'ill ! IRELAND AXD HER A GIT AT OR S. BY W. J. O'N. DAUNT, Author of "The Wife-Hunter, or Memoirs of M.P.'s," "Hugh Talbot," "The Gentle- man in Debt," belonged, cannot in any fairness be quoted against Irish claims or Irish rights. That class was manufactured by * Amongst the aristocratic eccentricities of the day, was the Earl of Belvedere's penchant for people who had hideous noses. He is said to have given an annual entertainment called the Nosey Dinner, the guests heing all remarkable either for their large red noses or some other sort of nasal deformity. His lordship's great delight was to invite two opposite proprietors of outlandish noses to take wine with each other, and to watch the converging inclination of their hideous profiles. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 31 England in this country. It was prevented by English power and English artifice from becoming fully identified with Irish interests. It was corrupted for English purposes, and by English influence. When England, therefore, upbraids us with its moral rottenness, we retort that she was the insti- gator of its political crimes — that those crimes were disastrous to the great mass of the Irish people, who had no participa- tion in them ; and that the disgrace, consequently, rests not on us, but on England herself, and on the individual crimi- nals who yielded to her seductions in this country. The corruption of the Irish parliament is also often men- tioned by our English censors as if English parliaments ha 1 been always immaculate, and as if Ireland alone presented specimens of senatorial profligacy. English history, however, informs us that this species of iniquity has occasionally flourished in the parliament of England. Lingard, for in- stance, says that when Charles II. received, in January, 1677, a portion of his annual pension from the King of France, the whole sum was immediately expended on the purchase of votes in the English House of Commons ; the result of which traffic gave the court, upon questions of finance,, a majority of about thirty voices. But English senators did not restrict them- selves to a market so limited as the English court. " It seemed," says Lingard, " as if the votes of the members of parliament were exposed for sale to all the powers of Europe. Some received bribes from the Lord Treasurer on account of the king; some from the Dutch, Spanish, and Imperial am- bassadors in favour of the confederates ; some even from Louis at the very time when they loudly declaimed against Louis as the great enemy of their religion and liberties." In*1678, a test was proposed for the discovery of such mem- bers of parliament as had received bribis or any other con- sideration for their votes, either from the English or any other government. " The popular leaders," says Lingard, " spoke warmly in its favour ; but before the last division took place, about an hundred members slipped out of the House, and the motion was lost by a majority of fourteen.''* Lord Macaulay calls the management by corruption of the English parliaments of that period, and of much more recent times, " one of the most important parts of the business of a minister ;" and, speaking of the long period between the reigns of Charles II. and George III., he says that it was * Lingard's Hist, of England, ad annos 1676, 16 78. 82 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. " as notorious that there was a market for votes at the treasury as that there was a market for cattle at Smithfield."* English politicians sometimes say that the Irish parliament was so corrupt that it deserved extinction. To reason thus is to confound the turpitude of particular parliaments with the eristenee of parliament. It is to deprive the Irish peoplo of their birthright, because certain parliamentary majorities have been base and venal. Would the gentlemen who reason in this i i! m-r apply the same logic to England ? Would they argue 'i t' ') e English parliament omjht to he annihilated, and the KiiL'IMi p "ph 1 d« prived of self-government, hi cause English s. mitors sold tin ir voi< s to Patch, French, Spanish, German, and native purchasers, and hecauso tho notoriety of this trathc equalled that of the public cattle- market ? 11 the I'liion strug-.'le in the Irish parliament developed, on the one band, the political depravity whieh England had 1 ; : • i s<» hard to produce, it al>o displayed on the other hand, many brilliant examplea of the most stainless and un- rmmhaenaMi b^ne-tv. I. ■.« iy » thut to debauch the legislature had for a series of years been systematically made by the •• \« riiiii. nt ; ai i vet in 1 , ' , '» the lirst attempt to carry the L'liitm was defeated by men who might have made for thoin- : . . •. . v, hat. w r t rn. tin -\ | I a.- d • • ith the mini Uor. And in 1800, after every possible exeitii.n to pack the parliament liad been resorted to, there still remained 1 1 .» members, a tried and trusty band, who, although in a minority, were yet miraculously numerous, when we n member the enormous powers of corruption which the government derived from the maul » r ei' -e b troughs and from their other resources. Of the men who were returned by the people, a majority stood linn to their tru*t. '1 m- tiaitors were chiefly found amtmg those members whom private influence had introduced into the legislature. The \ :« eioy could not help entertaining respect for tho anti- rnmiu^s. on th,. -Jl:h .May, I7'.i'.>, he writes to General Uoss: "There ii an opposition in parliament to the measure cf I'liion, formidable in character and talents.") The English cabinet did not think that their Irish confe- rat< i were sullicienth acti»« in pressing forward the Union. L-.rd Ca^tlerea^h, in a letter to John King, Esq., dated 7th March, lMM), thus accounts lor their imputed slowness : "It will be in the first place considered that we have a minority * Macaulay'i Hist, of England, iii. 541, 540 (H\o edition), t Cum walk* Correspondence, vol. iii. p. 101. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 38 consisting of 120 members well combined and united, that many of them are men of the first weight aud talent in the House, that 37 of them are members for counties, that great endeavours have been used to inflame the kingdom, that peti- tions from 26 counties have been procured, that the city of Dublin is almost unanimous against it, and with such an opposition so circumstanced and supported, it is evident much management must be used."* When Lord Castlereagh boasted that the Union, by extin- guishing a great number of pocket-boroughs, would operate as a measure of parliamentary reform, Charles Kendal Bushe immediately retorted that Lord Castlereagh's Union-majority were to be found among the members for those very constitu- encies which his lordship proposed to abolish as a punishment for their impurity ; and that it would be impossible for him to select one hundred members for the greater constituencies, amongst whom he would not fiud himself in a minority. " What, then," asked Bushe, " results from his own confes- sion ? This — that he is about to carry the Union against that part of the parliament which he allows to be pure, and by the instrumentality of that part which he alleges to be cor- rupt. He does not merely state this as a matter of can- dour, but as a matter of boast. He glories in cutting off the rotten limb, and amputating the withered branch of parlia- ment ; and yet, with that wiihered branch, he beats down the constitution." Out of doors there was a nearly universal detestation of the Union, which would have been effectual in defeating it if it were not for the overpowering military force in the hands of the government. I have not sought to conceal the faults or vices of the Irish parliament. It was an unreformed borough parliament ; and to the evils resulting from its construction must be added the mischiefs flowing from its sectarian bigotry during the long period between the restoration of Charles II. and the year 1800. Yet, notwithstanding these very serious drawbacks, it is a fact of the highest importance that from the moment when, in ] 782, this unreformed, bigoted parliament acquired freedom from the usurped claims of England to legislate for Ireland, the prosperity of Ireland sprang forward at a bound, and its progress is attested by a host of unimpeachable witnesses, to whose evidence I shall advert in a subsequent chapter of this work. It is scarcely possible to conceive more effectual ob- * Cornwallis Correspondence. 84 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. structions to the beneficial action of a free, resident legisla- ture, than those which arise from the sectarian intolerance of its members, and from the prevalence of a close-borough sys- tem. Yet the Irish parliament, in spite of those obstructions, conferred essential benefits on the country — benefits which greatly countervailed its evils. It kept the money of the country at home. It enacted several good measures. The individual interests of its members necessarily often ran in the same groove with the interests of the country ; so that personal selfishness occasionally came in aid of patriotism. The very facts of residence, and of discharging at home the high functions of Irish legislators, produced in many of them sentiments of patriotic pride and of national honour. The general results appeared in the astonishing advance of trade, commerce, manufactures, and agriculture — an advance which forms a strong and melancholy contrast with the general decay that followed the Union, and the present condition of our flying population. By the Union, England obtained the dishonest control of the whole resources of Ireland ; but she also ob- tained the lasting hatred of the people whose legislature she had first corrupted and then destroyed. The Union laid a sure foundation for Irish discontent and disaffection. It dis- posed the people to look anywhere for friendship rather than to the power that had robbed them of their birthright by an act that capped the climax of innumerable deeds of aggression. Great national crimes have seldom been forgiven by the in- jured parties. Oblivion of wrong is best promoted by ample and honourable restitution. Restitution is, in our case, ab- solutely indispensable to our national prosperity and dignity. (t Keep knocking at the Union," were among the last words of Grattan to Lord Cloncurry. " Come it soon, or come it late," said O'Connell, " my deliberate conviction is that if the Union be not peacefully repealed, a sanguinary separation of the countries will be tbe ultimate result." This is pretty much what Saurin said on the 27th February, 1800 : "I consider," said he, " the present measure" (of Union) ' ' as most dan- gerous to that connexion" (with Great Britain). " My opinion has been uniformly that it is a project to change a union and connexion of safety and independence, for a union of insecu- rity and dependence." I conclude this chapter with the following incident. On the night when the fatal measure passed the House of Com- mons, a large crowd who had assembled in College-green, waited until Mr. Speaker Foster, the leader of the anti- IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 85 Unionists, quitted the house. They took off their hats, and followed him, sad, silent, and uncovered, to his residence in Molesworth-street. Ere he entered the house he turned round, and sadly and solemnly bowed to the people, who then dispersed. No word was interchanged between the Speaker and the crowd. All felt the deadening pressure of a terrible national calamity. It was a sorrow too profound for utterance. CHAPTER, IV. "As we are men and Irishmen, Scorn for his curst alliance ! As we are men and Irishmen, Unto his throat defiance ! " Banim. The Union having been accomplished, the prevalent desire amongst the Irish people was, of course, to obtain its repeal. For a few years no great effort was made for this purpose. The army of occupation, under the terror of which it had been forced upon Ireland, was to a great extent still continued in the country. But the national desire for Repeal is coeval with the Union itself. It was not possible that a nation should sit quietly down in contented acquiesence in its own servitude. A sullen sentiment of enmity to England smouldered in the public mind. Men brooded angrily over the enormous crimes the English government had committed against their country ; and they felt (to use the language of Saurin, a lawyer of the highest ability) that " the exhibition of resistance to the measure became merely a question of prudence." Ere I pass to later periods, let me pause for a few moments to notice a misrepresentation. It is frequently said that the Catholics supported the Union. The Catholics, as a body, are free from the imputed guilt. At a Catholic aggregate meeting held in Dublin in 1795, the Catholic leaders unani- mously passed a resolution that they would collectively and individually resist even their own emancipation, " if proposed to be conceded on the ignominious terms of an Union with the sister kingdom." Imbued with this sentiment, O'Connell, in his maiden speech, delivered at a Catholic meeting held at the Royal Exchange, Dublin, to oppose the Union, loin January, 1800, declared that he would prefer the re-enact- ment of the whole penal code to the destruction of the Irish parliament. On the 15th of January, the patriotic conduct of 86 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. the Dublin Catholics was referred to in the House of Com- mons by Grattan, who said, " If she [Ireland] perish, they [the Catholics] will have done their utmost to save her ; . . . they will have flung out their last setting glories, and sunk with their country.' ' The Viceroy, Marquis Cornwallis, had made many attempts to gain Catholic support for the Union, and he had at one time flattered himself with hopes of success. But on the 12th December, 1798, he wrote as follows to Major-General Ross : 4 4 The opposition to the Union increases daily in and about Dublin ; and I am afraid, from conversations which I have held with persons much connected with them, that I was too san- guine when I hoped for the good inclinations of the Catholics." His failure to cajole the Catholic body is again mentioned in the following passage of a letter he addressed to the Duke of Portland, dated 2nd January, 1799 : " The Catholics, as a body, still adhere to their reserve on the measure of Union. The very temperate and liberal sentiments at first entertained or expressed by some of that body, were by no means adopted by the Catholics who met at Lord Fingal's, and professed to speak for the party at large. "* On the 12th April, 1799, Mr. Secretary Cooke wrote to William Wickham, Esq., as follows: 6 ' The Catholics think it [the Union] will put an end to their ambitious hopes, however it may give them ease and equality. "f I find in an interesting compilation entitled " The Very Rev. Dr. Renehan's Collections on Irish Church History," the follow- ing incidental notice of Catholic hostility to the Union : « 1799— July, 1. Dr. Bray [Catholic Archbishop of Cashel], in reply to urgent appeals to procure discreetly Catholic signatures in favour of the Union in Tipperary and Waterford, says that Lord Castlereagh, at whose instance this application was made, should know that he, as a Catholic bishop, had little influence. The Union might prove to be a useful mea- sure ; but bishops injure their own character and the cause of religion by interfering against the ivishes of the people. It is plain that Dr. Bray intended this answer as a polite refusal. A few days after, he received a letter from the Archbishop of Tuam, expressing his fears lest some ecclesiastics should be seduced by the government into approval of its measures, par- ticularly the Union, from which he anticipated the worst evils."J * Cornwallis Correspondence, iii. 28. The meeting at Lord FingaPs was held 13th December, 1798. f Cornwallis Correspondence, iii. 87. t Renehan's Coll., vol. i. p. 375. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 87 Despite martial-law, and governmental interference to ob- struct anti-Union petitions and to procure signatures in favour of the Union, we know that the signatures against it were 707,000, whilst those in its favour did not at any time exceed 5,000. Now, when we reflect that out of the 5,000,000 who then inhabited Ireland, 4,000,000 were Catholics, and also that the whole number of pro-Union petitioners, Protestants and all, was not greater than 5,000, is it not clear that the Catholic body stands exculpated from the ignominy of having supported the disfranchisement of Ireland ? Lord Cornwallis, while trying to persuade the Bishop of Lichfield that, except- ing Dublin, the general sense of Ireland was favourable to the Union, inadvertently adds : " It is, however, easy for men of influence to obtain addresses and resolutions on either side. 5 '* If so, how did it happen that notwithstanding the alleged popu- larity of the Union, the men of influence who favoured it could only stimulate 5,000 persons to sign petitions in its be- half ; whilst the men of influence upon the other side could muster an array of 707,000 petitioners ? Lord Cornwall discloses the truth. On the 31st January, 1800, he writes to Major- General Ross : " The Roman Catholics, for whom I have not been able to obtain the smallest token of favour, are joining the standard of opposition." To these proofs that the Catholics were not accomplices in the disfranchisement of Ireland, I add the following extract from Daniel O'Connell's anti-Union speech, delivered 13th January, 1800 : " There was no man present," said O'Con- nell, " but was acquainted with the industry with which it was circulated that the Catholics were favourable to the Union : in vain did multitudes of that body, in different capacities, express their disapprobation of the measure ; in vain did they concur with others of their fellow-subjects in express- ing their abhorrence of it — as freemen or freeholders, as electors of counties or inhabitants of cities — still the calumny was repeated ; it was printed in journal after journal ; it was published in pamphlet after pamphlet ; it was circulated with activity in private companies ; it was boldly and loudly pro- claimed in public assemblies In vain did the * Cornwallis Correspondence, iii. 169. It is to be noted that in the accounts we possess of the public transactions of that period, the number of signatures to pro-Union petitions is sometimes set down at 5,000, and sometimes at 3,000. But as it is also stated that several of the petitions prayed, not for the enactment of the Union, but only that it might be discussed, I daresay the apparent discrepancy may be explained by as- signing 2,000 of the signatures to the latter class of petitions. 88 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. Catholics individually endeavour to resist the torrent. Their future efforts, as individuals, would be equally vain and fruit- less ; they must then oppose it collectively." I have quoted the above testimonies in order to rescue the character of the Irish Catholics from a disgraceful accusation. That accusation, I presume, originated in the fact that the government succeeded in cajoling a few Catholic prelates to sanction their measure, and that Lords Kenmare and Fingal were ready to surrender their country. I think the episcopal traitors did not exceed ten. Sir Jonah Barrington says : " The Bishops Troy, Lanigan, and others, deluded by the Viceroy, sold their country, and basely betrayed their flocks by promoting the Union. But," Sir Jonah adds, " the great body of Catholics were true to their country."* This can be affirmed alike of the laity, the priesthood, and the majority of the bishops. The Protestants were not more favourable to the Union than their Catholic brethren. There were numberless resolu- tions of grand juries, Orange guilds, and Orange lodges, de- nouncing the project in the strongest language. Saurin em- phatically declared that " although the Union might be made binding as a law, it could never become obligatory upon con- science ; and that resistance to it would be in the abstract a duty." Numbers of the Protestant ascendancy party were in- accessible to the bribes of the minister. Their political in- tegrity deserves honourable record and enduring national gratitude. Sir Frederick Falkiner had four executions in his house at Abbotstown, on the very day on which he rejected a large offer of money from Lord Castlereagh. There were numerous other instances of noble and disinterested patriotism amongst the leaders of Orangeism. The government had tried to delude both parties — the Catholics, by holding out hopes of their emancipation from the imperial parliament ; the Protestants, by instilling into their minds a belief that the Union would render Emancipa- tion either impossible, or, if it should be granted, innocuous to Protestant ascendancy. George III. adopted the notion that it would become impossible. In his published corre- spondence with Pitt, he tells that minister that he had con- sented to the Union in the full belief that it would " shut the door" for ever against the Catholic claims. It required much dexterity on the part of the Viceroy and his agents to infuse into the minds of rival parties these opposite beliefs. Lord * " Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation," chapter xxvii. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 39 Cornwallis was, as we have seen, instructed by Pitt to assure the Catholics that the success of the Union was essential to the success of Emancipation. At the same time his subordi- nate ally, Mr. Secretary Cooke, while amusing the Catholics with some indistinct hope of " additional privileges" (which he did not specify), assured the Protestants in the same para- graph that under an Union " the Catholics could not force their claims with hostility against the whole power of Great Britain and Ireland."* Of Mr. Pitt's ambiguous utterances Mr. Speaker Foster said, " Mr. Pitt's language is of such a nature that one would imagine he had the two religions on either side of him, and one was not to hear what he said to the other."| Lord Cornwallis's task was to create among the Catholics a conviction that their claims would be much streiif/thened by incorporation with England. But what was the Viceroy's own conviction ? Let him answer the question himself : 4 'The claims of the Catholics will certainly be much weakened by their incorporation into the mass of British sub- jects. "J This he wrote to the Duke of Portland at the very time when he was labouring to convince the Catholics that the imperial parliament would emancipate them. So it did, twenty- nine years later ; and so it would not have done at that, or probably any other time, had not 0' Council's agitation created a belief in the Duke of Wellington's mind that the only alternatives were concession or civil war. It is interesting to notice the doubts of success which Lord Cornwallis occasionally felt. In a pamphlet by a barrister named Weld, the author, speaking of the bribed supporters of the Union, says, " their penitential tears fall fast upon the wages of apostacy." This reluctance to perform the execrable task for which they took payment is seen by Lord Cornwallis, who writes to the Bishop of Lichfield on the 24th January, 1800, " There can, I think, now be no great doubt of our parliamentary success, although I believe that a great number of our friends are not sincere well-wishers to the measure of Union." The Yiceroy was right. Those men had not virtue to reject the wages of iniquity; yet their lingering amor patrue would have been rejoiced if their country had escaped the blow * Mr. Secretary Cooke's " Arguments for and against a Union Con- sidered," page 30. fMr. Foster's Speech, 11th April, 1799. t Letter to the Duke of Portland, 24th December, 1798. Cornwallis Corespondence, iii. 22. 10 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. of the executioner. Again, the Viceroy writes to General Ross on the 4th February, 1800, " God only knows how the busi- ness will terminate ; but it is so hard to struggle against private interests, and the pride and prejudices of a nation, that I shall never feel confident of success till the Union is actually carried."* This admission that he was fighting a hard battle against the pride and prejudices of a nation contrasts rather curiously with his statements in other parts of his correspondence that the national sentiment was in his favour. On the 18th April, writing to General Eoss on the parliamentary supporters of the Union, his Excellency says, "I believe that half of our majority would be at least as much delighted as any of our opponents if the measure were defeated, "f The Union being carried against the will of nearly every inhabitant of Ireland, Protestant and Catholic, it appeared to the government politic to conciliate the Protestants, as being then the stronger party. Pitt indeed made a show of retiring from office because the king's prejudices prevented him from carrying a Catholic relief bill. He, however, soon took office again, without making any further attempt in favour of Eman- cipation. Notwithstanding his short-lived resignation of office, we may reasonably doubt the sincerity of his desire to carry a measure of Emancipation, when we recollect the duplicity with which he had authorized Grattan and Earl Fitzwilliam to ex- pect his co-operation in favour of the Catholics at a time when he was fully determined to obstruct their claims to the utmost of his power. No doubt there were multitudes who rejoiced in believing with King George III. that the Union had " shut the door" for ever against the claims of the Catholics. Those claims seemed for a while to be forgotten. The government allowed the Irish Protestants to monopolise the local control of the country as the most effectual means of reconciling them to the Union. They had the Castle, the courts, the public offices, and the enormous revenues of the state church. They had everything that remained after the suppression of the legis- lature. Yet this monoply did not avail to extinguish altogether the national sentiment that had grown up under the influence of home legislation. Grattan, the illustrious founder of the constitution of 1782, retired on the enactment of the Union into private life, from which he did not emerge until 1805, when he was returned to * Cornwallis Correspondence, iii. 169, 177. f Ibid. iii. 228. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 41 the imperial parliament for the borough of Malton. On the first appearance of so distinguished an orator on the boards of St. Stephen's, there was necessarily great curiosity excited. There were in his style of speaking some marked peculiarities, and also in his voice some Hibernian inflections, which called forth an incipient titter of derision from certain of his English auditors. These symptoms, however, were checked by Pitt, who nodded his approval of the style and manner of the speaker. What a type of Ireland's degradation ! Her most honoured and venerable patriot exposed to the sneers of a foreign assembly, and indebted for his exemption from insult to the patronizing approbation of the bitter and triumphant enemy of his country ! It was in the speech he then delivered that Grattan, in alluding to the fallen fortunes of Ireland, used the touching words, "I sat by her cradle ; I follow her hearse." In 1805 several of the guilds of Dublin met to prepare petitions for the repeal of the Union. The Stationers' Com- pany met at their hall in Capel-street, and appointed a com- mittee of nine to draw up their petition. They were probably encouraged to commence the good work by Grattan's return to the English House of Commons. The Orange Corporation of Dublin followed the example of the guilds in 1810, and con- fided their petition for repeal to Grattan and Sir Robert Shaw, father of the gentleman who is now, I believe, the Recorder of Dublin. Both those gentlemen promised to support the repeal, and Grattan emphatically said, "Whenever the ques- tion shall come before parliament, I shall prove myself an Irishman, and that Irishman whose first and last passion is his native country." It is curious to hear modern Orangemen and Tories de- nouncing Repeal as being no better than treason, when we remember that Repeal was proposed in 1810 by the most ultra-Orange municipality in the kingdom. The example of Repeal agitation was then given by that body, whose anti- Catholic prejudices were so violent and inflexible, that it ad- mitted only five Catholics to be freemen of the city of Dublin during the period of forty-eight years from 1793, when the Catholics became legally admissible, to 1841, when the Orange corporation was dissolved by the municipal reform act. Mr. Butt, who is at present most deservedly a popular favourite, but who, some five-and- twenty years ago had Orange leanings, once arraigned the Repealers as traitors in a speech at the Rotundo. He apparently forgot that his ancient friends and 42 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. clients, the Orange corporation, should necessarily be involved in this censure. The " treason" of Repeal was long enshrined in the Orange sanctuary in William-street, and many a true Orange knee was bent in that temple before the altar of the national divinity. Shall we ever see the Orangemen return to their ancient anti-Union principles ? Shall we ever see them adopt the political faith which seeks not the ascendancy of a class or a sect, but the greatness, the prosperity, the dignity of the whole Irish nation ?* In 1810, public meetings were held in snstainment of the Repeal, and in order to encourage the' corporation. George III. became ill, prior to his madness, and the loyal corporators suspended their agitation lest they should embarrass the royal invalid. In 1813, the Repeal demand was renewed in Dublin, and the Repealers of all creeds held a meeting to promote their object. O'Connell, who had joined the movement in 1810, now again came forward, and exerted himself in conformity with the earliest declaration he ever had made of his political principles. In 1822, Mr. Lucius Concannon, a member of the House of Commons, gave notice of a motion for the repeal of the Union. Mr. (afterwards Sir Robert) Peel, inquired " if the honourable gentleman could seriously ask the House to violate that solenjn compact ?" Just as if a measure which was literally forced upon Ireland at the point of the bayonet, could be rationally called a compact ! From that period for- ward, the Repeal was constantly mooted in private society. In 1824, Lord Cloncurry wrote a letter, which was read by O'Connell at the Catholic Association, recommending the Catholics to abandon for a time the struggle for Emancipa- tion, and to coalesce with the Protestants in a struggle for Repeal. But this advice was premature. The Protestants of Ireland could not just then have been induced to combine with the Catholics for that or any other purpose. The demon of religious hatred was in the ascendant. Catholicity was fami- liarly designated " the beast," and " the accursed thing," by Protestant controvertists ; and the more bigoted Protestant preachers inculcated envenomed hostility to the creed of the Catholics as a Christian duty paramount to all others. When sectarian hate is incessantly enforced, it speedily is trans- * To those who impute intolerance to the Catholics, the contrast between the old and the new corporations of Dublin will afford an instructive lesson. The Protestant corporation for forty-eight years admitted but five Catholic freemen, whereas the present corporation, containing since 1841 large Catholic majorities, has many times elected Protestants to the office of Lord Mayor. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 43 ferred from the creed of misbelievers to their persons. Those who recollect the exertions of the biblical party in 1824, 1825, and 1826, have reason to rejoice that their pernicious activity has been to a considerable extent relaxed.* The controversial excitement through the country was actually frightful. The Protestants were taught to look upon the religion of the Catholics as a grand magazine of immorality, infidelity, and rebellion ; whilst the Catholics, in their turn, regarded their enthusiastic assailants as the victims of a spiritual insanity, derived from an infernal source, and as disastrous in its social results as it was bizarre in its exhibition. The kindly cha- rities of friendship were annihilated ; ancient intimacies were broken up ; hatred was mitigated only by a sentiment of scornful compassion. Such were too frequently the mutual feelings of the two great sections of the Irish community — the one party having the immense preponderance in number, the other in wealth. Mr. Plunket, the Attorney-General, had declared that "the * Lord Farnliam was a leading patron of these biblical exploits. One cannot help regarding with a feeling of melancholy interest the curious scenes to which the system of patronising proselytes from Popery gave rise. I knew more than one Protestant clergyman, remote from the head-quarters of religious excitement, who had been asked by distressed wretches, " How much will I get from your reverence if I turn Pro- testant ?" The universal conviction on the minds of the lower order of Catholics was, that nobody " turned," as they called it, except for lucre ; and that an enormous fund existed, under the control of the Protestant leaders, for buying up the religious belief of all Papists who were willing to conform. Weekly bulletins of the number of new converts from Popery were placarded on the walls, and suspended from the necks of persons hired to perambulate the public streets. Fourteen hundred and eighty-three converts were at one time announced as the fruit of Lord Farnham's exertions in Cavan ; but when Archbishop Magee went down to confirm them, their numbers had shrunk to forty-two. Lord Farnham was doubtless a sincere enthusiast ; but his fanatical folly was excessive, and he was greatly imposed on. He kept open house for the crowds of proselytes, who were furnished with soup, potatoes, and in some instances with clothes. Pauper Protestants are said to have sometimes enjoyed his hospitality under the pretext of being " converts" from Popery ; and it is said that such Catholics as thought they could escape recognition among the multitude of strange faces, contrived to be M con- verted" three or four times over, in order to prolong the substantial ad- vantage of being fed in a dear season at the noble lord's cost. When the supply of food, &c, was discontinued, they returned to their former church. This Lord Farnham had been a determined opponent of the Union in 1800 ; and not long before his death he publicly declared at a conserva- tive meeting that his hostility to Repeal arose from a religious, and not at all from a political motive. Alas ! Lord Farnham was not the only man in whom sectarian fanaticism spoiled a good patriot ! 44 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. cauldron was already boiling over in Ireland, and that it was not requisite that a polemic contest should be thrown into it."* The advice was wasted. Many motives impelled the biblical party to persevere. First of all, to do them every justice, there were some fanatics amongst their number who conscien- tiously believed that they were divinely commissioned to dispel the gross darkness of Popery. They were, as they conceived, authorized to walk forth, wielding ' ' the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God," and with which they were destined to encounter and overcome - their enemies. Then there were the political speculators, who looked on the furious theological excitement as affording a useful diversion of men's minds from the grievances of tithes and penal disabilities to the abstract topics of purgatory, transubstantiation, and St. Peter's supre- macy. Again, it was hoped and expected by others that the ceaseless abuse launched at Popery would discline Protestants to become Emancipators, and possibly withdraw from the Catholics the political support of many who already had joined them. It is probable that some of the liberal members of parlia- ment, at that period, had but little sincerity in their emanci- pating zeal. The profession of liberal politics effected two things for them — it obtained an agreeable popularity, and also the honour of seats in parliament. Such persons voted for the Catholics year after year, entertaining, I verily believe, a full conviction that Emancipation would never be conceded. They thus enjoyed the cheap distinction of being senators on the easy terms of supporting a measure for which they che- rished no affection, but of whose defeat they indulged in a com- forting certainty. How ludicrously disappointed must such men have been when Peel and Wellington suddenly became champions of Emancipation in 1829. Religious jealousy and sectarian distrust, like the poisonous exhalations of the upas tree, blighted and withered the natural, inborn sentiment of nationality in many a well-meaning man. When Lord Cloncurry, in the letter already alluded to, pub- licly advocated Repeal, a worthy Protestant gentleman said to me that it would be an excellent thing if we had a parliament of our own in Ireland — " but then," he added, " the Papists are so numerous they would soon get the upper hand." I * But although Mr. Plunket said this, he is also stated — I do not know with what accuracy — to have helped to set the cauldron boiling, by ad- vising Dr. Magee, the Protestant Archbishop of "Dublin, to institute a controversial movement against the Catholic religion, which it was hoped would produce numerous conversions to Protestantism. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 45 asked him what harm their emancipation would do him or anyone ? His reply was to the effect that they wonld rival the Protestants in everything ; if a Papist was more eloquent or a better lawyer than a Protestant, he might get the start of the Protestant in parliament, or he might be promoted to the bench, while the Protestant of inferior talent lost the race. As matters stood, the Protestant could not be beaten in the race, for the Papist could not run — an advantage that should not be surrendered on any account. I mention this trifling incident because it illustrates the sort of jealous feeling which operated, not only to enlist Protestants against the Catholic claims, but also to smother their national spirit as Irishmen. The mischievous efficacy of this jealous terror will be more apparent when I add that the gentleman in question had been connected with the United Irishmen in 1797. The impressions received from that connexion were effaced by the malign influence of sectarian partizanship. And yet there was no great bitterness, nor was there any personal hostility in his politics. He did not hate Catholics ; he was not unkind to them in his landlord capacity ; but he had taken up the notion that their doctrine of absolution authorised crime. He had accurately expressed the sentiment that actu- ated thousands — a sturdy resolve to sustain the monopoly the Protestants had got, not only to preserve a party advantage, but from a belief that the spiritual merits of Protestantism en- titled its possessors to that monopoly. Meanwhile, O'Connell worked the Catholic question inde- fatigably. He was an inexhaustible declaimer, and astonish- ingly fertile in argument, in expedient, and in topics of excite- ment. There had been from the commencement of his career this novel feature in his agitation — there was nothing secret in it. No locked doors — no secret committees — no hidden springs — no machinery to which he would not at any moment have admitted the whole corps of government inspectors. Former political leaders had conceived that secrecy was an indispensable element of success. But O'Connell early saw the perils of every scheme of which concealment formed a part. The very fact of supposing the proceedings of a junto secret would necessarily induce ill-regulated spirits to give utterance to illegal or treasonable sentiments. There was the presumed protection of silence. Then there instantly arose the danger of treachery ; any rascal who was sufficiently base to betray his associates — any Reynolds or Newell — might in- stantly compromise the safety of the entire association by re- 46 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. vealing the indiscretion, or the illegality, or the treason, of a single member. O'Cormell's sagacity swept away all such danger. By resolving to hide nothing, his associates were sure to say and do nothing that required to be hidden. O'Connell's immediate predecessor as a Catholic leader was John Keogh, a Dublin merchant. Keogh was far advanced in years at the time when O'Connell first became very celebrated ; and it is believed that the old leader felt jealous of the popular talents as well as of the influence acquired by the younger one. It is quite certain that he sought to persuade O'Connell that the Catholics, instead of continuing their agitation, should relapse into silence and inertion, and try the effect of regard- ing the government with a surly, awe-inspiring frown, indica- tive of hostility too deeply rooted to petition or negotiate. Keogh, in fact, proposed and carried a resolution to that effect at a public meeting at which his rival attended. O'Connell proposed and carried a counter-resolution at the same meet- ing, which pledged the Catholics to unremitting activity. Nothing could have gratified the government more than the adoption by the Catholics of Keogh 's advice. It would have released them from the annual parliamentary bore of the Catholic question. It would have retarded the success of that question incalculably. The policy of endeavouring to scare a hostile government by a grim and silent scowl, was too melo- dramatic to avail on the political stage. O'Connell, of course, persevered. In 1813 he was called " an agitator with ulterior views." He immediately accepted the designation, and declared that the ulterior object he had in view was the Repeal of the Union. When urged at a much later period to postpone the agitation of the Catholic claims to that of Repeal, he refused to comply, assigning as his reason that Emancipation, by removing one great subject of national difference, would facilitate the junction of all Irishmen to re- gain their national independence. O Connell undoubtedly en- tertained at that time too favourable a notion of the patriotism of the Orange party. He did not anticipate the stubborn, in- flexible, enduring Orange bigotry which has survived the emancipation of the Catholics, and thus outlived the chief pretext for its exercise. No doubt, there were other pretexts too ; there were the corporations and the iniquitous Church Establishment ; the former have been taken from the Orange- men, but the State Church still remains ; and so long as a profitable and exclusive institution exists in Ireland, so long will the party that gains by its existence refuse to co-operate with the general mass of their countrymen. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 47 John Keogh's belief in the inutility of political agitation is instructive. Lord Fingal was latterly impressed with that belief, and alleged it as his reason for declining to preside at a Catholic meeting in Dublin. How often have I — how often have all whose memory extends back to the later years of the Catholic struggle — heard from all sides the exclamation, " Oh ! they will never get Emancipation. The government never will grant it. How are the Catholics to frighten the govern- ment into concession ? O'Connell is wasting his time : he has been haranguing for nearly thirty years, and has brought his dupes no nearer to it yet." Thus do we hear the Repeal agitation denounced as a delu- sion, and in much the same language. That it should be de- rided by its enemies is natural. Among its friends — that is to say, among the great bulk of the people of Ireland — there is tQO often an impatience of persevering agitation, a disposi- tion to relinquish a pursuit that is not speedily successful. To all fickle patriots I would observe, firstly, that the object to be gained — namely, the restoration of the Irish Parliament in connexion with the crown of Great Britain — is our indefeasible right, and is vitally necessary to our national prosperity. It is a political pearl beyond price. Secondly, I would remind them that the pursuit of Catholic Emancipation occupied fifty- one years. The first relaxation of the penal laws occurred in 1778 ; the admission of Catholics to the bench and to parlia- ment was not gained until 1829. Fifty-one years ! Here i3 a lesson for impatient patriots. During that protracted period, how many were the dreary intervals of hopeless depression ? how often did not ultimate success appear desperate ? how many a heart was weary of the long, long struggle which often seemed a vain and feeble protest against omnipotent hostility ? Yet for fifty-one years the friends of the Catholic cause strug- gled on with varying fortunes, until success at last crowned their persevering etforts. And we must not forget that some of the worst enactments of the penal code had become law more than fourscore years before the earliest legal mitigation of that code's severity. Hence we may learn a lesson of unfaltering perseverance in pursuit of Repeal. I do not underrate the difficulties of the task. England is now strong, and we are weak. Yet it is quite possible that political complications may arise which would render it worth England's while to purchase the fidelity of Ireland at the expense of that grand act of restitution. Repeal of the Union has ever had, has now, and ever will 48 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. have, the great strength of incontrovertible justice and right. Let the people of Ireland be ever on the watch for a time when imperial expediency may enforce from our rulers the con- cession of our righteous claim to self-legislation. Fenianism in America, despite its blunders and the glaring rascality of some of its leaders, is a portent too mighty to be despised. It is an exhibition to the world of the insatiable resentment of a people expelled by misgovernment, fiscal and political, from the land which " the Lord their God had given them" to in- habit. When, after 1798, the Marquis Cornwallis was con- gratulated because " the rebels were all crossing the Atlantic," his Excellency answered, 66 I would rather have three rebels to deal with in Ireland than one in America." Fenianism, as at present constituted in America, shows a great waste of power. It possesses the raw material of great strength ; but its strength is neutralised for any useful ends by mistakes in its programme, and by the turpitude of scheming leaders who have filled their own pockets by trading on popular credulity. It is not too much to expect that the Fenians will learn wisdom from experience. In order to achieve any benefit for Ireland they must totally renounce every principle that repels the great body of Irish Eepealers. They must discard the insane idea of substituting a republic for the Irish throne of Queen Victoria. It is our ardent desire that her Majesty should govern Ireland through an Irish ministry and an Irish legislature, just as Francis Joseph now governs Hungary through a Hungarian ministry and a Hungarian legislature. The Fenians — I speak of the multitude of Irish-American emigrants, not of some ten or twelve dishonest leaders — must bear in mind that the Irish Repealers inherit the constitutional principles of 1782, by which the legislative freedom of Ireland was combined with untainted loyalty to the sovereign of these realms. Any deviation on their part from these principles must be fatal to an alliance between them and us — fatal to the strength which such an alliance, if wisely formed, would constitute. Next, they must give up communism, or that approach to communism which I can well believe very few of them distinctly contemplate, but which, unless it be renounced, will frighten away from them every human being possessing anything to lose. Should the Fenians of America act thus wisely ; should they recast their programme, carefully discarding all that is incompatible with the laws and constitution at present having force in Ireland ; should they be sufficiently fortunate to sub- IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 49 stittite for the disreputable charlatans who have trafficked on their misplaced confidence leaders worthy of the name, and having the true gift of command, they may easily become a formidable power, capable of aiding materially in the restora- tion of the Irish constitution. English writers have com- plained that they have now two Irelands to deal with, one on each side of the Atlantic. This is true ; and in order that these two Irelands should effectively combine for the recovery of their rights, the Ireland now in exile must carefully shape her course in accordance with the principles and exigencies of the Ireland at home.* It is needless to point out the political contingencies in which British statesmen may find it their true policy to give Ireland that contentment which can alone result from our possessing the sole control of our own national concerns. War clouds are blackening in various quarters of the horizon. It is vitally important to the integrity of the empire in the event of foreign war that Ireland should be the fast and firm friend of England. There is but one way of making her so, and that is by the restoration of her stolen property — her power of self-legislation^ — in a word, by repealing the Union. All this is of course unpalatable to the English lust of domination. But we in Ireland have our own experience of that domination. While I write these lines, my attention is drawn to a recent article on Fenianism in the Times, in which it is asserted — and at present with sad truth — that England " does but hold Ireland in the very hollow of her hand." True ; we are strangled in the English gripe, and the re- sults of this imperial pressure are disclosed by the special correspondent of the Times, who writes from Cork to that journal on the 23rd March, 1867 : " In the country districts," says the limes correspondent, " the depopulation of Ireland is not brought to one's notice so forcibly as in the towns. The peasant's cabin, when its last occupant has gone across the blue water, is pulled down, and no trace is left that it ever existed. But town dwellings ' to let' and empty shops re- main, sad witnesses of a population that has been and is not. To the Irishman this is a trite subject ; the English traveller, accustomed at home to the rapid growth of numerous small towns in most of the counties he visits, is startled in this country by the almost uniform decay of towns, both small and great." * There are also other Irelands growing up in Australia and other British colonies. 3 50 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. Yes ; Ireland is held, as the Times says, in the very hollow of the hand of England, and the deadly consequence of such an unnatural position appears in the decay recorded by the Times' correspondent. It is well to bear in mind that when we were not held in the hollow of her hand — when, after 1782, we enjoyed for a few years the priceless blessing of self- government — every element of national prosperity developed itself with a force which, contrasted with our present degraded and despoiled condition, demonstrates the absolute necessity of domestic legislation. The extermination of great masses of the Irish people appears, from time to time, to have been a favourite object of English statesmanship. In the reign of Elizabeth, Lord Deputy Gray so conducted the government that, as Leland informs us, the queen was assured ' 6 that little was left in Ire- land for her majesty to reign over but ashes and carcasses."* In Prendergast's " Cromwellian Settlement" the author says: " Ireland now lay void as a wilderness. Five-sixths of her people had perished. "f In the gracious reign of Queen Vic- toria, more than two millions and a quarter of the Irish race have been got rid of within about fifteen years ; and contem- poraneously with their expulsion, the taxes annually wrung from Ireland have been increased by about two millions and a quarter.j This is being held in the very hollow of the hand of England. The modus operandi has been changed from ancient times. In the days of Elizabeth and Cromwell there were sanguinary raids against the people, and troops were employed * Leland, bookiv. chap. 2. In Frazer's Magazine for March, ] 865, Mr. Froude, in an article entitled " How Ireland was Governed in the Sixteenth Century," writes as follows : " In ' the stately days of great Elizabeth,' the murder of women and children appears to have been the every-day occupation of the English police in Ireland ; and accounts of atrocities, to the full as bad as that at Glencoe, were sent in on half a sheet of letter paper, and were endorsed like any other documents with a brevity which shows that such things were too common to deserve criticism or attract attention." f Prendergast's " Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland," p. 149. % By the census of 1841 the population of Ireland was 8,196,597. By the census of 1861 the population had fallen to 5,798,967. This shows a diminution of 2,397,630. The decrease did not begin till 1846 ; so that within fifteen years considerably more than two millions and a quarter of our people were cleared off. The diminution still goes on, as we are Vield in the very hollow of our loving sister's hand ; and so long as we enjoy that affectionate pressure, the same result may be expected. The above figures are taken from a parliamentary return of the Revenue and Popu'ation of Ireland moved for by Mr. (now Sir Joseph Neale) M'Kenna, M.P. for Youghal, and dated 25th February, 1867. IRELAND AND UER AGITATORS. 51 in destroying the green corn and carrying off the cattle, in order to starve out the Irish race. The people perished be- cause their means of support were destroyed or abstracted. And the people of our own time perish or emigrate precisely because their means of support are taken away from them — not indeed by the coarse, rude methods of a former age, but by the equally effectual methods devised by modern statesman- ship. The Union, with its consequent drain of Irish wealth in absentee taxes and absentee rental, and its destruction of the nascent manufacturing interests of Ireland by irresistible British competition, achieves the thinning out of our race which was formerly wrought by the sword. It deprives Ire- land of the means of supporting the Irish ; and it thus most effectively replaces the murderous policy of Elizabeth and Cromwell. The work once performed by military violence is now accomplished by an economic process, and under legal, peaceful, and constitutional forms. An Irishman who believes in the retributive justice of Providence, may well be excused for doubting if such a sys- tem of iniquity is destined to be perpetual. Quousque, Domine, quo usque ? CHAPTER V. " I think the character of the Irish Protestants not radically had ; on the contrary, they have a reasonable share of good nature. If they could be once got to think the Catholics were human creatures, and that they lost no job by thinking them such, I am convinced they would soon, very soon indeed, be led to show some regard for their country." Edmund Buhke. During the struggle for Emancipation, it must often have sorely galled the Catholic leaders to encounter the patronizing condescension of self-important Protestant nobodies, who took airs of protection and arrogated high consideration in virtue of being emancipators. Prompt payment in servility was ex- pected for the assuasive courtesies which seemed to claim a measureless superiority over the Catholic proteges on whom they were bestowed. " We have now shaken off our chains, " said Sheil after Emancipation; " and one of the blessings of freedom is our release from petty and contemptible political patronage. If a Protestant vouchsafed to be present at any of our meetings, it was, * Hurrah for the Protestant gentlemen ! Three cheers for the Protestant gentlemen ! A chair for the Protestant gentleman!' And this subserviency, readily ten- dered by some, was, perhaps, the most provoking small nui- sance of our grievances.'' IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. A species of humiliating advocacy consisted in alleging that although the religion of the Papists was damnable, idolatrous, diabolical, degrading, et cetera ; yet its wretched votaries might be safely admitted to political equality, inasmuch as the preponderating Protestant strength of the empire would always avail to counteract any mischief that might be devised by the Papists. Nay, Emancipation might possibly be instru- mental in converting the Papists to a purer faith ; inasmuch as their penal disqualifications rendered perseverance in Popery a point of honour with its professors ; whereas, admission to equality of privilege would remove the suspicion which might otherwise attach to their motives in conforming to Protes- tantism. Amongst the parliamentary advocates of Emancipation who took the occasion of supporting the Catholic claims to vitu- perate Popery was Mr. Perceval. He delivered a speech in w r hich the ultra- virulent abuse of Catholicity was only to be equalled by the language of some orator at Exeter Hall on a grand anti-Papal field day ; at the same time recommending the repeal of all disqualifying laws as conducive to the religious enlightenment of the Catholics. It scarcely needs be said that advocates of Mr. Perceval's class were amongst the poli- ticians who would have clogged Emancipation with the royal veto on the appointment of Catholic bishops. On this one point — that is, in supporting the veto — the illustrious Grattan went wrong. Mr. Daniel Owen Maddyn, in a work on Irish politics, upraids O'Connell with having " laboured to make the venerable Grattan as unpopular as possible." The accusation, when translated into the language of simple truth, merely means that Mr. O'Connell, with characteristic sagacity, opposed every scheme of accompanying Emancipation with measures in the slightest degree calculated to secularize the Catholic Church, or to bind up the priests in the trammels of the State. Grattan would have taken Emancipation though encumbered with the veto ; and although a Roman Catholic may condemn such a policy, yet he scarcely can blame Grattan for adopting it. Grattan was a Protestant, and of course could not fairly be expected to possess the watchful solicitude for the independence of Catholic spiritualities which should ani- mate an intelligent Catholic, anxious as well for the religious interests of his church as for the political freedom of his countrymen. In truth, the only point on which O'Connell differed from Grattan was the question of the veto. But if Grattan needed any apology for the part he adopted, IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 58 he could have found it in the fact that among the Catholics of note were men who conceived that Emancipation should be purchased at the expense of handing over to the government the appointment of the Catholic bishops under the name of a veto. One of these liberal Catholics was the late Chief Baron Wolfe, then a rising barrister on the Munster circuit. He came into collision on this subject with O'Connell at a public meeting held in a church in Limerick, and made a powerful and effective speech from the front of the gallery in favour of the veto. O'Connell, in reply, told the story of the sheep who were thriving under the protection of their dogs, when an address, recommending them to get rid of their dogs, was presented by the wolves. He said that the leading Wolfe came forward to the front of the gallery, and persuaded the sheep to give up their dogs ; that they obeyed him, and were instantly devoured ; and he then expressed a hope that the Catholics of Ireland would be warned by so impressive an ex- ample against the insidious advice of any Wolfe who might try to seduce them to give up their proved and faithful guides and protectors. The hit was received with roars of applause, and the vetoists were routed. Among the Protestant emancipators who combined patron- age with insult, was the statesman immortalized in Disraeli's " Coningsby" under the pseudonym of Nicholas Rigby, a dex- terous and lucky adventurer, of whose career a few brief incidents may not be uninteresting. Rigby's father held a government office near Dublin, and gave his son a college education. The young gentleman, whose critical taste was early on the outlook for subjects to dissect, published a metrical satire on the corps dramatique of the Theatre Royal, as it ex- isted under the management of Mr. Frederick- Jones. This production saw the light in 1804, and was entitled, " Familiar Epistles to Frederick Jones, Esq." The authorship was not avowed until after the work had passed through two editions. The versification was easy and correct ; the personal sketches flippant and piquant ; the text, in short, was good of its kind, but the notes, which encumbered every page, were of helpless dulness, which quality was rendered the more striking by the perpetual and clumsy attempts of the author to be pointed and brilliant. The dreary and ponderous pleasantry o Rigby's notes irresistibly reminded the reader of the stupid German commemorated by Boswell, who, being charmed by the ex- uberant spirits of some humorist, endeavoured when alone to emulate his friend's vivacity by jumping over the tables and 64 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. chairs, explaining the purpose of this saltatory exercise to an acquaintance who surprised him in the midst of his antics by saying, " J'ajiprends d'etre vif." Rigby's prosaic efforts to be vif were clumsy failures. But there was really a good deal of pungent sarcasm in his verses.