THOUGHTS 
 
 ON 
 
 lEELAND 
 
 ITS PRESENT AND ITS FUTURE. 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 COUNT CAYOUR 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 W. B. HODGSON, LLD. 
 
 
 LONDON : 
 TRÛBNER & CO., PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 MANCHESTER: A. IRELAND & CO., PALL MALL. 
 
 1868. 
 

 C-CTTP^ 
 
 TO 
 
 THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, M. P., 
 
 IN THE FIRM BELIEF THAT 
 
 HIS MOMENTARY DEFEAT HERALDS HIS LASTING TRIUMPH. 
 
 C^is Volume 
 
 IS RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED 
 
 (WITHOUT PERMISSION) 
 
 BY 
 
 THE TRANSLATOR 
 
 •2Uh Novpmber, 1868. 
 
 ♦ 7 p n r 
 
 ui h U '1 
 
" Ireland is now sufifering under a circle of evils, prodncins: and repro- 
 ducing each other : — want of capital produces want of employment, turbu- 
 lence, and misery ; turbulence and misery, insecurity ; insecurity prevents 
 *ihe introduction of capital, and so on. Until this circle is broken the evil 
 must continue, and probably augment." — Report, in 1836, on the State of the 
 Poor in Ireland, by Geo. Nicholls, Esq., p. 20. 
 
 "In virtue of the long unsettlement of Ireland and her special claims 
 to consideration, she is affording a clear field for the discussion of political, 
 ecclesiastical, and social questions which the English nation, satisfied with 
 an early and limited progress, will not suffer to be mooted directly in 
 respect to itself. An Irish famine repealed the Com Laws. Irish outrage 
 gave to the empire the benefit of a regularly organised police. The des- 
 perate state of Irish property led to the passing of an Encumbered Estates 
 Act. Ireland has introduced the system of mixed education. In Ireland, 
 the relations between landlord and tenant have been first made the subject 
 of discussion, with some prospect of an equitable solution. In Ireland was 
 promulgated the potent aphorism, ' Property has its duties as well as its 
 rights. ' In Ireland, where the members of the dominant Church are in a 
 small and hopeless minority, and the Establishment is clearly a political 
 evil, the great question of Church and State will probably be first raised 
 with effect, and receive its most rational solution. " — Goldwin Srmth : Irish 
 History and Irish Character. 2nd Ed., 1862, p. 197. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 TN January and February, 1844, at a time when freedom 
 of the press did not exist in Piedmont, there appeared 
 in the Bibliothèque Universelle de Geneve (Nouvelle 
 Série, Tom. 49,) the following article on "Ieeland, its 
 Peesent and its Future," by the late Count Cavour. 
 In 1855, it was reprinted in a collection of the "Politico- 
 Economical Works of Count Camille Benso di Cavour," 
 published at Coni, and little known beyond, or even 
 within, the bounds of Italy. It was written when the 
 Repeal agitation in Ireland was at its height. On the 
 10th of September, 1843, at a great Repeal meeting, 
 O'Connell promised he would have his Protection Society 
 of three hundred sitting before Christmas. " I hope," he 
 said, "to be able to give you, as a New Year's Gift, a 
 parliament in College Green." On the 7th of October, 
 within a week after the "monster meeting" at Mnl- 
 laghmast, the Irish government issued a proclamation 
 prohibiting a great Repeal meeting which was appointed 
 for the following day at Clontarf, three miles from Dublin, 
 at which persons on horseback were to have paraded as 
 
VUl PREFACE. 
 
 the "Repeal Cavalry." All similar meetings were, at 
 the same time, declared illegal. In obedience to a pro- 
 clamation issued thereupon by O'Connell, the meeting 
 was not held, and the day passed quietly. On the 14th 
 of October, O'Connell, John O'Connell, and several other 
 leading Repealers, were arrested on a charge of con- 
 spiracy, sedition, and unlawfully conspiring, but were held 
 to bail. The proceedings began on the 2nd of November, 
 the first day of term ; but it was not till the 12th ol 
 February, 1844, that the jury returned their verdict. 
 The issue is well known. On the 24th of May, the Irish 
 judges, having refused the motion for a new trial, sen- 
 tenced O'Connell to imprisonment for twelve months, 
 with a fine of £2,000, and bound him in his own recog- 
 nizance in the sum of £5,000, and two sureties of £2,500, 
 to keep the peace for seven years. On the 2nd of July, 
 the writs of error, in which O'Connell and his associates 
 m the State trials were plaintiffs, came before the House 
 of Lords; and, on the 4th of September, the law-lords 
 decided that the judgment of the court below ought to be 
 reversed. It was, then, while the case was still pending in 
 the Irish court, that Cavour's Essay appeared. If I do 
 not err, all that has occurred since that time tends to 
 increase, much rather than to diminish, the interest and 
 the value of the great Italian statesman's estimate of Irish 
 history, condition, and prospects. The failure of his 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 expectations, in so far as they have failed, is not less 
 instructive than their fulfilment, in so far as they have 
 been fulfilled. O'Connell's agitation for Repeal, indeed, 
 collapsed, as Cavour predicted, and the state of Ireland has, 
 in some degree, improved. But had Cavour lived till now, 
 great must have been his disappointment that, in spite 
 of the operation of the Encumbered Estates Act, passed 
 in 1849,* — in spite of a vast amount of emigration, — 
 in spite of the National School system, — in spite of all 
 legislative measures, — Irish discontent has, after another 
 quarter of a century, burst forth in armed Fenianism ; — 
 the Habeas Corpus Act has been again for a long time 
 suspended ;T-the great question of Ireland is still the 
 hinge on which turns the fate of British ministries ; and 
 the problems of Irish land and Irish church still clamour 
 for solution. Ireland is still, and will, too probably, long 
 continue to be, the field on which the battle of English 
 interests and English parties must be fought. A Pro- 
 testant Church must, it seems, be maintained in Catholic 
 Ireland lest a more and more doubtfully Protestant Church 
 in England should be endangered ; and the system of 
 
 * The number of Parliamentary titles registered in Ireland under the 
 Record of Title (Landed Estates Court) Act, up to the 1st of August, 1867, 
 was 200 ; and the value of the estates held thereunder is £564,049. 7s. 4d. — 
 Fall Mall Gazette, \Qth Sept., 1867. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 National Schools in Ireland must, it seems, be subverted, 
 in order that the Denominational System of Education 
 in England may be maintained. In both cases, Commis- 
 sions have been appointed with the hope, in the former 
 case, that the institution may, with modifications, be in 
 principle preserved; in the latter, that the institution may 
 be, in principle, destroyed. The relation between landlord 
 and tenant, again, must not be touched in Ireland, lest a 
 precedent dangerous to England should be established. 
 Out of this terrible complication only a very wise, or a 
 very presumptuous man can attempt to trace s^nj path of 
 speedy issue. Though, of late, events have marched 
 rapidly, and though a crisis has almost suddenly come 
 upon us, the immediate prospect is by no means bright. 
 Liberal majorities, indeed, have, on the whole, declared 
 themselves in favour of equality against privilege, of 
 religion against sect, of right against the ascendancy of 
 party or of creed. Victory seems to smile on the banner 
 bearing the device "Fiat Justitia, Ruat Ucclesiaf — 
 but the strife will be hard and painful, whether it be 
 long or short. Mr. Disraeli, in view of an early retire- 
 ment from the ministerial craft, and baffled in his ill- 
 disguised and worse denied overtures for an alliance with 
 Ultramontanism, has gone into partnership with Mr. 
 Murphy, in the business of " No Popery" agitation ; 
 and recent acts of mob-violence show that the demons 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 of theological rancour and national antipathy can too 
 easily be evoked among the ignorant and passionate 
 masses of our people. Whatever the immediate issue, 
 this appeal to too prevalent prejudice and animosity, 
 this revival of passions which have disgraced and en- 
 sanguined the past, cannot fail to be a danger and a 
 difficulty, and must be followed by a long train of evils. 
 Let me hope that this voice from the grave of Cavour 
 may be heard not without benefit on both sides of the 
 channel. His impartial and generous sympathy with 
 both England and Ireland, his strongly expressed and 
 calmly reasoned conviction that, while the two countries 
 cannot be, and ought not to be, separated, each country 
 ought to be, and will yet be, a blessing to the other, — 
 may, in some measure, urge Englishmen to persevere 
 in the difficult task of conciliating Ireland (so long 
 oppressed and so sadly alienated), — and encourage Irish- 
 men to hope more, to hate less, and to join earnestly 
 with what best deserves the name of England, in the 
 effort to remove the political and social evils from 
 which Ireland suffers, pre-eminently, but not alone. 
 
 W. B. H. 
 
 24th November, 1868. 
 
THOUGHTS ON THE PEESENT STATE, AND ON 
 THE FUTUEE, OF lEELAND. 
 
 npHE present singular condition of Ireland has excited 
 -L the attention of all in Europe who are interested in 
 politics. There is, perhaps, no one who has not put to 
 himself the question, with a full sense of its difficulty, — 
 What may be the issue of a movement which one extraor- 
 dinary man has been able to institute, and which he 
 guides with skill so marvellous ? The European journals, 
 faithful interpreters of the general thought, make 
 Ireland one of the habitual themes of their discussions. 
 Usually brief on the affairs of England, they open their 
 columns to reports of the smallest " meetings" at which 
 repeal of the Union is demanded, and they regularly in- 
 form us of the most minute details of the great law-case 
 in which O'Connell and his associates are at this hour 
 engaged. What means this general excitement ? Can it 
 announce the approach of one of those great political crises 
 which so profoundly modify the social being of nations ? 
 Does this crisis threaten with a violent catastrophe the 
 ancient edifice of the British constitution, which ages have 
 respected, and which European revolutions, far from 
 shaking, have rather consolidated ? From the hopes, the 
 ill-concealed joy of certain journals, of certain political 
 parties, when they speak of Ireland, one might be tempted 
 
 B 
 
2 PKESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 to this belief. The enemies of England on the continent, 
 and their number is unhappily very considerable, imagine 
 that the day of vengeance draws near ; her friends hesi- 
 tate, and feel their faith shaken in that constitution which, 
 more than any other in the world, they used to believe 
 to be safe from political shocks. 
 
 Public opinion on the continent is not, it must be 
 said, generally favourable to England. Extreme parties, 
 opposed in all besides, agree in their violent hatred of 
 that country. Moderate parties love it in theory ; but in 
 reality they feel towards it little instinctive sympathy. 
 Only a few isolated men, superior to the passions of the 
 crowd and to the popular instincts, cherish towards Eng- 
 land the esteem and interest which may well be inspired 
 by one of the greatest nations that have done honour to 
 humanity : a nation which has powerfully contributed to 
 the material and moral development of the world, and 
 whose civilising mission is yet far from being accomplished. 
 The masses are everywhere hostile to it. 
 
 Let it not be thought that in France only does this 
 sentiment prevail. In that country it is manifested in a 
 more lively and noisy fashion ; but, in truth, it is common 
 to all the nations of Europe. From St. Petersburg to 
 Madrid, in Germany as in Italy, the enemies of progress, 
 and the partisans of political revolutions alike regard 
 England as their most formidable foe. The former accuse 
 it of being the centre in which all revolutions are planned, 
 the assured refuge, the citadel, so to speak, of propa- 
 gandists and of levellers. The latter, on the contrary, 
 with greater reason perhaps, regard the English aristocracy 
 as the corner-stone of the European social edifice, and as 
 the greatest obstacle to their democratic schemes. This 
 
SYMPATHY WITH IRELAND. 
 
 hatred with which England inspires the extreme parties 
 might be expected to endear her to those more moderate ; 
 to the friends of well-ordered progress, of the gradual and 
 regular development of humanity ; to those, in short, who 
 are in principle opposed equally to the violent upturning 
 of society, and to its being kept in rigid incapacity of 
 change. The fact is not so. The motives which might 
 well induce sympathy with England are opposed by a host 
 of prejudices, of memories, and of passions whose force is 
 almost always irresistible. I do not wish to condemn all 
 the causes of this hostility ; I simply state the fact, 
 because it explains the general excitement displayed 
 regarding Ireland, when it has been thought that the 
 agitation which has sprung up there endangered the 
 existence of the British empire. 
 
 This sentiment is assuredly not the only cause of the 
 sympathy felt on the continent for the Irish people ; to 
 assert this were a slander on humanity. That sympathy 
 has its chief source in the generous instinct which leads 
 individuals, as well as the masses of men, to feel interested 
 in real suffering, and in affliction undeserved. Still, one 
 may believe, without fear of injustice, that the hatred of 
 the oppressors is not foreign to the sympathy of the 
 European public with the oppressed. 
 
 In truth, we hear every day men the least favourable to 
 liberty and toleration cry out loudly against English 
 tyranny, and the sad condition of the Irish Catholics, 
 while they have not a word of pity for their Polish 
 co-religionists, victims of the religious persecutions of the 
 Emperor of Kussia. On the other hand, again and again, 
 we meet with radicals who declaim with their usual energy 
 against the wicked abuses of the political and religious 
 
4 PEESENT AND FUTURE OF lEELAND. 
 
 aristocracy in Ireland, but who are silent about the other 
 and more revolting iniquities of the aristocracy of skin in 
 the country pre-eminently democratic. 
 
 It is of the very highest importance to explore the true 
 causes of the movement which stirs men's minds in favour 
 of Ireland, in order to guard against their possible influence 
 on our appreciation of passing events in that country, as 
 well as of their consequences and their probable results. 
 Error in this respect would be fatal if men of extreme 
 opinions, aiming at the same end, without distinction of 
 parties, were to succeed in impressing on continental 
 nations their opinions as to the dangers which threaten 
 England. If the prophecies of the Gazette de France and 
 of the National were to lead astray in this matter the 
 majority of French politicians, the maintenance of peace, 
 so desirable for all, but especially for those who, like 
 myself, have more faith in ideas than in cannons for 
 improving the lot of humanity, would become from day 
 to day more difficult, and finally impossible. So soon as 
 the masses shall be persuaded that the British power is 
 weakened ; that, undermined at its base, the colossus is no 
 longer able to maintain, as in the past, a war of giants 
 against a continental coalition, — all the efforts of states- 
 men, all the resistance of peaceful interests will be 
 powerless to arrest the flood of popular passions, which, 
 taking the occasion as propitious for gratifpng their 
 antipathy to England and for revenging ancient wrongs, 
 will hurry irresistibly the nations of Europe into a terrible 
 struggle, as ruinous to their material interests as to their 
 intellectual progress. 
 
 Notwithstanding what I have said regarding excessive 
 prejudices against England, I cannot enter upon the 
 
OPPEESSION OF THE CELTS. 
 
 subject which I purpose to treat, without frankly expressing 
 my sympathy for that Irish people to whom long past 
 generations have bequeathed a grievous heritage of misery 
 and suffering. The wish not to be unjust to the powerful 
 nation with which they are united by a bond which they 
 wish to break, will not, I trust, make me insensible to 
 their wrongs and indifferent to the cause of the evils, 
 whose oppressive reality cannot be denied. If, from 
 political considerations of a higher order, I were to think 
 it imprudent to express the strong interest with which 
 Ireland fills me, I would abandon the task which I have 
 imposed upon myself, for, however grave those consider- 
 ations might be, there are sentiments which even to them 
 ought never to be sacrificed. 
 
 All the world knows the long and melancholy history of 
 the miseries of Ireland. For eight centuries this country 
 has endured every kind of oppression and of persecution. 
 At first there were the evils of the barbarous conquest, 
 the oppression of the Celtic by the Anglo-Norman race. 
 After the conquest came the continual wars and revolts, 
 which renewed at short intervals the disasters of the first 
 invasion. Ireland of the middle age, always conquered, 
 was never completely subdued. Those powerful JSTorman 
 barons, whose domination had extended over the whole of 
 England, and had banished the very shadow of Saxon 
 nationality, could not succeed in establishing their empire 
 on the same basis on the other side of St. George's 
 Channel. The vast marshes of Ireland, its immense 
 thickets stretching towards the west, in Connaught espe- 
 cially, for centuries offered a sure refuge to the indomitable 
 Celts, and allowed them to maintain a savage independence 
 at the cost of poverty and suffering of every kind. 
 
6 PRESENT AND FUTUEE OF IRELAND. 
 
 From the conquest of Henry II. to the reign of Eliza- 
 beth, the history of Ireland is only a long succession of 
 rebellions, always defeated and always renewed. During 
 this period, the English were rather encamped than estab- 
 lished in Ireland. Their real dominion never went beyond 
 the province of Leinster, the nearest to England. Beyond 
 its limits they exercised a sort of sovereignty iisually 
 confined to a few ravaging excursions, prompted rather by 
 the spirit of vengeance than by the love of pillage. Those 
 four centuries were, for three-fourths of Ireland, only a 
 long war, which, in spite of numberless reverses, could not 
 effect the complete submission of the inhabitants. It is 
 perhaps in those fierce struggles that the energetic and 
 tenacious character of the Irish was formed. They owe 
 to the habits contracted in that period of incessant battles, 
 the marvellous persistence which has enabled them, when 
 material resistance became impossible, to preserve un- 
 changed even to our time, thanks to an invincible moral 
 resistance, their national customs, faith, and physiognomy. 
 
 In spite of the admiration excited by the generous 
 efforts of the Irish to maintain their independence, we are 
 compelled to admit that it would have been well for them 
 had they been thoroughly subdued in the reign of Henry 
 II. Had the Norman barons once settled and consolidated 
 their sway over the Celtic population of Ireland, they 
 would no longer have regarded themselves as the chiefs of 
 an army encamped in a conquered country ; they would in 
 time have become attached to their new country, and they 
 would have endowed it with beneficent institutions, such 
 as, from the middle ages onward, ensured the prosperity 
 and the glory of England. Four centuries would have 
 been more than enough to fuse the conquering and the 
 
THE STUARTS AND THE COMMONWEALTH. J 
 
 conquered races, so that, when their religious disputes 
 broke out, these would not have been frightfully en- 
 venomed by the antipathies of race and nationality. 
 
 From the time of Elizabeth's reign, religious persecution 
 took the place of the political persecution of the Irish 
 people, or, to speak more truly, the one aggravated the 
 other. Unalterably attached to the faith of their fathers, 
 the people energetically resisted the repeated efforts for 
 conversion made by the English government, which by 
 turns resorted to violence and to corruption. They resisted 
 openly under Elizabeth ; conquered, they resisted secretly 
 under James I. and Charles I. ; and they suffered equally 
 from the haughty domination of the last of the Tudors, 
 and from the legal quibbles and the hypocritical cruelties 
 of the first two Stuarts. 
 
 When the parliamentary revolution broke out, the Irish 
 thought the time had come for revenge of the sufferings 
 inflicted on them by the English during so many genera- 
 tions. They rose in mass to exterminate their oppressors, 
 and committed frightful massacres. The horrible insur- 
 rection of 1641 was followed by wars still more horrible, 
 by a reaction still more dreadful. The savage cruelty of 
 the republican generals, the legal butcheries of Cromwell 
 threw into the shade, if they did not justify, the crimes 
 of the insurgents.* 
 
 Under the restoration, Ireland, defrauded of its legiti- 
 
 * See Clarendon's History of tlie Eebellion and Ci-vdl Wars, vol. 7, 
 Oxford, 1749, Appendix : A Collection of the, Several Massacres and 
 Murders Committed by the Irisli, since the 23rd of October, 1641. — pp. 
 209 — 222 (13 pages). A Collection of Some of the Massacres and Murders 
 Committed on the Irish in Ireland, since the 23rd of October, 1641. — pp. 
 223—245 (22 i>£iges).—Translato7\ 
 
8 - PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 mate claims, was still in painful agitation, but without 
 recourse to actual violence. It was attracted to the 
 Stuarts by a secret instinct, though Charles II., more from 
 weakness than from bad intent, abandoned his more faith- 
 ful Catholic subjects to the suspicious tyranny of the 
 English Protestants. 
 
 After the revolution of 1688, Ireland made one more 
 effort to recover its independence. It fought for its king, 
 for its faith, for its political existence. But fortune, as in 
 former times, was unpropitious. Thoroughly defeated at 
 the Boyne, exhausted and incapable of resistance, it fell 
 again under the yoke of its oppressors. 
 
 The battle of the Boyne and the taking of Limerick 
 were the last acts of the civil and religious wars which 
 had for six centuries distracted and devastated Ireland. 
 The English dominion was now firmly established over 
 the whole island. Even Connaught, the last refuge of 
 the insurgent Irish, was completely subdued. After the 
 year 1690, war and bodily violence came to an end ; but 
 to them succeeded legal tyranny, judicial persecutions, 
 worse than the previous scourges, for they are equally 
 oppressive and more degrading. 
 
 The reign of William III. and that of Queen Anne 
 were occupied in building up, bit by bit, that monstrous 
 legislation called the penal law, of which the avowed end 
 was to maintain the Catholics in poverty and degradation, 
 by crushing them at once in their faith, in their rights 
 public and private, in their dearest affections. I will not 
 here retrace that barbarous code. Since Ireland engaged 
 the public attention, the journals have, from time to time, 
 reproduced its most violent clauses, and they must be 
 known to our readers. 
 
THE PENAL CODE. 
 
 The results of this inhuman code were lamentable. 
 The cruelty was purely gratuitous, for, far from losing 
 strength, Catholicism became all the stronger from the 
 hatred with which the poor Irish regarded the religion of 
 their oppressors. Every attempt at conversion failed. 
 The English parliament, in the belief that it was pro- 
 moting the established religion, merely, by its unjust laws, 
 placed at the mercy of the rich Protestants, proprietors of 
 the soil, the Catholic population which, in three-fourths of 
 the country, were almost exclusively its cultivators. The 
 penal laws which, at first, religious fanaticism had inspired, 
 lost by degrees their primitive character, and, in the hands 
 of those who applied' them, became a means of social 
 domination. During the greatest part of the eighteenth 
 century, the Irish peasant was reduced to a state of slavery 
 worse than that of the negro in the Antilles. Thanks to 
 the anti-Catholic legislation, and to the manner in which 
 it was applied, it was more difficult for him to obtain 
 justice from a Protestant grand jury, than it is now for a 
 slave in the French colonies to obtain it from the magis- 
 trates sent from the mother country to administer the 
 laws. During this period, Ireland presents the saddest 
 spectacle to be found in any civilised society, — complete 
 and absolute oppression of the poor by the rich, of him 
 who labours by him who possesses, organised by the law, 
 and maintained by the ministers of justice. 
 
 When we reflect on the influence which such a state of 
 things must have exercised on the relations of the different 
 classes of society, we can better understand the difliculties 
 of the present position of Ireland, and we easily discover the 
 true origin of that profound antipathy and of that per- 
 manent hostility which even now, when all the penal laws 
 
TO PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 have been repealed, render aliens to each other the Irish 
 peasant and the proprietor of the soil, and which form the 
 strongest obstacle in the path of those who strive sincerely 
 for the material and moral improvement of the country. 
 
