rllBERNIA OR, IRELAND OF TO=DAY. BY M. O’CONNOR MORRIS. THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY From the collection of James Collins, Drumcondra, Ireland. Purchased, 1918. M83Zh CENTRAL CIRCULATION BOOKSTACKS The person charging this material is re- sponsible for its return to the library from which it was borrowed on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mufilotion, and underlining of books ore reosons for disciplinary action and may result In dismissal from the University. TO RENEW CALL TELEPHONE CENTER, 333-8400 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA CHAMPAIGN Utc 2 2 1993 When renewing by phone, write new due date below previous due date. L162 ERRATA. Page 12, line 3 from bottom, Firlbrgs read Firlbrogs. ,, 23, line iZi for Rinacini Rinucini. ,, 27, line 9,yyr 138,000 read 138,000 men. HIBERNIA HODIERNA OR, IRELAND OF TO-DAY. BY MC O^CONNOR MORRIS. ft Author of Rambles in the Rocky Mountains Diihlm Castle,’^ “ Triviata^"^ Memini; or^ A Mingled Yarny' LONDON: HARRISON AND SONS, 59, PALL MALL, S.W. i0 tlje ^rinte ci 1897. LONDON : PRINTED BY HARRISON AND SONS, ST. MARTIN’s LANE, PRINTERS IN ORDINARY TO HER MAJESTY. PREFACE OR FOREWORDS. The late Lord Randolph Churchill was a man who had had great opportunities for studying the Irish question, and he made good use of them. After one of his Christmas visits to his friend, Lord Justice Fitzgibbon’s sanatorium at Howth, where a party of friends met every year, who were by no means unversed in Irish affairs, Lord Randolph was asked about “the distressed country” and its inhabi- tants by an English legislator, to whom he replied, in an off-hand manner, that the only signs of distress he had encountered in the Green Isle had been amongst its landlords and their families. Generalisations are of course not subject to the strict laws of accuracy of statement ; but there can be no doubt that I.ord Randolph’s generalisation had not only a germ of truth within it, but many germs of veracity j and there can be no doubt either that as a class, and in proportion to their status and condition, they have suffered more than any other section of the community from the depression of the times in the matter of agricultural produce, and the Socialistic legislation that has attempted 436280 i PREFACE OR FOREWORDS, to settle the Irish question by conferring upon one class the property of another, under the simulacrum of judicial procedure. Division is, of course, the great Socialistic panacea for the amelioration of the masses, and our legislators have taken a leaf out of their book that may possibly prove disastrous in its ultimate consequences, and may threaten a form of property held largely by aristocratic capitalists in England, namely “ground rents,^^ that have hitherto been considered sacrosanct. This buying off “the barbarians” is as old as the de- cadence of the Roman Empire, and there can be no doubt that to an ambitious statesman it may prove an irresistible temptation to purchase peace at so cheap a price as vicari- ous sacrifice ; and to kill Home Rule by kindness may be a laudable ambition, if prosecuted by honest methods, and not by filching from the estate of A in order to confer benefits on B, C, D, E, F, G. It may, however, be questioned whether Home Rule is at all in articulo mortis. Though its suspended animation may simulate death, yet this funereal presentment is nothing more than exhaustion and prostration, caused chiefly by internal strife, the want of a capable leader, and the temporary depletion of “the war chest.” Lord Salisbury is said, I believe on good authority, to have remarked to a deputation of Irish landowners that they had been, as a class, too remiss in ventilating their grievances and in dispensing with agitation. Perhaps for their own interests they had been somewhat slack ; but the PREFACE OR FOREWORDS, iii remark comes rather curiously from a Premier, who, judging by his public utterances (including the Hottentot lapse), must have known the facts of the landlords' position without having it accentuated by agitatmi^ and who owed his commanding majority in England very much to the strenuous efforts of Irish Unionists, who early demolished the fabric of falsehood that the Land Leaguers had erected in England on the subject of Irish landlords. In this connection I may venture to relate a personal experience. A good many years ago I was present at a pleasant and interesting reunion in West Kent when the secretary of the Hunt was presented with a handsome testimonial on his retirement. The occasion was very festive, and song and speech followed in brilliant sequence ; but one speech rather moved my bile. It was the utterance of a young farmer, who probably knew no better, and who congratulated his brother farmers on their being encouraged to hunt by their landlords, who were not like the Irish tyrants, who would forthwith raise the rents if a farmer or his son joined the county hounds. Moreover, he added that none of the Kent landlords had a drop of Irish blood in their veins. Considering that many hundreds of Irish farmers, or their sons, hunt pretty regularly, and essay often, with marked success, to add to their incomes by the sale of young hunters ; that farmers' races are an institution in the land, and that landlords have tried to improve horse-breeding as far as they could, the mere statement of the case refutes the IV PREFACE OR FOREWORDS. cruel calumny. As Irish landlords have been connected more than once by marriage with royalty, the second portion falls equally flat. I did not contradict the state- ment, because such contradiction might have interrupted the harmony of the afternoon. The pregnant fact, however, remains, that for one land- lord seen in the hunting-grounds of Ireland there are now full fifty of the farmer-class, and we could even wish the number of the latter extended, as they form ‘‘the back- bone of the chase as has been well said, and they have generally proved most liberal of their land. But landlords have not brought their grievances before the Areopagus of public opinion ! I think they have done so within reasonable limits, and Lord Londonderry, the Duke of Abercorn, Mr. Montgomery, and Mr. Bagwell have stated their case fairly and temperately before large meet- ings on many occasions, while the Press has not been silent on the subject; but to me, whose interest in the subject is more or less academic, it has always seemed somewhat strange that till the Marquis of Dufferin and Ava put on a white sheet, smote his breast, and recanted his old Gladstonian heresies about land and its tenure, little notice was taken of the plaints of the proprietors of the soil, who had not the requisite organisation, spiritual and temporal, supported by blunderbuses, carding machines, and rifles to give them the necessary weight and influence ! The theory that impoverished English and Scotch land- lords looked askance at their brethren in Ireland, because PREFACE OR FOREWORDS. they had not been so much reduced as themselves, may be dismissed as too utterly and miserably selfish. Besides, there is all the difference in life between poverty caused by economic causes, and poverty caused by process of law warped to political ends. In this little volume I have said very little about agriculture in Ireland. There is very little of it, stock being the staple of the country, and in stock Irishmen can hold their own. Farming is 7iot up to date in Ireland ; but it could hardly be so, as it lacks the two great desiderata — capital and labour. But capital may be flung away, as it has been seen in Galway, to the tune of nearly a millon, and the labour of the country is by no means as good as it ought to be, and is said to have greatly deteriorated in quality, while appreciated in price. In one article of produce alone — hay, to wit — Ireland probably loses at least a million per annum, but a good deal of this serious loss is due as much to the want of labour and capital as to faulty methods of husbandry. Is wit as ready, spontaneous, and scintillating as of yore in Ireland ? is a question often asked, and not very satisfac- torily answered. Wit is a very pervasive faculty, and a good share of Irish wit filters into the English and Irish Press, and loses its origin in anonymity ; but from many concur- rent signs and tokens, I do not think the people, better educated and more comfortable perhaps than in Wit’s brightest days, are such fountains of fun, such repertoires of good things as of old ! There are gods ” in our theatres as in past decades ; but one rarely hears such mots VI PREFACE OR FOREWORDS. as the ready one when the convivial Viceroy, the Duke of Rutland, paid a visit to a famous Phryne of his day. “ Who was at Peg . . this afternoon ? quoth strophist on one side, to which the anti-strophist on the other replied, “ Manners — Manners, you dog!’^ ; or when Robson, the actor, who had had a succes fou in Dublin, came before the footlights, and, declaring his inability to give utterance to his thoughts and emotions of gratitude, wished the audience could lock into his heart through a mirror. Maybe a pain in your stomach (he said ^ belly ’) would answer the purpose as well was the gloss of the genial ‘‘god’^ on the occasion. Politics and economics do not breed coruscations of bon^mots., nor are statistics the favourite food of poets ; and poesy has, I think, declined greatly since the Young Ireland movement drew many men and a few women into its vortex. In the remarks I ventured to make about the inveterate absenteeism of the Queen and the R05M Family (nay, of many kings and queens) from Ireland, it is, of course, understood that a Constitutional Monarch can do no ill, but their advisers can do an indefinite amount. Among a multitude of ill deeds done by “ the Patriots during the Parnell period there can be no doubt that some good was effected ; and the city, Dublin, was purged of much moral leprosy. It is not so long ago that a leper of the sort — a high official — was allowed to leave Dublin with a handsome pension, because he had influence^ and influence has worked Ireland much woe. PREFACE OR FOREWORDS, vii A distinguished English official in Ireland found out, after much labour and thought, that there were two Irelands .within the circumference of the island; most people discover the fact as easily as that 5 per cent, is a shilling in the pound. I have said nothing about the financial relations between England and Ireland : the larcencial guile of England is generally assumed by peers and proletarians ; but till I can see the balance-sheet I should like to reserve my judgment. It seems a pity that a regiment of guards should not be raised in Ireland. Its absence is a decided slur on the country. The realisation of the Greek myth of Saturn eating his children may be seen in our modern history, and some testimony to the bitter truth — “Za proprUte c’est le volP E CONTENTS. Chapter I PAGE. 5 Chapter II .... .... .... .... .... .... 12 Chapter III. .... .... .... H Chapter IV. .... .... .... 15 Chapter V .... i8 Chapter VI. .... .... .... .... 30 Chapter VII. .... .... .... .... .... 51 Chapter VIII. 62 Chapter IX. .... .... 66 Chapter X .... .... 69 Chapter XI .... 80 Chapter XII. .... .... 00 Chapter XIII. 90 Chapter XIV. .... .... .... .... 94 Chapter XV. .... .... .... 97 Chapter XVI. .... .... .... 100 Chapter XVII. .... .... .... .... 102 Chapter XVIII. 105 Chapter XIX. 109 Chapter XX. 113 Chapter XXL 116 Appendix I .... .... .... 119 Appendix II. .... .... ...» .... .... 122 f B 2 - HIBERNIA HODIERNA. Horace^s well-known Hexameter suggesting that lovely woman was from the earliest times — ante Helenam and the Trojan war, for instance — the cause of the world's warfare maybe bracketed with the Gallic gnome cherchez la femme^ if we would find out the true motive for crime and ‘‘ ructions." No doubt the unfortunate feminine has much to answer for since the fatal episode in the Garden of Eden, and the sequent primeval malediction; but, on the other hand, if woman’s wiles have had occasion- ally a maleficent effect on the lords of creation, and led them to do deeds of violence, who dare say that the good has not greatly preponderated, and that woman has not made the world infinitely more Paradisiacal by her presence ? Did not the bard of hope assure us that “The world was sad, the garden was a wild, And man, the hermit, sighed till woman smil’d.” But whatever may have been the case elsewhere, woman has not proved anything like so teterrima a causa belli in that green lerne that is separated from the Greater Britain by a yeasty sea for the greater part of the year fully deserving of Horace’s epithet dissociabilis^ as the tenure of land, and the appetite for its possession, which has gained the title of 6 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. Land Hunger ; a recognised motive for all sorts of agrarian villainy, sometimes culminating in murder and mutilation, nor do I think that we need go further to look for proofs of this proposition than to the famous speech of Lord Clare, spoken in 1800 a.d. in the Irish House of Lords, when that most vital question the Union between Great Britain and Ireland was under discussion. After reviewing the earlier history of Ireland, Lord Clare insisted that there was no real reduction of the island till the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when Ulster was brought into subjection, and made shire land. After the Tudors came the Stuarts; and James the First in his plantation scheme continued the policy of granting to English and Scotch adventurers large tracts of forfeited land, that had introduced so large an English element into Munster, when the Desmond acres (more than half a million) were at the disposal of the Crown. Under the Commonwealth there was a further disloca- tion of territorial rights, and a further introduction of new men into the old acres. While the revolution of 1688 caused a still further forfeiture of lands, tenements, and hereditaments, and brought in a new batch of landlords, who, whatever their good qualities might be, were certainly not racy of the soil.’’ These were the chief seismic shocks, so to speak, that changed the tenure of lands, and more especially of the most fertile and useful tracts ; but since then Economic Causes, of which the Famine of 1847“! 848 was the most efficacious, caused further transfers of the soil of Ireland, till the number of families who were landlords in the Plan- tagenet period or Tudor times has become extremely small, and the list of proprietors prior to the revolution is not by HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 7 any means a long one. The result of these confiscations, as the Right Hon. J. T. Ball remarks in his precis of this great Pre-Union oration, was that power and most of the property of the country became vested in colonists who established themselves after the termination of three distinct rebellions. Their descendants now owned the lands which had been so acquired ; but they were hemmed in on every side by the old inhabitants of the island, whom he described as ‘ brooding over their discontents in sullen indignation.^ What, then, he asked, was the security of the English settlers for their physical existence at the Revolu- tion ? and what was the security of their descendants at that day ? Solely the powerful and commanding protection of Great Britain.” Very nearly a hundred years have passed' by since those weighty words were spoken ; yet what do we see at the close of this century but a fresh phase of confiscation, inchoated by a strong Government, against a class of men who, whatever their shortcomings and demerits may have been, ever proved the bulwark of law and order, the incarna- tion of loyalty to the Throne and Constitution, and who, in some cases, shone as leading lights socially, politically, and agriculturally. But though these several strata of territorial proprietors came from the ranks of the conquerors, and represented a faith actively hostile (at that time) to the creed of their tenants and employes^ there are few records of harshness or severity on their part towards their subordinates; and in point of fact, wherever the curse of absenteeism and management by deputy of their estates did not prevail, very friendly relations obtained on the whole between the 8 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. majority of landlords and tenants in Ireland ; a fact which Mr. A. A. Sullivan, by no means a friend to land- lords, attests in the following telling sentences extracted from his volume JVew Ireland : — “The majority of Irish landlords did all in their power when the famine appeared. Many landowners found themselves on ^ the verge of ruin. They had inherited property that was heavily mortgaged. The money paid for rent did not remain in their hands, but went to pay their creditors. The loss of a yearns rent brought them fatally near seizure and bankruptcy, yet it must be acknowledged that a great many of these who might have escaped disaster by hardship towards their tenants preferred their own ruin.” A finer tribute to a patrician class never was paid, and we have good authority for saying “ Fas est et ah hoste doceril If we go back to the pre-Union day, we find that Grattan — the god of Irish idolatry — speaks most highly of his con- temporary landlords, and founds one of his strongest argu- ments against the union of Great Britain and Ireland on the probable withdrawal of their establishments from Ireland. “ So, too, the condition of the people was to be improved by creating a necessity for absenteeism, and withdrawing the influence of a resident gentry. The peasantry were to lose the presence of those whose presence was necessary as well for their succour as their improvement, that they might not perish for want of medicine, of cordial, of cure, which they can only find in the administration of the landlord, who,” he added, “ civilises them, and regulates them in the capacity ot a magistrate, while he husbands and covers them in that of a protector, improving not only them but himself by the exercise of his virtues, as well as the dispensation of his HIBERNIA HOD IE RN A. 9 property.’^ If these sentences point to a very low standard of general civilisation in Ireland, it points also to the land- lords as the most civilising agencies of the period. We alluded just now to economic causes that induced a further dislocation of proprietorship in Ireland ! Economic may be considered a misapplied term, when extravagance or feckless thriftlessness^ past or present, was the real fons et origo of this dislocation. Few Irish estates were received unencumbered by debt by their tenants ” in the years of famine and distress. In not a few cases the margin left to the proprietor, after paying these encumbrances, was very small, yet it was the fashion generally to live as if the gross income of the estate were available, instead of the net total ; and so, when a year or two of want came, and rents were no longer paid with any certainty, the usual consequences ensued, and mortgagees and encumbrancers foreclosed, or asserted their claims in the best way they could. To relieve the creditors (and possibly the pro- prietors) the Encumbered Estate Court was set up as a rough-and-ready and rather revolutionary tribunal, and some ;^ 5 o, 000,000 worth of property was sold, often at most sacrificial prices. Many of the purchasers were men who had amassed money in trade and business, and who had no idea of getting a small percentage on their bargains, and as a rule they raised the old rentals considerably, enforcing a rack-rent by all available methods within the law. But these new landlords — novi homines in every sense — if severe and grasping in their dealings with their tenants, when contrasted with their lenient and even lax predeces- sors, were mild in their methods compared to the new race 10 HIBERNIA HODIERNA, of land-jobbers, who saw how estates that had been allowed to become congested by sub-division, and to drift into hopeless arrear of rents, could be cleared by drastic, if legal, methods of an unprofitable tenantry, and then resold at an immense profit. This land-jobbing was carried on for years. Large sums of money were realised by these improving evictors ; but the wild justice of revenge asserted itself occasionally, and there can be little doubt that it is to the harshness of many purchasers under the Encumbered Estate Acts, and to the wholesale clearances effected by the land-jobbers, that landlords owe the revo- lutionary processes that have more or less characterised twenty-five Land Acts passed by the Legislature in the interests of tenants. The course of true love, according to the poet of all time, never did run smooth ; certainly the tenure of land in Ireland has had an equally tossed and tempestuous existence ! Originally tribal, and held more or less in commonalty, it next became semi-feudal, though the tribal customs leavened it for a long time. Then, as the country grew more and more English, and the land passed from the old to the new hands, English tenancies, and the laws of real estate, as understood in the sister isle, became the sole charters of possession. But the history of these changes of system and tenure is a tale of crime and chicane, of the most atrocious cruelties and the most wanton wrong ! of misery and spoliation wrought sometimes under the sanctions of religion and morality, till humanity almost shudders at the narration, and compares these racial records with ‘^Armenian and Bulgarian atrocities,’^ or the Aceldamas of Ashanti, where obi worship prevails ! As the HIBERNIA HODIERNA, II public is somewhat ignorant of Irish history we propose to devote three or four chapters to a quasi-panoramic picture of the growth and development of Ireland from early ages to the present period, omitting details, and dwelling more on the chief turning points. 