* The amusing personalities of the * 4 Familiar Epistles" rendered the book very popular in Dublin, and a good deal of interest was excited to discover the writer. So long as the Epistles were anonymous, several of the small literati acquired a transient importance from imputa- tions of the authorship — imputations which some of them en- couraged. But at length the real poet came forth to claim his laurels ; and Mr. Nicholas Rigby immediately began to lionise on the strength of his epistolary glories. Literary ladies asked him to their assemblies— dinner-giving dilettanti invited to their tables the young satirist whose opening rhymes had re- vealed so just an appreciation of the scientific gourmandize of . Frederick Jones. The " Familiar Epistles" soon rendered their author more familiar with champagne and turtle soup than, perhaps, he had previously been. One of the personages who bestowed their attentions on young Rigby was the late eccentric Baron Smith, father of Thomas Berry Cusack Smith, Attorney- General for Ireland to * e. g. — The sketch of Richard Jones : " But who is this, all boots and breeches, Cravat and cape, and spurs and switches, Grin and grimace, and shrugs and capers, And affectation, spleen, and vapours ? O Mr. Richard Jones, your humble ! Prithee give o ? er to mouth and mumble ; Stand still — speak plain ! and let us hear What was intended for the ear: Tor, faith ! without the timely aid j Of bills, no parts you've ever played." Another sketch : " Next Williams comes, the rude and rough* With face most whimsically gruff, Aping the careless sons of ocean, He scorns each fine and easy motion ; Tight to his sides his elbows pins, And dabbles with his hands like fins. Would he display the greatest woe ? He slaps his breast and points his toe : Is merriment to be expressed ? He points his toe and slaps his breast ; His turns are swings, his step a jump, His feelings fits, his touch a thump, And violent in all his parts, He speaks by gusts, and moves by starts/' IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 55 the time of the state-trials of O'Connell and others, and sub- sequently Master of the Rolls. I have heard that the Baron warmly admired the sportive rhymes of Rigby ; but however this may be, he bestowed some flattering attentions on their author, and affectionately invited him to his country-seat. The Baron was proverbial for his oddity. Possessed of an acute and metaphysical mind, his great intellectual powers were often distorted by unaccountable caprice. One of his traits was the suddenness of his attachments and dislikes, the lightning rapidity with which he could adopt and discard an acquaintance. He would ask you to spend a month at his house with an air of affectionate cordiality. If you accepted the invitation, and seemed disposed to take your host at his word, you would speedily receive an unequivocal hint that the sooner you ended your visit the better. He tried the experiment on Rigby. He asked him to stay for a month. Rigby accepted the Baron's hospitality, and was received with the blandest courtesy. For the first two days everything was coxdeur de rose. The Baron was enchant- ing ; his guest was delighted with his condescension. Rigby was introduced to the company who filled the house as a young gentleman of extraordinary genius, and his host's most particular friend. On the third day things were changed. The Baron scarcely deigned to glance in the direction of Rigby. Or if he did look towards the place where Rigby sat, it was with that wandering gaze that seems unconscious of the presence of its object. Rigby stood his ground unmoved. He, on his part, seemed unconscious of any alteration in the manner of the Baron. He rattled away, quite at his ease — lavished his stores of entertaining small-talk on the company, who were charmed with the Baron's agreeable guest. At dinner the Baron did not speak to him ; treated him with marked and supercilious coldness ; and indicated by the mute eloquence of manner that Rigby had exhausted his welcome. Next day Rigby took his usual place at the breakfast-table, conversed with delightful animation, and wore the appearance of a man so well satisfied with his quarters that he had not the least notion of changing them. The Baron, finding that silence had no effect in dislodging his pertinacious guest, at last determined to speak out. Meeting him alone in the domain soon after breakfast, he thus addressed him : " I had hoped, Mr. Rigby, that you would have spared me the pain of telling you what I think my manner sufficiently 56 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. indicated— that your visit is no longer agreeable. Is it pos- sible you cannot have discovered this ?" " Of course I have discovered it," returned Bigby. " You do not suppose me such a fool as not to have perceived that you became capriciously rude — from what cause I am wholly unable to guess. But this I know, that you invited me to stay for a month, and for a month I will stay. Your station in the world is fixed, but mine is not. Before I quitted Dublin I boasted among all my acquaintance of the flattering invita- tion you gave me. I told them I was going to spend a month with you. If I returned at the end of a few days I should be their laughing-stock ; my social position would be seriously damaged, and my prospects would be more or less injured. No, no. You certainly cannot be serious, Baron, in the in- tention of converting your kindness into a source of mischief to me." These words, spoken in a tone of civil but resolute impu- dence tickled the Baron's fancy ; he saw that his guest was no every-day character, and being an admirer of originality, he broke into a good-humoured fit of laughter, and permitted Bigby to remain until the month was expired. The anecdote is very characteristic of the energetic perse- verance which has marked through life the politician cele- brated in Disraeli's novel as " the Bight Honorable Nicholas Bigby." Bigby's next adventure of importance was his return to parliament. There was an election for the borough of Down- patrick. The contest was expected to be very close. One of the candidates was detained by an accident, and his friends, in order to prevent his rival from getting ahead of him, set up Bigby (who happened to be in the town) as a stalking-horse. Bigby was proposed and seconded — harangued the electors against time — a poll was demanded, and one vote was given, which, with the votes of his proposer and seconder, gave him three of the voices of the electors of Downpatrick. Just at this stage of the proceedings the bond fide candidate arrived. Bigby retired from the hustings, but made no formal resigna- tion of his claims. Fierce raged the contest. There was on both sides a tremendous expenditure of bribery. The election ended in the triumph of the man who bribed the highest ; and in due course of time his antagonist petitioned against his return. The sitting member was unseated for gross and cor- rupt bribery ; but the petitioner was not seated, for bribery to a great extent w T as clearly proved to have been committed by him also. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 57 There had been, however, a third candidate, who had com- mitted no bribery — a candidate who had got three votes. The committee accordingly reported that " Nicholas Rigby, Esquire," had been duly returned for the borough of Dofeit- patrick. This decision astonished the public, who had looked on Rigby's standing for the borough as a mere electioneering ruse, and who, in fact, had forgotten the circumstance in the interest excited by the more important candidates. Here was a frolic of fortune. It is not every day that senatorial honours are flung at men's heads, and Rigby deter- mined to make the most of his sudden and unlooked-for eleva- tion. The gentleman as whose locum tenens he had been originally proposed to the electors, wrote him a very friendly letter, requesting he would resign his seat, as the writer wished to offer himself again for the borough. But Rigby resolved on keeping what he had got. What ! resign his seat ! How, in point of justice to his constituents, or consistently with his sacred duty to the country, could he surrender the important trust the electors had kindly confided to his hands ? Forbid it honour ! conscience ! patriotism ! Rigby's friend was com- pelled to submit to Rigby's virtuous determination. Our hero, in the year 1808, published a pamphlet entitled "A Sketch of the State of Ireland, Past and Present," in which he bestowed a description of contemptuous advocacy on the Catholic claims. His arguments went to support Emanci- pation on the ground of its being too insignificant a boon to be worth refusing. He styled it " an almost empty privilege. " He held the opinion that Emancipation would facilitate con- versions to Protestantism. " Trade," he wrote, 1 1 when free, finds its level. So will religion. The majority will no more persist — when it is not a point of honour to do so — in the, worse faith than it would in the worse trade. Councils decide that the Confession of Ausburg is heresy, and parliaments vote that Popery is super- stition, and both impotently. No man will ever be converted when his religion is also his party. But expedient as Catholic Emancipation is, I think it only expedient, and concede it not without the following conditions." He then enumerated four conditions, of which the most important were the payment of the priesthood by the state, the approval of the prelates by the crown, and the disfranchise- ment of the forty- shilling freeholders. Curious timidity, that sought these protective conditions in return for conceding 44 an aimost empty privilege." 58 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. It is creditable to our hero that in his Sketch of the State of Ireland he has anticipated the aphorism that acquired for the late Under-Secretary Drummond such extensive popularity. " A landlord," said Rigby, " is not a mere land merchant ; he has duties to perform as well as rents to receive, and from his neglect of the former spring his difficulty in the latter, and the general misery and distraction of the country. The com- binations of the peasantry against this short-sighted monopoly are natural and fatal." Candidly and boldly expressed. This evidence, coming from such a quarter, is worth something. Rigby had pre- viously given an accurate description of the rack-rent system. He, however, took care, more sno, to insult the objects of his advocacy : " The peasantry of Ireland are generally of the Roman Catholic religion, but utterly and disgracefully ignorant ; few among them can read— fewer write." (Thanks to the Protes- tant code that had made their education penal — but Rigby does not tell us so.) He goes on: "The Irish language, a bar- barous jargon, is generally, and in some districts exclusively spoken ; and with it are retained customs and superstitions as barbarous. Popish legends and pagan traditions are con- founded and revered." He elsewhere calls the people " utterly dark and blind." I have mentioned Baron Smith. That wayward functionary was a member of the Irish parliament, and supported the Union with a zeal which, in due time, was rewarded by his elevation to the bench. In 1799 he issued an ingenious pamphlet, entitled "An Address to the People of Ireland," recommendatory of the Union. He went largely into the question of the competence of parliament to annihilate itself, which competence most of the anti-Unionists denied. He told the Catholics that he did not know whether an Union would better their chance of admission to the senate, but suggested that at any rate it would not diminish it. On the question of commercial advantages he availed himself extensively of the petitio principii, assuming, as if it were an incontrovertible axiom, that the incorporation of the legislatures would, ipso facto, incorporate the nations, extinguish their reciprocal jealousies, and identify their interests. How far he was sin- cere in the profession of these views it would now be useless to inquire. But as a sample of the readiness with which he accepted, or pretended to accept, empty professions for sub- stantial securities, it is not uninteresting to record that he quotes the following passage from a speech of " that enlight- IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 50 ened minister," as he calls him, Mr. Pitt, to prove that Irish commercial and manufacturing interests would sustain no injury, after an Union, from English rivalry or jealousy : " I will say," said Mr. Pitt, " that for an hundred years this country [England] has followed a very narrow policy with re- gard to Ireland. It manifested a very absurd jealousy concern- ing the growth, produce, and manufacture of several articles. I say that these jealousies will be buried by the plan [of Union which is now to be brought before you." Having quoted the above words, Mr. Smith exclaims, "I can entertain no fears that the statesman who thinks thus liberally, and speaks thus frankly, will, after an Union, make the influence of all Irish members submit to the mechanics of a single English town."* The English policy towards Ireland, described by Mr. Pitt as * 4 very narrow," has quite recently been described by Lord Dufferin in one of his letters to the Times in the following vigorous language: ' 'From Queen Elizabeth's reign to the Union," says Lord Dufferin (he should have said from Queen Elizabeth's reign until 1779), "the various commercial con- fraternities of Great Britain never for a moment relaxed their relentless grip on the trades of Ireland. One by one, each of our nascent industries was either strangled in its birth, or handed over, gagged and bound, to the jealous custody of the rival interest in England, until at last every foundation of wealth was hermetically, sealed." But Mr. Pitt's frank and liberal acknowledgment that this policy was " narrow," and his generous promise that an Union would render such narrowness impossible, inspired the con- fiding breast of Mr. William Smith with implicit and unlimited trust in Great Britain. It is not, however, thus that men be- stow their confidence in private life. Suppose, for example, that Brown says to Robinson, ' 1 My excellent friend, I acknow- ledge that I have always robbed and swindled you. I have counterworked your honest industry, deprived you of a market, and done my utmost to starve your wife and beggar your chil- dren. All this, I confess, was very narrow policy. But, nrv beloved Robinson, let us henceforth join forces. Give me, friend of my heart ! the key of your strong box and the control of your estate ; and you shall see with what noble and affec- tionate generosity I shall treat you for the future." If Brown, having plundered Robinson, thus addressed him, and if Robin- son gave Brown the control of his estate and the key of his strong box, we should certainly set down Robinson as a lunatic. * Address to the People of Ireland, p. 27. 60 IRELAND AND HEK, AGITATOKS. Pitt had admitted the past hostility, which in truth wag undeniable. The leopard cannot easily change his spots, There was absolutely nothing in the Union to extinguish that hostility. The Union could only invest our hereditary enemy with legislative power over Ireland. Irish commercial, manu- facturing, and trading interests were then prosperous, because the Volunteers had won free trade for Ireland in 1779. Prior to that period, the British parliament, deriving strength from the religious divisions of this country, had usurped the power of enacting prohibitory statutes and enforcing embargos, British statesmen might calculate that after an Union, the destruction of Irish industrial interests, which the prohibitory statutes and embargos of a former period had achieved, could thenceforth be effected by the enormous hemorrhage of Irish income, whereby Ireland would be deprived at once of her domestic markets, and of the capital which is indispensably necessary to create or perpetuate manufacturing establish- ments.* Baron Smith did not like the agitators. He got into the habit of introducing political dissertations into his charges to Grand Juries. A speaker at some public dinner at Tullamore in 1833, had said that " Catholicity now held aloft her high and palmy head, unshaken by the stormy blasts of persecution." The Baron thought this bombast worth quoting and censuring in one of his charges. He used to come into court at two o'clock in the afternoon ; and, when opening the commission, he carried a vast manuscript, the terror of grand-jurors. This was his charge ; and even although his auditors in the grand- jury box might concur in the political views which he an- * The English jealousy of Irish prosperity sometimes peeps out in the shape of an apology for any suggestion that might seem calculated to pro- mote Irish interests. The following appeared in the Dublin Evening Mail in September, 1861 : " The dread of a cotton famine has so demen- ted the Lancastrians that one, writing in their behalf to the Daily New*, advises a recourse to Irish linen as a temporary substitute. But the audacity of the proposal is so glaring, that an apology is found necessary for counselling anything so desperate. 1 Without wishing 9 (says this friendly gentleman) i in any way to promote Irish interests, I venture to suggest, at this dull season, whether Irish linen might not in many cases be used instead of cotton ?' If Irish linen could be grown near Glasgow or Preston, there might be no objection ; but to encourage its manufacture on the west of St. George's Channel is only to be justified by the urgent pressure of necessity. Such inadvertent admissions betray the jealousy with which the efforts of this country to achieve a commercial independence for herself, are regarded by a great portion of the trading community in England." — D. E. Mail, quoted in Cork Examiner, 12th September, 1861. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 61 Bounced, yet is said that they were wont to cast many a weary glance at the ponderous composition, whilst the Baron perused page after page of a document which, to their impatience, ap- peared to be interminable. It should be stated, to the Baron's honour, that as a judge he was humane, considerate, and painstaking. He went to the trouble of studying the Irish language, in order to render himself independent of interpreters, when witnesses were un- able to speak English. Of his views on Catholic Emancipation I cannot speak with certainty. He tells us in his " Address to the People of Ireland," that he supported the Catholic claims in 1795 ; but it is clear that he considered that the preserva- tion of the State Church Establishment and of Protestant as- cendancy should be carefully provided for in any measure of Catholic concession. I presume he held views on the Catholic question not dissimilar from those expressed by Bigby. Advocacy which was blended with a lofty assumption of superiority, or with actual insult, could scarcely be acceptable to the Catholics. This sort of insolent patronage was symp- tomatic of the general Protestant feeling of contempt for Papists which I have already noticed.* In truth, this was to some extent the fault of the Catholics themselves. I have known a Catholic family of respectable station seize, with alacrity which seemed servile, the proffered acquaintance of Protestant neighbours who were in no respect their supe- riors. Similar instances are consistent with my knowledge. A Protestant lady of fashion, angry with a female friend (also a Protestant) for introducing her to some ineligible acquaint- ance, exclaimed that she would avenge the affront by inviting the parish priest to meet the offending fair one at her house* This mode of punishing an affront by inflicting the parish priest on the offender, was thoroughly expressive of the Pro- testant estimate of Catholic society. Without disparaging the Catholic gentry, it must be owned that as a class they w T ere inferior to the Protestants in all the refinements of polished life. Exceptions, no doubt, there were ; but such was the general fact. The penal laws were the cause of this inferiority. It is uttering an obvious truism to say that the exclusive possession of power, official dignity, and political station, must necessarily have imparted to the habits and manners of the favoured class all the social ease * I once asked a baron (the son of a Union peer), whether any of his relatives were Catholics. " Oh, none," he replied, " except the bus- tards." IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. which results from the consciousness of command. Their peculiar advantages placed within their reach every facility of refinement. Their monopoly of so many other valuable things gave them almost a monopoly of civilization. It was a pro- verb, even so late as the first quarter of the present century, that " you might know a Catholic in the street by his crouch- ing appearance." The iron of the penal laws had entered into the souls of the people, and branded their manners with strong marks of their inferiority. The subservient spirit has long since passed away ; but I am not quite sure that in other re- spects Catholic society has yet fully acquired the polish which, from the causes already stated, is to be found amongst the upper classes of Protestants.* On the other hand, there is no vulgarity so odious, so offensive, so pestilent, as that of the Orange squireen. It is the ingrained vulgarity of mind, of soul, of sentiment. It is the loathsome emanation of " malice, hatred, all uncharitable- ness," in all its coarseness and deformity, unchecked and un- concealed by the conventional amenities of civilized life. " Decipit exemplar imitabile vitiis." The squireen class could imitate the bigotry of their betters, but they could not imitate the graces of manner which some- times invented the aristocratic bigot with something of a chi- valrous and dignified air. The Irish noblesse and leading gentry of the last century lived magnificently. The edifices they erected both in town and country — the scale of their household establishments — their equipages — were magnificent. In their manners there was V air grand ; their very rascality was of magnificent dimen- sions. There was no paltry peddling about them. You could hardly have found one of them capable of selling himself, like the Scotch Lord Banff, for the petty trifle of eleven guineas. The abandon, the laissez oiler principle was carried amongst them to the greatest extent compatible with social politeness. Whatever was bad, bigoted, or unnational in the aristocracy, was duly adopted and improved on by their industrious imita- tators, the small squires. Whatever tended to mitigate the evils of bigotry was beyond the imitation of the squireen class, because it was beyond their comprehension. How deeply are the Catholics of Ireland indebted to O'Connell for removing from them the galling indignities entailed by their political inferiority to such a thoroughly contemptible class ! * Written in 1844. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 68 An amusing volume might be written on the exploits of the Orange squires of Ireland. Vulgarity of soul was of course often found among the possessors of thousands a-year, as well as of hundreds. The squireen magistracy were a curious generation. While the smaller sort of justices occasionally rendered their judicial de- cisions auxiliary to the replenishing of their poultry yards, those whose wealth gave them greater weight were in frequent com- munication with the Castle, recommending " strong measures" to keep down the people, such as the increase of the consta- bulary or military force, the proclaiming of disturbed districts ; the enforcement of the insurrection act, or the suspension of the Habeas Corpus. Complaints against obnoxious indivi- duals were frequently made in these communications. The government were earwigged by the " loyalists," as the op- pressors of the people thought proper to term themselves ; and doubtless many a poor devil who never dreamt of plots or conspiracies, has been indicated to the executive as concerned in revolutionary projects. One ludicrous instance of this species of volunteer espionage is deserving of record. The officious informant of the govern- ment flew at higher game than ordinary, He was a magis- trate, a grand-juror, a man of family and fortune. The ob- ject of his attack was also a magistrate and grand-juror, and of lineage and station at least equal to his own. They were both " good loyalists ; " the former gentleman amused his leisure hours with a corps of cavalry yeomanry of which he was the captain, and which he seemed to consider indis- pensable to the stability of British connexion. These dignitaries quarrelled with each other. It was a private dispute — I do not know its nature ; perhaps it concerned the comparative merits of their foxhounds. The Accusing Angel (whom I shall call Mr. A.) conceived that the most exquisite revenge he could take would be to procure the dismissal of his foe (Mr. B.) from the commission of the peace. Mr. A. was in constant communication with the government. He wrote frequent letters to the Viceroy or his Secretary, ex- patiating on the demoniac disposition of the people, on the perpetual perils besetting the well-affected, and in especial on his own great merits. The literary qualities of his correspon- dence must have amused the official critics at Dublin Castle, for his orthography was unfettered by the usual rules, and he sometimes introduced a colloquial oath by way of giving ad- ditional emphasis to his statements. His despatches, with 64 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. some such announcements as these, that "by ! the country was in a truly aweful situation" — that "they ought to look sharpe after Mr. Murtogh O'Gruggerty," &c, had been usually received with such respectful consideration by official persons, that at last he began to consider himself all-powerful with the Irish administration. His correspondence was "private and confidential ;" so that he revelled in the double confidence of power and secrecy. He accordingly wrote to apprise the Lord Lieutenant that Mr. B. was a political hypocrite, who, while wearing the out- ward marks and tokens of loyalty, was destitute of its inward and spiritual graces ; that, in fact, he was secretly a captain of Whiteboys, a most dangerous character, and one who ought promptly to be struck off the list of magistrates. Mr. A. did not entertain a doubt that the return of the post would bring with it a supersedeas for his enemy from the Lord Chancellor ; and he chuckled with anticipated ecstasy over B's mortification, and his ignorance of the quarter whence the arrow was aimed. Although they had quarrelled, yet they had not quite dis- continued their acquaintance. Mr. A., therefore, was not very much astonished when he saw Mr. B. one fine morning ap- proaching his house on horseback. "Perhaps," thought he, " B. is coming to make up matters if he can — I wonder has he heard of his dismissal yet ?" The visitor, seeing the man of the house on his hall- door steps, hastened forward, reached the mansion in a few moments sprang from the saddle, and, horsewhip in one hand, presented with the other a written paper, saying : " There, sir, is the copy of a document signed with your name, which I have received from Dublin Castle by this morning's post. It foully and falsely accuses me of being a captain of Whiteboys, and demands my dismissal from the magistracy. I have come to ask whether you are the author of this rascally document ?" Mr. A. was so thunder-stricken at the suddenness, the total unexpectedness, of such an accusation, that he was quite at a loss what to answer. He stammered out an admission that he had written the letter. " Then," said B., " walk into the house this instant, and write a contradiction of it, which I shall dictate." Mr. A. could not choose but comply. B. immediately dictated a very full and unqualified contradiction, which A. duly wrote, and of which, the instant it was written, B. took possession. He then quitted the house with scant ceremony, and despatched to the IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 65 Chancellor the exculpation he had extorted from his accuser. Of course he was not dismissed from the magistracy. Nor was his accuser dismissed, the government probably attribu- ting his escapade to an exuberance of loyal zeal. Of the accusing justice the following anecdote was told me by a beneficed clergyman of the Established Church. His worship had an inveterate habit of profane swearing. At a meeting of magistrates, presided over by the Protestant rector of the parish, who was also a magistrate, he, as usual, gave emphasis to his opinion by a blasphemous oath. The rector, scandalised at the impiety, said, " I shall fine yon tenpence sir, for swearing in court." " Here it is by !" said the other, handing up the tenpenny piece (it was before the days of the shillings) and accompanying the coin w T iih a repetition of the blasphemy. " Another fine for that," said the rector. The justice tendered a second tenpenny with a similar profane accompaniment. And so on, the magistrate swearing, and the rector fining him, until he had emitted some eight or ten oaths, and got rid of a corresponding number of tenpennies. His worship probably considered the affair an excellent joke. This gentleman was the juror who, at the Cork assizes, presented to the court, in the character of foreman, the verdict of guilty, which he had spelled " gilty." " That's badly spelled," said the counsel for the defence,* who was near the box, and seized the paper in transitu. " How shall I mend it?" inquired the foreman, abashed and confused at this public censure. "Put n, o, t, before it," returned the counsel, handing back the paper for the emendation, which the foreman immediately made in bewildered unconsciousness of the important nature of the change. " There — that will do," said the counsel, taking the amended document, and handing up "not gilty' to the court. A fortunate interposition. The juror in question had a mania for hanging. He had, in his impetuous haste, handed in the issue paper without consulting his brethren of the jury-box. But if the prisoner, in that instance, escaped death, in how many instances were the miserable victims sacrificed ? A verdict of guilty was easily obtained from jurors who belonged to a class that deemed accusation sufficient to establish crimi- nality, and with whom the received policy was that of hanging the accused, " to make an example, and to preserve the quiet of the country." * Harry Deane Grady. 66 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. CHAPTER VI. " A man he was, to all the country dear." Goldsmith. There occurred in 1816, an incident strikingly illustrative of the Protestant ascendancy policy of making examples to pre- serve the quiet of the country. The gentleman who officiated as peace-preserver on the occasion to which I now allude, was the Rev. John Hamilton, Protestant curate of Roscrea, in the King's county, and a magistrate. The reverend gentleman had been trans- planted to Roscrea from the county Fermanagh. In politics he was an enthusiastic Orangeman ; his personal disposition appears to have been romantic and adventurous. Mr. Hamilton, on receiving his appointment to the magis- tracy, promised, as he afterwards boasted, to distinguish him- self by his zeal in discharging the duties of his office. He speedily set about redeeming his promise. The Monaghan militia, commanded by Colonel Kerr, were at that time quartered in Roscrea. They were all of red-hot Orange principles; and it was the familiar practice of the reverend gentleman to obtain from the commanding officer parties of the men, who scoured the country, firing shots, playing party tunes, and thus exhibiting their ardent loyalty in a sort of irregular ovation of perpetual recurrence. But these triumphant feux-de-joie and the accompanying martial music could not long furnish serious occupation to a spirit so adven- turous as that of the Rev. John Hamilton. There resided at Roscrea two highly respectable Catholic distillers, the Messieurs Daniel and Stephen Egan. There was also in that town a rival distiller named Birch, a wealthy Protestant, in whose family the reverend gentleman had officiated as tutor for some time after his appointment as curate. It occurred to the Rev. Mr. Hamilton, J. P., to evince his magisterial zeal by implicating the Messieurs Egan in a criminal conspiracy to murder the Protestant gentry of the neighbourhood. He was bustling, active, and artful ; and finding in many of his neighbours the ready credulity of pre- judice, he soon succeeded in creating serious alarm in their minds. He procured the aid of a confederate, named Dyer, who was groom or stableman in the employment of Mr. Birch (the reverend gentleman's patron) ; and Dyer, being duly IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 67 drilled by Mr. Hamilton, swore informations bearing that several persons, engaged in the murderous conspiracy afore- said, occasionally rendezvoused in a valley called The Cockpit, situated in the domain of the Hon. Francis Aldborough Prittie, M.P., for the purpose of concerting their organization, and also of practising the manoeuvres of military exercise. Matters were not yet ripe enough to explode the plot against the Egan family. An assistant for Dyer was procured from Dublin, a dexterous practitioner in informations, named Half- penny, alias Halpin. He was then in the police, an attache of Major Sirr's office. He had in 1798 displayed great activity as an informer. On this man's arrival at Roscrea, he was taken into the councils of the Rev. Mr. Hamilton. That reverend gentleman, his wife, and Halpin, dressed up a straw figure in a suit of Mr. Hamilton's clothes. They placed this figure, in a sitting attitude, at a table in a parlour on the ground floor of Mr. Hamilton's house ; its back was turned towards the window ; on the table before it was ex- panded a large Bible ; a pair of candles stood upon the table. From without, the appearance of this pantomime was precisely that of the reverend pastor of the Roscrea Protestants, deeply immersed in the study of the Word of God. The scenic illusion in the parlour being thus prepared, the reverend gentleman furnished a pistol to Halpin, who, with Dyer, had received his instructions to fire through the window at the stuffed figure. A man named Quinlan was inveigled to join the shooting party. Dyer and Halpin, in obedience to Mr. Hamilton's injunctions, fired through the sash at that reverend gentleman's straw representative, the window- shutters having been left open for the purpose. The figure was hit in the back with a bullet — the Bible was dislodged — two bullets struck the opposite wall. I Dire was the commotion that instantly prevailed through the town. The shout rang from mouth to mouth that the excel- lent pastor had been fired at while studying the Bible. He had escaped — hurrah ! by the special interposition of Providence. His preservation was, doubtless, miraculous ; but who could say that the same overruling care would be vouchsafed to the other Protestant inhabitants, whose lives were equally me- naced by the Popish conspiracy which had thus been merci- fully baulked of its first intended victim ? The Protestants clearly must defend themselves. The drums beat to arms. Parties of the Monaghan militia paraded the streets. Inhalf-an-hour the Messieurs Egan, who 68 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. were quietly sitting with some friends, were arrested by a piquet, and conveyed to the guard-house, where they were detained for the whole night on a charge of conspiring to murder the Rev. Mr. Hamilton. These events all took place on the night of the 28th of December, 1815. Next morning the two Egans were bailed out with great difficulty by the strenuous exertions of their friends. For some days a calm succeeded, interrupted only by the occa- sional nocturnal visits of Mr. Hamilton and the police to Mr. Egan's house, under pretext of searching for arms. It was surmised — I pretend not to say with what truth — that the government felt rather disinclined to follow up the prosecution in consequence of the excellent character always borne by the parties accused. But Lord Norbury and the Earl of Rosse so vehemently urged the prosecution, that the scruples, if any, of the government were overruled. A fresh witness to sustain the accusation was procured in the person of one Hickey, brother-in-law of the first witness, Dyer. Meanwhile the rampant delight of the Orange inhabitants of Roscrea was evinced in the most noisy and extravagant manner. Colonel Kerr was an active partizan of the Rev. Mr. Hamilton. He permitted the tattoo to be beaten through the town every evening, the drums being followed by a large military escort, at whose head the reverend gentleman osten- tatiously strutted, arrayed in an orange cloak, and wearing round his waist a belt studded with pistols. This melodra- matic exhibition was enlivened by such tunes as 6 ' Boyne Water," and " Protestant Boys," played on the military fifes. On the morning following the attack on the stuffed figure, the Hon. Mr. Prittie visited the Rev. Mr. Hamilton to inquire the particulars, and asked him whether his (Mr. H.'s) son had not had a great escape ? "Yes, sir," replied Mr. Hamilton. " Where were you sitting " demanded Mr. Prittie, " when the shot ivas fired at you V " There, sir," answered Mr. Hamilton, pointing to a table in the room. Mr. Hamilton thus sought to confirm Mr. Prittie in the belief which that gentleman had, in common with the public, then adopted — namely, that the shot had been actually fired at himself. This attempt at deception should be carefully borne in mind, because it neutralizes the defence which the reverend gentleman set up for his conduct at a subsequent stage of the affair. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 69 On the 11th January, 1816, the Messieurs Egan were ar- rested under a warrant of the Rev. Mr. Hamilton's. They were placed in the custody of a party of soldiers and marched to the inn, where they found some eight or ten persons in custody, on the charge of being also involved in the murder- ous conspiracy. The last-named parties were confined for the night in the uuard-room. At ten o'clock on the following forenoon all the prisoners set out to Clonmel, which is forty miles distant from Ros- crea, escorted by a large body of military and police. The Egans travelled in a chaise, which proceeded at a footpace ; the other prisoners walked, handcuffed, after the carriage. The first day's journey was to Templemore. It was rendered extremely fatiguing by the slowness of the pace and the incle- mency of the weather. The rain poured down in torrents, and the prisoners, on arriving at Templemore, were con- ducted to a miserable den without a fireplace, appropriately named the Black Hole, in which they would have spent the night but for the humane interposition of Sir John Carden, who obtained for them the accommodation of the inn. Next clay they proceeded to Cashel, where they were con- signed to a small, dreary, damp apartment without any sort of furniture. They applied for permission to occupy the inn, but met a refusal on the plea that the disturbed state of the country would render compliance dangerous. It was, how- ever, resolved to forward them at once to Clonmel. A curious incident occurred within a few miles of the latter town. Two of the escort appeared to quarrel with each other, aud in the course of the dispute they fell from their horses. The steeds, released from their riders, ran away, and the whole escort, with the exception of a single policeman, made off in pursuit of them. The solitary guard approached the Egans and strenuously urged them to escape. " I will follow my com- rades," said he, " in pursuit of the runaway horses, and you can then act as you please." But the prisoners, apprehensive of some trick, rejected the advice thus urgently offered, and quietly awaited the return of the party of police. Arrived at Clonmel, they were met in the jail by the Rev. Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Corker Wright,* a magistrate, who * This Mr. Corker Wright's house, near Shinrone, was the scene of a bloody tragedy in 1815. A parly had been got up to attack the house, it is supposed with his knowledge, and arranged by his steward, Hoey. At all events, the plan was fully known before it was acted upon, for a party of soldiers were in the house awaiting the assailants, in company 70 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. had zealously interested himself in the prosecution, Mr. Wright, on the following morning, visited the prisoners, affect- ed great friendliness, and strongly advised them to confess all they knew of the ' 1 conspiracy," promising to exert his in- fluence to procure their pardon. Of course an indignant dis- claimer of all knowledge of any conspiracy, was the only reply elicited by this treacherous suggestion. The Egans were then invited to see the various apartments of the jail. In one room they were shown the hangman busily preparing ropes for the next execution. But this sight failed to scare them into the false and foolish act of self-crimination. In a few days the special commission was opened by Lord Norbury and Baron George. The crown-prosecutor was Charles Kendal Bushe, then Solicitor- General, and afterwards Lord Chief Justice. The public augured very gloomily for the prisoners when it was known that Lord Norbury was to try the case. Norbury had a terrible reputation for severity. " We'll have great hanging next assizes — Lord Norbury's to come V 9 was a phrase that familiarly heralded his lordship's approach to assize towns on the circuit. Two witnesses came from Roscrea to bear testimony to the excellent character of the Egans. One of these was the Rev. Mr. L'Estrange, Protestant Rector of Roscrea. The other was a Protestant layman, Mr. William Smith, who informed the prisoners that shortly previous to the firing at the straw parson through the window, he had been present at a dinner party given by Mr. Birch, of Roscrea, at the Rev. Mr. Hamil- ton's instance. It was there stated that the Egans were ac- cused, on Dyer's sworn informations, of drilling men in the domain of the Hon. Mr. Prittie for treasonable purposes ; and Mr. Smith was then told that he should be apprised of the mode in which it was intended to proceed against them, pro- vided that he took an oath to keep secret the particulars. Mr. Smith rejected this condition, stating his conviction that the Egans were incapable of the imputed criminal acts ; and that to his own personal knowledge, Dyer had sworn falsely, inasmuch as the Egans were in another place at the very time with whom it is alleged that they marched for a part of the way. Arriving before the assailants, the military were stationed on the stair-head. The aggressors entered without any opposition. One of them lighting a candle, exposed the whole party to the soldiers, who immediately fired and killed them all. Not a man was left to disclose the agency by which the attack was concerted. The bodies were paraded on cars through the neighbour- ing villages on the following day, as trophies of the victory obtained by Mr. Corker Wright. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 71 when they were sworn by that person to have been drilling men in Mr. Prittie's grounds. Dyer was of course the principal witness. He gave his evidence with great self-possession and dexterity. He deposed to several meetings for military exercise in Mr. Prittie's domain. He was obliged to confess, on cross-examination, that he was in the receipt of five shillings a-week for suppressing his evi- dence against one Francis Cotton,* on a trial in which the said Cotton had been charged with the murder of a man named Quigley. The admission of his own infamy in compounding the felony of murder, necessarily deprived his evidence against the Egans of weight with the jury. Contradictions in his testimony were also elicited on cross-examination. The Rev. John Hamilton was the next witness. The trick of the stuffed figure had transpired ; and as he knew that a cross-examination on the subject awaited him, he resolved to put a bold face on the matter. Accordingly, in his direct evi- dence, he spoke of the effigy as a stratagem employed for the purpose of ascertaining if Dyer's previous informations were true ; but on his cross-examination he was constrained to admit that he had left the government, as well as several of his brother magistrates, under the impression that the firing at the effigy was an actual firing at his person. The reader will remember that when Mr. Prittie, on the morning following the attack on the straw figure, said to the Rev. Mr. Hamilton in that gentleman's house, " where were you sitting when the shot wens fired at you V Mr. Hamilton answered, " There, sir," pointing to a table in the room ,and thus attempting to confirm in Mr. Prittie's mind the belief that he had been actually fired at. When the reverend gentleman's testimony closed, the court- house rang with execrations, and the judges had some diffi- culty in restoring order. Halpin, and Dyer's brother-in-law, Hickey, were next ex- amined. Halpin gave his evidence with the composure and readi- ness of an expert informer. He inculpated Quinlan in the guilt of firing at Mr. Hamilton's effigy, under the belief that the effigy was that Rev. gentleman himself. Hickey's evidence tended to exonerate Quinlan from having fired ; but he swore that Mr. Stephen Egan had administered to him an oath to assist anyone who should attempt to take Mr. Hamilton's life. The infamous nature of the prosecution being manifest, the jury, without the least hesitation, unanimously acquitted the * This Cotton, and also Dyer, were subsequently in the employment of Mr. Birch, the distiller, at Roscrea. 72 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. prisoners. Lord Norbury, deprived of an opportunity of hang- ing anybody, escaped from the court under the pretext of sudden indisposition, leaving Baron George alone upon the bench. Dyer, with the concurrence of the learned Baron, was placed in the dock by the order of the Solicitor- G eneral, and indicted for wilful and corrupt perjury. But the grand jury, thinking, perhaps, that he might be useful on some future occasion, committed the disgraceful act of ignoring the bill.* The liberated prisoners were warmly congratulated by their numerous friends. They had a narrow escape. Had the Rev. Mr. Hamilton's dexterity of execution been equal to the inge- nuity of his invention, it would have fared hardly with them. He wanted only the opportunity to become a second Titus Gates. It was a romantic experiment doubtless — that of the Orange divine, who " Stuffed a figure of himself, Delicious thought ! and had it shot at, To bring some Papists to the shelf, Who could not otherwise be got at."f The Egans on their return were obliged to enter Boscrea by a back lane 5 in order to avoid the sanguinary ferocity of about one hundred of the Monaghan militia who had turned out, half intoxicated, ready for a desperate riot. There were also a large number of Orangemen, armed and prepared for mischief, who excited alarm by firing squibs through the town. Colonel Kerr was with some difficulty induced, by the strong remon- strance of a military gentleman, to draw the soldiers into the barracks. Mr. Hamilton published a pamphlet in his own vindication. He expatiated on his magisterial zeal — on the innocent nature of the exploit of getting men to fire at his effigy, which exploit, he loudly protested, was merely an in- genious device resorted to with the view of ascertaining whether designs against his life were really harboured by the persons whom Dyer had accused. He disclaimed having represented to the government that the firing at the effigy was a firing at his own person ; he alleged that he had made Major Sirr privy to the trick, and that he had requested the Major to convey that information to the Castle authorities. If he did so at all, it was somewhat of the latest. * In 1844, Dyer was still living at Roscrea ; he was then old, and seemed penitent for his former awful crimes. The witness Hickey was sent out of the country, on the failure of Hamilton's plot, by the parties who em- ployed him, and is supposed to have gone to America. t " Fudge Family in Paris." IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 73 The most amusing part of Mr. Hamilton's pamphlet is his solemn complaint that the Messieurs Egan showed no grati- tude to Colonel Kerr. He is also dissatisfied with Peel, who was then Irish secretary : " It is evident," says the ill-used clergyman, " that Mr. Peel's sole object was to vindicate the Lord Chancellor for not superseding me, and that he had no wish to defend me on my own account." One would think that Mr. Peel, in all conscience, had quite enough to do to palliate the retention of such a person in the magistracy, without entering on a defence of his machinations against the Egan family.* When we look back upon those dreary times ; when we contemplate the social and political depression of the Catho- lics, and the supremacy of their enemies in all the departments of the State ; when we think of the enormous influence pos- sessed by a virulent faction ; the vast array of selfish interest, deeply-rooted prejudice, and impenetrable ignorance, which had to be encountered and overcome ; it is difficult to form an adequate estimate of the merits of that leader whose voice inspired the timid and the spiritless, whose sagacity restrained the intemperate and rash, and whose influence combined to- gether the millions in that memorable organisation which wrung from reluctant bigotry the concession of the Catholic rights. O'Connell stated that a majority of the very House of Commons which in 1829 enacted Emancipation, had been returned in 1826 on pledges to resist that measure. As to the King, Lord Eldon has pourtrayed his majesty's virtuous agonies at being compelled to give the royal assent to the Relief Bill. ' ' What can I do ?" exclaimed the disconsolate monarch ; " what can I now fall back upon ? I am miserable — wretched. My situation is dreadful— nobody about me to ad- vise with. If I do give my assent, I'll go to the baths abroad, and from thence to Hanover ; Til return no more to England ; I'll make no Roman Catholic peers — I will not do what this bill will enable me to do — I'll return no more. Let them get a Catholic king in Clarence — the people will see that I did not wish this."t The Great Agitator triumphed, pro hac vice, over King, Lords, and Commons. * My account of the transactions described in the text, is compiled from a manuscript narrative lent me by one of the Egan family (Alderman Egan of Dublin), and a pamphlet published by the Rev. "Mr. Hamilton. f Twiss's Life of Lord Eldon. i 74 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. CHAPTER VII." "He vowed before the captive's God, to break the captive's chain, To bind the broken heart, and set the bondman free again." Anon. O'Connell's transition from the lawyer to the statesman was a change for which his long course of political agitation had prepared him. He intimately knew the people whom he was now to combine for the revival of the national legislature, and whose scattered strength he was to consolidate. The Catholic Association was pronounced to be an imperium in imperio oi vast magnitude and influence. And so it truly was. But the Kepeal Association, which O'Connell founded on the 15th April, 1840, gradually swelled to larger dimensions than its predecessor. In 1843 it surpassed the Catholic Association in the number of its members ; in the extent of its funds ; in the steady enthusiasm of its friends ; and in the exquisite per- fection of detail with which its organisation reached every nook and corner of the country. The sentiment of nationality had ever been a ruling idea in O'Connell's mind. It broke forth at first in his memorable declaration prior to the passing of the Union, that he would rather behold the re-enactment of the penal code, than con- sent to the destruction of the Irish parliament. With that declaration most of his subsequent acts have been consistent. That he who fleshed his maiden sword in opposition to the Union should devote his matured abilities to the Repeal of that measure was naturally to be expected. He struck the right chord ; the sympathies of his countrymen responded. In Sep- tember and October, 1830, he addressed four letters to the Irish public on the subject of Repeal. Those letters produced a deep and general sensation ; and if the public adhesion to the cause was not then as universally declared as at a later period, the reason why men paused was the great magnitude of the measure, which led even those who most ardently desired it, to fear that it was impracticable. O'Connell's appeal to his countrymen was readily responded to. But it is a total mistake to suppose that such response originated solely in the leader's influence. It originated in the deeply-rooted conviction in men's minds that they were the worse for the suppression of their native legislature, and would be the better for its restoration. What O'Connell IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 75 openly uttered, every man had felt before. The leader did no more than rehearse the popular sentiment. By-and-by public meetings began to spring up in different quarters. The opposition to the tithe- impost at that time convulsed every parish in the land ; and the two great ques- tions of the Repeal of the Union and the disendowment of the State Church were soon agitated together on nearly every rural platform. The landlords in great numbers espoused the anti-tithe cause. Protestantism they affectionately loved ; but the cheaper they could have it the better. Best of all, if they could enjoy it gratis. I knew in 1823 a landlord of conservative politics in collusion with his own Catholic tenant to defeat the exorbi- tant claims of the rector. The reverend gentleman claimed his tithe ; but the landlord, by collusive distresses for rent, contrived for some time to outwit him. The landlord, dis- gusted at the grasping propensities of his pastor, dropped his acquaintance, and the alienation continued for some years. It is said that the same landlord lay in ambush with a gun to shoot the parson's proctor, who presumed to enter on his Protestant premises in order to make a valuation of the growing crops, and that the angry gentleman was only restrained from some deed of violence by the strong remon- strance of a friend on the consequences which the act must have entailed on the perpetrator.* In fact, a great portion of the Protestant proprietary hated the tithes as intensely as the Catholics did — as intensely as they had been hated by their own Protestant predecessors, the members of the Irish House of Commons, who in 1735 passed the memorable Agist- ment Act that exempted all pasture lands from the claims of the State clergy, and threw the burden of tithe exclusively on tillage, f * I knew all the parties. This anecdote was given me as a fact ; but I think on reflection, that it probably originated in an angry threat which was interpreted too literally. Even thus modified, the story indi- cates a feeling of rage against the tithe-system. f This Act is generally described as having thrown the burden of tithes from the Protestant aristocracy on the Catholic tenantry. It, indeed, re- lieved the owner of pasture land ; but this relief imposed no additional burden on the owner of tillage. The man who tilled his land paid neither more nor less tithe after than before the passing of the Agistment Act. Moreover, tillage, in the early part of the 18th century, was so little prac- tised in Ireland, that the legislature, not twenty years prior to the Agist- ment Act, had passed a law to compel every man who occupied 100 acres to keep at least five acres tilled. Grazing was general; and the Catholic tenant who grazed his land partook of the exemption secured to pasture by the Act of 1735. 78 IRELAND and her agitators. " Down with the tithes," then, was the cry of many a Pro- testant landlord in 1831 and 1832. With some it was a purely selfish cry — a cry of men who simply preferred not paying money to paying it, and who dignified their conduct with the sounding phrases of " indignant resistance to an un- just and abominable impost," " sympathy in the sufferings of a Catholic people compelled to pay a Protestant priesthood, " and similar expressions of generous and lofty principle. Unjust and abominable is the impost, doubtless ; and a flagrant spoliation of the Catholics, from whom the church property was originally torn, and on whom, consequently, the support of two churches is thrown by the present malversation of the ecclesiastical state revenues ; but the animus of some of the anti-tithe landlords in 1882 was rather selfish than national. Many, however, were actuated by a purer motive. There was another section of the Protestant landlords, more important in respect of their wealth and position, and includ- ing many of the nobility, who rallied round the parsons at their utmost need, paid their own tithes, compelled (where they could) their tenants to pay theirs ; and entered into large subscriptions to enable the parsons to recover all arrears by legal process. The anti-national Church Establishment, thus supported at home, and backed from without by the power of England, out- lived a storm of well earned popular vengeance that shook every stone and timber in the edifice. It is an institution totally indefensible on any grounds of justice, honesty, or com- mon sense. The remark is now trite that Ireland is the only country on the face of the earth in which the whole ecclesias- tical State revenues have been grasped by the pastors of a small fractional part of the population. Such a monstrous outrage on the great principles of equity, and on the great majority of any nation, may be elsewhere vainly sought, either in or out of Christendom. In truth it is*an outrage which no thoroughly free country would submit to for a single day. The object of successive English governments in prolonging that outrage, is to prevent the fusion of Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants into one national fraternity. It is an engine of unrivalled efficacy in keeping Irishmen asunder — in perpe- tuating and intensifying their mutual jealousies and animosi- ties. It is a great pecuniary wrong, for it employs for ex- clusively Protestant purposes a vast national trust-fund, origi- nally instituted by Catholics for Catholic purposes, and now estimated by the Rev. Dr. Maziere Brady to amount to IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 77 £700,000 per annum. It is a gigantic insult to the great majority of the nation thus to bestow their ecclesiastical spoils upon the small minority. The insult receives additional venom from the reckless assaults made by some of the State clergy against the elder church upon whose spoils they are fattened. With such a fertile source of irritation established in the country, it would of course be irrational to expect that the social frame should not often be seriously disjointed, or that the different classes affected by the ecclesiastical outrage — those whom it benefits, and those whom it injures — could regard each other with that cordial friendliness which, in its absence, would probably prevail. Let me here briefly notice a few of the pretexts put forward on behalf of the anti-Irish State Church. I. It is urged by the transcendental pietists of the Protes- tant party, that the State is bound to provide for the dissemi- nation of true Christian knowledge amongst the community. But these gentlemen have been in the habit of vociferating that " the Bible alone" is the sole arbiter of controversy. Yet here they make the State, and not the Bible, the arbiter of what is, and what is not, true Christian knowledge. It may be asked, what authority the State, as such, possesses to define theological doctrines, and in virtue of such definition to tax the public of all creeds for their diffusion ? The State in England has been Roman Catholic ; has been Puritan ; has been High Church Anglican; has been Latitudinarian. If the State have the right to hand over the national ecclesiastical endowments to the clergy that happen to accept its theological views, then it will follow that as often as the government sees fit to change its religious belief, it may lawfully enforce a cor- responding change in the destination of church property. II. The argument is sometimes put in this way : " The State is entitled to offer religious truth to the acceptance of the nation." The nation has at least as good a right to deny, as the state has to affirm, that the commodity thus offered is religious truth. The State has been making the offer to the Irish people (at their bitter expense) for more than three centuries ; and the people, strong in their own religious faith, persist in believing that the article offered by the State is a counterfeit. Even if we assume that the Irish people err in so believing, yet who, unless he be stone-blind from prejudice, will deny that a species of State-apostleship which the experience of three centuries demonstrates to be efficacious only in irritating, not in converting, stands ipso facto self- condemned ? 