 When we reperuse the records of so many miseries and 
 of so long oppression, we are drawn involuntarily to pass 
 a severe judgment on the nation which was their author, 
 or at least accomplice, and to demand from the present 
 generation a reckoning for the barbarities of which their 
 fathers were guilty. However moderate one may be, it is 
 hard to resist the desire of seeing dawn for Ireland the 
 day not only of justice but also of revenge. Nevertheless, 
 if we subject this impulse of a generous indignation to 
 the cool judgment of reason, we are forced to admit that 
 the English of the time of William III. and of Queen 
 Anne are not so culpable as they appear to us when 
 we try them by the light of the nineteenth century. 
 In persecuting the Catholics, in heaping vexation upon 
 vexation so as to render their worship difficult and 
 humiliating, the statesmen of that epoch were not con- 
 scious of the crime which they were perpetrating against 
 humanity ; they only followed the opinions of their time ; 
 they were rigorously faithful in applying the doctrines of 
 intolerance which no one in Europe dared then openly to 
 gainsay. Before condemning them too severely, let us 
 remember that they were contemporary with the pious 
 prelates who demanded and obtained the revocation of the 
 edict of Nantes, and that they lived in a time when the 
 promulgation of a black code, which now we cannot read 
 without a shudder of horror, was reputed an eminently 
 philanthropic act. Let us condemn, with all the energy 
 of conviction that modern science can inspire, the cruel 
 
PROGEESS OF TOLEEATION. II 
 
 maxims, the false ideas which ruled the world a century 
 ago ; but let us be indulgent to the men whose principal 
 offence consisted in their inability to rise above the 
 intelligence of their time, when the opinions generally 
 received, far from checking their political passions, favoured 
 and excited them. 
 
 When we compare the effect which the cruelties and 
 the persecutions endured by Ireland produce upon us, 
 children of the nineteenth century, with the effect which 
 they produced on the most enlightened and refined of the 
 last century, we cannot but rejoice at the immense progress 
 that has occurred in the moral sense of nations. 
 
 On careful reflection, we shall be forced to own that 
 this mere progress ought to render us indulgent towards 
 our own times, and, while banishing regret for a past too 
 little studied, to make us patient under the evils, often 
 very serious, and always trying, of the period of transition 
 through which modern societies are destined to pass. 
 
 During the first half of the eighteenth century, the 
 spirit of toleration made considerable progress in Great 
 Britain. The contemporaries of Locke and of Hume* 
 
 * In this reference to "the contemporaries of Locke and of Hume" 
 there seems to be some confusion of dates. Locke, indeed, who was bom 
 in 1632, and who died in 1704, may well have exerted some influence on 
 opinion "during the first half of the eighteenth century," for his First 
 Letter on Toleration appeared in 1688. But Hume, who died in 1776, was 
 not born till 1711 ; his Treatise on Human Nature appeared in 1738 ; 
 the fu-st part of his Essays in 1742 ; and his Political Discourses, Essays, 
 and Inquiries concerning Morals in 1752. Of the earliest of these woi-ks 
 he has himself recorded : "Never was literary attempt more unfortunate 
 than my Treatise on Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press, 
 without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the 
 zealots. " — Translator. 
 
12 PRESE^^^T AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 could not cherisli towards dissenters in religion tlie perse- 
 cuting zeal which inflamed the disciples of Milton. The 
 penal laws to which the Irish Catholics were subjected, 
 came gradually to be regarded in their true light by most 
 enlightened men in the country, and their abolition was 
 demanded with growing energy by public opinion, that 
 imponderable force which has so wonderful an action on 
 the complicated springs of the British constitution. 
 
 Although there was an Irish parliament in Dublin, 
 political reforms really depended on the will of England. 
 In fact, the Irish legislature, in virtue of ancient statutes, 
 of which the most important is known under the name 
 of Poynings, the lieutenant of Henry YII, was so 
 dependent on the government at London, that it was 
 only an instrument in its hands. So long as the Stuart 
 party preserved a spark of life, all relief was refused to 
 the Irish Catholics, who were regarded as its most devoted 
 partisans. When this party was utterly extinct, the 
 government showed towards them a more favourable dis- 
 position. But it was not till the war of independence in 
 America had shaken at home the power of Lord North's 
 ministry, in 1778, that the partisans of religious toleration 
 could make a partial breach in the monstrous edifice of 
 penality which the hatred of Catholicism had built up in 
 Ireland. 
 
 The influence of the American revolution was not con- 
 fined to the reform of the penal laws ; it made itself felt 
 above all by the Protestant population of Ireland. Till 
 then that population had patiently borne the political yoke 
 of England, without whose aid it could not have forcibly 
 maintained its religious supremacy and its civil domination 
 over the Catholic population. It had consented to sacrifice 
 
THE MOVEMENT OF 1782. 1 3 
 
 its political rights in exchange for the needful means of 
 retaining under the yoke of servitude the majority of their 
 countrymen professing another creed. The movement 
 begun in men's minds by this memorable struggle, aided 
 by the progress of tolerant and liberal ideas, changed the 
 disposition of the Irish Protestants, and led them to claim 
 national independence. 
 
 The circumstances were eminently favourable. The 
 British government, having all its regular forces employed 
 in the colonies, was obliged, in order to preserve Ireland 
 from the invasion with which it was threatened, to appeal 
 to the wealthier classes in that country, and to organise 
 among them militia-bands which took the name of united 
 volunteers. These troops formed in the aggregate an 
 imposing force, which preserved the country from foreign 
 war, and which, at the same time, enabled the Irish to 
 demand from the British parliament their political eman- 
 cipation, in a way not to be resisted. 
 
 The triumph of the volunteers was accomplished in 
 1782. The ministry of Mr. Fox declared that the British 
 parliament had never had the right to make laws for 
 Ireland, or to invade the independence of the Irish 
 parliament. This was to abdicate, officially at least, all 
 idea of supremacy and of domination. It was the com- 
 plete emancipation of Ireland, the abolition of the tutorial 
 power which Britain had assumed. 
 
 The movement of 1782 was essentially Protestant ; the 
 Catholics took no active part in it ; they applauded but 
 did not effectively aid it. Nevertheless, the spirit which 
 had animated the volunteers was too generous not to have 
 an influence, at the moment of triumph at least, on the 
 condition of the Catholics. One of the first acts of the 
 
r4 PEESEXT AND FUTUKE OF lEELAND. 
 
 Irish parliament, after achieving its independence, was to 
 repeal a part of the penal laws which the reform of 1778 
 had left in force. 
 
 However glorious for Ireland may have been the peace- 
 ful revolution effected in 1782, we must not exaggerate its 
 significance ; it was far from establishing in fact the 
 independence of the Irish nation. The parliament at 
 Dublin was, it is true, declared sovereign and all powerful, 
 as fully as the British parliament ; but, its internal com- 
 position not having been changed, it had really only a 
 shadow of independence. In fact the Irish Chamber of 
 Commons was mainly composed of the representatives of 
 rotten boroughs, and of municipal corporations, which 
 admitted only a very small number of persons, all devoted 
 to the Protestant cause. Of three hundred members, the 
 counties elected only twenty-four ; the cities containing 
 above six thousand souls, at most fifty ; the rest were 
 nominated by the great proprietors of boroughs, most of 
 whom resided in England, where they were under the 
 absolute control of the government. 
 
 It may be affirmed, without exaggeration, that the Irish 
 parliament, even after 1782, was of legislative bodies the 
 most corruptible and the most corrupt. Certainly there 
 were glorious exceptions, names pure from all taint;* 
 long lives that no suspicion could assail ; but those rare 
 exceptions render still more striking the servility and 
 corruptness of the majority of that political body which 
 they vainly adorned. 
 
 The united volunteers, after having obtained the national 
 independence, demanded a parliamentary reform ; but, it 
 
 * Such were those of Grattan and Lord Charlemont. 
 
THE FRENCH EEVOLUTION. 1 5 
 
 must be owned, on this point they displayed much less 
 ardour and unanimity. Many of their body feared to 
 enter on the career of internal reforms, in the name of 
 the great principles of equity and justice, for they felt 
 that it must inevitably lead to the emancipation of the 
 Catholics, and in this they took no interest. Nevertheless, 
 as ideas of toleration made new progress from day to day, 
 it is probable that the sincere Irish reformers would 
 finally have triumphed over religious prejudices and anti- 
 pathies, if the war of the French revolution had not 
 arisen to disturb the regular development of liberal 
 principles in England. The statesmen, indeed, of that 
 country felt strongly the necessity of making in the 
 English constitution the changes which the progress of 
 the times demanded. Mr. Pitt, it is well known, though 
 the minister of a king not friendly to innovations, declared, 
 so early as 1785, for a large and effective parliamentary 
 reform. Before the events in France had turned aside his 
 projects of reform, this he would probably have accom- 
 plished, but for the unfortunate illness of George III. and 
 the avowed hostility of the Prince of Wales. 
 
 If Pitt had effected his plan of parliamentary reform, 
 he would without doubt have extended it to Ireland; and 
 this measure would have been the greatest of benefits to 
 that country, for it would have been impossible to touch 
 the political edifice which the Protestants had raised on a 
 narrow^ false, and factitious basis, without recognising and 
 conceding the rights of the Catholics. 
 
 Had parliamentary reform and Catholic emancipation 
 been accomplished in Ireland before 1792, before revolu- 
 tionary passions had agitated that country and revi\'ed 
 the ancient hatred of its sects and races, it would have 
 
1 6 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 been saved from a long series of sufferings and calamities 
 of which the end, alas ! has not yet come. Providence did 
 not permit those healing measures to be then applied ; 
 Ireland was destined to become, after a long career of 
 misery, an inexhaustible source of anxieties and troubles 
 to its oppressors, in order perhaps, to give to the world a 
 great lesson, and to teach the most powerful nations that 
 their crimes and their errors recoil sooner or later on those 
 who commit them. 
 
 The French revolution surprised the Irish reformers at 
 the outset of their efforts, and arrested their course. In 
 1792 they achieved, indeed, the repeal of the remaining 
 penal enactments which still weighed upon the Catholics, 
 and obtained the right of voting at elections ; an immense 
 concession, which would necessarily have brought about 
 their complete emancipation, if the country had continued 
 to advance in the way of regular and peaceful regeneration, 
 which the events consequent on the American revolution 
 appeared to have opened up. 
 
 The outbreaks of the democratic spirit in France, the 
 horrible excesses of 1793, produced a complete reaction 
 in the rich and enlightened classes of England and of 
 Ireland. The volunteers were disbanded without opposi- 
 tion, without even a protest by their chiefs against this 
 measure. Most of the reformers of 1782 became deter- 
 mined conservatives, so soon as social order seemed 
 threatened by the terrible propagandism of anarchy 
 which the Convention sought to organise. The events in 
 France, however, the effect of which had been to detach 
 the higher classes from the reformiDg party, drove the 
 rest of that party headlong into revohitionary ways. The 
 remnants of the volunteers formed a secret association 
 
THE UMTED lEISHMEN. 1 7 
 
 under the name of "United Irishmen," who endeavoured to 
 unite all the lower classes, without distinction of race or 
 creed, for subversive ends. The ultra democratic and 
 republican tendencies of this association, its avowed in- 
 tention to follow the example of France, kept aloof from 
 it all men who, by their intelligence, their rank, or their 
 riches, held a place in the least distinguished in society. 
 
 The United Irishmen, blinded by their passions, ex- 
 aggerating their strength and number, and above all 
 reckoning on efiflcient aid from France, which the mis- 
 doings of the rulers of that country and the opposition 
 of the elements did not permit them to obtain, attempted 
 an insurrectionary movement in 1798. The issue was not 
 for an instant doubtful. Without leaders, without orders, 
 without prepared plans, the insurgents could only commit 
 frightful outrages, and inflict terrible vengeance on those 
 whom they viewed as their greatest enemies — the Protes- 
 tants and the English. Nowhere did they succeed in 
 organising a serious resistance ; as soon as the English 
 army took the field, they dispersed almost without a 
 blow. 
 
 The repression enforced by the government was cruel ; 
 it resembled rather ferocious reprisals than justice severel}' 
 but reluctantly applied to misguided subjects. Neverthe- 
 less it attained its end : the revolutionary spirit was 
 crushed, the reforming party was destroyed, only feeble 
 but brilliant fragments remained. 
 
 The insurrection of 1798 supplied to the great minister 
 who then guided the destinies of Great Britain — Mr. 
 Pitt — the pretext and the means for carrying into effect a 
 measure which he must long have meditated. In that 
 war to the death which he carried on with the colossal 
 c 
 
1 8 PRESENT AND FUTUEE OF IRELAND. 
 
 power of France, he could not fail to be struck more than 
 once with the dangers caused to England by the legislative 
 independence of Ii eland, and he must have eagerly desired 
 to be able to unite the tv/o parliaments of London and of 
 Dublin. Public opinion in England declared loudly in 
 favour of this union, and the parliament supplied to the 
 ministry all the means needful for its accomplishment. 
 
 There was a great obstacle to be overcome : the consent 
 of the Irish parliament must be obtained ; it must be 
 induced itself to pronounce its sentence of death. Mr. 
 Pitt thought he could carry this measure with a high 
 hand ; but at the first attempt he failed. The first project 
 of legislative union, presented in 1799, was rejected by 
 the Irish House of Commons. The ministry had then 
 recourse to a means which it had found always successful 
 in the parliament of Dublin : it practised corruption on 
 an immense scale. It bought a large number of rotten 
 boroughs; it lavished places, honours, pensions, and, at 
 the end of a year, it procured a majority of one hundred 
 and sixty-eight votes against seventy-three, for the union 
 of the Irish parliament with that of Great Britain. 
 
 Let us pause for a few moments to examine this cele- 
 brated act, which has at all times called forth in Ireland 
 complaints so bitter, and recriminations so violent, and 
 which is, at this day, the pretext, if not the cause, of the 
 agitation which shakes this country to its deepest roots. 
 
 We must, at the outset, distinguish the merits of this 
 measure in itself from the means employed for its accom- 
 plishment. There can be but one voice in condemning to 
 infamy those who made traffic of the independence of 
 their country, who bartered their rights and their political 
 influence against gold and places, who sold their vote and 
 
PITT AND THE UNION. 1 9 
 
 sanctioned an act which their conscience disapproved. 
 But must we equally condemn the government which 
 purchased those corrupt men ? I would not hesitate to do 
 this if, by a fatal error, public opinion in ages past, and 
 even in our own, had not in some measure sanctioned on 
 the part of government a morality different from that 
 which private persons recognise ; if it had not, in all times, 
 treated with excessive indulgence the immoral acts which 
 have brought about great political results. If we would 
 brand with disgrace the character of Pitt for having 
 practised parliamentary corruption on a great scale, we 
 must treat with equal severity the greatest monarchs of 
 past times, Louis XIV., Joseph II., the great Frederick, 
 who, to reach their ends, offended far more grievously 
 against the inflexible principles of morality and of 
 humanity than did the illustrious statesman who estab- 
 lished the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 But, putting aside the appreciation of the conduct and 
 the merits of those who took part in the act of union, let 
 us examine this measure in itself, and let us see if, in fact, 
 it has been unjust and iniquitous towards Ireland, and if 
 it deserves all the hatred which it excites even at this day, 
 all the vituperation which 0' Conn ell and the orators of 
 the popular party lavish upon it without ceasing. 
 
 For myself, I declare frankly that I do not think so. 
 In accomplishing the legislative union of the British 
 islands Pitt was not moved by a narrow desire of domina- 
 tion ; he did not act in the exclusive interest of one 
 political party or of one religious sect. It was not in 
 order to enslave Ireland, to impose upon it his despotic 
 will, that he sought to unite all the parliamentary jDOwers 
 under one roof at Westminster. If such had beeu his 
 
20 peese:^t and futuee of ieeland. 
 
 object, tie would surely not have needed to incur such 
 odium to effect the union of the two countries ; he knew 
 very well that the Irish parliament, composed as it was, 
 was but an instrument in his skilful and firm hands. The 
 insurrection of 1798 had taught the Protestants, who alone 
 constituted the legal country, that their existence depended 
 wholly on the support of England, and that without the 
 continual aid of English bayonets, they would have been 
 the victims of the spirit of hatred and of vengeance which 
 animated the immense majority of the Catholic population. 
 The consciousness of its weakness, therefore, made the 
 party which exclusively composed the Irish parliament, 
 absolutely dependent on the cabinet at London. In order 
 to exercise over it a complete domination, Pitt would not 
 have needed to resort to the ancient methods of corruption; 
 intimidation would have sufficed. By forcing it to commit 
 suicide, he exacted from the parliament the only act which 
 could encounter a serious resistance ; and as regards him- 
 self, he lost rather than gained in parliamentary influence. 
 The aim of Pitt was noble and great. By uniting 
 under the same government the two islands which S.t. 
 George's Channel severs, he hoped to strengthen, to con- 
 solidate the edifice of British power, then exposed to 
 terrible attacks. He realised the thought of one of those 
 men who have possessed in the highest degree the instinct 
 of government — Cromwell — who nearly two centuries 
 before, desired to fuse the parliament of Ireland with that 
 of Britain. But, if the dominant thought was to strengthen 
 the government by simplifying the machinery of legisla- 
 tion, he thought also, I dare affirm, of performing an act 
 useful to Ireland, by withdrawing it from the dominion of 
 a blind and persecuting church. He wished to give to the 
 
CHARACTEE OF PITT. 21 
 
 Catholics, by means of the parliament of the united king- 
 dom, complete political emancipation, which they would 
 never have obtained from the Irish parliament. If he did 
 not realise these generous plans, it was because he found 
 in the will of George III. an obstacle which he had not the 
 courage to surmount, at a time when the support of the 
 crown was to him indispensable in order to save the nation- 
 ality of his country, threatened by the power of France. 
 
 A very false estimate of this illustrious statesman 
 commonly prevails. It is a grave error to represent him 
 as the patron of all abuses, of all oppressions, like a Lord 
 Eldon, or a Prince of Polignac. Far from it ; Pitt had all 
 the enlightenment of his time ; the son of Chatham was 
 not the friend of despotism, or the champion of religious 
 intolerance. With an intellect powerful and wide, he loved 
 power as a means, not as an end. He began his political 
 life by opposing the retrograde administration of Lord 
 North; and, as soon as he was himself a minister, one of 
 his first acts was to proclaim the necessity of a reform in 
 parliament. Pitt, assuredly, had not one of those ardent 
 souls which are passionately devoted to the great interests 
 of humanity, which, when they see these in question, 
 regard neither the obstacles in their way, nor the troubles 
 which their zeal may bring upon them. He was not one 
 of those men who wish to reconstruct society from bottom 
 to top, by means of general notions and humanitarian 
 theories. A genius profound and cold, void of prejudices, 
 he was animated solely by the love of his country, and by 
 the love of glory. At the outset of his career, he saw the 
 defects in the body politic, and he set himself to correct 
 them. If he had continued to wield power in a period 
 of peace and of tranquility, he would have been a reformer 
 
2 2 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 after the fashion of Mr. Peel and Mr. Canning, combining 
 the boldness and the large views of the one with the 
 wisdom and ability of the other. 
 
 But as soon as he saw gathering in the horizon the storm 
 of the French revolution, he foresaw, with the perspi- 
 cacity of superior intelligence, the outbreak of demagogic 
 principles and the dangers which they would bring on Eng- 
 land. He stopped short at once in his projects of reform,, 
 in order to provide for the crisis which was preparing. 
 He knew that in presence of the movement of revolution- 
 ary ideas which threatened to invade England, it would 
 have been imprudent to touch the sacred ark of the con- 
 stitution, and, by trying to repair the mouldering parts of 
 the social edifice which time had consecrated, to weaken 
 the respect with which it inspired the nation. From the 
 day when the revolution, overflowing the country in which 
 it had arisen, menaced Europe, Pitt had only one object 
 in view, to resist France, and to prevent ultra-democratic 
 ideas from invading England. To this supreme interest 
 he devoted all his means ; to this he sacrificed every other 
 political consideration. 
 
 Pitt's conduct, from the English pt)int of view, cannot 
 be too highly praised. By opposing France, by repressing^ 
 at home the violence of demagogues, he saved the social 
 order of England, and kept civilisation in the ways of 
 regular progress and of continuous development, which up 
 to that time it had pursued ; — for there does not now exist 
 a single individual, among persons of the least good sense, 
 be he radical or declared partisan of repeal, who could dare 
 to deny the fearful consequences which a democratic 
 revolution, if accomplished at the end of last century, 
 would have brought upon Great Britain. 
 
PROVISIONS OF THE UNION. 23 
 
 By abandoning his thoughts of reform, by becoming 
 conservative in the largest sense of the word, Pitt did not 
 constitute himself the defender of injustice and oppression. 
 I think I find a proof of this assertion in the very act of 
 union which has been the object of so many reproaches 
 and recriminations. Let us examine its chief provisions, 
 and see if the English ministry abused the unlimited 
 power which the terror caused by the insurrection of 1798, 
 and the means of corruption which it had employed, 
 placed in its hands, — to give to England the lion's share 
 in the legislative union by it effected, and to treat Ireland 
 rather as a conquered country than as a portion of the 
 same empire. 
 
 These chief provisions may be summed up in the eight 
 following articles : 
 
 1. The two kingdoms of England and Ireland are 
 declared to form one sole kingdom, under the title of 
 Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 2. The succession to the throne of the United Kingdom 
 sliall continue to be regulated by the laws now in force. 
 
 8. The United Kingdom shall be represented by one 
 parliament only, which shall take the name of the parlia- 
 ment of Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 4. Twenty-eight Irish temporal peers, elected for life 
 by the whole body of peers, as well as four bishops 
 succeeding each other in turn, shall be admitted to the 
 House of Lords of the United Kingdom ; and Ireland shall 
 send one hundred members to the House of Commons ; 
 that is to say, — sixty-four members elected by the thirty- 
 two counties, one by the University of Dublin, four by 
 the cities of Dublin and Cork, and thirty- one by thirty - 
 one of the most important towns or boroughs. 
 
24 PEESENT AND FUTUEE OF lEELAND. 
 
 5. The churclies of England and Ireland shall be 
 united and shall form only one church, subject to the same 
 laws, the same doctrines, to the same discipline as the 
 national Church of England. 
 
 6. The subjects of the two nations shall be placed on 
 the same footing in all that relates to industry, to commerce 
 and navigation. 
 
 7. England and Ireland shall contribute to the general 
 expenses of the state in the proportion of fifteen to two ; 
 this distribution shall last twenty years, and after that 
 time, the expenses shall be redistributed by parliament. 
 
 8. The laws now in force and the courts of justice 
 shall continué to exist as hitherto, except that appeals 
 from the Irish Courts of Chancery shall be carried to the 
 House of Lords of the United Kingdom. 
 
 It appears at once that, as regards the civil and 
 economic relations of the two kingdoms, the act of union 
 is irreproachable. England and Ireland are 'placed by it 
 on a footing of the most absolute equality. If there were 
 sacrifices or concessions on either side, it is by England 
 that they were made, since it consented to open its colonies 
 to Ireland, and to share the benefits of a monopoly of 
 which it alone had the privilege. 
 