12 CHAPTER IL Ireland, shaped like a rhomboid, contains nearly 21,000,000 statute acres. Its greater diagonal is upwards of 300 miles, its lesser some 210. It is separated from England by the St. George’s Channel — about fifty miles at its narrowest point ; and from Scotland by a channel of only thirteen miles. Though encircled by hills, it contains few mountain ranges, and you may travel by rail from Dublin to Galway, or from Dundalk to Donegal, without traversing a tunnel. The island has been compared to a soup plate, and the great central depression is said to have been swept of its coal measures by water action in past ages, and this is averred to be proved by the apparently unlikely course of rivers that cut a path through rocky mountains, shewing that the old levels were much higher than at present. The orography of a country often influences its destiny, as the Romans found in Spain and Portugal, where they had great trouble in pushing their conquests, as shown in the sapphic lines — Cantabriif7t indoctuin iuga ferre nostra^' and Serd doniitus catena.'^'' Gold was found in fair abundance in some of the rivers but the staple trade of the island was hides, exchanged for clarets. The inhabitants of this island were Aryan and Celts; Firlbrgs and Tuatha Da Danaans are spoken of as immi- grants at certain times, but nothing precise is known about them, nor yet of the Milesian migration. The country HIBERNIA IIODIERNA, 13 seems then, as now, to have been divided into four Provinces, of which each had its King, but all were subject to the controlling power of the Ard righ,”or overlord, till after the destruction of Tara in the sixth century. The foundation of these Celtic communities was the family or tribe, whose bond and foundation was consanguinity. Where birth and distinction were equal, wealth made all the difference, and the ‘‘Flaiths,’’ or rich men, lorded it over their poorer brethren. The wealth was represented by cows, of which the Flaiths ’’ hired out numbers to the tribesmen, and received rent^ or, failing that, personal service. The richest man was he who had most retainers, whom he quartered about at ‘‘Coyne and Livery,” while conquest led to the acquisition of serfs, styled Fuidhirs, There was a certain extent of arable land common to the tribe, and the cattle were pastured in the valleys and glades in the prevailing woodlands. The Kingly path was strictly marked out day by day : “ Sunday, for drinking ale, for he is not a lawful chief who does not distribute ale every Sunday ; Monday, for judgment, for the adjustment of the people ; Tuesday, at chess ; Wednesday, seeing greyhounds coursing ; Thurs- day, at marriage duties ; Friday, at horseracing ; Saturday, at giving judgments.” Law was in the hands of the Brehof^s^ who arranged the erics or fines for torts and felonies, and had a written code among the oldest in Europe. There was no central authority and little public opinion ; but, curiously enough, this tribal system endured in many parts of Ireland till the sixteenth century with little change, though much of the common land, as at Rome, had passed from the tribe to the chiefs. 14 CHAPTER III. With the fifth century the history of Ireland may be said to commence. It was in the middle of that century that Patricius, or St. Patrick, commenced his mission to that country, where as a boy he had been a slave. It was very successful, and in vain did the Druidical lannes and lambres ” strive against him : we say Druidical^ because dolmens and cromlechs witness to their existence, though we know little about them and their works — only the legend of the banishment of snakes points to snake worship. The converted chiefs gave land largely to found religious houses, and in a few years the Church of Ireland became mis- sionary, and spread the saving light throughout Europe, creating some jealousy by the zeal of the episcopi mgantes. In 1152 four archiepiscopal sees were founded, Armagh being Primatial. In the eighth century, however, the Danes swooped down on Ireland and plundered the church cruelly. They acquired much of the eastern littoral, and made settlements in Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, and Limerick ; and, under Turgesius, mastered much of the interior. Indeed, the name Turgesius’ Fort still survives in Western Meath ; but the Danish Sedan was fought at Clontarf on Good Friday, 1014, when they and their Leinster allies were routed by the Dalcassian King, Brian Borumha, After this hero’s death the Overlordship of Ireland was competed for by several Pretenders, till, in the twelfth century, it was acquired by Roderick O’Connor, King of Connaught. 15 CHAPTER IV. The conquest of Ireland by a handful of filibustering Normans sounds incredible, but it is vouched for by the continuous existence of several noble families descended from these conquestadors, up to the present, and by sundry “sermons in stone.^^ Dermot MacMurrough had proved a Paris in his abduction of Devorgil, the wife of O’Rorke of Breffny, and was at rupture with his Leinster subjects. He applied for aid to Henry the Second, then in Aquitaine, who had been given a title to Ireland by Adrian the Fourth, as Hildebrand had given one to England to William his ancestor. Fitstephen, Mountmorres, and Raymond le Gros espoused his cause, took Wexford and Waterford, and were soon joined by Strongbow, who married Dermot’s daughter Eva. Henry the Second, soon after these events, landed at Waterford, marched to Dublin, and laid the foundations of England's sway by establishing feudal tenures. He also held a Synod at Cashel, at which the Church was granted certain privileges : it has been styled a Parliament. The death of Becket recalled him to England in 1172. The submission of the Irish chiefs enabled the King, as grantor, to provide splendid estates for his nobles, which they in turn leased to lesser men by subinfeudation. In reality, the grants were only recognised where there was power to enforce them, and the Norman grantees built keeps and held thp most fertile valleys of the Slaney, the Suir, the Nore, the Barrow, and the Lower Shannon. By l6 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. degrees power and land got into the hands of a few nobles, and Palatinates were formed by the Fitzgeralds of Kildare, and Desmond, and the Butlers. These petty Kings replaced the old chieftains; but by taking the natives as allies in these quarrels, and adopting their customs, they weakened their own influence and strengthened that of the Irish. For three years Edward Bruce was practically King of Ireland, till defeated and slain at Dundalk by John of Bermingham ; but by the middle and close of the four- teenth century the Norman nobles had, for the most part, become Hibernis Hiberniores, In another fifty years the Pale had shrunk to the narrowest limits ; the exchequer was drained ; and though Kichard the Second invaded Ireland with a large army, he did little beyond receiving nominal submissions, and soon blackmail was paid to the Irish chieftains, and the Angevin Kings had given way to the Tudors. The projected plantation of Wicklow had never been effected, and the O’Tooles and O’Byrnes swooped down on the denizens of Dublin, killing many in the suburban zone. The Kings of England had too much to do between wars in Scotland, Wales, and France to effectually control Ireland, from whence they drew little revenue but good soldiers, and latterly the quarrels of the houses of York and Lancaster had decimated some of the great Irish families whose scions fell at Stoke and Wakefield. English yeomen, too, had deserted the country, and returned to England. Of the Anglo-Norman Conquest little remained in Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, still less in Ulster, which was practically wholly Irish with the exception of a seaport or two. HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 17 Some idea of the lawlessness of the country may be formed by the fact that great peers such as Ormonde and Desmond were excused from attending Parliaments, though their retinues would probably have been large and capable of protecting them in transit. During this period the estates of the Templars, who occupied Kilmainham Priory, were confiscated, and Lord de Vesci, accused of treason, also lost his lands. There had been created in Ireland during this period of practical anarchy three interests — those of the English-born, of the Anglo-Irish or colonists, and of the natives, who, unless they belonged to five families (quinque sangumes)^ had legally no rights or privileges, and were only tolerated as necessary hewers of wood and drawers of water — hostes humani ge?ieris — in the pure eyes of the law and its expo- nents, who had already shown a keenness of enquiry into titles with a view to re-grants or forfeiture. CHAPTER V. We have now come to Tudor times. Henry the Seventh soon found out that Ireland was the weak spot in England’s armour, where conspiracies were continually hatched. Simnel and Warbeck risings led him to these considera- tions, and he determined to make Ireland as safe as was possible. Sir E. Poynings was made Lord Deputy, and Foy7tings‘ act^ that reduced the Irish Parliament to a Court of Registry of the decrees of the Privy Council of both Kingdoms^ arrested all Parliamentary freedom. The Earl of Kildare, notwithstanding flagrant acts of rebellion, was made Viceroy, and ruled Ireland well. His victory at Knockdoe,^ near Galway, over the De Burghs and their allies, gained Connaught to the Crown effectually. At the death of the seventh Henry, his son, the eighth of the name, succeeded him, and he soon turned his attention to Ireland, where the power of the Geraldines was over- weening, and hateful to Wolsey. Gerald, son of the great Geraldine, was summoned to England. His son, Silken ” Thomas, broke out into a rebellion, which the artillery of Sir W. Skefflngton soon suppressed by the capture of Maynooth Castle, and in fine the mature male Geraldines were executed at Tyburn, though a boy escaped to renew the family, and was cared for by Cardinal Pole at Rome. Lord Leonard Gray, the new Viceroy, completely pacified Ireland tor some years. HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 19 How Henry the Eighth deposed Popery in England, installing himself as Pontifex Maximus^ and how he dises- tablished a thousand religious houses, founding a new territorial aristocracy on the spoils of the Church, is too old a tale to recapitulate. Many of these houses merited their disestablishment. Those in Ireland had not, as a rule, created scandals, but 400 of them were suppressed to the profit of the English interest, and some soldiers now became soldiers of fortune. Coercion and conciliation have been the great levers of English statesmen in their dealings with Ireland. Henry elected the latter lever, preferring sober ways, politic drifts, and amiable persuasions founded on law and reason to the sword and extermination. It was, perhaps, cheaper to kill Home Rule by kindness.’^ He summoned a Parliament in Dublin at which native chiefs in native costume sat with the Lords of the Pale, and titles were scattered about nearly as profusely as when “ the Union was in jeopardy. These chiefs had one and all accepted their lands on feudal tenure from Henry as grantor ; but these lands v/ere tribal^ and the tanist, or chief, had only a life interest in the demesne portion of them ! Henry abjured Papacy, but adhered to Catholicism. Not so the Council of the sixth Edward, who had solid, perhaps sordid, reasons for Protestantising. In Ireland the Englishry and the Irishry were orthodox, though not worshipping at the same altars, and hating each other. Proselytism made them coalesce, and this was confirmed by the iconoclasni and the breaking-up of objects of popular veneration as that of the image of our lady of Trim. Queen Mary, a Tudor, and a Catholic, retained many of her father’s ideas as to c 2 20 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. prerogative ; she checked the stream of Protestantism, but enough had been done to create a new root of bitterness in Ireland — the odium Theologicum. No trouble had been taken to translate either Bible or Prayer Book into Irish, and many of the Pluralist incumbents were absentees, and had no churches. After the death of Henry the Eighth the conciliation policy was replaced by coercion, and the possessions of the O’Connors of ^‘Faly,” and of the O’Moores of Leix, were seized and planted with Englishmen, of whose descendants several survive to this day. Dangen and Campa became Philipstown and Maryborough. Elizabeth was surrounded by enemies. France, Spain, and Scotland were hostile, and the Catholics of her own Kingdom were very dangerous. In Ireland Shane O’Neill assumed a menacing attitude when he called himself The O’Neill.” He was sent for to the Court, and there captivated the Queen. Sussex was the Viceroy. Shane defeated him, and survived his attempts to poison him; but Sir Henry Sidney at last wore him out, and Shane was killed by the Scots, while his county — Tyrone — was declared forfeited. Essex failed as a “ Planter ” : he committed fearful atrocities. But the warping of all law in the restoration of Sir Peter Carew’s long dormant claims aroused the Irish chieftains, and some of the English too, to the schemes for confiscation that were being hatched. One of the outcomes of this dread was the Desmond rebellion, that soon assumed enor- mous proportions, and received aid from Spain. It was ultimately crushed by Ormonde and Sir Henry Pelham. The Spaniards who surrendered w^ere killed in cold blood to the number of 800, and a minor outbreak of the Eustace HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 21 family, whose chief was Lord Baltinglass, was also quelled. The pen of Edmund Spenser, the poet, has pourtrayed the utter desolation of Munster after this rebellion. More than half a million of acres were now ready for plantation,^’ an act which really did little more than change the names of the landlords, for the people remained to till the soil^ and yeomen were not largely introduced from England. An even more formidable rebellion was created in Ulster by the conduct of Fitzwilliam, the new Viceroy, who drove a strong subject of the Queen, Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, into open war, in which he was supported by many Irish and some English colonists. Another Essex was sent to suppress it, but he failed. Bagenal was badly beaten, but Mountjoy at last prevailed over the Confederation and their allies from Spain, and Tyrone made honourable terms ere he heard of the Queen’s death. Mountjoy and Carew had reduced Ulster as Munster had been reduced ; that is to say, they made a solitude and called it peace,” and brought the peasantry to such straits that cannibalism was far from uncommon, for the policy was to destroy crops and corn. In the provinces there were Provincial Governors whose soldiers lived on the^ people at ‘‘ Coyne and Livery.” The country was partially a wilder- ness ; the seaports, inhabited very much by Englishmen, were fairly flourishing. But all opposition was quelled. James the First of England and Ireland ascended the Throne in 1603, and set to work to Protestantise Ireland by pains and penalties. Ulster v/as resettled : the chiefs received grants ” of their demesne lands, while the people held their own tribal lands as tenants at will. The chiefs were closely watched, and at last, fearing that they were 22 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. doomed, they left the country for the Continent, and this flight is known in history as the flight of the Ea 7 'lsr Attainder followed ; plantation succeeded it, though on a smaller acreage than in Munster. Nearly four millions of acres (statute) were placed at the disposal of the Crown ; but, as in Munster, a leav-en of natives was left glehce adstricti, Leinster now contained few Irish enemies, but the law was invoked by discoverers ” to find flaws in titles, and nearly half a million of acres were replanted^ and thus the founda- tions of the fortunes of many noble families v/ere laid, and the filching of hereditary estates and their gifts to English and Scotch settlers and “servitors” paved the way for I‘rotestant ascendancy and racial rancour. King James the First died in 1625. He has been generally presented to the reading public by historians and chroniclers as a pedantic pundit; but he was something more than that — a man better informed than his fellows, and very learned for a King. Now that Ulster had been brought into the fold he summoned in 1613 a Parliament that con- tained “recusants” and representatives of the Irish race, though he manipulated it in a way to secure a working majority by the creation of little boroughs. The number of Members was fixed at 300 for the Lower House. The calling of such a Parliament was a tacit repeal of the Statutes of Kilkenny (which made Irish fashions of coiffure, dress, and riding penal), and the levelling up of men of Irish birth to the full privileges of citize 7 iship froTn a coTiditioTt of outlaivry. From this date, though religim might create impassable harriers ’twixt man and man, blood and race had ceased to have such an effect. In 1633 Sir Thomas Wentworth, better known as Lord HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 23 Strafford, became Viceroy of Ireland, He was Charles the First’s faithful servant in Ireland, which he administered well, if very despotically. In 1641, betrayed by the King — whom he had served too loyally — he was executed. The rebellion of 1641 was partly religious^ partly territorial y to recover Ulster from its ‘^planters.” How many perished in its cause ’twere hard to deteimine, but the number was very considerable. By 1642 all Ireland, save a few towns, was in overt rebellion. The arrival of Owen Roe O’Neill and Colonel Preston altered the character of events. Charles was temporising, and despatched Glamorgan to Ireland ; his secret treaty was discovered when the Archbishop of Tuam was killed at Sligo. The Pope’s nuncio, Rinacini, lu'ecipitated matters into a war of religion, and in 1647 Ormonde retired to Paris. Meanwhile there was disagree- ment among ‘Hhe rebels,” and in 1649 Oliver Cromwell was sent to Ireland as Viceroy. The successful sieges and slaughters of Drogheda and Wexford made Ireland very submissive, and confiscation followed conquest. Crom- well’s ruthless massacres are constantly cited by historians, but they were innocent compared to those of some Eliza- bethan and Tudor Generals. With the capture of Limerick this war ended. Had Charles been loyal, or the rebels really united and well led, they might have captured, if not held, Ireland. The victory of Owen Roe O’Neill at Benburb over Monroe’s Scotch Legion appears to prove this. Hitherto we have had plantations. Transplantation to Connaught was the Cromwellian edict, and the settlement of Ireland was effected by the uprooting of families who had held their lands for 500 years. Even Ulster planters were 24 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. transplanted. On the restoration the old proprietors fought hard for the recovery of their lands, but very futilely. Little was regranted to them, and Protestants held more than 5,000,000 acres of land. The High Church party was now triumphant, with Bramhall as Primate. When Charles the Second became a Roman Catholic, after being a Covenanter and then an Episcopalian, a terrible Protestant or Puritan reaction set in, and among its fruits w^as the judicial murder of Oliver Plunkett. James the Second sent over Richard Talbot as his deputy to Ireland. He remodelled the island to a Papist pattern, and his army amounted to nearly 1 00,000 men ! Parliament passed an Act of Restoration of Estates. Meanwhile the town of Derry was relieved, and the battle of Newtown Butler followed, in which the Irish were badly beaten. The victory of the Boyne placed Dublin in the posses- sion of William the Third. Giukel took Athlone, and siege was laid to Limerick after St. Ruth had lost Aughrim, though not without desperate fighting. An armistice was agreed to, and a treaty made soon afterwards — the famous or infamous ‘‘broken treaty.’