78 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. I desire in this work to keep clear of all doctrinal contro- versy. But without entering upon any, it may be observed that independently of doctrinal grounds for rejecting the State Church, there is the significant fact that it is scantily believed in by large numbers of its own ministers. The Irish State clergy are perpetually claiming identification with the State Church in England. They imagine that they strengthen their position by hooking themselves on to the Anglican Es- tablishment. Well, for several generations great numbers of the English State clergy have been clamouring against the hard necessity of subscribing their own doctrinal code. In 1772, and again in 1815, petitions from numerous churchmen for exemption from what they called " the grievance'' of sub- scription to the thirty-nine articles, were presented to parlia- ment. If the reverend petitioners really believed the articles, they could not have termed their subscription a grievance. On the 15th January, ] 863, a meeting of 300 " evangelical" clergymen of the English church was held at Bishop Wilson's Memorial Hall, Islington. At that meeting the Kev. Hugh Stowell thus delivered himself : " The astounding fact was now developed, that numbers had avowed themselves believers in the revelation of God, had actually taken upon themselves to teach that revelation, and were yet all the while hollow at heart, and unsettled in conviction." The Kev. Chairman of the meeting thus indicated the species of doctrine taught by these " numbers" of clerical dissidents : " The peculiarity of our present position is this, that the sceptical sentiments of the present day proceed not from the school of Paine or Voltaire, but from those who are within the pale of our National Church — from men who, by their station and pro- fession, are pledged to uphold themselves, and to teach to others, the doctrines of our holy religion."* On the 9th June, 1863, Mr. Buxton, M.P., brought a bill into parliament to abolish the necessity of subscription to the thirty-nine articles. He acted at the instance of ministers of the Anglican religion and candidates for ordination, who, as he described their pitiable case, felt their consciences tormented by the dire necessity of declaring their belief in doctrines in which they really did not believe. f Yet the Anglo-Irish Protestant clergy grasp the whole ecclesiastical State revenues of Catholic Ireland, on the pre- text of diffusing among us a doctrinal code which their clerical * London Liberator, 1st February, 1863. f London Liberator f 1st July, 1863. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 79 brethren in England are trying to fling off as an intolerable burthen on their consciences. To some extent, the recalci- trant clergy have been successful. By the Act, 28th and 29th Victoria, chapter cxxii., entitled, " An Act to amend the Law as to the Subscriptions and Declarations to be made and Oaths to be taken by the Clergy of the Established Church of Eng- land and Ireland," a less stringent form of Declaration of As- sent is substituted for the previous forms of Declaration and Subscription. The short title of the Act is* 'The Clerical Subscription Act," and it is dated 5th July, 1865. I cannot see that the dissident clergy have gained much by the change. Although the language in which profession of belief is hence- forth to be made is undoubtedly to some extent relaxed, yet it still is, in express terms, a " Declaration of Assent ;" which cannot, I think, be satisfactorily used by men whose real sen- timent is Dissent. But whether the State clergy believe, or disbelieve, or doubt, or deny the truth of their own religion, the Irish nation is at any rate to be mulcted for its support. III. It is said in defence of the Establishment, " The earliest- Christians of Ireland were Protestants, whose belief was the same as that of the modern Anglo-Irish parsons. The parsons, therefore, are entitled, in virtue of their spiritual descent from the Irish Protestant Christians aforesaid, to enjoy the church temporalities of Ireland." I answer that, firstly, the statement is untrue ; and secondly, if it were true, it would not establish any right to the national church-revenues on the part of the Protestant clergy of the present day. The statement is untrue. For proofs of its untruth, I refer the reader to a book by the Rev. Dr. Rock, entitled, " A Letter to Lord John Manners," sold by Dolman, of London. Dr. Rock's book overflows with irresistible demonstrations. A volume on the same subject by the Rev. Mr. Gaffney, sold by Duffy, Dublin, may also be consulted with advantage. A work by the Rev. Dr. Moran* is also worth the careful study of those who are interested in the history of the early Irish church. Independently of the direct proofs contained in the works now referred to, there are historical statements made by the Rev. J. H. Todd of Trinity College in his " Life of St. Patrick," which seem wholly incompatible with the theory of early Irish Protestantism ; and which are the more remark- * u Essay on the Origin, Doctrines, and Discipline of the Early Irish Church. By the Rev. Dr. Moran, Vice-Rector of the Irish College, Rome." Dublin: Duffy, 1864. 80 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. able, inasmuch as Dr. Todd rejects the Roman origin of SL Patrick's mission. Dr. Todd says: " The deadly hatred of England and of everything English, which has for so many centuries unfortu- nately rankled in the native Irish heart, was not at first created by any difference in religion."* This is an important statement. The creed of the English invaders was admittedly Roman Catholic. Now, if the creed of the native Irish had not been also Roman Catholic, it is plain that religious dissensions between the two parties, ex- asperated by their national antipathies, must have widely pre- vailed through the kingdom. But while history is full of the struggles for political power between English and Irish, it is silent as to any theological warfare between them. The only rational solution of this silence consists in the fact that their creed was the same. Accordingly, Dr. Todd candidly says : " There were two churches in Ireland, separated from each other, without any essential difference of discipline or doctrine, at a period long pre- vious to the Reformation. "f Observe the important admission, " without any essential difference of discipline or doctrine." Now, one of these two churches, or, more accurately speaking, these two hierarchies, is admitted on all hands to have been Roman Catholic. The other hierarchy, therefore, which did not differ essentially from Roman Catholic discipline or doctrine, cannot possibly have symbolized with the modern Protestant State Church in Ireland, which differs most essentially from both. The doctrinal and disciplinary identity of the ancient Irish and Anglo-Irish hierarchies is further shown by Dr. Todd, who says: "At a subsequent period, when the Anglo-Irish church had accepted the Reformation ;J the 1 mere Irish' * Life of St. Patrick, Introduction, p. 242. t Life of St. Patrick, Introduction, p. 241. X Which alleged acceptance is disproved by the Rev. Maziere Brady, D.D., and rejected as a monstrous historical error by so earnest a Pro- testant as Mr. Froude. Immediately following the passage last cited in the text, Dr. Todd, speaking of the post-Reformation period, says : " Mis- sionary bishops and priests, therefore, ordained abroad, were sent into Ireland to support the interests of Rome ; and from them is derived a third church, in close communion with the See of Rome, which has now assumed the form and dimensions of a national established religion" (page 242). What Dr. Todd here calls " a third church," was precisely the same great mass of Irish and Anglo-Irish Catholics whom he admits to have been in communion with Rome up to the date of the Reformation. He seems, by the words " a third church," to ignore the lay element in IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 81 clergy were found to have become practically extinct. Their episcopacy had merged into, or become identified with, the episco- pacy which was recognized by the laic. 11 * This quiet identification into one body of the two hierarchies shows that their religious belief was identical. This is evident when we consider the impossibility of such identification, or common merger into one hierarchy, of two churches having different creeds. For instance, the identification of the pre- sent State Church in Ireland with the Irish Roman Catholic church is impossible. Fancy the Most Rev. Dr. Trench cele- brating mass in the Church of the Conception ; or Cardinal Cullen preaching up the thirty-nine articles in St. Patrick's Ca- thedral ! But Dr. Todd informs us that such an identification of the ancient Irish church and the Anglo-Irish Roman Catholic church had actually occurred before the Reformation ; an iden- tification which could not have occurred unless their religious belief had been previously identical. But it may be suggested that the English invaders had, perhaps, infused their Roman Catholic notions into the minds of the Irish. To such a supposition Dr. Todd supplies the answer when he tells us of " the deadly hatred of England and of everything English, which for so many centuries unfortunately rankled in the Irish heart." That deadly hatred would have neces- sarily extended to any English religious opinions not pre- viously held by the Irish themselves. The Irish were not likely to accept the apostleship of invaders whom they held in mortal abhorrence. The inference is inevitable ; the Irish did not receive, and could not possibly have received, their un- doubted Roman Catholic.. belief from the English. Whence, the church, which constitutes the great body of its members, and which formed neither a third nor a second church, but remained unchanged in its hereditary fidelity to Rome. It is true that the ferocity of the Re- formed government deprived the Catholic people of home education for their clergy, who were therefore compelled to pursue their ecclesiastical studies in foreign seminaries, whence they returned to preach the old faith in Ireland, where, according to Edinond Spenser, M peril of death" awaited them. But the people of Ireland were, and are, unable to un- derstand how the tricks which the secular power played with religion In the sixteenth century, could destroy their own inherited identity with the church of their ancestors — even supposing that the alleged conversion of nearly all their bishops to Protestantism were historically true, instead of being, as it is, totally destitute of historical foundation. Dr. Todd's work displays much research, and possesses great interest, even for readers who do not acquiesce in all his views. * Life of St. Patrick, Introduction, p. 242. 82 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. then, did they derive that belief ? There is but one rational answer — they derived it from the original founders of Irish Christianity. In fact, the difference between the early Irish and Anglo-Irish hierarchies was purely political or national, and not at all doctrinal.* But in truth the question whether the church of St. Patrick was Catholic or Protestant, is totally irrelevant to the claims of the modern State Church. Even if St. Palladius and St. Patrick had taught the thirty-nine articles, and converted the Irish of the fifth century to Anglican Protestantism, the modern State clergy would not be a whit the nearer establish- ing a righteous title to the national ecclesiastical revenues. For, in the first place, the legislator of our day has to deal, not with the fifth century, but with the nineteenth. Again, if the aboriginal Irish parsons of those early times were Pro- testants, they must have been an exquisitely good-for-nothing set of gentlemen, since it is clear that they suffered the whole nation to slip through their fingers into the hands of the Popish priests. On the modern " evangelical" hypothesis, those early pastors must have been given the church -revenues as the salary for teaching Protestantism to the Irish people. But they did not keep their part of the bargain, for they suffered all their flocks to lapse into Catholicity. They did not give value for the money, and they consequently became disentitled to claim it. How preposterous, then, to assert for the State clergy of the present day a right as derived from a long extinct generation of parsons, who, if they ever existed at all, manifestly forfeited * Among the proofs of the connexion of the early Irish church with Rome is a rule or canon, contained in the ancient Book of the Canons of Armagh, which enjoins that disputed matters which could not be settled by the local ecclesiastical authorities, should be referred to the Roman See for final adjudication. Here is the canon, as translated by the late Professor Eugene O'Curry : " Moreover, if any case should arise of ex- treme difficulty, and beyond the knowledge of all the judges of the na- tions of the Scots [i.e. the Irish, who were then called Scott] it is to be duly referred to the chair of the Archbishop of the Gaedhill, that is to say, of Patrick, and the jurisdiction of this bishop (of Armagh). But if such a case as aforesaid, of a matter of issue, cannot be easily disposed of [by him] with his counsellors, in that [investigation], we have decreed that it be sent to the apostolic seat — that is to say, to the chair of the Apostle Peter having the authority of the city of Rome. " These are the persons who decreed concerning this matter, viz., Auxilius, Patrick, Secundinus, and Benignus." (See " O'Curry's Lectures on the Manuscript Materials of Ancient Irish History," pp. 373 and 611. Dublin : Duffy, 1861.) IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 83 all title to Ireland's church property some thousand or twelve hundred years ago ! Were such a plea valid, it would follow by parity of reasoning, that if the original holders of Irish church-property had been Mahometans, then a hierarchy of Turkish muftis would, at the present day, have a rightful claim to our ecclesiastical state-revenues. IV. It is strenuously urged that as nearly all the Irish Roman Catholic bishops at the period of the Reformation ac- cepted Protestantism, they became entitled, in virtue of their corporate identity, to carry the church property into the new creed of their adoption. But, firstly, the story of their conversion is a figment. The Rev. Maziere Brady and the Rev. Dr. Moran have conclu- sively disproved it. Next, if the whole Catholic hierarchy of the Elizabethan period had adopted Protestantism, I do not see how their conversion could have justified them in carrying into the Protestant Church the Catholic ecclesiastical property, of which they had been given the use on condition of their fidelity to the Catholic Church. On the contrary, it seems clear that by deserting Catholicity they would have forfeited their sole original right to enjoy the Catholic endowments. Suppose the whole English hierarchy were suddenly to become Anabaptists to-morrow, would they have a moral right, in virtue of their corporate identity, to carry the whole national church property of England into the Anabaptist communion ? V. It is urged that the disendowment of the anti-Irish State Church would invalidate or shake the title to all other kinds of property. Sir Hugh (now Lord) Cairns expresses the objection in the following words : "It was utterly impos- sible they could attempt to destroy any kind of property in the country without loosening the security of property of every kind They could not confiscate benefices without loosening the bonds that secured property of every kind in the kingdom." I quote the following answer to the above objection from the report of a speech which I delivered at the National Asso- ciation of Ireland on the day of its inauguration : "Just as if the ecclesiastical endowments, which Grattan called ' the salary of prayer,' stood on the same basis with private property ! The law creates the endowments. But the law only protects other kinds of property. The revenues instituted by the State as the salary or remuneration for the performance of certain specific public functions, are legitimately liable to interference on the part of the State that created IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. them. But this gives no precedent for interference with pro- perty which the State did not institute — property acquired from industry, or inheritance, or gift. So much for the prin- ciple. Then, as to the fact. All this hughear about loosening the security of secular property if the ecclesiastical revenues were meddled with — all these menaces were dinned into our ears when parliament, about thirty years ago, struck twenty- five per cent, off the Irish tithe rent-charge. But what private property was loosened or lessened by extinguishing one-fourth of the parochial revenues of the Irish State clergy ? Can Sir Hugh Cairns — can any man show that private property was shaken or diminished to the extent of one farthing by what the learned gentleman would doubtless call the confiscation of a fourth part of the Irish benefices ?"* VI. It is asked, " Would you make the tithe rent- charge a present to the landlords by a simple act of disendowment ?" Most certainly not. The revenues, in my opinion, should be secularised, and commissioners might be appointed by the State to apply them to public uses of general benefit. Mr. Miall proposed that the tithe rent-charge should be sold to the landlords at ten years' purchase ; and that the fund thus realised should be locally expended in public works. It has also been suggested that the poor-rate should be partially paid from the tithe rent-charge. The State Church property is a great national trust fund ; and honesty imperatively demands that it should be appropriated so as to benefit the whole Irish nation. Now, though it is the trust estate of all, it is dis- honestly monopolised by a small fractional part of the people. The Catholics were robbed of it in the sixteenth century, and the robbery is perpetuated on hypocritical pretexts and de- fended by shallow and insulting sophistry. ^Restitution might be made in either of two ways — by re-investing the Catholic Church with the ecclesiastical revenues, or by appropriating those revenues to secular objects for the benefit of the whole people. The former mode is heartily deprecated (and for excellent reasons) by nearly all the Irish Catholics. The latter mode commends itself as being an effectual scheme of restitution, and is beyond all comparison more easily achievable. VII. It is said, by way of showing that the Catholics have no right to complain, that the incidence of tithe, or tithe rent- * Page 14 of my speech, which was printed as a pamphlet by the Eng- lish Liberation Society, from whom it can be had at 2 Serjeant's-inn, rieet-street, London. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 85 charge, falls upon the landlords, who are chiefly Protestants, and not upon the tenants, who are chiefly Catholics. A delusion. No person ever denied that, prior to the pass- ing of the Rent-charge Act, the occupying tenant, and he alone, paid tithe to the parson. Now, what does the Rent-charge Act effect ? It just substitutes the landlord for the tithe-proctor, as receiver of the impost for the parson. The occupying tenant pays it to the parson through the receivership of the landlord, instead of paying it as formerly through the receiver- ship of the tithe-proctor. It is true that the law now makes the landlord, instead of the tenant, the parson's security for the money. But the tenant is the landlord's security for it. Before the landlord pays it to the parson he must first obtain it from the tenant. As well might it be denied that the occu- pying tenant pays the rent, as that he pays the tithe rent- charge. The law, for the purposes of mystification, amalga- mates the tithe with the rent. But this very amalgamation demonstrates that if the tenant pays the one, he pays the other also. " A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and the tithe, whether styled rent, or rent-charge, or modus, or whatever else you please, has as foul a stench in the nostrils of Justice as in the days of Captain Rock and the tithe-proctors. It is indeed true that there are not now san- guinary riots between farmers and proctors as of old ; but the essence of the wrong is unchanged. A very erroneous impression prevails in some quarters that the Rent-charge Act conferred a boon upon the landlords, be- cause it professes to give them a bonus of twenty-five per cent, for collecting and handing to the clergy the remaining seventy- five per cent. Judging from my own experience, from my knowledge of the country, and from my communications with other landlords, I think it most improbable that a single land- lord in Ireland ever pocketed a farthing of the twenty- five per cent. The landlords have found it sufficiently diffi- cult to recover the seventy- five per cent, in full from theii tenantry. It is indeed obvious, as I have already said, that whatever the landlord pays the parson he must first extract from the tenant ; but it is equally true that the tithe rent- charge is paid out of a gross rental which in a good many in- stances is diminished by the repeal of the corn laws, whilst the septennial valuation of the impost is measured by compari- son with the standard of high prices that preceded that repeal. VIII. Some Protestant clergymen have the exquisite modesty to tell the public that the State Church revenues of Ireland 86 IRELAND AND HKK AGITATORS. are little enough for the support of their order ; and on this ground they deprecate reduction or alienation. For minister- ing to a small fractional part of the Irish people they are not ashamed to claim the whole ecclesiastical State property of the country. It is, they say, little enough. It is about ^700,000 a- year.* If this be little enough for the pastors and church purposes of a fraction, let us ask to what annual sum would the payment of the Irish clergy of all churches, rated on the same scale, amount ? If the State Church clergy, whose flocks are between eleven and twelve per cent, of the whole, require £700,000, then the collective Irish clergy of all denominations would require something about six millions sterling per annum ! It is lucky for Ireland that her Catholic priests and her Presbyterian ministers have less inflated notions than the State Church clergy entertain respecting the amount of remuneration to which they are entitled. I have now noticed a few of the current sophisms employed to defend the infliction of a Protestant State Church on Catho- lic Ireland. As an institution of the State, it is a marvellous system of incorporated fraud and insolence. It robs the people and it insults their religion. When its advocates, clerical and I'Ajy have exhausted their eloquence in sounding its praises, we have only to look it in the face — to look at its shameless monopoly of a nation's church property for the benefit of a numerically small and wealthy minority — in order to condemn it as an abominable outrage on every principle of justice and of honest policy. If any Englishman thinks otherwise, I shall merely ask him what he would think of a Koinan Catholic Church Establishment quartered by law on every parish of Protestant England ? of fiery Roman Catholic polemics ex- tracting payment from English Protestant flocks for ferocious vituperation of Protestantism ? j * The Rev. Maziere Brady, in a letter to the Times, March, 1867, having enumerated various items of church revenues and church property omitted from an annual income of .-€420,000, which Lord Dufferin ap- peared to think was the whole, says, " If those sums were added to the £-120,000 a-year of which Lord Dufferin spoke, the total would perhaps exceed £700,000. But in the absence of any reliable return it is impos- sible to calculate with certainty the present revenues of the Establish- ment." f It would be most unjust to inculpate all the Protestant clergy of Ireland as firebrand polemics. Great numbers of them are incapable of the insulting malpractices referred to in the text ; and are personally so very estimable that it is really to be regretted that their unfortunate position as a State clergy in a Catholic country should deprive them of IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 87 Why, let me ask, is the anti-Irish State Church upheld by English statesmen ? Why do they persist in inflicting upon us a wrong which the English nation would not submit to for an hour ? The true answer, I doubt not, is to be found in the traditionary Irish state-craft of English parties — in the belief that they cannot govern Ireland without a plentiful admixture of exasperating injustice. To keep Ireland down, it is neces- sary to perpetuate the distractions and miseries of her people. This policy is not new: " Some of her" [Elizabeth's] " coun- sellors," says Leland, " appear to have conceived an odious jealousy which reconciled them to the distractions and miseries of Ireland. 4 Should we exert ourselves,' said they, 'in re- ducing this country to order and civility, it must soon acquire power, consequence, and riches. The inhabitants will thus be alienated from England ; they will cast themselves into the arms of some foreign power, or perhaps erect themselves into an independent and separate state. Let us therefore connive at their disorders ; for a weak and disordered people never can attempt to detach themselves from the crown of Eng- land.'"* In the species of state-craft here described by the historian, we discern the policy that maintains the anti-Irish Church Establishment. " Let us connive at their disorders." It would tax human wit to connive at our disorders more ef- fectually than by forcing upon the country a corporate incubus of which social hatred and heartburning are the necessary con- sequences ; which generates an angry sense of wrong on the one side, and a sentiment of arrogant superiority upon the other. With such an ecclesiastical gangrene among us, it cannot be matter of surprise that a thousand acrid humours circulate their poison through the nation's veins, and keep the body politic in a chronic condition of disease. This is the true purpose and mission of the anti-Irish State Church. Before I close this chapter I shall say a word or two on the proposals, from time to time suggested, to purchase the Catholic clergy by pensions, or glebe, or some other sort of state-endowment. the popularity which their amiable qualities would probably otherwise acquire. But there are also many whose controversial zeal renders them intolerable nuisances. All alike are in a false position. * Leland's Hist. Ireland, book iv. chap. 3. I have said nothing of the doctrinal character of the State Church ; such a topic being wholly irrelevant to the subject of this chapter. 88 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. Statesmen regard the endowment of any church by the State in the light of a bribe to its clergy. Thus, Lord Castle- reagh speculated on purchasing the support of the Presbyterian clergy for the Union by an augmentation of the Eegium Donum. On the 23rd November, 1798, he wrote as follows to William Wickham, Esq. : " Of late they (the Presbyterians) are rather tired of the treason in which they had very deeply embarked ; perhaps they may be inclined to compromise with the Union ; some additional provision for the clergy, connecting the church more closely with the crown, would probably disarm the opposi- tion, if not secure the support of that body"* In the recently published Correspondence of Earl Grey,f we find the following passage in a letter addressed by Sir Herbert Taylor to that nobleman : " Your lordship is aware that I was private secretary to King George III. when the correspondence took place with the administration of which you were a mem- ber, on the Catholic question, and I was of course privy to all that passed (His Majesty being blind), and had opportunities of learning his sentiments not consigned to paper. I am almost confident that he more than once said that he should not object to a proposition for giving a stipend to the Roman Catholic clergy, and that he observed that no better expedient could be found for reducing the influence of the Pope in Ire- land, and transferring their dependence to the government from which they would derive their means of support. I have heard the late Duke of York express the same opinion ; and the king assures me that the late Mr. Perceval had frequently stated it to him as an arrangement he should be glad to effect." It is needless to observe that the Catholic clergy give no allegiance to the Pope inconsistent with their temporal allegi- ance to their sovereign. What demands our attention is this — that the project of giving them a pension was considered in the light of a bribe by its authors — a bribe which was to buy them off from certain principles which it was presumed that they held. And in the light of a bribe would any possible scheme of endowing the Catholic clergy of Ireland by an English aud Protestant State be inevitably regarded, not only by the govern- ment, but, what is more important, by the people of Ireland. If the clergy of the Irish people became the paid officers of the * Cornwallis Correspondence, vol. ii. p. 247. f " The Correspondence of Earl Grey with King William IV., and with Sir Herbert Taylor. Edited by Henry, Earl Grey." London, John Murray, 183 7. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 89 English government, they would utterly and finally forfeit the confidence of their flocks. We shudder to contemplate the scenes of anarchy and irreligion which would follow from such a loosing of the bands that now unite the people and their pas- tors. In the sound sense, the honesty, and the Christian fidelity of the priesthood, we have happily a full security against such a terrible result. They cannot be bribed away from Irish interests. In Cardinal Cullen's Pastoral at the beginning of Lent, 1866, he said, with reference to the pensioning project, " Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes." Now, in whatever shape the dona may be offered, whether in glebes, in pensions, or (if we could conceive aught so incredible) in a share of the existing eccle- siastical State revenues, it is certain that the offer would be meant as a bribe to purchase off the priesthood from the na- tional interests of their country. Both English Whigs and English Tories — the two great parties who alternately ad- minister the affairs of the empire — are resolved on preserving the Legislative Union as long as they can. That is to say, they are resolved to perpetuate the legislative disfranchisement of Ireland ; to prolong a system that deprives her of the sole control of her own national interests, and that gives to Great Britain about nine parts in eleven of the formal control of those interests, and in real fact the whole of it ; to prolong a system that results in the wholesale spoliation of the wealth which God has bestowed upon our island, and in the conse- quent depopulation that afflicts almost to madness every man who has a heart to feel for the wrongs of his expatriated brethren, and a conscience to abhor the diabolical wickedness of plundering a country of its riches and driving out its in- habitants. All this the Union does, and the people of Ireland know it. How could they retain their confidence in a priesthood capable of accepting any species of endowment from a govern- ment resolved to perpetuate that Union ? The scheme of dividing the present endowments between the Protestant and Catholic churches has been started by a gentleman whose personal character, position, and abilities, entitle him to our respect. I have publicly stated my objec- tions to this scheme. Independently of other objections, I regard it as impracticable. By seeking a share of the endow- ments for the Catholic Church, we should in the first place turn against us the English Voluntaries who at present are our only reliable allies. In the second place, we should en- 90 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. tail upon our cause the weakness of internal division ; for no man who knows Ireland can expect that the mass of Irish Catholics would desert the Voluntary banner under which they have hitherto rallied, in order to fraternize with the claimants for Catholic endowment. We should encumber our agitation with miserable by-battles between the friends of total disen- dowment and the gentlemen (few, though indefatigable) who demand the division of the spoil between the churches. Thus, in the third place, we should furnish to the Whigs a plausible pretext for leaving the present giant evil undisturbed. They would be only too glad of the opportunity of telling us that until we were agreed among ourselves as to the proper remedy, they deemed it inexpedient to interfere with existing arrange- ments. The Catholic Church in Ireland has thriven and flourished for more than three centuries on the Voluntary system. It has struck its roots deep into the hearts of the Irish people, not only unsustained by, but in defiance of, the powers of this world. Circumstanced as Ireland has been, and is, can any man doubt that among the human motives which act in harmony with the principle of divine faith, supporting that principle and in turn receiving strength from it, is the deep, enduring, passionate love of country that burns in the souls of our people ? Let no rash hand attempt the terrible experiment of separating our devotion to the Catholic church from our Irish nationality. Let no fantastic theorist seek to reduce us to the awful alternative of abandoning our accustomed ecclesiastical obedience ; or of rendering that obedience to a hierarchy who would have forfeited our confi- dence by accepting endowments from a power that, whether nationally or religiously, cannot possibly have any common sympathies with Catholic Ireland. Let no rash hand, I solemnly repeat, attempt that terrible experiment. I do not believe that the scheme of dividing the endowments could suc- ceed ; but the very attempt pernicious. Its success — were success conceivable — would unlock the floodgates of infidelity in our midst. Nor would the political results of the scheme be any better than its spiritual consequences. An intelligent priest in the south of Ireland, conversing with me on the efforts the Catholic clergy had made to check Fenianism, said : " The people were just hanging on to us — we could scarcely hold them in ; but if they had been able to point to an endowment in our hands, we could not have held them in at all." IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 91 Of the general principle of state-endowment of religion I shall here say nothing. But of its particular application by the Protestant government of another country to our national church I will say this : Every church which is endowed by the State must to some extent rely upon temporal support ; but the " vital power of religion is generally found to exist in an inverse ratio to its reliance upon temporal support."* This is at any rate true of Catholicity in Ireland. And may God defend us, and defend our remotest posterity, from the fatal pecuniary alliance between our national church and an alien, uncongenial government ! By an active, earnest, indefatigable union of action with the English Voluntaries, it seems to me quite possible that the Whigs — nay, perad venture, the Tories — may be driven, at some happy political crisis, to render justice to the Irish nation by disendowing the anti-Irish ecclesiastical garrison by which we are plundered, insulted, and divided. CHAPTER VII. "Then who's the wretch that hasely spurni The ties of country, kindred, friends ; That Darters every nobler aim For sordid views— for private ends ? One slave alone on earth you'll find, Through Nature's universal span, So lost to virtue, dead to shame, The anti-Irish Irishman." Spirit of the Nation. I have said that " Repeal" and " No Tithes" were associated on the platforms. The journals in the State Church interest, and the speakers and writers, lay and clerical, by whom that interest was defended, generally represented Repeal as a purely Popish scheme, designed to overthrow Protestantism, and fraught with peril to the properties and persons of Protestants. The true merits and facts of the question were carefully sup- pressed ; the most baseless falsehoods were boldly affirmed and reiterated ; the fanatical engine was incessantly worked ; and a profound impression was made on the credulity, the ignorance, and the religious prejudices of a large class of Protestants. So far as concerns the miserable wrangling of adverse reli- gionists, let it pass for what it is worth. A ferocious polemi- cal divine imagines that he has discharged a telling shot when * Rev. H. B. Liddon 92 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. he has let off some fanatical impertinence about " idolatry," or " wafer-gods," or the " priest-ridden people." Well, he has been impertinent ; what matter ? None, surely — unless we get too much of his impertinence. I bear no enmity to any man for calling me a limb of Antichrist, and telling me I must necessarily go to the devil as a follower of the Pope. Certainly such language is not civil, and I am convinced it is not true. But there is little wisdom in quarrelling with men for mere incivility, or for a mistaken view of my chances of salvation. It is impossible to conceive anything more intrin- sically unimportant than the anti- Catholic speculations and incivilities of our polemical assailants. " Antichrist !" shouted at a Catholic by some delirious enthusiast, should no more excite his wrath than " d — n your blood !" from a drunken trooper. But the case is altered when the abuse of our faith becomes the watchword of a powerful party. When it becomes the rallying cry of men who avail themselves of the spirit it excites to assail our pockets or abridge our liberties, we are called on to resent it ; to resist the party who use their fanata- cism as an engine wherewith to work out our oppression. It is preposterous to talk of the anti-Irish Church Estab- lishment as a religious institution. Of the personal piety or of the doctrinal convictions of its numerous estimable mem- bers, I say nothing disrespectful. I speak of it solely as an endowed institution; and as such it is in Catholic eyes a purely political Establishment. What act has it performed — what ends has it achieved to answer the purpose of a religious institution ? From a Protestant standpoint it cannot seem, in this sense, valuable ; for it bas not converted the Catholics of Ireland to the Protestant religion. They were but as three to one during part of the last century ; now they are over seven to one as compared with the State Church Protes- tants — poor evidence of its missionary efficacy.* Has it dif- * In a paper entitled Ritualism in its Missionary Aspect, by an Angli- can clergyman, the Rev. Dr. Littledale, that reverend gentleman says of the State Church in Ireland : " Though called by some of its panegyrists a Missionary Church, how completely it has broken down in dealing with the Roman Catholic population need not be insisted on. It is enough to say, that even if the reports of the proselytising societies were as true as they are unscrupulously mendacious, the results would be a very poor return for three centuries of monopoly." (From " The Church and the World : Essays on the Questions of the Day. By various writers. First series. Edited by the Rev. Orby Shipley, M.A." Second edition. Lon- don : Longmans.) Archdeacon Stopford, in order to demonstrate the vast success of the State Church in converting the Irish from Catholicity, published in 1853, IRELAND AKD HER AGITATORS. 98 fused through the land the Christian fruits of peace, fraternal love, good will, and mutual tolerance ? There it stands, hating and hated, plundering and execrated ; in past times prolific of outrage, tears, and waitings ; in our own day proli- fic of bitter politico-sectarian animosity between classes who ought to have one common interest as Irishmen. It is a monument of English power and Irish degradation. These are the qualities that constitute its real value in the estimation of our Whig and Tory rulers. The Whigs, out of office, have often made political capital by denouncing it as an intolerable grievance. The Whigs, when in office, have looked with complacent philosophy at the intolerable grievance, and have not stirred a finger to molest it. They, as well as the Tories, regard it as a useful auxiliary in the misgovernment and robbery of Ireland. It holds out rich rewards to an im- portant class, to sustain in every possible mode the (so-called) interests of imperial England as opposed to those of their native country. The injury of being thus rendered subser- vient to the powerful rivalry of another land becomes the more galling, when, as in the case of Ireland, the depressed nation is compelled to be the paymaster of those officers who enforce and perpetrate its own servitude. A man who thinks he can smooth his path to station and salary by cryiug, " Up with England ! Down with Ireland !" finds the inducement to anti- national politics much augmented, when to the motive of self- interest is added the stimulant of sectarian partisanship. That such a wealthy exclusive institution as the State Church should have kept a considerable portion of the Pro- testant body from merging into the great national mass, is in his work called " Income and Requirements of the Irish Church," a table professing to give the number of State Protestants in forty-eiovht selected parishes in 1834 and 1851 respectively ; by which he made it appear that the Protestant inhabitants were greatly increased by conver- sions, and amounted in 1851 to no less than 12,372 persons. Mr. Her- bert Skeats, in his excellent pamphlet styled " The Irish Church : a Historical and Statistical Review," follows the Archdeacon through each of his forty-eight parishes, and finds, by comparing the Archdeacon's figures with the figures of the last census, that if there really were 12,372 Protestants in those parishes in 1851, there must have been "the most alarming declension, in ten years, of the number of converts, or of mem- bers of the Established Church, that has probably ever taken place in any part of Ireland, or in any other country." And well might Mr. Skeats say so ; for the census of 1861 only gave a total of 6,939 State Protes- tants in the parishes in question. The other alternative suggested by Mr. Skeats is probably the true one — namely, that the Archdeacon's statement was inaccurate. 94 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. not greatly to be wondered at. Eeligious bigotry, combined with pecuniary profit, has availed to perpetuate the original hostility to Ireland of the Elizabethan, Cromwellian, and Williamite adventurers, in the breasts of their descendants of the present day. This long- cherished hatred of a domestic faction to their countrymen has no parallel in any other country. You will find all Frenchmen, of whatever party in the State, zealous for the glory of France ; all Germans ardent for the honour of Germany ; Spaniards for Spain, and so on. It is in Ireland only that you will hear from the lips of her un- natural children the frequent expressions, "this odious land !" " this detestable people !" " England will drag her triumphant cannon over your prostrate carcases if you dare to resist,"* with innumerable similar ebullitions of venemous hatred of the unoffending people among whom their lot is cast, and whose only crime is that they agitate for the common liberties of their revilers and themselves. A trivial circumstance will illustrate the satanic activity with which, under the pretext of religion, hatred of the Irish Catholic peasantry is instilled into the Protestant mind. I recently chanced to converse with a young lady who had been carefully brought up under parsonic influences, and who, I am certain, would not wilfully calumni- ate anybody. She abused our poor countryfolk as a set of ferocious and immoral savages. Of course she had derived that impression from her intercourse with teachers and com- panions. I tried to undeceive her, and stated one or two reasons to show her that she was mistaken. " Ah !" said she, " I wish you had been the other night at the lecture we heard from the Rev. Mr. ! He said the country people were a dreadful set, and told us how, when going among them, his life had been more than once in danger from the ferocity of fellows who were hounded at him by the priests. I can tell you he was well cheered." I have no doubt he was well cheered. On my fair friend's table was a "religious" work, in which it was affirmed that the Irish Catholics considered it a greater sin " to eat meat on Friday, than to murder a Protestant for a consideration." These details may seem trivial. But such prejudices are not trivial in their consequences when kneaded into the minds of large numbers of, possibly, well-meaning people, the current of whose affections has been thereby turned from the land that * I found this anti-national brag in the report of a speech delivered by Mr. Emerson Tennent. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 95 supplies them with their means of living, and from the people whom they ought to love. What, I ask, is the inexhaustible fountain of this pestilen- tial hatred of Ireland by Irishmen ? What feeds the stream of ceaseless calumny, insult, and political enmity ? Again I answer — the Church Establishment, acting through the in- terests it affects. Despite the lapse of ages, despite even the'connexions formed by marriage with many of the native families, the hostile spirit of the invader is as fresh, as vivid, in the modern descendants of the ruthless soldiery of Essex or St. Leger, of the sanguinary fanatics of the Commonwealth, or of the military settlers of the Williamite era, as it was some centuries ago in the breasts of their forefathers. They have never become blended with the people. I have heard language redolent of the most con- temptuous and envenomed hostility to the national population of Ireland, proceeding from tongues whose rich Hibernian brogue contrasted ludicrously with the anti-Hibernian senti- ments they uttered. Even the ignorant Orange tradesman still fancies himself a sort of Englishman in virtue of his Eng- lish creed, and the long habit, not yet extinguished by eman- cipation, of regarding its profession as a badge of social su- periorty. The most zealous Protestant, if sincerely desirous for the propagation of his religion, must desire the removal of a Church Establishment w T hich has rendered that religion more unpopular in Ireland than ten thousand Bellarmines or Bos- suets could possibly have done. The Catholic desires the removal of a system by which he is robbed. He desires that the scandalous malversation of a great national trust-fund should be put an end to. The Irish nationalist, whether Catholic or Protestant, desires to get rid of an Establishment in which he can only recognise an instrument of denationalisation, effectual in creating mutual distrust and hatred ; an instrument which debases and degrades the Protestant mind by withdrawing it from the real, vital in- terests of Ireland, in return for the protection afforded by England to domestic plunder. To any dispassionate observer at a distance, not aware of the source of the unnatural hostility of Ireland's domestic enemies to their country, how strange, how unaccountable must that hostility appear ! how strange that no national yearn- ings should be excited in their minds by the hallowed associations of home, the ties of kindred, the casting of their lot in the old 96 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. land of their birth ; that the blending of their forefathers' dust for many a generation with Irish earth, should yet leave the living descendant as alien in feeling — nay, as hostile, as if no such associations existed to bind his heart to his fatherland ! Strange that the mystic voices of the breeze that stirs the ancient sycamores over his ancestors' graves, should not whisper to his spirit to love Ireland — to strive for her liber- ties ! Strange that he should have no pride of country ; that not only is he destitute of the ordinary sentiment of pa- triotism indigenous to every other land on earth, but that from his tongue should emanate the bitterest insults to Ireland and her sons — from his brain should proceed the wickedest devices to enthral his own countrymen ! I once heard a jovial Irish squire of Cromwellian descent, whose estate lay in as peace- able a district as any in the world, exclaim that if it were not for the personal supervision his property required from him, he would quit "this abominable country and go live in Eng- land." An orator named Harte proclaimed at a meeting of the Dublin Conservative Society some years ago, that " it was perfectly notorious to every man who heard him, that to be a Protestant in Ireland was sufficient to render life insecure." These instances are not isolated. The party who exhibit this astounding hatred of their country are indefatigable in their calumnies. The inspiring source of that hatred is clearly dis- cernible in the pseudo-religious character of their attacks. Take two instances which accidently met my eye when I was preparing the first edition of this work for the press ; the first of these is an extract from the Cork Constitution newspaper of July 27th, 1844. It is headed, " DOINGS IN DINGLE. " On Sunday last, the Eev. Mr. Brasbie read his public re- cantation from the errors of Popery in Dingle Church. The fact of a priest abjuring Popery caused great excitement, and the magistrates, having got full notice that the mob were de- termined to execute Lynch law on the priest on his road to the church, took full precautions to preserve the peace. Be- fore service commenced, the townspeople were astonished to see the Hon. Captain Plunket, of II. M. steamer Stromboli, march into the town from Ventry with a force of about 100 men, including the marine artillery and marines, with drums and colours. This fine body of men, armed to the teeth, having joined the seamen and marines of H. M. brigantine Lynx, under the command of Captain Nott, presented such an IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 97 imposing appearance, that, we need scarcely say, everything passed off very quietly. The coastguard from the surrounding stations were marched to church, fully armed, and conveyed the reverend gentleman to the house of the Rev. Mr. Gayer, where he at present remains. Mr. Gillman, our active sub- inspector, had all his police ready to turn out at a moment's notice. Dingle for the last twenty years never presented such a force." Lord Aberdeen, about that period, apologised in parliament for the non-transmission of a marine force to Morocco, as Her Majesty's war-vessels were on duty on the coast of Ireland. His lordship ought to have explained the tremendous nature of the duty which deprived the Mediterranean of the presence of the British flag. He should have announced that the Strom - boli and the Lynx were required to assist the "missionary church" (as the Evening Mail delights to term the Establish- ment) in the acquisition of the Rev. Mr. Brasbie to her fold. The whole paragraph is redolent of Irish State-Churchism. The transition from Popish error to Protestant truth is per- formed by the beat of drum and with the flourish of military colours. The triumph of having caught a priest who will re- nounce holy water and purgatory is combined with the con- genial triumph of saying to the mob," My lads, we have 100 marines, all armed to the teeth, who will make smithereens of any man that dares to wag a finger." The orthodox parade of "such a force as Dingle had not seen for twenty years," is requisite to give due eclat to the Rev. Mr. Brasbie's exchange of Pope Gregory XYI. for Pope Victoria as the head of his church ; and moreover to protect the sacred person of the con- vert from the truculence of the " mob," who in all probability did not care three straws for the exploits of the reverend gen- tleman. The other instance is the allegation, by the Rev. Mr. Nangle of Achill, that eleven Achillonians had attempted to induce one Francis M'Hugh to enter into a conspiracy to burn Mr. Nangle's house. That reverend gentleman also printed in the Achill. Herald (of which he was the editor) a statement that the Catholics of the island had conspired to break into his dwelling and strangle the inhabitants. His charge of medi- tated murder and arson, elicited from Mr. S. C. Hall, the well- known writer, an indignant letter to the Times, from which the following paragraph is an extract : "The intention of the conspirators (writes the Rev. E. Nangle in his own newspaper, the Ac/all Herald — fruitful 5 98 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. source of incalculable mischief!) was to have come down in considerable force at night, to have entered by one of the senior missionary's (i. e. Mr. Nangle's) house, to have strangled him and the other heads of the mission in their beds, and, after robbing them, to burn their dwellings. " Eely on it, sir, there is not a shadow of foundation for this 6 horrible plot.' For the sake of mercy and justice, lend your powerful aid to prevent so foul a slander from obtaining credit in this country. "Without meaning to insinuate that this cock-and-bull story of conspiracy to murder wholesale has been got up for the occasion, I may at least say that it occurs at a lucky mo- ment for the colony, inasmuch as within the next month the Rev. E. Nangle will make his customary round of visits to several English towns, and deliver his annual oration at Exeter Hall ; the result of which, once a year, is a freitage of English gold to his small colony at Achill. I append my name, which you will either print or withhold at your pleasure. " Jan. 8th 1844." " S. C. Hall. Mr. Hall is not only a Protestant, but a Conservative. I mention his religious and political opinions, not that his per- sonal truth and honour are in the slightest degree thereby affected, but because there are readers who will more readily accept the testimony of a gentleman who holds his views than if it were the evidence of a Catholic nationalist. In fact, it is extremely difficult to suppose that Mr. Nangle believed in the truth of his serious accusations. They were, of course, inter- spersed with affecting expressions of pious regret at the dense spiritual blindness of the people. Mr. Nangle prosecuted the alleged culprits. The charge of attempting to involve M'Hugh in a conspiracy to burn the house was sworn to at the Mayo assizes of July, 1844, by that person himself, who appeared to be a convert, probably of Mr. Nangle's manufacture. His sworn testimony was rejected by Judge Jackson as totally incredible.* * Mr. Hall's appreciation of the moral merits of the onslaught on the faith of the Achill Catholics, sustained by English contributions of money, maybe learned from the following passage of his "Tour through Ireland," page 400 : " It was impossible," says Mr. Hall, " not to appreciate the mag- nanimity of the poor, miserable, utterly destitute, and absolutely starving inhabitants of Achill, who were at the time of our visit enduring priva- tions at which humanity shudders — and to know that by walking a couple of miles and professing to change their religion, they would be instantly supplied with food, clothes, and lodging. Yet these hungry thousands — for it would be scarcely an exaggeration to say that nine-tenths of the IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 90 The work of pious slander is incessant. In July, 1863, a circular address was issued from "The Metropolitan House, Bachelor's- walk, Dublin," to the Protestant employers of Ire- land. It is headed with the words, " Assassination — Self Preservation/' and seems to have been chiefly meant to work upon the nervous fears of ladies, inasmuch as it commences, "Dear Madam." I copy the first and last paragraphs of this most characteristic document : "The assassinations that are taking, and have taken place, almost daily, in our unhappy, but, alas ! notorious country, prove beyond a shadow of doubt that it is neither safe nor prudent for landlords to employ Roman Catholics as domestic or farm- servants, or to locate them on their lands as small farmers or stewards. To illustrate this statement by numerous examples would be to waste your time, and trifle with the most serious evil of the age in which we live." The Address goes on to urge, as the best means of self-pre- servation from Popish assassins, the employment of "Protes- tants only who are in favour of British connexion." Roman Catholics, indeed, may be employed; but only "in stations unaccompanied by risk and personal danger." They are to be shown a holy and edifying example, and to be taught to live "in the constant practice of godliness, industry, and every Christian virtue." Having thus exhorted the Protestant em- ployers to keep their dangerous neighbours at a prudent dis- tance, the Address concludes as follows: "This method of self-preservation would, we are convinced, be found a golden rule — a royal road to domestic safety, security, and protection, for Protestants individually and collectively. It would check the assassination and decimation of our gentry ; and it would reflect its blessings on those who are not of our communion. It would elevate our class, edify the church, receive the ap- proval of the Most High, and attract the attention and imita- tion of the civilised and uncivilised inhabitants of Great Bri- tain, of Europe, and of the World. — Your very humble Servant in Christ Jesus, « The Secretary, u July ig 3 » " Employment and Aid Society for Protestants. This address was intended for private circulation ; but a copy population of this island were, in the month of July last, entirely without food — preferred patiently to endure their sufferings rather than submit to what they considered a degradation. Such fortitude we do believe to be without parallel in the history of any 4 ignorant and unenlightened' people since the creation of the world." 