 As regards religion, the union is less favourable to the 
 majority of the Irish nation ; I do not hesitate to say that 
 it made the condition worse. But let it not be forgotten 
 that England treated in Ireland with "the legal country," 
 composed exclusively of Protestants, who would never 
 have consented to dispossess themselves of the power 
 which they exercised, if their religious privileges had not 
 been guaranteed to them in their integrity. 
 
 The points which I have now examined are only 
 
HOUSES OF LOEDS AND COMMONS. 25 
 
 subsidiary ; the essential provisions of the Act of Union 
 are those which regulate the proportion of political power 
 reserved to each of the two countries, and the manner in 
 which the public burdens are divided between them. 
 
 Of the six hundred and fifty-eight members of which 
 the House of Commons was composed after the union, 
 Ireland was to have a hundred, and Great Britain five 
 hundred and fifty-eight. In the House of Lords, Ireland 
 obtained thirty-two representatives. Finally, its share of 
 the public burdens was fixed at two-seventeenths of the 
 total outlay. Was this an unfair division — an abuse of 
 power; were these conditions humiliating, and such as 
 might be imposed by an insolent victor on a vanquished 
 people ? A few moments' reflection will suffice to convince 
 us of the reverse. 
 
 I confess that the number of representatives granted to 
 the Irish peers seems at first disproportionate, especially 
 if we look to the number of persons that now constitute 
 the House of Lords. But we must remember that in 
 1800 that number was much smaller than it is at present ; 
 so that the inequality was far less than that which strikes 
 us when we think of thirty-two Irish peers now sitting 
 among four hundred British peers. In spite of this 
 seeming injustice, I cannot blame this provision of the 
 Act of Union. «In fact, the Irish peerage was much less 
 illustrious and eminent than the British peerage. With 
 a few exceptions, its ranks had been filled almost exclu- 
 sively by the most servile and devoted instruments of 
 British domination. Never had it done a popular act. 
 Its suppression was a real service to the country. The 
 introduction into the House of Lords of a certain number 
 of Irish Peers was far from being a benefit to Ireland. 
 
26 PEESEKT AND FUTÏÏRE OF IRELAND. 
 
 Since 1800, and even to our day, they have always been 
 the most violent, the most backward of the Tory party, 
 the most opposed to every sort of concession or reform. 
 
 The successive ministers from Pitt to the present time 
 have called to the House of Lords very many Irish peers ; 
 there are now more than fifty besides the thirty-two 
 representatives of the Irish peerage. I cannot think that 
 the true friends of Ireland have had reason to rejoice in 
 this seeming favour bestowed upon that country. 
 
 As to the composition of the House of Commons, 
 according to the terms of the union, Ireland having a 
 hundred deputies, while England and Scotland retained 
 five hundred and fifty-eight, its political influence was to 
 that of Britain in the ratio of 1 to 5 '5 8. This is too 
 small if we compare the populations of the two countries 
 at that epoch. In 1800, England and Scotland reckoned 
 eleven millions of inhabitants. We do not know exactly 
 the number of the Irish people at that time, but we can 
 scarcely estimate it at less than four millions. The popu- 
 lations of the two countries were then one to the other as 
 4 is to 11, or rather as 1 to 275, while their ratio of 
 political influence was as 1 to 5 '58. If, then, we reason 
 according to the mathematical ideas which the French 
 revolution made current, there is here a flagrant injustice 
 to Ireland. 
 
 There are, however, two things to be considered which, 
 in great measure at least, exonerate the authors of the Act 
 of Union from the charge of unfairness to Ireland in this 
 respect. 
 
 In the first place, as the census had not, in 1800, been 
 yet taken in Ireland, the population of that country was 
 supposed to be much less numerous than it really was. 
 
DISTBIBUTION OF POLITICAL POWER. 27 
 
 An official document published in 1785 stated the number 
 of inhabitants at 2,845,000. It was, then, natural that 
 statesmen, charged with the partition of political influence 
 between the two countries, should take this number as the 
 basis of their calculations. The populations of the two 
 countries were thus stated to be iu the ratio of 1 to 3 "86, 
 so that the apparent injustice done to Ireland was reduced 
 by one third. 
 
 But, in the second place, it must be borne seriously in 
 mind that in Britain never has the number of the 
 population been considered as the only element to be 
 taken into account in the distribution of political rights. 
 In the middle ages, the chief office of the House of 
 Commons being to vote subsidies, it was composed exclu- 
 sively of representatives of the commons who were able 
 to pay taxes. During several centuries, it was rather the 
 guardian of the national purse, than an integral portion 
 of the supreme power. Time and revolutions have, it is 
 true, strangely modified this idea; nevertheless it has 
 left its traces in the British constitution, and even at this 
 day it exerts a certain influence in that country. 
 
 If, accordingly, the public wealth, or, what comes to 
 the same thing, if the distribution of the public burdens 
 had been taken as the basis of the distribution of legisla- 
 tive power, Ireland would not have had reason to complain, 
 since it contributed to the finances of the kinodom less 
 than an eighth of the taxation, while it obtained the sixth 
 part of the representation of the United Kingdom. 
 
 By comparing all the ciphers which I have cited, we 
 find that the number of deputies granted to Ireland by the 
 Act of Union is a sort of mean proportion between >vhat 
 would have accrued had the number of the population, 
 
28 PEESENT AND FUTUEE OF lEELAND. 
 
 and what would have accrued had the amount of taxation, 
 been taken as the basis of the distribution of legislative 
 power. 
 
 Notwithstanding all that I have said, I do not maintain 
 the absolute justice, the perfect equity of this important 
 part of the Act of Union ; but I do not hesitate to affirm 
 that it is in all respects conformable to the practical 
 notions of political equity and justice at that time 
 generally prevalent in England. I have not the least 
 doubt that if strictly impartial arbiters, chosen, however, 
 among politicians imbued with English doctrines, had 
 been instructed to determine the proportion which Britain 
 and Ireland respectively should have in the united parlia- 
 ment, they would not have treated Ireland more liberally 
 than did Pitt. 
 
 After 1800, Ireland was governed like the rest of the 
 British empire by the three estates sitting at "Westminster. 
 Did the great majority of the country, the Catholics 
 especially, lose much by this political change, and have 
 they had serious reasons to regret their national parlia- 
 ment ? This cannot be maintained. The parliament of 
 Dublin, as I have already said, was composed exclusively 
 in the Protestant interest. Notwithstanding the right 
 granted to the Catholics, in 1792, of voting at elections, 
 they could never have exerted any influence on the House 
 of Commons, for, with the exception of the counties which 
 elected but a small part of the members composing the 
 house (sixty-four out of three hundred), their right was 
 quite illusory. In the twenty-six towns of any importance 
 that returned deputies, the right of election was reserved 
 to the municipal corporations, that is to say to the utmost 
 violence and intolerance ever exhibited by the spirit of 
 
THE UNION, A BENEFIT TO IRELAND. 29 
 
 prejudiced fanaticism. As to the small boroughs, for 
 which one hundred and twenty-four deputies had been 
 reserved, they were absolutely dependent on a few 
 oligarchs who, disposing of the majority of the house, 
 usually united so as to sell their votes to the British 
 government, with the greatest advantage to themselves. 
 
 It is not such an assembly as that that the great 
 national Irish party wishes to resuscitate. I much doubt 
 that they would consent to its revival, even if the repeal 
 of the Act of Union were to be obtained on this condition. 
 If they did consent, it would be with the secret hope of 
 soon crushing, under the weight of the popular indigna- 
 tion, an assembly so anti-national. But if, while granting 
 to Ireland the restoration of its ancient parliament, the 
 British government placed at the disposal of that body a 
 numerous army to repress the attempts of extra-legal 
 reform by the Catholic party, we may well believe that in 
 Ireland there would be but one voice to demand the 
 maintenance of the existing order of things, which, though 
 far from being satisfactory, is still greatly preferable to 
 that to which it succeeded. The ancient edifice of the 
 Irish constitution, let it never be forgotten, was a monstrous 
 assemblage of injustice and iniquities ; since it was not 
 possible to reform it, its destruction was a deed well done. 
 Therefore it is that, all things considered, I must regard 
 the Act of Union, in spite of all its defects, as an event 
 at which humanity must rejoice. 
 
 In opposition to this assertion, which will appear strange 
 to all those who are content to study history in the daily 
 newspapers, will be cited the example of 1782, and it will 
 be contended that if the union had not taken place, the 
 Catholics would have obtained reHgious emancipation and 
 
30 PRESEIS^T AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 parliamentary reform by the same means which the 
 volunteers had successfully employed to wrest from Britain 
 the recognition of national independence. But this would 
 be a serious error. In 1782, Ireland was unanimous ; she 
 had on her side justice, strength, and a certain measure of 
 legality. Britain, enfeebled by a disastrous war, had 
 herself put arms into her hands, and had helped her to 
 organise an imposing military force. How, in those cir- 
 cumstances, could the British government have refused 
 demands which, besides, were approved by the public 
 opinion of the whole country? But, after the French 
 revolution had broken out, the Protestant party in a body 
 declared against every kind of reform. Holding absolute 
 mastery of parliament, they would long have refused the 
 slightest concessions in favour of the Catholics. 
 
 Mr. Pitt, it must in justice be said, regarded the Act of 
 Union as the only means of cc»nsolidating religious peace 
 in Ireland, and of establishing there an equitable political 
 system. He had promised to the Catholics to present to 
 the parliament of the united kingdoms, so soon as it 
 should be constituted, an act to restore to them the 
 exercise of all their rights. In his eyes their emancipation 
 was a necessary consequence of the fusion of the two 
 countries. Unhappily his projects of conciliation and of 
 tolerance met an almost insuperable obstacle in the 
 obstinacy and narrow prejudices of the old king, George 
 III. At first he showed himself faithful to the true 
 principles of parliamentary government, and he quitted 
 office rather than renounce the execution of his promises 
 towards the Catholics. But he was faithful to them only 
 by half When restored to the ministry by his old lieu- 
 tenants, he did not use the immense parliamentary 
 
UNION AND EMANCIPATION. 3Î 
 
 influence at his disposal to secure the triumph of the 
 principles of religious toleration which he had proclaimed. 
 Exclusively pre-occupied with the external dangers which 
 threatened England, he aimed at regaining power, less in 
 the interest of her internal policj^ than in order to sustain 
 with greater energy and vigour the terrible struggle which 
 he had begun with France. At this decisive moment he 
 wished not to weaken his means of action by alienating 
 the confidence of his aged sovereign. He sacrificed the 
 Catholics to the success of his political war. 
 
 Britain committed an enormous fault in not granting to 
 the Catholics emancipation as a consequence of the Act of 
 Union. It would by this means have secured their attach- 
 ment, or, at least, would have rendered less unpopular 
 with the great mass of the nation a measure which could 
 not fail to wound the national pride of Ireland. Emanci- 
 pation would not have healed all the wounds of Ireland ; 
 but it would have prevented their being more and more 
 envenomed. The poor and suffering classes, instead of 
 attributing all their evils to the British parliament, would 
 have been accustomed to regard it as a just and protecting 
 power; and they would have patiently waited to receive 
 from it what to them was much more necessary than 
 political rights : great ecclesiastical and social reforms. 
 
 So long as the war with Napoleon lasted, the parliament 
 had neither time nor inclination to take up questions of 
 reform, whether in Britain or in Ireland. The Whigs, 
 during their short period of power, did nothing for the 
 latter country. After the peace, the prodigious success 
 obtained by the government had given to the Tory party, 
 who claimed, not without some reason, the monopoly of 
 the national glory, so great strength that all reform 
 
32 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 seemed to be indefinitely postponed. Tlie emancipation 
 of the Catholics, which in 1800 had been on the point of 
 accomplishment, was regarded in 1817 as a thing impos- 
 sible. 
 
 Nevertheless, the fruitful germs of progress and of 
 liberty inherent in the British constitution, though kept 
 down for a time by the intoxication of victory, soon began 
 to spring up anew. The spirit of reform, stifled by the 
 cares of war and then by the joys of triumph, awoke 
 with fresh strength, and on all sides broke oat complaints, 
 more and more energetic, against the glaring political 
 inequalities sanctioned by the constitution. The ablest 
 and the most enlightened of the Tories felt the gravity of 
 this movement, and thought that the time had come to 
 o-rant some of the demands of the popular party. Canning 
 and his friends, impressed by this conviction, introduced 
 into their party and into the ministry the principle of 
 reform, and ardently espoused the cause of religious 
 toleration. 
 
 During all this time the Irish Catholics, breathing freely 
 in a state of civil liberty, had largely increased in numbers 
 in wealth, and in intelligence. Their leaders had learned 
 that the time for revolts and for violent revolutions had 
 passed — that their only reasonable hope lay in the skilful 
 and persevering use of the legal means which the British 
 constitution, to its glory be it said, places within reach of 
 the suffering classes, to obtain redress of their grievances. 
 For this end a committee was organised in Dublin so early 
 as in 1810, to support by the press, or in all other legal 
 ways, the claims of the Catholics. This committee, at 
 first guided during several years by John Keogh, extended 
 its ramifications over the whole of Ireland. It grew up in 
 
CATHOLIC EMANCIPATIOJS^. 33 
 
 darkness and in siJence, and, before, so to speak, the British 
 government was aware of its existence, it had organised 
 throughout the country an immense association embracing 
 almost the entire Catholic population. 
 
 This celebrated association, known under the name of 
 the Catholic Association, perfectly disciplined by its skil- 
 ful chief, the illustrious O'Connell, suddenly, in 1825, 
 displayed itself in a startling manner. Its imposing 
 attitude, the astonishing power which it wielded over the 
 Irish masses, produced in Britain an immense effect. It 
 succeeded in organising and in maintaining an agitation so 
 threatening, without, however, transgressing the bounds 
 of legality, that after some years the government was 
 reduced to the alternative of crushing it by force, or of 
 disarming it by concessions. The leaders of the Tory 
 party, then in power, after long hesitation, adopted the 
 latter course. The Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel, 
 who, a few years before, had separated from Canning, 
 rather than follow him in the new path which he wished 
 to take in home politics, resolved to grant to the Irish 
 Catholics all their demands. This decision was wise and 
 prudent, rather than generous. In fact, if they yielded, 
 it was because they perceived that the British nation 
 would not long have supported them, if, in order to 
 maintain Protestant supremacy in Ireland, they had been 
 obliged to resort to violent means, such as were employed 
 against the reformers of the sixteenth and eighteenth 
 centuries. 
 
 The Act of 1829, drawn up by Mr. Peel, who, more 
 
 than any other statesman, is instinctively aware of the 
 
 necessities of the moment, was complete. The political 
 
 incapacity which had for centuries oppressed the Catholics, 
 
 D 
 
34 PRESEIS^T AND FUTURE OF IRELAîs^D. 
 
 was entirely abolished. The only restrictions were that 
 they were excluded from the offices of the Eegent of the 
 kingdom, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Chancellors 
 of Eno-land and of Ireland, and the President of the 
 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland — exclusions 
 based on solid reasons, and neither unjust nor insulting to 
 the Catholics of Great Britain, 
 
 Nevertheless, the Act of Emancipation, wrested from 
 the fear, rather than due to the good will, of parliament, 
 did not content Ireland. Her inveterate sores required 
 deeper remedies than a simple political reform, which the 
 Irish patriots with reason regarded rather as a means for 
 obtaining the redress of their country's wrongs, than as in 
 itself the end of their efforts. The agitation, further 
 stimulated by the events of July, 1830, began anew with 
 greater intensity and violence than before. 
 
 O'Connell, then all powerful with his party, engaged in 
 a memorable struggle with the government of Lord Grey, 
 and the consequences seemed likely to be serious. But 
 scarcely had the ministry brought forward the famous bill 
 for parliamentary reform, when O'Connell desisted from 
 all attack, from all hostile movement Perceiving with 
 instinctive and admirable sagacity the interest which the 
 Catholics had in the success of that measure, he passed, 
 with surprising dexterity, from an almost factious opposi- 
 tion, to boundless devotion to the Whig party. 
 
 So long as the fate of the bill was doubtful, so long as 
 reform was not decided, Lord Grey had no more sure and 
 faithful allies than the Irish Catholic members. To them 
 must "be attributed a considerable part of the victory 
 which that minister, sapported by public opinion, gained 
 over the House of Lords. 
 
THE REFORM BILL, 1832. 35 
 
 The Reform Bill did something for Ireland, and especi- 
 ally for the Catholics. To Ireland five new representatives 
 were granted ; one for the University of Dublin, and four 
 for towns whose importance had increased. But, what 
 was of more consequence, the electoral franchise was 
 extended. It had hitherto been concentrated in the 
 boroughs and placed in the hands of municipal corpo- 
 rations, wholly composed of Protestants and of fanatical 
 Protestants. It was now extended to every inhabitant 
 paying ten pounds in rent. This change secured to 
 the Catholics the majority in most of the electoral 
 bodies. 
 
 Parliamentary reform alone could not, any more than 
 emancipation, dry up the springs of popular agitation in 
 Ireland. Lord Grey erred in regarding it as the proper 
 boundary of the legislation of the reforming party. This 
 opinion, true in a certain measure relatively to England, 
 was, in relation to Ireland, wholly false. To the Irish 
 Catholics especially, it could be only a further means for 
 obtaining the changes in the religious and social order 
 which the state of their country imperiously demanded. 
 From the year 1832, the agitation was revived in a form 
 more than ever threatening. It was directed in particular 
 against tithes, an impost which was odious to the Catholics 
 from the humiliations which it inflicted, as from the pecu- 
 niary sacrifices which it involved. This time, O'Connell 
 was not strong enough to keep the popular movement 
 within legal bounds. The peasants, exasperated by misery 
 and by the disappointment of their hopes of relief from 
 tithes, waged a terrible war upon the clergy. The resist- 
 ance to the collections of this impost was so well organised, 
 and so vigorously maintained, that it became impossible for 
 
36 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 the tithe agents to obtain payment, even with the aid of 
 the police and of regular troops. In vain the government 
 of Lord Grey endeavoured to quell this general resistance 
 by vigorous means. The powers with which it was armed 
 by the Coercion Bill of 1833, were not effective in obtain- 
 ing for the clergy payment of their dues ; and when, to 
 relieve the extreme distress into which that body had 
 fallen, the government took the tithes upon itself, its 
 efforts were not more successful. 
 
 The ministry was not unanimous as to the courser to be 
 pursued with the Catholics. A certain number of mem- 
 bers of the cabinet were disposed to concession ; they 
 succeeded in laying before parliament, at the same time 
 as the Coercion Bill, a measure for initiating the reform of 
 the Anglican Church established in Ireland. In virtue of 
 this law, which, after long contests, was passed by both 
 houses, the Catholics were freed from the ecclesiastical 
 contribution named Vestry Cess, which the Protestants 
 had the right to levy from all the inhabitants of their 
 parish for the maintenance of their churches. The funds 
 arising from this impost were supplemented by a reserve 
 on the revenue of all ecclesiastical benefices, and by the 
 produce of ten bishoprics, and of some other ecclesiastical 
 charges, of which the suppression was decreed after the 
 death of the surviving holders. 
 
 This bill was a great boon to Catholic Ireland, less by 
 the reforms that it sanctioned, than by the precedent 
 which it established. The government, having touched 
 the sacred ark of the church, was on the way to be com- 
 pelled by the force of things to reduce its revenues in 
 proportion to the real requirements of the small minority 
 that professes in Ireland the religion of the state. 
 
LORD Melbourne's ministry. 37 
 
 In fact, the majority in the ministry were not slow in 
 an endeavour to draw from the principle established by 
 the bill of 1833 the logical consequences that flowed 
 naturally from it. They pronounced themselves in favour 
 of Mr. Ward's motion, which sought to make parlia- 
 ment declare that the state had the right to appropriate 
 for secular uses the surplus revenues of the church. 
 Four ministers, more Protestants than reformers, Lord 
 Stanley, Sir James Graham, the Duke of Richmond, and 
 Lord Goderich, refusing to subscribe to this declaration, 
 quitted the cabinet. Soon afterwards, Lord Grey, who 
 followed reluctantly the policy of his colleagues towards 
 Ireland, imitated their example and abandoned office. 
 
 The retirement of the intractable Whig partisans of the 
 established church, led to the ministry of Lord Melbourne, 
 which, with the exception of the very short interval of 
 the vain attempt of the Peel ministry, governed England 
 during six years. The formation of the Melbourne min- 
 istry was a great event for Ireland. In fact, it was 
 formed avowedly to satisfy her just demands. For the 
 first time the fall of a ministry had been caused by their 
 refusal to grant the wishes of the Irish people, and a new 
 cabinet had proclaimed aloud the intention to treat 
 Catholics and Protestants on a footing of equality. For 
 the first time, in the course of centuries. Catholics were 
 called to assume the first dignities of the magistracy. 
 The nomination of Mr. O'Loughlen to the Mastership of 
 the Rolls — the second place in the Courts of Equity — and 
 that of Mr. Shell as member of the Privy Council, signal- 
 ised the beginning of a new era for Ireland, from the date 
 of which the Liberal party have wholly ceased to take 
 religious differences into account. 
 
38 PRESENT AND FUTUEE OF IRELAND. 
 
 Lord Melbourne confided the administration of Ireland 
 to men of a firm and conciliatory disposition, who suc- 
 ceeded in gaining the esteem and the confidence of the 
 Catholics. The two Lord Lieutenants during his ministry, 
 Lord Mulgrave and Lord Fortescue, exercised power in 
 the true interests of the country; through their justice 
 and impartiality Ireland enjoyed an amount of tranquillity 
 beyond all previous conception. 
 
 If Ireland owes much to those Lord Lieutenants, she 
 owes still more to the true representative of the ministry, 
 to the Secretary of State — Lord Morpeth — who, during six 
 years, employed all the power with which he was invested 
 to obliterate the traces of religious discords, and to cicatrise 
 the wounds of that unhappy country. We may indulge 
 the hope that the career of this statesman — the hope of 
 the Whig party — will not close without his being per- 
 mitted to complete, as minister or as Lord Lieutenant, the 
 work of pacification and of regeneration which he has 
 so worthily begun under the ministry of Lord Melbourne. 
 
 The legislative attempts of the ministry to improve the 
 condition of the Catholics were not so successful as their 
 efforts in administration. It was only by abandoning the 
 application of the famous principle of the appropriation of 
 the surplus revenues of the church that they could carry 
 through both houses a measure for transmuting tithes into 
 a perpetual rent charge, and they were obliged to return 
 five times to the attack ere they could effect the reform of 
 the Irish municipal corporations, and not without sub- 
 mitting to several amendments which impaired its efficacy. 
 
 In spite of the concessions which the ministry were 
 forced to make, the two laws just mentioned were not less 
 the source of great benefits to Ireland. 
 
MUNICIPAL REFOEM. 39 
 
 The law for tlie conversion of tithes reduced their 
 amount to three-fourths of what they were when they 
 were paid in kind. Besides, it levied this impost directly 
 from the landowners ; and thus put an end to the hateful 
 relations between the ecclesiastical tithe-collectors and the 
 wretched Catholic tenants. It is probable that the tithe 
 now, as heretofore, falls in the last resort on the tenant ; 
 but as he does not pay it directly, and as it is confounded 
 with the rent paid to the proprietor, the impost appears to 
 him much less humiliating and vexatious. Since the pro- 
 mulgation of the new law for the conversion of tithes, 
 peace, accordingly, has been no more disturbed in the 
 agricultural districts, and the clergy of the established 
 church have collected their revenues without obstacle or 
 difficulty. 
 