^ A few days after this Chateau Renard, with a French fleet and reinforcements, appeared in the Shannon. Forfeiture of lands followed defeat, and it is calculated that the Catholic proprietors now held only one-seventh of the acreage of the island. The Penal Code was next passed by a Protestant Parlia- ment for the ruin, temporally and spiritually, of the Roman Catholic population — a terrible reprisal for James’ policy, and the brief Catholic ascendancy. The settled policy of England now was to keep Ireland weak. Her wool trade was destroyed ; Irish salt meat was HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 25 prohibited to enter the ports of England, and Ireland was excluded from the Navigation Laws. Small wonder, then, that a union with England was sought, but rejected. Of course, smuggling grew out of such a prohibitive system. A persecution of Presbyterians by the Laudian Bishops forced many to leave for America ; and so gross were the abuses in Parliament, held as in a vice by an oligarchy, that a Patriotic party sprang up, led chiefly by the disappointed Dean Swift, Lucas, and Molyneaux. Lords Lieutenants were absentees, and Lords Justices performed Viceregal functions. Of these. Archbishops Boulter, Hoadley, and Stone were most famous. Mean- while the farmers (oppressed by tithes), middlemen, and absentees, had become greatly impoverished, and organised secret societies. Parliaments lasted in Ireland till the King’s death. An octennial Bill was granted as a reform, but the boons offered to revolting America were refused to Ireland. At last the difficulties of England made Ireland’s Opportunity. The volunteers sprung up, and their guns, parked close by the Parliament House, bore the ominous inscription Free trade or this.” In 1770 Grattan and the patriots ” gained free trade for Ireland, or rather equal commercial privileges with England. In two years more England had granted Ireland Practical Home Rule^ by the emancipation of her Parliament. The proximate cause of these concessions was probably the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. From 1782 to 1784 great efforts were made to reform the Irish Parliament, but in vain. From 1783 to 1789 the struggle was for real Free Trade, which Pitt was inclined to grant, but which the English manufacturers refused, and 26 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. conflicts between the two Parliaments inclined Pitt more and more to Union, Meanwhile the country was honey- combed by secret societies. Gradually concessions were being made to Catholics, and the Penal Laws relaxed. Wolfe Tone in 1788 founded the society of ‘‘The United Irishmen/^ that ere long numbered more than a quarter of a million. In 1794 the Duke of Portland was in charge of Irish affairs, and Lord Pitzwilliam was Viceroy; but George the Third was not to be moved from his Protes- tantism, which he identified with religion, and Catholic hopes were dashed to the ground. The feud between “ the Defenders’’ and the Protestant farmers in Ulster resulted in “ the battle of the Diamond,” in which forty-eight men were killed. The Defenders were summarily suppressed and haled in many cases by a press gang to serve on board men-of-war. Lord Edward Fitzgerald now appears on the scene, and the Directory in France sent a fleet under Hoche to invade Ireland, and create “ a rising.” A storm, however, came to England’s aid, and dispersed it from Bantry Bay. The United Irishmen were next suppressed, and Martial Law proclaimed. Lord Edward was wounded, and died in Dublin, and “ the rebellion ” was, ere long, confined to the County of Wexford, where, till the Guards and large rein- forcements came, the Loyalists were in much peril. The battle of Vinegar Hill, and the capture of Wexford extin- guished it after fearful atrocities had been committed by both sides. The suppression of “ the rising ” in Wexford did not release the English Government from peril in Ireland; for Humbert, not waiting for Hardi, his brother General, HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 27 landed in Killala Harbour with about 1,000 men and defeated General Lake’s Militia and Yeomanry near Castle- bar. The latter galloped to Athlone in precipitate flight known as the Castlebar races. However, Lake and Corn- wallis were soon on Humbert’s tracks, and forced him to surrender. Hardi was caught by Admiral Warren off Lough Swilly, and on board the “ Hoche” Wolfe Tone was taken. He practically committed suicide in prison. It took ;^i38,ooo to put down the rebellion: it cost the country very nearly ;2^5,ooo,oco. These events, and the independence shown by the Irish Parliament in the matter of the Regency, precipitated the Union; but it took two Sessions and great bribing of every kind to achieve it Constitutionally in the year 1800. The government of Ireland during about 750 years had been anything rather than creditable to a great Power ! In the Plantagenet period it was practically “ a make-believe ” Government ; for between wars in France (in which the Irish took a leading part) and the Wars of the Roses, the Crown had neither time nor money to complete the conquest and reorganisation of the island ; and here we may notice that up to the era of William the Third English Sovereigns maintained (on paper) their pretensions to the French Crown, a fact which King William’s statue in College Green, Dublin, sets forth very plainly. In Tudor times much was done to effectually subdue both the Anglo-Irish and the natives ; and if the most execrable cruelties and deceptions were practised, it must be recollected that England was - fighting for existence against the Pope~~a temporal Prince then — and the Powers of Spain, France, and Scotland. Had common prudence, not to speak of 28 HIBERNIA HODIERNA, kindness and conciliation, been adopted, the Reformation might have been introduced into Ireland; but the Bible was not translated into the native tongue, nor the Prayer- Book either, and Pluralist rectors and vicars could not read the text had they been so translated. Considering that murder was no uncommon offence among the Irish clergy^ as testified by the four masters^ we cannot conceive rhat their religious zeal was very fervent, particularly when we learn that Shane O'Neill had made his Horseboys” dignitaries of the Armagh Chapter. Even the country, that was covered with beautiful wood — oak especially (Westminster Hall was ceiled and wainscoated with Irish oak) — was stripped of its best vesture and shade by the English planters, and indeed there are few redeeming features in the record of England's Raj, that was founded on fraud and maintained by force, and wounded by its intolerant assumption of superiority in morals and intellect. The curse of Cromwell is a legend and tradition in the country : the curse of the false, fleeting, perjured ” Stuarts was infinitely worse, and more fatal to Irish interests, which suffered cruelly from the loyalty of the people to their Faith and to their Sovereigns. The Penal Laws were their penalty ; but perhaps had James and Tyrconnel prevailed, Protestants might have fared as badly. Fiscally, nothing could be more grasping and avaricious than the policy of England towards Ireland. Even in Strafford's time the Irish woollen trade was weakened to benefit English manufacturers. In William the Third's era it was almost suppressed to gratify English commercial jealousy, and, in point of fact, Free Trade '' (though not in its modern acceptation but equality with England) was only wrung HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 29 from the necessities which war had imposed upon England. Moreover, provision was made for a large number of Courtly parasites through the Irish Exchequer; while the officials sent over to fill the high places in Church and State were men very often of an extremely low standard of faith and morality. Altogether, Ireland was the step-child, England the injusta noverca, and it was mainly to men of English descent that Ireland owed the exposition of these grievances and iniquities. 30 CHAPTER VI. Lord Cornwallis’s words, to the effect that Ireland might be saved by the Union^^ but could not be saved without it^ are frequently quoted, and have proved rather prophetic. The Union brought peace for a short term ; but when war with France was renewed after the peace of Amiens, Emmett’s rebellion broke out, but it proved an abortive rising, and caused but a few deaths, includ- ing that of Lord Kilwarden, the Judge — its first victim. Catholic Emancipation was one of the boons that had been vaguely held out to a^ proscribed population by Pitt, on the passing of the Union. It was, however, not granted, owing, it is said, to George the Third’s scruples as to his Coronation oath. The Vicero5^alties of Lord Hard- wicke and of the Duke of Bedford were not memorable or eventful. The Yeomanry was costing the country 1 00,000 per month, and the corps was deeply imbued with Orangeism. The Duke of Richmond’s reign was more convivial than statesmanlike, and in Lord Whit- worth’s Viceroyalty the most remarkable episode was the duel between O’Connell and D’Esterre at Bishopscourt, County Kildare, in which, wholly contrary to expectation, the latter was killed. Meanwhile the conclusion of the great war, that had inflated prices and enlarged the area of tillage in Ireland, caused general distress by the fall in rents and wages, and it soon became apparent that the population of the country, unprovided with a Poor Law, was too great for the resources of the soil. HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 31 Two men now appeared on the political scene who have left their mark in history : Peel established the Royal Irish Constabulary, perhaps the. finest corps in the world qua physique and morale ; and O’Connell made the Catholic Association, officered by the priesthood of that faith, almost //le power paramount of the country. In 1825 a Bill for withdrawing the Penal restrictions passed the Commons, but was wrecked in the Lords, most unfortunately for the best interests of Ireland. In 1828 came the, Clare election, in which O’Connell defeated the Government nominee, Mr. Vesey-Fitzgerald, and from that date landlord ascend- ancy in Ireland ceased almost entirely, and Catholic Eman- cipation followed as its corollary — a tardy concession wrung from England by agitation — its fatal firstfruit, for, in the course of six decades since then, agitation in Ireland — not always crimeless — has been the key to political power, and the redress of grievances — real and imaginary — rather than justice, or the sense of right. Considering the strength of the opposition encountered few greater Constitutional conquests are recorded in history than that achieved by O’Connell. Catholic Emancipation synchronised with the agitation for reform in England : the latter was effected in 1832, and Lord Grey was the Prime Minister of the period. O’Connell came forward in the House of Commons as the champion of “ Repeal of the Union,” but made little way. Tithe collection in Ireland was a really genuine grievance. Rich grass lands were exempt, and the levy fell on the small tenancies of the poor, where tilth prevailed. They rose against it, and on a few occasions, aided by the Whiteboy Organization, defeated the police and military forces of the Crown. In 1838, after much fighting, the Tithes Commuta- 32 HIBERNIA HODIERNA, tion Act was passed, and the primary payment of the tax was forced on the landlords. Ecclesiastical reformation and reduction followed. Ten sees were lopped off the Irish Establishment, that was in possession of nearly a million of acres, a fact which, after the revolution, meant about lo acres a man. The establishment of National Schools was due mainly to Mr. Stanley. Lord Grey’s Ministry was succeeded by that of Lord Melbourne, our Queen’s first Premier. He ruled Ireland, through O’Connell, by means of the famous Lichfield Pact, and the result, on the whole, was good if inglorious. A Poor Law for Ireland was passed, and there was an attempt made at municipal reform. Peel followed Melbourne, and O’Connell com- menced his crusade for repeal by “monster” meetings. His trial, sentence, and its subsequent quashing in the House of Lords are well-known matters of history, and not creditable to the Bench or Government of Ireland. Peel founded “ The Queen’s Colleges ” (their ultimate comple- ment was the Royal University) ; and to his initiative is due the Devon Commission, an enquiry into the land system of Ireland, conducted — and well conducted — by landlords. In 1845 premonitory symptoms of the potato failure came as a warning. In 1846 and 1847 the blight culminated in a fearful famine. In 1848 “Young Ireland,” no longer dominated by the greatness of O’Connell, rose in arms, and, like Smith O’Brien at Ballingarry, was promptly sup- pressed, and without bloodshed. The effects of the famine economically were more widespread, in the legal confisca- tion of one-fifth of the soil through the Landed Estate Court, and the emigration of multitudes of the peasantry and some of the upper classes till a population, that had HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 33 increased from the date of the revolution by some six millions^ dwindled down in a few decades to less than the population of modern London. With the diminution of population and relief from pressure came a term of pros- perity, which an abortive effort made by the Fenian con- spiracy hardly affected at all. The Clerkenwell explosion, however, turned the attention of Mr. Gladstone, as he has told us often, to the Irish Land and Church questions as he became Premier in 1868, with Lord Spencer for Viceroy, and his Faery Queen for Vicereine or Proregina^ When Mr. Gladstone in 1868 came in as a Premier with a commanding majority, the Irish Church, which had been generally condemned as a national scandal by statesmen and publicists — by Sidney Smith, for instance, and Count Cavour — first occupied the attention of the Ministry, and after a protracted debate it was disestablished, though not without ample provision being made for compensation to all office-holders and incumbents — even to curates who, it was said, had taken Orders without due regard to the statutory age. Sixteen millions worth of property were affected by this measure, and nine millions formed The Irish Church Surplus Fund,'' diverted, in the course of time, to many secular uses. Mr. Gladstone having effected this great reform in the Church system of Ireland, turned to the land system, on which the Devon Commission had already pronounced. That it required reformation is patent, from the fact that the millions of Ireland had, with few exceptions, to live out of the land." That their tenure was frail, and subject to the caprice of the lord of the soil, and that the land hunger had created an unnatural demand for it. It is not asserted that the rule of the D 34 HIBERNIA HODIERNA, landords was generally harsh or tyrannical. They had not required the coercion of a special Truck Act, or the establishment of a corps of Inspectors to enforce the dictates of humanity, like the manufacturers of England, Wales, and Scotland, They had not, as a rule, seized upon opportunities for raising their rents and profits, as landlords in towns were wont to do, and as we saw attempted in the Metropolis a few months ago on the joyous occasion of the Queen^s Diamond Jubilee; but the agents of absentees had occasionally exercised their functions harshly, and no one could defend the semi-serfdom involved in a “ tenancy at will,” especially where the tenant was hardly, in many cases, a free agent. The Land Act of 1870 was remarkable for two provisions in favour of the tenant at will ” : ist. Compensation for disturbance. 2nd. Compensation for improvements. The Bill met little opposition on the part of landlords, though its provisions were drastic. By granting leases to their tenants landlords could, and did, evade its penalties. But besides these two charters the Irish tenant was invited to purchase his holding by the Bright Clauses and repay- ment by annuities permitted. Under the Church Act about two millions had been advanced to the occupiers of glebe land to facilitate the purchase of their tenements under the same system. Since 1870 there has been a regular rain of Acts explaining, amending, altering, and improving, but all confusing, the relations between the lord of the soil and the occupier, till the tangle has become greater and greater with every recurring year, and law is invoked by both parties, at considerable expense, to cut the Gordian Knot made by hasty law-makers, who seemed to think, one and HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 35 all, that they had been granted by Providence a special mission for mending and ending the Irish difficulty, and who seemed animated by the desire of trumping their predecessors’ trick, and posing as the saviours of the island. The Land Act of 1870 was a boon and a blessing to Irish farmers, and till 1879 rents, though subsequently styled rack-rents, were paid very fairly and freely. Then came a bad season, and some distress in the west, which was taken advantage of by advanced politicians in Ireland, and The National Land League for Mayo (rather a contra- dictory title) was formed with the basis, or fundamentary proposition, ‘‘That the land of Ireland belonged to the people,” though compensation to landlords was then promised in the event of deprivation. This measure led to the formation of “The National Land League of Ireland,” of which Charles Stewart Parnell, M.P., was voted President This extraordinary man, the greatest and strongest leader — next to Daniel O’Connell — that the Nationalists of Ireland ever possessed, now fills the entire political canvas, and deserves a short notice. He was the second son of the Squire of Avondale, County Wicklow, and came of a Cheshire family, of which Lord Congleton is the head. Some branches had migrated to Ireland in the reign of Charles the Second, and were distinguished for talent and patriotic aspirations. Amongst them was Parnell the Poet. Charles Stewart Parnell entered Parliament in 1874 as Member for Meath, and his programme then was the settlement of western peasants in the rich grass lands of Meath, a rather Utopian scheme that never came to anything. He early evinced his sympathy with the Fenian cause by standing D 2 36 HIBERNIA HOD IE RN A. up in the House for men convicted of murder at Manchester and hanged for it, though called generally in Ireland the Manchester martyrs/^ Butt’s advocacy of Home Rule in the House of Com- mons was annual and academic, and withal most illusory, Parnell made the Irish party a real power, though at Isaac Butt’s death Shaw was elected to the leadership, to which Mitchell Henry aspired. Both these men were probably Avidi sed Impares^ and Parnell, who was not overburdened with scruples or prejudices, was the only possible leader. The Clan-na-Gael accepted him, and some of the Fenians too, moved probably by his persistent obstruction in the House of Commons. His policy was styled the “New Departure,” or war with England within Constitutional limits. After a visit to America, and the return of Gladstone to power in 1879, he was voted chairman of the Home Rule party. Meanwhile the harvest of agrarian outrages was increasing, and the numbers, from 301 in 1868, had swelled to 4,439 in 1881. Forster’s Coercion Bill was passed after much debate, and even Mr. Gladstone’s Land Bill of 1881 failed to conciliate Parnell, and he was thrown into Kilmainham Gaol for inciting the farmers to reject it, and depend for salvation on the Land League. By the Kilmainham Treaty he was, after a short term, released, with his friends ; and soon after that event Mr. T. Burke and Lord F. Cavendish were murdered, on the 6th of May, in the Phoenix Park, before the eyes of Lord Spencer. At a meeting in Dublin Mr. Parnell was presented with a cheque for ;^37,ooo, and the Parnell party became the arbiter of all others in the House, while Mr. Gladstone, who had appealed to the people to give him such a HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 37 majority as would make