100 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. of it accidentally reached the hands of Mr. A. M. Sullivan, the ahle and patriotic editor of the Nation, in which journal that gentleman published it on the 15th of August, 1863. One mode of keeping up the sectarian excitement was by displaying anti-Catholic placards in the streets. This was for a long period constantly and offensively done. An English gentleman, one of the most illustrious of the Oxford converts, wrote to me from Dublin that if the Catholics were to retaliate with anti-Protestant placards, a state of things would be pro- duced which would probably compel the government to put a stop, to that species of warfare. There were controversial handbills profusely scattered over the country — thrown upon the highways, flung into the fields, and pasted upon walls. The piers of my entrance-gate were thus decorated. Whether any of the handbills displayed talent, I am unable to say. The attempts at argument in those which I saw were the veriest sweepings of controversial rubbish. But they attacked " Popery," helped to exasperate the Catholics, and gave an appearance of activity in return for the large sums of money with which the managers of the affair were subsidised by credulous English fanatics. Let me here observe, that, great as has been the evil result- ing from religious bigotry, yet the presence of two hostile creeds within the land has not been totally without its good. I have heretofore spoken of the Protestant church with refer- ence exclusively to its temporal establishment. I now speak of it as a religious system ; and, as such, it has derived some moral advantage from the presence of antagonist Catholicity. The advantage has been mutual. Two rival churches will watch and purify each other. Not that this is any justification of religious differencas ; not that such differences are necessary lo preserve religion pure; but simply that where they happen to exist, God can educe good from the evil of disunion. Contrast the morals of the Protestants of the present day with those of their fathers in the heyday of the penal laws, when Catholics were too insignificant to be their rivals — when Protestantism had everything its own way. Then were the golden days of duelling, of drunkenness, of pro- fligate clubs in the metropolis — the Cherokee, the Hell tire, the Pinkers and Sweaters, whose orgies are still preserved in the local traditions of Dublin. Then were the da\sof galLmt jovial, hard-drinking parsons — men who were paid by the state for talking every Sunday about religion, and who, ac- cordingly pronounced some cold and formnl sentences to small IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 101 congregations, who, on their parts, conceived that they per- formed a meritorious duty in listening with grave faces to the solemn homilies. Catholicity, however, uprose in renovated strength, shook off its penal bandages, and assumed the atti- tude of spiritual rivalry. The State Church was alarmed. If the Protestant clergy and their flocks became more bigoted, they certainly became more virtuous. The majority of the parsons of our day are moral and pious. Apart from the drawbacks of anti-Irish prejudice and anti-Catholic slander (in which latter not one-twentieth part of them actively partici- pate), they are in general personally virtuous and exemplary. Would to God that Irishmen of all creeds could recognise and rejoice in each other's good qualities; that they could turn the rivalship of antagonist creeds to its legitimate ac- count — the promotion of religion and morality; discard all unchristian acerbity, and unite with cordial, mutual trustful- ness in the national cause ! CHAPTER IX. 'Tis only to gather Our strength and be ready, The son with the father, The wild with the steady — In front of the danger, To tramp all together Defying the stranger, In hail or in heather.— J. De Jean. The continued existence of the Union for thirty years had a powerful effect in benumbing nationality amongst those whose re- ligious teachers inspired them with a suspicion of their country- men. They had become accustomed to be legislated for by England, and use had rendered them insensible to the de- gradation which had roused up, in 1800, the Irish spirit of the very Orangemen. The Union had debased and degraded many of the generation who had grown up since its enactment. They sneered at the Repealers as visionaries, and — prejudging the whole matter in dispute — they flippantly asserted that there was nothing Ireland could gain from native legislation that she could not also obtain from the imperial parliament. The Reform agitation of 1831 necessarily excited the Eng- lish mind to a pitch of intensity. The Irish were busy with their own agitation ; and when Reform had been carried, and some enlargement of the constituencies temporarily etfected, the Repealers mustered their strength to send members to St. Stephen's who should represent their principles. Many Irish agitators, elate with the prospect of parliamentary 102 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. distinction, were speedily in the field. Ere the senatorial vision had crossed their aspiring thoughts , some three or four had acquired more than ordinary notoriety by their agitation. Of these, one of the most conspicuous was Feargus O'Connor. Feargus was fourth son of Roger O'Connor, who, in 1798, re- sided at Connorville near Dunmanway in the county of Cork. Roger O'Connor was involved in the rebellion of which his brother Arthur was one of the principal leaders. Arthur wished to make Ireland a republic on the French model of 1792. He was a thoroughly honest politician. Of his dis- interestedness there is conclusive proof in the fact that he de- liberately forfeited the splendid inheritance of his maternal uncle, Lord Longueville, who was childless, and who would have made him his heir on condition of his adopting his lordship's politics. Roger's views were monarchical ; I believe he intended to exercise the sovereign authority himself. Roger employed his military skill in fortifying Connor- ville to sustain an attack from the king's troops. He planned a trap for them also, of which I had a detailed description from a gentleman who was personally cognizant of the device. There were two fronts to Connorville house. From the front that faced the public road the halldoor steps were removed ; and the windows of the basement storey on that side of the house were strongly built up. No hostile entry could have been effected upon that front. The other front opened on a large courtyard, nearly sur- rounded with high buildings. From the eastern side of this courtyard ran a broad, straight avenue, some hundreds of yards in length, between two very lofty walls overgrown with ivy of extraordinary luxuriance. At the extremity of this avenue farthest from the house was a high and massive iron gate. The whole length of the avenue was commanded by cannon which were placed in a shed in the courtyard, and managed by French artillerymen. The massive gate at the eastern end of the avenue was left constantly open, to invite the entrance of his majesty's troops in the event of a hostile descent upon Connorville. There were men always stationed perdu in the huge ivy bushes at the top of the piers, to lock the gates the instant the military force should have passed through. The soldiers would thus be caught in a complete trap ; hemmed in by the lofty walls that flanked the avenue, their retreat cut off by the iron gate behind them, and their position fully raked in front by the cannon in the courtyard.* * I have allowed this account of Roger O'Connor's preparations to re- IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 103 The scheme seemed feasible enough, but it never was real- ised. The soldiers came to Connorville — they entered the avenue and courtyard ; but whether the artillerymen had de- serted their post, or whether Roger had not completed his intended preparations, certain it is that the redcoats scoured the premises without molestation, and Roger surveyed them from the friendly shade of a holly tree in which he was en- sconced, on a rocky eminence that overlooked the courtyard from the north. He escaped on that occasion ; his capture did not occur for some months after. His subsequent imprisonment at Fort George in Scotland is well known. I possess, in his manuscript, a poetical " In- vocation to Sleep," which he composed during his incarcera- tion. It is manifestly an unfinished production ; a few lines may serve as a sample of its merits : " Far from my native land, far from my wife And all my little babes, on Moray Firth Incag'd and barr'd with double bolts I drag My heavy days and lengthened nights of pain. On Sleep, that dull and partial god, I call In vain ! unheard or slighted are my plaints. The constant tramp of feet and watchful cry Of 'Who comes there V the sentry's hollow cough, Contracted from the midnight cold and damp, Assail my ear, still conscious of the sound. The bell's loud voice, which speaks old Time's decay, Is so familiar grown, I still conceit That I can tell his numbers by his note. Oh ! for a cup of Lethe's pool to steep My weary senses in forgetfulness !" When Roger was released from Fort George, he was per- mitted to reside in England, but not for some time to return to Ireland. When at last this restriction was withdrawn, he returned to Ireland and purchased the magnificent mansion and domain of Dangan Castle in the county of Meath, the birth-place of the Duke of Wellington f and the family-seat of the Wellesleys. The purchase-money was to remain for main unaltered from the first edition of this work. It was given me by my father. A lady, who professes to recollect Connorville at the period, has, I am told, asserted that the preparations were not actually made. It is therefore proper to say that my father may possibly have described to me a plan which Roger only devised, but did not bring to the point of preparation. But my impression of the communication I received is such as I have given in the text. f This was popularly believed. But it is said on plausible authority that the Duke was born in the family mansion in Dublin, Mornington House in Upper Merrion-street, now occupied by the Ecclesiastical Com- missioners. 104 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. some time in his hands bearing interest. The following brief notice of Dangan occurs in Arthur Young's " Tour in Ire- land, " under date 28th June, 1776 : " Went in the evening to Lord Mornington's at Dangan, who is making many im- provements which he showed me. His plantations are exten- sive, and he has formed a large water having five or six islands much varied ; and promontories of high land shoot so far into it as to form almost distant lakes ; the effect pleasing. There are above 100 acres under water, and his lordship has planned a considerable addition to it." The extensive plantations had grown up into lofty woods before Roger became their proprietor. His declared object in becoming the occupant of Dangan was, that he might possess a house fit for the reception of Bonaparte, as he professed a firm faith in the advent of the Emperor to Ireland. Welling- ton, however, was less hospitable, and effectually prevented the visit of Napoleon to his hereditary residence. Feargus was born at Connorville in 1796. He resided a good deal with his father at Dangan until the mansion was consumed by a fire said to have been accidental. He had, how- ever, been sent to two or three schools, at which he distin- guished himself by a number of irregular pranks ; he also ran off from his family to England, and amused himself hay- making one summer in Wiltshire. Eoger was eccentric and imaginative. Feargus early acquired a taste for an adventu- rous life, and politics naturally had a place in his rumina- tions. In 1822 he resided, with other members of his family, at Fortrobert, a spacious house on a hill adjoining the domain of Connorville. There he lived a jolly life — enjoying the so- ciety afforded by the neighbourhood, to which his entertaining conversation rendered him a welcome acquisition ; playing whist ; riding to foxhounds ; outrivalling all his competitors in desperate horsemanship ; and giving occasional indications of the spirit within him by attacks on prominent local abuses. He published a pamphlet fiercely denouncing the oppressors of the peasantry — parsons, tithe-proctors, grinding middle- men, jobbing grand-jurors — with especial censure of all magis- trates trafficking in justice. As yet Feargus had not tried his rhetorical powers in pub- lic. But the exciting political transactions of 1831 and 1832 necessarily called forth so active and ardent a spirit. He first appeared at a Whig meeting held in Cork in December, 1831, for the purpose of forwarding Reform. Messieurs Jephson of Mallow ; N. P. Leader, then member for Kilkenny ; Delacour, IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 105 a banker ; Stawell of Kilbrittain ; Baldwin of Cork ; with some youthful scions of the Shannon and Kingston families, and several other Whig notables of the county, were mustered in the old court-house on the Grand Parade at an early hour. They all rehearsed the usual commonplaces of Reform ; talked in a tone of aristocratic condescension about the claims of the democracy ; announced that in order to establish a right to full citizenship it was not requisite that men should exhibit rentrolls and pedigrees ; with a great many equally respectable political truisms. Up to four o'clock the most amusing speaker was Leader, the member for Kilkenny. He was a stout, thick- set man, with a wild ferocious eye ; he shouted and bellowed, gesticulated like a harlequin, slapped his thighs, spun nearly round on tiptoe, emphasised remarkable hits by bobbing down his head within a couple a feet of the floor, roared, stamped, ranted, blustered, and, perforce of a thundering expenditure of personal energy, elicited vociferous applause. Late in the day Feargus came forward to the front, of one of the galleries ; distanced all the Whigs and Reformers by exclaiming that Repeal alone could save L*eland from ruin ; and certainly so far as concerned the external matters of voice, action, and delivery, he made beyond comparison the best speech of the day. Feargus now set himself to work in earnest to attain poli- tical leadership. He had not yet contemplated an attack on the representation of the county, for he had not yet seen to what extent the Reform bill would popularise the constituency ; but he dearly loved the greeting cheers of the multitude ; he re- velled in the consciousness of possessing unusual volubility, and he had a strong conviction that his popular talents would soon exalt him into a position of political command. In the summer of 1832, the anti-tithe agitation extended itself all over the county of Cork. Feargus was ubiquitous. Macroom, Dunmanway, Enniskean, and several other places were visited in rapid succession. "Fargus," as the country folk familiarly termed him, soon ingratiated himself into every one's favour ; and by the frankness and ease of his address, and his great colloquial powers, disarmed the suspicious en- mity of many in the middle ranks, who had previously ana- thematised both himself and his cause. He soon received the distinction of two or three public entertainments. At Macroom he got a dinner from about three hundred farmers and shopkeepers, at which he, for the first time, publicly announced himself a candidate for the re- 106 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. presentation. He declared, in accents of affecting pathos, that his advocacy of the people's rights had weaned from him the affections of his nearest relatives. " Since I last," said he, " met my friends of Macroom, there has heen no smile on my cheek, no comfort in my breast. My nearest relations have turned from me ; it is true they recog- nize me privately, but in public they have wounded my feel- ings. I leave them to that awful moment when the sacred Monitor shall arouse them to reflection — when he shall tap here" (pointing to his breast), " and cry, Awake ! Be judged !" It behoved the people, upon whose behalf the sufferings in question were incurred, to apply the salve to the patriotic victim. It especially behoved the tradesmen of Macroom to indemnify him for his sorrows, inasmuch as he claimed the honour of membership with their fraternity in virtue of his having taken part in a meeting held in the large square of that town, in the month of June previously. The electors in the popular interest had been urged by the Catholic clergy to register their votes, and the shrewd ones began with confidence to augur a very large liberal majority at the next general election. At the Macroom dinner, as we learn from the Cork Southern Reporter of that date, " the sub- ject of the representation was freely discussed. Mr. O'Connor announced his intention of becoming a candidate for the county of Cork at the approaching election. He was received with great enthusiasm, and all present confirmed his pretensions by the highest eulogy of his claims and character. A general pledge was made by the company of their support and influence. At the suggestion of the chairman, a resolution was entered into for the formation of an Independent Club to organize the representative franchise in the county, the better to secure the return of Mr. O'Connor in conjunction with any other popular candidate who should present himself. The conditions laid down for the future candidates were a full support of the Re- peal of the Union, total abolition of tithes, vote by ballot, and universal suffrage." It was late at night when Feargus rose to announce his re- solution to become a candidate for the county. The candles had nearly burned down to their sockets, and threw a dim and doubtful gleam upon the large apartment. A very prosy, windy speaker had occupied a great deal of time in delivering a speech which I cannot better describe than by saying that in matter and structure it resembled an interminable leading- article in a tenth-rate country newspaper. Listeners got tired — IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 107 Feargus was especially impatient ; yet the orator not only prosed on, but seemed to regard his newly-found capacity for public speaking as a subject of particular congratulation. " This," he exclaimed, " is the first time I ever made a speech, and I never thought I could have talked so long without stop- ping — it appears to me that I'm inspired !" and he continued to give the audience the benefit of his inspiration either until he had exhausted the afflatus, or until the chairman checked his utterances on the plea that the hour was now far advanced. The crowd had drawn close to the small dais, or platform, on which were assembled the chairman, the guest, and two or three other country gentlemen. There was great exultation at the hope of seeing the popular favourite returned to parlia- ment. When Feargus announced that he would stand for the county, a rapturous hurrah ! testified the general delight. The candidate resumed his seat, much pleased at the sym- pathy of his friends ; when a movement was discerned among the throng, as of some stalwart fellow elbowing his way to the front. Feargus rose, and recognised the person who was forcing himself forward; he was a broad-shouldered, red- haired, athletic Protestant farmer named Whiting, who bore a strong personal resemblance to the burly candidate himself. "Make room for Mr. Whiting," said Feargus in his bland- est accents. Room was immediately made for his passage. " How are you, my worthy friend?" continued Feargus, courteously shaking hands with Whiting. " Would you wish to get on the platform ? We've plenty of room for you." Whiting accepted the invitation and was given a chair, on which he seated himself. He gazed for some moments at Feargus in mute ecstasy, and then broke forth, " Fargus ! Fargus ! is it not the murdher of the world to see you looking after the representation of a county in their English parlia- ment, instead of enjoying (as by right you ought) the royal crown of Ireland upon that honest red head, as was worn by your ancesthors in the ancient times of ould!" Feargus, however, limited his ambition to a seat for the county despite this stimulating burst of post-prandial enthu- siasm. He smiled assuasively in return for Mr. Whiting's complimentary allusion to his ancestral honours. The scene was amusing, and its effect was heightened by the personal resemblance of the sturdy yeoman and the patriotic orator, who exchanged the most affectionate glances with each other. Feargus lashed all jobbers, particularly jobbing magistrates who made a profitable traffic of their justiceship : " they ate 108 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. justice, drank justice, lay upon justice, rode justice, wore jus- tice — aye, threadbare !" He complimented the tradesmen of Macroom, by whom he was surrounded: 11 Tradesmen we are all, in fact, from the monarch who tills the throne, and whoso trade is that of cabiuet- jilting, to the humble chimney-sweeper who loudly proclaims his calling from the house-tops. I am a tradesman of Ma- croom. I was bound npprentiee in the great square on the 10ft fane Im4 " (alluding to the anti-tithe meeting held on t". * day) ; "and on my snowboard shall bo Peace, Industry, Union, and Freedom." At the Enniskean anti-tithe meeting, Foargns gallantly de- f.nl tin I>;.kif of Wellington. "I did boar that a military t'.-rn- was to have nttoinhd. It* I saw that force under the command of the Great Capt in of the nge, I would tell him w:m in bis dotage, an 1 that tho powt-r of knowledge was greater than the power of cannon." He defended bimsolf from calumnious imputation : H Hero I stand in the midst of thousands and tens of thousands to whom I have been known from my birth, and I fearlessly ask them if the breath of slander has hore ever dared to assail my . .' : r • N i . • an 1 oho. is). "I lave 1 over Op- i . . i t) ii., :m. *t in.iix ill mil among you?" ("No! no I BQnrah !*) 44 Haw I not over been your advisor and director " t •• V. - ! \ • ^ ! hnrrah ! "). Ho announced tho religions object of his agitation at a dill* ner given him in Enniskean: '* My obj ot is to pnrify the rrl.gion 1 profess by lopping oft its rotten and redundant tem- poralities' ai: ., The people did not respond to any great extent to the bel - ligerent call of their Accepted Present. It was supposed, or promised, that 100,000 Chartists would assemble to oppose O'Connell ; but the contemporary journals state that from two to three thousand at the utmost, assembled upon Holbeck Moor. Feargus, during the earlier part of his imprisonment in York Castle, was treated with atrocious severity. He published in the newspapers statements of the barbarous indignities in- flicted upon him. In a letter to the Times he expressed a fear lest the prison discipline should abridge his existence ; and desired that in the event of his death, his body should be opened by three surgeons whom he named — one residing at York, another at Hammersmith, and the third in London. Before he had ended his epistle, however, he evidently thought that it would be better to live for future political squalls than to die in jail for & post mortem examination : " Adieu, world," he concludes, " for seventeen months ; but, by heaven ! I'll make a storm in you yet." IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 127 In jail he performed some eccentric exploits. On the first Sunday after his arrival he was conducted to the chapel of the prison, where he astonished the congregation and scandalized the parson by bellowing the responses of the service in sten- torian tones. He was not again required to attend the chapel during his imprisonment. He early acquired supremacy among the apostles of Chart- ism. Joining the Chartists as a volunteer, he speedily worked himself into the supreme command, although he had compe- titors of by no means contemptible ability. A Chartist gentle- man once said to me, " He began with us as a disciple ; but, sir, he soon distanced all of us." In the Evening Star, a sort of adjunct to the Northern Star, and, like it, edited for a time by Feargus, an amusing writer published a series of sketches of the Chartist leaders, com- mencing with a portrait of the Chartist chief. The writer, describing an interview with Feargus and a Scotch Chartist leader named MacDouall, acquaints us that the latter gentle- man claimed a diabolical pedigree. " i Son of the Devil,' said the gallant little doctor, 1 is the meaning of my sirname.' 1 And I am a lineal descendant from Roderick O'Connor, the last king of all Ireland !' said Feargus, kindled into a momen- tary pride of ancestry by this flash of the untameable spirit in the brave Scot. 6 There were five kings of Ireland, all O'Con- nors, at the same time, but I am lineally descended from Roderick, the Ardrigh, or high king. You see in me a speci- men of what my countrymen of the true Milesian descent would all have been, had it not been for the dwarfing effects of bad living and ill-treatment.' " It would seem that in thus offering himself as a specimen of the splendid proportions to which his countrymen might, if unpersecuted, have arrived, Feargus produced on the narrator an impression that he was, in truth, a being of mysterious and undefinable greatness. "From that period," continues the writer, " I have never seen O'Connor without regarding myself a3 in the presence of a true representative of the ancient Celtic chieftains — beings who depicture themselves to us out of the mist of time as characterised by simple and unaffected majesty of form and deportment, without the adornments of civilisation — the frip- pery of jewels, crowns, and sceptres." The writer ends by remarking that " the reality of O'Connor's greatness, as a devotee of principle," overawed his enemies. The above is doubtless very complimentary — not more so, 128 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. however, than Feargus himself could be on appropriate occa- sions. In Dublin lived a Mr. Patrick O'Higgins, who got up a nibbling opposition to O'Connell, and devoted a room at the back of his house to the reception of a few discontented de- serters from O'Connellism. Mr. O'Higgins professed himself an ally of Feargus, and promised to propagate Chartism in Dublin. Feargus acknowledged his merits in the Star, and ended an eloquent eulogium by exclaiming, " Rome had her Brutus — Ireland has her O'Higgins. " When Joseph Sturge, the Quaker, was candidate for Notting- ham on the principles of moral force Chartism, Feargus gave him active assistance in the preliminary agitation. An affray took place in the market square of Nottingham, in which Feargus displayed strength and valour worthy of the descend- ant of the Ardrigh Roderick ; for although beset by numbers upon every side, he knocked all down right and left. Next day twenty-one men swore that Feargus had severally knocked each of them down in the riot. The Univers translated the English accounts of the transaction into French, heading the narrative, " Meeurs Electorales Anglaises." At one of the meetings for the Nottingham election Feargus exclaimed, " Hurrah for Sturge and Nottingham ! or for the Devil, if he supports the Charter." I should like to have seen the quiet Quaker-face of honest Joseph Sturge, on being thus hypoihetically coupled with the prince of darkness by his reckless ally. Perhaps the hurrah for the Devil was intended as a compliment to Dr. MacDouall, who asserted the diabolical derivation of his patronymic. The reports 01 O'Connor's meetings and speeches in the Star are full of traits illustrating that wild energy which formed so marked a feature in his character. We are told how he sat down after a two hours speech so exhausted that the per- spiration oozed through his dress ; how he said he would work the flesh off his bones, or have the Charter ; how he cheered his followers by declaring that he was " as strong as ten bulls ;" how he described Lane-End as the place " where the lads beat the cavalry and made them retreat," adding, " in this town all the people are born marksmen. I learn that a lad of fourteen or fifteen could kill a crow flying with a stone." He was resolved to lose nothing by unnecessary modesty. In one of his addresses to his followers he thus stated his achievements and his consequent responsibilities: "I have made the mind of England, and it is my duty now to guide it." He was ambitious of the reputation of possessing classical IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 129 and scientific knowledge, as appears by the following extract from the Manchester Guardian : " Mr. O'Connor next referred to the charge of the Times, that he did not know how to spell ; and challenged any editor of that paper to be examined with him by any fellow from one of the colleges in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Geometry, Algebra, Arithmetic, &c, and if he (Mr. O'Connor) did not beat him, he would consent to be banished from the country for life." In 1847 he was returned to parliament for Nottingham, defeating Sir John Hobhouse by a majority of over 600. In 1848 an enormous Chartist demonstration, in which Feargus was of course the principal hero, took place in London. Serious disturbances were apprehended, and among the special constables then sworn in, it is said that the present Emperor of the French was enrolled. Feargus had instituted a land scheme, which elicited a vast number of five pound subscriptions from members of the Chartist body who believed that the payment of that sum would entitle them to profitable settlements on four- acre allotments. The scheme broke down, and with it broke dow T n its author's intellect. His insanity displayed itself in a num- ber of strange freaks in the House of Commons and its imme- diate precincts. He was confined, by order of the House, in one of its apartments for some days. During that period the newspapers gave constant accounts of his condition and his actions. From one of those accounts I take the following : " He still indulges in rapid, rambling aberrations; reciting to his attendants snatches of what he states to be his own poetical compositions — uttering now and then an eloge on the late Sir Robert Peel, abruptly broken off to descant on the disasters of an old woman and her pig in the bogs of Ballin- hassig — of a stud of some twenty long-tailed black horses his brother kept in Ireland — all whimsically interwoven with such canticles as are heard at the Coal-Hole, or by the recital of a litany, interlarded with tears, on the failure of the unfortunate land scheme." The exhibition was at once grotesque and melancholy. We discern amidst the shattered fragments of his once strong in- tellect, faint traces of the facetious humour which in his better days had rendered him an entertaining companion. He was removed to the asylum kept by Dr. Take at Chiswick, and thence, in 1855, to lodgings at Notting Hill-terrace, where he died on the 31st August of that year, in the sixtieth year of his age. The Chartists of London gave him a grand public 180 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. funeral. He was buried at Kensall-green cemetery. His ad- mirers at Nottingham have erected a statue to his memory. O'Connell preserved the Irish Eepealers from the alliance with the Chartists which Feargus wanted to effect. O'Connell had no confidence in the leaders, and he condemned the unfair and intolerant policy repeatedly practised by the party, of violently obstructing all meetings held for any other political object than the attainment of the Charter. CHAPTER XII. "Justice hath done her unrelenting part, If she indeed be justice, who drives on, Bloody and blind, the chariot-wheels of death." SOUTHET. We are constantly told, in this year of grace 1867, to expect vast benefits for Ireland from the English legislature when it shall be popularised by the pending measures of Reform. We had been told, in like manner, to expect great benefits for Ireland from the Reform bills of 1831. Our experience of that period does not encourage us to entertain sanguine hopes on the present occasion. The proceedings of the first reformed parliament furnished a conclusive answer to those Irish whig- liberals who opposed Repeal on the plea that reform in the English legislature would supersede the necessity for domestic legislation for Ireland. The Irish agitation in 1831-2 was not opposed by the Whig government so long as it could be considered auxiliary to the English agitation for Reform. But as soon as the triumph of Reform was certain, and the Irish agitators were no longer required to subserve English purposes, prosecutions were threatened ; Lord Anglesea proclaimed down meetings ; and the sailor-king was instructed by his ministers in 1833 to express from the throne his " surprise" and " indignation" at the efforts of the Irish to obtain a restoration of the national legislature, of which they had been deprived by a system of Machiavellian fraud and diabolic crime. O'Connell denounced the king's speech as " a brutal and bloody speech — a declaration of war against Ireland." The address, echoing the royal speech, was of course carried by an enormous majority. The Coercion Bill, for restricting the people of Ireland from meeting to petition parliament, was shortly afterwards introduced. There was a very full muster IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 131 of Irish and English members on the night of its introduction. Expectation was on tiptoe; it had been announced that dis- closures of an appalling nature would be made to justify its enactment. Lord Althorp (afterwards Earl Spencer) opened the case for the government. His delivery was heavy, hesita- ting, and unimpressive. He laboured under a disadvantage which in an impartial assembly would have been fatal — namely, that of requiring implicit belief in a tale of Irish outrages and horrors, in which the names of the informers were to a great extent suppressed. The House was ; called upon to ground coercive legislation upon unauthenticated charges ; and the pretext for withholding the authentication was, that to publish the names of the informers would expose them to personal outrage from their lawless neighbours. The House was perfectly ready to ground coercive legisla- tion for Ireland upon anonymous information. It was not nice as to pretexts. It was boldly alleged that praedial out- rages were the result of political agitation, and that in order to put down the former the latter should be suppressed. Any other origin of praedial outrages than political agitation ap- peared to be ignored by the friends of coercion. Lord Althorp's speech was a failure. O'Connell left the House immediately on its conclusion, and remained for some minutes in the lobby, offering triumphant congratulations to all the anti-coercion members whom he met, on the wretched exhibition of his lordship. " Did you ever hear anything more miserable ? Why, the government have literally got no case at all. Bad as the House is, it will be impossible to get them to pass the bill on such statements. Hurrah !" Thus did the Great Dan cheer the members of the Tail and his friends in general, expressing in the most sanguine terms his conviction that the government must be defeated. By-and-by Mr. Stanley (now Lord Derby) rose. He en- joyed one great advantage — he had an audience strongly pre- disposed in his favour. But in other respects he laboured under difficulties. He had, in fact, to repair Lord Althorp's failure. He had to re-state a series of allegations which had fallen, feeble and dull, from the incompetent lips of th.3 blundering leader. And well did he perform his task. Before he had spoken for five minutes, the attention of friend and foe alike was riveted in admiration of the orator's abilities. Clear, rapid, and animated, he scathed the Liberals with the fire of his sarcasm, and combated their arguments with his showy and plausible parliamentary logic. The natural graces 132 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. of his unconstrained and easy action, the vivid glances of his eagle eye, the air of bold and well- sustained defiance which no one could better assume, greatly enhanced the effect of his eloquence. He had gathered up some of the unconsidered sayings of his Irish antagonists, and paraded them before the House with wicked ingenuity as indicative of seditious inten- tions. He closed with a ferocious invective against O'Con- n ell personally, and sat down amidst thunders of Whig and Tory plaudits. Well did he merit the cheers of his party. The rickety and misshapen bantling of Lord Althorp was moulded by the plastic powers of Mr. Stanley into showy proportions and ap- parent strength. The bill was obstinately contested. Mr. O'Connell led the opposition, and displayed all the qualities of a great parlia- mentary debater. An Irish Conservative exclaimed with as- tonishment to the present writer as the House adjourned one night, " How stoutly Dan battles it out among these Eng- lish !" O'Connell had, in the course of the evening, thus concluded a fiery invective against the Whigs : "You have brains of lead, and hearts of stone, and fangs of iron." He displayed inimitable tact and dexterity in defence, promptitude and vigour in assault, and knocked about Whigs and Tories with an easy exercise of strength which astonished the mem- bers who had not previously witnessed such a brilliant display of his abilities. Despite the opposition of the friends of Ireland, the bill finally passed, and the constitutional privileges that yet re- mained to the Irish people were temporarily invaded — osten- sibly to check prsedial disturbances, but in reality to thwart the agitation for Repeal. Mr. Stanley had boasted that he would make his government feared before it should be loved. He did not make it either feared or loved — he only succeeded in making it hated. The crime thus committed against Ireland was aggravated by the fact that it emanated from the English Reformers in the full flush and heyday of their triumph. The first use the friends of English liberty made of their great victory was to crush the constitutional freedom of their Irish fellow- subjects. What a pregnant lesson to Irishmen ! What a practical com- mentary on the doctrine of imperial identification ! At the present moment there is a section of Irish politicians who tell us to accept Mr. Gladstone as the leader destined to conduct Ireland to greatness and prosperity. Mr. Gladstone has mer- IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 133 cilessly increased our taxation fifty- two per cent., and given a stimulant to the exodus by draining the country of the means that ought to circulate at home for the sustentation of our people. In fiscal affairs he has shown himself our unscru- pulous foe ; but he has given expression to the sentiment that Ireland, in all matters purely local, should be ruled in accord- ance with the feelings and principles of the Irish people. Pro- vided he is allowed to take our money to a ruinous amount, he does not object to gratify our harmless national fancies. We are therefore exhorted to regard him, and the great Eng- lish Reform party, as allies of inappreciable value. The ex- orbitant taxation imposed on us by Mr. Gladstone is an ac- complished fact. The liberal declarations of its author are as yet little more than mere words. Words are cheap. On the 18th March, 1846, Sir James Graham anticipated Mr. Gladstone's verbal liberality in the following manner : " I think," said Sir James, " it is our bounden duty, in legislating for Ireland, not to legislate with regard to English feelings, English prejudices, and still less with reference to English law which has long obtained the sanction of usage in this country. But we are bound to consult Irish feelings, Irish habits, Irish laws, as they have existed for centuries, though they may be at variance with the provisions found in the English statute-book."* Sir James spoke these words under the pressure of O'Con- nelPs Repeal agitation. If Mr. Gladstone's declarations to the same effect shall be found to possess more value for the Irish people, I shall of course rejoice. There is one respect in which Reform in the English parliament may probably be useful to Ireland. It is likely to increase the power of the English friends of ecclesiastical voluntaryism — the only English party in whose sincere desire to abate the nuisance of the anti-Irish State Church I can place the slightest confidence. CHAPTER XIII. •* They came in the morning, scoffing and scorning, Saying, ' Were you harassed ? were you sore abused?* ! Orange haters, ye heat the traitors, That betrayed our Saviour to the wicked Jews." Rockite Song. When the Coercion Act was passed by the first reformed parliament, the Eepealers were angry, but not depressed. If agitation was suspended for a season, its objects and purposes * Report in Morning Chronicle, 19th March, 1846. 134 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. survived with undiminished vitality and vigour in the affections of the people. Affairs, however, wore a very dreary aspect. There was a cessation of the cheering, spirit-stirring political activity which had enlivened the preceding year, whilst the Catholic tenantry were in many districts mercilessly scourged for their anti- tithe and anti-Union offences. Ejectments were served on non- voters as well as on voters by some of the more bigoted landlords of the Tory-evangelic school. I have two cleared districts at this moment before me — that is, districts from which the Catholic tenantry were swept out to make room for a docile Protestant colony. The townlands respectively named Castletown and Shanavagh are situated in the county of Cork, and in 1837 were part of the estate of a Union-Earl of high Tory politics and warm evangelic zeal. That noble lord is since dead ; but his political and evangelic mantle has fallen on his present successor. It is right to premise that in the instance now mentioned, the landlord appeared to have acted from religious enthusiasm, not from political resentment ; for the ejected occupiers had not registered their votes. But expulsion is the same whether proceeding from fanatical ardour or political vengeance. I have selected the townlands in question, because, from their proximity to my residence, I had access to the best informa- tion respecting them. It may not be amiss to devote a few sentences to the past and present memoranda of these districts — the rather as the tale, with a few slight changes, is that of many a spot in Ire- land. Instruction sometimes lurks in the simple annals of the poor. Kinneigh, the parish in which Castletown is situated, is a wild upland tract, rising into abrupt and rocky eminences abounding in furze and coarse herbage. The hills are savage without grandeur ; there is nothing picturesque in their out- lines, and none of them ascend to any considerable elevation. There has, of late years, been erected a handsome Protestant church which replaces the former barn-like edifice ; and in its immediate vicinity stands one of the inexplicable round towers, seventy feet high. This tower is the only thing in the parish worth looking at. A stern old monument it is, of days so long gone by that man's memory retains no trace of their annals. Having mentioned the church, I may as well waste a few words in commemoration of an ancient parson, now deceased, by whom the church-goers of Kinneigh were for a long time IRELAND AND ELER AGITATORS. 135 illuminated. This gentleman, the Rev. Gilbert Laird, dropped into the parish, no one could tell whence, about the beginning of this century, or perhaps a few years previously. All that the Protestant parishioners knew about the matter was, that a queer-looking little brown bunch of a man, whose appearance bore some resemblance to that minute variety of the porcine species, a hedgehog, suddenly appeared in the pulpit one day, and delivered a discourse containing nothing about which any- body who heard it could predicate any quality in particular. The slight curiosity which was excited by the first appearance of the new parson died away, when it was found that all in- quiry as to his origin, birthplace, former associates, or habits, were perfectly fruitless. On all those matters he preserved to the end of his days an impenetrable silence. He bore with him due credentials from the absentee rector, so that his title to the curacy was undoubted and unquestionable ; and that, he conceived, was all that his flock were entitled to know. He continued to officiate and to preach : I believe the only effusion of his pulpit eloquence which yet survives in the parochial memory, is a discourse from the nursery fable of the Idle Grasshopper and the Industrious Ant, with appropriate amplifications from the preacher himself. Feargus O'Connor, who was one of the Rev. Gilbert Laird's congregation, excelled in his mimicry of this sermon, and often delivered it with great comic power for the amusement of his friends. No two human faces could be much more dissimilar in form or feature than those of the clergyman and his imitator ; but this dissimilarity seemed to vanish, so exquisite was Feargus's presentment of the voice, the manner, and the expression of countenance proper to the reverend original. Mr. Laird became a sort of favourite with one or two squires who played backgammon and lived loose, rollicking lives. He rattled the dice with more sociability than he had displayed in any other occupation ; and, although personally free from vice, he was not the man to annoy his patrons with many troublesome moral remonstrances. By-and-by the queer little man acquired a sort of small popularity, probably because his absurdities furnished matter for mirth. Whimsical stories were told of him ; people were amused with his odd habits, such as getting his bed thrashed with short flails every morn- ing by the housemaids, and his sleeping with a bolster at the bed-foot in order to accommodate himself in the event of his choosing to reverse the relative positions of his head and feet during the night. His penurious style of living also supplied 136 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. matter for irreverent jests. He existed on the smallest pos- sible modicum of his salary as curate ; and the residue he re- gularly invested in the purchase of a life-annuity. The whole income arising from these investments he invested again ; so that if the insurance offices had given him ten thousand per cent., they would have still been gainers by their singular an- nuitant. Thus he went on, investing and re-investing ; and he flattered himself with the hope of enjoying the income thus created by the time it should reach £500 per annum. He continued unmarried until about the age of eighty- seven. He then united himself with a lady who was some fifty years his junior. The union was not happy, for he bitterly re- proached the bride with her deception in concealing the mal- formation of her left foot, which deformity he had not dis- covered until after the matrimonial knot was irrevocably fastened. He did not long survive the discovery ; and he now reposes in one of the graveyards of the city of Cork. The old gentleman, although far from being a model clergy- man, yet possessed the negative merit of doing no mischief. Such was the pastor to whose care the souls of the Protes- tants of Kinneigh were for many years committed. Whilst the spiritual interests of his small flock flourished under his tutelage, the temporal concerns of the Catholics were not in a very prosperous condition. They held the land from a middle- man named Gill man, who was the immediate tenant of the Earl of Bandon. Some of them paid their rents from the pro- ceeds of illicit distillation ; and the necessary consequence of such a system was the demoralisation of the parish to a con- siderable extent. The falsehood and chicane indispensable to those who carry on a contraband trade are not the worst re- sults of their illegal occupation. Men who live in defiance of the law become desperate, and blood has been shed in that unhappy district in defence of the pottheen stills. Undoubtedly the whole blame of these evils should not be cast upon the people. Those squires and squireens who encouraged their traffic by becoming their customers are to a great extent cul- pable.* * The manoeuvres of distillers to smuggle their whiskey have often dis- played much inventive genius. A celebrated Dublin distiller continued for a ,ong time to baffle the officers of excise by sending out large quanti- ties of spirits that had never seen a gauger's face, in tin cases which were made to resemble in shape the natural protuberance of a pregnant woman, and which were worn by accommodating damsels under their clothes. At last the distiller, growing bold from the frequent success of the experiment, tried his device on too extensive a scale. The suspicions of a knowing IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 137 Let it not however be supposed that Castletown was an un- mitigated pandemonium of pottheen desperadoes. There were many of the inhabitants who had nothing to do with the stills, and who were of very fair average characters. The middleman from whom the people held their farms died ; and their leases all expired with him. His term was for his own life ; the townland at his death reverted to the Earl of Bandon. Here was a glorious opportunity to plant a Protes- tant colony. The noble Earl rejoiced with exceeding great joy at the facilities now presented of serving an ejectment on Idolatry and Wafer- worship, and inducting a colony of True Believers into the evacuated district. The number of persons to be expelled, young and old, good, bad, and indifferent, was 247. The expulsion of such a multitude excited public interest. The Earl of Mulgrave, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, ad- verted to the circumstance in the House of Lords, and elicited the following reply from the noble perpetrator : "The Earl of Bandon felt, as the noble Earl opposite had alluded to him in so pointed a manner, it was necessary that he should trouble their lordships with a very few words. The noble Earl had brought a charge against him founded upon a newspaper report. He (the Earl of Bandon) was not in the habit of attending to newspaper reports, and he never condescended to answer them. He thought he had some reason to complain of the noble Earl for advancing so grave a charge against him, founded upon no more authentic information than that con- tained in a newspaper. He would not trouble their lordships by entering into a detail of his arrangements with respect to his own estate (hear, hear). He would only say that those whom he was accused, at that inclement season, of having turned adrift in the world, were, all of them, in their respective houses (laughter and cheers). Having made that statement he must repeat that he felt himself rather ill-used by having been called to defend himself from a charge founded upon no better authority than that of a newspaper."* Lord Bandon's virtuous indignation imposed on Lord Mulgrave, who immediately withdrew the accusation. The natural inference from Lord Bandon's words was, that the gauger were excited on seeing thirty-six women, r 11 enceinte, in Mr. 's premises. The gauger poked their persons with his wand, and speedily ascertained that the apparent fecundity of the fair phalanx was in truth derived from thirty-six tin vessels cunningly fitted to their persons, the contents of wiiich were speedily seized in his Majesty's name. * Parliamentary Report, in Cork Southern Reporter of 2nd December, 1837, 138 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. tenants were not to be molested. It is true that he did. not directly assert that they should not be disturbed, but his complaint of ill-usage at being accused of disturbing or ex- pelling them, was calculated to convey that impression to his audience. The real fact was that the tenants had all received notice to quit, but the notices had not then yet taken effect. The time of ejectment soon arrived. The aboriginal occupants were turned out, and new tribes of Hosfords, Applebys, Swantons, Dawleys, and Burchells were introduced. Three of the former tenants were permitted to retain a portion of their holdings ; of these a man named Hurley sought favour with the noble proprietor by promising to abjure Popery. The man accordingly went to the Protestant church, pursuant to his undertaking ; but conceiving that a domestic calamity — the idiocy of his son — was a mark of the divine vengeance at his change of religion, he threatened (according to the infor- mation I was given at the time) to return to his former creed. Whether he did so I know not. The whole machinery of proselytism was soon put in motion at Castletown and Shanavagh. Reverend personages exhorted ; readers and teachers besieged the Catholics on highways and byways ; schools were erected, to which some of the not yet extirpated Papists gave their trembling and reluctant atten- dance. The noble Earl's family occasionally visited these schools to watch the expansion of the nascent gospel seed, and to accelerate the process of its ripening by the warmth and light of their countenances. They are, I have no doubt, sincere enthusiasts ; and when we consider the vast influence their station and fortune if properly used might invest them with, it is deplorable to witness the direction their zeal has taken ; to contrast what they are with what they might be ; to see them take their stand in the front ranks of the anti- national interest, instead of being the honoured, cherished leaders of their countrymen to national independence. I can- not help remarking that there was a time when Francis Ber- nard, afterwards first Earl of Bandon, was associated with the people of Ireland in demanding the restoration of the Irish constitution. On the 25th March, 1782, at a meeting held at Bandon, he occupied the chair. There were three resolutions passed, of which the last affirmed, " That no power on earth can make laws to bind Ireland, except the King, Lords, and Commons thereof. (Signed) "S. Stawell, Colonel, Bandon Cavalry. "F. Bernard, Colonel, Bandon Infantry." IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 139 Grattan had then fired the mind of the nation, and the sacred flame ignited many persons who themselves, or whose descendants, have degenerated into anti-nationalists. At Shanavagh the politico-religious movement produced its natural results. A man named Hurley (a suspicious patronymic, it would seem, in these districts) attended the school with great assiduity, and after a due course of instruction, professed his willingness to attend the Protestant church. He accord- ingly became a church- going Protestant, and his new confreres thought that a valuable fish had been hooked, One day a tenant of mine met this convert on the road, and asked him wherefore he had quitted his earlier faith to adopt Protestant- ism. 1 ' Musha, God help us !" responded the convert, 1 1 I have got a small family to support, and I thought by turning I could maybe get a lase of the ould ground from Lord Bandon." " But you'd lose your poor sowl," remonstrated the other. " Och, maybe not — maybe not. I expect God won't take me so short entirely, but that I may quit them all and go back to Mass once more afore I die." The convert also told my informant that by way of an ad- ditional safeguard, he did not give attention to the preaching or prayers of the Protestant service, but rehearsed his own prayers mentally whilst the parson performed the service. Some time subsequently to the above conversation (which I took down from the lips of one of the parties) Mr. Hurley's duplex policy was curiously exhibited. He fell ill, and being afraid of death, despatched a messenger to bring the parish priest to administer the last rites of the Catholic Church. " But, hark ye!" added the politic invalid, " tell his reverence not to come up here till after dark, for fear any of the Pro- testants should see him and tell the minister." Mr. Hurley had considered his alternative — death, then Popery and Father O'Sullivan ; but if he should recover, then Protestantism and another attempt to conciliate his landlord's patronage. Father O'Sullivan (then priest of the parish) in- formed me that he refused to attend him, stating that his per- tinacious duplicity at that awful period totally disqualified him from the profitable reception of the rites of the Church.* He recovered, and continued to attend the Protestant place of worship ; but although he was permitted to remain in his * A reviewer, commenting on this narrative, said that it cut two ways, and that the priest must have left Hurley in a state of great ignorance. But Hurley was not ignorant that his conduct was criminal. He was 140 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. farm, I am not aware that he obtained a lease of it. About the period referred to, he sent an infant child to the priest to be christened ; the child was smuggled in a covered basket to escape the observation of the Protestants.* It is but justice to say that the Protestant clergy then, and since, in the district have been men of irreproachable morals. They, in common with their brethren all over the kingdom, were startled at the march of nationality ; they trembled for the stability, if not of their Zion, at least of its temporalities. Hence their itching and uneasy zeal to make an inroad on the enemy's territories. I suppose Mr. Hurley's conversion has plainly acting against conscience, and the priest had nothing to do with his conduct except to condemn it. * Whilst the first edition of this work (1845) wa3 passing through the press, public attention became excited by the case, tried at the Tralee assizes, of the Rev. Charles Gayer, one of the leaders of a proselytizing establishment at Dingle, county Kerry, versus Patrick Robert Byrne, proprietor of the Kerry Examiner newspaper. The defendant was con- victed of what, in the rigid acceptation of the law, was deemed libel; but the organized system of rank bribery to proselytise the Catholics which the evidence disclosed must, I think, have received a salutary check from the publicity thus entailed upon it. Timothy Lynch, a witness and ci-devant con-vert, deposed that he got from Gayer the sum of £\2 10s. and two half-crowns as the price of his adhesion. Edward Hussey, another witness, also deposed to having received money from Gayer in consideration of his becoming a Protestant. John Power, a fish-jolter, deposed to having received from Gayer " about £b or £Q" for a similar consideration. Thomas Hogan deposed to having got from Gayer seventeen shillings in two different sums and two pecks of potatoes, and a house rent free from another proselytiser named Moriarty ; in conside- ration of which benefits he became a Protestant. James Kearney, another convert, deposed that the considerations for which he conformed were plentiful employment and good wages from Gayer, and a house and garden rent-free ; " he never paid a farthing rent ; taxes and all are paid for him ; has a garden behind the house the same way, and every one else has the same ; none of them pay any rent." Maurice Power, a second fish-jolter, deposed to having bargained with Gayer to become a Protes- tant for the price of a horse to carry his fish. These statements were uncontradicted by Gayer, who was in court during the trial ; and some of them (such as that of the houses being rent-free for converts) were of such a nature as from the public notoriety of the facts rendered denial in Kerry impossible. It is difficult to resist a smile at the ludicrous character of the prosely- tising system, thus exhibited on the uncontradicted oaths of competent witnesses. But the horrible moral results of that system, the spiritual recklessness which it necessarily engenders, suggest solemn and mournful reflections. The total insensibility to real religious conviction of what nature soever, the organized hypocrisy resulting from the traffic of the people with " the Dingle Mission," appears in the following incident. A batch of fifteen of Gayer's proselytes, finding their adhesion to the State IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 141 been chronicled in some exulting report of the progress of " the gospel." He is certainly entitled to some notice, if it were only for the clever expedient of neutralizing the iniquity of his conversion by abstracting his mind, while in the Pro- testant church, from the services in which he externally pre- tended to participate. Well, Castletown was now peopled with a Protestant ten- antry. Shanavagh also was pretty well dotted with the new settlers. A sort of miniature millenium was to be exhibited amidst the Kinneigh furze -brakes for the edification of the surrounding community. The noble landlord doubtless re- garded his work with sentiments of self-applause. But — if the popular account of the matter may be trusted — the tenants disturbed his complacency by falling into arrears. Why should they live on potatoes and sour milk, as if they were no better than Papists ? They occupied the same religious level with his lordship. They accordingly lived well. Some of them showed their own sense of their gospel-dignity by follow- iug the hounds on good stout hunters. One peculiarly enthu- siastic Protestant shone forth in the glory of a red coat and top-boots. The Earl distrained his stock and crops, and set keepers to watch them ; the tenant grumbled, and muttered something about becoming a Repealer. Another Protestant Nimrod — Dawley — was menaced with expulsion from his farm ; whereupon, as the best revenge he could take on his lordship, he actually turned Papist and attended Mass.