 The reform of the municipal corporations, though less 
 complete than that before made in England and in Scot- 
 land, has, nevertheless, been an immense triumph to the 
 Catholics. These corporations were truly citadels in which 
 found refuge the most passionate and fanatical spirit of 
 intolerance and persecution exhibited in late times. By 
 destroying their privileges, by granting the right of vote 
 to all the electors with a certain guarantee of income, the 
 law gave to the Catholics a preponderating influence in 
 almost all the towns. It is to this law that the Catholics 
 owed the satisfaction of seeing their illustrious leader, 
 whom they justly name their Liberator — O'Connell — 
 occupy the first municipal dignity of the kingdom, and, as 
 Mayor of Dublin, take precedence of all the public func- 
 tionaries, even the Lord Chancellor himself, in the train 
 of the Lord Lieutenant. 
 
 During the whole period of the Melbourne ministry 
 
40 PEESENT AND FUTURE OF IREI-AND. 
 
 the peace of Ireland was not broken. The conduct of 
 O'Connell and the other leaders of the Catholic party on 
 this occasion is above all praise. Renouncing the seductive 
 triumphs of popular agitation, they made as great efforts 
 to maintain the tranquillity which they had achieved as 
 they had made to originate the movement which caused 
 the retirement of Lord Grey. 
 
 Shortly after Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 
 the month of October, 1837, O'Connell induced the 
 Catholic Association to pass the following resolution, 
 vwhich so well expresses the disposition of the Catholic 
 party at that time, that I think I must quote it in full : — 
 
 " The National Association, profoundly grateful for the 
 firm, energetic, humane, and perfectly impartial adminis- 
 >tration of Lord Mulgrave ;* fully confiding in the sincere 
 purpose of Her Majesty to render justice to Ireland, by 
 placing it on the sa.me footing as England and Scotland ; 
 and, above all and before all, inspired with gratitude, as 
 respectful as lively, to Her Most Gracious Majesty, on 
 account of the national and enlightened policy which has 
 marked the beginning of her auspicious reign, — declares 
 its wish to give a striking testimony of its confidence in 
 the administration by dissolving itself, and by leaving 
 the realisation of its projects to the Irish and popular 
 members of parliament who support the government of 
 the Queen." 
 
 This resolution — so wise and so loyal, proposed by 
 O'Connell — contrasts strangely with the sentiments of 
 passionate hostility to which he had given frank utterance 
 some years before against England and against the Whigs 
 
 * Afterwards Lord Normanby. 
 
o'connell's consistency. 41 
 
 themselves. We do not in this language recognise the 
 man who, when he contended against the administration 
 of Lord Grey, went so far in his anger as to advise his 
 fellow-citizens, in order to diminish the resources of the 
 government, to abstain from consuming any article subject 
 to either excise or customs duty. And yet, under those 
 seeming inconsistencies, we find a perfect harmony in 
 O'Connell's plans. By a thousand means, which he could 
 multiply without ceasing, and vary without end, according 
 to the exigencies of the moment, he still advances to the 
 same object — the political elevation of his fellow-religion- 
 ists and fellow-countrymen. In consideration of the 
 constancy of his moving principle, history will pardon his 
 continual variations, his so various judgments of the 
 same measures and the same men. 
 
 I have been careful to note those changes in the 
 conduct of O'Connell and the party which follows him 
 with a blind confidence, not only that I may throw light 
 upon past events, but still more that I may make the 
 present state of Ireland more intelligible, and disabuse 
 the minds of those who, taking literally the energetic 
 protests, the rash promises of which O'Connell during the 
 past year has been so lavish, regard that country as 
 irrevocably pledged to a deadly strife with Britain. 
 
 The calm and orderly conduct of the Irish since the 
 formation of the Melbourne ministry, bears high testimony 
 to the progress which the people have made in real 
 civilisation. It sufficed that a government should show 
 itself well disposed towards them, that it should display 
 the intention to respect their beliefs, and not to shock 
 their national sentiments; immediately this people, so 
 turbulent, so impatient of submission, respected the 
 
42 PRESE]S"T AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 authority of the laws, and patiently supported the evils of 
 their social state, to which no one could apply a speedy 
 remedy. 
 
 If the Whig ministry had been as powerful in England 
 as it was in Ireland, if it could have commanded in the 
 House of Commons a majority strong enough to compel 
 the House of Lords to adopt the remedial measures 
 which it had prepared with a view to remove the 
 grievances of Ireland, all the wounds of that country 
 would have been on the way of cure, and political reforms 
 would gradually have brought about the social reforms 
 which alone could restore to Irish society the conditions of 
 repose and prosperity. 
 
 Fate decided otherwise. The Melbourne ministry in- 
 stead of gaining, lost ground daily. Its moderate and 
 impartial policy towards Ireland did not suit the majority 
 in England. When Lord Stanley separated himself from 
 bis colleagues, he told them truly : " I maintain confidently 
 that the country is not ripe for the Appropriation Bill, 
 and for the reform of the established church in Ireland." 
 
 Habits of oppression, rooted for centuries, are not 
 speedily overcome. Nations, like individuals, have diffi- 
 culty in renouncing the ideas of superiority and of 
 domination which time has sanctioned. It must be long 
 before the whole English people can regard the Irish 
 as enjoying the same rights, and deserving the same 
 respect, as the proud descendants of the Saxons and the 
 Normans. 
 
 In spite of the sympathies of Ireland, the Melbourne 
 ministry — feebly supported by the Radicals, undermined 
 by the Chartists, violently attacked by the Tory party, 
 which, having gained strength in opposition, had been 
 
THE TOEIES AND SIR ROBERT PEEL. 43 
 
 reconstituted on a wider basis, under the name of the 
 Conservative party — would not have long survived, had 
 not Queen Victoria's accession to the throne given to it 
 an auxiliary in the royal power. In its favour the 
 Queen used her prerogatives to their furthest limits, and 
 displayed in its support an energy and a firmness very 
 remarkable at the outset of a reign begun at so early an 
 age. Thanks to this help, Lord Melbourne was able to 
 surmount more than one parliamentary storm, which 
 endangered his ministerial existence ; but, at last, he was 
 forced to succumb before a decisive majority of the House 
 of Commons. 
 
 The return of the Tories to power was a cruel blow to 
 Ireland. In vain did Sir Robert Peel, in order to diminish 
 its effect, seek among all his followers the wisest, the most 
 conciliatory men, that he might confide to them the care 
 of governing that country. The personal merits of the 
 new Lord Lieutenant and of the new Secretary of State, 
 Lord De Grey and Lord Elliot, could not prevent the 
 discontent and irritation which the Irish could not 
 but feel at the fall of the only government which 
 had openly shown itself favourable to their cause. Very 
 fortunately, nevertheless, the change of ministry having 
 occurred against the wish of the Queen, and the Tories 
 having been, so to speak, imposed by the majority of 
 the Commons, the Irish, while they resumed their oppo- 
 sition, failed not to draw a just distinction between 
 her person and her government. While they began 
 anew a fierce struggle against her ministers, they pre- 
 served towards the Queen a very lively feeling of attach- 
 ment and of gratitude, of which the agitation for the 
 Repeal of the Union has not yet weakened the power. 
 
44 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 In presence of a Tory ministry whicli commanded a 
 numerous majority in both houses, O'Connell saw clearly 
 that the cause of Ireland had nothing to expect from 
 parliament. Mr. Peel, who had been restored to power by a 
 Conservative and Protestant reaction, could grant nothing 
 to the Catholics ; it was even to be feared that his party 
 might force upon him some violent measures, such, for 
 example, as the bill on the formation of the electoral lists, 
 which Lord Stanley had oftener than once submitted to 
 the house when he was in opposition — a bill of which the 
 effect would have been considerably to diminish the num- 
 ber of the electors. In order to prevent the adoption of 
 retrograde measures, and to force the ministry to continue 
 the work of justice which Lord Melbourne had begun, 
 O'Connell, who had become powerless in parliament, had 
 no resource but to revive the popular agitation, to begin 
 anew the contest in the public street, and to reorganise a 
 powerful association for the maintenance of his country's 
 rights. He adopted it without hesitation. Quitting his 
 place in the House of Commons he returned to Ireland, fol- 
 lowed by almost all his Catholic colleagues ; and resolute to 
 resist, with all the arms that the British constitution 
 affords to defeated parties, the projects of his adversaries. 
 This determination was reasonable, if the question is 
 judged from the Irish point of view ; no one can blame 
 O'Connell for having -declined the parliamentary contest, 
 in which his party were too much at disadvantage, and for 
 having transported the strife to a ground on which he well 
 knew that the prudent head of the government would not 
 willingly meet him. It seems to me certain that, if he 
 had continued this agitation within the bounds of the 
 British constitution ; if he had assigned to it an end pre- 
 
AGITATION FOR EEPEAL. 45 
 
 cise and moderate ; if, for example, he had been content 
 with demanding the reform of the church, or the modifi- 
 cation of the laws determining the relations between 
 landowners and their tenants, — he would most seriously 
 have embarrassed the Peel ministry, he would have effected 
 a speedy reaction in favour of his country in the public 
 opinion of Britain, and obtained, after a time, new conces- 
 sions — a new victory. But this wise and prudent course 
 did not suit him. Either, intoxicated by past success, he 
 believed in the irresistible force of the means which he 
 was about to employ, or, more probably, thinking that, in 
 order strongly to stir the masses, to excite their passions, 
 and obtain from them an absolute devotedness, it was 
 necessary to hold out great objects to be accomplished, he 
 adopted an extreme course. Scarcely had he arrived in 
 Dublin, when he unfurled the banner of Repeal of the 
 Union, declaring that he would never withdraw from the 
 contest until he had obtained the re-establishment of his 
 country's national independence. 
 
 His powerful voice was heard from one end of Ireland 
 to the other. The sound awakened all the political and 
 religious passions, all the sentiments of nationality, which 
 during so many years he had been able to restrain. After 
 some months the whole Catholic population, and some 
 Protestants connected therewith, constituted an associ- 
 ation more numerous, better organised, than that which 
 in 1829 wrested the Emancipation Bill from the Duke 
 of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. This association 
 obeys its skilful leader with blind devotion. By its aid, 
 O'Connell at tliis hour wields a boundless empire over 
 seven-eighths of his countrymen ; and the support of the 
 Catholic clergy tends to maintain and to extend his sway. 
 
46 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 Up to the present time O'Connell has acted with great 
 prudence. After having organised his army, he has passed 
 in review its several corps, bringing together in different 
 parts of the country all those who had enrolled themselves 
 under the banner of Repeal. Was it the object of this 
 display of force to intimidate England ? Was this the 
 prelude of more decisive measures? We know not. Thé 
 prosecution which the government has thought fit to 
 institute against him and his principal adherents has 
 interrupted the course of those popular gatherings, and 
 has not allowed him to complete the judicial organisation 
 which he had devised in order to neutralise the influence 
 of the legal magistracy ; the same cause seems to have led 
 him to postpone the project of bringing together the 
 delegates from the different parts of the country, who 
 were to form a sort of national assembly. Faithful to his 
 system of peaceful opposition, he has bowed his head 
 before the voice of law, and he has suspended the combat 
 till after the decision of the jury before whom he is about 
 to appear. 
 
 The union of so much audacity and so much prudence 
 on the part of the Irish Catholics, of so much moderation 
 and energy on the part of the English government, 
 astonishes beyond measure the politicians of the continent, 
 who have not a great knowledge of the princijDles on 
 which rests the magnificent edifice of the British consti- 
 tution. So long as the government remained inactive, 
 they predicted a speedy revolution in Ireland, and its 
 inevitable separation from the kingdom. Now, perhaps, 
 struck with the feeble resistance offered to the first efforts 
 of the ministry to repress the agitation and to arrest 
 O'Connell in his course, they utterly despair of the cause 
 
EFFECT OF THE AGITATION" OX ENGLAND. 47 
 
 of the Irish Catholics, and think them doomed to sterile 
 contests, which can in no way improve their sad condition. 
 
 I do not hesitate to say that these two ways of judging 
 the Irish question are equally erroneous. Some months 
 ago, much undue importance was attached to the move- 
 ment which O'Connell then so boldly directed ; we should 
 be equally deceived if we failed to recognise the gravity 
 of the dangers which it may threaten for the future. 
 Ireland, covered with sores which centuries have en- 
 venomed, will be for a long time to come a source of 
 embarrassment and of troubles to England. Even though 
 the most prompt and efficacious remedies were applied, 
 though all parties should agree in trying to effect a cure, 
 its recovery could not for many years be complete ; more 
 than one generation must pass away before all traces of 
 discord and hatred, civil and religious, could be removed. 
 
 But such an agreement is not to be hoped for. Passions 
 and prejudices are still too vigorous for England to be 
 unanimous in regard to Ireland ; and this is but the 
 smallest of the difficulties in the way of the regular 
 development of that country. What in my eyes is more 
 grave, is the severance which O'Connell has thought it 
 right to make between his party and the whole British 
 nation. Up to the present time the Irish Catholics had 
 reckoned in England ardent and devoted partisans whose 
 number was decidedly on the increase. By placing them- 
 selves above the oscillations of the policy of the day, it 
 became easy to foresee the time when the friends of 
 Ireland would have an irresistible majority in parliament. 
 By displaying the banner of Repeal of the Union, O'Connell 
 has broken with his old allies. He has placed himself 
 face to face with England, and he has defied all its united 
 
48 PEESEÎTT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 strengtli. He has confounded in an equal enmity the 
 Tories and the Whigs ; the enemies of all reforms, of all 
 concessions, and the most determined champions of civil 
 and religious equality. 
 
 Europe, in general, has applauded the conduct of O'Con- 
 nell, and has seemingly agreed with him in believing that 
 the legislative independence of Ireland is the only effec- 
 tual remedy for the evils of that country. Is this opinion 
 well-founded ? I am far from so thinking. On the con- 
 trary, I regard this notion as erroneous and as fatal to the 
 improvement of the condition of the Irish people. In my 
 opinion, O'Connell could not adopt a course more to be 
 deplored. Instead of encouraging him to persist in it, the 
 duty of all those who have at heart the interest of Ireland 
 is to exhort him to retrace his steps, and to resume, along 
 with the liberal British party, the work of progessive 
 reform which he has already carried so far onward. 
 
 In proof of what I have now advanced, it is necessary, 
 first, to examine the social state of Ireland, by searching 
 out the true cause of the evils which she endures ; next, 
 to analyse the remedies which might be expected from a 
 national legislature; and, lastly, to set forth the difficulties, 
 the insurmountable obstacles in the way of the Repeal of 
 the Union, and the numberless disadvantages which would 
 attend the realisation of this project. 
 
 The task which I am about to undertake cannot com- 
 pletely solve the problem of the present state of Ireland, 
 or pierce the darkness that hides the future reserved for 
 it. It will serve at least, I hope, to throw some light on 
 this interesting question, and to restrain within more 
 reasonable limits the conjectures and the hypotheses to 
 which it gives rise. 
 
IRELAND AGRICULTUEAL. 49 
 
 If the evils of Ireland could be imputed to its political 
 state, she would need little pity, and their cure would be 
 easy. In truth, she enjoys at this moment many more 
 rights than most civilised nations whose lot is more pros- 
 perous. The press is there free even to license ; individual 
 liberty is religiously respected ; the right of association is 
 exercised to an extent nowhere else to be equalled ; in a 
 word, the Irish possess all the political rights of which the 
 English are so justly proud. Do they, then, complain 
 withoat reason ? Are their sufferings imaginary ? Alas ! 
 no. They are only too real. But in place of attributing 
 them to political laws, we must seek their cause in the 
 religious and social organisation of the countrj^ Let us 
 endeavour to explore the true principles on which this 
 organisation rests. 
 
 Ireland, and especially Catholic Ireland, is a country 
 exclusively agricultural. The cultivation of the ground is 
 the chief — not to say the only — resource of the great ma- 
 jority of the population. This is ordinarily a condition 
 eminently favourable to the maintenance of order and of 
 peace; but here it is otherwise. The land, to which the 
 Irish are attached by an insurmountable necessity, belongs 
 almost wholly to a foreign race, which has for them neither 
 sympathy nor affection, with which they are not united by 
 the multitude of moral ties that everywhere else exist 
 between the owner and the cultivator of the soil. The 
 wars of invasion first, and religious strife afterwards, have 
 several times transferred the property from the hands of 
 the ancient possessors of the soil to those of the con- 
 querors or the persecutors of the country. As a conse- 
 quence of the successive confiscations which have taken 
 place during the whole course of the seventeenth century, 
 
 E 
 
50 PEESENT AND FUTUEE OF lEELAND. 
 
 Ireland, for a hundred years, has been divided into two 
 hostile classes ; one. which possesses, the other which tills, 
 the soil. Its population is composed of proprietors, Pro- 
 testant, intolerant, haughty, treating with contempt those 
 whom they have conquered ; and of tenants. Catholic, 
 poor, ignorant, superstitious, animated by an inveterate 
 hatred of the despoilers of their country. 
 
 Such a social state has no parallel in Europe. Russia 
 itself is, in this respect, in a more satisfactory condition. 
 The serf, it is true, is legally in a state of absolute depen- 
 dence on his master ; he exercises fewer rights, he is 
 subject to more of violent and arbitrary usage. But at 
 least there exists between him and the upper classes of 
 society a number of moral relations of which there is no 
 trace in Ireland. The same blood flows in his veins and 
 in those of his master ; they worship at the same altars ; 
 they speak the same language ; their national sympathies, 
 their history, are the same ; they have no remembrance of 
 any change in their reciprocal positions. Nothing similar 
 exists in Ireland. The Catholic cultivator regards the 
 Protestant proprietors as cruel strangers who have robbed 
 him of his goods ; as sacrilegious persons who have pro- 
 faned his holy temples ; as enemies, in short, still stained 
 with the blood of his forefathers. To form an idea of 
 the state of misery and degradation into which the 
 tyranny of William III. plunged Ireland, we must seek 
 the terms of comparison in America — in the countries 
 in which slavery still exists in all its hideousness. 
 
 These so hostile relations could not fail to disgust the 
 proprietors with their domains as places of residence. 
 The majority of them, in fact, caring very little to em- 
 bellish or improve their estates, and pursued, besides, by a 
 
SUB-LETTING AND MIDDLEMEN. 51 
 
 feeling of insecurity from which they cannot escape, think 
 only of drawing from them the most money possible, 
 without being obliged to make hazardous advances. The 
 misery of Ireland raised up a class of grasping men who 
 wonderfully strengthened these dispositions. These men, 
 called "middlemen" (entremetteurs), rented from the 
 large proprietors who did not reside on their estates, a 
 vast extent of badly cultivated land, unprovided with any 
 sort of farm-buildings, or of the means of cultivation. 
 Thereupon they divided the land into very small portions, 
 and without even spending a farthing upon them to bring 
 them into condition, they sub-let them to the wretched 
 inhabitants of the country, among whom were often the 
 descendants of the ancient proprietors who had been 
 dispossessed by war and confiscations. This operation was 
 often repeated ; and the same domain passed into several 
 hands, by division and sub-division, before coming to him 
 who was finally to cultivate it ; so that it is not rare, even 
 at this day, to find between the proprietor and the true 
 cultivator a hierarchy of five or six farmers, holding one 
 from another. 
 
 This organisation of agricultural labour is, beyond con- 
 tradiction, the worst that can exist. It unites to all the 
 evils that can be charged upon the extreme division of the 
 soil the vices of large properties ; it renders impossible 
 the division of labour, as well as improvements in agricul- 
 ture, without redeeming its defects by the zeal, the activity, 
 and the constant industry which the sentiment of pro- 
 perty inspires. 
 
 The relative superiority of the two agricultural systems, 
 of large and of sm^all culture, will for a long time be a 
 problem unsolved ; but up to this time we may declare, 
 
52 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 without fear of error, that the tillage of the soil consigned 
 to small farmers, without capital, without intelligence, 
 without affection for the soil they till, is the most deplor- 
 able kind of agriculture that it is possible to imagine. 
 
 Nevertheless as this agricultural system, however de- 
 testable, was eminently convenient to the proprietors, the 
 Irish parliament and the courts of justice did not cease to 
 favour it. In order better to secure the payment of their 
 rents, the great landowners, who had at their disposal the 
 majority in the houses of parliament, passed a law which 
 rendered the farmer-cultivators responsible for what the 
 farmers intermediate between themselves and the pro- 
 prietor might owe to him. Thus, a wretched peasant, after 
 having paid an exorbitant rent to the man who had let to 
 him the field on which he had so much difficulty to live, 
 was often called upon to pay the debts which the larger 
 farmers, to him unknown, had contracted with the proprie- 
 tor of the soil. This monstrous iniquity — this scandalous 
 abuse of power, which -would of itself suffice to explain 
 the agrarian outrages which ever have been so frequent in 
 Ireland — subsisted even to 1830. In that year, an Act, 
 known under the name of " The Sub-letting Act," declared 
 that every bona fide payment, made by a tenant to the 
 farmer from whom he held his land with the consent, ex- 
 pressed or tacit, of the proprietor, should be held as valid, 
 and could not be further questioned. 
 
 The selfish interests of the Irish landowners, who wished 
 above all things to be relieved from the care of their 
 estates, would have sufficed to extend throughout the 
 whole country the system of tenures just described ; but 
 its extension was singularly favoured by causes foreign to 
 the organisation of property. The first was the introduc- 
 
THE POTATO AND POPULATION. 53 
 
 tion of the potato, a plant eminently suited to the small 
 , culture. The second was that invincible tendency which, 
 it cannot be denied, urges a poor, ignorant, brutalised 
 population to increase its numbers as long as it can find 
 means of subsistence, however wretched. 
 
 This is not the place to discuss Malthus' theory of 
 population, and to establish within what limits it is true 
 that population tends to increase in a proportion more 
 rapid than the means of subsistence. I believe, with many 
 modern economists, and especially Mr. Senior, who has 
 treated this question with his usual ability, that the cele- 
 brated Malthus has exaggerated the effect of the tendency 
 of ÛiQ force which urges nations to multiply. Having had 
 the very great merit of being the first to establish the 
 universality of this tendency, it is not surprising that, 
 dazzled by his own discovery, he has assigned to it a more 
 considerable action than it really has. But whatever may 
 be the general law which regulates the equilibrium of the 
 forces which accelerate or retard the normal progress of 
 the population, it is not doubtful that, in the particular 
 circumstances of Ireland, the former must have exercised 
 a preponderating influence. 
 