him independent of Parnell and the Irish party, came into power in 1886 and introduced Home Rule as his henchman. Mr. Gladstone's Bill was defeated by thirty votes. It had split up his demoralised following, and the Liberal Unionists now joined the Conservative Camp. The General Election of 1886 brought in Lord Salisbury, and Mr. Parnell openly joined the Liberals, giving up his policy of Retaliation ; but from this time he ceased to be a regular Party leader, and was seldom seen in the House or accessible to his followers. The Special Commission devised by the Times was a very noble conception perhaps, but it was most faultily and foolishly carried out in detail, and proved virtually a triumph for Mr. Parnell, who received damages from that paper equivalent to ^5,000 with costs; but if acquitted on the main charges, he was found guilty of minor offences, such as intimidation and condonation of outrage. Mr. Parnelfs condemnation in the Divorce Court need not be dwelt on here, but his followers in Ireland and America pledged themselves to fealty to their chief, a pledge which, with few exceptions, they violated shortly afterwards when Mr. Gladstone pronounced against him. After a spirited but ineffectual political campaign in Ireland, in which the priests threw their weight into the opposite, or anti- Parnellite, scales, Mr. Parnell died at Brighton, and was buried in Glasnevin Cemetery a popular idol to the end, though hurled from his throne. Few men could have made so much of the materials that came to his hand. In Irish revolutions men are apt to become, as Byron suggests, more Irish and less nice.” 38 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. What made Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell such a fierce hater of England it were hard to say, unless he inherited its germs from his mother, Mrs. Delia Parnell, a daughter of Commodore Stewart, the ci-deva 7 it captain of the Chesa- peak ” taken by the Shannon ” off Boston, who had a wholesome hatred of Britons. It would also be hard to explain his reason or motive for running counter to his own class and order — landlords ; for he had early shown that he was not too tender-hearted in his dealings with recalcitrant tenants, and latterly his relations with his employes at Avondale were very strained, while his migration policy proved a financial failure. His rule of his party was rigid, not to say tyrannical. Like all the great leaders of the National party in Ireland, save one, he was a Protestant, and to a certain extent an unflinching one. Possibly this fact may have accelerated his downfall, as laches fully as great as his were condoned where the odium theologicum did not intervene. Parnell during his political life was quite estranged from the heads of his family. In 1880 the swing of the political pendulum brought the Radical-Liberal party once more into power. Their Coryphoeus, and to a certain extent Dictator, was Mr. Gladstone, a man of transcendant talents and infinite power of application, joined to a great command of language, and a power of peroration that was much admired by his partisans, but broyght little conviction to those outside their pale. - To Mr. Gladstone power had become almost as necessary and indispensable as the breath of life. He had forsaken the political arena for a term, and retired like Cincinatus to the domesticities of Hawarden, to thin its woods, and preach the Gospel of Jam to distressed HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 39 farmers : reminding one of the great gladiator of the Augustan age, of whom Horace tells us that “Veianius Armis Herculis ad postern fixis requiescit in agris, Ne populum extrema toties exoret arena.” But, unlike Veianius, he longed for the stress, the strain, and the triumph of the wonted battlefield, where those who ought to know declared that he fancied he wielded the sword of the Lord and of Gideon,” having infinite con- fidence in his own powers and the plenary inspiration of his convictions on affairs of State, a confidence which, it must be confessed, was shared by a large number of his followers, who paid him homage as to a political Pope. It was not his unswerving constancy or consistency that had placed him on this pinnacle, for Mr. Gladstone had boxed the political compass, and his attempts to bribe an influential section of the constituencies by holding out the abolition of the Income tax as the reward of their support must have staggered the devotion of thinkers ; but this may have been set down as the eccentricity of genius, and did not quench the fervent faith of his followers. Radicals as a rule have an inveterate and inborn dislike to the territorial aristocracy and squirearchy of the country, on whom he had been instrumental in dealing deadly blows in the introduction of Free Trade, without any restrictions, into the commercial system of Great Britain. He was already meditating a destructive onslaught on a section of that landed aristocracy who were known in Ireland, and England too, as ‘‘The Garrison,” from their loyalty to the Constitution and institutions of the latter, that might some- times have been carried to excess, and earned Talleyrand’s 40 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. anathema for trop de zeleP but which had been proved in time of need by Catholic Peers such as Lords Fingall and Gormanstown. This Garrison,” steadfast in its devotion to Queen and country, had not, as a rule, been accused of harshness and illiberality to their tenants. Rents had not been raised even in the most prosperous times by the old landlords of inheritance (as they had been in England, Scotland, and Wales), though a few modern ones of inferior status, who had purchased under the Encumbered Estates Court, and thereby gained what were styled Parliamentary and inde- feasible titles to their lands, had undoubtedly done so ; but the same thing had happened commonly enough in England, and seignorial haughtiness of manner and bearing was even rifer in other parts of the United Kingdom than in Ireland. It never was contended that Irish landlords had strained or evaded the law, and the simple fact often urged as a plea ad misericordiam^ by recalcitrant or impe- cunious tenants, that their families had occupied their farms for centuries, is almost proof positive to the contrary. As a matter of fact, eviction was the landlord’s ready remedy for non-payment of his redditus^ or rent, and it is a mistake to suppose that eviction was as common in Ireland as either in London and New York; indeed, policy, if not humanity, forbade the excessive exercise of this legal instrument on an estate, and the Act of 1870 had provided that it could only be carried out where a yeaPs rent was due, while reinstatement was open to the evictee under tolerably easy conditions. The landlord has his engagements to meet, and no blame could be attached to either an individual or a class that availed itself of the legal methods of enforcing HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 41 a debt, or disencumbering his estate of a profitless or inefficient occupier. That this was not done recklessly or without cause is proved by the accumulation of arrears, amounting to millions, that were due by defaulting tenants to careless or over-easy landlords and that were brought forward in the estate ledgers year after year. Possibly the charge of almost culpable carelessness may be brought against the Irish landowners (or their attorneys and agents), for had their original grants been duly executed and registered, “The Discoverers ” would have had little to go on, and a third or fourth part of their estates would not have been forfeited to the Crown ; but, on the other hand, it may be urged that no loyal subjects could conceive of such mean chicanery on the part of the Crown, Again, it tells much against the business-like character of the landlords (or their agents and attorneys) that very few records of their improvements on the estates in their charge have been kept, and so the Sub-Commissioners adopt the presumption that they have been made by the tenant, whereas the reverse is the case, and landlords in the great majority of cases gave timber and slates to aid their tenants, and undertook the main drainage. Here, again, it may be said that no landlords could have fore- seen an inquisition like the Land Commission, or prepared for it. Again, landlords might have kept records of the deliberate destruction, or, at any rate, grave injury done to land by defaulting tenants, who were anxious to extract the utmost from their farms ere they threw them up or were evicted from them. In parts of the midlands of Ireland, where the soil is thin, the custom was to pare off the grassy surface and 42 HIBERNIA HODIERNA, burn it in heaps ; then to plant potatoes in it, and, after that, draw off as many corn (or white) crops as exhausted nature would yield. Such land was valueless for years, till nature or man had restoredits phosphates and fertility, and was much below prairie value. It has been well said by experts that if Scotland had been subjected to farming (?) such as Ireland underwent, it would yield nothing. • On the other hand, the wealth of some land in Ireland is apparently almost inexhaustible. A wealthy grazier told me one day the story of a field that lay between two of his holdings, for which he paid a small rent. We meadowed it for twenty-six years^ running ; got fine crops off it, and then, finding it was so good, we bought it.’’ The question of improvements is evidently connected with ground rents on which the tenants made the buildings,, and are supposed to be recouped by possession for their terms. Ireland is getting nearer to England every year, and what is done there may well form a precedent. In all ages of the world men of great energy and active minds have been fired to attempt great things by the very difficulty of their accomplishment. Just as the mountain peak lures the traveller to try to scale its heights by its- apparent or seeming inaccessibility, so the tangle into which natural causes — improvidence, neglect, and supine- ness — on the part of the executive had worked the land question of Ireland, proved a strong incentive to Mr.. Gladstone to attempt the solution, while the vista ot a people’s lasting love,” and a generous recognition of his services expressed in making him the master of manjr- HIBERNIA IIODIERNA, 4S certain votes, no doubt added fuel to the ardour of his attempts at agrarian legislation ; but, of all men in the world, Mr. Gladstone might have been expected, d priori^ to mete out a measure of justice to the lords of the soil, even if they were generally antagonistic to himself, or his latest self, in politics, for his family, and house sugar-planters and West India merchants in Jamaica and Demerara, had received full compensation when their slaves were emanci- pated, and he himself had acknowledged the justice of compensation when he disestablished the Protestant Episcopal Church of Ireland. Moreover his recent re- searches into Irish history, that had opened his eyes to the “ blackguardism ’’ of Pitt, had shown him that compensa- tion to the utmost limit was recognised by the British Government in even such questionable property as seats in the House of Commons, seeing that the owners of this chattel property received upwards of a million and a quarter of hard cash for the deprivation of the political privilege of sending their nominees to the House of Commons. So Mr. Gladstone, with a light heart and a profound ignorance of, and inexperience in, the ways of the Irish people, of whom and their country he had practically seen nothing, produced and carried his famous (or infamous) Bill of 1 88 1, that no doubt brought a measure of relief to a certain number of needy and necessitous tenants, but left the land question more unsettled than ever, and upset , pro tanto^ the foundations on which real property had been supposed to rest, ever since civilisation had forced its way and sway into England, as illustrated by the following bits of ancient doggerel familiar to law students throughout the Empire 44 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. “He that holdeth his lands in fee Need never to quake nor quiver ; He need not quake, for, don’t you see? They are his and his heir’s for ever.” “ I, John of Gaunt, Do give and grant To Sir John Burgoyne And heirs of his line Sutton and Potten Until the v^rorld’s rotten.” The Land Act of i88i may be styled the Magna Charta of the Irish tenant-farmer — the glorification of tenant right — which may be said to imply landlord's wrong (for property may have its wrongs as well as its rights and duties). It gave him his heart’s desire — Fixity of tenure, Fair rent, and Free sale (three entities represented by the three F’s). It abolished arbitrarily, in the case of the landlord, the birth- right of every free citizen— free contract ^ — and substituted for it a revolutionary tribunal from which practically there is no appeal ; it rendered the landlord’s estate in what was once his own land almost valueless for purposes of selling or borrowing ; reduced the proprietor to the condition of a rent charger, while an estate was carved out for the tenant from the fee-simple lands of the proprietor, and this estate the tenant was free to sell, directly after acquisition, to the highest and best bidder by private treaty or public auction ; and the amount that it realised may be said to represent the mulct of the landlord on that farm. To carry out the valuation of the farms of Ireland a tribunal has been formed of Commissioners and Sub-Com- missioners, and the latter may be said to be the working bees, HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 45 as they have to go on the farms, survey and inspect them, and report to the Superior Court, which, as a matter of fact, almost always supports its officers, and confirms their de- cisions. Now, who are these Sub-Commissioners in whose hands the estates and incomes of the landlords are placed — an artichoke whose leaves must be plucked off more or less, if only as a raison d'etre of their own existence ? Have they as a rule been educated in the science of agriculture, as surveyors and factors are in England and Scotland ? Have they studied geology and chemistry, or learnt in the laboratory the secrets and mysteries of nature ? Nothing of the sort ! There is absolutely no qualification. No examination has been required, not even matriculation ; and the corps of Commissioners have been launched on their predatory mission because they were known and liked by people in influence — an M,P. it may be, a popular peer, a political priest, a caucusmonger, or an electioneering attorney, but very few because they were known or believed to have special talents or qualifications for an office so vital to the best interests of the State ; and so if you go round the Courts you may alight upon an ex-cavalry or infantry centurion, several farmers who had not found salvation in their profession, a jobber or two in cattle or pigs, a few desceuvres landagents who had not proved great successes, several attorneys, and possibly a few more whose studies in the arcana of the turf had probably sharpened their intellects and made them good calculators. For their services they receive a stipend of ^2^800 a year, with allowances equal to ;^i,ooo per annum ; and so sedulously is the appointment sought, that it is said that lately Mr. Gerald Balfour had something like 900 applications for a 46 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. score of berths, for the pay is good and certain, and the duties not too onerous if rather unpleasant, and relieved by holidays not a few. The salus reipublicce^ or welfare of the State, is, we are told on good authority, the supreme law for statesmen, but it may very reasonably be questioned whether any State necessity presented itself to Ministers of the Crown after the securities granted to the occupiers of the soil of Ireland by the Act of 1870; and certainly every law and consideration of justice was in favour of the owners of real estate, who had been guilty of no crime, and had not infringed the Statutes of the country, rather than of a class, some of whose members were no doubt as blameless as the Ethiopians of story, but of whom the majority had entered into a conspiracy against the rights of property, and furthered their anarchical aims by such violent methods as murder and mutilation, till the Pope, having learnt the facts of the case through his Legate, was forced to interfere, and to denounce practices that struck at the foundations not only of religion, but of morality itself. Wrong and repudiation are hardly good or permanent bases for the settlement of an agrarian or any other question. Farming, like all other occupations or trades, requires capital to carry it out successfully, besides the capital repre- sented by the strong arms of the farmer and of his sons. Now, if by the new methods introduced by this Act, which abolished free contract in land (a thing unknown in America, and forbidden by its Constitution), though it reopened the portals of contract to the tenant, a flood of capital like a second Pactolus had been spread out and let loose over the country, there might have been HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 47 some justification for the curious aberration ; but what is the real state of things introduced by this more excellent way? Let us take as an illustration a farm let at ;^ioo per annum : The tenant goes into Court, as invited by law, and gets the old rent reduced to a reduction of 25 per cent. He is a needy man; farming has not thriven with him nor he by farming, and straightway he offers his. interest in the farm, and in a very short time gets about ;;^i,ooo for the new estate granted to him by the new-fangled tribunal. Now, if the last purchaser drew on his own capital for the outlay, and had besides a reserve for his farming operations, it might be said that though the landlord had been grievously injured, the country had gained by the innovation ; but instead of such a consummation, the chances are as many to one that the buyer had to contract a loan with the local usurer, or gombeen man, at a high rate of interest, so that, through expenses of loan and expenses of the Court, etc., he entered on his farm at a much higher rental practically than the original £100, and the only conclusion to be drawn is that this ;^ioo per annum was not really a rack-rent, and that the Act has done little more than substitute A for B, or vice versa ; while we are bound to recollect that Borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry,’’ a precept or gnome that has as much truth now as it had in the days of Shakespeare, Besides the blessings conveyed by the three F^s, the Irish tenant was actually tempted to purchase his holding out- right by an advance from the State of three-fourths of the necessary sum, to be repaid by an annuity in thirty-five 48 HIBERNIA HODIERNA, years. This was an extension of the Bright Clauses and the Irish Church Act of 1869. In 1885 1 the Act known as Lord Ashbourne’s enabled the tenants to receive the entire purchase-money from the State, and repay it by an annuity terminable in 49 years. This was, perhaps, the best boon offered to the tenants, and by it some ten millions were absorbed, while the land- lords were not injured by it after the Act of 1881 had once passed. The Act of 1887 admitted leaseholders to the benefits of the Commission Land Court, and evictions were miti- gated, while temporary reductions were made in the judicial rents owing to lean years. In 1891 Mr. Balfour’s Land Purchase Act, on much the same lines as Lord Ashbourne’s, but having in addition a guarantee, reserve, and insurance funds, were added, and evictees were given facilities for regaining their status ; while the Church Fund was tapped to form a Board for the relief of ^‘the congested districts,” where protection to industry is granted. In 1891 a Turbary Act was passed in the interest of the tenant, and another Act in the same year enabled long leaseholders ” to enjoy the benefits of the Land Court. While a third in the same fertile year established local registries for title. Meanwhile, in 1882, a most important measure of relief to tenants under ;^3o rent or valuation was passed in the Arrears Act. Payment from them of one year’s rent gave them an acquittance in full, while the landlord received another year’s rent from the Church Fund. Thus were ;^t,82o, 586 extinguished. This Act, though HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 49 seemingly a high-handed measure, was, we think, a very wholesome one for both parties, and acted like a Court of National Insolvency. Thus it