions, language, and ideas. 
 
 Ulster, Scotch and Protestant, was, as all the world 
 
 ' See Lecky's " England in the Eighteenth Century," as to destruction of 
 Irish woollen trade by English statute under William III. : " For nearly fifty 
 years after, every bad season produced a famine. " 
 
A "^ Sttrgicar' Nation. 183 
 
 knows, mechanically and forcibly introduced — thrust into 
 the flank of Ireland, the natives being sent off "to hell 
 or Connaught," and forbidden on pain of death to return. 
 No nation can be disintegrated, no nation created, by a 
 surgical process like that, unless it absorbs and destroys 
 the other nation. 
 
 As the basis of radicalism is the freedom, initiative, and 
 force of the individual ; so the basis of federalism and 
 empire is the freedom, wholeness, and force of the con- 
 stituent nations. 
 
 " Seven-twelfths of the Protestants of Ireland live out- 
 side these three counties in the north-east corner of Ulster, 
 and the other five-twelfths live inside those counties," 
 said Mr. Parnell lately.' If so, would Mr. Chamberlain, 
 or even Mr. Goschen, make of the five-twelfths, in a little 
 corner, a nation ? 
 
 No statesman destroys or questions real life. He knows 
 that all true life helps all other true life. As well say 
 that the free individual is necessarily hostile to family life, 
 or that to a free commune, or a free commune to a self- 
 governed country, or free countries and municipalities to 
 national well-being, or confederation to empire — as well 
 say all this as assert that the Irish nation, in life, dignity, 
 honour, and independence, can " be dangerous to the 
 security of England." That were Whig or Tory states- 
 manship ; but Liberal, Radical, Irish, or English states- 
 manship — never ! Life is only dangerous to those who 
 would, but cannot, destroy it. 
 
 In the debate of the ist of June last, Mr. Chamberlain 
 produced his Canadian plan as the one to be applied to 
 Ireland, and as having the effect of protecting Ulster, but 
 the Chancellor of the Exchequer showed that it would 
 have the contrary result : 
 
 "In the 91st section of the Canadian Act . . . the provincial 
 ' Times report, June 8th. 
 
184 The Gladstone Epoch. 
 
 legislature shall have exclusive authority over direct taxation with 
 the province, the establishments, and tenure of provincial offices, 
 and over the property (men of Ulster tremble) and civil rights of 
 the province (cheers and laughter). ... It may interest him to 
 learn that the provincial parliament, which is to be the model for 
 the Irish parliament, has exclusive authority over the administra- 
 tion of justice, the maintenance and organization of provincial 
 courts, both civil and criminal (cheers and laughter). This is his 
 last patent plan." ' 
 
 Why, according to Alison's partial life of Castlereagh, 
 " the most formidable opposition (to the Union) v^^as among 
 the barristers and citizens of Dublin, the country gentle- 
 men all over Ireland, and the lower ranks of the Orangemen 
 and Protestants of the North ; with most of them it was not 
 mere resistance, but absolute horror." 
 
 It is unnecessary to argue the question of Ulster; it is 
 sufficient to state it. 
 
 Ulster as a plantation of Scotch Presbyterians has 
 always been favoured as a garrison province, and has 
 constantly presumed accordingly. 
 
 Ulster was foremost in all Ireland in sympathy with 
 the American rebellion ; was aroused as one man against 
 English dictation during the volunteer movement; was 
 drawn over by Castlereagh and Pitt by notorious means ; 
 and has always known better than the rest of Ireland how 
 to protect herself against landlord tyranny and greed. 
 
 " Protestant " Ulster has always endeavoured and 
 endeavours still to monopolize, against '* Catholic " Ulster, 
 all municipal offices and representation. 
 
 " Protestant " Ulster is exclusive, domineering, and would 
 be dominant. " Catholic " Ulster is liberal, conciliatory, 
 and, as to all questions but nationality, yielding. 
 
 Mr. W. A. O'Conor has some very pertinent observa- 
 tions on " Orangeism " (pp. 6g, 70), in his recent volume 
 " The Hi-story of the Irish People " : ^ 
 
 ' Times report, June 2, 1886. ^ Heywood, 1886: 
 
G Conor on Orangemen. 185 
 
 "The first Orange lodge was formed on the 21st of September 
 1795- 
 
 " The impunity accorded to Orangemen had a very real meaning. 
 The dominion of England could not (formerly) be maintained for 
 a day in Ireland without their aid. 
 
 " There was at once safety and danger in Orangeism. The part 
 which the Protestants had taken in 1798 was to be prevented' in 
 the future at any cost. Orangeism might be relied on to destroy 
 Catholics, but its tendency was towards insubordination, its loyalty 
 being conditional. The vain effort was therefore made to appease 
 it by satiating its hatred. O'Connell always said that rather than 
 remain in the union, he would be satisfied to repeal Catholic 
 emancipation, and trust himself to his Protestant fellow country- 
 men. Against these dispositions Orangeism must be fostered. As 
 it had been created by government, all that was needed was to 
 give it legal strength, and let it follow its own will. It was supplied 
 with congenial magistrates and arms." 
 