 When a people has fallen into a state of frightful 
 misery, — when it has lost all hope of bettering its lot, — 
 when the upper classes and the government do nothing to 
 raise its moral condition, — it is evident that the powerful 
 instinct which urges to reproduction will find no other 
 obstacle than the want of subsistence. If, then, there be 
 introduced into the country a system of agriculture which, 
 like that of which the cultivation of the potato is the basis, 
 is such as to make the soil produce a mass of alimentary 
 substance detestable in quality, it is true, but, up to a 
 
54 PRESEN-T AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 certain point, proportioned to the amount of labour applied 
 to it, the population will increase much more rapidly than 
 wealth, as long as there shall be fields to divide, and lands 
 capable of being subjected to the new mode of culture. 
 
 Mr. Senior, indeed, contests these theoretic conclusions. 
 He maintains that, in spite of the complaints raised on 
 all sides, the material condition of Ireland has improved 
 during the last fifty years. I cannot share his opinion : 
 testimonies the most irrefra.gable concur in disproof of it. 
 I will content myself, in order to prove what I have ad- 
 vanced, with quoting a few lines of the remarkable report 
 presented to parliament in 18^39, by the commission which 
 had been appointed to inquire into the possibility and the 
 propriety of establishing railways in Ireland. 
 
 " We have perceived," say the Commissionei's, " no symptom of 
 improvement in the condition of the people, who are almost exclu- 
 sively wretched beings in rags, lodged in filthy cabins. In King's 
 County, as in all those that we have traversed, there is a frightful 
 excess of population. In a single barony, we have ascertained that 
 of 1,599 labourers, 668, or two fifths, are habitually without work." 
 
 Further on, the same Commissianers add : — ■ 
 
 " Among the effects of this rapid increase of population, without 
 a corresponding increase of remunerative employment, the most 
 alarming, though perhaps the most obviously to be expected, is a 
 deterioration of the food of the peasantry. It could scarcely be 
 thought, indeed, that their customary diet would admit of any 
 reduction, save in quantity alone ; yet it has been reduced as to 
 quality also, in such a way as sensibly to diminish their comfort, if 
 not to impair their health. Bread was never an article of common 
 use amongst the labouring poor ; but it is now less known by them 
 than it was at the time when a sum exceeding £50,000 per annum 
 was paid in ' bounties,' to induce the landholders to grow a suffi- 
 ciency of grain for the supply of the city of DubUn. Milk is become 
 almost a luxury to many of them ; and the quahty of their potato 
 diet is generally much inferior to what it was at the commencement 
 of the present century. A species of potato called the ' lumper' has 
 
THE PEOTESTANT CHUECH. 55 
 
 been brought into general cultivation, on account of its great pro- 
 ductiveness, and the facility with which it can be raised from an 
 inferior soil and with a comparatively small portion of manure. 
 This root, at its first introduction, was scarcely considered food good 
 enough for swine ; it neither possesses the farinaceous qualities of 
 the better varieties of the plant, nor is it as palatable as any other, 
 being wet and tasteless, and, in point of substantial nutriment, little 
 better, as an article of human food, than a Swedish turnip. In 
 many counties of Leinster, and throughout the provinces of Munster 
 and Connaught, the lumper now constitues the principal food of the 
 labouring peasantry." 
 
 In the face of facts so decisive, it is impossible to accept 
 the opinion of Mr. Senior ; and we are forced to admit 
 that the fatal system of sub-letting land in small portions, 
 joined to other causes arising from the social circumstances 
 of the country, has resulted in an increase at once of the 
 population and of the misery and the suffering of the great 
 mass of the people. 
 
 All the evils that I have pointed out are aggravated by 
 the presence of a Protestant clergy who divide, with the 
 rich proprietors, the fruit of the labour of the devotedly 
 Catholic population in the midst of whom they live. This 
 body of clergy has long been not only a continual cause of 
 irritation, but even an occasion of scandal. The covetous- 
 ness, the harshness, and the disorderly lives of the eccle- 
 siastics of the Established Irish Church were in the last 
 century proverbial. They are now greatly improved ; and 
 we now observe dispositions more humane, more chari- 
 table as well as more becoming lives* But not the less 
 does the church remain, to the Catholics, the represen- 
 tative of the causes of their miseries, a sign of defeat and 
 of oppression which exasperates their sufferings and makes 
 their humiliation more keenly felt. 
 
 To complete the picture of the chief evils which have 
 
56 PRESEÎ^T AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 afflicted the social life of Ireland, it suffices to add a few 
 words on the fatal effects of the spirit of disorder and of 
 vengeance which so great suffering has provoked among 
 the lower classes. During nearly a century, Ireland 
 resounded with the reports of savage exploits, of abomi- 
 nable cruelties committed by associations of peasants, 
 who sometimes under the name of Whiteboys, sometimes 
 under that of White feet, or under other designations, used 
 to avenge, often upon innocent persons, the outrages on 
 humanity committed by the class of proprietors and their 
 pitiless agents the middlemen. 
 
 These agrarian outbreaks, these servile wars, increased 
 all the evils of the country without abating any. If they 
 had continued with their primitive violence, the future of 
 the country would have been hopeless, and all idea of im- 
 proving its condition must have been abandoned. Thanks 
 to Heaven, however, for some years Ireland has been deli- 
 vered from the scourge of this popular justice. The illegal 
 associations, energetically resisted by the leaders of the 
 Catholic party, have almost completely disappeared. This 
 is a symptom of moral progress that we may hail with joy 
 as the dawn of better days for the country. 
 
 After having pointed out the evils of Ireland, we must 
 inquire what has been done up to this time by way of 
 remedy. During the whole of last century the whole 
 business of the Irish parliament was to keep the Catholic 
 masses in check, without a single thought of improving 
 their condition. The parliament of the United Kingdom 
 pursued the same course during the first years that fol- 
 lowed the Union. Protestant prejudices and national 
 antipathies did not allow the Catholics to be regarded 
 otherwise than as brutes, condemned to till the soil to 
 
THE SUB-LETTING ACT. 57 
 
 which they were bound for the exclusive benefit of the 
 privileged classes. Nevertheless, when ideas of political 
 reform and of religious tolerance had been diffused 
 throughout England, — when the Catholic Association had 
 revealed the extent of the means and intelligence pos- 
 sessed by the Irish who had remained faithful to their 
 ancient worship, — every enlightened man in Great Britain 
 began to occupy himself with the state of Ireland, and to 
 take thought for the means of improving it. The parlia- 
 ment ordered several inquiries to ascertain the state of 
 the country and to discover the source of its evils. In 
 consequence of those inquires, it adopted in succession 
 several remedial measures, the more important of which I 
 will briefly recount. 
 
 In the first place it endeavoured to put an end to that 
 fatal system of subdivision of the land, of which I have 
 already indicated the dangerous results ; and for this end 
 it passed " The Sub-letting Act," of which I have before 
 spoken. This measure was excellent in itself, and its 
 happy consequences have already appeared. To it must 
 be ascribed, in great measure, the diminution, during the 
 last ten years, in the increase of the population, a fact to 
 which public attention has been called by the last census. 
 Nevertheless, through an unfortunate neglect, in providing 
 for the future, no care was taken to secure the present lot 
 of the miserable small tenants whom a vicious legislation 
 had called into being, and great sufferings and great dis- 
 orders were caused by this bill. A certain number of 
 landowners, no longer finding in the system of sub-letting 
 the security which they desired, evicted in mass the poor 
 families who cultivated the ground under no other title 
 than that of yearly tenants. These wretched people, 
 
58 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 without resource, without shelter, often perished through 
 want or were compelled to seek beyond the seas a new 
 country, less cruel to them than that which had given 
 them birth. 
 
 The abolition of the tax for the repair of the churches, 
 the suppression of several bishoprics and other eccle- 
 siastical benefices, the commutation of the tithes into 
 a direct charge on the landowners, were beneficent 
 acts, which sensibly ameliorated the religious state of 
 Ireland. 
 
 But of all that has been done within fourteen years for 
 the country, the measure which must effect the greatest 
 good, that which is destined in the fulness of time to effect 
 the moral regeneration of the people, is, beyond contradic- 
 tion, the establishment of a vast system of popular educa- 
 tion upon a wide and solid basis. The Whig ministry, 
 convinced that the only means of raising the lower classes 
 from the sad state in which they vegetated rather than 
 lived, was to develop their intelligence and to spread some 
 knowledge among them, resolved to found a great number 
 of primary schools with the sole object of instructing the 
 children who should frequent them, all attempt at religious 
 proselytism being forbidden. Some efforts had already 
 been made to diffuse popular instruction. A society, aided 
 by government, had long existed in Dublin, and from the 
 name of the street in which its meetings were held it had 
 received the title of the " Kildare Street Society." The 
 intentions of its founders were laudable ; but, as, with 
 much zeal for education, they had also an ardent spirit of 
 Protestant proselytism, their efforts had but small success. 
 The Catholics regarded their schools with distrust, and in 
 general held themselves aloof 
 
 / 
 
NATIONAL SCHOOLS. 59 
 
 The system of national education founded by the Whig 
 ministry is different. All sectarian and proselytising spirit 
 has been carefully banished from it. Its object is to 
 diffuse instruction and morality, without doing any thing, 
 directly or indirectly, to influence the religious faith of the 
 children. Theological instruction is quite foreign to 
 the mission of the schoolmasters; it is, nevertheless, 
 obligatory on the pupils, but the duty of imparting it 
 is confided wholly to the ministers of the religion pro- 
 fessed by the parents. To secure the maintenance of 
 this principle of religious impartiality, the administra- 
 tion of all these schools has been placed under the 
 direction of a commission composed of Catholic prelates, 
 of Protestant prelates, and of laymen of both bodies, 
 as distinguished by their intelligence as by their tolerant 
 spirit. 
 
 The success of this new plan of education has been 
 complete. The Catholics have accepted it eagerly, and 
 they avail themselves of it zealously. In all respects the 
 national sehools deserve great praise. The spirit which 
 guides th^m, the methods which they employ, the results 
 which they produce, render them true model schools. 
 They are infinitely superior to the English primary schools, 
 and I doubt that there are in Europe many that equal 
 them. Through their agency, it is certain that the gene- 
 ration now growing up in Ireland will enjoy the benefits 
 of an education intellectual and moral, solid and extensive. 
 There is in them a mighty germ of progress which time 
 will develop, and which will produce abundance of fruit 
 very unlike that which may be expected from the political 
 agitation that has the Repeal of the Union for its object 
 or its pretext. 
 
6o PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 Lastly, among the means tried for improving the con- 
 dition of Ireland, I will cite the law which establishes a 
 poor-rate and the English system of legal charity. I do 
 not assert that this system is good in itself, or that it is 
 peculiarly suitable to Ireland. The questions raised by 
 legal charity are in my view the most difficult of all those 
 connected with the progressive transformation of the old 
 social order; they are far from being settled. Those who, 
 relying on the example of England, think they can con- 
 demn it absolutely, commit a grave error ; for, if legal 
 charity has produced some pernicious results, it has had 
 the merit of testifying boldly to the obligations which 
 society acknowledges towards the humblest of its members, 
 and of propounding a problem of beneficence to which we 
 must hope the progress of civilisation will, sooner or 
 later, furnish a satisfactory solution. 
 
 Whatever may be the practical results in Ireland of the 
 new poor-law, it will not the less remain as a striking 
 proof of the benevolent disposition of parliament towards 
 the poor of that island, of the spirit of equity and justice 
 which begins to animate the representatives of the 
 British nation. Though, even, it should wholly fail in the 
 object which its authors had in view, this law would not 
 the less deserve to be cited with commendation as the 
 first example of a law passed in the sole interest of the 
 Catholic masses, and of a sacrifice in their favour imposed 
 upon the Protestant landowners. 
 
 The remedial measures which I have briefly enumerated 
 are but trivial in comparison with the profound evils which 
 afflict Ireland. Besides, their effect cannot be speedy ; 
 only time can render them fruitful and efficacious. At 
 this day, though there have been, especially during the 
 
WHAT MEANS REPEAL OF THE UNION ? 6 1 
 
 last few years, partial amelioration and progress, the state 
 of the great mass of the population is, nevertheless, 
 deeply distressing. It is, then, natural that all the friends 
 of humanity should feel an ardent interest in the remedies 
 likely to bring a prompt relief. 
 
 Can it be that the first, the most important of those 
 remedies, is the Repeal of the Legislative Union, which, for 
 four and forty years, has existed between Britain and 
 Ireland? Ought we to hope from Repeal the cure of the 
 diseases- of the Irish nation, which O'Connell every day 
 proclaims amidst the applause of the enthusiastic multi- 
 tude ? Can it be true, as most of the continental politicians 
 seem to think, that a parliament sitting in the hall of 
 College Green at Dublin would have the power instanta- 
 neously to cure the social sores of Ireland, and to restore 
 the social edifice on an equitable and beneficial basis, 
 so as to develop among all classes a prosperity hitherto 
 unknown ? This is the great question of the moment ; 
 and it is important that it should be answered, in order 
 that we may judge if the schemes of O'Connell and his 
 party are reasonable and well founded, — if their purpose, 
 which they cannot realise by force, has at least truth and 
 justice on its side. 
 
 Let us, at the outset, try to form a precise idea of what 
 O'Connell and the Irish Association understand by the 
 Repeal of the Union. In the first place, the only ques- 
 tion hitherto has been regarding legislative independence ; 
 not at all political independence. Queen Victoria has no 
 subjects more devoted than the Irish Catholics, who, even 
 while they demand a national parliament, wish to main- 
 tain intact upon her head the brilliant crown of the British 
 Isles. This parliament, however, which they so eagerly 
 
62 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 demand, cannot be the same as that which existed before 
 the Union. The Liberator would, assuredly, render a sorry- 
 service to his country, and above all to his party, if he 
 tried to restore Ireland to the state in which she was in 
 1799. In spite of the illusions which the dazzling memo- 
 ries of the movement in 1782 may produce, it is easy to 
 learn that the majority of the Irish nation was then much 
 more oppressed, and that it had much more just reason 
 for complaint than it has now. The old Irish parliament, 
 I have already said, was an obedient instrument in the 
 hands of the cabinet of St. James' ; it was serviceable 
 only to the owners of rotten boroughs — to the traders in 
 parliamentary influence, who openly sold the rights and 
 liberties of their fellow-citizens. 
 
 But, in spite of the regret which O'Connell sometimes 
 expresses, no one thinks of restoring the old Irish consti- 
 tution. What the Association desires is the creation of a 
 national parliament on the bases which Cathohc Emanci- 
 pation and the Reform of 1832 have consecrated, in which 
 the Catholic and popular element should have an incon- 
 testable preponderance. 
 
 After so many centuries of dependence and submission, 
 the Catholic majority aspires to power and domination in 
 its turn. 
 
 Nevertheless, in order to disunite the kingdoms which 
 compose the British empire, it is not enough to declare 
 that the Irish representatives and peers, instead of meeting, 
 as now, at Westminster, shall meet on College Green, in 
 Dublin. The relations must be settled between the 
 executive power and houses of legislature in the two 
 countries ; it would be necessary to divide between them 
 the powers which they exercised in common. Here 
 
BRITISH AND IRISH PARLIAMENTS. 63 
 
 we see numberless difficulties arise, which neither 
 0' Conn ell nor any other Irish orator has yet attempted 
 to resolve. 
 
 If, in the British constitution, the functions of the par- 
 liament were purely administrative ; if, even, it did not 
 extend beyond the sphere of legislation, — we might ma- 
 nage to understand the co-existence of two independent 
 legislatures, sitting one in London, the other in Dublin. 
 But everyone knows that in England the parliament has 
 a preponderating influence on the executive power ; that 
 foreign and colonial policy is subject to its control : that 
 nothing of serious importance is done without its approval 
 and its sanction. This being so, how can these high func- 
 tions be divided between the legislators of the two coun- 
 tries ? How can their independent action be harmonised ? 
 I do not think that it is possible to devise, for this end, 
 any means that can resist a few moments' examination. 
 In no country, and assuredly not in Great Britain, in 
 which so many diverse interests claim an incessant care, 
 can the executive power be subject to two distinct in- 
 fluences. A ministry obliged to please at once an English 
 majority and an Irish majority, is a thing impossible. In 
 contradiction to this view, we may, perhaps, be referred to 
 the state of Great Britain from 1782 to the establishment 
 of the Union, a period during which two parliaments 
 nominally independent existed at London and at Dublin. 
 But this argument is an illusion. Every one knows very 
 well that the old Irish parliament was dependent on the 
 English ministry, and that as soon as one party had the 
 majority at Westminster, it was sure, by means of certain 
 pecuniary sacrifices, absolutely to overrule the Irish par- 
 liament. 
 
64 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 In order to prove the real independence of the Irish 
 parliament, some obstinate disputants may still appeal to 
 the dissension between it and the English parliament on 
 occasion of the temporary regency of the Prince of Wales, 
 at the time of the first illness of George III. We know, 
 indeed, that on this occasion the English Houses, controlled 
 by Pitt, refused to grant more than a very limited power 
 to the hereditary prince ; while the Irish Houses, in spite 
 of all the efforts of ministerial agents, persisted in invest- 
 ing him with all the powers of royalty. The fact is 
 indubitable, but, in my opinion, it is far from proving the 
 independence of the Irish parliament. It is but one 
 more indication of its servile instinct, which sought, by 
 dangerous concessions, to propitiate the regent into whose 
 hands supreme power, sooner or later, was to fall. It is 
 impossible honestly to contend that, with an independent 
 legislature, Ireland can continue to exert the slightest 
 influence on foreign or colonial policy. This is the first 
 sacrifice which the Repeal of the TJuion would impose 
 upon the country. Has the Liberator well considered 
 its importance? Has he thought how humiliating it 
 would be for his country to follow in the political orbit 
 the powerful star of Great Britain, without being able 
 in any way to influence its course? Has he thought 
 how injurious it would be to his country to renounce 
 all political connection with the immense colonies of 
 England, the vast regions which are as necessary to it 
 for the reception of its surplus population, as they are 
 useful to Great Britain in receiving the overflow of its 
 manufactures ? 
 
 For my part, I am convinced that the Irish nation has 
 too much pride and dignity ever to submit to hold a 
 
PEOPOSAL OF A THIED PAELIAMENT. 65 
 
 position so dependent and secondary as that to which 
 the division of the two kingdoms would reduce it, even 
 though at this price an independent parliament should be 
 obtained. 
 
 Some persons have thought that all interests could be 
 reconciled by placing above the two parliaments a third 
 and supreme assembly, with the sole duty of deciding 
 questions of foreign and colonial policy. Possessed by 
 this idea, Mr. Sharman Crawford, who represents the 
 opinion of the Protestant Radicals, offered some time ago 
 to the Liberator to co-operate with him, if he would con- 
 sent to modify his schemes of absolute independence, and 
 to substitute for them a sort of Anglo-Hibernian con- 
 federation. It is easy to see that this plan is still more 
 difficult of execution than those which we have already 
 examined. In fact, how is it possible to reconcile the 
 action of three legislative assemblies, and of three ex- 
 ecutive powers, which must be, within certain limits, 
 independent of each other. In a country which has with 
 other countries so numerous relations, there is scarcely 
 any measure of foreign or colonial policy which does not 
 directly influence its home policy. When war is declared, 
 taxes must be imposed ; when treaties of commerce are 
 made, modifications of the customs tariff are indispensable ; 
 many treaties involve changes in the civil law. How, 
 then, could an Anglo-Irish congress carry its ordinances 
 into effect by means of parliaments almost as powerful as 
 itself? It would be impossible. The representative 
 machine, already so complicated and so slow, could not 
 work after its springs had been tripled, after three par- 
 liaments had been established instead of one. All the 
 energy of Pitt, all the genius of Canning, would be 
 
 F 
 
66 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 incompetent to work it ; they would be forced to abandon 
 the direction and the defence of interests so great and so 
 various as those which connect Great Britain with almost 
 every place on the globe. 
 
 The example of the Swiss or the American confederation 
 cannot be cited as a proof of the possibility of establishing 
 an Anglo-Hibernian confederation ; first, because the 
 foreign affairs of those countries are as simple, and as few 
 in number as those of Britain are important, numerous, 
 and complex; secondly, because they have not numerous 
 colonies to maintain in a position of semi-dependence as 
 delicate as it is difficult ; because they have not an empire 
 of a hundred million of inhabitants, like that of India, to 
 govern ; lastly, because the United States have no con- 
 tinental neighbours to fear, while Switzerland is relatively 
 too weak to exert any positive action on the great powers 
 that surround it. It is, besides, impossible to liken a 
 confederation formed by a great number of states, among 
 which no one is much stronger than several others united, 
 to the confederation which it may have been wished 
 to establish between the British colossus and Ireland 
 which is so inferior to it in strength and power. It is 
 obvious that, in a numerous confederation, the interests of 
 the different states are balanced and grouped in a manner 
 favourable to the states so united. But in a case in which 
 two nations only should be face to face, the weaker would 
 always follow the law of the stronger. Any such congress 
 would serve only to make known to Ireland the commands 
 of England. 
 
 If we view the question on all its sides, we shall be 
 convinced that, were the Union dissolved, Britain must 
 
ALLEGED BENEFITS OF REPEAL. 6^ 
 
 either resolve to hold Ireland in a state of subjection and 
 dependence worse than that which now exists, or leave 
 her to follow freely the course of her destinies ; and, in 
 this case, the words of Sir Robert Peel may be adopted, — 
 that " to retain Ireland after the Repeal of the Union in 
 a course accordant with that of the British empire, would 
 require not less than the omniscience and the omnipotence 
 of the Supreme Being who maintains the harmony of the 
 planetary system." 
 
 But let us pass over all the difficulties which the 
 Repeal of the Union might cause in regard to foreign 
 and colonial policy ; let us suppose them removed by a 
 miracle of Divine Providence, and let us inquire if the 
 benefits which Ireland may hope from a national gov- 
 ernment are as considerable as the Liberator and his 
 partisans assert. At the first glance it seems probable 
 that the finances of Ireland would be improved by the 
 Repeal of the Union. Those who accept literally the 
 declarations of O'Connell must be supposed to think 
 that the country bears a part of the public burdens 
 disproportioned to its population and its wealth; that 
 it would consequently be much relieved, if it had to 
 provide only for its own wants by its own resources. 
 This is, however, a complete illusion. Ireland has not 
 been unjustly treated in a financial respect ; if left to 
 itself, it would probably be obliged to increase its present 
 taxes, if not to impose new. Let us see what it really 
 pays. 
 
 The Union had placed at its charge two-seventeenths 
 of the expenses of the United Kingdom. This is a divi- 
 sion, if not favourable, at least equitable. Since that time 
 
68 PRESEN'T AND FUTUEE OF IRELAND. 
 
 its share lias diminished. In an official document, pub- 
 lished in 1834, we find the following distribution of the 
 produce of the imposts in the two kingdoms : — 
 
 Geeat Bkitain. Ireland. 
 
 Customs £19,353,324 ... £1,757,143* 
 
 Excise 13,061,852 ... 1,966,183 
 
 Post 1,970,361 ... 240,471 
 
 Stamps 6,825,679 ... 466,170 
 
 Taxes 4,662,256 ... — 
 
 Total £45,873,472 ... £4,429,967 
 
 From this it follows that Ireland bears an eleventh 
 part of the public burdens, which is much less than that 
 which the Act of Union assigned. 
 