will be seen that if Land Acts were trumps, the Irish farmer holds a splendid hand, but his attorney holds a far better one, and the common, garden, or hedge attorney has had a magnificent innings for 20 odd years with fair prospects for the future. We now come to the land legislation of 1896, when — if ever — the landowners had reason to expect that their burdens would be rather diminished than increased. “ Who fears to speak of ’98 ? ” is the first line of a patriotic ballad. Who fears to speak of ’96 comes far more home to hundreds of the smaller proprietors of Ireland, whom it has brought very nearly to the point of extinction. Some legislation was necessary, as the statutory period of fifteen years had nearly expired ; but a few lines or clauses of renewal would have sufficed to keep up the Land Courts and the land system ; but there seems to have been no necessity to take new^ departures and to introduce the thin end of the wedge in the matter of compulsory sale — and compulsory purchase. The Bill contains some good measures. It removes some of the conditions precedent to purchase of holdings by tenants that were perhaps rather complicated, but the bringing into the Land Court of ^^town parks’’ is gene- rally deprecated. The inclusion into the fold of tenants in want of Parlia- mentary assistance, of graziers or holders of pasture lands exceeding per annum seems unaccountable ! These graziers are no doubt w^orthy men, but practically as citizens E 50 HIBERNIA HODIERNA, and farmers they do little good to a country, for they give very little employment, and keep no labourers ; as a herd and his sons are capable of supervising large tracts of grass- land. A tale is told of one of these graziers that it may not be impertinent here to relate. This man had a very fine and cheap farm, but he wanted it even cheaper ; nor could he be blamed for the desire, though he was a notoriously rich man, and far wealthier than the average landlord. Expect- ing the speedy advent of the Sub-Commissioners, he sent off a large herd of semi-fat bullocks to a friend’s farm in the neighbourhood, for he naively remarked, If they saw the condition of the cattle they would not be likely to grant much reduction.” In mixed farms of grass and arable it was naturally the policy of the tenant who went into Court to make his acres look as poor and miserable as possible, and such aids for that end as irrigation by salt water have been tried, dams being opened for the purpose. SI CHAPTER VII. Absenteeism has been often denounced as one of the great evils, nay, curses, of Ireland, and penal legislation was in several reigns directed against the authors of this plague, that left their country poor, weak, and anaemic ! Like the quality of mercy as portrayed by Shakespeare, it may be said to have been mightiest in the mighty,” and to have been most conspicuous among the Sovereigns and Lords of Ireland,” a fact which will at once commend itself to the reader when he recollects that between the visit of Richard the Second to that Island in 1399, and that of George the Fourth in 1821, no King or Queen of England set foot for amicable or statesmanlike purposes in that part of their dominions known as Ireland. Nor could Richard’s visit be considered as purely one of am.ity. And yet no race ever made much greater sacrifices in the cause of loyalty than the Irish, as proved by the extra- ordinary tenacity of purpose which they showed in main- taining the cause of the Stuarts, who were quite unworthy of their devotion and love. This protracted and almost chronic absenteeism on the part of its Sovereigns from a portion of their kingdom that called more especially for their presence by reason of its poverty, backwardness, and semi-civilised condition, the result of its having never been thoroughly conquered or settled, did not exist to anything like the same extent in the Plantagenet period, though the Angevin Kings had E 2 52 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. more excuse for it by reason of their almost ceasdess wars and raids in France, in Wales, and in Scotland; for we find King John — whom history holds up to us as one of the worst of Kings — constantly coming to Ireland, though the Royal yacht could not have been much more than a cockle-shell, and pirates infested the coasts of Ireland, and made depots in Lambay Island, near Dublin. All this is the more unfortunate when it is recollected that the Irish, true to their Celtic blood, ever loved persons more than things or abstractions^ concrete hmnanity rather than general virtues and moral excellencies^ and that the legend, Spend me and defend me ” — the unwritten law that bound the tribesman to his chieftain — was more firmly ingrained in the Irish nature than a whole ‘‘ Senchus More of Statutes and Ordinances of later creation. This was shown by the way in which their vassals stuck to the Desmonds and Fitzgeralds through good report and evil report, and later to the O’Neills — “ Victrix causa Deis placuit sed victa Catoni.’* Ddward the Third drew largely on Ireland for his levies for Guienne and Gascony, and there is a tale in an ancient chronicle of how, at the siege of some seaport, a Gallic Goliath came forth in his panoply and defied the manhood of England, when an Irish giant, who was at the other side of the estuary, swam across, encountered Goliath, and brought back his head to the camp. Yet while their Sovereign was to these soldiers a living, breathing, and fighting entity, to the majority of the Irish he was as impersonal as the Tycoon of Japan, a monarch who spent them^ but did not defend them^ and whose deputies had HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 53 neither the grace or manhood to raise them from a worse condition than that of the Helots of Sparta. In 1769 a list of absentee incomes was compiled, and it amounted to the astounding total of 1,5 08, 98 2 14s. 6d,j a canker that devoured the very life of the community, while it added the additional drain of deputies, who of course, in many cases, plundered the estates committed to their charge egregiously, but if they did they spent their plunder in Ireland. It seems a curious thing, looking at present conditions, that the largest estate noticed in that absentee document was that of the Earl of Donegal, namely, ;^2 2,000 per annum. If the reprobated Union did no other good to Ireland, and in some respects tended to increase the number of absentees, it greatly curtailed the list of vampires, who, without any merit on their own part (often the reverse), fattened on the taxes collected in Ireland. George the Fourth received a most enthusiastic welcome from the Irish. Her Majesty the Queen was most loyally and heartily received on every occasion of her angelic visits, unhappily few and far between. The Duke of Connaught was ever cordially welcomed, and, to come to modern instances, nothing could have been more cordial and hearty than the accueil given to the Duke and Duchess of York in August and September last, when they paid visits in, and travelled through, three Provinces of the Island, clearly showing that the spirit of loyalty had survived in the hearts of the people unimpaired by long years of apathy and neglect, and that it extended beyond the naturally loyal classes who had formed ^‘the Enghsh Garrison,’^ 54 HIBERNIA HODIERNA, The loyalty of that garrison ” had more than once saved the island for England; for without going back to the revolution for examples, we can point to the stand made at Bantry Bay by Mr. White, afterwards perhaps, propter hoc, made Earl of Bantry ; and the way two Catholic Peers in ’98 at the head of their Yeomanry scattered the rebels at Tara. These Peers were the Earl of Fingall and Viscount Gormanston. But there is no denying the pregnant fact that loyalty grows best under the rays of Royalty, for tares are apt to be sown by ‘‘the enemy'’ when Royalty remains “cloistered" like the virtue against which the poet inveighed ; not to speak of the more substantial and tangible benefits accruing to a population by the presence among them of their Sovereign, her Court, and her surroundings, which in no part of the United Kingdom are more wanted than in Ireland. That Ireland has survived the cruel wrongs wrought on her, sometimes by those who ought to have been her best friends, is a proof of wonderful and enduring vitality. Sir John Davis held that absenteeism was at the bottom of the rebellions in the country, and in the days of Richard the Second and Henry the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth, the Statutes against this act of abandonment and desertion were en- forced against the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord Berkeley, and others, and two-thirds of the profits of their estates were forfeited to the Crown. Even the office of Prorex was occasionally — indeed often — handed over to a Deputy, or Lord Justice ; and even up to the time of Charles the First the law was invoked against these deserters of their duties. But allowing that Ireland has suffered cruelly in the past HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 55 from the canker of absenteeism, and that her loyalty has been sorely tried by the invisibility and intangibility of its objects of veneration and devotion, what reparation can be made in the future for these centuries and decades of neglect ? The reparation seems to lie ready to hand in the substi- tution of a rea/ for an unreal Court, of the substance for the simulacrum^ of mock majesty for real royalty ! When the Prorex or Viceroy had real duties to perform, policies to create, and some difficulties to envisage, there was every reason for the appointment ; and the King’s Deputy had it in his power to advance the best interests of the king- dom or, vice versa, to retard them. Strafford and Tyrconnel were not only the King’s most powerful subjects while in office, but had work to do that required much State-craft and determination ; but for a long time the official duties of the Lord Lieutenancy have been dwindling palpably, while the real, practical power was slowly but surely passing into the hands of the Chief Secretary, who represented the Government of the day in the House of Commons, and was responsible for the administration in Ireland, being occasionally a Cabinet Minister, while his nominal chief was not invited to those Eleusinian penetralia or frontis- teria. Of course, the Lord Lieutenant of the day is ostensibly not only the fountain of honour, but, what is far more important in Ireland, the dispenser of patronage and the bestower of places ; yet practically, ever since political merit, or, in other words, support of the Govern- ment, became the practical key to office — an infinitely more effective Open Sesame ” than m.erit or personal qualification — it will be evident that the tide of place and patronage must, in the nature of things, set far 56 HIBERNIA HODIERNA, more strongly towards the Secretary than the Viceroy, who, for the most part, is now limited to the social side of his functions, and whose cook, vintner, and butler are among the# chief arbiters of his popularity, though, of course, a good presence, a happy manner, an easy temper, a clear head^ and a readiness of tongue and pen are all very useful allies. Under these circumstances, it must be evident that the choice of the Prime Minister becomes more restricted every year ; for among the gifted men in the gilded chamber, who have statesmanlike aims and some individuality of purpose, not many could be found willing to accept a position of more or less masterly inac- tivity and placid acquiescence ; while the princely hospi- talities of such tenants of the office as the Duke of Aber- corn. Lords Eglinton, Spencer, Londonderry, Zetland, and Cadogan have made the office one that could only be filled by a rich man — and a rich man ready and willing to spend liberally, if not lavishly. But even if a rich country like England could furnish a sufficiency of peers, able and willing to undertake such a corvee (though, as a matter of fact, the decadence of the landed interest has reduced their number greatly), the uselessness of the office is a stronger argument for its abolition than the mere difficulty in finding ^‘proper” men to fill it adequately, though such a difficulty has been experienced by statesmen and Kings ever since the Tudor times, and even in the Plantagenet period. If it be contended that the abolition of an office, conse- crated, so to speak, by the prescription of more than seven centuries, would do a fresh wrong and injustice to Ireland {E pluribus umtni)^ we would reply that the presence of a HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 57 Royal Prince in the capital would more than atone for such disestablishment ; while to prevent any slight injury to the trade of Dublin as would be caused by the apprehended stoppage of the sale of some thousands of pairs of gloves and shoes, yards of silk, and bottles of champagne, would, in all probability, be counterbalanced by larger orders from the Royalties in residence, and the influx of their friends and relations from England and the Continent. But if the argument against such abolition was based on the rights of Ireland according to the Union Charier^ or Treaty, the ready reply comes that Irish patriots have been very urgent to repeal that Union whenever they saw a chance of carrying out their purpose ; and that the Union’’ has had many of its provisions broken for the good of the country and its people, including the keystone of its arch (if such a simile may be used), in the disestablish- ment of the Church of Ireland and the secularisation of a large portion of its revenues ! The Lord Lieutenancy would still maintain a practical existence, mutato nomine^ as the powers of the Viceroy would be transferred to that high official, the Secretary ; but the anomaly of the two Kings of Brentford smelling at one rose (or shamrock) would be abolished, and the social functions of the Viceregal office would in that case be delegated to a Prince of the blood and his Princess, and would probably attain a greater popularity than the old Viceregal Courts (splendidly maintained as some of them were no doubt), as the rays of Royalty are more inspiring to the ordinary courtier than those of Viceroyalty ; even as turtle soup is more appreciated than the mock substitute. 58 HIBERNIA HODIERNA But, again, it may be urged that such a change as that proposed would involve so much expenditure that it might prove inconvenient to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. A very few thousand pounds seems ample to meet the cost of the disestablishment of the Viceroyalty. The tenant of the Castle of Dublin soon found that a county residence was a very desirable thing; and in the reign of Charles the Second upv/ards of 200 acres of land v;ere carved out of the Phoenix Park and appropriated to a Viceregal residence. The house is amply large for all domestic and festive purposes, and in the spacious grounds a garden party numbering four or five thousand can be given without crowding or inconvenience, as proved by such hostesses as Lady Aberdeen, Lady Zetland, and Lady Cadogan ! The views from the Viceregal Lodge are perhaps equal to those to be seen from any of “the Stately homes’^ of England, Wales, or Scotland, more especially to the southward, where the horizon is bounded by the grouse mountains of the Counties Dublin and Wicklow, while the secular elms planted by Philip Dormer, Earl of Chesterfield, offer “ a boundless contiguity of shade in the leafy months of the year. The house itself is not architecturally beautiful, being not very dissimilar to the White House at Washington, United States, externally, but the resources of science could do something in im- provement and decoration without much cost, A great many houses, such as Castletown (County Kildare), Hume- wood, Kylemore, Muckross, and Killeen Castle have been suggested as “ Koyal residences : all have some drawback connected with position or necessary repairs and alterations. The last-named place — Killeen Castle — HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 59 would do admirably if the proposed Prince were only fond of hunting, for it commands much of the Meath, Kildare, and Dublin counties, that are almost peerless for purposes of pursuit ; but the Duke of York is not, it is said, keen for fox-hunting, though an enthusiastic and successful gunner; and there are good mountains and moors to be had within a few miles of Dublin, with mixed shooting that has its charm to many sportsmen. At any rate, the Lodge is handy for yachting purposes, while the State rooms at the Castle would fulhl their raison d’etre in levees^ Drawing Rooms, and dances ! Dublin, a cheval^ so to speak, of lines of railway leading to all points of the compass, is admirably adapted for the nomadic Nimrod or sporadic sportsman! There is good salmon fishing within an hour of the capital at Navan or Slane; and a house near the former town, Blackcastle, close to the confluence of the Blackwater and the Boyne, was leased by Lord Spencer and the late Duke of Marl- borough for angling. Turning southward there are the Blackwater (another) the Maigue, the Fergus, and the Lee, while the wild West offers an embarrassment of choice whether for salmon, trout, or peel. Deer stalking is now confined to two conterminous forests — Muckross and Killarney ; nor is it to be expected that even in the west any deer ranges are likely to be created, vu the tendency to improve land and reclaim the wilderness in Ireland, unless special inducements were held out ; but there was a time when deer were nearly as common as goats in some parts of Ireland, and in prehistoric days the Megaceros Hibernicus mus^ have been a noble quarry. 6o HIBERNIA HODIERNA, There is every reason to think that the substitution of real Royalty for Viceroyalty would do something towards arresting the strong tide of absenteeism. A Royal Prince or Duke is, or ought to be, above party, and that fact alone would have a tendency towards fusing the many parties into which Irish society has been split up, though the territorial aristocracy, mulcted as it has been, is arrayed in a nearly solid phalanx on the Conservative or Liberal- Unionist side, but not devoid of patriotic impulses in many cases. Now, within the compass of a few years, the partyism of certain Lord Lieutenants was far too much in evidence, and obscured the great fact that the Viceroy was his Sovereign’s representative, and not that of her Minister for the time being. Of course, this party spirit reacted on the social system, and gave its colour to the courtiers who thronged to Castle functions, and pro tanto did harm to Ireland by the accentuation of political fissures. The Ireland a Nation ” school might sigh for the days of Grattan, when Rutland and Merrion Squares and Kildare Street in Dublin, housed the Peerage of Ireland, as well as its commons ; but at that time London had not acquired its centripetal force — drawing all things, like a magnet, into its vortex — and the journey thither was a matter of days, not, as now, of a few hours. A Royal Court, however, would assuredly have its magnetic influence, and, aided by such “ draws ” as Punchestown, Leopardstown, the Horse Show, and the Curragh, might, and probably would, fill Dublin with much of the rank and fashion of the United Kingdom, to whom it had not been much more than the portal to such spots as Killarney and Queens- HIBERNIA HODJERNA. 6i town, to which fashion in one case, and travelling exigencies in the other, beckoned tourists and travellers. Ireland a Nation^’ is a Milesian mirage, unsupported by historical fact ; but Ireland loses none of its nationality by its fusion into the United Kingdom, nor will a Prince make that nationality less than a Viceroy ! 