 Upon this point of Catholic v. Protestant there is some 
 valuable information in a speech by Mr. Charles Dawson, 
 ex-Lord Mayor of Dublin, and ex-M.P. for Carlow, at 
 the Rotunda on May 12, 1886. He showed that in the 
 treatment of minorities the Irish have been almost with- 
 out reproach. That immediately following Catholic 
 emancipation the Catholic constituencies used their 
 newly-acquired power to return forty-three members of 
 Parliament who were Protestants. That being a minority 
 in religion has been a password instead of an obstruction 
 to the favour and confidence of the Catholics. In the 
 matter of municipal honours, the generosity of the 
 Catholics has been unbounded. In the Catholic city of 
 Cork the first Reform election secured nine Protestant 
 Councillors, and the second Mayor was a Protestant; 
 since then there have been several Protestant Mayors in 
 succession. Last year there were eight Protestant 
 members of the Harbour Board. Mr. Dawson says : 
 
 *' There are more Catholics in proportion in Belfast than there 
 
1 86 The Gladstone Epoch. 
 
 are Protestants in Dublin. Have they had, or have they now, a 
 Catholic member of their Council ? Have they now, or have 
 they ever had, a Catholic Mayor, or a Catholic Sheriff, or a 
 Catholic Treasurer, Engineer, or Officer of Health ? Have they 
 now, or have they ever had, any Catholic officer whatever, paid or 
 honorary, first-class or lower ? Protestant Ulster — which turns 
 out on investigation to be a myth, inasmuch as the non-Catholics 
 dominate only in certain districts — compares sadly in point of 
 tolerance with Catholic Cork or Dublin, Limerick or Waterford. 
 In Derry the power is entirely in the hands of the Protestants, 
 although there is a majority of Catholics in the population. To 
 17,000 Catholics there are only 12,000 Protestants, and the 
 Corporation of Derry has only one Catholic member. The 
 Corporation does not employ one solitary Catholic in any 
 department. In the whole of Armagh and Down no place of 
 honour or emolument is given to a Catholic, and this is true of 
 railways, banks, factories, poor law boards, &c. Coming to the 
 Catholic districts of Donegal, Fermanagh, Tyrone, and Monaghan, 
 there is not now, nor to my knowledge has there ever been, one 
 single Catholic appointed to an elective position by the non- 
 Catholic minority, who still have power over the Catholic people." 
 
 This certainly looks, as the Rev. Malcolm MacCoU 
 remarks in his able pamphlet, " as though the Orangemen 
 of Ulster object to Home Rule, not because they fear 
 persecution, but because they expect equality." 
 
 " Local Government in Irish counties is a gross and palpable 
 mockery. The grand jury, who are mostly landlords or land 
 agents, and generally Protestants, have the entire control of 
 County Government. The pettiest Act for local purposes must be 
 obtained from the Imperial Parliament at a great cost of money, 
 time, and trouble. London robs the provinces, as old Rome 
 robbed hers, of wealth, intelligence, and enterprise." 
 
 Moreover, all Irish matters that are not locally monopo- 
 lized are either managed or jobbed from the Castle; for 
 instance, elementary and intermediate education, the 
 
Russell and Duffy on Gladstone. 187 
 
 Irish constabulary, the prisons, the Fishery Board, the 
 Board of Works, including public buildings, harbours, 
 inland waterways, advance of public money for land im- 
 provements, for drainage, for sanitary works, artizan's 
 dwellings, &c. In our Lords' House, moreover, Ireland 
 has only 28 out of 526 ; and in the Commons she is out- 
 numbered 6 to I, and always by men ignorant of Irish 
 needs. 
 
 One word more about the man who almost alone, among 
 English statesmen, seeks to do justice to Ireland. It is 
 not the first time he has been assailed for so doing, and 
 Earl Russell's reference to him in 1869 fits the present 
 situation : 
 
 " I still retain my opinion that Mr. Gladstone, encountering 
 great risks, and provoking bitter animosity, has aimed, not at 
 ofificial station, but at the welfare of his country in the mighty 
 struggle in which he has engaged. If he should aspire to perform 
 a permanent and immortal service to his country, to reconcile 
 England and Ireland ; if he should seek to remove the last link 
 of the fefters fastened by the conqueror on the limbs of his victim, 
 . . . then indeed he will be enrolled among the noblest of 
 England's statesmen, and will have laid the foundations of a great 
 work. I feel sure that Mr. Gladstone will not propose to take a 
 leap in the dark. The wreath ob civem servaium will be a million 
 times deserved by the minister who shall knit together three 
 nations." ^ 
 
 Sir C. Gavan Duffy characterizes Mr. Gladstone's Irish 
 endeavours as ** one of the most courageous and dis- 
 interested achievements in human history. A statesman, 
 when frame and brain need repose, takes in hand a task 
 fit for Hercules. Before laying down his load of human 
 responsibility, he braces his strength for one more supreme 
 task for the service of the nations. A hundred years 
 hence, this will perhaps be the most memorable fact in 
 
 ' Earl Russell's 3rd letter to Mr. Fortescue, 1869. 
 