- Church less profitable than they had expected, turned off en masse to the Rev. Mr. M'Manus, Presbyterian minister at Milltown, and inquired what terms he would give them for becoming Presbyterians. In Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Coviel denies that Monsieur Jourdain's father was a linen-draper ; he had, indeed, from disinte. ested benevolence, accommodated the public wilh linens ; and the public, from their grateful sense of his kindness, had gracefully and delicately pre- sented him with certain moneys. On both sides it was an elevated inter- change of practical philanthropy — there was nothing of traffic in the transaction. Precisely thus did "Messrs. Gayer and Company deny that they ever bribed " converts." True, some pauper Papists, from the force of sudden and simultaneous conviction, came rushing headlong into Pro- testantism ; true, also, the Protestant agents gave money, and free houses, and employment to the converts. But there was nothing of a quid pro quo in the transaction. On the one side it was conscientious adoption of religious truth ; on the other it was the most exalted benevolence and " mercy to the household of faith." * The circumstances above recorded were communicated to me in 1844 by persons who had immediate access to the best information. All I know of the district at present is, that the Protestant colony continues to occupy the land. 142 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. The people in numerous parts of the kingdom feel the paramount necessity of efficient protection from the irritating persecution of which I have given a specimen. The best pro- tection would be found in the principle of nationality. Were that principle well developed in Ireland, it would speedily absorb all wretched sectarian contentions. It would extinguish the pernicious desire to exalt any one sect or church at the expense of any other. The doings I have briefly recorded are exploits of what is called the English interest in Ireland. The people can never be prosperous or happy until the magnates of the land cherish the Irish interest — which, if they did but know it, is their 4 own true interest — as paramount to every other. Every unprejudiced person will concede that the interests of real religion cannot be advanced by the system of evange- lical bullyism. That much of the crime and insubordination in Ireland has arisen from the extermination — whether pious or profane— of the inhabitants, will be readily admitted, when it is remembered that in the five years from 1838 to 1842 in- clusive, ejectment proceedings were taken against no less than 356,985 persons, as appears by parliamentary papers to which the public attention was called in June, 1843, by the late Mr. Sharman Crawford, who then affirmed that the clearing pro- cess went on at an increasing ratio. And from that day to this, among the incidents most familiar to those who watch Irish events with anxious interest, are the evictions of the Irish tenantry, often under circumstances which show that the work of expulsion is prompted by political vengeance or sectarian bigotry. It seems a curious and perverse fatality that the possession of the elective franchise, and also the want of it, have alike been fraught with bitter evils to the Irish peasantry. The exercise of the franchise in opposition to the landlord will has drawn down extermination upon tens of thousands. That the want of the franchise in former days also caused the ex- pulsion of the people from the soil, appears from a statement of John Keogh's in the published Correspondence of Edmund Burke. ' ' It is a known fact," says Keogh in 1792, the year before the concession of the forty- shilling franchise, " that the Roman Catholics have been, and are every day turned out of very beneficial farms, deprived of the maintenance of themselves and their families, have lost their honest occupations, and the exercise (the most beneficial to the State) of their industry > IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 143 and capitals, because they could not vote at an election, and to make room for those that could. A fortiori they have in multitudes of instances failed to obtain leases, nor can they ever obtain them on equal terms."* It was natural that a peasantry thus trained to regard the franchise as conducive to their livelihood, should, on first ac- quiring it, have used it for several years with greater subser- viency to landlord dictation than they have done in more recent times. When political corruption was at its greatest height, the landlord occasionally disposed of their electioneering in- terests to the candidates who bid the highest. The tenants saw that their votes were a subject of traffic with their land- lords. An instance of impartial rascality is recorded of Mr. B F . He sold the votes of all his tenants to two rival candidates, and pocketed the money of both. As he did not indicate to his tenantry the particular candidate for whose success he was desirous, one of the tenants, on behalf of the rest, asked his honour for which of the candidates they should vote ? " Faith, boys," answered Mr. F , " you may take your choice. I have knocked the highest penny I could out of your votes already, so it would be unhandsome of me to hinder you from selling yourselves now to whoever will bid the best." The tenants thanked his honour for his liberal per- mission, and proceeded as fast as they could to take his ad- vice. The expedients used to manufacture voters for an emer- gency were sometimes very curious. The well-known Mac- Coghlan of the King's county, when hard pressed for a batch of electors to turn the scale in an approaching contest, granted freeholds to the requisite number of voters ; the terms of the leases beiDg for the life of one Jack Murphy. The voters were put in possession — the election came on — and MacCogh- lan's friend, with the aid of the newly-made freeholders, car- ried the day. MacCoghlan, however, had not the least notion of allowing the new corps of voters to occupy his ground, now that their services were no longer necessary. He accordingly ended all their leases by shooting Jack Murphy, the common life in all. Be not horrified, good reader ; Jack Murphy was an old spavined horse. * Burke's Correspondence, iv. 6/. 1U IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. CHAPTER XIV. " Ireland rests 'mid the rush of progression, Like a frozen ship in a frozen sea ; And the changeless stillness of life's stagnation Is worse than the wildest waves could he Rending the rocks eternally. " Trump et-tongued, to a people sleeping, Who will speak with magic command; Bidding them rise — these dead men keeping Watch by the dead in a silent land ?" Speranza. O'Connell was at last obliged by the pressure of some mem- bers of the Tail, as well as by the remonstrances of the Repeal newspapers, to bring the question of Eepeal before the House of Commons on the 22nd April, 1834. For some days previously, Mr. Spring Rice, who was pitched on as the special champion of the Union, was observed to frisk about the purlieus of St. Stephen's with the smirking self- complacency of anticipated triumph. He looked forward to a two-fold victory. He knew that he should have an over- whelming majority against O'Connell's motion ; and he had availed himself of his peculiar facilities of reference to official documents to prepare lengthy tabular statements illustrative of what he termed the giant- stride prosperity of Ireland under the Union. "With these he expected to demolish O'Connell's allegations of Irish decay. The 22nd arrived ; the House was crowded with members ; the gallery with strangers. O'Connell's opening speech rehearsed the outrageous crimes committed by England against Ireland from the earliest date of their connexion. Having, by this historical retrospect, de- monstrated the systematic enmity of England to this country, the speaker thence passed to the measure of the Union, dilated upon the means by which it was carried, exhibited the falling off in national prosperity which had been its consequence, and concluded by moving "for a select committee to inquire and report on the means by which the destruction of the Irish parliament was effected ; of the effects of that measure upon Ireland, and upon the labourers in husbandry, and operatives in manufactures in England, and on the probable consequences of continuing the legislative Union between both countries." O'Connell's able and comprehensive speech occupied five hours. On the next day (the 23rd), Mr. Rice delivered his reply. IRELAND AND ITER AGITATORS. 145 He deprecated Mr. O'Connell's references to the English atrocities of former times, as being in their nature irritating and irrelevant to the question before the House. He alleged the danger of two independent parliaments in one empire, and inferred the likelihood of separation under such a system from the differences on the Regency question in 1789. I shall not recapitulate his arguments here, as the subject will be examined in the Appendix to this work. He alleged that the Irish Volunteers had tried to intimidate the Irish parliament subsequently to 1782. Well had it been for Ireland if their interference had been potential ! What the Volunteers sought was to procure a reform of the Irish House of Commons ; of which measure the principle has been since recognised, and incorporated with the British constitu- tion, by the English legislature. He alleged that the Irish parliament had been notorious for jobbery and corruption. Not more so, certainly, than the English parliament. Lord Macaulay says that there was a time when the only way in which the minister could manage the English parliament was by corruption.* That the Irish legislature was in this respect culpable, only proves that it needed the reform which the Volunteers sought — not that it ought to be extinguished. To urge the corruption of the un- reformed Irish parliament as a reason for putting an end to it, is extremely like saying that as death puts an end to disease, the best mode of treating a sick man is to kill him outright. He next quoted Grattan, to show that the achievements of the Irish parliament had not realised his expectations. But he omitted to quote Grattan's declaration that the Irish par- liament, with all its faults, had done more good for Ireland in fourteen years than the English parliament had done fur Eng- land in a century. He denied that the rebellion had been fomented in order to carry the Union. He alleged the parental care of Ireland evinced by the im- perial parliament; stating that no less than 175 committees on Irish affairs had been appointed by the House since the Union. He, however, forgot to state that the immense ma- jority of those committees had ended abortively ; and that the committee of 1825, for which he claimed the merit of carrying Emancipation, was in fact the product of O'Conueirs Irish agitation. He claimed merit for England in admitting Irish corn an 1 * Hist. England. 7 146 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. butter duty free ; as if it were a boon to Ireland to increase tbe supply of food to English consumers and to cheapen its price for them. England has, since then, done the same, for all the world ; compelled by the exigencies of the English stomach to import as much food as she can get, and on the cheapest possible terms. He inferred the giant- stride prosperity of Ireland from her largely increased exports of corn and cattle ; omitting to notice that the producers of the corn and cattle were disabled by penury from consuming the food of their own raising, and that much of the price received for the exports was again ex- ported to England in the shape of absentee rents.* Mr. Rice stated some acts of beneficial tendency which the United parliament had passed for Ireland. But in claiming credit for the Union on this score, he omitted to show that a reformed Irish legislature would not have passed every one of the good laws in question, and many more into the bargain. He produced multitudinous tables to demonstrate the im- proved condition and increased comforts of the Irish people generally after the Union. Cruel mockery ! At the time when he spoke, there was the evidence of the Kailway Com- missioners showing that 2,385,000 of the Irish people — being more than one-fourth of our then population — were destitute paupers for thirty weeks in every year. He stated many grants made by the imperial parliament to Ireland from 1800 to 1834. But he did not state that the greater part of those grants had been made prior to 1821, in virtue of an express stipulation at the time of the Union for their continuance for twenty- one years ; nor did he state that * In truth, a table of Exports and Imports may afford no true test of a nation's prosperity. Let me borrow the following illustration from my able friend Mr. Staunton (1844) : " Fifty years ago we manufactured our own cloth — at present we get cloth from England. Fifty years ago £100 worth of corn sent from Tipperary to Dublin was consumed in Dublin, and paid for with £100 worth of cloth made in Dublin. Here was a transaction which occasioned no exports or imports. Contrast this trans- action with the present condition of affairs. The £100 worth of corn goes from Tipperary — not to Dublin, but to England. Tt is paid for with £100 worth of cloth made in England. An item is furnished to Spring Rice's table of exports and imports, and he cries out ' Hurrah ! I have got a triumphant proof of Irish prosperity.' But how stands the fact ? In the former transaction, which exhibited no imports nor exports, the Irish corn fed the Irishman, and paid for Irish manufactures. In the latter transaction, which exhibits both an import and an export, the Irish corn feeds the Englishman, and is paid for in English manufactures, whilst the Irish operative perishes for want of employment." IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 147 the imperial parliament commenced the work of reduction as soon as the stipulated period had expired. And he did not state that the aggregate of the absentee rents and absentee taxes remitted from Ireland largely exceeded the whole of his boasted grants. He stated that the consolidation of the exchequers of Eng- land and Ireland in 1817 had been precipitated by the bank- ruptcy of Ireland. But he did not tell the House that Ireland had been made bankrupt by the financial terms of the Union, which had forced her to contract for an expenditure she was totally unable to meet. The reader will find in the Appendix a paper issued by the National League in which the nature of the fiscal grievance is examined. Mr. Rice quoted the amount of tonnage of the vessels clear- ing out from Irish ports, in proof of augmented commercial wealth, relying on his hearers' ignorance of the fact that ton- nage is frequently a delusive index.* He repeated the old fallacy that Irish agitation kept English capital out of this country. Just as if English capitalists were not constantly investing their money in countries where real danger and real obstacles are encountered — in foreign lands, where a single hostile shot between the countries would de- * To illustrate this position, I subjoin the following table of Dublin tonnage, which I obtained in 18-42 from a well-informed source. It is close enough to accuracy to serve the purpose of the argument : In 1832 there were about 130 vessels cleared outwards to foreign port? from Dublin. Of these 43 were in ballast (timber ships), and 52 with passengers. Thus, 95 out of 130 represented no profitable commerce. Again, in 1833, there were about 180 vessels cleared out to foreign ports. Of these 90 were in ballast, and 30 with passengers. Thus, 120 out of 180 represented no profitable commerce. Again, in 1834, there were 150 vessels cleared out to foreign porH Of these G4 were in ballast, and 49 with passengers. Thus, 113 vessels out of 150 betokened no profitable commerce. Before a table of tonnage, therefore, can be accepted as a test of com- mercial prosperity, it is necessary to ascertain the nature of the traffic which that tonnage represents. Of course a profitable export trade in^ volves large tonnage ; but, on the other hand, large tonnage inay exist w ithout a profitable export trade. 148 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. stroy the security for repayment. " England," says Captain Marryat, "has now 55 millions sterling invested in American securities, which is a large sum, and the majority consider that a war will spunge out this debt."* At a later period, Lord George Bentinck gave the House of Commons a list of English investments in foreign speculations, both civil and military. He was urging an advance of money for Irish railways, and contrasting the reluctance of parlia- ment to give a farthing for that purpose with the lavish pro- fusion displayed by government, as well as by private specu- lators, in squandering English wealth on the objects he enu- merated : " Send it abroad," said his lordship, " as you did some £70,000,000 for three years to foreign countries to sup- port their wars and to subsidise foreign nations. Send it abroad, as you did £10,000,000 or £12,000,000 in 1825 ; and invest £7,000,000 sterling in Peruvian mines, Mexican gold and Mexican silver, as you did in 1825. . . . Sink your capital in no less than twenty-three foreign mining compa- nies. . . You also sent £18,000,000 to Portugal, and you sunk £22,000,000 in Spanish Actives, Spanish Passives, and Spanish Deferred. To America, in 1836, you sent millions. You got rid of £100,000,000 in this way."f The English capitalist can scatter his investments broad- cast all over the globe excepting in Ireland. Dangers of climate, dangers of war, perils of earth, air, or ocean deter him not. It seems there is only one scarecrow on the face of the earth that has terrors for his adventurous soul ; and that scarecrow is Irish agitation. Mr. Spring Rice in 1834 affirmed, with as much parliamentary gravity as if he expected a single human being to believe him, that the capitalists who were un- deterred by the vast variety of real and substantial dangers that beset their undertakings in the most remote corners of the globe, were frightened out of Ireland b}' Irish agitation — that is to say, by the clack of our platform eloquence. Our subsequent experience teaches us a different lesson. There was, for a good many years after the famine, a cessation of what is called Irish agitation. We were nearly as quiet as the graves into which myriads of our countrymen had been precipitated by English misgovernment. Did English capital stream into our country, to reward our quiescence and to verify the prophecies of Mr. Spring Rice ? On the contrary, Mr. *Capt.Marryat's Diary in America, Part II. vol. 2, p. 118. London. 1839. t Speech of Lord George Bentinck in the House of Commons, 4th February, 1847. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 149 Gladstone seized the moment of our helpless prostration to add about £2,300,000 per annum to our taxes ; which friendly achievement constitutes, I presume, his claim to the enthusi- astic confidence so warmly expressed by some of his Irish ad- mirers. The talk about English capital coming to Ireland is an im- pudent mockery. We should not want a shilling of English capital if England did not rob us of Irish capital. We are plundered of our own by a ceaseless process of abstraction, and then it is said to us, " Do but keep quiet, and suffer Eng- lish wealth to stream into your island." Whatever other reasons may exist to prevent the investment of English capital amongst us, it is certain that the Union, by giving the English manufacturing capitalist the command of the Irish manufacture- market, deprives him of at least one motive to expend his capital in establishing manufactures here. He has already got our market. What more does he require ? From his mill or his factory in Yorkshire or Lancashire, ha can pour any amount of his fabrics into Irish circulation. Why, then, should he incur the needless risk and expense of establishing a factory in Tipperary or Roscommon ? Mr. Rice's oration lasted for six hours and a-half. At its close he was unable to find the amendment to which his long speech was the prelude. Some mirth was excited by his per- plexity. The amendment was found on the following day, read by the Speaker, and seconded by Mr. Emerson Tennent in a speech which, pursuant to his invariable habit, he had carefully written out and got by heart. The only part of it worth extracting is the following ludicrous specimen of flippant nonsense : " Ireland was, we were told, annihilated and ex- tinguished by the Union, inasmuch as it then ceased to be a distinct kingdom. But on the same principle, Scotland must likewise have been annihilated, when she, in 1707, ceased to be a distinct kingdom on being incorporated with England ; and by a parity of reasoning, if the mere fact of incorporation, by destroying distinctness, involves extinction, England her- self must have been annihilated when she became incorporated with the other two" (loud cheers.) " So that, according to the doctrine of the Repealers, the whole empire must at this moment be ideal, and exist, like the universe of Berkeley, only in the imagination of its inhabitants" (renewed cheering). What an index to the discerning sagacity of the House is afforded by the plaudits elicited by Mr. Tennent ! Here now are the facts : 150 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. Ireland lost two-thirds of her representation by the Union ; England preserved her own representation whole and in- tact. Ireland lost the power of legislating for herself ; England retained unimpaired, the full power of self-legislation, and ac- quired, in addition, the power of legislating for Ireland. Ireland lost the advantage of a resident legislature and its consequent expenditure ; England lost nothing, and acquired the residence not only of the Irish delegates^but of the largely augmented crop of Irish absentees whom the transfer to London of the legislative power attracted thither. And yet a parrot-statesman is cheered by the collective wisdom when he glibly rehearses the absurd proposition that if the Union politically annihilated Ireland, which had lost much and gained nothing, it necessarily also annihilated England, which had gained much and lost nothing. Kichard Sheil made a brilliant speech in the debate. He had, for some time after 1880, coquetted with Eepeal. The Great Agitator had made many public appeals to him to join the movement ; but vainly, until the general election of 1832; necessitated a decisive declaration on the subject. Sheil then declared himself a determined and unqualified Repealer. His accession was hailed with delight by O'Connell, who triumph- antly exclaimed, " Richard's himself again." The important recruit proved a useful and powerful ally in the parliamentary debate. Of his speech I shall quote one or two passages : " At the time of the Union Ireland was charged with the contribution of two- seventeenths.* Was that fair ? Sir John Newport and Lord Plunket both asserted that it was most unfair ; but the fact was far better than the authority of either of them, for it turned out that Ireland was unable to pay it It was necessary to make up her deficiency by a loan. Where was that loan borrowed ? In England ; and the revenue of Ireland was devoted to paying the interest on that loan to British capitalists. " Sheil produced great effect by his allusion to the case of Belgium : " Now turn to Belgium. Does not the example bear us out ? Hear an extract from the Declaration of Belgian Independence. After stating that the Union was obtained by fraud, the docu- ment goes on and states that * an enormous debt and expen- * Not two-seventeenths of the whole imperial revenue, but two-, seventeenths of that part of it which remained after the debt-charge of each country had been first provided for by separate taxes upon each. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 151 diture — the only dowry that Holland brought us at the time of our deplorable union ; taxes overwhelming by their amount ; laws always voted by the Dutch for Holland only, and always against Belgium, represented so unequally in the States- General ; the seat of all important establishments fixed in Holland ; the most offensive partialities in the distribution of civil and mili- tary employments — in a word, Belgium treated as a conquered province, as a colony ; everything rendered a revolution in- evitable.' " (Loud cheers from the Repealers.) " You fear," continued Mr. Sheil, " separation may be the result of Repeal. What may not be the result of maintaining the Union ? Let a few years go by ; Catholic and Protestant will become re- conciled (their divisions cannot last for ever) ; the popular power will augment — the feelings of the people will be extended to their representatives — the absentee drain will continue — the church system will be still maintained — the national mind will become one mass of heated and fiery emotion — the same disregard for the interests and feelings of Ireland will be dis- played ; and then (may God forefend that the event should befal !) if there be an outbreak of popular commotion here ; if the prediction of the Conservatives should be fulfilled, and if your alliance with France, which is as unstable as its dynasty, should give way — then you may have cause to lament, but lament when it will be too late, that you did not give back her parliament to Ireland." Sir Robert Peel followed Sheil in a speech of great ability and eloquence, but which partook of the fallacious character necessarily attaching to all that was urged in defence of the Union. He quoted Canning's smart saying, " Repeal the Union ! restore the Heptarchy !" but he omitted to state that both the Repeal of the Union and the restoration of the Hep- tarchy had been instanced by Canning as absurdities analogous to a reform in Parliament. What Canning had said was, "Reform the Parliament! repeal the Union! restore the Heptarchy !"* Canning, in a debate in the British House of Commons on the Union in 1799, termed Catholic Emancipa- tion " a wild and impracticable measure." These random expressions of statesmen are worth little or nothing. The supposition that the man who would give Ireland a parliament is bound by his own principles to give separate governments to Essex and Kent, was unworthy the intellect of Canning. * So O'Connell told me. I have not seen the report of Canning's speech containing the passage cited. The speech next referred to I found in an old volume of the debates of 1799. 152 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. Sir Robert next urged that Repeal would be a dismember- ment of the empire. He said that absenteeism was caused, not by the Union f but by " the cursed system of agitation." He tried to terrify the Irish Protestants by predicting that they would have real dangers to encounter should Repeal be achieved. Since Sir Robert spoke the Irish Protestants have had to endure a large share of the general poverty entailed by the Union, as the vast reduction of their numbers, the records of the Encumbered Estates' Court, and other records also,, bear witness. He manfully avowed the spirit of British domination by declaring that 4 4 he, for one, would never consent that to an Irish parliament should be left the determination of the pro- portion of the amount that country should contribute in future to defray the general expenses of the state, and contribute to the diminution of the general public debt." A more barefaced and impudent avowal than this of the robber-principle, " We will put our hands into your pockets whether you like it or not," it would be impossible to make. It was just the thing to tell effectually with an English au- dience. He denied, in defiance of (TConnell's proofs, that Pitt and Castlereagh had fomented the rebellion of 1798 ; alleging that those statesmen could not have afforded a rebellion at a time of foreign war, and when a mutiny broke out at the Nore. They could, however, afford to pour 187,000 troops into Ire- land ; and the forces thus left at their disposal well enabled them to afford a rebellion. He defended the application to Ireland of the ruinous and infamous principle of Divide el impera, alleging that this prin- ciple had protected the two parties from each other; and that he regarded it as the mediator by which, in all domestic quar- rels, the fury of both sides had been allayed. He quizzed Mr. Feargus O'Connor about the Irish King Roderick, quoting some ancient account of a barbarous cere- monial at the coronation of the kings of Ireland. Much laughter was excited by this sally. He then wound up by a very eloquent allusion to the tre- mendous conflict which agitated Europe from 1803 to 1814, calling the attention of the House to the fact that among the bravest military leaders were the Irish generals Ponsonby and Packenham ; that the British army had been commanded by the Irish Wellington, " who, standing with his back ta the IRELAND AND II KR AGITATORS. 153 sea on the rock of Lisbon, saw all Europe in dismay and her liberties jeopardised, but who never ceased from his glorious labours till he saw the whole Continent emancipated." What the Union had to do with the valour of Ponsonby and Packenham, or with the glories of Wellington, it were difficult to tell. I presume that even had the Irish parliament con- tinued to sit in College-green, England would have readily availed herself of Irish valour and Irish military genius. " During that period," said Sir Robert (namely from 1803 to 1814) the reins of government were "placed in the hands of a Castlereagh and a Pitt,* and a Grattan was seen to join with a Fox in the deliberations of the legislature of the country." It is political blasphemy to class the illustrious Grattan in the same category with the execrable patricide Castlereagh. The conclusion of Sir Robert's speech was eloquent : " With the return of a separate parliament, after the Catholic disabi- lities had been removed, what might not be expected from the triumphant rancour of religious hatred ? It would amount to a complete disbanding of society. Who could set bounds — who could regulate the force of those antagonist powers — who could so adjust the centrifugal force, if he might so term it, which ought to keep Ireland within her proper orbit in the system of the empire, as to prevent her flying away into the chaos of lawless agitation, or a boundless sea of revolution ?" (Continued cheers.) " To set such boundaries was beyond any power that man could possibly employ. To effect such a state of things required the might of that omniscient and omnipotent Power which in the material world had separated the light from the darkness" (loud cheers), "and prescribed the eternal laws by which the magnificent harmony of the planetary system was arranged and sustained." Sir Robert sat down in the midst of a perfect tempest of applause, of which the enthusiasm was not diminished by the shameless libel on the Irish Catholics which he deemed it ex- pedient to pronounce. " Triumphant rancour of religious hatred." The Protestant Parnell, in his Historical Apology for the Irish Catholics, does their character justice in this respect : " The Irish Roman Catholics bigots !" he exclaims ; " the Irish Roman Catholics are the only sect that ever re- sumed power without exercising vengeance." And another Protestant historian, Dr. William Cooke Taylor, speaking of the Catholics of Ireland, says : "It is but justice * Pitt died in 1806. 154 IRELAND AND HEK AGYT ATOMS. to this maligned body to add, that on the three occasions of their obtaining the upper hand, they never injured a single person in life or limb for professing a religion different from their own."* In truth, one of the most prominent traits in the Irish Catholic character is the absence of religious bigotry. This trait is displayed in the fairness with which Catholic majorities in corporations elect Protestant mayors in due rotation. It is manifested by the fact that priests and people prefer Pro- testant candidates of popular principles to Catholic candidates of unpopular politics. The contests between the Protestant Spaight and the Catholic Ball, and between the Protestant White and the Catholic Waldron, are instances in point. Our people are stedfastly faithful to the Catholic religion. But their politics are influenced, not by theological predilections, but by their desire for the success of some legitimate political object. It was stated in the debate of 1834 by Mr. Lambert of Wexford (an anti-Kepealer) that the Catholic Bishop of Water- ford was pelted with mud in the streets of that city because he was not a Bepealer. No man of right feeling will approve such an outrage, but the fact shows that even among the lowest and most violent of the populace religious partisanship was absorbed, in national prepossession. The Bepealer was, with them, a character more sacred than the non-repealing prelate. The mitre was unable to protect its venerable wearer from the in- dignation of those who deemed their nationality outraged by bis non-adhesion to their cause. w Triumphant rancour of religious hatred." Sir Bobert, in this outrage upon truth,, calculated that his words would influence that class of persons whom a blind, unreasoning hatred of Catholics and Catholicity diverts from the real interests of their country and of them- selves. He calculated accurately. After some further skirmishing among the smaller fry, the debate was closed by Mr. O'Connell in a speech remarkable for its vigour and vivacity. I extract from it the following passages : " I have insisted on the incompetence of the Irish parlia- ment to create a new legislature, and I am convinced I was right in that part of my argument. There was nothing to authorise the parliament of Ireland to dispose of the Irish nation, any more than there was anything to authorise the British parliament to dispose, of the British nation to any other m the face of the globe. * Taylor's Hist. Civil Wars of Ireland - r vol. i. j>. 169. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 155 "As to the fomenting of the rebellion in order to bring about the Union — upon that point I have been perfectly tri- umphant. i But why,' said the right hon. baronet, ' should Mr. Pitt and Lord Castlereagh excite a rebellion in Ireland at a time when there was a mutiny at the Nore ?' That mu' iny had broken out suddenly and unexpectedly. What, therefore, had its existence to do with the fomentation of the rebellion ? The English ministry did not foresee the mutiny, though they might have conjectured the outbreak of the rebellion. Could the Union have ever been carried but for the rebellion ? What answer could be given to the Report of the Secret Com- mittee of the Irish House of Commons, from which it appeared that a person holding the rank of colonel of the United Irish- men had given to the government monthly reports of their secret meetings from March,* 1797 ? It was clear from this that the government were cognizant of the plot, and had it in their power to put it down. But the right hon. gentleman said there were traitorous materials in Ireland. Undoubtedly there were, otherwise there could not have been a rebellion ; but those materials were not of a formidable nature. They existed to a certain extent in Leinster and Ulster, and pro- duced two skirmishes, in one of which Lord O'Neill was killed : but the only really formidable occurrence took place in Wex- ford. These matters were encouraged — not repressed ; and the Union was brought about by fomenting the rebellion till it exploded Mr. O'Connell continued in a strain of great animation to reply to the arguments of several of his opponents seriatim. The motion for the Repeal Committee was negatived by an enormous majority — the numbers being 525 against 40, in- cluding the tellers. Mr. Stanley took no part in the debate. He was probably muzzled by Sir Robert Peel, who, with characteristic policy and caution, contrived that the debate should sustain as little interruption as possible from the indecent shoutings and fero- cious yells with which the Irish members had been assailed during the discussion on the Coercion Bill in the previous year. Mr. Stanley's silence was remarkable. His feelings against the Repeal were very strong; he had in 1883 declared he would " resist it to the death." That he did not now avail himself of the opportunity of renewing that declaration, is pro- bably to be ascribed to the management of his more cautious leader > who naturally doubted his discretion. * This should be April, 156 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. The ministerial and English journals generally were loud in their glorifications. Spring Rice's speech they pronounced to be an unanswerable manual. No Repealer could in future dare to raise his voice against the demonstrations, clear as light, of the infinite benefits the Union had conferred upon Ireland. The question, they said, was finally set at rest ; and they added much more to the same purpose. Meanwhile, the result of the debate upon the Irish people was precisely what any man who knew the country and its inhabitants must expect. They saw in the division a fresh proof of English hostility to their rights and of English in- difference to their grievances. Mr. Rice's tabular dexterities — his " giant- stride prosperity" on paper, seemed a heartless and insolent mockery to a people of whom every fourth indi- vidual was a destitute pauper. The alacrity and fervour with which the House applauded the most hollow fallacies, afforded, to the minds of the Irish nation, fresh evidence of its total ignorance of their condition and its consequent incapacity to legislate for their advantage. Our people felt that the con- stitution of Ireland was the indisputable property of the nation, and not of its parliament, which consequently had no autho- rity to sell it in 1800. Their resolve to struggle for the Re- peal, to seize whatever opportunities God might send for its achievement, was thenceforth more firmly fixed than ever. Both Houses had addressed the king, who replied in an echo of their joint address. The address and the reply con- tained a promise to uphold the Union ; but at the same time a pledge ' 4 to remove all just causes of complaint, and to sanc- tion all well-considered measures of improvement." The Irish people were not so foolish as to place the least faith in this pledge of King, Lords, and Commons ; but they acquiesced in O'Connell's policy of testing their truth by the celebrated six-years' experiment, at the end of which, as the pledges were demonstratively proved to have been mere delu- sions, the Repeal Association was established, and the agita- tion directed once more into its natural and legitimate channel. I shall pass over the six years of Whig ascendancy, and the fruitless struggles for that chimera, Equality with England under the Union.* There was, to do the Whigs justice, a fair administration of the law, and their legal appointments were excellent. * In the Anti-Union, a most interesting periodical commenced on the 27th Dec, 1798, and which reckoned Saurin among its contributors, I find at page 63 the following : " It has been asserted that the powers of IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 157 CHAPTER XV. M Resolve ! resolve ! and to be Men aspire ; Let God-like Reason from her sovereign throne Speak the commanding word. ' I will,' and it is done." Thomson. The time was now come when O'Connell deemed it right to abandon for ever all attempts to obtain 6 ' justice for Ireland" from the English parliament. He accordingly embarked in his final effort to procure a Eepeal of the Union. On the loth April, 1840, he founded the Repeal Associa- tion. Its first meeting was held in the Great Room of the Corn Exchange, Burgh-quay, which is capable of accommo- dating about five hundred persons. The room was not one- fifth part filled ; there was a discouraging display of empty benches — a commencement that might well have disheart- ened a leader less sanguine than O'Connell. He remem- bered the commencement of the Catholic Association, the seven men who congregated in Coyne's back-parlour in Capel- street, and the magnificent result of that small beginning ; and he confidently looked forward to a yet more brilliant termina- tion of his new enterprise. Still the meeting had a very discouraging appearance to those who had not the sagacious forecast of the leader. It seemed as if the word Repeal had lost its potent magic. But the fact was far otherwise. The thinness of the attendance arose from no apathy as to the national cause. It arose from a strong fear on the part of the Repeal public that the new experiment was not made bond fide. Repeal had been tem- porarily abandoned before. Such might be again its fate. Men dreaded lest O'Connell merely meant to rattle it about the ears of the government in terrorem, as a means of com- pelling them to make minor concessions to Ireland. " As soon," said O'Connell, " as they begin to find out that I am thoroughly in earnest, they will come flocking in to the Association." The chair was taken by Mr. John O'Neill of Fitzwilliam- square, a Protestant merchant of great wealth and sterling Irish representatives will be enlarged, and the rights of Irish electors im- proved, by Irish representatives having two shares in eleven in the direc- tion of affairs relative to their own country only, instead of having the sole disposal of them in themselves alone." The other nine shares being in the hands of a jealous rival ! Such is the Union. 158 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. patriotism. He had been, in early youth, a member of the Volunteer army of 1782. " I was then," he said to me, "too young to be of much use to Ireland, and now I am too old." But, young or old, his country had always commanded his best services. That good old Protestant patriot is long since dead. He descended to the tomb full of years, and deeply honoured by his fellow-countrymen. For more than half-an-hour the few who had congregated at the Corn Exchange anxiously awaited the opening address of the Liberator ; but he still lingered, apparently unwilling to commence, in the hope of a more numerous attendance. But no reinforcement came. There were manifestations of impatience amongst those who were assembled. O'Connell at length rose, and with the air of one deeply im- pressed with the high and solemn responsibility which he in- curred, spoke as follows : "My fellow-countrymen, I rise with a deep sense of the awful importance of the step I am about to propose to the Irish people, and a full knowledge of the difficulties by which we are surrounded and the obstacles we have to contend with. I trust that my heart is pure, and my judgment on the present occasion unclouded ; and I declare, in the presence of that God who is to judge me for an eternity of weal or of woe, that I have no object in view but the good of my native land, and that I feel in the deepest sense the responsibility I am about to incur. We are about to enter on a struggle that will ter- minate only in having the most ample justice done to Ireland by placing her on an equality with the sister country, or in the establishment of our legislative independence. The struggle commences now ; it will end only then. We commence under auspices that may afford little prospect of ultimate success to some ; but those who know the character of the brave, moral, religious, and patient Irish people, cannot be of that opinion. We will, no doubt, be laughed at and derided on all sides, and sneered at by friends who believe everything is imprac- ticable, and opposed by those malignant enemies who will be delighted to find any opportunity of manifesting their hostility. But no matter. We were derided and laughed at before by persons of this description when we set about the accomplish- ment of that great moral revolution which won religious free- dom for ourselves and others/' He then referred to the small origin of the Catholic Asso- ciation, its progress and triumph ; exposed the delusive nature ©f the Union, and repeated his proofs of the anti- Irish spirit IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. no in which laws were made for Ireland by the imperial legisla- ture. He promised perseverance : " We have assembled to take part in proceedings that will yet be memorable in the history of our country. Yes, this 15th of April will be yet memorable in the annals of Ireland. It shall be referred to as the day on which the flag of Repeal was unfurled ; and I shall fearlessly, legally, and constitu- tionally keep it unfurled until the day of success shall have arrived, or the grave shall close over me, and on my tomb shall be inscribed, * He died a Repealer.' . . . . We must be up, I say, and stirring. We can do no good by quiescence ; it may do us evil, but it can do us no service. We must take counsel from the French proverb, which says, ' Help yourselves, and God will help you.' We must not forget the story of the fellow who, when the wheel of his cart stuck in the mud, prayed to Jupiter to help him. 4 You lazy rascal,' said his godship, ' put your shoulder to the wheel, and get along out of that.' I tell you there is nothing else for us but to help ourselves ; and help ourselves, with the aid of heaven, we shall/' Having quoted the well-known denunciations of the Union pronounced in 1799 and 1800 by Bushe (the Chief Justice) and Plunket (the Chancellor), he continued : " These are ' Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn I have them here. They shall spread through the land in the course of the next week for the perusal of the youth of Ireland • not one of whom, I trust, will be found, whose eve will not glisten with fire, whose young heart will not burn with indignation at the spoliation resorted to by our enemies. There was a bargain, forsooth ! Why, is not the Chief Justice* still living '? and L? he not a witness for me ? Is not the Lord Chancellor of Ire- land, f with all his Asdrubals or Hannibals, living also to bear his testimony ? What care I whether he has changed his opinion or no ? He was honest then, because he had no sons to quarter on the State. Let him change now if he wish. In his day of virtue he felt and spoke those sentiments which I have read for you. Let him now change them in the day of his power and authority." In the opening passage of O'Connell's speech, he had men- tioned "justice to Ireland" as an alternative. But how vision- ary he deemed the prospect of obtaining that justice is evident from the following passage i 1 1 If we get the justice we desire, * Charles Kendal Bushe. + ^"illiaui Conyngham Plunket. 160 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. then our Kepeal Association is at an end ; but I know we will not get that justice, and that there is nothing left for us but to pursue vigorously the course we have commenced this day. . . . . Why should we for a moment deceive our- selves ? This justice will not be done to Ireland, and we will at once set ourselves right by declaring that there is a Repeal Association, and that unless the moral miracle be performed of having justice done to us by England, we will never cease until we have a parliament established in College-green.* " Not one single benefit has the Union conferred upon Ire- land, but, on the contrary, it has brought in its train poverty, degradation, and sorrow. When once the public mind is aroused, and the evils which we have suffered pointed out to the people, the Union cannot continue. It is not the writing of a single letter, nor the delivery of a single speech, that can effect the Repeal; it is the concentration of public opinion, directed as a galvanic battery, that will have that effect. That opinion will then become powerful as the lightnings of heaven, destroying everything that may impede its course." He concluded by moving the adoption of a set of rules ; the seconder of the motion being Mr. John Redmond, a patriotic citizen. So ended the first day's meeting. The Whig liberals did their best to throw contempt and ridicule on the proceedings. The paucity of the attendance was pointed out with scorn. Those gentlemen said to their acquaintances as they met in the streets, " Dan will never work this question — he is not in * As this passage appeared to contain an admission, even although a hypothetical one, that justice from England could supersede the necessity of Repeal, O'Connell guarded himself against such an objection in a sub- sequent speech, delivered on the 1st May, 1840. He explained his mean- ing, in still retaining the semblance of an alternative, to be this : " I have declared for the Repeal, and from this declaration nothing ever shall take me. It has been said that even in the formation of this society, I held out the alternative of justice. Let them do us justice ; let them increase our representatives to 150 in number — let them remove the church grievance — let them increase the franchise — let them do all this, and though they will not have convinced me that Repeal is unnecessary, they will deprive me of the forces by which I hope to succeed But who supposes that they ever will be brought to do us justice ? Not even a dreamer who dreamed soundly in his sleep ; no one short of an idiot could be brought to believe it. Why, it is absurd as the vulgar saying, * to^ stop the tide with a pitchfork/ 1 hold out the alternative, to be sure ; but it is to the English members of parliament — the alternative is not for me ; it is for them. ,; IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 1G1 earnest — the people don't care about it" (this was a very favourite allegation) — " lie won't be able to get over the priests to help him." The word " Repealer" was pronounced with a derisive curl of the lip by the " genteel" liberals, who re- ligiously abhorred all treason against whiggery. More saga- cious men, however, knew the question was workable. They remembered the popular enthusiasm of 1832, and they did not believe that enthusiasm to be a mere fever fit. O'Connell was accused, as a matter of course, of embarking in what he knew and intended to be a delusive agitation. To create an im- pression that the leader was insincere, was a dexterous mode of damaging the cause. O'Connell, however, had the most intense conviction that success was possible, provided that the parties who were interested in its attainment would apply their whole strength to the task. Those parties were the people of Ireland. He had great faith in the manifest truth and common sense of his statements and arguments. When dictating reports and addresses to Mr. Ray, the able and ex- cellent secretary of the Association, he would say, "Well, Ray, I am acquitting my conscience ; I am giving the people of Ireland an opportunity to have their parliament restored, and if they do not aid me the fault is their own." He held that the Act of Union (which Saurin had pro- nounced to be destitute of any other sanction than coercive force), did not need a formal act of the imperial parliament for its repeal ; and he published in May, 1840, a masterly argu- ment to show that her majesty possesses the constitutional right of convoking the Irish parliament in Dublin, notwith- standing the iniquitous suppression of that body by the trans- action of 1800.* And he believed that it was not impossible to create a condition of public affairs in which her Majesty's advisers might deem such exercise of her constitutional prero- gative expedient. For a good while after the establishment of the Repeal Association, the English press was wholly, or nearly, silent on the subject. By-and-by, the English journalists condescended to laugh at the Repealers. After their wit was exhausted at our expense, they began to be abusive. The Repealers were denounced as political criminals of the worst description, and floods of coarse vituperation were poured on them from the * I have published O'ConnelFs argument, which he supports by histo- rical references, in the sixteenth chapter of my " Personal Recollections" of him. 162 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. copious reservoirs of the Times newspaper. O'Connell re- turned the compliments of the Times in these verses : " Vile press without a parallel, Organ meet for fiends of hell, Lies thy trade ; thy master-sense, Bribed and brutal insolence. From Puddledock to either sea, Toryism stinks of thee." To account for the virulence of these lines, I should remind the reader that the Times had termed the Irish nation " a filthy and felonious multitude, " and the Catholic clergy a tribe of " surpliced ruffians." CHAPTER XVI. " Such men as these Give grace to holy mysteries, And make the pure oblation rise, A God -accepted sacrifice." Anon, The Repeal Association gradually expanded itself. Every week brought fresh recruits. Of these, some few were the ancient relics of a former age — old men who in early youth had stood in the ranks of the Volunteer army, and who now, ere they sank into the grave, were glad to enrol themselves once more in the service of their country. I have already named my old Protestant friend, John O'Neill. Another of our patri- archal adjuncts was Eobert M'Clelland, a northern Presbyte- rian, who, although then past eighty, was a regular attendant at the weekly meetings at the Corn Exchange as long as his health permitted him. It would be unjust and ungrateful to omit this mention of those venerable Protestant patriof s, whose aid was ever heartily rendered to every movement having for its object the enlargement of the liberties of Ireland. Requi- escant in pace. Repeal progressed. The Catholic clergy sent in their ad- hesions pretty numerously. On one occasion a bishop* and eighty- three of his clergy were enrolled together. There were three great provincial meetings for Leinster, Connaught, and Munster ; at the Leinster meeting, which was held near Kil- kenny in October, 1840, a quarter of a million of persons were computed to be present. John O'Connell occupied the chair. It was a grave autumnal day ; there was a quiet beauty in the fertile, undulating landscape, with the city in the middle dis- * Right Rev. Dr. Foran, Bishop of Waterford. IRELAND AND HER AGJTATOPwS. 168 tance, the proud towers of the Ormonds rising high above the mass of city buildings, and the hills of Mount Leiuster and Blackstairs in the far horizon. The muster was a noble display, and was distinguished, like all the other meetings for Repeal, by that rigid observance of decorum, preservation of the peace, and perfect sobriety, which no great popular gatherings of similar extent in any other nation could exhibit. Father Mathew's movement was essentially useful to Repeal. By withdrawing the'people from the odious and stultifying vice of inebriety, it raised them in the intellectual scale. Freed from the degrading influences of intoxication, they were the better enabled to think and to reason. A reasoning, thinking people are not destined to slavery. The arguments in favour of Repeal come so home to the common sense of Irishmen, that it needs only to rescue the people from habits of intem- perance to convert the impulsive and unreasoning shout for liberty into a calculating, sagacious, and well-sustained struggle for legislative independence. The enemies of Ireland, both domestic and English, saw this ; and accordingly the Tem- perance Movement was made the object of ferocious vitupera- tion. It is amusing to look back at some few of the exploits of the anti-temperance party. Religious fanaticism was of course pressed into the service of drunkenness. A parson named Whitty refused to grant to Father Mathew the use of the Rock of Cashel to accommodate his postulants, alleging that " temperance was of the devil."* Another clergyman named Edgar, residing in the diocese of Deny, declared in a letter to Mr. Buckingham the ex-member for Sheffield, that " teetotalism was highly insulting to the majesty of God at the same time expressing his fears that Mr. Buckingham was infected with the disease in its w T orst form. The Rev. Mr. Sewell, of Oxford, wrote an article in the Quarterly Review en- titled " Romanism in Ireland asserting therein that super- stition was the chief agency of the Temperance Movement, and murder its ultimate object. Passing from the high priests of Inebriety to its profaner organs, the Protestant Magazine for June, 1841, complacently quoted from the congenial Times the following awful passage : u We cannot but suspect that this temperance movement is, substantially, a sort of Trojan horse, within whose ribs there lurks an overwhelming phalanx, which some of these nights will sally on the sleeping sentinels of Ireland and make it an easy prey." * Morning Chronicle, 27th April, 1841. f Ibid* 164 IRELAND AND ITER AGITATORS. The Ulster Orangemen were at all events resolved that they should not be caught, napping. At Loughgall, a number of Orange farmers entered into a resolution that they would not employ any labourers who had taken the temperance pledge. In other places there were anti-temperance riots, especially at Newtownhamilton and Lurgan. The Orangemen apparently were not satisfied with the privilege of getting drunk, unless they could deprive their neighbours of the privilege of pledging themselves to sobriety. The Cootehill Orangemen published a manifesto, redolent of the choicest inspirations of the Orange divinity, exhorting the Protestants to oppose the entrance of Father Mathew into their district, where he purposed to ad- minister the pledge. The document, having first adverted to the priest's threatened advent, proceeded thus : " Insulted Protestants ! will ye, can ye, bear it any longer ? Has the spirit of your fathers, and immortal William, died within you ? Arouse ! be steady and courageous ! Let not the religion* of your fathers be trampled upon by idolators ! Let the spirit of William, that whispers to you at this moment, animate your hearts and souls, and let not the antichristian apostle depart from Cootehill in boasted triumph. ' Arise, I say, arise my beys, and raise your standard high ; The man that will not join you now, treat as an enemy ; Fear not O'Connell — Mathew — Devil! but let your motto be, To put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry. Remember Gideon's chosen few ; The arm that guarded them guards you.' " This delirious melange of politics, bigotry, and truculence, demonstrates the fatal success with which the Whittys and Edgars had instilled into their followers a virulent hostility to national amelioration. The Divine^assistance is invoked by the Cootehill devotees to preserve their drunken licence. The arm that guarded Gideon's chosen few is expected to guard the Orange bacchanals from the fatal invasion of temperance. At a later period, however/the spirit of the North became im- proved. Leading men of all political shades looked with favour upon temperance ; and as virtues are gregarious, the same result which attended the success of Father Mathew's movement in the South also marked its progress in the North. As morality and sobriety advanced, nationality kept pace with them. Let the mere enthusiast, whether Orangeman or Re- pealer, forswear his drunken orgies ; the latter will become a * Query, the whiskey bottle ? IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 165 more zealous, because a more enlightened and intelligent sup- porter of national liberty ; the former will be led to inquire whether that which is manifestly good for Ireland can be bad for himself. The result of this inquiry will make him a Re- pealer. The agitation for Repeal went on, sometimes in places which conjured up interesting historical associations. A Re- peal meeting was held at Carrick-on-Suir, which was followed by a pnblic dinner, presided over by a Protestant gentleman, Mr. Power. The dinner took place in an apartment at the top of the principal inn. I was told that many persons had wished to obtain a room in the castle of Carrick-on-Suir for the festivity ; but a fear lest Lord Ormond, the proprietor of the castle, might visit with his vengeance the gentleman who rented the old building as tenant-at-will, induced the managers of the dinner to select the less commodious apartment in the hotel. I chanced that day to be at Carrick, and I walked to see the old castle. It is beautifully situated in a secluded lawn overhanging the Suir, at the distance of a few hundred yards from the eastern end of the town. I could not ascertain the elate of the older, or castellated portion of the edifice : the more modern part was erected by Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond, in 1565, which date is displayed on the wall of the hall ; on which, likewise, there is a rude fresco representing Queen Elizabeth, with the initials E. R. On the opposite wall there is another fresco representing the founder, who is said by the tradition of the castle to have found favour as a lover with that princess. The tradition found its way into France, and the family of Lord Galmoye is stated, in a French genea- logical work, to descend from her Majesty and her Irish ad- mirer. In Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for 1830, the fol- lowing very curious notice of the Galmoye family is extracted from the " Dictionaire de la Noblesse," published at Paris in 1771, 2nd edition, tome iii. : " 6 Le comte Thomas de Butler dit le noir, quelques annees apres etre alle en Angleterre, envoya en Irlande un jeune enfant portant son nom, et deja cve6 Lord Viscomte de Gal- moye. II est certain (dit le Memoire envoye sur lequel nous avons dresse cette geriealogie) que le comte le reconnoissoit pour son fils, et la tradition veut que la reine Elizabeth fut sa mere; e'est de cet enfant que descendoit milord de Galmoye, mort a Paris en 1740, lieut. general des armees du roi, cre'e' comte de Newcastle en France par le roi Jacques II. , dont il 166 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. etait premier gentilhomme de la chambre,' &c. A tradition of the same import prevails in the Irish branch of the family." The curious old mansion founded by " Black Tom Butler" is still habitable.