 It will be remarked that the impost known under the 
 name of taxes appears in the column of Ireland, followed 
 only by a blank. The fact is, that since 1825 it has been 
 abolished in Ireland, while it still subsists in England. 
 
 Since the year to which the figures just cited refer, 
 Great Britain, having been involved in extraordinary 
 expenses on account of the affairs of Canada and the 
 Chinese expedition, has been compelled to draw fresh 
 resources from taxation. Sir Robert Peel had the couraofe 
 to propose and to carry through parliament a tax on 
 
 * It is necessary to observe that a part of the foreign merchandise sub- 
 ject to customs duty, which Ireland consumes, is imported from England, 
 after having paid duty there. In order, therefore, to make a rigorous 
 comparison between the burdens of the two countries, we must take into 
 account the sum yielded by those duties. This would requh^e very compli- 
 cated investigations ; according, however, to calciilations which may be 
 regarded as sufficiently exact, we may reckon them approximately at 
 £5,000,000. This increase would modify the proportion given above, and 
 raise to a tenth the share of the public burdens that falls upon Ireland. 
 
FINANCIAL POSITION OF lEELAND. 69 
 
 incomes ; but, in consideration of the position of Ireland, 
 he exempted that country from it. Thus, at this time, 
 the proportion before shown has been further modified in 
 favour of that country. 
 
 These incontestable facts suffice to absolve Britain from 
 the charge of having abused its strength in order to crush 
 Ireland with taxation ; they show, on the contrary, that in 
 matters of finance Ireland has been generously treated. 
 
 Let us now inquire what would be the position of 
 Ireland if left to herself If we suppose that no change 
 be "made in existing imposts, she might, according to the 
 table before given, dispose of a revenue of £4,429,967, 
 which sum, to be more exact, I will raise to £5,000,000, in 
 order to allow for goods which she consumes but which 
 now pay customs dues in England. From these £5,000,000 
 must first be paid the interest of the portion of the debt 
 of the United Kingdom which will remain chargeable to 
 Ireland ; for, even if disunited, she must still retain a part 
 of the burden now borne by her in common with England. 
 O'Connell never ceases to compare the amount 01 the 
 Irish debt with that of the British debt at the time of 
 the Union, to prove the wrong which, he says, has been 
 done to his country. I suppose that there is a full inten- 
 tion to repair this wrong, and that, consequently, the obli- 
 gation to contribute to the payment of old debts is 
 abolished. By old debts I mean those contracted before 
 the beginning of the war of the French revolution ; this 
 would be a basis not only equitable, but still favourable to 
 Ireland ; for in truth she had an old debt, and it would 
 have been but reasonable to require, while sharing with 
 her the advantages which the vast colonies of Great 
 Britain secured to the mother country, that she should 
 
70 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 contribute to the costs whicli, in the conquest of these, 
 the country had incurred. To ask more would be ridicu- 
 lous and absurd. The Liberator himself cannot entertain 
 the thought, unless he think that one day, at the head of 
 a victorious army, he will be able to dictate laws to 
 conquered Britain. 
 
 On this principle, Britain alone would be charged with 
 £239,350,148, which she owed in 1783. The rest of the 
 public debt, including the exchequer bills, rose in 1836 to 
 £787,638,816. There would then remain to be divided 
 between the two countries a debt of £548,288,668. By 
 charging Ireland with £60,000,060, no injustice would be 
 committed ; impartial arbiters would treat her more 
 severely. That sum of X60,000,000 of debt would cost 
 about £2,000,000 in interest, and this would reduce 
 the part of her revenue available for public service to 
 £3,000,000 (i. e. 75,000,000 of francs). This is a very 
 scanty revenue for a country of eight millions of inhabi- 
 tants. All the states of Europe spend in proportion to 
 their population twice, thrice, even six times more than 
 this. It would be wholly insufficient, to enable Ireland 
 to dispose of any military force, and to maintain the police 
 and the magistracy on the footing on which they are at 
 present constituted. One of the first consequences of 
 Repeal, accordingly, would be to force upon the parliament 
 of Dublin an increased taxation. 
 
 But, it will be said, it is not the amount of imposts 
 which makes Ireland suffer; it is the manner in which 
 they are distributed. It is enough to inquire what are 
 the chief sources of the public revenues, in order to be con- 
 vinced that the state -burdens fall almost exclusively on 
 the rich classes, or on the vicious part of the population. 
 
INCIDENCE OF TAXATION. 7 1 
 
 The customs form nearly half of the resources of the 
 state. Now these consist almost wholly of the duties on 
 colonial products, sugar and tea in particular. By reduc- 
 tion of those duties, the middle class would probably be 
 relieved; but six-sevenths of the population would find 
 not the least benefit, for these articles do not at all enter 
 into their consumption. 
 
 With the customs, the excise forms almost the whole 
 of the public revenue of Ireland ; now it is well known 
 that it is the duties on the manufacture of spirits that 
 constitute four-fifths of this branch of revenue, and 
 no one, so far as I am aware, thinks of demanding their 
 reduction. 
 
 It is certain, therefore, that the Repeal of the Union 
 could not make any beneficial change either in the amount 
 of taxes, or in the manner in which they are levied. But 
 the evils of Ireland are not caused by financial abuses ; it 
 signifies little, therefore, that a national government should 
 be unable to make improvements in this respect, if it could 
 lay its hand on their true source, and effect a thorough 
 change in the deplorable social and religious condition of 
 the country. 
 
 I have already spoken of the organic vices of Irish 
 society. These may be summed up under two distinct 
 heads : first, the supremacy of a worship odious to the 
 majority of the population ; secondly, the deplorable state 
 to which the agricultural population are reduced, by the 
 bad distribution of property, by the feelings of hostility 
 which separate the different classes of society ; and lastly, 
 by the effects of a too rapid growth of the poor population. 
 Let us see what a national parliament could do by way of 
 remedy to these. 
 
72 PRESENT AND FUTUEE OF IRELAND. 
 
 We must begin by forming an idea of what the Irish 
 pariiament would be, of the spirit which would animate 
 it, and of the parties that in it would arise. It is evident 
 that, if Repeal were obtained, it would be due to the suc- 
 cessful efforts of the popular and Catholic party, and, con- 
 sequently, that the first independent legislature would 
 consist almost wholly of members of that party. What 
 else, indeed, could the Protestants expect or hope ? The 
 destruction of the municipal corporations has secured the 
 majority to the Catholics in all the towns, and the right of 
 voting possessed by all the farmers paying £10 sterling 
 in rent, guarantees their triumph in four-fifths of the 
 counties, as often as a great national interest is involved. 
 It is no exaggeration, therefore, to assert that three - 
 fourths of the House of Commons, owing its existence to 
 Repeal, would be Catholic democrats. 
 
 Their treatment of the Anglican Church would not be 
 doubtful. They would reform it, or, to speak more truly, 
 they would destroy it utterly. O'Connell declares that 
 the rights of existing holders of ecclesiastical benefices 
 would be respected. Of this I have strong doubts. The 
 Catholics, intoxicated with the success of their long 
 efforts, would not act with so scrupulous delicacy towards 
 a clergy whom they regard as the primary cause of the 
 humiliations and the sufferings which their fellow reli- 
 gionists have endured for ages. The protestations of 
 O'Connell inspire me with little confidence; constant as 
 he is to the object at which he aims, he does not at all 
 hesitate to vary his means, and to repudiate the engage- 
 ments which hamper him, forgetting to-morrow the pro- 
 mises of to-day. For my part, I will think the Protestant 
 ecclesiastics ver}^ fortunate if, after Repeal, the revolution 
 
THE lEISH PROTESTANT CHURCH. 73 
 
 be effected simply by legal measures, and without such 
 treatment by the masses as was a few years ago, in Spain, 
 experienced by the convents. 
 
 Nevertheless, the reform of the established church is so 
 essential to the well-being of Ireland, that we must not 
 regard too strictly the means employed to effect it. I do 
 not hesitate to declare that, if the Repeal of the Union 
 were indispensable to this end, I could not but desire it, 
 in spite of all the evils which this measure must involve. 
 But happily this necessity does not exist. The Radical 
 reform of the church not only is possible without the 
 Repeal of the Union, but it is even probable, if the 
 violent acts of the Catholic party do not arrest the move- 
 ment of English public opinion in its favour. The Whigs 
 attempted this reform ; their attempt was premature, and 
 it did not succeed. But they have not abandoned their 
 task; on the contrary, the men who are the hope of this 
 party for the future are much more daring now than they 
 were in 1835 ; and, in my judgment, we have a certain 
 symptom of the downfall, sooner or later, of the establish- 
 ment in Ireland, in the fact that a member of such 
 standing as Mr. Ward, with the concurrence of a numerous 
 party, this year presented to parliament a motion which 
 aimed at nothing less than the suppression by a single 
 stroke of the pen of the whole factitious edifice of the 
 state religion in Ireland. The reform of the established 
 church will come to pass, in one way or other. With a 
 national parliament it would be more speedy and more 
 complete ; but it would probably be also violent, unjust, 
 and perhaps cruel. If the Union continue, it will be 
 effected slowly by regular and legal means. I can under- 
 stand a preference of the former course; but whatever 
 
74 PRESENT AND FUTUEE OF IRELAND. 
 
 love of revolutions there may be, we cannot forget how 
 costly to humanity are the sudden and violent derange- 
 ments which always follow in their train. 
 
 The religious question furnishes plausible arguments to 
 the partisans of Repeal. The case is different with the 
 social question. This, at least, is the inevitable result of 
 a thorough analysis of the remedial measures which a 
 national parliament might adopt, and a conscientious com- 
 parison of them with those which have been, and with 
 those which probably will be adopted by the reformed 
 parliament, if no violent shocks occur. 
 
 To raise the peasant class from their present sad con- 
 dition, there are two sorts of remedies : we may endeavour 
 to improve their lot by regular legal and pacific means ; or, 
 adopting a bolder system, we may seek to destroy the evil 
 at its root, by violently changing the laws which deter- 
 mine the distribution of property ; by at once freeing the 
 tenant from his dependence on his landlord ; by effecting, 
 to speak clearly, a true social revolution, which should 
 restore to the present Catholic population the lands of 
 which their ancestors were despoiled by civil wars and by 
 repeated con fiscations. 
 
 The former system maybe applied more or less success- 
 fully, either by an Irish parliament, or by the parliament 
 such as it is now. The latter is impossible, unless the 
 Repeal of the Union — or more strictly, the absolute isola- 
 tion of Ireland — should leave to the popular party a free 
 field of action. I decline to discuss their comparative 
 merits, not because I think there is no one who prefers 
 the more violent course ; on the contrary, I believe that 
 it is preferred by all extreme parties, by all the enemies 
 of Great Britain, whether democratic or aristocratic. For 
 
FIVE REMEDIAL MEASURES. 75 
 
 widely different reasons, indeed, both parties would rejoice 
 to see that country a prey to revolutionary storms : the 
 Radicals, because such is their natural bent ; the enemies 
 of progress, because they bitterly hate Britain, which in 
 their eyes is, as it were, the fatal workshop in which are 
 elaborated in safety all ideas subversive of the ancient 
 order of things, and from which they are sent forth to 
 conquer the world. But, as I have no intention to address 
 these extreme parties, I think it useless to stop to examine 
 a system which, whatever may be its final results, is 
 founded on injustice and proscriptions, on violations of 
 moral law and of humanity. 
 
 While, then, I regard solely legal and peaceful means, 
 I wall examine in succession the chief measures which can 
 improve the state of the Irish masses. These may be 
 ranged under five heads, according as they have for their 
 object popular education, commerce and industry, great 
 works of public utility, the organisation of public relief 
 and emigration ; lastly, the amendment of the civil laws 
 affecting the distribution of property and the relations of 
 the landowners and their tenants. We shall discuss in 
 order each of these categories. 
 
 I. Popular Instruction. — Education is the first 
 necessity of Ireland. That only can raise the morals and 
 enlighten the intellect of the masses brutalised by ages of 
 oppression and misery. That only, by developing among 
 the people a sentiment of prudence, can arrest the per- 
 nicious increase of the population, and establish a less 
 lamentable proportion between the number of inhabitants 
 and their means of subsistence. The Irish have a lively 
 intelligence ; they seek instruction eagerly, and they learn 
 quickly. It is almo&t true to say that the best government 
 
76 PEESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 for Ireland will be that which will diffuse most light 
 among the poorer classes, and do most to dispel the 
 darkness of dense ignorance in which they have vegetated 
 hitherto. 
 
 I have already spoken of the laudable efforts of the 
 Whig ministry to found a vast system of national educa- 
 tion, on a plan eminently tolerant and reasonable. That 
 plan, which has been received with favour and sympathy 
 by the Catholics, has succeeded beyond the hopes of its 
 founders. The national schools have multiplied rapidly, 
 and their number, already very considerable, is daily on 
 the increase. The good which they do is immense, for 
 they are conducted on a system, and by methods which 
 leave nothing to be wished by the most exacting advocates 
 of popular instruction. Thanks to the establishment of 
 normal schools, which are true models, the day is not 
 distant when there shall be established in every part of 
 Ireland primary schools to satisfy the intellectual needs of 
 the population. The future of this great work has not 
 been endangered by the accession of the Conservative 
 party to power. At the outset, the fanatical partisans of 
 the established church attacked it violently, and all the 
 energy of the Melbourne ministry was required to main- 
 tain progress in the course on which it had entered. But 
 now the benefits of the national schools are so great and 
 so universally recognised, that Sir Robert Peel will do all 
 in their favour that Lord John Russell could have done. 
 
 Would a national parliament hasten this intellectual 
 movement ? It may well be doubted. The existing sys- 
 tem is based on the complete absence of proselytism, on a 
 spirit of absolute impartiality among the different religious 
 creeds. The men who direct it are justly reputed as the 
 
THE FUTUEE OF EDUCATION. "]*] 
 
 most intelligent, the wisest, and most moderate of the 
 clergy — Catholic and Protestant — along with the most 
 eminent laymen of the country. Would it remain un- 
 changed if power were to pass into the hands of the 
 Catholic democracy ? Assuredly not. It would certainly 
 be disposed to place under the sole direction of the clergy 
 the national schools, — all those at least which exist in the 
 provinces, where the Protestants are an imperceptible 
 minority. Such a result will be regarded as certain by all 
 those who, relying on the lessons of history, reflect on the 
 tendencies of religious parties when they have all political 
 power in their own hands. Now this would be a great 
 misfortune to the country, an obstacle to the progress of 
 instruction. 
 
 No one is more disposed than I to render justice to the 
 Catholic clergy. I honour their sincere faith, their zealous 
 charity, their boundless self-devotion ; but I do not recog- 
 nise in them the qualities necessary to direct successfully 
 popular instruction. Their profound ignorance, their 
 numerous prejudices, their exaggerated political notions, 
 render them unfit to fulfil the mission which the primary 
 teacher ought to propose to himself — to develop the intel- 
 ligence and to raise the moral dignity of childhood. If 
 the national schools were entrusted to the clergy they 
 would soon fall, from the high degree of perfection which 
 they have attained, to the level of the Belgian schools. 
 The instruction would cease to be intelligent, and the 
 lower classes would derive much less benefit from them. 
 
 As the merits of the present system cannot be gainsaid, 
 it will perhaps be alleged that an Irish parliament, 
 would devote to popular instruction a much larger annual 
 sum than that which is now granted. This is possible. 
 
"J^ PRESENT AND FUTUEE OF IRELAND-. 
 
 But it is equally true that, if the popular party were to 
 demand the increase of this sum with a hundredth part of 
 the zeal displayed in the pursuit of an impossibility, they 
 would obtain from parliament, whatever party might 
 occupy the Treasury benches, more money than is required 
 to found schools in every parish. 
 
 II. Commerce and Industry. — What have these to 
 hope from the legislative independence of Ireland ? What 
 means could the Irish government have for rapidly deve- 
 loping these two principal sources of the prosperity of 
 nations ? In this respect, I confess my complete ignorance. 
 Some persons think, perhaps, that by adopting a protective 
 system, by closing its ports to Britain, Ireland could make 
 mauy branches of manufacture flourish at hoiiie, Nothing 
 more absurd can be imagined. A war of tariffs between 
 the two islands would be pernicious to both ; but Britain 
 would suffer much less than Ireland. Ireland, essentially 
 by nature agricultural, finds in Great Britain the most 
 advantageous market in the world for the sale of its pro- 
 ducts. Even if we suppose that the condition of the lower 
 classes is improved as is to be desired, even if those classes 
 were able to consume a much larger amount of articles of 
 food, Ireland will always yield (however little its agri- 
 culture may share in the general improvement which we 
 suppose) a surplus of agricultural produce, which it must 
 export. If England close her ports against her, what will 
 she do with her butter, her corn, her wheat ? Driven to 
 sell them at a loss on the continent, she will see her 
 agriculture reduced to terrible distress. 
 
 Britain, on the other hand, would lose little by exchang- 
 ing her manufactured goods for the grain of Canada and 
 of the Baltic, for the butter of Holland, instead of 
 
COMMEECE AND PUBLIC WORKS. 79 
 
 exchanging them, as now, for the produce of Ireland ; and 
 if she had to bear some losses, these would be, in any case, 
 much less than those of her rival. It is, then, quite clear 
 that to establish fiscal barriers between Ireland and 
 Britain would be an act of madness. 
 
 It is, besides, certain that Ireland cannot aspire, at 
 present, to become an industrial power. There are wanting 
 the elements necessary for the development of industry : 
 capital and the chief kinds of raw material. The Repeal 
 of the Union would not give her either the iron or the 
 coal which would be necessary; and still less would it 
 increase the mass of capital needful for a great develop- 
 ment of industry. By the aid of bounties, of privileges, 
 and of other costly encouragements, a factitious industry 
 might perhaps be introduced into Ireland ; but such a 
 result, far from being desirable, would be to be dreaded as a 
 new means of aggravating, sooner or later, the distress of 
 the working classes. 
 
 III. Public Woeks. — Of all the measures hitherto 
 proposed, that which would give to Ireland if not the 
 most complete, at all events the most speedy, relief, is the 
 execution of vast public works of a kind to employ a part 
 of the labour not required by agriculture. The Irish, if 
 well paid and well fed, are eminently qualified for labour 
 which requires great muscular strength. They are ex- 
 cellent labourers. The French people have had means of 
 judging, by the way in which the men laboured whom the 
 contractors for the Paris and Rouen railway had brought 
 over from the other side of the Channel, and who were 
 almost all Irish. Consequently, the execution of such 
 enterprises as canals, harbours, railways, would be favour- 
 ably conducted in Ireland, since manual labour, which 
 
8o PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 constitutes the chief cost of similar works, is there abun- 
 dant and cheap. But an available working population is 
 not the only condition needful for the accomplishment of 
 the enterprises just mentioned. To set that population in 
 motion, there are needed the sinews of all things — money, 
 capital. To procure these is the great difficulty. Would 
 it be less when Ireland had obtained an independent legis- 
 lature? I cannot think so. For whether the execution 
 were undertaken by private companies, or by the govern- 
 ment itself, capital would be less disposed than now to 
 seek employment in Ireland. The country itself possesses 
 little ; if it wish to undertake great works, it must have 
 recourse to British capitalists. Those, who already hesitate 
 to invest their money on the other side of the St. George's 
 Channel, would probably refuse altogether to risk it in a 
 country which had become to them a quite foreign land. 
 For a long time, if Repeal were effected, the Protestant 
 coins of London would distrust the good faith of the 
 democratic parliament of Dublin. It is, then, probable 
 that this measure would retard, rather than advance, the 
 execution of the public works which the interests of 
 Ireland imperiously demand. 
 
 If, on the contrary, the Union be maintained, — if the 
 feverish agitation of Repeal be calmed, — it is certain that 
 the government will resume the projects already suggested 
 under the Melbourne ministry, and that it will provide 
 Ireland with a network of railways like that which covers 
 Great Britain. Sir Robert Peel has already declared that 
 if he opposed the schemes of his predecessors in office, it 
 was only because he preferred to leave the field open to 
 private industry; but that this not having fulfilled his 
 expectation, he was disposed to return to his first thoughts. 
 
IMPORTANCE OF RAILWAYS. 8 I 
 
 From this declaration, I should be inclined to think that, 
 in the next session, the ministry will do something for 
 Irish railways. May God inspire them with a determina- 
 tion, noble, comprehensive, energetic, worthy of the great 
 nation which they govern, and lead them to adopt a plan 
 which, embracing the whole country, may produce, in some 
 measure, a happy revolution in the rate of wages ! * 
 
 Kailways, independently of the temporary advantages 
 which they would yield by creating a vast demand for 
 labour, would singularly advance the work of regeneration 
 which popular instruction is called on to accomplish. By 
 destroying distances, by placing, so to speak, wild Con- 
 naught at the gate of Dublin; by bringing nearer together 
 the inhabitants of all parts of the island, by furnishing 
 them with the occasion and the means of seeing and of 
 knowing each other, they would contribute to weaken 
 
 * In the Memoir of Thomas Drummond, by John F. McLennan, Edin., 
 1867, c. xvii., pp. 341—401, there is a full and most interesting account of 
 the Report of the Commission on Irish Railroads appointed in October, 
 1836, and of the hostility and indifference that proved fatal to its recommen- 
 dations. After the lapse, and, in part, the loss, of more than thirty years, 
 another Commission is now considering the subject of Irish railways. Its 
 secretary is Dr. Hancock, a sound economist and an indefatigable statist, 
 whose striking observations on the Financial Condition of Irish Railways 
 are quoted by Mr. McLennan in Appendix No. VIL, p. 464. Mr. 
 McLennan says, in words as sad as they are just: "Mr. Drummond's 
 benevolent scheme for the improvement of the masses of the Irish was 
 destined to be thwarted through British selfishness and obtuseness. Its 
 results, at least, were lost when, by his untimely death, the genius that had 
 conceived and directed the project was withdrawal. Some of those who 
 were foremost in opposing him are now, I am assured, the most clamorous 
 for the purchase of the Irish railways by the state. It is the old story — 
 the good that might have been done can only be conjectm'ed — the e^dl that 
 might have been averted we must suffer as best we may." — p. 397. — Trans- 
 lator. 
 
 G 
 
82 FEESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 those prejudices of race, those antipathies of sect, which 
 have wrought so much evil to the country. 
 
 Lastly, railways would give to Ireland great commercial 
 importance. If one of those marvellous lines crossed the 
 island from east to west, placing St. George's Channel in 
 prompt communication with the western shore washed by 
 the Atlantic ; if the distance which separates the walls of 
 Dublin from the harbours of Connaught could be traversed 
 in eight hours, Ireland would of necessity become the 
 highway between the two hemisj)heres : its future would 
 be magnificent. The consequences of such an enterprise 
 would be immense, not only for Ireland, but for the whole 
 world. Trans- Atlantic navigation, having its point of 
 departure on the furthest shores of County Clare, ren- 
 dered thus more easy and less costly, would be prodi- 
 giously extended. Imagine what, in a not distant future, 
 would be the relations of America and Europe, if in seven 
 days' time men could pass from one hemisphere to the 
 other. 
 