62 CHAPTER VIII. Ireland has been for centuries accustomed to reprisals, and perhaps, more than any other portion of the United Kingdom, to the practical enforcement of the American party slogan, “ To the victors the spoils ’’ ; and such a system works very badly in a poor country ! Not to speak of the avalanche of honours and titles falling on prominent or working members of the successful party, places and power are at the disposal of the friends of the Inns P with- out much regard to the unwritten covenances and tradi- tions that are supposed to regulate such matters. It used to be considered de regie to appoint large landed proprietors to such positions as the Lieutenancies of Counties, where the tenant of such a trust exercises a good deal of patronage in the appointment of County Magistrates ; yet in Lord Rosebery’s Government such qualifications were entirely overlooked in two instances, and the appointments given to two gentlemen who, if sound on Home Rule and the National question, had hardly an acre of fee-simple estate in their hands in the counties where they suddenly became men of light and leading I Not to go back too far we find that the same Government made desperate efforts to extrude Sir T. Moffett from the Presidency of the Galway Queen’s College on the score of age, though, as a matter of fact, the canon of age did not affect his office, and it was well-known that Sir Thomas was in the possession of all his intellectual powers, matured by long experience. HIBERNIA HODIERNA. ^3 Mr. George Fottrell, who is now on the Commission for enquiring into the working of the Land Acts, was dismissed by one Government, to be replaced aucto splendore of office by the next, while Lieutenant-Colonel Turner, R.A., a very energetic Divisional Magistrate, at a time when energy was really of inestimable importance, was dismissed by Mr. John Morley for the supposed reason that he was a persona ingrata to his party in the South of Ireland (as no lache or dereliction of duty was ever imputed, much less proved, against him), while we find the gallant Colonel amply rewarded by the succeeding Administration. These are a few instances that rise naturally to the memory. Of course, it is not proposed to make out a coJalogue raiso7ine of such discrepant decisions in the matter of patronage, which in Ireland too often means covert bribery. The Church of Ireland, that perhaps was the most Erastian on the face of the earth, has by the Act of Dises- tablishment been lifted into a purer and more serene atmosphere ; but the Bench of Ireland is still almost purely political ! It may be said that the same system obtains in England ; but in England it is counteracted by public opinion, and the notorious fact that every Judge and Chancellor has earned political prizes by a successful and large private practice, which was probably much more lucrative than the partial Giiu77i cu77i dig7titate of the ermine. One of the most flagrant instances of political success in Ireland was the appointment of Judge Keogh, who, not long before his elevation, at an election speech had counselled his clients to watch their opportunities for some- thing akin to outrage. Judge Keogh was an extremely able 64 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. man, and an ornament to the Bench ; but the public never forgot that this administrator of the law had not always been zealous for its strict observance. However, there is great joy, even on earth, on a political sinner that repenteth ! Another very flagrant instance of government by bribery was when the Premier of England, by the Lich- field pact, handed over the patronage of Ireland (and even of places beyond it) to Daniel O’Connell ‘‘the Liber- ator,” who, to his credit be it said, was not accused — even by his opponents — of having wielded this great power corruptly or badly. Ireland has ever been a land of deputies. The Viceroy — a deputy himself — often handed over his powers to a deputy for his entire term. Landlords generally handed over their estates to agents with the most disastrous results, as might have been antici- pated; and to come down to a lower grade of officials, here is something like a precis of the official career of one of the ablest of the Clerks of the Peace for a leading county : Appointed after a distinguished career at the Dublin Uni- versity at the age of about twenty, he soon migrated to London and got called to the Bar ; but practice not being as large or lucrative as he wished, he went to India, where his knowledge of law, backed by great linguistic powers, was extremely appreciated, and brought him much money. We next see him in the character of a journalist, and next of a Brazilian merchant — a career not wholly successful ; then of a juris co?isultm Cyprus, winding up by a discharge, for a few years, of his duties in Ireland prior to his acceptance of a high position in South America, where he died ere he could reap the fruits of office. A noble HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 65 Marquis holds the appointment in Belfast, but is never there. Stipendiary or Resident Magistrates could not, in the nature of things and words, be absentees from their several spheres of duty — at any rate, for a long time ; but a few years ago some of them found their duties so light that they kept packs of hounds, and shov^ed sport for their neighbourhoods. All this has now ceased — tempora mutantur — whether by Castle ukase or by having more sessions to attend, it matters not ; but these semi-judicial gentlemen are for the most part sportsmen still, and a few of them very good sports- men, though horse-dealing and keeping ‘^sires’’ has been suspended. It seems strange, however, under these cir- cumstances, that the laws against poaching, carried on within hearing and seeing distance of their homes occasion- ally, should be so seldom enforced ; for it is a common thing to see flappers openly paraded in public long before the ist of August, when the close season of ducks ceases ; and partridges (known or believed not to be English or Scotch) are sold in the shops long before the 20th of September, with young woodcocks, shot or snared on mountains and moors, and unfit for food. 66 CHAPTER IX. Whether it was written in the Book of Fate (to which poets and necromancers are fond of referring) that Ireland was predestined to be the stock farm of subterraneously and industrially rich England, and that her mission was to feed her moiling millions, certain it is that such is the fact, and that Ireland supplies a large proportion of the beef and mutton consumed in England, that boasts the refrain “ O the roast beef of old England,’^ though old England grows a very small percentage of that same beeC This fact implies a large arena of good grass, and that is really the heritage of Ireland, and one that, aided by the melancholy ocean,’^ has earned for her the epithet or sobriquet of the Emerald Isle,’^ for in three of her Pro- vinces at least grass is the staple of the country, while cereals and roots are only variations in the farming pro-^ gramme, sometimes merely introduced with a view to the reclamation of the soil by draining and cultivation,, to lead to a grassy future. Now, this grass acreage has, naturally, degrees in the quality and excellence of its fattening powers. In the West and South the grass tracts are devoted ta breeding sheep and cattle, that are sold in large flocks and herds at such annual marts as Ballinasloe, where the men of the East fight furious battles with the natives of the West for their stock, both sides knowing well the necessities of HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 67 the case ; for the owners of the fattening lands of Royal Meath, and parts of Kildare, Dublin, and Louth, must have a supply of native stock to eat down their redundant grass — the richest perhaps in the world — as the law of the land prohibits foreigners,” on account of the rinderpest risk, from which Ireland has had a singular and happy immunity. Hunting men have not failed to recognise that these oceans of grass ” were most favourable to fox-hunting ; and so every county in Ireland, or nearly every county, has its “ cry of hounds,” and some rejoice in several packs adapted to various quarries. Perhaps the weak point in Irish hunting grounds is the want of wide woodlands, as the indigenous forests, many of them oak forests too, have succumbed to the exigencies of their owners, occasionally to their extravagances, and in not a few cases to the greed of miners — generally English — who cut down tracts ot woodland in their neighbourhood for their smelting works. Much oak timber, too, was exported to England as of the highest quality. The old laws of the Pale laid it down as a condition that every farmer or occupier should plant a certain number of trees every year, but, inter arma sileuf leges, and tenures were too uncertain to devote time or money to improvement, when raids, reprisals, and host- ings ” became common. If, however, trees are not so plentiful in Ireland as a lover of scenery or a landscape gardener could wish, nature has supplied a valuable substitute in the gorse which, both indigenous and foreign, abounds all through the land, and forms admirable lairs for foxes. Hence counties like Meath and Kildare, poor in forests or even F 2 68 HIBERNIA HODIERNA, large woods, are rich in gorse coverts, and these shelter innumerable foxes, who as a rule forage for themselves, chiefly amongst rabbits, and though not innocent of feathered fowl, do not do the damage that might be antici- pated from their numbers and wildness. 69 CHAPTER X. Peradventure, too, it may be written in the Book of Fate that Ireland is destined to be the hunting ground for the golden youth of England, and even for that plated with a meaner metal ere many years have run their course ; for there can be little doubt that, owing to agricultural depression, the impoverishment of squire and farmer, who formed the backbone of the chase,’^ from that cause, and the great increase of what may be styled ‘‘ the gunning industry,’’ or the taking of shootings throughout the country by city men,” fox-hunting is by no means the paramount and proud pastime that it was some years or decades ago in England, when men hacked twenty and thirty miles to a meet, or drove to it in a post-chaise, v/ith reliefs of horses on the road* Not indeed that the number of hunting-men is not greater than ever, of hunting women mfinitely greater, but that it has not got the same hold of the classes as it had once ; Vv^hile the diffi- culties of carrying out fox-hunting arrangements satis- factorily have increased manifold, owing to the inroads of railway men, who swoop down in hunting hordes by special trains from London and the great towns, to the dismay of grazier and farmer alike, and the jealousy oi keepers, who are very loth to harbour foxes in their coverts, and too often do away with the vixens, who, and who alone can bring up the cubs in the way in which they should go, according to the canons of fox-hunters ; while the owners 70 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. of coverts will not allow hounds into them till they have been shot once or twice — in fact, till near or even after Christmas. All these causes conspire to make hunting a pastime that has to be managed with great diplomacy, and at serious cost. Now, these deterrents are mainly absent in Ireland. Hunting-fields there are far more homogeneous than in England, and strangers ” are very rare. There is no pheasant interest antagonistic to the chase there. The farmers are most friendly to it, and the mischief done, owing to the firmness of the sod of old pasture land, and its limestone substratum, is infinitesimal compared with the results of a day’s hunting in the larger island, where broken gates and damaged fences often look as if an army had charged over them equipped with all arms. The date to which the oldest packs in England can strain back to is the reign of Edward the Third, who was great in war and great in the chase too, and was of the same mind as the late Duke of Wellington, who had his cry of hounds ” in the Peninsula. We read that Edward the Third used to take over sixty couple of hounds wherewith to pursue in Guienne and Gascony, and if we search the annals of Ireland we will find that even in the Tribal period the King was bound to be a sportsman, while some few centuries after the conquest of Ireland by the Norman adventurers, and its annexation to the Crown of England, we find a great Lord engaged in a hunting row, though hardly such a one as a modern master would be likely to have on his hands. Let me say a fore word or two in explanation here : The early Norman settlers soon began to fight with each HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 71 other, and were apt to hire Irish mercenaries, whom for economy and obedience to the custom of the country, they billeted on the farmers at what is termed “ coyne and livery,’^ a custom strictly forbidden by the English law of the land. Now, the Butlers and the Fitzgeralds were rival powers, and anything but friendly houses. The Butlers were Lancastrians, the Fitzgeralds Yorkists, and both were practically Kings living in castles that were impregnable save by heavy artillery. Now, we read that Pierce Earl of Ormonde and Ossory had a noble Hunting Establishment, maintained by his tenants and Freeholders in Kilkenny and Tipperary. In 1535 the Earl of Kildare charged him with having contynually taken coigne and liverey of all the King’s subgiettes within the counties of Kilkenny and Tipperary, not only for his horsemen. Kerne, and Callow glass, but also for his masons, car- penters, taillours, being in his owne werkes, and also for his sundry Huntes, that is to seye, 24 personnes, with 60 grehowndes, and howndes for Dere Hunting, a nother nomber of men and dogges for to hunt the Hare, and a third nomber for to hunt the Martyn : all at the charges ot the King’s subgiettes, mete, drinke, and money ; The hole charges whereof surmountith 2000 markes by yere.”* What the issue of this accusation or indictment was we know not ; but farming in a hu 7 iting country in those days must have been heavily handicapped, nor was pursuit likely to have been very popular. Though it is sometimes stated that Ireland derived her hunting institutions from England, just as the latter country borrowed the theory and practice of the chase * “State Papers,” Part III, Vol. II, p. 121. 72 HIBERNIA HODIERNA, from the French — whose technical terms have in many cases been adopted — I am inclined to think that in a country so eminently adapted for pursuit, and vfhere horses flourished infinitely more suitable for fast progress over the country than any in England or France, hunt- ing grew up spontaneously in Ireland, though fostered by the Norman adventurers who had gained a footing in the Green Isle, and who were all sportsmen. We know that Irish greyhounds — probably used in pulling down the wolves that infested the country — were considered presents fit for Royalty, while the falcons that bred inland and along the coasts were so valuable that special ordinances were made to check or arrest their exportation ; so that it is not unreasonable to suppose that harriers and foxhounds, who had the gift of nose-power, were as much used as in England, though of course the fox, the first of our modern quarries, was one of the last to gain the verdict of fashion ! In Ireland the co-operative principle of the chase, now so universally popular in both countries, was hardly recog- nised till the close of the last century or the commence- ment of the present one ; but something of the same kind marked the evolution of the chase in England, where great seignorial packs were to be found in many parts of the country long before such a thing as a subscription pack was thought of. In Ireland, though several noblemen and gentlemen of high position kept private packs which were followed by their neighbours and friends, there was nothing equivalent to the Belvoir, Grafton, Berkely, Beau- fort, or Brocklesby Hunts, of which some are merging into subscription packs. In Ireland the Curraghmore Hunt was a comparatively recent affair, and Giles Eyre^s HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 73 famous Blazers merged, after his era, into the East and West Galway Hunts, while the latter claims the old name, whose derivation is still a mystery, though some good guesses have been made in that direction. Lord Howth’s private pack of staghounds, which he purchased from Sir Thomas Stanley, and brought over with a view of hunting stags over his own broad lands in the Counties of Meath and Dublin, as well as over those of his friends, have merged into the famous Ward Union Staghounds. Readers of the life of that very versatile Churchman, Dean Swift, will recollect that he was so fired with the accounts he had received of the open house kept by Squire Matthews at Thomastown in South Tipperary, that he rode down there from Larracor, in Meath^ and found, that as the Queen of Sheba discovered that the glory of Solomon her host was infinitely greater than report, so the charms of the menage at Thomastown had not been half done justice to by rumour. Among other ag7'emens at this fascinating country house, it is said that three packs of hounds, with an adequate number of hunters, were kept for the guests — foxhounds, to wit, and harehounds, and buckhounds. This Squire Matthews, whose hospitality was so splendid, was one of the finest swordsmen of his day, as he proved on some swaggering bullies who openly insulted him in the City of Dublin. The property is now held by the Dunsandle family. Kilruddery Abbey, the residence of the Earls of Meath, on the western slopes of Bray Head, that forms with its vis-a-vis^ the Hill of Howth, one of the pillars or bulwarks of Dublin Bay — the pillars, it may be, of the Hibernian Hercules, when there were giants in the land — was the 74 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. recognised centre of one of the oldest hunts in the island, when Kildare lay in the cold shade of neglect, and Meath was not, as now, a name to conjure by. The present Lord of Kilruddery is a philanthropist, and full of sensible schemes for the well-being, comfort, and health of his brother-men ; but his son. Lord Ardee, who is in the Foot Guards, spends his leaves in Ireland, and pursues more majorum^ though in a more amoene country than they rode over, namely, in Meath, Dublin, and Kildare. This hunt had its vates sacer, and I have added in the Appendix one of the efforts of his sporting muse. As a hunt Kilruddery is now but a memory. The Ormonde and King^s County Hunting Corporation is as old, perhaps, as any now going concerns in Ireland. Witness these lines from a popular ballad : — ‘ ‘ On the first day of Spring, in the year ’93 — The finest recreation of the old countheree — The King’s County gentlemen o’er hills, dales, and rocks. They rode out so gallant in search of a fox.” Kilkenny has always taken a leading position in Irish history. Here Parliaments were held, and the Statutes of Kilkenny are part of Irish history. It was in Kilkenny that Tommy Moore was so greatly appreciated, and Miss O’Neil as Juliet left a pattern for posterity. Its hunt and club house were famous in the earlier decades of this waning century, and the Duhallow Hunt, too, has famous traditions — traditions worthily main- tained by its present master, Mr. Baring. The traditions of Southern Tipperary, too, have been well revived by its present M.F.H., Mr. Richard Burke, who lives in the house, HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 75 after which the Southern Tipperary Hunt was named the Grove Hunt, that had its livery and special button.’’ The oldest hunt in Ulster is, I believe, the County Down Hunt, which, though now without a pack, has a noble cellar, and is as exclusive as any in the Kingdom. Kildare owes its venatic fame and consolidation to the late Sir John Kennedy, who almost created it. Meath owes almost everything to the late Sam Reynell, who, it he did not absolutely discover it, recast it, and brought it to its present fine form — unquestionably the finest area for the chase in the world known to sportsmen, and the largest, too. As might have been anticipated, several English and Scotch masters have taken counties in Ireland from time to time — penetrated with a sense of its great natural advan- tages — ^just as in the present season Englishmen hold venatic sway over several hunts, such as Limerick, East Galway, and Duhallow. Some of these “ foreigners ” have been failures, but more have shown extremely good sport — none better, perhaps, than Mr. Macdonald Morton and Mr. John Oswald Trotter in Westmeath and Meath. That wonderful lady centaur of the century, the Kaiserin, or Empress of Austria, delighted greatly in the hunting grounds of the Green Isle, which she considered much the best within her wide experience. Her Majesty would probably have renewed her venatic visits to Ireland every year had not some over-zealous publicists written articles that must have proved very painful to so loyal a lady ! but if the Kaiserin has deserted Meath, Dublin, and Kildare, not a few of her subjects have followed her lead, and put in appearances, more or less periodical, in these counties, while some of the German Emperor’s countrymen are to 76 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. be seen regularly at the opening, intermediate, and closing meets of Meath : Count Stolberg, for instance. Americans, too, have taken very kindly to the chase in Ireland, and I may name Mr. W. Eustis, who took his degrees and diploma in Royal Meath, where he was generally found very near hounds, and who pretty often caught the judge's eye when he tried his luck between flags. Irish hounds, or Irish packs rather, have not been equal to English in the past, and are largely recruited by drafts from that country. Home breeding, however, is now in the ascendant. Puppy shows, introduced by Mr. Assheton Biddulph, of the Ormonde and King’s County Hunt, are becoming popular institutions, and an annual hound show is held in Clonmel, but should^ and probably will ere long, be held in conjunction with the great August horse show at Ball’s Bridge, to which it would probably prove a most attractive feature. There can be no doubt that the distance from London is a drawback to English sportsmen coming over to Ireland, even though triple-expansion engines and fast trains have reduced the time measure between the two capitals to about nine hours ! Mr. Gladstone, if I recollect right, proclaimed that the value of a political vote increased in the ratio of its distance from the capital : that, at that moment, might have been too conservative for his taste ; but there is no gainsaying the solid fact that it is a draw- back, as all civilised mortals like to be as near the centre of civilisation as possible. Another drawback may perhaps be found in the paucity of comfortable small hunting-boxes, with good stabling HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 77 attached to them, and not inconveniently distant from post offices or telegraph stations. Irish noblemen and gentlemen had an unfortunate taste for overbuilding during the past century or two, and not a few fine mansions are to be found, even in hunting counties, unlet, from their very size and pretentious character. The hunting man during the season wants, in his house at any rate, but little here below, nor wants that little long, say for four or five months ; but he has no desire to half fill a huge mansion that requires proportionate coal, and what a certain well-known Mrs. Malaprop used to call a revenue (retinue) of servants.’^ I have no doubt, however, that when the want of small, cosy hunting quarters is fully felt, the remedy will come, and the need be adequately met. Looking, therefore, to past migrations and to future probabilities, we venture to think that Ireland is likely to be the chosen hunting ground of the world, and mainly from its natural capabilities. For as the Latin Poet said of Baiae, ^‘Est ubi plus tepeant hiemes ubi mitior auraP etc. Frost rarely vetoes the chase for more than two or three days in the season, and often at a time when, owing to hard work and the pressure of protracted pursuit, hunters are extremely glad of a few days’ rest as their owners are of slipping off to town on the urgent business of pleasure. Any man who has hunted in different countries knows how much more economical it is in the way of horseflesh to ride on old pasture and not m plough and newly-laid down grass fields, which are often quite as distressing to hunters as the most painful plough. Grass in England and Ireland are two different entities. In the former country the sod rarely remains unprofaned 78 HIBERNIA HODIERNA, by the plough for many generations. In Ireland it does ; and — would the gentle reader be astonished to hear that in some of the grasseries of Ireland there are many farms without such an implement as a plough in their equip- ment ! Tilth, too, in Ireland is very light, as the plough is rarely driven deep into the soil (loo years ago, or more, ploughing by the tail was common), and the steam plough is practically unknown. Then as 'to fences: Irish fields are, as a rule, divided by banks and ditches (single and double, as the case may be), or by walls of varying height and breadth, but, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred (perhaps out of a thousand), innocent of masonry, lime, or cement. These fences suffer little from the efforts of hunters, successful or otherwise, and can be readily repaired at small expense — not like the more artificial and costly fences of England ; while gates in Ireland are mostly conspicuous by their absence. The gunning interest, too, in Ireland never clashes with the chase ; for you can almost count on your fingers the number of coverts in which pheasants are reared on any- thing like a large scale ; and in general terms it may be said that the pheasant interest alone is antagonistic to foxhunting, for keepers cannot be expected to be friendly to foxes (more especially during the summer months, when vixens are apt to suffer at their hands). A strong master can, if so inclined, force them to be tolerant towards them. The comparative absence of pheasants ensures the very important fact that the quarries in Ireland are home-bred, and not exotic : possibly made in Germany f or Portugal ; for in the latter country they abound, and their brushes are HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 79 to be seen pendant from the head-collars of most carriage horses — it may be for ornament, or to mitigate the fly plague. The comparative v/ildness of Ireland, and the absence of many civilising (?) agencies there, is all in favour of its sport ; for the good sportsman who has a passion for the pastime, and does not follow it as a mere votary of fashion, ever loves the wild element in his hunting — unlike that “ Earl of ancient name, Who hunted the fox, but liked him tame,” In Ireland you may be landed in a boghole, but not in a disused coalpit, or mine ; and there is little chance, as in England, of finding that your hunter, after clearing a hedge, has impinged against a broad board that proclaims, orbi et arhi^ in large letters the virtues of “ Beecham’s Pills that cure all ills,'* of Owbridge's Lung Tonic, of Fragrant Floriline, Sapolio, Sozodont, Carter's Little Liver Pills, Sunlight or Vinolia Soaps et hoc gefius omne / I do not in the least agree with the dictum of a good sportsman of a strong literary turn, and who has enriched the world of sport with a few songs of the right ring, and who has tried mastership on both sides of the Channel, namely, that the worst hunting county in Ireland is better than the best in England ; but that worst is certainly superior in one sense, namely, that it is more natural and less artificial. 8o CHAPTER XL The solemn sentence pronounced by the wise virgins to their less wise sisters in the gospel parable as expounded, or expanded rather, by the late Laureate, Too late, ye come too late,” seems a legend strikingly applicable to the landlords of Ireland, who, with many able men in their midst, never seemed to take in or comprehend the signs of the times, or accept the warning voices all around them. They had done no wrong, they had committed no crimes, they had been loyal to their Queen and country, set in many cases a bright example of industry and enterprise to their tenants and emplGyes. Why, then, should they be sacrificed, and why should they be subjected to the mani- fest and cruel injustice of seeing their estates whittled away, or pulled to pieces, leaf by leaf, like an artichoke, in favour of a class that could not by their best friends be called very law-abiding, or even particularly loyal — that professed and felt no love to England, and made free use of atrocities ” (it may be vicariously) to further their own ends, and satisfy their greed for land ? Alas ! they had not learnt the lesson that in the eyes of the law, and of lawmakers, weakness or want of power is a crime, and that the legal maxim, ‘‘De minimis no7i curat lex^ was as applic- able to territorial magnates as to the meanest in the land. Ever since the Clare Election they had lost in at least three Provinces all voting or political influence, and though they retained the symbols of power as magistrates HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 8i and Grand Jurors, the substance was gone, and gone be- yond recall. Even the Petty Jury qualification had been lowered, and with estates encumbered to a large part of their present value, they found themselves without leaders, without organisation, and without even the power of wealth and freedom from embarrassment, exposed to the pitiless pelting of the tempest or tornado that burst over the land. I think it Vv^as Froude who counselled them to imitate the Phaoecians of old, and found a colony soifiewhere^ though the particular spot was not named, nor even the nearest continent. To the philosopher sitting in a well- paid and well-padded professional chair, no doubt the scheme seemed not impossible — perhaps heroic ; but it was practically impossible, for the luckless landlords were literally like the old hinds and serfs, glebce adstrictiy forced to fight Avith legal weapons their own tenants and depen- dants, so that something might be saved for their families out of the waste and welter of judicial confiscation ! Few outsiders can realise the influences that were brought to bear against the landlords qua landlords. Among them may be reckoned the Lady League, who, with a vehemence proportionate to their ignorance, did all they could to stimulate the natural greed of tenants, and to incite them to non-payment of rent. It is well-known that while the silent increment of rent had been rising steadily in England and Scotland during the sixties and seventies, in Ireland rents had remained comparatively stationary, and that on some estates, notably on that of the Marquis of Clanricarde— one of the most incriminated, by the way — rents had remained at their very low level for several decades. G 82 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. But there are the deputies, let them implead one another ’’ ! Of course landlords, with their charges to meet^ did invoke their legal remedies, much against their will ; but when histrionic sieges were rather courted by the defaulters, and brought large galleries, there is little doubt but that in some cases the power of the Crown was not put forth as it might and ought to have been ; while a section of the Press found fine copy in these passages of arms for their tirades against exterminating landlords, though their leader, Parnell, showed them by-and-bye that he could use a crowbar on occasion as well as any bailiff. There is no doubt that there was a feeling abroad in England amongst its landowners that their brethren in Ireland had not suffered as much as some of their own body — a very selfish feeling at best ; but the difference between the tv/o countries was this : On certain soils in England economical rent had almost entirely disappeared, and the fact was acknowledged by all parties ; in Ireland it had not disappeared, but was diverted. If the landlords of Ireland had been really provident and farseeing, they would have given their tenants at will leases after the Land Bill of 1870 ; and when the thin year of 1879 arrived, and distress prevailed in several districts amongst the smaller farmers, a little timely indulgence would have been greatly appreciated, and might have proved good policy; but the general notion amongst the landowners seemed to be that though their neighbours’ tenants might drag them into Court, their own would not do so — so good was their interest in their farms ! At any rate, there was little or no cohesion or co-operation amongst them. Conferences were held, and long platitudinous HIBERNIA HODIEKNA, 83 orations made ; but very few practical steps were taken to mitigate the evil ; nor was that capital institution The Landlords’ Convention ” — which has done good service in toning down hostile legislation and the assertion of the few rights left to landlords — established as a rallying point in Dublin, till little remained to them to defend as in Swift’s day, when a magazine was built in the Phoenix Park after a great explosion, and not before : the same spirit has prevailed. “ Here is a proof of Irish sense ! Here Irish sense is seen ! When nothing’s left them for defence They build a magazine ! ” Yet this same class of landlords, who are now flung aside by the State — Project d vilior algdf — while their estates are cut down by ‘^scorching,” Sub- Commissioners, for the sake of “expedition,” have done good service to Ireland in many ways, notably in 'the matter of agriculture and stock-culture. Anyone conver- sant with Ireland forty years ago, or perhaps fifty, will recollect the large number of Scotch stewards kept by resident landlords for the improvement of their home farms. A great many of these home farms, cultivated according to the best Scotch methods, were really oases in a desert of inculture and bad farming, and from such sources much of the existing knowledge of farming possessed by Irishmen is derived. Then as to stock and horses ! It is not so very long ago since we saw a short-horn bull of Lord Rathdonnell’s beat- G 2 84 HIBERNIA HODIERNA, ing all England at the Royal Agricultural Show held at muddy Kilburn, He was bred by an improving landlord. The late Marquis of Sligo and Mr. Christopher St. George were among the pioneers of improvement in Irish horse* flesh. S5 CHAPTER XII. If Goldsmith’s Confucian Chinaman whom, if I recollect right, he styled “ a citizen of the world ” could be interro- gated as to his opinions about the chief Christian bodies in Ireland during the past seven or eight centuries, I fear his comments would not redound to their credit. “ Tantc^ne animis ccelestibus irce 1 ” he might well exclaim, not having forgotten his classics ! Or can that be the teaching of the Prince of Peace and the God of Love, that leads brothers and cousins of diverse creeds to the hatred of each other, and all for the love of God ? A little reflection, however, reminded him that the correct spelling and pronunciation of a difficult diphthong made all the difference in the world in their doxies in the early centuries of the Christian Creed, as did, too,, the dating of Easter ; so that, after all, the lack of proper discrimination of two such prefixes as trans ” and con,” in a matter of transcendental mystery, was not so extremely surprising. In his retrospect of religion in the eighteenth century in Ireland he was much exercised in trying to discover why one set of professors of Christ’s faith who held very much the same doctrines and creeds as their rival Polemists, were permitted to ban them in their civil rights, and debar them from many of the privileges common to all mankind, till it occurred to him that the greed of power and of pelf were motives and factors in the main stronger than religion itself \ and he also gathered, in his terrestrial and celestial survey, that the exercise and monopoly of 86 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. temporalities and spiritualities led naturally to mammon worship amongst the privileged, while persecution acted as a tonic and purifier to its victims. Thus he saw the Princes of the Church burning with fervent zeal to add field to field and pound to pound, even through the lov/est arts of the money-changer, so that their name and fame might be per- petuated for generations, while the Fathers of the oppressed creed were only solicitous for the spiritual well-being of their flocks, and the bringing up in what they deemed the right way of the little lambs, and imparting as much education to them as they could on the sunny side of a bank or hedgerow, from whence they derived their title of “ Hedge ” Priests. But if the oppressed worshippers were not permitted to summons the faithful to Mass by means of bells and belfries, the worship was none the less solemnly intense, and such solecisms or indecencies were not to be seen in their midst as amongst their better endowed rivals, where a wealthy diocese boasted a noble episcopal palace, with broad lands appurtenant, but could not point to a corresponding cathedral for episcopal ministrations, for its foundations had never been laid in Irish soil. Time brought tardy relief to the disendowed and oppressed worshippers, and the effects of toleration were seen in the upspringing of churches and cathedrals of hewn stone all over the land, while the taste of a very mild form of persecution and depletion quickened the plethoric Protestants to increased fervour of faith and broader views of Catholic toleration towards those who held the Pope of Rome as their spiritual head and dictator — God’s living oracle and witness in this world ; though it pained this liberal man of the world’s mind to hear such stories current HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 87 as the following, when a citizen of Portadown in Ulster, who had made an excursion to Rome, was remonstrating with another fellow-citizen of that ancient town on the habit prevalent amongst their townsfolk of ever and always consigning the Holy Father to a place whose initial letter is the same as that of Hades, adding that the Pope was a charming old gentleman, full of learning and piety.” He may be all that,” said the remonstrator, but no man ever had a worse name in Portadown ! ” But what astonished and amazed the citizen of the world more than anything else were a few drives through Dublin and its environs, where he found that though a few pious and wealthy Hezekiahs such as the Guinnesses, the Roes, and the Findlaters had repaired, renewed, and re-created the ^des labantes deorum^^ and saved the city from a discreditable scandal, the followers of the Pope had managed to annex an infinite number of houses, parks, and demesne lands in the city and its suburban zone, and turned them into colleges, fraternities, convents, schools, and monasteries, and all without any aid save the good- will and liberality of the faithful. “Verily,” quoth the citizen as he mused on these things, “ there seems little real differ- ence between the churches that have the same charters, the same holy books, and the same creeds ; but the orga- nisation and discipline of the Papists is the superior, and the wisdom of the serpent is more in evidence amongst them than in Puritania or Protestania.” The priesthood of Ireland, though no longer possessed of their ancient plenary power, are by no means une quaniite negligable^ spiritually or politically. Some years ago Ireland was to a great extent a theocracy, and some 88 HIBERNIA HODIERNA, Ministers saw wisdom (or ease) in ruling the people through their priesthood. The agrarian war fought by the National League and the Land League under their sacred banners, contrary to the Papal rescripts, and the equities and moralities of the case, has deprived them of much of their sacerdotal influence ; for in their Propagandist zeal they pushed political partizanship beyond decent limits, and have suffered accordingly, as in 1798 they preferred being patriots to their sacred mission on earth, and led (contrary to the orders of their Bishops) their rebellious countrymen occasionally to victory, but eventually to defeat and disaster. The shifty tactics adopted by the Catholic hierarchy and clergy after ParnelFs downfall contributed much to lov/er their prestige in the country, for Parnellism — though some- thing of an extinct volcano — is represented by a compact, if small, party, remarkable for its sobriety of tone amidst much writing and rhetoric, whose characteristics too often are intemperance of tongue and vituperative violence of expression. Much of the widespread influence of the priesthood in Ireland is due, of course, to the current idea prevalent amongst the masses that they have superhuman faculties and thaumaturgic gifts beyond the spiritual limits in which they are acknowledged even by the best educated. If you are slightly doubtful in this matter, or supremely sceptical, your opinions will, we imagine, be altered after a drive through the streets of Dublin, in the course of which your jehu will have made profound obeisances to every padre he sees in the streets and touched his caubeen to every Roman Catholic shrine he passes by. HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 89 That there has been a strong reaction against their despotism on matters secular is demonstrated by many examples and signs. Let us illustrate the proposition by a single one : A spiritual subject of the Lord Bishop of Meath was editor and proprietor of a small local news- paper. In it he ventured to differ from the very pro- nounced views of this Prelate as to the source of supply of water for his fellow-citizens of Mullingar. For this act of lese majeste he was banned, and practically excommuni- cated ! But the paper lived and throve, and its proprietor was lately returned to Parliament by a neighbouring — very Roman Catholic — constituency. In Portugal the priests are limited by the State (their paymaster) to the exercise of their spiritual functions. In Ireland the priesthood has been allowed to form an imperium in imperio dangerous to the State, and ulti- mately injurious to their own spiritual influence amongst thinking men. As politicians they have occasionally made the fatal mistake of prophesying before they knew. For instance, the hierarchy of Ireland supported Pitt in passing the Union Bill. They joined O’Connell not long after- wards in essaying to gain its repeal. They supported Parnell for a season as a politician, and presently repudiated him, though he had not changed his views or policy. History is said to repeat itself marvellously. Some eight centuries ago Pope Adrian handed over Ireland to Henry the Second to cure the indiscipline of the priesthood there ; and once more the Pope is to be found on the side of English law and order ! In its sale of indulgences and dispensations it is the same as ever. There are some mad Mollahs about even now in Ireland. 