* Its front presents a long row of gables in the fashion of Elizabethan manor-houses, with a large oriel window over the porch. Its large deserted chambers are just such as spectral personages might readily honour with their visits. I accordingly asked if the house was haunted, and was told by the person who showed it, that in the days of the Ormonds a ghost had been constantly there — a utilitarian ghost, apparently ; for he used to officiate as volunteer shoe- black, and to discharge other duties of domestic labour. The largest apartments are in the upper storey. There is a noble drawingroom about sixty feet long, which contains two decorated chimneys Whatever be the worth of the Galmoye tradition, old " Tom Butler," as the guide familiarly called him, was anxious to record his devotion to Elizabeth ; and this he has done by the frequent repetition of her Majesty's initials and arms in the quaint stucco ornaments of the ceiling. There is another spacious room on the same floor, with an oriel overlooking the river. I was inclined to regret that Mr. O'Connell was not enter- tained in this old stronghold of the Butlers. The old walls speak eloquently to the imagination. There would have bee i a romantic interest in beholding the great advocate of Irish legislative independence working out his mighty task in the de- serted residence of one of the most powerful of the Norman- Irish families ; enforcing the right of Ireland to. self govern- ment in the ancient halls of Elizabeth's favourite, who per- formed his share of the duty of riveting the English chain upon his country ;f in those halls which at a later period, were the habitation of James, Duke of Ormond, who exercised such a potent influence, partly for good, but more for evil, on the destinies of Ireland, I lingered until twilight in the castle. The echo of the * 1842. I have not seen it since. f Thomas Butler, the founder of the Elizabethan part of Carrick-on- Suir Castle, was the tenth Earl of Ormond, and died there in his 88th year, in 1614. He was great-uncle to James, the celebrated Duke of Ormond, who often mentioned his recollection of his aged relative, as " a blind old man, having a long beard, and wearing his George about his neck whether he sat up in his chair or lay down in his bed/' In 1632, James made a journey from London to Carrick, which, even according to modern ideas, seems a rapid one. On a Saturday morning in September, he left London, and rode post to Acton, within eight miles of Bristol. At IRELAND AND ITER AGITATORS. 107 closing doors sounded weirdly and solemn through the dusky chambers ; it came upon the ear like the voice of ages past. The guide bore in his hand the ponderous old keys, which, to judge from their great size and rude workmanship, might have been coeval with the edifice itself. When I reached the lawn, I turned to look once more on the venerable pile reposing in its solitude and silence, and then retraced my steps to the town. At the Repeal dinner, O'Connell said, u I am often asked how I can expect to obtain Repeal from the imperial parlia- ment when I have not been able to obtain minor benefits. I answer this question by reminding the querists that upon the minor advantages I sought, I have not been supported by the whole Irish people ; whereas the Repeal agitation accumulates around me their entire strength. Minor objects were not of sufficient importance to enlist their full energies. The eagle does not catch flies. The eagle spirit of Ireland soars above these individual advantages, and perches on the lofty pedestal of national independence." He proceeded to predict the cer- tain attainment of Repeal, so soon as universal Ireland should be actively aroused in its behalf; and he then, in a strain of fervid eloquence, described the long perspective of Irish pros- perity which he expected to result from that measure. Carrick had its own sad experience of decay since the Union, there having been prior to that measure a thriving woollen-trade in the town and its immediate vicinity, giving bread to about 5,000 persons ; whereas now* there is but partial employment for about 100 persons there. Go where they would, the Repeal agitators had the dismal and terrible advantage of being able to point to the surround- ing crowds instances of decay with which their local expe- rience was familiar — practical fulfilments of John Foster's me- morable words, " Where the parliament is, there will the manufacturer be also," In Limerick there had been before the Union over a thousand woollen-weavers ; the number had eight next morning he sailed from Bristol to Waterford in a vessel called the Ninth Whelp, and at nine o'clock a.m. on Monday, they ran up to Waterford, whence his lordship immediately took horse for Carrick, which is distant from Waterford only sixteen miles. Henry Hyde, second Earl of Clarendon, in a letter to Lord Rochester, dated in 1686, says of this old seat: " Carrick, an ancient seat helonging to the Duke of Ormond, is, I think, one of the prettiest places I ever saw in my life." — Clarendon's Letters, London, 1828. * 1844. 168 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS, shrunk into less than seventy.* In Bandon — Protestant Ban- don — there had been before the Union a flourishing manu- facture of camlets, cords, and stuffs. That trade had all but vanished ; the only branch of the woollen manufacture remain- ing there when our Repeal missions were organized, being that of frieze for the peasantry. And similar decay had widely overspread the land on all sides. The Viceroy, Lord Ebrington, now made an effort to arrest the progress of Eepeal by announcing that no member of the Repeal Association should be appointed to any office in the gift of the government. This declaration necessarily scared all the place-hunters from joining the movement, and thus preserved it from the adhesion of a good deal of rascality. Lord Ebrington's threat was undignified, but not unnatural. He probably thought that as the Union was originally carried by bribery, Repeal could best be averted by bribing men through their hopes of office to refrain from junction with the agitators. CHAPTER XVII. " Arouse thee, youth ! it is no idle call ; Our rights are leaguered — haste to man the wall ; Haste where the old green banner waves on high, Signal of honoured death, or victory." Among the public men who played fast and loose on the question of Repeal was Mr. Sharman Crawford. That gentle- man had ably and persistently advocated the cause of the Irish tenant-farmer, and had, by his advocacy, acquired wide and merited popularity. He denounced the crimes committed against the people by exterminating landlords, and contended for the system of small farms, which, he said, could be worked with a profit to the tenant by the application of increased skill in cultivation, while the landlord would possess full security for his rent in the value enjoyed by the tenant. O'Conneil expected that Crawford would assist the Repeal agitation — an expectation which was not unreasonable, for * Since the first edition of this work was printed, Mr. Tait, an invalu- able citizen of Limerick, has conferred great benefits on that city by es- tablishing a large factory, which extensively furnishes clothes to the depart- ments of police and military, and employs at good wages a large number of hands. For copious and authentic details of the general decay, see Mr. Secre- tary Ray's admirable " Report on the Disastrous Effects of the Union on the Woollen, Silk, and Cotton Manufactures." IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 1G9 Crawford, in 1833, had published a pamphlet entitled, " The Expediency and Necessity of a Local Legislative Body in Ire- land, supported by a Reference to Facts and Principles." In page 27 of that pamphlet, its author says : " Sad experience now proves to Ireland, as on former occasions, that England's freedom is Ireland's slavery ; that England's prosperity only dooms Ireland to a more depressed state of misery and political degradation. She finds the same abuses retained — the same disregard of her complaints ; and what renders the case still more hopeless is the general apathy and indifference of the British nation, and the worse than indifference of the Scotch, towards matters connected with Irish policy." At page 53, speaking of the reformed parliament of England, Mr. Crawford asks, " Have not the proceedings of that par- liament forced a conviction on many of the most attached friends of British connexion, that the union of the nations can only be upheld by the separation of the parliaments ?" These extracts afford a fair sample of the general spirit of Mr. Crawford's pamphlet. But on the revival, by O'Connell, of the agitation for Repeal, Mr. Crawford ranged himself among the anti-Repealers. In October, 1841, he published " Observations addressed to the Repealers of Ireland," in which he declared that he would not be " a party to a delusive agitation." He recommended, instead of the pursuit of Re- peal, that the Irish should unite with " the aggrieved and unrepresented classes in England and Scotland" in demanding a new' distribution and equalisation of electoral districts all over the United Kingdom. He denied that it was possible for Ireland to possess an independent parliament in connexion with the British crown. And he censured the patriots of 1782 for establishing " a nominally independent" Irish parliament, instead of seeking a federative connexion with England on the American principle. Mr. Crawford's attacks on the Repealers had a wide circu- lation. The task of reply was entrusted to me. My answers went the round of the Repeal press in Ireland, and were pub- lished as a pamphlet both in Dublin and Belfast. As long as O'Connell lived, Mr. Crawford retained his attitude of hostility ; but after the death of O'Connell he publicly joined the Pro- testant Repeal Association which had been instituted at Bel- fast, recanted his imperialism, and declared his assent to the principles of 1782. But I must not anticipate. Hitherto the agitation, although occupying the minds of the people, and engaging much of their support, had not been 8 170 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. efficiently organized. To supply this defect, and at the same time to inculcate the principle of nationality in the various rural districts, it was now deemed advisable to send mission- aries through the land. The persons selected by the Com- mittee of the Association to discharge this arduous duty were Mr. John O'Connell, third son of the Liberator, who was appointed Repeal Director for Connaught ; Mr. Ray, the secre- tary of the Association ; and myself. I was appointed Repeal Director for Leinster. On the 12th September, 1842, we left Dublin for our seve- ral routes. Mr. Ray proceeded to Limerick, Munster having been assigned as the district of his labours. As John O'Con- nell's route and mine for the first and second day lay in the same direction, we travelled together in the canal boat to Mullingar. At that town we waited on the Right Rev. Dr. Cantwell, the Bishop of the diocese, who promised his cordial co-operation to the cause in which we were engaged. Next day we proceeded to Ballymahon, where the Bishop of Ardagh had invited a large party of his clergy to meet us. There was much grave and earnest discussion on the subject of the move- ment. The Prelate pledged himself that all the influence he possessed should be placed at the disposal of the Repeal Association. The Bishop of Meath had given a similar pledge, and nobly were their promises redeemed. Without the active co-operation of the Irish priesthood, the Repeal cause could never have acquired the commanding posi- tion it soon began to occupy. It is not uninteresting to trace the gradation of its progress in the rural districts. Three men, animated with the most ardent desire to promote na- tional freedom, travelled from town to town, from parish to parish. They solicited and obtained the hearty and powerful support of the priests. They assembled their countrymen in the market place, in the church, on the bleak hill- side ; they told in plain and energetic language the story of England's crime and Ireland's degradation ; they enumerated the grind- ing wrongs, the oppressions, and the robberies inflicted on the ill-starred land, which in losing the power of self-govern- ment had lost the power of self-defence; they asked their countrymen whether this national dishonour should continue ? whether the Irish people should not stretch forth their hands to seize and to fashion into strength the rich elements of power and prosperity that everywhere lay scattered around ? They made it a personal question to each individual ; they charged it home upon the conscience of each, whether he IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 171 would be a guilty partaker, by his criminal apathy, in the wrongs inflicted by England on his country ? They asked, u Could the wrong'd realm no arms supply, But the abject tear and the slavish sigh ?" They stirred into energetic life the slumbering spirit of old nationhood; they awakened the political sleeper from his trance. Repeal began to be a gathering shout in many a district that had long dozed on in torpid inactivity. The connexions of the central institute in Dublin were extended through the land. The pulsations of the heart began to be felt at the extremities ; and the question soon exhibited in the different rural districts a vitality and vigour which astonished the whole tribe of anti-Irish gentlemen with wooden heads and stony hearts — men whose diseased and stunted intellects were perfectly incapable of regarding any great public question ex- cept through the medium of the narrowest, the paltriest pre- judice. It was in the rural dwellings of the clergy that the question was now efficiently worked. In the priest's humble home a power was being organized which was destined, as we fondly hoped, to make tyranny reel in high places. And how simple the process ! how easy the details ! Look at that anxious, thoughtful group gathered round the pastor's table. The shutters are closed ; the candles lighted ; the faggot blazes brightly on the hearth ; " the autumn breeze's bugle sound" is heard from without ; it has swept from the hills, and its wild voice awakens in the heart a mystic thrill for freedom. The priest tells his guest the effective strength of the dis- trict, availing himself, in the detail, of the local information possessed by the parishioners, or the neighbouring clergy who have assembled at his house. It is then ascertained who will work ; who will undertake the duty of Repeal Warden ; who will collect the Repeal rent ; and who will assume the charge of particular ploughlands, if in the country, or wards, if in a town. The obstacles are also canvassed ; the hostility of Lord So-and-So, or of Captain , his agent, who swears he will eject every tenant that gives sixpence to any of O'Connell's devices. Or perhaps there is the anti-Irish Catholic landlord — a greater scourge than the Orange pro- prietor — who, since shuffling off his penal coil in 1829, has affected the courtier and fine gentleman, and conceives that he establishes his claim to aristocratic distinction by mimick- ing the tyranny of those by whom his creed is denounced as satanic ; the supple slave of Tory squires ; the petty tyrant of 172 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. his village, who redeems the vulgarity of going to Mass by the seventy with which he grinds the unfortunate tenantry who go there along with him. To elude the spiteful vigilance of this most execrable class is a problem which engages the attention of our coterie. The problem is easily solved. What needs Squire A. or Lord B. know about the tenants' contri- butions ? A discreet warden, who can be silent when occasion requires, is appointed to receive their subscriptions ; so that matter is settled. Then speculations arise respecting the possible adhesion of men whose countenance would be advan- tageous ; they are alleged to have uttered very national senti- ments on certain occasions ; could they now be got to realise their patriotic declarations ? Having arranged all these practical matters and set the agitation in a working train, the missionary next inquires respecting the past and present state of trade, and the social condition of the people in the district. The information thus elicited is painful. It reveals the national decay and the popular destitution. Nearly all over Leinster, the linen trade — once the great staple — is now only a memory. The inquirer finds that in the immediate vicinity of Clara in the King's county, capital amounting to at least £150,000 had been invested in that trade, which is now extinct in that locality. The old men who have joined the priest's party tell the visitor that prior to the Union they remember from forty to fifty head of cattle killed at Christmas by the villagers and farmers, who could then afford to eat beef ; whereas now, in- stead of forty or fifty, not half-a-dozen Christmas cows are consumed by the impoverished people.* At Mullingar he hears there had been a flourishing linen trade before the Union, and that it is now gone. At Athlone that trade gave bread to from 4,000 to 5,000 persons prior to the Union. There is now no linen trade at Athlone ; but there is a large poorhouse there. The country around Banagher, Ferbane, Ballycumber, and Cloghan had once been covered over with the linen manufacture. The visitor is told that it has shared the same fate as at Athlone and Mullingar — extinction. The numerous deserted mansions, formerly the seats of splendid hospitality, but now decaying from the neglect of their absentee owners, also form a painful item in the mis- sionary's information. On one point a great unanimity prevails — namely, that alj * See Appendix for some remarks of John O'Connell on this point. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 173 these evils, and nearly all other grievances affecting the coun- try, have their source either remotely or immediately in the denial to Ireland of the power of making her own laws, and in the anti-national, anti -Irish spirit which the Union has in- fused into the aristocracy.* Such are the topics that occupy the group in the priest's parlour. At the Repeal meeting next day, the thousands who as- semble round the missionary drink in his words with an eager- ness that evinces the depth and fervour with which they are ready to fling themselves into the constitutional strife. They exhibit intellectual quickness in their just and accurate per- ception of the points brought before them by the speakers. Their appreciation of the arguments addressed to them is clear and instantaneous. They evince this mental power by the judicious mode in which they cheer, or otherwise testify the impression made upon their minds. A striking and honourable feature in the national character is also developed at these gatherings — namely, the profound reverence the Irish people entertain for religion. If the name of the Deity be pronounced, every hat is raised. If the Divine blessing be invoked on Ireland — if the speaker expresses his reliance on the protection of Providence for the ultimate success of the movement, and the consequent greatness and happiness of the land, there follows a deep murmur of reverential acquiescence from the multitude ; there is an earnestness of voice, gesture, and countenance which demonstrates how intense is the re- liance of the Irish people on the overruling care of their God. There cannot be a more interesting occupation than that of the Repeal missionary. He penetrates into retired rural dis- tricts ; he mingles with the people ; he learns from personal inquiry and actual observation to know their condition more truly than if he had trusted for his information to the mon- * Among the aristocracy, as among all other classes, there are of course varieties of individual character — good, evil, and middling. It is not therefore as a type of the whole, nor even of many, that I specify a fungus lord, whose father got a step in the peerage for supporting the Union ; whose red, round, unmeaning face was a faithful index of the mental stolidity of the sensual bon-vivant ; whose corpulent person v. as encased in stays and padded garments to supply, so far as possible, the symmetry denied by nature ; a bloated, superannuated fop ; the scourge of Catholic tenants ; a frequenter of brothels ; yet sometimes caught as a prize by flunkey parsons to preside at what they termed their religious meetings. 174 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS, strous fallacies of Spring Rice and Montgomery Martin.* He finds that condition grievously deteriorated since the time when Arthur Young wrote his " Tour in Ireland. 19 In enlarg- ing his acquaintance with his countrymen, he augments his indignant horror at their wrongs, and his zealous devotion to their service. The Catholic chapels and the abodes of the priests often afford interesting mementos of the penal days. In the more remote parishes the house of the pastor is sometimes a thatched cabin adjoining the chapel, which is also thatched ; both nestling in the nook of a hill, or in some retired situation which seems to evidence that concealment from observation was an object with the founder. In the chapel is the old, rough, unpainted wood-work ; there are the deal benches* rails, and altar, clumsy in their construction, and brown from age ; the rude, whitewashed walls, the decaying windows^ the simple roof that has sheltered the worshipper for four generations from the inclemency of the weather. On the altar is the tiny saering-bell, which has tinkled perhaps for a century to announce the " Canon," the " Elevation," and the " Agnus Dei." Relics are these of the dark time of Catholic depression — relics which, notwithstanding their humble appearance in modern estimation, were doubtless in their day the source of modest pride and triumph to the priests and the flocks who had been accustomed to celebrate their worship in the glen or on the plain, beneath the chill blasts of winter or the scorching sun of summer. To them, a roof, however rude, under which to adore their Creator was indeed a luxurious novelty. Then the priest's cabin, a tene- ment containing four miserable closets, two bed-rooms, a par- lour, and a kitchen. In wet weather the Repealers sometimes got the use of the chapels for their meetings. The rude old walls, which had witnessed the timid orisons of a persecuted flock in penal days, now echoed to the proud and joyous voice of reviving nationality. These remnants of a former period contrast strongly with the spacious and substantial churches raised within the last few years by the voluntary subscriptions of the people. The Catholic clergy in the wealthier parishes now reside in excel- lent and comfortable houses. The traveller is forcibly im- * Mr. Staunton, formerly proprietor of the Dublin Register, produced a trenchant castigation of this impudent quack, in a pamphlet published at the expense of the Repeal Association. IRELAND AND HKR AGITATORS. 175 pressed with the contrast between the past and the present. He sees in its obvious moral a powerful evidence of the fidelity with which the Irish people adhered under persecution to the faith which they deemed the best, and of the pious zeal with which, when disenthralled from penal shackles, they have reared temples to the worship of the Most High God. He sees in it also an evidence of the efficacy of the Voluntary System in support of religious establishments. Small indivi- dual contributions from a numerous population can, without severe pressure upon anyone, produce great results. The missionaries forwarded to the Association weekly re- ports of their progress. Mr. Ray especially turned his atten- tion to the condition of the peasantry ; and from one of his reports I extract the following passages descriptive of the wretchedness endured by the poorer inhabitants of Charleville, county Cork : " At the meeting on Sunday," says Mr. Ray, "the Rev. Mr. Meagher mentioned a most revolting case of destitu- tion connected with this subject, occasioned by the head of a family being thrown out of employment. He was a check- weaver, of sober, industrious habits, but reduced to such a state, that after having parted with every article to suppon nature, his wife actually perished for want ; her helpless babee were lying beside their dead mother unconscious of their loss — the unfortunate man himself in agonized bewilderment. In this condition the Rev. Mr. Meagher found them on Christmas day. Innumerable appalling cases here and else- where might be added of the effects of that fatal act which robbed Ireland of her industrial occupations, and her people of their spirit and nationality. " Immediately adjoining Mr. Dudley's in the town, there is a row of wretched cabins ; these were formerly the happy re- sidences of busy inmates. They are erected on a plot of ground held originally by lease for lives under the Earl of Cork (an absentee nobleman). I understand the lessee, some years since, consigned the occupying tenants to his lordship, the rents being applotted on their respective holdings. One of the cabins is held by a widow named Dalton ; that and the ad- joining one were erected by her late husband — the rent £2 a-year. The roof was blown off the latter cabin at the great storm last January, and so it remains. The other is so dila- pidated that the rain pours all through. Next to this is one held by Widow Meehan, at 7s. lOd. per year, almost roofless and utterly untenantable ; her son-in-law died, leaving his 170 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. wife and an infant, now two years old, an incumbrance upon the poor widow. They are supported chiefly by charity ; she told me that she had to pawn her bed-clothes last year to pay the rent, and was never since able to release them, and that she wished she had them now to pawn again, for the pre- sent year's rent is due. A man named Clifden held another of these cabins and a small plot at £1 15s. a-year. He is a labourer at 6d. a-day when he can get work. The surviving life in the original lease was supposed to have died a couple of years since, and possession was taken of the entire range under ejectment process. The day this occurred, Clifden had the roof partly stripped, and was in the act of repairing it with new thatch. They had, of course, to quit, and this roof was also blown off by the wind. It was presently discovered that the life in the lease was in being (as the respected lady is still) and the tenants were allowed to continue ; but this man with a wife and a number of young children had to hire a miserable cabin at the end of the town, and he is liable to the two rents. The very next hut is still worse : the roof of this was also blown down by the 6 great storm;' it is held by John Molony, labourer, at 15s. a-year ; it is exactly twelve feet square ; the clay walls about six feet high. The poor man made a sort of covering from the old sticks and thatch of the fallen roof, but from its flatness totally incapable of resisting the wet. I found his wife and five of his children huddled together in a corner of this hut, scarcely covered with a few loathsome rags ; the youngest was in her arms, the two next had only dirty coarse tattered bibs, the others little better; the two elder boys were out helping their father to dig, &e. This was on Tuesday last ; the two preceding nights had been most wet and inclement, and this unhappy family could get no rest, as there was not a dry spot they could lie on. I observed the remains of an old deal bedstead in a corner, with as much broken straw and rags as would make a bed for a dog ; the floor under it, and indeed through the entire, in a complete bog with wet. I asked, was that where they slept ? The woman said, * Aye, is it.' ' Have the entire family no other sleeping-place ?' said I. ' None other.' I could ask no fur- ther questions. They were standing round two or three sods of half-burned turf 3 trying to dry their rags ; it was so, in fact, with the rest. I did not see in all those places together as much as would equal one" good fire. This poor woman told me that up to two months ago the elder children used to attend the school, but were now too naked to go there IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 177 11 I have given but a sample of what is prevalent everywhere about the towns and in the rural districts. * They starve themselves,' said an intelligent man to me, 1 to feed the pigs for the rents.' It is impossible to witness these things with- out deep sensation." Mr. Ray also furnished a report upon the fallen condition of Bandon ; but instead of quoting from it, I shall give the following memorandum, which was kindly communicated to me by William Connor Sullivan, Esq., a gentleman who exhibits the practical patriotism of employing sixty persons in a factory he has established in Bandon in connexion with his tanning trade, and who, if he could depend on sufficient sup- port, would make an effort to re-establish the cotton mill at Overton near that town. Here is his memorandum : " In 1825, the population of Bandon was 14,000, according to Lewis — of these, 7,000 persons were supported by the manu- facture of linen, woollen, ticken, and corduroys, or cotton. In 18G1, according to the census, the population had fallen to 6,100. The Overton mills, which gave employment to 2,000 persons, have been long since abandoned, the trade gone, and the buildings dilapidated." When some instances of Irish poverty, suffering, and decay were once mentioned in the English House of Lords, the late Duke of Wellington observed that it would not mend the mut- ter to set up a parliament in Ireland ; because there was also deep misery in England, which country did actually enjoy the residence of the legislature. " There is a parliament in Eng- land ; there is also misery there ; therefore seek not the Re- peal of the Union." There will be a mixture of poverty in every human society until the end of time. " The poor you have always with you."* But the Duke's argument implies that the numbers of the poor and the intensity of their privations are not di- minished by the presence of the wealthy, and are not increased by withdrawing from amongst them the great source of ex- penditure. It is also to be noticed that when his Grace used that argument, a good deal of the misery existing in England was directly traceable to the Irish poverty caused by the Union. The poorer Irish, having no manufactures to employ their surplus hands at home, emigrated in shoals to England, where they lowered the wages of labour in the English market, and frequently dragged down the English operative to the level of their own wretchedness. Had his Grace remembered * Matt. xxvi. 11. 178 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. this, he would perhaps have doubted the soundness of his anti-Repeal inference from the distress existing in certain Eng- lish districts. Every political quack will supply his own nostrum. The social diseases of Ireland are admitted on all hands. You can scarcely find any man of any party who does not laugh to scorn Spring Kice's " giant-stride prosperity." It was avail- able to call down a parliamentary cheer, and for a parlia- mentary pretext for opposing Eepeal ; but it was the very hyperbole of audacious falsehood ; it was too monstrous to endure in the real conviction of any human being. The social diseases, I repeat, are admitted on all hands. The condition of Ireland is proverbially anomalous. There is the startling incongruity of an anti-Irish aristocracy enlisted against the just rights of the masses of the people. There is a vast ecclesiastical property which belongs to the whole nation, and which is feloniously absorbed by a small minority for their own benefit. There is a rich proprietary hating the land whence their w r ealth, their rank, and their social status are exclusively derived. There is a soil proverbial for its fertility, yet inhabited by the yearly diminishing remnants of a people whose poverty is declared by travellers to exceed all they ever had witnessed of human destitution elsewhere. There is pro- ductive power, which, if developed, and its fruits retained at home, could support in comfort a larger population than ever inhabited the island ; yet which either lies waste, or else is diverted from its natural and legitimate purpose — the support of the Irish people — to swell the wealth and greatness of the neighbouring nation that has struck its fangs into our vitals. There is the spectacle of a people who, when plucked bare by the Union drains of many years, and crushed to the dust by famine, were, just at that juncture, made the subject of new and enormous taxation to liquidate the liabilities of wealthy England. That all this leaven should not powerfully work for dis- affection, no rational man could expect. We have various nostrums recommended by a multitude of political physicians. But it is not the absentee legislator, nor the cold, utilitarian political economist, nor the clever political speculator who can string together flippant paragraphs, nor the Cockney tourist who posts through Ireland to construct a marketable book from the salient traits which appear on the surface of society — it is not one of these who can prescribe, or even comprehend an adequate remedy. They have not the requisite knowledge IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 179 of the people ; and if they had, they have not the hearty sym- pathies which are indispensable to render that knowledge available. Cold, self-sufficient dogmatizers too many of them are, viewing all that they see (and how little is that all!) through the medium of preconceived political theories, nine- tenths of which are inapplicable to the condition of the country. He whose intercourse with the people has been extensive and prolonged ; who has mingled with his fellow-countrymen on terms of the most unreserved mutual confidence ; who has seen the struggles of the oppressed against the tyranny that would grind them into powder ; who has witnessed the anxious heavings of the nation's breast ; who knows the intense sin- cerity and unalterable determination with which his com- patriots are actuated ; who witnesses the persevering efforts of the anti-Irish class to prevent the disenthralment of the people from their bondage ; he who has seen the pernicious antagonism of the two great sections of the Irish nation, is compelled to trace the origin of Irish evils to English influence operating through an alien legislature and exclusive institu- tions, and to recognize in the Repeal of the Union the only possible cure for the social disease — the only certain guaran- tee against relapse. It is manifest that exclusive political institutions could not, in the present day, survive the restoration of the Irish legis- lature. The class who are now infected with a vicious hatred of their country would then become nationalised in spite of themselves. They could not help it. The preponderating pressure of the national sentiment, having a legislature for its organ, would overcome their resistance. Their prejudices would be swept away in the national torrent. They would, despite some contortions and grimaces, be made auxiliary to the national prosperity and greatness. They would be at last amalgamated with the great mass of Irishmen. Nothing short of the Repeal of the Union can fulfil the requirements of Ireland. Imagine every minor boon conceded that the most liberal Whig-Radical could proffer ; imagine tithes abolished, the franchises enlarged, the representation extended, the magistracy popularised, tenant-right conceded ; yet, so long as Ireland possessed no parliament, we should depend upon the will of another nation for the continuance of those advantages ; we should still have England's robber-hand in our pockets, abstracting our money for her own uses under the pretext of imperial identification ; we should still be ini- 180 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. poverished by the drain of an absentee rental, computed to be at present four millions a-year ; our people would still be driven as if with flaming swords out of their own country by the colossal plunder of the means that should circulate at home for their support ; we should still be subjected to a system devised to substitute cattle and sheep for the human inhabitants of Ireland ; we should still remain degraded by the absence of that privilege without which man is a despised slave — the uncontrolled management of our own country for ourselves. Thus, if England were to give us everything else, yet so long as she withheld from us our parliament, we should be deprived of that which were far more valuable than all the rest put together. The instinct of nationality cannot be rooted out of the Irish mind ; if its eradication were practicable it would have been long since effected. "What, let us ask, is that instinct ? What are its lessons ? Here are the words of an authority who will at any rate be respected by many who are not well-wishers to Ireland : " It is by virtue of a providential design that the human species is found distributed in groups distinct by race and language, and established in certain definite territories, where each has contracted a certain unity of tendencies and of insti- tutions, so that it does not trouble the habitation of another and suffers no interference with its own. God has shown what value man should attach to his nationality, when, wish- ing to punish the Hebrew people, rebellious against warnings and chastisements, he inflicted foreign domination on them as the most terrible punishment of all. . . . The Christian idea does not admit that the social power should issue in the oppression of one individual by another. Conquest cannot legalise the domination of one nation over another, for force is powerless to constitute right." Whether the doctrines here enunciated were correctly applicable to the purpose for which they were employed by the writer, I do not pronounce. But it is certain that as applied to Ireland they find a cordial echo in the minds of millions of our countrymen at home and in exile. The words I have quoted are taken from a letter addressed by Baron Ricasoli to the Pope, in August, 1861. Nationality is the principle which teaches us to take care of the interests of our own country, and to protect ourselves against the aggression of our neighbours. It is not a merely sentimental or romantic idea. It is eminently practical. It IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 181 teaches us, for instance, in Ireland, that the physical and mental gifts bestowed by the Creator on our country and on its inhabitants — the fertility of the island — the wealth which it produces — the intelligence of its people — their industrial capacities — were clearly designed by the Divine Giver for the use and benefit of the Irish nation ; and that the system is wicked and execrable which deprives that nation of the boun- ties of Providence ; which expels them by the million from the despoiled land, and which grasps for the benefit of England the gifts bestowed by God upon the people whom a multiform, subtle tyranny has hunted into exile. The principle of na- tionality is the principle of self-protection against such mon- strous wrong. It is in the spirit of a friend to the British empire, not an enemy, that I quote from a very able New York letter in the Dundee Advertiser* the following description of the progress of the Irish in America : " They are building up a mighty nation, and raising up an enemy for their here- ditary foe, that will assuredly strangle her at some future day." England, in the day of her strength, may deride such pre- dictions. Her scorn, however, is not wise. Despite the follies and blunders of Fenianism, and the crimes of some of its leaders, its animating principle will survive and acquire fresh strength with every shipload of emigrants landed from Ireland on the American coast. It is not reasonable to sup- pose that the Fenians will always be destitute of leaders of ability. A cause that enlists all the Irish in the United States must sooner or later furnish champions endowed with a formidable capacity for command. I leave to statesmen to consider the perils possibly resulting from the fixed resentment that inspires the large and growing community of exiled Irish. There is an effectual mode of extinguishing their hatred. Let England deal with Ireland as Austria has dealt with Hungary. Let her undo the hideous crime of 1800. Let our revered sovereign open in Dublin the first session of the restored Irish legislature, leaving thenceforth her faithful Irish subjects to possess their own country and develop for themselves its re- sources in accordance with the claims of justice, and with the evident purposes of Providence— let our Queen do this, and Ireland, resuming the prosperous career which commenced in '82, and which the Union interrupted, will become the right arm of the Empire — loyal, proud, and happy; contributing to the general prosperity in time of peace, and to the general * From which it is copied into the Nation 27th April, 1867. The letter is that of a careful observer — not a partisan. 182 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. defence in time of war. Let our Queen do this, and Fenian hostility, deprived of its pabulum, will at once become a thing of the past. CHAPTER XVIII. True, my friend, as if an angel said it, Would that an angel's pealing voice were thine, 'Till thy words were rooted and imbedded, Deep in every Irish heart as mine, Battling for our isle's regeneration. Still we know the future holds no chance, Hope or prospect for this Irish nation, Save in trampling down intolerance— Trampling doAvn the bigot's broils that pandered, Through the past, to England's foulest deeds, Writing broadly on our souls and standard, This unchanging motto— Deeds not Creeds. Poetry of the Nation. A notable event in the year 1842 was the establishment of the Nation newspaper. The proprietor and editor, Mr. Charles Gravan Duffy, had previously exhibited the self-reliance of conscious talent in setting up the Belfast Vindicator, despite the discouraging pre- dictions of numerous friends well acquainted with the North, who assured him that the failure of a Repeal journal in Saxon- ised Ulster was a matter of certainty. Duffy, nothing daunted, persevered in his experiment, and speedily reached a circula- tion of thirteen hundred ; establishing a firm footing in the heart of the enemy's quarters. The ability with which the Vindicator was conducted, soon acquired for its editor a high re- putation as a journalist. Mr. Duffy felt before long that his talents required a wider scope for their exercise than could be afforded by the conduct of a provincial journal, however re- spectable. He resolved upon starting the Nation. In this new undertaking he encountered discouragement similar to that which had waited on his northern experiment. Intelli- gent, observant men, who wished him well, treated his hopes of success as chimerical, asserting with much colour of pro- bability that the whole ground was pre-occupied by the two re- spectable weekly metropolitan journals which were already the exponents and propagandists of Repeal doctrines. The Weekly Freeman's Journal had been edited in succes- sion by several warm and able advocates of Irish independence. The Weekly Register, conducted by its proprietor, Michael Staun- ton, had acquired great value from the extensive and accurate financial and statistical knowledge profusely scattered through IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 183 its leading articles. Mr. Staunton has been truly called the father of a distinct school — and a most useful one — of Irish politics. He has devoted his abilities to the elucidation of the knotty question of international finance — a question the most easily obscured by the ingenuity of official chicane. The Nation appeared contemporaneously with the Repeal missions. Its projectors little heeded the vaticinations of timid prophets. In the words of their prospectus, " they were pre- pared, if they did not find a way open, to try if they could make one." And a way they did make, and that speedily. They were encouraged to their task by the conviction that since the success of O'Connell's great struggle for civil and religious liberty, a new mind had grown up in Ireland ; a mind filled with new thoughts, new aspirations — panting to achieve new victories. The style of the Nation was eminently fervid and earnest ; it told home upon the hearts of the people. It spoke forth the singleness of purpose and the energy whereby its editor was characterised. One of its attractive features was its poetry. There were many poetical contributors, of whom the principal were Mr. Duffy and Mr. Thomas Osborne Davis, a Protestant barrister. Their minds were stored with the annals of their country — the feuds, the wrongs, the struggles of elder ages — the gallant exhibitions of an often foiled but never vanquished spirit of liberty. The thoughts inspired by those annals — now flowing in a dark and vengeful current — now rushing along in impetuous tumult — now softening into deep and solemn pathos — now concentrated in stern defiance — now soaring aloft upon the buoyant wings of lightsome hope — were thrown into verses glowing with a passionate fervour that awakened into life every slumbering pulse of Irish patriotism. Here is Young Ireland's poetical compliment to O'Connell : i. I saw him at the hour of pray'r, when morning's earliest dawn Was breaking o'er the mountain tops — o'er grassy dell and lawn ; When the parting shades of night had fled — when moon and stars were gone, Before a high and gorgeous shrine the Chieftain kneel'd alone. His hands were clasp'd upon his breast, his eye was rais'd above ; I heard those full and solemn tones in words of faith and love ; He pray'd that those who wrong'd him might for ever be forgiven ; Oh ! who would say such prayers as these are not received in heaven ? ir. I saw him next amid the best and noblest of our isle — There was the same majestic form, the same heart-kindling smile. But grief was on that princely brow — for others still he mourn' d ; He gazed upon poor fetter'd slaves, and his heart within him burn'd : 184 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. And he vowed before the captive's God to break the captive's chain, To bind the broken heart, and set the bondsman free again. And fit was he our chief to be in triumph or in need, Who never wrong'd his deadliest foe in thought, or word, or deed. in. I saw him when the light of eve had faded from the west, Beside the hearth that old man sat, by infant forms caress'd ; One hand was gently laid upon his grandchild's clustering hair, The other, rais'd to heaven, invoked a blessing and a pray'r. And woman's lips w r ere heard to breathe a high and glorious strain — Those songs of old that haunt us still, and ever will remain Within the heart like treasur'd gems, that bring from mem'ry's cell Thoughts of our youthful days, and friends that we have lov'd so well. IV. I saw that eagle glance again — the brow was marked with care. Though rich and regal were the robes the Nation's chief doth wear ;* And many an eye now quailed with shame, and many a cheek now glow'd, As he paid them back with words of love for every curse bestowed. I thought of his unceasing care, his never-ending zeal ; I heard the watchward burst from all — the gathering cry — Repeal ! And as his eyes were rais'd to heaven — from whence his mission came — He stood amid the thousands there a monarch save in name. I select the following poems, not so much as specimens of poetical excellence, as from the plain exposition they afford of the policy, principles, and objects of their author. The first is entitled A LAY SERMON. BY CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY. I. Brother, do you love your brother? Brother, are you all you seem ? Do you live for more than living ? Has your life a law, and scheme ? Are you prompt to bear its duties, As a brave man may beseem ? n. Brother, shun the mist exhaling From the fen of pride and doubt ; Neither seek the house of bondage, Walling straitened souls about ; Bats ! who, from their narrow spy-hole, Cannot see a world without, in. Anchor in no stagnant shallow ; Trust the wide and wond'rous sea, "Where the tides are fresh for ever, And the mighty currents free '; There, perchance, young Columbus, Your New World of Truth may be. * The municipal robes of Lord Mayor. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 185 IV. Favour will not make deserving — (Can the sunshine brighten clay ?) Slowly must it grow and blossom, Fed by labour and delay ; And the fairest bud to promise, Bears the taint of quick decay. v. You must strive for better guerdons, Strive to be the thing you'd seem ; Be the thing that God hath made you, Channel for no borrowed stream ; He hath lent you mind and conscience ; See you travel in their beam. VI. See you scale life's misty highlands By this light of living truth ; And, with bosom braced for labour, Breast them in your manly youth ; So when age and care have found you, Shall your downward path be smooth, VII. Fear not, on that rugged highway Life may want its lawful zest ; Sunny glens are in the mountain. Where the weary feet may rest, Cooled in streams that gush for ever From a loving mother's breast. VIII. * Simple heart and simple pleasures," So they write life's golden rule ; Honour won by supple baseness, State that crowns a canker'd fool, Gleam as gleam the gold and purple On a hot and rancid pool. IX. Wear no show of wit or science But the gems you've won and weighed ; Thefts, like ivy on a ruin, Make the rifts they seem to shade : Are you not a thief and beggar, In the rarest spoils arrayed ? x. Shadows deck a sunny landscape, Making brighter all the bright : So, my brother ! care and danger, On a loving nature light, Bringing all its latent beauties Out upon the common sight. 186 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. Love the things that God created, Make your brother's need your care ; Scorn and hate repel God's blessings, But where love is, they are there, As the moonbeams light the waters, Leaving rock and sandbank bare. XII. Thus, my brother, grow and nourish, Fearing none, and loving all ; For the true man needs no patron, He shall climb, and never crawl : Two things fashion their own channel — The strong man and the waterfall. The next is a song of triumph at the union of all Irishmen BY THOMAS DAVIS. Ireland ! rejoice, and England ! deplore. Faction and feud are passing away, ; Twas a low voice, but 'tis a loud roar, " Orange and Green will carry the day !" Orange ! Orange ! Green and Orange ! Pitted together in many a fray — Lions in fight, And link'd in their might, Orange and Green will carry the day. Orange ! Orange ! Green and Orange ! Wave them together o'er mountain and bay, Orange and Green, Our King and our Queen, " Orange and Green will carry the day !" ii. Rusty the swords our fathers unsheathed, William and James are turned to clay — Long did we till the wrath they bequeath'd, Red was the crop and bitter the pay. Freedom fled us, Knaves misled us : Under the feet of the foemen we lay — Riches and strength, We'll win them at length, For Orange and Green will carry the day. Landlords fool'd us, England ruled us, Hounding our passions to make us their prey ; But, in their spite, The Irish " Unite," And Orange and Green will carry the day. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 187 in. Fruitful our soil where honest men starve, Empty the mart, and shipless the bay; Out of our want the Oligarchs carve ; Foreigners fatten on our decay. Disunited, Therefore blighted, Ruined and rent by the Englishman's sway : Party and creed For once have agreed — Orange and Green will cam* the day. Boyne's old water, Red with slaughter, Now is as pure as an infant at play ; So in our souls Its history rolls, And Orange and Green will carry the day. IV. English deceit can rule us no more, Bigots and knaves are scattered like spray ; Deep was the oath the Orangeman swore, " Orange and Green must cam* the day." Orange ! Orange ! Bless the Orange ! Tories and 'Whigs grew pale with dismay, When from the North, Burst the cry forth, u Orange and Green must carry the day !" No surrender ! No Pretender ! Never to falter and never betray — With an Amen, We swear it again, Orange and Green shall carry the day ! Such were the strains that aroused the spirit of Young Ire- land — and of Old Ireland also. Their moral was self-reliance, internal union, and the extinction of sectarian animosities. In that moral I thoroughly concurred. We had in the Repeal Association many Protestant members, of whose conscientious attachment to their own religious belief I never entertained the least doubt. Those men had a noble, generous, and well de- served trust in their Catholic countrymen. Enemies them- selves to the political ascendancy of Protestantism, they felt no fears of Catholic ascendancy in the event of Repeal. Their principle, and ours, was the thorough political equality of all. For myself, I may be permitted to say this : I am a Catholic, deeply convinced of the truth of the Catholic faith, and claim- ing for Catholics the fullest equality of citizenship with Pro- testants. Yet, while recognising the infinite importance of the 188 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. Catholic faith in a spiritual point of view, I feel that, in a tem- poral aspect, home-government is so much more important than Catholic privilege, that if I were reduced to the alterna- tive, I should greatly prefer to have Ireland governed by an exclusively Protestant Irish parliament than by an exclusively Catholic English or imperial legislature. On a balance of ad- vantages and disadvantages, the scale would be immensely de- pressed in favour of self-legislation, even although clogged with the drawback of Catholic disability. Should any theo- logical enthusiast find fault with this opinion, I would remind him that the aggregate Catholic meeting held in DubJin, in 1795, unanimously declared that they would resist even their own emancipation if offered as the price of an Union. And O'Connell said something not dissimilar when he announced on the 13th January, 1800, that he would prefer "the penal code in all its pristine horrors to the Union, as the lesser and more sufferable evil." Young Ireland was ardent and eager. Her fiery vehemence was a useful ingredient in our great constitutional warfare, so long as it was tempered with the judgment and experience of her elder friend and namesake. Old Ireland had seen much and struggled much. Old Ireland had been the victor in one prolonged and hard-fought contest — a triumph due to her wisdom, her virtue, and her perseverance. The sagacity of the one, restraining, but not extinguishing, the impetuous ar- dour of the other, produced a combination of qualities which would have been resistless in their union, if the demons of jealousy and division, followed by the crushing evils of the famine, had not dashed the councils and paralysed the strength of men whose movement, so long as they acted in concert with each other, had so fair a promise of success. The Nation first appeared on the 15th October, 1842. John O'Connell had, I think, returned to town, but Mr. Bay and I were still pursuing our missionary avocations. The result of the missions on the Repeal rent was remarkable. The week before we set forth to the provinces the rent was £45 14s. 8d. The week after our return it reached £235. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 189 CHAPTER XIX. Acres. — By my valour, then, Sir Lucius, forty yards is a good distance I tell you. Sir Lucius, the farther off he is, the cooler I shall take ray aim. Sir Lucius. — Faith, then, I suppose you would aim at him best if he were out of Bight. Acres.