 If the British nation speedily accomplish a work which 
 must have results so magnificent, it will have done much 
 to repair the wrongs which its ancestors have inflicted 
 upon Ireland, and to fill up the gulph which the hatreds 
 of ages have dug between the two islands so near in space, 
 so far off in feeling. 
 
 IV. Emigration : Poor-rates. — A system of well 
 managed legal aid, supported by emigration on a great 
 scale, would, doubtless, give substantial relief to the 
 labouring class employed in agriculture. By forcing, on 
 one hand, the landowners to take an interest in the lot of 
 the poor of their parish, and, on the other, by diminishing 
 the number of the unhappy people who now compete so 
 
EEPEAL AiSTD POOR-EATES. S^ 
 
 terribly for a morsel of land to cultivate, or for insufficient 
 wages, it would necessarily produce a rise in wages, and 
 a fall in the rents of small pieces of land. 
 
 If these measures were accompanied by the extension 
 to all parts of Ireland of the present system of education ; 
 if the government, the clergy, and the upper classes, 
 employing all the means of influence and of action which 
 society has at its disposal, were to vie with each other in 
 the effort to develop the intelligence and to raise the 
 morals of the lower classes, a permanent amelioration 
 would ensue. The Irish workmen, better instructed and 
 less ignorant, would become more provident, and, after 
 having been lifted from the wretched mire in which they 
 have so long vegetated, they would strive to go on mount- 
 ing the steps of the social ladder, and to attain a more 
 prosperous state than that of the agricultural populations 
 of either Britain or the continent. 
 
 The efficacy of such remedies being admitted, it follows 
 that the E,epeal of the Union would be a great good, if it 
 were certain that an Irish legislature would endeavour to 
 apply them with energy and success. But it is easy to see 
 that a purely Irish parliament would not inevitably take 
 so rational a course. The popular party has in all times 
 shown the most intense repugnance to the principle of 
 legal charity as it is understood in Great Britain. 
 
 When the Melbourne ministry attempted to introduce 
 into Ireland the system of poor-rates, O'Connell opposed 
 it with his accustomed violence. He has since resisted its 
 application by all the means in his power. It is, then, 
 reasonable to think that, if the government of Ireland 
 were to fall into his hands, one of his first cares would be 
 to suppress the poor-rate, and to destroy all that has been 
 
84 PEESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 done to apply to the country the English system of legal 
 charity. 
 
 The expedient of emigration would be more to the taste 
 of the popular party. The Irish parliament would not 
 oppose it; but if it had recourse to it, it would find almost 
 insurmountable difficulties in its execution. All the efforts 
 of statesmen, and all the plans, more or less ingenious, of 
 economists, have failed to resolve the problem of trans- 
 porting, without an enormous cost, great numbers of men 
 and women across the ocean. The colonies in which it is 
 still possible to secure a happy existence for a large 
 number of emigrants, are the most distant. Canada is in 
 danger of being overcrowded by a population purely of 
 the lower classes ; already the last immigrants have found 
 there a competition as keen as that from which they fled 
 when they quitted Europe. 
 
 There are only the vast continents of Oceania open to 
 receive and able usefully to employ the waves of emigra- 
 tion. It is unfortunate, for the cost of transporting a 
 family from Ireland to New Holland is the double of that 
 required for a passage to Canada. 
 
 The fact being so, how could Ireland, if abandoned to 
 her own resources, undertake a vast plan of emigration ? 
 In this case also, much more than in the question of 
 railways, would the want of capital make her powerless. 
 Besides, if even she could find the means of procuring it, 
 she must have recourse to England and entreat her to 
 receive the surplus of the population ; she would be com- 
 pelled to humble herself before the haughty rival against 
 whom she had sustained so fierce a struggle. If she 
 consented to do this, I do not see what would be the 
 benefit of the Repeal of the Union. Assuredly, this 
 
AN ALIEIS" ARISTOCEACY. 85 
 
 measure would not tend to raise the moral dignity of the 
 country. 
 
 Y. Reform of the Laws of Territorial Pro- 
 perty. — The inquiry now made regarding the first four 
 measures that we have viewed as the only possible reme- 
 dies for the evils of Ireland tends also to prove that the 
 Repeal of the Union, far from facilitating their application, 
 would render it difficult and dangerous. It remains for 
 me to examine the last question, the most important of 
 all, that is, what could be done to bring about a better 
 distribution of property in land, and to improve the rela- 
 tions between the proprietors and the tenants ? 
 
 Let me repeat, at the outset, that we have excluded from 
 the discussion every scheme based on spoliation and revo- 
 lution. We must assume as our foundation that the Irish 
 parliament would respect vested rights, and that it would 
 renounce the seductive but guilty thought of avenging on 
 the present generation the crimes of past generations, 
 and would content itself with regulating and modifying, 
 without violently destroying, the now existing rights of 
 property. Within the circle so restricted, there would 
 still be much to do. 
 
 M. de Beaumont, in his remarkable work on Ireland, 
 has very well shown that almost all the evils which afflict 
 the country ma}' be referred to the existence of a bad 
 aristocracy. It is evident, in fact, that in a country where 
 property in land is the source of almost all powers, the 
 most pernicious of things possible is that the class of 
 proprietors and the other classes who form the great mass 
 of society should belong to races and to religions opposed, 
 rivals, hostile to each other. Here is, I cannot repeat it 
 too often, the fatal germ of an infinitude of evils which 
 
86 PRESENT AND FUTURE OP IRELAND. 
 
 corrupt and vitiate all the political and social institutions 
 of the country. Nothing, consequently, can be done more 
 useful to Ireland than to try to change this vicious state, 
 by substituting for the existing class of Protestant pro- 
 prietors. Catholic proprietors, who should inspire the masses 
 of the people with sympathy in all their relations. 
 
 By the " pure and simple" confiscation of the property of 
 Protestants, by their forced sale, and by other measures of 
 this kind, an assembly such as the French National 
 Convention would speedily attain this end ; but these 
 abominable expedients revolt all honest minds. It is 
 for us, then, to see what can be hoped from a modi- 
 fication of the civil laws which relate to the right of 
 property. 
 
 The laws which regulate the transmission and the dis- 
 tribution of landed property in Ireland, are analogous to 
 those of Great Britain. Their chief object is to maintain 
 the possession of it without change or partition, in the 
 same families, and to prevent its being broken up into 
 small portions by successive divisions. I do not wish to 
 discuss their absolute merit ; in their favour numerous 
 arguments may be alleged, and the example of England 
 gives to these great weight. But, however advantageous 
 they may be to a society organised wholly in accordance 
 with their principle, it cannot be denied that in Ireland 
 their sad effect is to maintain a deplorable state of things. 
 Reform, then, would be desirable, for the greatest admi- 
 ^ration of the aristocratic system cannot disguise the fact 
 that the greatest services that could be rendered to that 
 country would be to deliver it from its Protestant aristo- 
 cracy, as a preliminary for creating another aristocracy 
 which should be Catholic. 
 
FREE SALE OF LAND. 87 
 
 If the civil law did not check the transferrence of pro- 
 perties, this change would be made more rapidly than may 
 seem probable at first sight. In fact, the Irish Protestants 
 cannot cling to their estates with the tenacity which, in 
 this respect distinguishes the English race. The man who 
 never lives on his estate, or he who lives surrounded by a 
 population, that, in return for the contempt with which he 
 treats them, regard him with implacable hatred, cannot be 
 bound to his property by very strong moral ties. If he 
 found it to his pecuniary advantage to be freed from it, he 
 would not keep it long. It is probable, therefore, that if 
 land were as easily transferable in Ireland as it is in 
 France, a steady movement would ensue which, little by 
 little, would transfer it from the hands of Protestant pro- 
 prietors to those of Catholic capitalists. 
 
 The Catholics have, during the last century, greatly 
 increased their wealth; the statement of the deposits in 
 the different banks shows that the largest portion of the 
 floating capital of the country belongs to them. They are 
 able, then, to purchase lands, to recover by peaceful 
 means the property wrested from their ancestors. If they 
 do not now, it is because the civil law presents obstacles 
 almost insurmountable. 
 
 To remove these, it would suffice to abolish entails 
 and also the right of primogeniture ; to permit the par- 
 tition of inheritances, and to simplify the processes and 
 formalities now required for the sale or division of landed 
 estate. To the British people, indeed, these measures 
 would seem very serious ; they would be regarded by them 
 as expedients almost revolutionary. The present parlia- 
 ment would not readily grant them; but would an Irish 
 parliament be much more disposed to their adoption ? This 
 
88 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 is by no means certain ; for though these are measures of 
 vital importance, not a voice in Ireland is raised to 
 demand them. In all the innumerable speeches of O'Con- 
 nell, not a single word on the subject is to be found. 
 Ideas of civil reform are more advanced in Britain than in 
 Ireland. In Britain a large party already demands such 
 reforms with great persistency. One of the leaders of that 
 party, Mr. Ewart, member of the House of Commons, two 
 years ago proposed the abolition of primogeniture ; in the 
 discussion that followed that motion, I do not think that a 
 single Irish orator spoke in its favour. I am more than 
 inclined to believe that, though O'Connell at times uses 
 the language of a thorough democrat, he is at heart, as 
 regards the laws of property, friendly to the aristocratic 
 system ; so that I should be less astonished to see an 
 Irish parliament adopt violent and revolutionary measures 
 against the Protestant proprietors, than to see it effect a 
 complete reform of the civil laws, in the direction of those 
 principles of equality which the French code has conse- 
 crated. 
 
 From these considerations, I think I may affirm that as 
 regards even the amendment of the civil laws, Ireland has 
 more to hope from the parliament of Great Britain than 
 from an exclusively national parliament. The opinion 
 which I have expressed about entails and primogeniture 
 will astonish, perhaps offend, those who imagine that 
 the ancient edifice of the British Constitution, mined 
 on every side, has no other supports than aristocratic 
 institutions, which cannot be touched without danger of 
 their falling in ruin. The example of the great reforms 
 that have been effected during the last twenty years may 
 well suffice to convince them of their error ; but as these 
 
BRITISH AND IRISH ARISTOCRACIES. 89 
 
 reforms have modified the political and religious laws, 
 rather than the civil laws which maintain the aristocratic 
 organisation of society, their authority may with some 
 reason be denied. I readily make this admission, and I 
 will not use the arguments which these reforms might 
 seem to present. But, while I acknowledge the very 
 important place which the aristocracy has held, and still 
 holds, in the British Constitution, I utterly reject the 
 claim of the Irish aristocracy to be regarded as on a 
 similar footing. How can two things so widely different 
 be likened to each other ? What resemblance is there 
 between a nobility which by its intelligence, its talents, 
 its devotedness to the interests of the country, has justly 
 merited its rank at the summit of the British nation, and 
 a class of selfish landowners, alien to the country which 
 they occupy, and hostile to the population which they 
 rule ? The two aristocracies have assuredly no more in 
 common than a sound and vigorous arm has with its 
 fellow which gangrene has blighted. 
 
 The improvement of the relations established by law 
 between the proprietors and the tenants, between the 
 minority who possess and the majority who cultivate, is 
 one of the most difficult problems that the legislator can 
 undertake. These relations are in Ireland as bad as 
 possible ; they are, I have already said, the primary cause 
 of the country's distress. No one denies that they need 
 serious reform. 
 
 But if the evil is great, the remedies are difficult and 
 still more dangerous. It is to be feared that, in adjusting 
 the relative condition of the proprietors and the tenants, 
 the very right of property may be attacked. Here is a 
 danger against which a legislature, under the control of 
 
90 PRESEN'T AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 the Catholic democracy, would find it hard to defend itself. 
 I should have little trust, I confess, in the impartiality of 
 such an assembly when called to decide between the rich 
 Protestants and the Catholic masses. Let not the pro- 
 testations of O'Connell be relied upon. He himself would 
 be powerless to stem the torrent of popular passion, 
 excited by real suffering and by hatred grown inveterate. 
 If the Repeal of the Union were carried, if Ireland were 
 quite free to treat as she thought fit the Protestant land- 
 owners, it is almost certain that their rights would b^ 
 unscrupulously invaded, and that the principle of property 
 would be set at nought, however great the danger that 
 might thence result to the whole social edifice. 
 
 These are grave considerations — sufficient, in my view, 
 to give pause to any sincere person who, moved by a sen- 
 timent of unreflecting generosity, looks forward wishfully 
 to the Repeal of the Union, without, however, desiring that 
 measure to be the prelude of violent and revolutionary 
 acts. 
 
 Such reflections on the danger of the needful reforms 
 in the relations of landlord and tenant do not prove that 
 nothing can be done in this direction. It is, on the con- 
 trary, certain that a government enlightened, strong, and 
 impartial, can by degrees effect great improvements. 
 During many centuries all the laws have been made in 
 the exclusive interest of the landowners. Those times of 
 injustice we have happily left far behind us ; effort is now 
 needed to obliterate the traces they have left. It is a 
 laborious task, but one that many statesmen have already 
 taken in hand, one that I hope will in future be ardently 
 p ursued. Already a great revolution has been effected in 
 th e social system of Ireland. It dates from the day when 
 
PEOPEETY AND POOE-EATES. 9 1 
 
 the Lord Lieutenant, Lord ISTormanby, in reply to the 
 complaints addressed to him by the proprietors of a 
 county on the disorders of the poorer classes, proclaimed 
 aloud the sacred maxim that " Property has its duties as 
 well as its rights, and the former cannot be violated with- 
 out injury to the latter." Admirable words, which mark 
 the advent of a new era for Ireland, and announce that 
 the dominion of force is about to give place to the reign 
 of justice and humanity ! * 
 
 The ministry of Lord Melbourne, by introducing the 
 poor-law into Ireland, by laying down the principle that 
 the landowners are bound to assist the poorer classes in 
 their need, has carried as far as it was permitted the 
 application of Lord Normanby's doctrine. This principle, 
 it is true, has been badly applied. The new poor-law has 
 had but little success, on account as much of the defec- 
 tiveness of the measures which it necessarily involved, as 
 of the violent and almost factious opposition of the popular 
 party. Nevertheless, whatever may be its immediate 
 results, it will still have the immense merit of establishing 
 
 * One of the results of otir aristocratic system of government is that the 
 fignre-head of the vessel is apt to be mistaken — nay, even to mistake itself — 
 for the captain. Though Lord Normanby, in the House of Lords, declared 
 in high oj6&cial language, — " I dictated and directed to be sent a letter," — 
 there can be no doubt whatever that the memorable sentiment cited by 
 Cavour is due to Mr. Thomas Drummond, the under-secretary to the 
 Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1835 to 1840. The e\'idence is summed 
 up unanswerably in the Memoir by Mr. McLennan, pp. 325-339. The 
 passage, of which only the first nine words are given verbatim in the text, 
 occurs in a letter dated 22nd May, 1838, and addressed to Lord Donough- 
 more, the Lord Lieutenant of the county of Tipperary. A recent writer, 
 author of "The Pilgrim and the Shrine," 1868, quotes the passage thus : — 
 "Property has its duties as well as its priinleges." Vol. L, p. 60., B. i., 
 c 3. — Translator. 
 
92 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 for the first time in Ireland, that it is at once the right 
 and the duty of society to impose sacrifices on the richer 
 classes, in exchange for the benefits secured to them by 
 the maintenance of social order. 
 
 While the right of property is respected, it must still 
 be possible to do something to improve the relations of 
 landlord and tenant ; such, at least, is the opinion of 
 intelligent men of all parties. Mr. Sharman Crawford, a 
 popular Irish member, had announced in last session .of 
 parliament his intention to bring forward a bill with this 
 object. Sir Robert Peel, far from opposing it, declared 
 that the government was disposed to support every measure 
 which, without violating the principle of property, should 
 give to the tenants a greater security of tenure, and 
 guarantee to them a share of the value added to the land 
 by their improvements. The close of the session having 
 prevented Mr. Crawford from carrying his intention into 
 effect, the ministry named a commission charged to inquire 
 into the relations of landowners and tenants in Ireland, 
 and to prepare a law effecting all the reforms fairly 
 within the sphere of legislative action. The just and 
 honourable character of the man placed at the head of 
 this commission — the Earl of Devon — is a sure guarantee 
 of the intentions of the English cabinet. I do not assert 
 that it is disposed, as some extreme members desire, to go 
 so far as to demand an indefinite prolongation of leases, 
 which would be equivalent to despoiling the proprietors of 
 all their rights, in order to invest the farmers with them 
 on a free and invariable payment, but I think that it will 
 aid all reforms not absolutely incompatible with the spirit 
 of British legislation. 
 
 Would an Irish parliament be better fitted to effect 
 
ABSENTEEISM. 
 
 93 
 
 these reforms ? Surely not. That they may not exceed 
 the limits of reason and of justice, that they may be 
 beneficent without being revolutionary, there are required 
 in the legislator a moderation, a prudence, an impartiality, 
 that cannot be hoped, for a long time at least, in a House 
 of Commons, such as the Repeal of the Union would make 
 it. That assembly, subject to the empire of popular 
 demands, animated by violent passions, would be a bad 
 judge, a partial umpire in the cause pleaded by the 
 tenants against their landlords. There is reason to fear 
 that its sentence would be dictated by a spirit of reaction 
 and of vengeance, which may be as fatal to Ireland in the 
 future, as the spirit of oppression of intolerance has been 
 in the past. 
 
 The conscientious examination that we have now made 
 seems to me sufficiently to demonstrate that the advan- 
 tages which might result from a national legislature are 
 far from counterbalancing the disadvantages and the 
 dangers with which the Repeal of the Union threatens 
 Ireland. I should, therefore, no longer hesitate to declare 
 myself opposed to that measure, and to condemn the 
 sterile agitation of which it is the pretext, if there were 
 not in its favour a last argument which is incessantly put 
 forward, and which, by its plausibility, deceives many 
 impartial persons. This argument is furnished by the 
 habitual absence of very many of the rich landowners. 
 It is by declaiming against the evils of absenteeism that 
 O'Connell and his party strive to prove that an Irish par- 
 liament, which should restore, by good will or by force, 
 those rich absentees to their country, would be a vast 
 benefit to Ireland. 
 
94 PEESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 The argument is serious, and deserves all the more 
 careful consideration on our part, because it has commonly 
 been treated very lightly by politicians on the continent. 
 
 I am far from denying the evil consequences of absen- 
 teeism in general. On the contrary, I think that they are 
 of two kinds — one moral, the other economic. 
 
 It is no slight evil to a country that a considerable 
 portion of the opulent class should be continually absent 
 from it. We cannot too highly estimate the benefits of 
 every kind which result from the habitual residence of 
 landowners on their estates. Of all aristocracies, the most 
 popular is the territorial aristocracy, that which dwells in 
 the midst of the rural population. Such an aristocracy 
 has much more dignity and moral weight than the aristo- 
 cracy of the court ; it is much stronger, more energetic, 
 more generous than the aristocracy of mere finance, which 
 has sprung from commerce and which lives in cities. But 
 what constitutes the true territorial aristocracy, is not 
 merelv the possession of a large part of the soil ; it is 
 much more the influence which personal relations, con- 
 tinued from generation to generation for centuries, have 
 given to the great proprietors over the population of the 
 country. These relations are rich in happy results for all 
 classes of society, for the highest as for the lowest. They 
 afford to the rich a noble use of their wealth ; they secure 
 to the poor greater benevolence and humanity at the 
 hands of the rich. When society rests on solid founda- 
 tions, when in its constitution there is no abnormal cause 
 of disturbance or of discord, the presence of the proprietors 
 on their estates must have benefical results. 
 
 But if, on the contrary, from any cause whatever, be- 
 tween the landed aristocracy and the mass of the people, 
 
CAX EESIDENCE BE ENFORCED ? 95 
 
 there exist hostile sentiments and inveterate antipathy, 
 the presence of the former can confer no benefit. To 
 remove the moral consequences of absenteeism, it would 
 not suffice to force the Protestant aristocracy to reside 
 upon their estates. They must first be inspired with 
 more humane and benevolent sentiments towards their 
 Catholic tenants ; they must be induced to strive for the 
 improvement of their tenants' condition with the same 
 ardour that they have hitherto shown in retaining them 
 in a state of dependence and oppression. Until this salu- 
 tary change takes place, as long as the proprietors in 
 general shall be regarded as the oppressors rather than 
 the natural protectors of the country, I do not hesitate to 
 say that absenteeism, whatever may be its economic con- 
 sequences, will be, in a moral respect, a good more than evil. 
 No pecuniary sacrifices can be compared to the pernicious 
 effects of the presence of a rich class, corrupt and oppres- 
 sive, in the midst of masses ignorant, passionate, and 
 bitterly hostile. 
 
 But, even if the presence of the proprietors on their 
 estates were as beneficial as O'Connell affirms, how could 
 an Irish parliament accomplish this object ? I will go so 
 far as to suppose that by coercive measures, which I do 
 not approve, he forces the Irish proprietors to remain 
 within the island ; but it seems to me utterly impossible 
 for him to compel them to reside on their estates. For 
 this end must be devised a new sort of lettre de cachet to 
 condemn the great proprietors, for a part of the year, to 
 do philanthropy to the advantage of their tenants. The 
 idea is too absurd to merit the trouble of refutation. 
 
 Let us turn to the economic results of absenteeism. 
 
 At the outset, I may observe that Ireland is not the 
 
go PKESEÎsT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 only country that complains of the wrong done to the 
 public wealth by the absence of some of the richest 
 families. England has made the same complaint. During 
 the years that followed the re-establishment of the general 
 peace, public opinion was much disturbed by the danger 
 to the national finances from the increasing emigration to 
 the continent, and more than once there was a question 
 of checking the torrent by fiscal and coercive measures. 
 Experience, however, and the discussions which took place 
 on this subject, having shown that the fear was exag- 
 gerated, public opinion was reassured, and declamations 
 against absenteeism dropped into the range of the most 
 vulgar eloquence of mob orators. 
 
 The remarkable writings of several economists have 
 contributed much to this result. By a complete analysis of 
 the effects of absenteeism on the production and the con- 
 sumption of wealth, it has been clearly proved that most 
 frequently it exerts, economically, no injurious effect. The 
 first writer who has treated this subject thoroughly is 
 Mr. Mc.Culloch, the learned editor and commentator of 
 Adam Smith. It is he who first, during an examination 
 that has become famous, maintained before a committee 
 of the House of Lords, that absenteeism was innocent of 
 all the charges brought against it.* The opinions of Mr. 
 
 * Mr. Mc, CuUocli appends the following note to the chapter on Com- 
 merce in his Principles of Political Economy, 2nd edit., Lond., 1830, p. 157, 
 P. i., C. 5 : — " I do not mean, by anything now stated, nor did I ever mean, 
 by anything I have stated on other occasions, to maintain that absenteeism 
 may not be, in several respects, injurious. It would be easy, indeed, to show 
 that both England and Scotland have been largely benefitted by the resi- 
 dence of the great landed proprietors on their estates. No one can doubt 
 that they have been highly instrumental in introducing the manners, and 
 
IS ABSENTEEISM INJURIOUS? 97 
 
 Mc.Culloch have been generally adopted by economists. 
 However strange they may at first appear, they are, 
 within certain limits, perfectly correct. Like almost all 
 who make discoveries in moral science, however, he has 
 claimed for his principle a too wide extension. An econo- 
 mist, not less celebrated — Mr. Senior — has subsequently 
 reduced it within juster limits. Nevertheless, as I think 
 that these are not yet drawn with perfect exactness, I beg 
 permission to discuss the question. I shall, I trust, be 
 pardoned for this short excursion into the domain of 
 economic science in consideration of the importance of 
 the subject, and its novelty to some of my readers. 
 