1 88 The Gladstone Epoch. 
 
 English annals during the latter half of the nineteenth 
 century." 
 
 The words, however, which Grattan applied to Fox 
 were, and will remain, the supreme eulogy for such 
 statesmanship as his and Gladstone's : 
 
 " What an idea has he disclosed as just and applicable to Ireland I 
 An Irish legislature, and an Irish government ; a genuine executive, 
 and a genuine parliament, major reriim nascitur ordo. As an 
 Englishman he would strengthen the connection by removing 
 the motives of separation. This is an idea worthy a compre- 
 hensive statesman. He applies to great passions, and great 
 principles, for the government of a great country. He stood, the 
 Marpesian rock that struck its base to the centre, and raised its 
 forehead to the skies ! " 
 
 Let us add, in the words of Grattan, when he retiired 
 from the Irish Parliament : 
 
 " May the House of Commons flourish, but let the people be 
 the sole authors of its existence, as they should be the great object 
 of its care. May the connection with Great Britain continue, 
 but let its result be perfect in the fairest and fullest sense." 
 
 It only now remains to add his supplication : " How- 
 ever it may please the Almighty to dispose of Princes or 
 of Parliaments, may the liberties of the people be im- 
 mortal 1 " 
 
 Everyvi^here and always thiroughout this controversy 
 let us remember that the party of progress believes in 
 development, not repression ; and in conservatism, by 
 development. The development of the threefold manhood 
 of this empire should be no more and no less real, radical, 
 and profound, than should be the development of the 
 three or four home nations. Surely the English manhood 
 has become imperial manhood, because it has been more 
 symmetrical and complete than that of other nations. In 
 like manner the English nations and Colonies can better 
 
His Retrospect and Prospect. 189 
 
 enter into empire, because they are more self-governed, 
 national, and complete than colonies and nations else- 
 where. 
 
 Thus alone can the mighty unknown future, to which 
 confederation points, be built up. Thus alone can the 
 mightiest of all mundane forces, *' the coming democratic 
 confederation of all the Britains," be rightly brought to- 
 gether and held together — be best united to each other 
 and to the whole around the throne of England. 
 
 This book cannot close without an extract (which I am 
 forced to condense) from the Premier's short history of 
 ninety j^ears of the Anglo-Irish question, and of its black 
 traditions ; without reference also to his golden vision of 
 the future, and its glorious hopes ! 
 
 "There was such a golden moment; it was in 1795, it was on 
 the mission of Lord Fitzwilliam. At that moment it is historically 
 clear that the parliament of Grattan was on the point of solving 
 the Irish problem. The two great knots of that problem were 
 emancipation and reform. The cup was at her lips when the 
 hand of England dashed it to the ground, in obedience to the 
 wild and dangerous intimations of an Irish faction. There has 
 been no great day of hope for Ireland till now — more than ninety 
 years. What Ireland was doing for herself in 1795, we at length 
 have done. The Roman Catholics have been emancipated, 
 slowly, sullenly, not from good-will, but from abject terror. The 
 second problem has been also solved, and I am thankful to say 
 with a free heart and open hand, and the gift of that franchise 
 was the last act required to make the success of Ireland in her 
 final effort absolutely sure. We have given Ireland a voice, we 
 must all listen, divided, as I am afraid we are, by an almost im- 
 measurable gap." 
 
 " You have power, wealth, rank — what have we ? We think we 
 have the people's heart ! We believe, and we know we have the 
 promise of the harvest of the future. The ebbing tide is with you, 
 and the flowing tide with us. Ireland stands at your bar expectant, 
 hopeful, almost suppliant. She asks a blessed oblivion, and in 
 that our interest is deeper even than hers. My right honourable 
 
I go The Democratic Confederal Fuhire. 
 
 friend, Mr. Goschen, asks us to abide by the traditions of which we 
 are the heirs. What traditions ? By the Irish traditions ? Go into 
 the length and breadth of the world, ransack the literature of all 
 countries — can you find a single book in which the conduct of 
 England towards Ireland is treated except with profound and 
 bitter condemnation. Those traditions are a broad black blot. 
 
 " Ireland also asks a boon for the future, which will be to us, in 
 respect of honour, no less a boon than to her in respect of happi- 
 ness, prosperity, and peace. 
 
 "Think, I beseech you, think well, think wisely; think, not for 
 the moment, but for the years that are to come, before you reject 
 this Bill."^ 
 
 We may well pause before rejecting the words of the 
 greatest man now living upon this planet, respecting the 
 recognition of one of its most considerable facts — a fact, 
 moreover, materially affecting the constitution of the most 
 awful and glorious combination of political, social, and 
 citizen progress and power that practical politicians can at 
 present contemplate. We must prepare, through Glad- 
 stone, for another policy and a new epoch. 
 
 " To see, like some vast island from the ocean. 
 The altar of the Federation rear its shape in the midst. 
 
 Its shadows hid 
 Far ships ; to know its height the morning mists forbid. 
 To hear the restless multitude for ever 
 Around the base of that great altar flow." 
 
 ^ June 7, 1886. 
 
 UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GEESHARr PRESS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON. 
 
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