— No, Sir Lucius— but I should think forty, or eight-and-thirty yards — Do, my dear Sir Lucius, let me bring him dowrrat a long shot. The Rivals. O'Connfll's next step was to bring the Repeal question into the Dublin Corporation. Early in February, 1843, he gave notice that on Tuesday the 21st of the month he would move a resolution affirmatory of the right of Ireland to a resident parliament, and the necessity of repealing the Union. Shortly prior to the 21st, he suddenly announced the post- ponement of his motion for a week. The Tory members of the Corporation complained of being unfairly treated. Alder- man Butt declared that he had remained in town at much per- sonal inconvenience in order to oppose the motion, and strongly remonstrated against the postponement. O'Connell, however, was inexorable ; whereupon there was a sort of triumphant growl amongst the opposite party, who said that he only manoeu- vred to get Butt out of town, from a well grounded fear of discussing the merits of Repeal with so able an adversary. The postponement was useful. Had the discussion taken place on the day originally fixed, it would have passed off as a matter of course, without exciting half the interest it afterwards created. But by putting it off, an additional fillip was given to the public mind. The anti-Repealers alleged that O'Connell was shrinking from Butt ; the Repealers indignantly denied the accusation. People upon both sides were thus set talking over the matter, and the public curiosity was wound up to a pitch of intensity when the day for the discussion arrived. O'Connell had planned this, in order to give additional eclat to the discomfiture he intended for the anti- Repealers. And a signal triumph he achieved. The Unionists had long been in the habit of saying, "O'Connell and his party have always kept out of the way of discussing this question — if we had them face to face we could expose their delusions." They had now got an opportunity of realising their boast. The Assembly House in William-street was crowded to the utmost. A vast concourse of people thronged the streets without, unable to obtain admittance, yet rooted to the spot by the interest which the question awakened in all breasts. Twice or thrice in the course of the day I passed through the 190 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. crowd, and the people invariably asked me how Repeal was going on ? and who was speaking now ? with as eager an anxiety as if the success of the Repeal in the Dublin Corpora- tion would secure its final and immediate triumph. O'Connell's opening speech occupied four hours and ten minutes. He had arranged the whole subject under nine dis- tinct propositions. These were, I. The capability and capacity of the Irish nation for an in- dependent legislature. II. The perfect right of Ireland to have a domestic parlia- ment. III. That that right was fully established by the transactions of 1782. IV. That the most beneficial effects to Ireland resulted from her parliamentary independence. V. The utter incompetence of the Irish parliament to anni- hilate the Irish Constitution by the Union. VI. That the Union was no contract or bargain ; that it was carried by the grossest corruption and bribery, added to force, fraud, and terror. VII. That the Union produced the most disastrous results to Ireland. VIII. That the Union can be abolished by peaceable and constitutional means, without the violation of law, and without the destruction of property or life. IX. That the most salutary results, and none other, must arise from a Repeal of the Union. " These," said O'Connell, "are the nine propositions which I came here to-day to demonstrate. I say to demonstrate, not as relying on any intellectual powers of my own, or any force of talent, but from the truth and plainness of the propositions themselves. His speech was luminous and masterly. Notwithstanding its length, the physical vigour of the orator continued unim- paired to the end. The Nation's description is so accurate and discriminating that I cannot do better than quote it : "O'Connell," says that journal, "may have made more eloquent speeches — speeches more calculated to heat the blood and stir the passions, but he never excelled this one as an elaborate and masterly statement of a great case. The arrangement he adopted was remarkably skilful and judicious. He threw down, as it were, a single proof, and heaped others in succession upon the top of it, till they grew up to a gigantic pyramid which all the world might recognise. The effect of IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 191 this process upon the audience was magical. The truth seemed to dawn upon them like the rising sun, growing plainer and plainer by degrees, till at length, as he drew near his peroration, it admitted of neither question nor dispute, and men seemed to say to each other with exulting looks, ' This is unanswerable.' " Such was the oration which Mr. Butt was obliged to reply to. It is not the least disparagement of his great abilities to say that his reply was a failure. There was a case made out for the Kepeal which could not be rebutted. In the total ab- sence of legitimate argument, he was compelled to resort to small dexterities, such as challenging, not the doctrine that the Irish parliament was incompetent to effect its own destruc- tion, but the alleged consequences of that doctrine, which Mr. Butt asserted would invalidate afl the acts of the imperial parliament. Mr. Butt also prophesied that as forty years had elapsed since the Union, we might look forward to some future good results from that measure ; a prediction which he tried to sustain by alleging that after the lapse of forty years the Scottish Union had begun to bear fruits of benefit to Scotland. Mr. Butt has seen reason to change his opinions since he uttered that prophecy. In his admirable "Plea for the Celtic Race," he admits " the decay that unquestionably followed the Union and instead of retaining the confidence which, in 1843, he reposed in the justice of the British parliament, he writes as follows in a letter on the county Cork election, dated 10th February, 1867 : "I have lost all faith in what is called parliamentary action. Just measures for Ireland will not be passed by the British parliament, unless under the pressure of external danger, or the influence of some great and powerful organisation combining the Irish people." In other words, we have nothing to expect from British justice. Any rights obtained from the British parliament must be forced out of that assembly by fear or by expediency. So said O'Connell in 1843. So says Mr. Butt in 1867. To return to his speech in reply to O'Connell. He defended the Irish Church Establishment on the ground that it was the duty of every state to consecrate itself to God; just as if the mode of consecrating Ireland to God was to invest the pastors of an eighth or ninth part of the population with a legal power to fleece the whole people ! He strongly urged repose for Ireland ; just as if a wronged and suffering nation ever gained anything by silent acquiescence in her injuries ! Mr. Butt is a man of great intellectual power, and of noble 192 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. and generous impulses. It would indeed have been impossible that, possessing his high qualities of head and heart, and with the experience of the intervening quarter of a century, he should have retained to the present day the opinions expressed in his anti-Repeal speech in the Dublin Corporation. While he spoke, O'Connell repeatedly exclaimed, " I never made so unanswered a speech ! Why, he doesn't even try to make a case." The solution of this was, that in the midst of an Irish assembly there was no case to be made. Mr. Butt once or twice essayed Spring Rice's expedient of alleging our giant- stride prosperity ; but although that line of argu- ment might call down vociferous cheers in an English House of Commons, it could not elicit one solitary cheer from the Conservative party in the Irish Corporation ; for to all in that assembly the adverse facts were too well and too painfully known. The Warder newspaper, of evangelico- Orange politics, an able organ of the anti-Repeal party, and to which Mr. Butt has often been a literary contributor, furnishes, in its number for the 5th October, 1844, the following emphatic contradic- tion of Spring Rice's prosperity- case : " Squalid half- starvation is the desperate lot of the Irish peasant — destitution which no exertion of his own can relieve ; there is no labour too hard for him — he shrinks from no toil or hardship — but employment there is none for him ; priva- tion and misery which could not be borne for two days by Englishmen without the riot of insurrection, are here endured from weary month to month with a stoical patience." So spoke the Tory Warder. It may be easily supposed that the allegation of Irish prosperity did not meet an encou- raging reception from men who, though holding various politics, were yet perfectly cognizant of the dreary facts thus announced on high Protestant authority. I may parentheti- cally remark that in the face of such severe and widely-spread privation, the Whig parliament of 1833 might have discovered some other cause of prsedial outrages than political agitation. The Corporation debate was adjourned till the following day, when it was resumed with much ability by other gentle- men. Mr. Staunton's speech was an admirable financial state- ment. The debate was a second time adjourned. On the third day the public anxiety continued unabated. The vicinity of the Assembly House was argain densely crowded. Several speakers preceded O'Connell, who rose to reply at two o'clock. Near him sat his two staunch friends, John O'Neill, IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 193 the Protestant, and Robert M'Clelland, the Presbyterian. The countenaLces of both those old patriots expressed their triumph at O'Connell's anticipated victory. No report, no description, could possibly do justice to that magnificent reply. O'Connell took up in succession all the objections of all his opponents, and dashed them to pieces ono by one. The whole phalanx of Unionists looked like pigmies in the grasp of a giant. The dexterities of Butt shrank and withered into nothing when touched by O'Connell. The con- sciousness of a great moral triumph seemed to animate his voice, his glance, his gestures. Never had I heard him so eloquent ; never had I witnessed so noble a display of his transcendent powers. The house divided on the question ; forty-one members to fifteen affirming the principle of Repeal by a majority of twenty-six. The decisive blow thus struck in the metropoli- tan corporation was promptly followed up in all the reformed corporations of the kingdom. Nothing could be more manifest than the superiority in argument of the corporate Repealers of Dublin. The Evening Mail, which had long puffed and blustered on the side of the Unionists, clearly saw that no rational case could be made against Repeal ; and it therefore, with becoming prudence, gravely advised the enemies of Irish legislative independence in the Cork Town Council not to argue the question at all ; but simply to record their political servility by silent votes. The impulse given to Repeal throughout the kingdom ap- peared in a rapid augmentation of the rent. The national question was now enthroned, moreover, in the different muni- cipalities ; and the temper and ability with which it was dis- cussed in those assemblies demonstrated the powerful hold it had taken on the thinking and intelligent mercantile classes of the kingdom. But the enemy did not relax his activity. The most daring misstatements of facts, the most reckless falsifications of the purposes of the Repealers, were profusely circulated by a large portion of the anti-repeal press ; and with an amount of suc- cess proportioned to the ignorance, bigotry, stolidity, or pre- judice of each reader. We, whose earnest aim and labour were to raise Ireland from her prostrate condition ; to retain for Irishmen the blessings which God has bestowed on their country ; to retain for the country the expenditure of its own wealth, and thereby to rescue the Irish peasant from the squalid half-starvation which the Tory Warder pronounced to 9 194 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. be bis desperate lot ; to obliterate sectarian distinctions and to place all Irisbmen upon a common level of fair play and equal privilege ; we, whose efforts sougbt tbe welfare and honour of all, were maligned as dark and dangerous conspirators against the rights of property, against the lives of Protestants, against order and civilization, against British connexion, Among the modes adopted to produce false impressions of the question of Repeal, was the circulation of a pamphlet by Mr. Montgomery Martin, entitled " Ireland before and after the Union with Great Britain." The object of this pamphlet was, of course, to demonstrate that Ireland had prospered largely by the destruction of her power of self-legislation. Mr. Martin's production was hailed with a burst of acclamation by the anti-repeal press. The Times led off by saying, " Mr. Montgomery Martin has published a valuable recital.' ' The Morning Herald said, " The publication at such a juncture as this of so demonstrative a work, is invaluable ; it will convict the Impostor. To the government proceedings it will give great assistance. It ought to be circulated throughout every town, village, and hamlet in Ireland." And so on, in strains more or less laudatory, through numerous anti-repeal organs in all the three kingdoms. Mr. Martin had, some time pre- viously, tried to set up a Repeal newspaper in London under the patronage of Mr. O'Connell. He was advised by Mr. O'Connell not to attempt it, inasmuch as the only readers of the paper would be the Irish in England, whose support would not render the experiment remunerative. Mr. Martin, how- ever, persevered ; set up the paper, and called it The Bepealer. O'Connell's prediction was fulfilled — it did not pay ; and Mr. Martin, after publishing a few numbers, desisted from the profitless attempt, and adopted the opposite side of the ques- tion. His pen, equally ready to advocate either the Repeal of the Union or the continuance of that measure, was now em- ployed to prove, not only that Ireland had made vast advances since 1800, but that she had been in a state of progressive decay during the existence of her free constitution. To de- monstrate the alleged decay, Mr. Martin exhibited fifteen items of exports, in which,^during a carefully selected portion of that period, a decrease had occurred. But he took care to omit nineteen other articles of export (including the staple commo- dity, linen) in which, during the very same years, there had been a large increase. On the whole thirty-four items, the nineteen and the fifteen taken collectively, there was a large increase. The audacious fraud was exposed by my old friend IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 198 Michael Staunton in a learned and able reply, which was pub- lished as a pamphlet by the Repeal Association and widely circulated, I mention the circumstance to show the base methods that were taken to deceive the public mind on a question of vital importance to Ireland, CHAPTER XX. *' Oh I come then, Erin, come away ; Oh, haste, my love, nor longer stay, Oh, haste ! thy cruel sister leave, Her words are false, her smiles deceive ; 1 Union,' she cries, with viperous breath — Union with her— is Erin's death." Beauties of the Press. The ensuing summer and autumn were rendered remarkable by the great gatherings called monster-meetings. The utility of those meetings lay in the evidence they afforded that the voice of the nation was for Repeal. Whig and Tory alike had incessantly asserted that the people cared nothing for Repeal. The people in 1843 turned out in their multitudinous strength to give the lie to that laboriously reiterated calumny. The whole population were astir. Invitations to attend public meetings in distant quarters poured in upon those who had been chiefly conspicuous in the agitation. The attendance on the weekly meetings of the Association overflowed the capacity of the apartment in which we had been accustomed to assem- ble. O'Connell resolved on erecting a hall of larger compass ; and on Thursday the 30th March, 1843, he laid the founda- tion-stone of the new edifice, on which he bestowed the name of Conciliation Hall. Meanwhile, meeting followed meeting in the country. O'Connell displayed astonishing mental and physical elasticity and vigour. He was then sixty-eight years old ; and he flat- tered himself that when accumulating years should have de- prived him of the strength required for his public exertions, he could still, from his closet, regulate the agitation, and guide the men who might occupy, under his instructions, a species of deputy leadership. During all this year the Young Ireland party, whose organ was the Nation newspaper, seemed to work in harmony with the old Agitator ; but in their writings, and especially in their poetry, there rang the clash of arms — there were significant allusions to the sword which O'Connell did not like. He could not control his impetuous allies ; but he took comfort by observing that fiery thoughts, which, if expressed 196 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. in prose, might be legally unsafe, could be clothed in a poetic dress consistently with legal security. He had, with wondrous skill, kept the public mind of a whole generation at a pitch of the highest political excitement, yet restrained it from unconstitutional or illegal action. He feared that the Young Ireland party would stimulate his followers to compro- mise at once their own safety and the interests of Eepeal by deviations from the old, safe course they had hitherto pursued. But as yet the public saw nothing except mutual confidence and harmony of action between Old and Young Ireland. The greatest of the monster-meetings was held on the hill of Tara in the county Meath on the 15th August, 1843. In O'Connell's speech occurs the following passage: " We are at Tara of the Kings. We are on the spot where the mo- narch s of Ireland were elected, and where the chieftains of Ire- land bound themselves by the sacred pledge of honour and the tie of religion to stand by their native land against the Danes, or any other stranger. This is emphatically the spot from which emanated the social power — the legal authority — the right to dominion over the farthest extremities of the island, and the power of concentrating the force of the entire nation for the purpose of national defence. On this important spot I have an important duty to perform. I here protest in the face of my Creator — in the face of Ireland and of God, I protest against the continuance of the unfounded and unjust Union. My proposition to Ireland is that the Union is not binding upon us ; it is not binding, I mean, upon conscience — it is void in principle — it is void as matter of right — and it is void in constitutional law." On the day when O'Connell thus addressed a multitude computed by the Nation to consist of 750,000 persons, and which, although that number was probably an over-estimate, yet was undoubtedly an enormous gathering, the people of Clontibret in the county Monaghan held a numerous meeting to which I accepted an invitation. It was presided over by Captain Seaver of Heath Hall, a Protestant gentleman of for- tune, and a convert to Eepeal from Orangeism. On a rising ground at a small distance from our meeting, a party of dra- goons were drawn up under the command of an officer. This species of military supervision had become rather usual about that period. The pretext was, that a breach of the peace might occur between the Eepealers and the anti-Eepealers, re- quiring military intervention to suppress it. The redcoats looked lively, and were a picturesque addition to the landscape. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 197 The meetings were all perfectly peaceful ; and if the soldiers were on any occasion permitted to approach within hearing of the speakers, they must — if Irish — have been heartily delighted with the doctrines announced, and with the resolutions that expressed the most fervid determination to persevere. O'Connell sometimes alluded to the beauties of the scenery. At the Clifden meeting he thus expressed himself : " I love the wild and majestic scenes through which I have this day passed in coming to your meeting. Perhaps I might be justi- fied in saying that nature did not intend me for a politician ; but that, judging from my feelings, I ought rather to have spent my life in the quiet and undisturbed admiration and en- joyment of nature's beauty and magnificence. The scenery I have this day passed has made me think so. It filled my soul with a thrilling and undefinable sensation to behold that wild and swelling morass encompassed by cloudcapt and majestic mountains — the regions of the storm and the mist — and the quiet lake surrounded with high and heath-covered banks, or sometimes embossed among trees, its surface scarcely disturbed by the soft and perfumed autumnal breeze ; whilst the tiny waves with which it was rippled, seemed to smile approbation upon us as our procession passed along its banks. I love the music of the waters, the silvery echoes of mountain rill, and the sounds of the torrent rushing over the brow of the preci- pice. They seem to whisper to my soul the joys of youth, to arouse the energies of manhood, and to dictate to me a com- mand that I could not refuse to obey — to use every energy of my soul, every power of my mind, every faculty of my being, to make our majestic yet neglected country the garden and the paradise for which nature has so obviously designed it." There were altogether some forty-five monster meetings, quite enough to develop the genuine sentiments of Ireland upon the Union, were any such evidence wanted. On the 20th October, 1843, Mr. Smith O'Brien addressed a letter to the secretary, enclosing his first subscription, and announcing his adhesion to the Repeal Association. In his letter he said : ' ' At this moment, after forty-three years of nominal union, the affections of the two nations are so entirely alienated from each other, that England trusts for the main- tenance of her connexion, not to the attachment of the Irish people, but to the bayonets which menace our bosoms, and to the cannon which she has planted on all our strong- holds." On the 23rd October, Conciliation Hall was formally opened. 198 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. The accession of Mr. O'Brien was hailed with delight. He had long adhered to the delusive hope that justice to Ireland might be obtained from the united parliament ; but on the failure of his motion for a parliamentary inquiry into Irish grievances, was compelled to despair of any good from such a source. His motion was prefaced with a speech of great ability, fraught with extensive and accurate information as to the wrongs sustained by Ireland. He sought inquiry. As a matter of course it was refused ; prosecution of the Irish leaders was resolved on, and William Smith O'Brien tendered his adhesion to the National Association. A slight outline of his career will interest the Irish public. He was born in October, 1803. His remote ancestors were the royal O'Briens, of whose family Brian Boroimhe was a member. He was the second son of the late Sir Edward O'Brien, bart., of Dromoland, county Clare, and heir to the estates of his maternal grandfather, Mr. William Smith. He spent three years at Harrow school, and took his degree at Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1828 he was brought into parliament by his father for the borough of Ennis — a close borough to which the O'Brien family and the late Lord Fitz- gerald alternately possessed the nomination. He ardently supported the Catholic claims, and enrolled himself a member of the Catholic Association in the year of his return to parlia- ment. He did not, in the House of Commons, give a regular support to the Tory ministry, although his father was a poli- tician of the class called Liberal Conservatives ; but after the Duke of Wellington carried Emancipation and lost the support of the ultra-Tories, Mr. O'Brien became a supporter in genera! of the government — voting, however, against it upon some questions involving constitutional principles. In 1831 he lost his seat on the dissolution which followed the defeat of the- Whigs on the Keform Bill. On that measure Mr. O'Brien did not vote, being absent from London, but he voted against General Gascoigne's motion declaring that the number and proportion of English representatives ought to continue un- diminished. In 1832 he was invited to stand for Ennis on the Liberal interest, but having transferred his residence from the county Clare to the county Limerick, he declined the invitation. In 1834 he re-entered parliament for the county of Limerick, and from that year until 1843 he generally acted with the liberal Whigs, giving them an independent support, but opposing them whenever he deemed them in the wrong — for example, on the Jamaica question. During their tenure of office IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 199 he neither asked nor received any favour for himself or his family. Such is the outline of Mr. O'Brien's political career prior to 1813. It displays a single-minded consistency in the pur- suit of political truth. His motion on behalf of Ireland was couched in the following words: " That this House will resolve itself into a committee for the purpose of taking into conside- ration the causes of discontent at present prevailing in Ireland, with a view to the redress of grievances, and to the establish- ment of a system of just and impartial government in that part of the united kingdom." The rejection of that motion by the House decided the mover to join the Repeal agitation. He brought to the cause great practical ability, a complete mastery of the details of public business, acquired from his long experience in parlia- mentary committees, and an honest zeal, of which the enthu- siasm was at that time tempered and regulated by a calm and accurate judgment. His descent from the proudest line in Irish history gratified the Celtic prepossessions of the people ; his social position commanded respect ; and his Protestant creed afforded one more proof, in addition to the many already existing, that Irish nationality is of no particular sect or per- suasion ; and that amongst those who own its sacred influence, the most ardent, the most useful, the most active, may be, and have been, Protestants. On his junction with the Repeal Association, he immediately founded the Parliamentary Committee of that body, whose occupation was to watch and report upon all bills affecting Ire- land in their progress through parliament. The committees of the Association were practical schools of legislation. They amassed and disseminated information on matters with which the Irish legislator ought to be familiar. The Repeal leaders devoted their labours not merely to the organising of the people, but to the equally necessary task of diffusing through the land a body of knowledge calculated to exalt and fortify the move- ment by enlisting the intellect of Ireland as well as her feelings in favour of home-government. One of the topics to which the attention of the Association was called, was the project, from time to time renewed, of abolishing the viceroy alty. Against that project the Association passed a unanimous resolution. The viceroyalty, like every human institution, has its defects ; but it is better than any executive system by which it could be replaced. Not a shadow of proof has been given that Ireland would derive any benefit 200 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. from its abolition. Many of the pretexts for abolishing the office have an ugly resemblance to the pretexts for abolishing the Irish parliament. Many of them would equally serve for abolishing our supreme courts of judicature, and transferring the jurisdiction of the Four Courts to Westminster Hall. We might be told about steam-rails and telegraphic wires. We might be told that the retention of a separate judicature was a mark of provincial dependence, and that we should be raised to the level of England, and made " an integral member of the empire," by the extinction of all that gives metropolitan rank to the capital of our country, and national character to our jurisprudence. English egotism is engrossing ; and when- ever a scheme for the further spoliation of Ireland is contem- plated by the absorption to London of our public institutions or offices, the project of robbery is pretty certain to be repre- sented as " making Ireland an integral part of the empire, " and exalting us to an equality with England. If the viceroy - alty were abolished, the supreme courts of law and equity would become the next objects of attack. Significant indica- tions of this have already been given. Some advocates of the abolition of the Viceregal office have — in my opinion, inconsistently— deplored the evils of Irish absenteeism. They deem it mischievous that the owners of Irish estates should be absentees ; yet they are ready to make an absentee of the Irish executive. I know no reason why any governmental acts or functions that can be performed in Ireland, should be performed out of Ireland. The talk we hear about the jobbery, flunkeyism, and cor- ruption engendered by the viceregal institution supplies no sound argument for abolishing the office. That talk merely means that the executive has something to give, in the way of either place or countenance ; and that for what it can give there will be applicants. The same objection may be made against every executive government that ever existed, or that ever will exist. The viceroyalty marks our national distinctness, and is a practical acknowledgment that Ireland is sufficiently great to require the permanent presence of the sovereign's representa- tive. The admirable regularity and effective working of the Asso- ciation at this period were mainly due to the care and ability of its secretary, Mr. Ray. He conducted the multitudinous correspondence of the Association, smoothed difficulties, disen- tangled and arranged the most complex details of public busi- IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 201 ness with a quiet, easy mastery, resulting partly from long habit, but far more from natural sagacity. His acquaintance with Irish political subjects was accurate and extensive. He had a singularly tabular mind, well stored with information, historic and statistic; and he could, at a moment's notice, produce to you any fact or detail you might require from his copious stores. Each item occupied its place in his mental repositories, duly labelled and ticketed. An able and efficient officer of the Association, he was popular not only from his official merits, but also from his great and well-known private worth. Mr, Ray was the originator of the Repeal Reading Rooms. He established them in several towns on his Repeal mission in 1842. The first of these rooms opened was at Newcastle, county Limerick. As the Reading Room system extended itself, it developed its utility in furnishing local centres to combine and permanently organize the county patriots ; cen- tres where political information could be constantly acquired ; social rallying points for the provincial Repealers where the intellect was exercised and improved ; where habits of morality were strengthened by the inducement afforded to the people to employ their leisure hours in mental recreation instead of sensual indulgence. Among the gentlemen who rendered frequent and efficient assistance to O'Connell in getting up meetings, was Maurice Lenihan, Esq., the able and accomplished author of a valuable History of Limerick. A list of the meetings which Mr. Lenihan contributed to organize would nearly fill a page. His exertions in this department of the popular service commenced in 1832, in which year he assisted in promoting the Repeal and anti- tithe demonstrations of Clonmel and Carrick-on-Suir. In 1837, 1838, 1843, and 1814, we find him actively engaged in a similar service at Cork, Mallow, Skibbereen, and Lismore. He was the principal organiser of the monster-meeting held at Thurles in September, 1845, to petition for Repeal ; and his graphic pen was frequently employed in describing for the press the popular gatherings assembled by O'Connell. Mr. Lenihan may look back with honourable pride on his useful and active part in the national agitation ; for he is staunch to his national principles, and as incapable as ever of comprehend- ing how Ireland can be benefited by the robbery and degrada- tion of the Union. 202 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. CHAPTER XXI. "The King of France, with twenty thousand men, Marched up the hill, and then marched down again." The autumn of 1843 was advancing to its close ; three or four monster-meetings yet remained to be held. Of these the Clontarf gathering was fixed for Sunday the 8th October. The executive had hitherto looked passively on at the agitation. They now resolved on a sudden demonstration of vigour. Late on the afternoon of Saturday the 7th, a proclamation by the Viceroy, Lord De Grey, was issued from the Castle, pro- hibiting the intended meeting of the morrow at Clontarf. O'Connell, apprehensive of a sanguinary attack upon the people in case of their disregarding this proclamation, issued a counter-proclamation from the Corn Exchange, enjoining the Eepealers to abandon their purpose of assembling. Mes- sengers were despatched into the country in all directions to meet the people on their way to the metropolis, and to send them back to their respective homes. Meanwhile the government placed Dublin in a state of siege. All the guards at the barracks and at the Castle were doubled ; and for the especial protection of Earl De Grey from Repeal violence, a squadron of dragoons and two extra companies of foot were quartered in the Lower Castle Yard. Aldborough House was garrisoned with a regiment of infantry ; at night there were patrols established through the city. The roads in the vicinity were patrolled by parties of mounted police. Three vessels in the river had their guns runs out, command- ing the spot where the meeting was intended to have been held. The guns at the Pigeon House Fort were also run out so as to command Clontarf, and prepared for immediate action. The Rhadamanthus and Dee war steamers brought the 87th Royal Irish Fusiliers to Dublin. The 34th regiment arrived in Dublin on Sunday morning after a stormy passage from Glasgow. As that regiment marched through the city, the multitude heartily cheered them ; the commanding officer mistook the cheer for a hostile indication, and ordered the men to halt and fix bayonets. The crowd cheered again. The officer was wiser the second time, and quietly marched his men to their barrack. The 5th Dragoon Guards were stationed at Clontarf. The men were accoutred for active service — each man and horse being provisioned for twenty-four hours. The 60th Rifles IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 203 were stationed in their immediate vicinity ; each soldier was served with sixty rounds of ball-cartridge. A brigade of the Royal Horse Artillery occupied a position near Clontarf sheds, with four six-pounders limbered and ready for immediate action. There were also the 11th Hussars and the 54th regiment of infantry stationed near the sheds. A monster armament was brought against unarmed, peaceful multitudes, to prevent their assembling to petition the legislature for the repeal of a destructive and detested statute. It is impossible not to be struck with the similarity of the means whereby the Union was carried, and those by which it is sustained. Pitt and Castlereagh corrupted and coerced. Ebrington bribed Unionists with the lure of government patronage ; De Grey brought down troops to overawe the Repealers. Pitt poured 137,000 bayonets into Ireland to carry the Union. Peel poured in 30,000 bayonets to preserve it. The display of military force could not disconcert men who meditated no appeal to arms. The Tories, however, declared that the military occupation of Ireland was indispensable to preserve the connexion of the countries. What a pregnant commentary on the Union ! The Union, which was to have fused, consolidated, identified the nations, so that they were no longer to have been " twain, but one flesh this consoli- dating Union lasts for three-and-forty years, at the end of which period (on the Tory showing) it requires 30,000 troops to restrain one of the " consolidated" parties from breaking loose from the other. I repeat, what a pregnant commentary on the Union ! It is the same at the end of sixty-six years. It will be the same as long the Union lasts. A measure in the highest degree insulting to the national honour, abhorrent to the national sentiment, and pernicious to the national in- terests, can have no other security for its continuance than the overwhelming brute-force of England. Meanwhile the Repealers displayed no relaxation of zeal or activity. The first weekly meeting of the Association after the Clontarf affair was so crowded, that the committee were obliged to adjourn it to the theatre in Abbey-street. Prose- cutions were threatened, and the public mind was greatly ex- cited. On that day, and on the two following Mondays, the chair was successively occupied by John O'Connell, by myself, and by Mr. John Augustus O'Neill of Bunowen Castle, who threw into his address a genuinely Irish spirit of chivalrous devotion to the cause. Then came the prosecutions, under the management of the 204 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. Attorney- G-eneral, Mr. Thomas Berry Cusack Smith, son of Baron Smith, whose support of the Union has been noticed in a former chapter of this work. At first the proceedings excited curiosity, but their dull monotony soon palled upon the public. The traversers kept up their spirits despite this monster nui- sance. Amusement was given by the public perusal of fan- tastic, amatory, or romantic poetry in court, from the versical department of the Nation. Mr. Steele was in hopes that the principal witness against him, Mr. Frederick Bond Hughes, would have been discredited by the court and jury from the following circumstance. Steele was in the habit of writing out his own speeches for the newspapers, and introducing whatever additions or changes might occur to him while the pen was in his hand. Mr. Hughes, who was employed by the government to report the speeches of the Kepealers, ap- peared as a witness for the prosecution of Steele, and swore to his actual delivery of a speech which contained the quotation, " Behemoth, biggest born of the earth, Upheaved his vastness." Now, these words had not been delivered by Steele, but had been added by him to the report of whatever he had really said. Yet Mr. Hughes swore positively to Steele's delivery of the speech as reported with the added passage about Behemoth and his vastness. Steele made an affidavit denying the de- livery, and asserting that he had introduced the addition while writing out his speech for the press. But the objection to Mr. Hughes's credibility was overruled by the court ; and in candour it must be admitted that such a mistake might be made by the witness without any intentional deviation from veracity. The mistake was made the most of, and added to the unpopularity which had already attached to Mr. Hughes as a crown witness. The owner of an itinerant equestrian troupe, whose name was Hughes, tried to turn the affair to his own account by appending to his placards and advertisements the following intimation : " N.B. — No connexion with Mr. Fre- derick Bond Hughes ;" which disclaimer may perhaps have drawn some extra spectators to the equine show. The trials went on slowly and wearily. One of the attorneys for the defence made a serio-comic complaint of the court, the agents, and the defendants, who all seemed engaged in a con- spiracy to deprive the trial of becoming gravity and dignity. 44 Heaven help me," said this gentleman, "I have got no peace among 'em all. I want my clients to swear an affidavit — they've levanted somewhere, and aren't to be found. Well, IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 205 there's a hurry-scurry after them, and at last they're dis- covered sitting for their pictures to some vagabond coxcomb of an artist from London. By-and-by I want Mr. n (a brother solicitor) ' ' on a very pressing matter. He's invisible — another hue-and-cry ; at length he's caught in a back parlour, with his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, strutting up and down in a dignified attitude, and looking as majestic as he can for some other grinning picture-drawing scamp. We go back to the court — the traversers are cracking their jokes among themselves in their box, and my lords are poking their necks over the desk to find out if they can what the d the fun is all about. Counsellor Fitzgibbon does his duty by his client, whereupon the Attorney- General jumps up and sends him a three-cocked invitation in open court to come and be shot at twelve paces." The most brilliant speeches that enlivened the prolonged monotony of the trial were those of Sheil, who defended John O'Connell, and of Whiteside (now Chief Justice), who defended Charles Gavan Duffy. From Mr. Whiteside's speech I extract one passage : " Men have lived amongst us who approached the greatness of antiquity. The imperishable records of their eloquence may keep alive in our hearts a zeal for freedom and a love of country. The comprehensive genius of Flood — the more than mortal energy of Grattan — the splendour of Bushe — the wisdom of Saurin — the learning of Ball — the noble sim- plicity of Burrowes — the Demosthenic fire of Plunket, and the eloquence of Curran, rushing from the heart, and which will sound in the ears of his countrymen for ever. They failed to save the ancient constitution of Ireland — wit, learn- ing, genius, eloquence, lost their power over the souls of men. With one great exception,* our distinguished countrymen have passed away, but their memorials cannot perish with them. While the language lasts, their eloquence lives, and their names will be remembered by a grateful posterity so long as genius shall be honoured and patriotism revered. The Irish people, lastly, demand that the Union be repealed, because, they say, their feelings have not been consulted nor their miseries relieved by the imperial parliament. Wealth has diminished, say they, amongst us ; before us there is a gloomy prospect and little hope. . . . They have embraced this project of Repeal with ardour. It is their nature, where they feel strongly, to act boldly and to speak passionately." The management of the trial by the government officers is * Plunket, who then still lived. 206 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. familiar to the public — the refusal of the caption to the tra- verses — the defective jury -list — the shameless packing of the jury — the admission of a species of evidence against the tra- versers which was actually condemned as inadmissible at the very same period by the Court of Queen's Bench at West- minster* — the charge by the Lord Chief Justice against " the other side," and finally the wrongful imprisonment. But the imprisonment was a great point gained for the Orangemen. No matter by what means accomplished, it was the subject of loud exultation. The traversers were at last in gaol, convicted of a " conspiracy ;" which conspiracy no ten rational men outside the court and jurybox believed to have any existence at all. The exclusion of Catholics from the jury-list because they were supposed to be Repealers, was defended by Sir James Graham in the following manner : " We wanted," said the right hon. baronet, " to avoid the partiality necessarily arising from preconceived opinions favourable Jo Repeal on the part of the jurors." Did it occur to Sir James that there might be as strong a partiality on the opposite side, arising from the preconceived opinions of jurors adverse to Repeal ? When a man says, " Don't put Repealers into the jury- box — they will be sure to acquit," it sounds extremely like saying, " Do put anti-Repealers into the box — they will be sure to convict." CHAPTER XXII. " Who helpeth not himself, Fortune disowns ; Who braves all obstacles will win i' th' end ; Success crowns perseverance— coward souls, Who shrink from work, shall never win work's guerdon." Herbert Smith. The Orange and Tory party now had their triumph. Truly the government had deserved success, if a reckless disregard of all decency in their vindictive pursuit could entitle them to victory. But the verdict was obtained, no matter how ; and sentence was pronounced, and there was a mighty uproar of delight in all Orangeland. The Mail announced that the traversers had been hurried to their prison with less eclat than had often attended a coal-porter's wedding. I think it was that journal * Viz., the admission of newspaper articles in evidence against men who never saw them. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 207 that jocularly said, " O'Connell has got two feather beds con- veyed from his house to the gaol — one for himself, and the other, we presume, for Repeal." That Repeal could survive the incarceration of seven of its leaders, was deemed impossi- ble. The cause was extinct ; that was loudly announced. The Repeal rent would dwindle to nothing. The deluded people, having their eyes opened to the wickedness, folly, and peril of their evil ways by the well-merited punishment of their chiefs, would be scared from any further connexion with the movement. They would no longer furnish the sinews of war to a set of men who could not keep their heads out of Sir Robert Peel's net. The leaders were seized ; the flock would scatter. And above all, the mischievous magic of O'Connell's legal infallibility, which so long had kept the Repealers to- gether, would now be destroyed. The spell was dissolved ; the magician would henceforth be powerless. Such were the boasts of the anti-Repealers on O'Connell's imprisonment. Bets were laid whether the Repealers would hold their usual meeting on the following Monday. The Con- servative party were firmly convinced that they would not dare to assemble. The committee met on the evening of the day that saw O'Connell consigned to a prison. The room was overflowing, and great excitement necessarily prevailed. It was surmised that the government would proclaim down the Association on the Monday morning, and arrest the principal Repealers who were still at large. On the question being discussed as to who should occupy the chair, a post of possible danger, numerous gentlemen offered themselves; but Mr. Smith O'Brien said that as he conceived that the struggle against despotic power could perhaps be most effectively made in his person, he claimed the chief post of peril as a particular favour. It was, however, deemed more advisable that Mr. O'Brien should occupy the place usually filled by Mr. O'Connell. Monday arrived. It soon became manifest that the Re- pealers were not scared by the recent prosecution. They mustered in such crowds that Conciliation Hall was filled long before the hour announced for the commencement of the day's business, and thousands who could not obtain standing room were obliged to go away. The Tory predictions did not seem likely to be realised. There was no shrinking, either fcmong the leaders or the people. The chair was occupied on Monday by Mr. Caleb Powell of Clonshavoy, the Protestant representative of the county 208 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. Limerick ; and on Tuesday by another Protestant gentleman, Captain Seaver of Heath Hall, near Newry. There was a sustained, yet quiet energy in the proceedings. There was the most intense enthusiasm combined with the most cautious discretion. Every face expressed firm resolution to encounter all risks that might beset the pursuit of Repeal ; but at the same time to play the game warily as well as firmly. The minds of men were braced and strung for a mighty effort. It was glorious to behold the crowds that filled the national hall at the moment when the thunders of the government were directed against Ireland's nationality. The people never as- sumed a loftier port or a nobler attitude than when they calmly bade defiance to tyrannic power, and opposed the simple might of popular opinion to the chicanery of perverted law and the formidable array of British bayonets. The troops that filled the land, and the monster-indictment, alike were impotent to scare them from a course recommended by its own intrinsic justice, and endeared to their hearts by the sentiment of honourable national pride. They hailed with delight the entrance of the men who were accustomed to take a prominent part in the proceedings. The roof rang again with the joyous acclamations that greeted their appearance. The prosecution did not paralyse the contributors to the Repeal exchequer. There was actually an inconvenient rivalry to hand in money. Each man was eager to pour into the treasury the contribution entrusted to his care, and thus were several hours successively occupied. The first week's receipts amounted to £2,593 18s. 2d., which sum was considerably exceeded on several subsequent occasions. Almost immediately on O'Connell's imprisonment the several municipal corporations of Ireland sent deputies to the metropolis ; where, having been refused admission to the prison for the purpose of presenting addresses to the captives, they assembled at O'Connell's house in Merrion-square, and there agreed on a solemn declaration that Ireland required a domestic parliament to develop her resources and secure her prosperity. This declaration, emanating not from noisy agita- tors, but from the very flower of the trading and mercantile community of Ireland, was necessarily calculated to produce a deep impression. Whilst these events occurred out of doors, let us take a peep within the prison walls. O'Connell, on the evening of his incarceration, had exclaimed, " Thank God, I am in jail for Ireland!" He believed that Peel's IRELAND AND IIER AGITATORS. 209 false move tended to augment the strength of the national cause. All the prisoners dined together, and the party wore anything but a tragical air. They all enjoyed the exhilaration of spirits arising from a hope, that, whatever inconvenience they might sustain, their imprisonment would accelerate the triumph of the cause that was nearest to their hearts. They were, for the first few days, occupied with the bustle of fixing themselves in their new quarters. At last they settled clown into something like their usual habits. Charles Gavan Duffy, the editor of the Nation ; Dr. (now Sir John) Gray, the editor of the Freeman; and Richard Barrett, the editor of the Pilot, found abundant employment in superintending their several journals. The moments unoccupied by business they devoted to study, or to taking exercise in the adjoining gar- dens. Mr. Duffy, under the impression that the imprison- ment would last a year, announced his purpose of reading through Carte's Life of Ormond in three folio volumes. Mr. Ray still exercised his supervision of the affairs of the Asso- ciation. John O'Connell wrote his amusing and instructive Repeal Dictionary, which appeared in the weekly press, and which I believe was subsequently published in a collected form. Steele read Kane's Industrial Resources of Ireland, and defaced the fair pages of the work with innumerable marks of admiration. Barrett was ready for fun, frisk, joyous frolic of every sort, and more than once kept the incarcerated coterie in roars of laughter by attitudinising and grimacing in a style that would have done honour to Liston. Two of the visitors played the short-armed orator; the comic force of the pathetic passages being much enhanced by a cambric handkerchief which the gentleman who performed the action held to the weeping eyes of the gentleman who performed the eloquence. Nearly all the prisoners contributed to the pages of a jeu and oats, are the rents of absentees. " I pray the English reader to ponder well this testimony, in connexion with Pitt's hypocritical promises, in 1800, of bless- ings, and prosperity, and wealth to be showered upon Ireland by the Union. " Ireland," said the Times in 1845, " may be truly considered in a perpetual state of famine." And this, it is to be observed, was before the potato disease had set in; it was in the same year in which the same journal had pronounced that Ireland was " full and overflowing with human food." Just reflect on such a condition of things— a country over- flowing with food, yet its people in a perpetual state of famine I It would indeed be miraculous if Ireland were in any other state, while the means which God had given her for the sup- port of her inhabitants were wrung out of her by the Union, Well might the Times exclaim, " Social atrophy drains off the vital juices of the nation." That social atrophy is the want of self-government. One more testimony to the realisation of Pitt's Union pros- perity promises : " We cannot," say the Irish Poor Inquiry Commissioners in their Third Report, " estimate the number of persons in Ireland out of work and in distress, during thirty w 7 eeks of the year, at less than 585,000, nor the number of persons dependent on them at less than 1,800,000, making in the whole 2,385,000." That was the state of affairs in 1836. That would not have been the state of affairs in 1836 if the' annual produce of Ireland had not been swept off by England as fast as it was produced. That was not the condition of the Irish population while Ireland possessed her own parliament. Manufactures, which were then rapidly growing up, would have continued to extend, and to absorb the surplus agricultural hands. The income of the country would have continued to circulate at home among the Irish people, forming innumerable little capitals. There would not have been a perpetual decree of sic vos non vobis, condemning millions to toil without enjoy- ment. There wquld not— there could not have been 2,885,000 destitute paupers out of a population (at that time) of eight millions. With these evidences of national misery before our eyes, it is at once ludicrous and melancholy to reflect that the pretext upon which the imperial parliament rejected O'Connell's motion IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 275 for Repeal in 1834 was the " giant-stride prosperity of Ire- land." Could there be a more conclusive proof of the trans- cendant ignorance of that parliament on Irish matters, or of its total incompetence to govern Ireland for the benefit of the country? The " prosperity" of a people " in a perpetual state of famine !" Of a people whose " vital juices are drained off by a social atrophy !" Of a people, more than a fourth of whom were at that very time reduced to a state of pauperism for thirty weeks in every year, and whose numbers have since then been enormously thinned out by the imperial plunder that renders their native country incapable of supporting them I* Imagine legislation gravely founded on the alleged prosperity of such a people ! Who can wonder that the wronged and outraged nation should try to shake loose from this beau ideal of legislative ignorance and impudence ? Let us next see whether Pitt's pretext that the Union would cement the affections and incorporate the interests of the countries, was in any respect better founded than his pro- mises of Irish prosperity. On this point I shall again quote from an intelligent Tory authority : ' ' The position of Ireland," says Frazer's Magazine for May, 1845, " considered as an in- tegral portion of the British empire, is a thing quite by itself in the history of nations. Subjects of the same crown, governed by the same laws, represented in the same parlia- ment, and partakers in the same free constitution, the Irish people are as far removed from an amalgamation w r ith the people of England as if the breadth of Europe stood between them, and they were known to one another only by name. Moreover, the sources of this alienation lie so deep — they are of such ancient date, and so continually present to the minds of both races, that up to the present moment the best en- deavours of kings, and ministers, and parliaments to remove them have availed nothing Attachment, using that term in its more generous sense, there is, it is to be apprehended, very little between the two countries — cer- tainly none on the side of the Irish towards their English fellow- subjects." True — perfectly true. It would indeed be most extraor- dinary if there were any. Men do not love the spoiler, the * In a former chapter I have referred to the parliamentary return ob- tained by Sir J. N. M'Kenna, showing a diminution of the Irish people between 1846 and 1861 to the extent of 2,397,630 souls. But the exodus has been since going on ; and the decrease is estimated to have reached the enormous amount of 2,738,099, by the middle of the present year 1867. 276 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. robber, the destroyer of their liberties. The attachment of the Irish people is not to be won by the corruption and de- struction of their native legislature, and the wholesale abstrac- tion of their national resources. It is not to be won by the prostration of Ireland from the rank of a kingdom to that of a province ; nor by the irritating and insolent intrusion of England into all their domestic concerns. The Union was a crime and a curse— a crime in its perpetration, and a curse in its deadly results ; and the attachment of a people is not to be won by crimes and curses. Those persons who yet che- rish the preposterous fancy that the Union operates as a bond of international affection, should think of Frazer's Tory evi- dence — ' ' Far removed from amalgamation with the people of England." " Deep and ancient alienation of the countries. " " No attachment. " And is this the mutual love produced by nearly half-a-century of Union ? Methinks it is much more like dismemberment. I cordially forgive Frazer for the non- sense he talks about kings, and ministers, and parliaments trying to heal the international sore, in consideration of the testimony he bears to an important truth — namely, the tried and proved incompetence of the Union to promote good will, or anything but alienation, between the two countries. It is, indeed, remarkable, that whilst Unionists allege that the dissolution of the Union would infallibly be followed by our total separation from Great Britain, they omit all notice of the tendency of the Union itself to produce separation, by disgusting the Irish people with a connexion whereby they are degraded and impoverished. I admit the advantage to Ireland of connexion with Great Britain — connexion under the same crown, and with separate parliaments. But if I deem — as I do deem — such a connexion greatly preferable to sepa- ration, I also deem separation greatly preferable to the Union. Connexion is a very good thing, but like most other good things it may be purchased at too high a price ; and unde- niably the destruction of our parliament is too high a price to pay for British connexion. A connexion satisfactory to Ireland would be far more likely to endure than one which is the source of perpetual irritation and ill-will. Norway and Sweden afford a happy example of two friendly nations united under the same crown, and each enjoying its own domestic parliament. We hear a vast quan- tity of grave and solemn nonsense about two co-ordinate par- liaments necessarily clashing against each other, and destroy- ing the integrity of the empire. The problem is practically IRELAND AND TIER AGITATORS. 277 solved by Sweden and Norway. The collision of the nations were a much more probable event, if the one aroused the deadly hatred of the other by destroying her power of self- legislation. True, the overwhelming strength of one of the countries may, in a time of peace, neutralise any attempts on the part of the other to throw off the yoke. But the history of the world is not yet ended. If England does not timely atone for the Union-crime by restoring to Ireland her parlia- ment, the latter will, in all probability, be yet the sharpest thorn in her so-called sister's side. The Unionists allege that the Union, by centralising the legislative power, consolidates and strengthens the empire. Centralisation, up to a certain point, is indispensable for im- perial integrity and safety. But when it passes that point it becomes despotism ; and, despotism resembles the brazen statue with the feet of clay. Its strength is corroded, its foun- dations are undermined by the just dissatisfaction of those portions of the empire that are the victims of its monopoly of power, of expenditure, and of influence. There is no per- manent political health in a state whose extremities are op- pressed and despoiled to augment the strength and enhance the grandeur of the centre. Such a political condition is ana- logous to the state of a human body affected with an overflow of blood at the head or heart, which every man knows is a state of disease not unfrequently followed by death. Centralisation, in the shape of Legislative Union, is the source, not of strength, but of weakness — weakness arising from alienated hearts and trampled interests. Local self- government in the several nations which collectively constitute an empire or a republic, affords the best security to the whole against foreign aggression — a security derived from the greater zeal each separate portion must necessarily have in defending those local institutions which are beneficial to each man's local interests, and entwine themselves around his best affections. On the other hand, centralisation, by rendering the inhabitants of the parts at a distance from the centre dissatisfied and dis- contemed, necessarily weakens the outposts of the empire, and thereby renders the provinces vulnerable to the foreign in- vader. Men will fight better in defence of happy homes than they will in defence of hearths despoiled by the centralising tyranny. Men will fight better in defence of their liberties than they will in defence of their own bondage. They will struggle with a bolder heart and a more stalwart arm in de- fence of free local institutions, prolific of blessings and redo- 278 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. lent of nationality, than in support of a system which strikes down their natural rights, and brands them with national in- feriority. Among the pretexts for refusing Kepeal which are used by English statesmen, it is insolently urged that English power is indispensably needed to keep a people so divided among themselves as the Irish from absolute anarchy and mutual destruction. The direct reverse is the fact. English power has been constantly employed, not to allay but to foment our divisions, on the principle of Divide et Imp&ra ; and the only possible exorcist of the baleful spirit of internal discord is a resident National Legislature, in which all Irish parties would possess a proportional representation ; and which would promote the numerous and varied interests which are common to Irishmen of every sect and party. The divisions existing at the present day in Ireland are ex- tremely analogous to those which existed in England after the Norman Conquest. Take the following description of the latter from Thierry : " The reader," says that historian, ' ' must imagine to himself two countries ; the one possessed by the Normans, wealthy and exonerated from capitation and other taxes ; the other, that is the Saxon, enslaved and oppressed with a land-tax ; the former full of spacious man- sions, of walled and moated castles ; the latter covered with thatched huts and old ruined walls ; this peopled with the prosperous and idle, with soldiers and courtiers, with knights and barons — that with men miserable, and doomed to toil, with peasants and artisans. Lastly, to complete the picture, these two lands are in a manner woven into each other ; they meet at every point, and yet they are more completely separated than if there were seas between them. Each has a language of its own which is strange to the other. French is the court language, used in all the palaces, castles, and mansions, in the abbeys and monasteries, in all the residences of wealth and power ; w T hile the ancient language of the country is only heard at the firesides of the poor and the serfs." This description, with a few variations of detail, would accurately serve for the Ireland of our own day. How, or why was it, that from the jarring and apparently irreconcilable elements of Norman and Saxon, the great and well-combined English nation of the present day has been formed ? It was because the Conqueror placed the central government within, and not without, the realm of England. Had England IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 279 been ruled then and now by a government seated in France, we should still see the degrading and disastrous divisions described by the historian existing in pestilent vigour. There would be the National English party, detesting the absentee legislature ; and there would be the French, or Norman party, sustaining the national evil because of some personal profit or class monopoly by which they might be bribed to support it. These parties would cordially hate each other ; and doubtless French statesmen would announce that French intervention and control were indispensably required to keep Englishmen from cutting one another's throats. But, happily for England, all her governmental institutions were planted upon English ground. There they took root, and there they formed a nucleus around which the descendants of the Saxon, of the Norman, of the Dane, might alike forget their distinctive enmities, and blend, under the shadow of an English legislature, into one amalgamated people. This is just what we want in Ireland to terminate our ruin- ous divisions. A resident parliament, representing all, acces- sible to all, and harmonising all into one great national party. But English Whigs — especially when out of office — inter- pose with soft and soothing accents, "Give up Repeal, and we will give you full justice in a British parliament. Did not King, Lords, and Commons, in 1834, promise you that every just cause of complaint should be removed ? Every British privilege shall be yours ; full equality of rights and franchises ; anything, everything, except an Irish parliament in College- green." Yes, everything is promised, except the concession of that ancient indefeasible right which is worth more a thousandfold than all the rest ; I say, promised — for the intention to per- form is far more than doubtful. But were that intention as sincere and honest as I believe it to be otherwise — were Whigs triumphant in both houses, with their hands full of boons, ready to bestow upon Ireland, still the political equality of Ireland with England under an incorporating Union is tho- roughly and totally impossible. It is out of the nature of things. In any distribution of members, England must always have a numerical superiority in a united legislature, capable of defeating the legislative influence of the whole body of Irish members in questions afiecting their own country. This single circumstance must necessarily render a legislative union of equality impossible. For many years before 1829 a majority of Irish members uniformly supported Emancipation, and that 280 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. measure was as uniformly rejected by the English House of Commons. What equality was there in that ? The Coercion Act of 1833 was passed by the London parliament in defiance of a majority of Irish members. What equality was there in that? The income tax was imposed on Ireland in 1853 against a large majority of Irish votes. What equality was there in that ? Again, it is ridiculous to expect that so long as the Union lasts, England will not always continue the residence of the legislature. That also debars a Union of equality. The seat of parliament is the centre of power, and will, necessarily, attract the Irish absentees to London . Your (( equality" would still leave Ireland afflicted with an absentee drain, now amounting to at least £4,000,000 per annum. So long as the Union lasts, so long will England (under the name of "the empire") hold the purse-strings of the Irish nation. What equality is there in that ? Equal rights with England under a Union ! The thing, I repeat, is totally impossible. Common sense laughs to scorn the flimsy delusion. Oh, but then there is to be a fusion of England and Ire- land into one nation — just as Sussex and Kent are identified with each other. This, again, is impossible. A nation, as Burke says, is not merely a geographical arrangement — it is a moral essence. The pregnant experience of the past and of the present — the experience of seven eventful centuries — de- monstrates the total impracticability of fusing together the moral essences of England and Ireland. To constitute sepa- rate nationhood are required the moral, the historical, the geographical elements. By these elements the special dis- tinctness of Ireland is as clearly marked out as is the distinct- ness of any other nation in the world. Kent and Sussex may amalgamate. Ireland can no more amalgamate with England than with Holland or with France. In the words of Groold, " Her patent to be a nation, not a shire, comes direct from heaven. The Almighty has, in majestic characters, signed the great charter of our independence. The great Creator of the world has given our beloved country the gigantic outlines of a kingdom. The God of Nature never intended that Ire- land should be a province." So spoke Goold, as truly as eloquently. God has stamped on Ireland the indelible charac- ters of national distinctness ; and the violent and unnatural efforts to counteract His manifest designs, to obliterate the features of her individuality, and to bring her people and her institutions under the control of uncongenial Britain, have re- sulted in unspeakable disaster and misery. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 281 As to the Whig notion that any conceivable political amelio- rations could render the Union endurable, I have already tried to show its absurdity. Name as many good laws as you please ; they are surely as attainable from an Irish parliament as from an imperial one. So that, whilst upon the one hand imperial legislation can give us at best no advantage oyer home-government, on the other hand home-government pos- sesses over imperial the inestimable advantage of home-ex- penditure ; home-sympathies ; the sole control of our national resources and revenues ; the exclusion of foreign hands from Irish coffers ; and the residence instead of the absenteeship of the great Irish proprietors who follow in the wake of the legis- lature. Imperial legislation, even under the most favouring circumstances, would still leave us under the withering influ- ences of absenteeism, of a swindling tax drain, and of the anglicised, anti-Irish prepossessions and prejudices of our aristocracy ; whilst it could not give us one solitary good law that could not be far more readily procured from an Irish parliament. I shall now examine some common objections to the Repeal of the Union ; availing myself of the language of Mr. Daniel Owen Maddyn, the clever and amusing, but somewhat super- ficial author of " Ireland and its Rulers." Mr. Maddyn's ar- guments are in substance the same as those which have been used by English senators, journalists, and politicians in ge- neral. " England," says Mr. Maddyn, " would (in the event of Repeal) cease to be a substantive power, and Europe would be left at the mercy of Russia, France, Austria, and Prussia. In the name of common sense, we ask, Why ? What is there in Repeal to diminish the power of England ? The Union at this moment fills the minds of the Irish people at home and in America with rancorous jealousy of England. Does the rancorous jealousy of some millions of the Queen's European subjects conduce to the stability of England's pow er ? Is English power necessarily built on the depression of the Irish people ? Is the strength of the empire dependent on the weakness of one of its constituent nations ? On the contrary, the national sense of intolerable wrong inflicted by England upon Ireland in the demolition of her legislature., is more calculated to perpetuate international animosity, and thereby produce imperial weakness, than a system in which two free parliaments should provide for the respective wants of the two countries. " A house divided against itself shall not stand;" and the Union promotes and foments the perilous division of the household. 232 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. Mr. Maddyn continues as follows: "The Irish Repealers may object that such a consummation" (namely, the decrease of England's European influence) " should have happened in the last century, previous to the Union, if it were likely to take place again upon its supposed dissolution. But to this and all similar arguments of the Repeal party, it is a sufficient political answer to reply, that Ireland had never a free parlia- ment till 1782 ; that within eighteen years the connexion was, three times, all but dissolved — viz., by Flood's Convention for ultra-reform, by the difference upon the Regency Question in 1789, and by the rebellion in 1798 ; that Fox and Burke, while yielding to an Irish army, led by an Irish aristocracy, considered that Grattan's revolution was most calamitous to England ; and that Pitt, in the very outset of his parliamen- tary life, resolved on the measure of an Union and the ex- tinction of the Irish parliament, from his sagacious foresight of the probable results of two legislatures in one empire." " Ireland had never a free parliament until 1782." This assertion is, in Mr. Maddyn's sense, unfounded. We have already seen the Irish parliament in 1460 affirming, not only its own independence of England, but that of all previous par- liaments from the days of Henry II. In another sense, how- ever, Mr. Maddyn is correct ; that is, if he means to imply that the imperfect construction of the unreformed Irish House of Commons left it open to corrupt court influence. In this sense, it is true that even the Irish parliament of 1782 was not free enough ; that it was not based on a representation sufficiently extensive ; that too large a portion of the lower house represented — not the people — but the patrons of bo- roughs. It may be said that the Irish parliament was only the more easily managed on that account. Perhaps so. But that species of management, like all other international dis- honesty, incurred the strong risk of defeating its own object ; and instead of binding the two countries together in the solid, lasting bonds of full, free justice, and fair play, it tended to exacerbate the victimised nation, and to create a store of rankling hatred, fraught with eventual danger to the empire. The Repealers believe that heartfelt international amity and consequent imperial safety can alone co-exist with a truly free and popular Irish legislature ; one which will do justice to the Irish people, and be placed beyond the reach of all cor- rupt management. Let me here notice a fallacy commonly put forward by the Unionists. They say : " As long as you had a parliament, its IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 283 utility was obstructed and its members were corrupted by English influence. Therefore a Union was indispensable to correct the evils resulting from such a state of things." It is perfectly true that the unreformed Irish parliament was exposed to pernicious English influence. The natural and rational course would have been to get rid of that influence, instead of getting rid of the parliament. But what is the remedy of the sagacious Unionists ? Why, truly, to increase the disease. That disease, they themselves allege, was the English influence then partially operating through channels of parliamentary corruption. What is their cure ? To render that same mischievous influence dominant, paramount. To render it perpetual and resistless. It was, they say, pernicious, even when counteracted by the occasional virtue or the national interests of an Irish legislature. And yet they would have us believe that it becomes innocuous when that counteractive power is extinct, and when no check exists to its detrimental operation. I come back to Mr. Maddyn. He blunders in his assertion that within eighteen years from 1782 the connexion of the countries was three times all but dissolved. Flood's fellow- conventionists were totally incompetent to effect separation from England, even had they desired it. And a very small minority of them did desire it.* In truth, the parliamentary reform for which they struggled, would, if successful, have satisfied their utmost aspirations. It is false that the difference upon the Regency Question, in 1789, "all but dissolved the connexion of the countries." Both parliaments concurred in their choice of the Prince of W r ales as Regent during the king's illness, and thus the identity of the executive was secured. The Irish parliament invested the Regent with full royal prerogatives, whilst the British senate, influenced by Pitt, placed some restriction on his powers. The party who supported the popular view in the Irish Commons were as warmly attached to British connexion as was their leader, Grattan. The danger arising from a possible difference in choosing the Regent might have easily been provided against by a law enacting that whoever at any time might be Regent in England should also be Regent in Ireland. A bill to that effect was brought into the Irish par- liament by the Right Hon. James Fitzgerald, and — cushioned by the government. Mr..Maddyn's assertion that the rebellion of 1798 was in * Flood himself was one of the few conventionists who wished separation. 284 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. any degree ascribable to the existence of a resident parliament, is a curious instance of the slapdash hardihood with which a clever writer will sometimes lucubrate on topics he knows little or nothing about. Mr. Maddyn makes no attempt to demonstrate any connexion between the rebellion and the residence of the senate. The real fact is that the Irish par- liament of 1798 was eminently devoted to British connexion. Foster boasted that that parliament put down the insurrection. The stimulants to rebel were to be found, not in the residence of the legislature, but in the ample provocatives administered to the people by the government. The convulsive throes of revolutionary France then agitated Europe. Wild spirits — chiefly Protestant — amongst the Irish middle classes, first caught the contagion of French principles and preached up rebellion in their secret conclaves, when they found it impossible to obtain the parliamentary reform which at one time would have satisfied their desires. They unfortu- nately found in the hearts of the Irish peasantry a soil well prepared to receive the seed they scattered. England had prepared the soil for the reception of that seed. English misgovernment had taught the Irish of that day to seize on any project that held out a hope of deliverance from their tyrants. Mr. Maddyn next asserts that " The character of England would be ruined by consenting to such a measure" (as the Re- peal). " Her reputation for sagacity and political ability would be destroyed — her fame would vanish." It may be asked how her character and fame would suffer by the mere performance of an act of justice; which act would remove from the empire a dangerous source of weakness — possibly of eventual disruption. He continues: " Her material interests would share the same ruin as her moral power. As in individuals, so in nations, character is the creator of national wealth and rank in the social scale." Undoubtedly. But again, Mr. Maddyn does not show how England's character would be compromised by simply undoing an intolerable national wrong, and by recurring to a system precisely analogous to that which she instructed her am- bassador, Lord Minto, to negotiate in the instance of Sicily and Naples. Mr. Maddyn goes on : "It" (the Repeal) " would rob England of a large home market for her manufactures, for of course an Irish parliament would adopt the political economy of the IRELAND AND TIER AGITATORS. 285 national school, and pass a tariff hostile to English manufac- tures. In so doing, it would not merely cut off from England a large portion of her home trade, but it would also set up a rival trader at her very side. 11 So then, the Repeal of the Union is resisted on the express and avowed grounds that it would resuscitate the manufactures of Ireland which the Union had destroyed. Pitt, to be sure, had said fine things about the marvellous increase of Irish trade and manufactures to be effected by the Union ; but here we have an Unionist, and an Irishman to boot, apprehensive lest the restoration of the Irish parliament should wake up Irish manufactures from the torpor of death, and erect the Irish trader into a rival of the Englishman. Now, if Mr.Maddyn be right — and sure I am that he is — in suggesting, in the above quoted slavish paragraph, that the Union has operated to extinguish Irish manufactures, and to throw the monoply of the Irish market into the hands of British manufacturers, it necessarily follows that violent hos- tility to England must be excited in the breasts of those who feel themselves sacrificed to the competition of the English trader. Mr. Maddyn, however, startles us with the discovery that it is not in any such causes that hostility lurks, but in the Repeal ; which measure, he proceeds to say, " would be creat- ing a hostile country whose emigrants swarm in the British colonies ; all of whom would be ready to act in concert with the Irish rulers at College-green." But he does not explain how an act of great national resti- tution could excite the hostility of the people whose goods it would restore to them. His notion is as irrational as it would be to suppose that you excite the enmity of your creditors by paying your debts. Their enmity would much more probably be aroused by the refusal of payment. He might have learned to think more accurately if he had read the letters addressed to the Repeal Association by Irish emigrants in America and the colonies. Their communications overflowed with hostility to English injustice. The Irish in America at present teach a similar lesson. Mr. Maddyn should have asked himself from which of two causes would Irish hostility to England more probably proceed — from the jealousy that crushed a legislature, and has starved out the Irish manufacturer ; or the frank and honourable, although tardy justice, that would restore the parliament, and adopt as its motto, suiun cuique f In truth, there is no fallacy more common than to predict, as prospec- tive evils to result from the Repeal, the very hostility and 236 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. jealousy existing at the present moment, and of which the Union is itself the real cause. The fear that the Repeal of the Union would deprive Eng- land of a profitable commercial intercourse with Ireland, is as foolish as it is unfounded. A similar fear was entertained by the British merchants who in 1776 believed that the American revolt would destroy their trade with the American colonies. But their trade, instead of being destroyed, expanded into pro- portions commensurate with the increased vitality and energy acquired by America from her independence ; and it is now, in the words quoted by Mr. Goldwin Smith from Mr. Merivale, " the greatest the world ever saw."* This example should lead English merchants to inquire whether the dishonest profits derived from monopolising the manufacture-markets of plun- dered and impoverished Ireland, would not be greatly exceeded by the commercial gain of having in Ireland a prosperous and wealthy neighbour. Mr. Maddyn next alleges, as a result of Repeal, that " the difficulty of maintaining a standing army would be increased considerably. Even if Irish soldiers enlisted in the British ranks, upon any collision with Ireland they would probably desert, and start up against the * Saxons.' The loyalty of a large portion of the army would be doubtful, and the vast In- dian empire, and the colonies, would probably be left exposed for want of troops." I might argue that here again Mr. Maddyn suggests diffi- culties as probably resulting from Repeal, which are a great deal more likely to result from the Union. But it needs not. English policy has hunted the human material of war out of the country. " The Celts are gone with a vengeance." "Ire- land will be henceforth the fruitful mother of herds and flocks." Such have been the boasts of English politicians. Ireland is not at present a fruitful mother of recruits ; and as they are not forthcoming, it is scarcely worth while to speculate on what their probable conduct would be if they were among us as of old. Again — Mr. Maddyn fears that " The funds would be very liberally spunged, for of course Ireland, when separate, would not consent to be held responsible for debts that she never contracted." In the name of common honesty, why should she be held responsible for debts that she never contracted ? It is painful to contrast such lucubrations as these with Pitt's hypocritical * The " Empire," by Goldwin Smith; 1863, p. 25. IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. 287 disclaimer in 1799 of all desire to grasp our financial resources for British purposes. Let me now sum up. Ireland demands the Repeal, 1. Because self-legislation is her indefeasible right. She has never surrendered that right. 2. Because self-legislation, even though accompanied with the serious drawbacks of a most corrupt borough system and Catholic disability, conferred great and increasing prosperity on Ireland from 1782 until the Union. 3. Because the destruction of our national constitution has covered the land with decay, and has produced unspeakable suffering among its inhabitants. 4. Because Ireland is truly desirous that the integrity of the empire may be preserved on such terms as will not in- volve her own degradation and the ruinous plunder of her people. The Union imperils the integrity of the empire by holding out the strong lure to foreign invasion which is furnished by the just discontent of Ireland. Foreign invasion were indeed an affliction of great magnitude. But the Union is also an affliction of colossal magnitude — an affliction so huge that it may easily render even foreign conquest a mere question in the minds of many between one species of tyranny and another. Samson, in his thirst for vengeance, pulled down the house to crush his foes, rejoicing in the deed that over- whelmed them, even although he was himself included in their ruin. Tyranny has often merged the instinct of self-preserva- tion in the burning desire to punish the tyrant. But — give to the Irish people an Irish parliament to defend, and then let the foe invade our shores — he will be met by the stout arms and intrepid hearts of a gallant people, fortified and inspired by the resistless, the ennobling influences of trium- phant nationality. Give to the Irish that strong interest in repelling invasion which local institutions and domestic govern- ment alone can give them. Restore to them their national constitution, and they will feel that they have something really worth defending. It needs no words to prove that men will fight more readily to protect a domestic legislature that grati- fies the national pride and keeps the national wealth at home, than a system of absentee legislation that is in itself an insult, that drains the country of its wealth, and beggars multitudes of its inhabitants. British connexion with two legislatures is preferable to sepa- ration ; but separation would be a smaller evil than the destruc- tion of the Irish parliament. 288 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. There seems no reason why Ireland should not flourish in a separate existence as well as Sweden, Portugal, Denmark, Holland, Belgium — countries all naturally her inferiors in the qualities and resources that entitle a nation to self-government. But there is every reason why Ireland, possessing a fertile soil, capacious estuaries, a first-rate situation for commerce, a brave and intelligent people, should find absolute and separate independence incomparably preferable to a legislative Union, which cripples her powers, absorbs her resources for the bene- fit of England, and acts as a social and political blister — ■ draining and irritating. An Englishman may easily test the capacity of the Union to attach Irishmen to British connexion, by asking himself the question, whether he would submit to a political alliance with any land on earth which involved the destruction of the Eng- lish parliament, or which deprived the English nation of self- government ? It is to be deplored that England, with her ample means of securing our attachment by the simple justice of Repeal, should yet prefer to perpetuate our hostility by refusing us that jus- tice. I am no blind anti-English bigot. For estimable indi- vidual Englishmen I entertain warm regard and deep respect. I can recognise the many claims of England to our admira- tion — would that she could enable me to add, our affection ! In the sixteenth century my paternal ancestors were English ; and a sentiment not wholly dissimilar from filial reverence will sometimes steal over my mind when I think that for many centuries my forefathers belonged to that land, so full of glo- rious monuments of all that can exalt and dignify the human race, rich with memories of martial valour and pacific wisdom, famed for the splendid pre-eminence in arts and arms of her mighty sons, covered over with her stately old ancestral dwellings, adorned with majestic churches and cathedrals — the venerable records of the piety that once distinguished her inhabitants. Even an Irish Repealer may experience a mo- mentary thrill of pride when he thinks of his remote connexion with a country possessing such claims on the world's admira- tion ; but the sentiment is quickly banished by the wrongs that England's crimes have inflicted upon that far dearer land in which his first breath was drawn, with which his fondest affections are identified, and of which God's providence has made him a citizen. England — England ! why will you compel our reluctant detestation ? APPENDIX. THE FINANCIAL GRIEVANCES OF IRELAND.* One of the worst evils entailed upon Ireland by the destruction of her native parliament, is the great injustice with which the English parlia- ment has treated her in matters of finance. The pecuniary loss sustained on this head is enormous, and to state it in all its details would demand a large volume. I only propose at present to bring before the reader a few leading facts of our case. Firstly, it is to be borne in mind that at the time of the Union the National Debt of Ireland was, in round numbers, only 28 millions ster- ling. At the same time the National Debt of Great Britain amounted, in round numbers, to 450 millions. It was plain that whereas the British debt was more than 16 times as large as the Irish debt, there could be no plausible pretext for subjecting Ireland to as high a rate of taxation as Great Britain. Accordingly, Lord Castlereagh, the leader of the Union- ists in the Irish House of Ccmmons, promised that Ireland never should have any concern with the pre-Union debt of Great Britain, and that the financial terms of the Union should not only protect Ireland from exces- sive or unfair taxation, but should also secure to her the exclusive benefit of any surplus Irish revenue that might remain after defraying the public expenses as set forth in the Union-statute. Those financial terms were as follows : I. Ireland was, as I have just said, to be protected from any liability on account of the British National Debt contracted prior to the Union. II. The separate Debt of each country being first provided for by a separate charge, Ireland was then to contribute two-seventeenths towards the joint or common expenditure of the United Kingdom for 20 years; after which her contribution was to be made proportionate to her ability, as ascertained at stated periods of revision by certain tests specified in the Act. III. Ireland was not only promised that she never should have any con- cern with the then existing British Debt, but she was also assured that her taxation should not be raised to the standard of Great Britain until the following conditions should occur : 1., That the two debts should come to bear to each other the propor- tion of 15 parts for Great Britain to 2 parts for Ireland, and, 2., That the respective circumstances of the two countries should admit of uniform taxation. The proportion of two parts for Ireland to fifteen parts for Great Britain • Reprinted from No. III., of Publications of the Irish National League. 13 290 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. was strongly protested against by Mr. Foster, the Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, and by the other opponents of the Union. Proofs were given that the load thus imposed on Ireland exceeded her capacity. The anti-Union members of the House of Lords entered on their journals a protest containing a careful and able calculation of the comparative tax- able ability of the two countries. They contended with justice that the ability of Ireland, instead of being two-seventeenths, or 1 to 7£, was no greater than 1 to 13. But the patriots reasoned and protested in vain. The ratio of 1 for Ireland to 7 J for Great Britain became law along with the Act of Union in which it was incorporated. The predictions of Mr. Foster and his friends were soon verified. They had spoken truly when they alleged that Ireland was overloaded by the Union-proportions. When the general taxation of the empire was aug- mented by the prolonged and increasing expenses of the war, she broke down beneath the enormous burthen, and recourse was had to a system of disproportionate borrowing on her credit, in order to make good the de- ficiencies of her revenue. The borrowings with which she was charged exceeded immensely the comparative ratio of her taxable ability, even as that ratio was stated by Lord Castlereagh and by the Union Act. Lord Castlereagh had stated her ability to bear to the ability of Great Britain the proportion of 1 to 7-|. But the post-Union borrowings on Irish ac- count by the imperial government were to the British borrowings in the much higher ratio of about 1 to 3 j-. Here are the figures : Year. British Debt. An. Charge. Irish Debt. An. Charge. . 5th Jan. 1801, £ 450,504,984 £ 17,718,851 £ 28,545,134 £ 1,244,463 5th Jan. 1817. 734,522,101 28,238,416 112,704,773 4,104,514 Parliamentary Paper, No. 35, of 1819.* Thus, while the imperial government less than doubled the British debt, they quadrupled the Irish debt. By this management the Irish debt, which in 1801 had been to the British as 1 to 16£, was forced up to bear to the British Debt the ratio of 1 to 7£. This was the proportion required by the Act of Union as a condition of subjecting Ireland to indiscriminate taxation with Great Britain — a condition equally impudent and iniquitous. Ireland was to be loaded with inordinate debt ; and then this debt was to be made the pretext for raising her taxation to the high British standard, and thereby rendering her liable to the pre-Union debt of Great Britain ! By way of softening down the glaring injustice of such a proposition, Lord Castlereagh said that the two debts might be brought to bear to each * By another Parliamentary Paper, No. 256, of 1824, signed by J. C. Herries, Secretary of the Treasury, the debts as they stood in 1801 are thus stated : — British Funded, £420,305,944. Irish Funded, 26,841,219. By adding the unfunded debts to these amounts, Great Britain is brought up, in round numbers to 446 millions, and Ireland to 28 millions. The difference between the two returns is unimportant, as its effect on the proportions is infinitesimal. This return makes the Iri-sh debt-charge less than it appears in that of 1819. APPENDIX. 291 other the prescribed proportions, partly by the increase of the Irish debt, but partly also by the decrease of the British. To which Mr. Foster thus answered on the 15th of March, 1800 : u The monstrous absurdity you would force down our throats is, that Ireland's increase of poverty, as shown by her increase of debt, and England's increase of wealth, as shown by diminution of debt, are to bring them to an equality of con- dition, so as to be able to bear an equality of taxation." But bad as this was, the former and worse alternative was what really befel. The given ratio was reached solely by the increase of the Irish debt, without any decrease of the British. The following declarations of prominent statesmen in the united parlia- ment attest the nature and extent of the fiscal injustice inflicted on Ireland by the Union : On the 20th June, 1804 (four years after the Union had passed), Mr. Foster observed, that whereas in 1 794 the Irish debt did not exceed two millions anda-half, it had in 1803 risen to 43 millions; and that during the current year it was increased to nearly 53 millions. In the discussion on the Irish budget in 1804 (for up to 1817 the Irish and British Exchequers continued separate), Mr. James Fitzgerald observed that " it was obvious that Ireland could not discharge her share of the unequal contract entered into for her ; and of course that England should ultimately pay all." And seeing that the " unequal contract" was forced upon Ireland by British bribes and British bayonets, it was no more than just that England should ultimately pay all. But it will appear by-and-by that this equitable obligation is not recognised by modern English statesmen. On the 19th of March, 1811, Mr. Parnell adverted to what he termed the main cause of the increase of the Irish debt, and the failure in the produce of the Irish taxes. " The ratio of the contribution of Ireland to the general expenditure fixed by the noble lord" (Castlereagh) "was that cause. In this his lordship was mistaken ; and that," continued Mr. Parnell, " was the source of all those evils and embarrassments that oppressed the country. Ireland had been paying a greater proportion than she ought to have done." On the 20th May, 1811, Sir John Newport said, in a debate on the Irish budget : " The revenues of Ireland have made no progress ade- quate to her debt. No instance has occurred within the last three years in which the separate charge of Ireland amounted to within one million of the joint charge. This was one effect of the rate of contribution fixed at the Union, which, so long as it was acted upon, would render the pay- ment of the debt impossible." On the 11th June, 1813, Mr. Wellesley Pole said that when the Union proportions were settled, the imperial expenditure was only 25 millions, whereas it now was 72 millions. He added that it never could have been expected that Ireland would be able to pay two-seventeenths of so large a sum as 72 millions.* On the 20th May, 1816, Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, in proposing the con- solidation of the two Exchequers, said : " You contracted with Ireland for an expenditure she could not meet ; * The words here ascribed to Mr. "W. Pole, were 'probably inaccurately reported. Ireland was not required by the Union Statute to raise 2-17ths of the whole imperial revenue; but only of that portion of the revenue which remained after each coun- try should liavc first provided for its own separate debt charge. 292 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. your own snare of which you could not meet hut hy sacrifices unexampled ; by exertions, the tension of which England only could have borne. Ire- land had been led to hope that her expenditure would have been less than before she was united with you. In the 15 years preceding the Union it amounted to 41 millions, but in the 15 years of Union it swelled to 148 millions. The increase of her revenue would have more than discharged, without the aid of loans, an expenditure greater than that of the 15 years preceding 18&L" This is tantamount to an admission that a domestic parliament would have preserved us from the insolvency in which we were involved by the Union rate of contribution. The Parliamentary Committee of 1815 which recommended the con- solidation of the English and Irish Exchequers, admitted that the two- seventeenths were " a burthen which experience had proved to be too great," (Fourth Report, published 1815, sessional number 214.) Mr. Leslie Foster said that " taxation in Ireland had been carried almost to its neplusultra." On the 21st April, 1818, Mr. Plunket, speak- ing to a motion of Mr. Shaw's on the window-tax, said : " Ireland cer- tainly had not paid the two-seventeenths stipulated for at the time of the Union ; and for the plainest of all possible reasons, because she could not ; because a burthen utterly disproportioned to her strength had been im- posed on her." In 1822 the late Right Hon. Henry Goulburn, when speaking to a motion of Sir John Newport, said ; " The Union contribu- tion of two-seventeenths for Ireland is now admitted on all hands to have been more than she was able to bear." And in 1830 the late Marquis of Lansdowne referred in the House of Lords to the incapacity of Ireland to bear the load that had been imposed upon her. In 1816 w r as passed the Act for consolidating the British and Irish Ex- chequers — it is the 56th George III. chap. 98. It became operative on the 1st January, 1817. The pretext for passing it was to relieve Ireland from the unjust load imposed upon her by the Union-rate of contribution, and from the unpaid excess of so-called " Irish" debt which had rendered her insolvent, and which was the inevitable result of the fraudulent Union-ratio. Great Britain was to assume that excess ; or, speaking more accurately, it was to be transferred from the separate Irish account to the general imperial ac- count. It is here to be noted that the excess of so-called Irish debt which ex- isted in 1816 is commonly spoken of by British politicians, and also by some ignorant Irish ones, as if it were really and justly Irish debt, creating on the part of Ireland an equitable liability, from which Great Britain gene- rously relieved her by passing the Consolidation Act, and thereby taking on herself the liability in question. Nothing can be more false than this view of the matter. Firstly, the excess of " Irish" debt arose from a rate of contribution admittedly unjust. Ireland was overcharged by the Union proportion of two-seventeenths. To the exact extent of the Irish over- charge was Great Britain undercharged. If Ireland were taxed too much, Great Britain was to the same extent necessarily taxed too little. The injustice of the two-seventeenths is clearly admitted by the statesmen I have quoted. The unpaid excess of debt arising out of that unjust pro- portion, is not properly Irish debt at all, but British. Secondly, it appears if possible more plain that the excess of debt thus created was really British though nominally Irish, when we consider that APPENDIX. 293 the Act of Union that contained the nnjust fiscal ratio in which that excess originated, was forced upon Ireland by English power against the all but universal will of the Irish people, and by means of which it is utterly impossible to exaggerate the wickedness. Let us suppose a parallel case between two private persons. If A, by violence and fraud, coerces recalci- trant B into submitting to a fiscal burthen beyond his ability, and which finally renders B insolvent, will anyone contend that A, who forced the burthen on reluctant and resisting B, is not the person morally liable to the whole extent of the excess which his victim proves unable to dis- charge ? So it was between England and Ireland. Yet statesmen and publicists have talked about the generosity of Great Britain in taking on herself the load of Irish debt ! The opponents of the Union were justly afraid that the balance, or surplus, of Irish taxes which should remain after defraying the public ex- penses of Ireland, would be carried out of the country by the English government. In order to quiet this fear, a clause was inserted in the 7th article of the Act of Union, enacting that Ireland should have the sole and exclusive benefit of all her surplus taxes in any one of five modes pointed out in the clause. This provision looked well. But its authors had taken effectual means to prevent Ireland from deriving any benefit from it, by the dexterous contrivance of making her " contract" (to bor- row the words of Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald) M for an expenditure she could not meet." If she could not even meet the expenditure forced on her, a fortiori she could not have a surplus. Thus, while a formal clause appa- rently secured to her the use of her own money, that clause was cleverly accompanied with fiscal conditions that rendered it worthless. The Parliamentary Committee of 1815, as well as individual members, had, as we have seen, proclaimed that the Union-ratio imposed on Ireland was beyond her ability. In 1816 the Consolidation Act passed, uniting the two Exchequers. Honesty would suggest that if the former rate of Irish contribution were condemned as unjustly high, a new and lower rate should now be substituted for it. But theu a separate ratio for Ireland, fairly poportioned to her ability, would leave to Ireland a separate surplus revenue. Nay, when the public expenditure should fall to the low peace level, even the two-seventeenths, although beyond the true Irish proportion, might nevertheless possibly leave an Irish surplus, which surplus, under the 7th Article of the Union, should be appropriated exclusively to Irish uses. This would never do. It would not consist with the British idea about Irish matters, that Ireland should retain the use of her own reve- nues. A special Irish surplus must therefore be rendered impossible. Ac- cordingly, the imperial parliament, by the 56th George III. chap. 98, abolished the Union ratio of two-seventeenths without substituting any other ratio. When Ireland ceased to have a special ratio, she technically ceased to have a special surplus. Thus again was the Union-guarantee that Irish surplus revenue should be applied to the sole benefit of Ireland, rendered null by dishonest legislation. The bankruptcy of Ireland in 1816, brought about by the Union-ratio of two-seventeenths and by imperial management, was turned to account in that year by the British power that produced it. The substitution of an indiscriminate system of taxation tor fixed international proportions, mortgaged Ireland for the pre-Union debt of Great Britain, a debt she had no part in contracting, and from which the Act of Union professes to pro- 294 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. tect her, "but to the annual interest of which she is forced to contribute a portion of payment. The transactions of 1816 were again turned to account by Mr. Glad- stone, who, in 1853, justified the Irish income tax by pleading that in 1816 Great Britain had assumed the unpaid excess of what was termed " Irish debt." But that excess was admitted to have originated in a fiscal in- justice. Mr. Gladstone, therefore, deems that the removal of an admit- tedly unjust load, creates a right to impose another load in place of the one taken off. In other words, if you undo an avowed wrong, you are thereby entitled to inflict an equivalent wrong on the aggrieved party. Colonel Dunne's Committee on Irish Taxation will, I trust, have useful results. The Irish witnesses underwent a very hostile cross-examination from some of the English members of the Committee. But setting aside the multitude of details, many of them irrelevant, into which the inquiry diverged, the following facts stand unshaken, and should become fami- liarly known to every man in Ireland : 1. The British debt in 1801 was about 16| times as large as the Irish debt. 2. It was promised by the authors of the Union, and the promise was embodied in the 7 th Article, that as Ireland had no part in contracting that debt, so she should be for ever preserved from all concern with the payment of its principal or interest. 3. In order to give effect to this promise, Great Britain was to be sepa- rately taxed to the extent of her separate pre-Union debt-charge. But Great Britain is not thus separately taxed ; and Ireland is consequently made to contribute to the payment of a purely British liability from which she was promised perpetual exemption. 4. Ireland has never received from Great Britain one farthing by way of compensation or equivalent for being thus subjected to the pre-Union British debt. 5. By the 5th clause of the 7th Article of the Union, Ireland, as I have already said, was guaranteed the benefit of her own surplus taxes. She has never during the 64 years of Union, received one farthing in virtue of that clause. Her taxes, after defraying her public-domestic expenses, have been uniformly abstracted by England ; and the clause that professes to secure to Ireland the use of them has been rendered a dead letter by the parliamentary management I have described. 6. The amount of Irish taxes annually drawn from this kingdom is a very large item in the general pecuniary drain. Mr. Dillon, in his able and carefully compiled Report to the Dublin Corporation, shows that the Irish taxes expended out of Ireland in the year 1860 amounted to £4,095,453; and that in 1861 they amounted to £3,970,715. 7. From the tone of some of the English members of Colonel Dunne's Committee, when examining the witnesses on Irish taxation, it seems clear that those gentlemen have not got the slightest idea that any sepa- rate British liability exists. And I cannot discover the faintest trace that Messieurs Lowe, Stanhope, Northcote, and Hankey recognise the right of Ireland to the separate use of her own surplus. They seem to be thoroughly imbued with the truly English notion that Irish taxes, when expended for Irish purposes, are unfairly withheld from their rightful English owners. All this financial injustice is the inevitable result of losing the pro- tection of an Irish legislature. The species of connexion that exists APPENDIX. 295 between Ireland and England is designed and adapted to draw off Irish wealth to England without any return. Before closing this part of my subject, I desire once more to impress upon the reader the important fact that we are entitled to a great equivalent for having been subjected to the heavy pre-Uuion British liabilities, and that up to this hour the equivalent has been withheld. This fact should be always kept in view. I have hitherto considered the abstraction of money from Ireland with reference to its injustice. I shall add a few words on the inability of Ireland to endure the drain of her means, and on the effect of that drain upon her people. It has been said that the capacity of Ireland to pay taxes on the pre- sent high scale is demonstrated by the fact of her paying them. It would be about as rational to infer the capacity of an individual for dis- bursement from the fact of his being robbed. True, Ireland pays; but at what cost of popular suffering ? High taxes are indeed wrung out of her ; but that they are disproportioned to her strength is shown by the evanishment of her people. The pecuniary resources that should employ and support the labouring population and large numbers of small traders are drawn out of the country in a variety of ways ; and millions of our people, despoiled of their natural and legitimate sources of sup- port, have been forced in self-defence to fly to foreign lands. It must be remembered that excessive taxation is only one mode out of many in which England contrives to get hold of the money of Ireland. There are also the rents remitted to the absentee owners of Irish estates ; which rents, if we average them at three millions per annum for the 64 years of Union, amount to 192 millions sterling. There is the money withdrawn for the parliament ary expenses of passing railway bills, and other bills of private companies ; as also for appeals from Ireland to the House of Lords, which, if it were not for the Union, would be spent in Dublin. There is the money withdrawn in the commercial profits of banks and insurance companies whose head-quarters are in London. There is the money sent out of the country to purchase those articles of English manufacture that obtained possession of the Irish market on the ruin of our own manufacture. There is the money spent in London by Irish law students, whom an absurd and degrading practice compels to pass a certain number of their terms at English inns of court. There is the in- terest of loans remitted from Ireland to English money-lenders. Wealth begets wealth; and the causes which have impoverished Ireland and enriched England have placed the lenders of money in the latter coun- try. It of course is no grievance to an Irish borrower to obtain an ad- vance from an English lender. But it is a national calamity that Ireland should be so drained of her wealth that the capital whence the advances are made must be sought across the water ; involving, in the interest paid thereon, a large addition to the absentee drain. I believe that 300 millions sterling are a very low estimate of the actual cash extorted from Ireland by the action of the Union in the modes I have enumerated; and it must be kept in mind that we lose not merely the enormous sums that are abstracted, but also the domestic profit that would arise from their expenditure in the land that produced them. How is it possible that the annual productions of a country thus cir- cumstanced can ever accumulate into national capital ? Capital is said by M'Culloch to consist of produce saved from immediate consumption. To employ an illustration familiar to my rural readers, a farmer's wife 296 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. whose cream is regularly skimmed and carried off by a free-and-easy neighbour, may as well hope for a good supply of butter from her dairy, as Ireland can hope for an adequate growth of national capital when so large an amount of her annual income is incessantly carried off by Eng. land. Can anyone wonder that a country thus cruelly despoiled should lose in recent years two millions and a-half of its inhabitants ?* Or that, when visited by famine in 1846, the plundered nation, deprived by the Union of the power of self-support, should have become the recipient of the world's alms ? All this monstrous spoliation is styled, " the identifi- cation of the two islands;" "the unity of their interests;" and we are told that it makes " Ireland an integral part of the empire." Our money is taken, our people are driven to emigrate, and we are paid off in this sort of talk. The Union of England and Ireland was compared by Lord Byron to the union of a shark with its prey. In its present operation it degrades, defrauds, and depopulates Ireland. W J. O'N. Daunt. Kilcascan, 6th September, 1864. General Dunne's Committee issued their Report on Irish Taxation on the 1st June, 1865. General Dunne refused to sign- it, very justly con- ceiving that it did not present a fair statement of the question. He had submitted to the committee a draft report in which the fiscal case of Ireland was very ably stated. This was rejected, and the committee, by a small majority (which included an Irish member, Sir George Colthurst), adopted a Report which had been drawn up by Sir Stafford Northcote. A question had been discussed, whether, according to the terms of the Union, a separate debt might have been created for Ireland to supplement the annual deficiencies of hsr contribution. On this point Sir Stafford Northcote says : " It is obvious that if a separate debt could not be created, Ireland might have been required to make good, year by year, her con- tribution of two-seventeenths to the joint expenditure of the whole king- dom." Yes — but only until 1820 ; at which period, according to the Act of Union, there was to be a revision of the proportions. Sir Stafford ignores the revision, and argues as if the two-seventeenths were to have been per- petual. Sir Stafford admits (p. vi. of Report) that " experience proved that the resources of Ireland were not sufficient to meet it" (viz., the contribution of two-seventeenths). Yet he argues throughout as if Ireland were justly and equitably liable to a load admittedly beyond her resources. The power reserved in the Act of Union to revise the proportions clearly im- plied that they might have been miscalculated, and that, if so, the error should be rectified. Sir Stafford admits the fact of the miscalculation ; yet his reasoning assumes that this admitted overcharge constituted, in point of equity, a debt fairly binding on Ireland. In 1817 the English and Irish exchequers were amalgamated, and * I do not ascribe the exodus exclusively to the money-drain. There are at least three other leading causes of it; but of these there are none, I think, more effective than the money- drain. APPENDIX. 297 Ireland was thereby swindled out of the protection she would have de- rived from a just revision of the proportions. M Had that amalgamation not taken place," says Sir Stafford, " and had the system of raising revenue which prevailed from 1801 to 1816 been continued, the Irish separate debt would have continued to increase until the country might have been crushed by it" (p. viii.) Again Sir Stafford ignores the provision for revising the proportions in 1820. One would think he had not seen it; and yet he copies at full length the section of the Act that contains it. The following admissions are worth extracting : " Since 1845," 6ays Sir Stafford, "the share which Great Britain has had in the remission of imperial taxation has been proportionally much larger than that which Ireland has had ; and the additions made to the imperial taxation of Ireland have been proportionally heavier than those made to the taxation of Great Britain, while at the same time it can hardly be doubted that Great Britain has derived a larger measure of advantage than Ireland from the repeal of the Corn Laws, as a compensation for which the bo >n was originally given by Sir R. Peel. " It is not surprising that the large increase which your committee have noticed in the general taxation since 1845, should have given rise to com- plaint. Nor is it surprising that louder complaints should have been made by Ireland than by other parts of the United Kingdom. The pres- sure of taxation will be felt most by the weakest part of the community ; and as the average wealth of the Irish taxpayers is less than the average wealth of the English taxpayers, the ability of Ireland to bear heavy taxation is evidently less than the ability of England. Mr. Senior, whose evidence upon the position of Ireland will be found very suggestive, re- marks that the taxation of England is both the heaviest and the lightest in Europe — the heaviest as regards the amount raised, the lightest as re- gards the ability to bear that amount ; but that in the case of Ireland it is heavy both as regards the amount and as regards the ability of the contributor ; and he adds that England is the most lightly taxed, and Ireland the most heavily taxed country in Europe, although both are nominally liable to equal taxation" (pp. x. xi.) But Sir Stafford says that if Irish taxation were specially reduced on the score of Irish poverty, the poorer parts of Great Britain might claim reduction of taxes on similar grounds. On the first publication in the newspapers of Sir Stafford's Report, I addressed to the National League a letter, from which I take the following passage: "When Colonel Dunne claims that, in conformity with Union promises, Irish fiscal burthens should be lessened to the admittedly small ratio of Irish fiscal ability, he is told that the same claim of reduction might as fairly be set up by any distressed portion of Great Britain — say, for instance, Wiltshire. And this shallow excuse is given by able men ! Pray, look at the disparity that exists between the cases they thus seek to assimilate. Wiltshire never had a distinct and separate debt. Wiltshire cannot show, as Ireland can, that it was ever promised exemption from the old British debt. It cannot show, as Ireland can, that it was ever promised the local and ex- clusive expenditure of its own surplus public revenue. In these important respects it stands in a totally different position from Ireland. On the direct contrary, Wiltshire is morally, politically, and geographically an integral member of that country which promised to secure to Irelaud exemption from pre-Union British burthens, and the exclusive use of 298 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. Irish surplus revenue. It is, therefore, absurd to pretend that Wiltshire has as good a right — or any right — to make for herself claims such as we put forward. Wiltshire, being an integral part of Britain, is herself a party to the British promise given to Ireland. She stands in the position of promisor — Ireland occupies that of promisee. It is a shallow and dis- creditable juggle to pretend that an identity of position exists between parties who stand in directly opposite relations to each other." I conclude this section of the Appendix with the following quotation from a speech delivered by Henry Grattan in 1800 : " Rely on it that Ireland, like every enslaved country, will ultimately be compelled to pay for her own subjugation. Robbery and taxes ever follow conquest ; the country that loses her liberty loses her revenues. " " RIGBY." I am not certain that Downpatrick was the scene of this gentleman's curious adventure as a parliamentary candidate. Perhaps it was Athlone. (See page 56.) THE KEGENCY QUESTION. Among the difficulties most commonlv paraded by those persons who can see nothing but mischief in the Repeal of the Union, one of the most prominent is the possible difference of the two parliaments on the ques- tion of selecting a Regent. Mr. S harm an Crawford, in his anti- Repeal Letters of 1841, copying his predecessors, insisted strongly on the perils (and no man denies them) which would follow from such a diversity. The Repealers, however, propose that the cause of dissension on this point should be extinguished, by leaving the appointment of the Regent exclu- sively in the hands of the British ministry and parliament. To this pro- posal Mr. Crawford objected, " That it would surrender the independence of the Irish parliament on this vital point.' 7 I quote the following passage from my reply to Mr. Crawford: " I do not see how the independence of the Irish parliament would be one whit more compromised by an ipso facto identity of the Regent, than it would be by the ipso facto identity of the Sovereign ; and, I never yet heard that this latter identity was deemed incompatible with the parliamentary independence of Ireland. In fact, the identity of the Regent would seem to follow as a necessary consequence from the principle of the law that requires the identity of the monarch. " Mr. Crawford terms the Regency question 1 a vital point/ So it is — vital to the imperial connexion of the kingdoms ; and it is therefore that we Repealers, being ardent friends of the connexion, are desirous to in- corporate with the Irish Constitution a provision for the identity of the Regent. But the question of the Regent's person, however important to the connexion of the countries, is a matter of very inferior importance as affects the general welfare and every-day comfort of the people — the ad- ministration of justice — the prosperity of trade, of manufactures, of com- merce. These are the matters of really vital importance to the people — APPENDIX. 209 matters which require all the care of a resident, well-constructed, popular parliament. Give the people of Ireland such a parliament as this, and they can well afford to leave to a British ministry the selection of the Regent's person." JOHN O'CONNELL OX THE COMPARATIVE COM- FORT OF THE IRISH PEOPLE, BEFORE AND AFTER THE UNION.* John O'Coxxell, to show the greater comfort enjoyed by the Irish people hefore the Union than in 1843, wrote as follows : " A return has recently appeared in all the papers, of the number of sheep and horned cattle at Ballinasloe every year since 1790 to the present time. I extract from it the following : Years. Sheep. Horned Cattle. 1799 - - 77,900 - - 9,900. 1835 - - 62.400 - - 8,500. 1842 - - 76,800 - - 14,300. Now, by a parliamentary report of 1834, and the Irish Railway Report, I find that our whole export of sheep the first of the above years was only 800 — and in the second was 125,000. What became of the 77,100 sur- plus sheep in the former year, as well as the sheep at other fairs ? They were eaten at home. Where did the people get money to buy them ? The money of the country was spent in the country As to oxen, 14,000 went away in 1799, and 98,000 in 1835 ; yet, if we test the product of all Ireland in the former year by the amount at Ballinasloe fair — no bad criterion, I believe — she had for sale more in that year than in 1835, and consumed the surplus over her export Her export in 1799 was only one-seventh of what it was in 1835." ENDOWMENT OF THE IRISH CATHOLIC CHURCH. Since the seventh chapter of this work was written. Mr, Aubrey De Vere has published his pamphlet entitled " Pleas for Secularization in which he again assigns reasons for dissenting from my opinion that the state-en- dowment of the Catholic Church of Ireland would be eminently pernicious to the spiritual and temporal interests of the Irish people. Mr. De Vere's views, and mine, have been so fully stated in our various publications, that farther discussion of our respective reasons would, I think, be super- fluous ; the more especially as the policy I venture to advocate has re- ceived the high and unanimous sanction of the Catholic Prelates of Ire- land at their general meeting held in Dublin on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd October, 1867. * See page 172. 300 IRELAND AND HER AGITATORS. JUDGE 'HAG AN ON THE SEPARATE IRISH JUDI- CATURE.* " We may labour, in all proper cases, to assimilate the laws of the three kingdoms, giving for that purpose from every district what light and help we can reciprocally furnish ; but we should maintain for all the integrity of their independent judicatures, in the assurance that they will not less enjoy the benefits of a common code, if it do not aim to subordinate any one to any other of them, or unduly exalt a part at the expense of ex- haustion and depression to the rest For Ireland, at least, it is essential to maintain a high judiciary and an educated bar, if she would preserve anything of the informed opinion, the productive energy, and the public spirit, without which a people stagnates and sinks into contempt." (See p. 200 ante.) * From his Address, at the Social Science Congress at Belfast, September, 1867. THE EKD. Mullany's Steam Press Printing Works, 47 Fleet-street, Dublin. 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