 This is Mr. Senior's theory : — " Let us first," he says, 
 " distinguish between the countries that export primary 
 materials and those which export manufactured articles. 
 In the former, the rich man who lives abroad will pay 
 his expenditure by means of the primary materials of his 
 country, either directly or indirectly. There is thus no 
 doubt that a prodigal Irish lord pays his extravagant 
 
 in diffusing a taste for the conveniences and enjoyments of a more refined 
 society ; and that the improved communications between different places, 
 the expensive and commodious farm-buildings, and the plantations with 
 which the country is sheltered and ornamented, are to be, in a great degree, 
 ascribed to their residence. It may be doubted, however, considering the 
 circumstances under which most Irish landlords acquired their estates, the 
 difference between their religious tenets and those of their tenants, the 
 peculiar tenures under which the latter hold their lands, and the political 
 condition of the country, whether their residence would have been of any 
 considerable advantage. But, whatever conclusion may be come to as to 
 this point, cannot affect what has been stated in the text. The question 
 really at issue refers merely to the spending of revenue, and has nothing 
 to do with the improvement of estates ; and, notwithstanding all that has 
 been said to the contrary, I am not yet convinced that absenteeism is, in 
 this respect, at all injurious." — Translatai'. 
 
 H 
 
çS PEESENT AND FUTURE OF lEELAND. 
 
 expenses in London or on the continent by the grain, 
 the pigs, the butter which his lands produce, and which 
 England consumes. If this lord inhabited Ireland, a part 
 at least of those products would be exchanged for Irish 
 labour, and would, consequently, be consumed by the 
 workmen of the country, who would have more bacon to 
 eat, and more butter to give a relish to their potatoes. If, 
 however, this same lord returned home with exclusively 
 English tastes, — if he were attended solely by English 
 servants, — and if he brought from England all that he 
 required, Ireland would gain but little. His grain, his 
 pigs, and his butter would be eaten by the English, or 
 exported to pay for English goods." From this reasoning, 
 of which the truth is obvious, Mr. Senior concludes that 
 absenteeism, in countries which export primary materials, 
 must affect injuriously the national wealth, and tend to 
 depress the rate of wages ; and that, consequently, it is 
 desirable for such countries that the idle rich should con- 
 sume their revenues at home, provided they have not 
 contracted the habit of employing only foreign labour. 
 
 " For countries which export manufactured goods," adds 
 Mr. Senior, "the case is different. The rich man, not being 
 able to pay his expenditure by means of the produce of 
 his lands, will exchange it for manufactured goods, which, 
 being exported to the country in which he lives, will pay 
 his debts. This operation is not effected directly. Bankers 
 only in seeming end it by transferrence of paper. It often 
 happens that the products of the country of the absentee, 
 instead of being exported into the country in which he 
 lives, go to pay the debts which he may have contracted 
 with a third country. Nevertheless, through the thousand 
 complications of commercial exchanges, it is easy to reduce 
 
ME. senior's DOCTEINE. 99 
 
 the effect of the rich man's expenditure abroad to the 
 operation just explained. Such being the case, his country 
 will have sustained no loss. His income will be exchangred 
 for national labour ; only that labour, instead of being 
 consumed by him unproductively at home, will have been 
 employed to pay other services equally unproductive, 
 which he receives from the foreigners among whom he 
 lives." 
 
 This second reasoning of Mr. Senior is substantially 
 sound ; but he draws from it too wide consequences. If 
 the country in question exported only articles of luxury 
 that did not at all enter into the consumption of the 
 working classes, this able economist would be completely 
 right. As long as the expenditure of the English on the 
 continent is paid with porcelain vases and horses of 
 pure blood, England, far from losing, rather gains. The 
 expenditure of the absentee, increasing the demand for 
 articles of luxury, encourages the development of those 
 branches of industry which bring the best wages and the 
 highest profits. But if the country exports manufactured 
 articles which the working classes do consume, — cheap 
 stuffs, for example, — I do not understand how a different 
 effect can be assigned ta absenteeism from that which it 
 produces in countries that export primary materials. 
 
 The rich man, it is true, whether he remain at home or 
 go abroad, will equally spend his income on manufactured 
 articles, as we have said he would on the previous hypo- 
 thesis. But, in the case of these manufactured articles 
 being of a kind employed by the working classes, it is 
 probable that he would not himself consume them ; he 
 would exchange them a second time for services suited to 
 satisfy his refined tastes. It will be. objected that the 
 
lOO PRESEI^T AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 same revenue cannot be consumed twice. That is true ; 
 but it must not be forgotten that if the rich man's income 
 goes to pay the service of all those whom he employs, 
 viz., his gamekeeper, grooms, tailor, &c., this kind of con- 
 sumption, though unproductive from the economic point 
 of view, nevertheless enables his countrymen, who are 
 thus paid, to procure for their own use articles of first 
 necessity which, in the case of the absence of the rich 
 man, would have been exported. 
 
 Absenteeism, in these circumstances, does not create a 
 new demand abroad for manufactured articles. It only 
 displaces it. It was the servants, the workmen, the trades- 
 men of the country of the absentee who demanded them ; 
 it is now the servants, the workmen, the tradesmen whom 
 he employs abroad who will profit by them. 
 
 In order to throw grave doubts on the theory of Mr. 
 Senior, it is enough to inquire if it is possible for ab- 
 senteeism to have a different effect on a country which 
 exports oxen, and on that which should export only 
 candles made from the tallow of those same animals. In 
 one case as in the other, the exportation lessens the 
 quantity of different articles which constitute the real 
 wages of the working classes ; and, consequently, it must 
 tend to lower wages. 
 
 If we apply these principles to Ireland, we shall be 
 forced to acknowledge that absenteeism tends to her 
 impoverishment; for that country is one of those that 
 export almost exclusively primary materials, or manufac- 
 tured articles suitable for the consumption of the lower 
 classes. 
 
 It cannot, then, be doubted that an Irish parliament 
 would do a most useful thing if it could retain in Ireland 
 
HOW PREVENT ABSENTEEISM? 1 01 
 
 all the rich proprietors who live abroad. But how could 
 this end be attained? Could it be solely by indirect 
 means, by rendering a residence in Dublin as interesting 
 as is now a residence in London ? I am very doubtful of 
 the success. It is difficult to change the habits and 
 to modify the tastes of the richer classes. The attraction 
 which will draw them to England, even after the Repeal 
 of the Union, will continue to be more powerful than all 
 the seductions which life in Dublin will be able to offer. 
 
 Political interest cannot be much reckoned on as a 
 means of retaining in Ireland the absentee proprietors. 
 They almost all belong to the extreme Tory party ; they 
 would lose all influence in an Irish parliament. They 
 would always be in a small minority in the House of 
 Commons, and, as the House of Lords would become 
 insignificant, I do not think that they would be eager to 
 attend, or that they would assiduously perform their legis- 
 lative functions. 
 
 But, it will be said, if the great proprietors, indifferent 
 to the benefits of national independence, persist in living 
 at a distance from their country, coercive means will be 
 employed. This is more easily said than done. I do not 
 suppose that the recipe will be applied which the Emperor 
 of Russia employs to force the nobility to return to the 
 empire — sequestration of their revenues, and even confis- 
 cation of their estates. This course would be too violent, 
 too much opposed to the manners, the ideas of our age ; 
 no one, except a few pothouse demagogues, would dare to 
 advise it. A tax, then, as a last resource, must be levied 
 on the income of the absentees. This measure, which at 
 the first glance seems simple, would be of very difficult 
 application, perhaps even impossible. 
 
I02 PEESENT AND FUTUEE OF lEELAND. 
 
 How, indeed, could the absence of any one be estab- 
 lished? Would absence during a few months suffice to 
 subject the offender to the tax ? Would the whole family 
 be required to stay in Ireland, or its head only^? More- 
 over, what kind of establishment will the rich be required 
 to maintain in their own country ? The mere mention of 
 such questions is enough to show that it is almost impos- 
 sible to answer them. Without instituting a series of 
 inquisitorial and vexatious measures, it will be impossible 
 to impose a tax which will not be universally evaded. It 
 is impossible not to permit temporary absence ; and how 
 shall it be limited? Railways and steamboats, which 
 have brought Dublin within twenty-four hours of London,* 
 will enable the rich Irishman, who with his family lives 
 in London, to present himself in Ireland as often as shall 
 be necessary to escape the tax. I repeat that, without 
 adopting an odious system, opposed to all our ideas, to all 
 principles of justice, coercive means for compelling the 
 great Irish nobles to stay at home will be completely 
 vain. 
 
 There is, besides, a grave consideration which is com- 
 monly lost sight of, but which alone may suffice to dispel 
 the hope of causing absentees to return. It is usually 
 forgotten that the greatest part of the land possessed by 
 non-resident owners belongs to Englishmen, to peers of 
 ^Great Britain, to powerful corporations. No one can be 
 expected to renounce his quality of Englishman in order 
 to inhabit Ireland. An exceptional measure, accordingly, 
 would be needful to subject such persons to the tax on 
 absentees. This would be in truth a first step in spoUa- 
 
 * No v^^ less than twelve. 1868.— Translatai'. 
 
REPEAL INEFFECTUAL. IO3 
 
 tion, one to which corporations and other landowners 
 would not readily submit. They would invoke the support 
 of their government, of Britain, and assuredly it would 
 not be withheld. What would happen then ? A civil 
 war. This would be in Ireland the height of madness; 
 for not only would she have to contend with material 
 forces far superior to her own, but she would have against 
 her moral forces also — -justice and right. 
 
 It must, then, be acknowledged that absenteeism is an 
 evil, but that the remedies which O'Connell and his party 
 would apply by means of the Repeal of the Union would 
 be an aggravation of it, not a cure. 
 
 I think that I have now completed the most important 
 part of the task which I had imposed upon myself, by 
 demonstrating how far the inevitable consequences of the 
 Repeal of the Union are from fulfilling the expectation of 
 those persons who honestly believe that on the success of 
 this measure depends the salvation of Ireland. If the 
 analysis that I have made is not wholly inexact, it may 
 with certainty be predicted that the advantages which 
 would result from it would be more than counterbalanced 
 by the evils and the dangers that it would cause. It is, 
 accordingly, to be deplored that it should have become 
 the sole object, the sole concern of the Irish popular 
 party. But even though I should have erred, and unduly 
 depreciated the possible benefits of a national legislature, 
 ought we to applaud the course which O'Connell and his 
 party have taken, and which almost all Catholic Ireland 
 has, in appearance at least, adopted with so much energy 
 and invincible determination ? Assuredly not ; for before 
 encouraging Irish patriots in the perilous path that they 
 have chosen, we must know, not only if the end they seek 
 
I04 PEESENT AND FUTUEE OF lEELAND. 
 
 is legitimate, but further, if it is not beset with insur- 
 mountable obstacles, and if it is reasonable to hope that 
 they will succeed, whether by conviction or by force, in 
 breaking the bond which unites them to Great Britain. 
 Now, this is what no men of good sense, after a few 
 moments' reflection, can admit. 
 
 How, indeed, could the Repeal of the Union be effected 1 
 By legal means ? But for this result the consent of parlia- 
 ment must be obtained ; and this the immense majority 
 will always be unanimous in refusing. By force ? By the 
 fear which Ireland may flatter herself by fancying that 
 she inspires ? But who can suppose that Britain would 
 retreat before the menacing attitude of the forces which 
 O'Connell has organised ? Those who think so wholly 
 misunderstand the character of the British people, and 
 the principles which guide its government. They are not, 
 it is true, a quickly sensitive people. They act with as 
 much prudence as firmness : when an absolute necessity 
 makes itself felt, they can yield, at the sacrifice even of 
 their vanity and their pride ; but when the real interests 
 of the national power, the principles of the national ex- 
 istence, are at stake, they are the most determined people 
 that ever existed, and capable of the most gigantic, the 
 most persevering efforts. 
 
 The Repeal of the Union is rightly regarded in Britain, 
 by all parties, as a question of life or death ; all, with equal 
 energy, have declared against the separation of the two 
 kingdoms. Though divided in opinion as to the best means 
 of governing that country, and restoring it to tranquillity, 
 the British people are unanimous as to the necessity of 
 maintaining, by all possible means, the incorporation of 
 Ireland with Great Britain. Let it be remembered that 
 
BRITAIN OPPOSED TO EEPEAL. IO5 
 
 the gentlest, the most humane, the most liberal, the most 
 sincere member of the Whig party — Lord Spencer — when 
 he was minister, declared without hesitation that, rather 
 than consent to the Kepeal of the Union, he would advise 
 parliament to maintain a war of extermination ; and, there- 
 after, let it be judged if it is probable that any British 
 cabinet whatsoever, supported by the entire nation, would 
 ever yield to the menaces of O'Connell. 
 
 Some persons, deceived by a false historical analogy, 
 invoke the example of what happened in 1829, when the 
 Catholics were emancipated, to prove that it is not impos- 
 sible to wrest from fear important concessions, long refused 
 to entreaties. The comparison is inadmissible. In 1829, 
 the Irish contended for a cause the justice of which was 
 evident ; and they had on their side, if not a majority of 
 the British people, at least a very imposing minority, in 
 whose ranks were reckoned not merely the whole Whig 
 party, but even the most eminent and most enlightened 
 Tories. The Duke of Wellington did not give way merely 
 on account of the threatening attitude of the Catholic 
 Association; he jdelded, because, as a skilful leader, he 
 saw that his army was not resolved to follow him into a 
 deadly strife. He wielded, it is true, the majority in both 
 chambers, and he could, with an effort, have caused the 
 defeat of any direct motion in favour of the Catholics ; 
 but it would have been difi&cult and almost impossible for 
 him to obtain from the House of Commons the extraordi- 
 nary powers needful forcibly to suppress the formidable 
 agitation which O'Connell had organised. 
 
 The circumstances are now very different. In Great 
 Britain, both in parliament and in the country, there 
 is unanimity against the Repeal of the Union. This 
 
I06 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 measure is rejected equally by tlie fanatical partisans of 
 all existing things, and by the most ardent friends of 
 progress. This universal agreement is not due wholly to 
 the mere sentiment of the national interest ; it must, in 
 great part, be ascribed to the loyal and honest conviction 
 which regards the disruption of the bond that unites the 
 British islands as a hateful and criminal enterprise. The 
 ministry, whatever it may be, will always find parliament 
 prepared to arm it with all the necessary legal powers, and 
 to place at its disposal sufficient material resources to 
 maintain in Ireland the existing legal order, whether by 
 means of the laws or by force. 
 
 The systematic legal agitation, such as O'Connell has 
 conducted, is, therefore, doomed to be and to continue 
 barren. The promises, the boasts, of the Liberator may, 
 in this respect, continue to maintain illusions in the minds 
 of the Irish Catholics ; but these illusions will, sooner or 
 later, be dispelled, and the popular party will, in the end, 
 demand from its leader an account of the results of so 
 great efforts, so great sacrifices. What will, then, be the 
 course of the great man whose influence on the destinies 
 of Ireland is so powerful ? Abandoning the issueless path 
 which he has entered, will he resort to the final argument 
 of oppressed nations, to insurrection, to civil war ? I cannot 
 believe it. O'Connell is too skilful, too enlightened ; he 
 has too much good sense to engage seriously in a death- 
 struggle with Great Britain. The chances would be too 
 unequal. Some persons are, I know, of a contrary opinion ; 
 they believe that on the day when O'Connell shall unfurl 
 the banner of the Independence of Ireland, and appeal to 
 the national forces, an irresistible popular movement will 
 ensue. They say: In this age it is impossible to keep 
 
IRELAND NOT UNANIMOUS. 107 
 
 down by force eight millions of men resolved to conquer 
 or to die. Here again is an illusion which will quickly be 
 removed by a careful study of the elements that compose 
 the population of the British empire. 
 
 In the first place, let it be remembered that Ireland is 
 not unanimous ; that in that country there is a numerous 
 and powerful class, bound by all their interests to the 
 Union, and to whom the question of Repeal is a question 
 of life or death. The Protestants are indeed only a small 
 numerical majority ; but they are strong by their wealth, 
 by their energy, and by their organisation. At the first 
 cry of insurrection they would rise in mass, and with the 
 aid of the regular troops, they would unhesitatingly attack 
 the assemblages of Catholics in revolt. 
 
 In respect of popular warfare the people of the British 
 Isles differs essentially from the French people. In France, 
 the use of arms is general ; the military spirit pervades 
 all classes of society ; it is even stronger in the lower than 
 in the upper classes. The conscription has taught the 
 great majority of the nation how to fight ; there is not a 
 village in which a company or a platoon cannot be organ- 
 ised in a day. Combats in the streets are, consequently, 
 dangerous in France ; the people more than once have 
 been victorious. In Ireland, as in Britain, on the contrary, 
 the people have not military instincts or military habits. 
 The army is to them something foreign. Tlie people 
 furnish it with soldiers, indeed ; but these, once enrolled, 
 return no more into the ranks of the people. The armed 
 force produces a magical effect upon the masses. Small 
 detachments have often sufficed to disperse groups, seem- 
 ingly the most threatening. However the courage of the 
 Irish soldiers may be over-rated, and in spite of O'Connell's 
 
108 PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 boasts, no one acquainted with Ireland can, for a moment, 
 believe that the popular masses would be able to oppose a 
 serious resistance to regular troops. 
 
 The middle and the upper classes constitute the living 
 strength of the British nation. They are much more 
 energetic than the similar classes on the continent. No 
 revolution, no attempt at insurrection is possible if the 
 majority of the persons composing these do not declare 
 against the government. Now nothing is less probable 
 in Ireland. If civil war broke out, we should see on 
 one side numerous and confused masses of undisciplined 
 peasants, commanded by a small number of Catholics 
 belonging to the upper ranks of society; and, on the 
 other side, the upper and the middle classes supported 
 by all the force at the disposal of the government. The 
 contest would, in truth, be too unequal. The popular 
 party, by resorting to violence, would rush upon certain 
 m in. 
 
 There is no chance, not the slightest, that could turn 
 the scale in favour of the Irish insurrection, or make the 
 balance even. There might be an unsuccessful foreign 
 war that would exhaust the strength of Britain. In that 
 case, I confess, the Irish might successfully attempt an 
 insurrection. But can this extreme case enter into the 
 calculations of reasonable men ? Can we approve a party 
 that founds its chances of success on the humiliation of its 
 country ?* No ! a thousand times no. Repeal obtained 
 
 * But, unhappily, though not quite unreasonably, too many Irishmen 
 refuse to recognise Britain as their country. "Britain," they say, " is not 
 our friend; nor British law." England AND Scotland are Great Britain ; 
 but we say Great Britain and Ireland. — Translator. 
 
REPEAL IMPOSSIBLE AND NEEDLESS. IO9 
 
 at the price of the humiliation of Britain would cost 
 humanity too dear. No one of good faith can desire it at 
 this price. 
 
 But, in fine, I shall be asked what conclusion is to 
 be drawn from all the reasoning by which I have endea- 
 voured to ascertain the present state of the questions 
 relating to the condition of Ireland. In the first place, I 
 have a firm conviction that Repeal will not be effected. 
 But I shall next, perhaps, be asked, what then will hap- 
 pen ? What will be the issue of the present crisis, and 
 what will be the dénouement of the drama in which 
 O'Connell plays so extraordinary a part ? I cannot, and I 
 will not, expatiate in the field of conjectures and predic- 
 tions. I have already said, it is permitted to no one to 
 foresee the mysteries of the future. The social horizon is 
 closely limited ; men of the greatest genius have striven 
 in vain to cross its bounds. Nevertheless, without 
 hazarding any rash hypothesis, I think I may end this 
 article — already too long — by affirming that it is probable 
 the present ministry and those which shall follow it will 
 continue to apply to Ireland the system of amelioration 
 and of reform which Lord Melbourne was the first to 
 adopt on a broad basis. The insults, the violence of 
 O'Connell and his followers, so long as he shall not 
 transgress legality, will not arrest the march of the 
 British government. Long accustomed to the extreme 
 consequences of political liberty, the government is not 
 sensitive or timid. It does not allow itself to be moved 
 either by vain threats, or by the fear of seeming to yield 
 through weakness, when the time for concession has come. 
 It will then pursue the work of the regeneration of Ire- 
 land. Its march will be measured and prudent ; perhaps 
 
no PRESENT AND FUTURE OF IRELAND. 
 
 e-^en it will be exceedingly slow ; but it will be constant, 
 and nothing will make it turn back. In support of 
 what I have said, I will only cite the moderate, liberal, 
 generous^conduct of the cabinet of Sir Robert Peel towards 
 Canada. 
 
 What it did for that distant colony it will do for Ireland. 
 After having conquered Canada by force of arms, it has 
 chosen to conciliate it by large concessions. In like man- 
 ner, if it gain over O'Connell a legal victory, and so, 
 too, if it be obliged to repress by material force bolder 
 attempts, it will not the less endeavour to give to the 
 demands of the Irish all the satisfaction that is compa- 
 tible with the interests of Great Britain and with the 
 requirements of its party. 
 
 What, then, will be the final result of these progressive 
 and moderate reforms ? Will they succeed in radically 
 curing the wounds of Ireland, and in completely fusing 
 the sentiments and the interests of that country with 
 those of Britain ? These are grave questions which only 
 the future can resolve. I hope, and I ardently desire, that 
 the solution will be favourable to that Ireland which is so 
 worthy of interest, and which inspires so deep attach- 
 ment. May the real progress which the efforts of honest 
 men of all parties, aided by time, must accomphsh, com- 
 pensate her for the loss of those brilliant dreams of 
 national independence that she can never realise ! 
 
 A, Ireland and Co., Printers, Pall Mall, Manchester, 
 
- 
 
 Date Due 
 
 
 . J/iiV ^'?G 
 
 
 
 
 
 /-/.- 
 
 
 
 OUi^ --0 'fi^ 
 
 /y -- 
 
 * ^ 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 . APR 2 
 
 3 2001 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 .VI aY 
 
 Ô I /lUui 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 f) 
 
 
 
 
BOSTON COLLEGE 
 
 mil 
 
 3 9031 01275206 9 
 
 Qvr^. 
 
 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS 
 CHESTNUT HILL. MASS. 
 
 Books may be kept for two weeks and may be 
 renewed for the same period, unless reserved. 
 
 Two cents a day is charged for each book kept 
 overtime. 
 
 If you cannot find what you want, ask the 
 Librarian who will be glad to. help you. 
 
 The borrower is responsible for books drawn 
 on his card and for all fines accruing on the same. 
 
 1