90 CHAPTER XIII. Ireland has of late become ambitious to emulate the land of the Switzer, and to attract tourists from many lands, but more especially from England ; for, ever since the days of the Grand Tour, Britons have been looked upon by the breed of Boniface as the very best of travellers and visitors to hotels. Of course, times have changed greatly since the Milor-Anglais travelled about from city to city in his postchaise, with his courier and valet, “ two gentlemen occasionally rolled into one ” ! But travelling has become vastly more popular since then. There can be no question that Ireland has done much to meet the proposed influx. In Dublin alone nearly loo hotels have sprung up, or been “ converted ” from private houses, of fair extent. A few of these hotels, such as the Metropole and the Granvillej may be classed as good. The great majority, however, are not first-class by any means. Of course, the old Dublin hotds, such as the Shelbourne, have kept pace with the march of improvement, which now- a-days steps out at the double.^’ All parts of Ireland have felt the impulse, and Larne, Portrush, and Bundoran have raade good preparations for the visitors, while railways have seconded the movement, and Viceroys, such as Lord Crewe and Lord Cadogan, have lent it their active support and patronage. The hotel reform was greatly needed, for the rule in Ireland was to claim the maximum of pay for the minimum HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 91 of comfort and style. Nor did Lady Morgan’s allitera- tive and scathing sentence of Dear Dirty Dublin ” find better illustration than in her hotel system. By-and-bye it may be hoped that the verdict will be Nous avons change tout celuy’' but at present cookery and attendance ” leave something to be desired. The South of Ireland has not lagged by any means, and at Killarney Hotel comfort is responsive to the beauty ot the surroundings, and enhances their enjoyment. Nor need one wander far in one’s quest, for if the Railway Hotel is not too full you will be thoroughly comfortable there. Then the southern hotels, such as those at Caragh, Waterville, Parknasilla, and Kenmare, are well found, well managed, and surrounded by beautiful scenery, combining mountain, mere, and seascapes. In most of them good rough shooting ” is added as an additional attraction ; but though care and preservation may lead in time to fair shooting — for the breeding grounds and cover are good enough — rough walking is at present the sole certainty — and plenty of it. But in the matter of fishing the outlook is infinitely better, for Caragh and Waterville hotels have fair salmon streams besides their lakes ; and between such sporting ” fish as salmo salar, and brown, and sea trout, the visitor should find plenty of occupation ; nor is there a better anodyne for overstrung and overwrought nerves than good air, grand scenery, creature comforts, and a fair share of sport ; and, it may be added, that should the climatic or atmospherical conditions be adverse to angling in fresh water, the sea close to him to the southward will ensure him a plenteous 92 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. harvest. Indeed, anglers have good reason to bless Ireland with its prolific rivers and vast lacustrine system, of which the latter, and some of the former, are open to the visitor at very slight expense incurred in cars and boats ; and I may mention that in two of the large lakes within little more than a rifle shot of that midland metropolis, Mullin- gar, two monster trout were caught within the last decade by men trolling for pike with common rough tackle. Of these, one pulled down the scale at 261bs. |oz. ; the other was a fraction over lylbs. Such piscatorial prizes are well worth trying for, and, if rare, we may be certain that there are in these lakes still as fine fish as ever were taken out of them. Snipe shooting used to be good in the Kingdom of Kerry, but even snipe want some protection \ and the numbers of breechloaders and poachers have increased marvellously with each recurring decade ; for pot-shooting proves profitable, and there seems a game dealer ” in every village, who ships his wares to Manchester mainly, finding that even the bitter starling finds an eater and buyer there. Indeed, \os, gun licences and pococurante authorities have sung the death-knell of ordinary shooting in Ireland ; as eyen young woodcock are offered for sale in August, when quite unfit for food, and Irish partridges and ducks are. to be seen on poulterers’ counters during their close season, and sold as English. Lord Howth, who has done much for sport in Ireland, assimilated the dates of grouse shooting in England, Scotland, and Ireland, by a short Bill. A pendant to it might fix the partridge St. Bartholomew on the 1 2th of September, a date that would probably HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 93 suit gunners in all three lands better than the present ist. Lord Carysfort and a few others have proved to demon- stration that pheasants can be quite as numerous in Ireland as in any part of the United Kingdom, while Lord Ardi- laun’s woods at Ashford (that are properly preserved) gave a total of 209 woodcock to seven guns in a single day not long ago ; and forty and fifty brace of snipe may still, I believe, be shot in a day on well-preserved moors, such as Lord Ventry’s. Hares became nearly extinct in the County of Dublin a decade or two ago ; but in a few years Lord Howth, by strict preservation, had a sufficient number to be able to send stocks for several harrier counties where they had been quite decimated. 94 CHAPTER XIV. The true derivation of the Irish horse is as hard to trace as that of his rider and owner. We know that Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, gave the Romans a good deal of trouble with her chariots and war horses. Had Agricola sent that legion or two that he thought sufficient for the annexation of Ireland, we probably should not be so much in the dark about our island as we are now ; l?ut the fact remains, that when the filibusters invaded Ireland as the allies of one of its Princes, nothing struck them more than the contrast between their great heavy horses — probably Flemish, and of the type to be seen under William the Third’s bronze presentment in College Green, Dublin — and the smaller and more ^‘classy” steeds of the natives, that in all probability owed their origin to the constant traffic that existed between such ports as Galway, Limerick, and Cork with the Gironde and Spain, where Barbs pre- vailed. This struck that keen observer Giraldus Cambrensis greatly, and he extols ‘‘the hobbies.” Stanyhurst says, “ The nag or the hackenie is very good for travelling, albeit others report the contrary, and if he be broken accordinglie, you shall have a little Tit, that will travell a whole dale without anie bait. Their horses of service are called chiefe horses : being well broken they are of an excellent courage They reine passinglie, and champ upon their bridels bravelie; commonly they amble not, but gallop and run, HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 95 and these horses are but for skirmishes, not for travelling, for their stomachs are such as they disdain to be hacknied thereof the report grew that the Irish hobbie will not hold out in travelling. You shall have of the third sort a bastard or mongrell hobbie, near as tall as the horse of service, strong in travelling, easie in ambling, and verie swift in running. Of the horse of service they make great store, as wherein at times of need they repose a great peece of safetie. This brood Volasterane writeth to have come from Asturea, the countrie of Hispaine, between Gallicia and Portugall, whereof they were named Austurcones, a name now properlie applied to the Hispanish Genet/' In the six- teenth century there were about 3,000 horses of ^‘service" in Ireland, or war horses with their riders amongst the chiefs, Theiner, reporting to the Pope, says : The land itself produces absolutely nothing but oats, and most excellent victorious horses, more swift than the English horses. In ancient times the inhabitants were called Asturians, because they came of the Asturian peoples of Spain." In Richard II.’s second expedition McMorough rode to a conference with the Earl of Gloucester on a horse without saddle or housing, which was so fine and good that it had cost him, they said, four hundred cows, for there is little money in the country, wherefore their usual traffic is only with cattle. In coming down the hill it galloped so hard in my opinion I never in all my life saw hare, deer, or sheep, or any other animal, I declare to. you for a certainty, run with such speed as it did. In his right hand he bore a great long dart which he cast with much skill." The figure of McMorough may be seen in the British Museum. 96 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. In the times of the Stuarts Arabian and Turkish horses were imported, and some found their way into Ireland. Cromwell, too, was a great horse fancier and a great cavalry officer. Thoroughbred horses all strain back to these importa- tions, such as the Darly Arabian and the Byerly Turk; and in thoroughbred stock Ireland has held her own with England, in spite of difficulties, chiefly of finance. But the half-bred or seven-eighths hunter is the specialty of Ireland, and has been for many years a valuable export. Unlike the Arabs, the Irish farmers were induced by long prices to part with many of their good, sound mares, and hence, it is said, something of a decline in hunters ; but as Ireland remains the best mart still for the war horses and hunters of the world, no decided or irreparable mis- chief has been done yet. Trade generally leads to adulteration in some shape or another, so crosses with Clydesdales were sought to give size and scope; of course this miscegenation injured the market, and it was arrested; but the last attempt by Government Commissioners to infuse hackney blood into Ireland with a view of improving knee action is probably the .worst attempt that has been made to vitiate good stock. Hackneys are useful and ornamental in their places, but are fatal to the best qualifications of hunters — namely, shoulder action, stoutness, and light wind or breathing powers. Happily, the mischief has been freely recognised, and will be averted. 97 CHAPTER XV. In this little bird^s-eye view of Ireland nothing has been said about the turf, legitimate or illegitimate, though the men of Ireland (and occasionally the women, too) gravitate to both branches just as naturally as every fallow field does to good grass, wherein Ireland differs essentially from England, as England does not naturally garb itself in good grass, as a study of road sidings and railway embankments will show. The history of the Irish turf and its annals have been written and published \ but though in the earlier decades of the century there were great Irish horses occasionally running and winning in England, such as Mr. T, Blake's “Guicoli" and “Napoleon”; “Cawrouch,” Chanticleer,” “ The Baron,” “ Faugh a Ballagh,” “ Hark- away,” “ Mince Pie,” “ St. Laurence,” “ Wolf Dog,” “ Co- ranna,” “ Croagh Patrick,” “ Cruiskeen,” “ Russborough ” (who dead-heated for the Leger with “ Voltigeur”), “ Kil- warline,” who won it later on ; ^‘Umpire,” “ Lady Patricia,” Bendigo,” “ Barcaldine,” “ Laodamia,” “ Comedy,” etc. It may be doubted if Irish race horses v;ere ever more in evidence or better represented than by Galtee More,” “ Winkfield's Pride,” “ Kilcock,” “Clorane,” “Red Heart,” “ Count Schomberg,” and “ Wildfowler,” while it would not be easy to find chasers superior to “ The Lamb,” “ The Liberator,” “ Comeaway,” “ Cloister,” “ Royal Meath,” Usna,” and “ Manifesto.” H HIBERNIA HODIERNA. Considering the paucity of first-class brood mares in Ireland, and the notorious fact that every first-class sire is spirited away to England as soon as his stock gain name and fame on the turf — witness, Uncas,’’ Favo,” and Kendal — it is wonderful how many first-class horses are bred in Ireland ; and it points very directly to the con- clusion that Ireland is a better place to breed and rear race horses than England, Wales, or Scotland. In the early part of the present century Jamaica occupied as much space in the Calendar as Ireland, Now it is utterly ignored in that Libro D’oro, yet I think as first-class a race horse can be bred in the Pimento pastures of St. Ann^s in that island as in England ; perhaps even on the sunny savannahs of St. Elizabeth's, The turf of Ireland is no longer the aristocratic conclave that it was when it had for chiefs such men as the Marquises of Waterford and Conyngham, the EarlofHowth, Lord Rossmore, the Marquis of Normanby, and Sir Thomas Burke, and later on the Marquis of Drogheda ; but it is much more businesslike and set on a far broader basis. So great are its monetary transactions that whereas the book- making interest used to be represented by half-a-dozen, or at most a dozen men, now the layers of odds amount to a little legion, and hence it may be surmised that the takers are in proportion. So far as my eye can aid me in forming an opinion, I think race horses and chasers are much better trained and brought out than they were in days gone by ; and as for turf- morality, I do not think it has retrograded at its headquarters during the past two decades, or that such a thing as a horse being tried on Sunday unknown to the owner, while the secret HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 99 became a public one — a secret de polichinelle — and the owner was the only one who knew nothing about it, would be likely to happen now. Irish lads do not get the training or education in race riding that English lads do; but, for all that, there are half-a- dozen fair jocks competing in Ireland, though most riders there represent too strongly the order of the flagellants. Mr. T. Beasley, who was an exceptionally good amateur, has unfortunately almost given up race-riding. H 2 100 CHAPTER XVL Nothing shows the mutations of fortune and its uncer- tainties much more than the number of fine parks and pleasances in Ireland that have fallen from their ci-devant high estate, and degenerated into farms and grazing lands ; while their former proprietors have passed into utter oblivion. The same process is going on at present, though we notice the gradual merger more after a few decades have gone by. Many good-hearted men and women in England were touched by the true tale of the Distressed Irish Ladies, whose best spokesman and leader was the late Lord Waterford. They had done no harm in their genera- tion — probably much good — but were stranded on a barren shore by the great wave of landed depression and agitation. Many of their sisters, cousins, and aunts have felt the times cruelly, and the tale is current of a mistress and her servant hard at work scrubbing the floor, when the latter thought it necessary to soliloquise (aloud) thus — Well, my lady, times are very curious, entirely ! Here are you, a proud Peer^s daughter, doing scrub work, while Pm another, and helping you ! Irish ladies have succeeded wonderfully as milliners and modistes ; others who have good houses receive paying guests, or manage hotels, or turn cooks ; others traffic in tea or turn to the stage ; while amongst their male relations many devote themselves to training horses, or coping at home or abroad, and with some success, too ! others join hunting staffis, or enlist, or bet HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 101 professionally ; and of the minority, those who have handles to their names sit as directors or chairmen of companies, or, failing those reliefs, turn to business as guinea-pigs in the city, or vendors of wine, while not a few have gone in for literature and the Press. 102 CHAPTER XVII. In the remarks I have ventured to make about the everlasting land question in Ireland, I have tried to point out as succinctly as I could that for centuries confiscation has followed on the heels of conquest, and that the old legend of ‘‘To the victors the spoils” was invariably followed by a change of territorial owners. There has been no “war” within the United Kingdom for centuries, save political and party warfare, and yet confiscation has been resorted to by Governments of both parties, in vain hopes of settling the Irish question in the manner pointed out by Finton Lalor a good many years ago — namely^ by the spolia- tion of landowners and the enrichment of the occupiers of the soil ! Whether this confiscation amounted to one-half, one- third, or only a quarter of their estates, matters not now ; the process is still going on, and England is deliberately depriving her subjects of their property, pro bono publicoy as is stated, without compensation ; thus setting at nought the canons of the Constitution, as interpreted by such publicists as Mill and Fawcett. Fiat experimentum in corpore viW^ is the cry, but do not attempt such outrages on the sacrosanct soil of England ! Land has been the most available asset for confiscation, but in her commercial enterprises Ireland has often had to yield to English manufacturing greed and jealousy ! In its admirable article on Lady Cadogan's Textile Exhibition in Dublin last August the Times acknow- HIBERNIA HODIERNA, 103 ledged that England had been an arida nutrix^* to such nascent undertakings in the past. If arida nutrix means “ a drynurse,” I think the Horatian conjunction of words is misplaced, as they imply some kindness and protection. Injusta noverca*^ from the Georgies would be, I venture to suggest, a more appropriate term, and more consonant to the truth of history. But if England has been cruel and vindictive, as well as most careless in her government for centuries of an island that must form an integral part of the Kingdom, if only from sordid considerations of national safety ; for the two islands are, as Helen puts it to Hermia in Shakespeare’s play— “ Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, But yet a union in partition.” Siamese twins may have differences, but they cannot afford internecine quarrels^ and in some respects England has defended Ireland well, and loyally; for all the invasions of the island by foreign foes were caused by Irish con- spirators (or patriots). The population of Ireland, even after the revolution, was little more than a million. In 1847 it was estimated at more than eight millions, and now, with a population of barely five millions, Ireland can boast of a much larger reserve fund, as indicated by bank deposits and shares than she ever had, while the shares of her leading bank — that of Ireland — are higher pro rata than those of the Bank of England ; and, tried by every test, Ireland is sound financially, and, if poor, still progressing towards prosperity ! Take up your Thackeray and compare the present con- dition of men, women, and things with what he saw and 104 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. set down on his pictured page. Mendicity has compara- tively disappeared, and a certain air of general bien 4 tre has replaced the shoeless and ragged aspect of large portions of the population. Lord George Bentinck’s prescient mind would have advanced Ireland by leaps and bounds had his railway expansion scheme been adopted : Mr. Balfour’s recogni- tion of its merits, and imitation of it, has already done good. Sackville Street, Dublin, is something of a sign or em- blem of Irish politics, as at present quiescent. The Land League first found a local habitation in the upper room of a tobacconist {pTrepwov). Then it migrated to a house over which was emblazoned ‘‘43, Upper O’Connell Street.” That house — that must have been sadly infested by rats and mice, who devoured the Land League ledgers — is now a Young Men’s Christian Association, and Sackville Street has not changed its ancient name. The retention, too, of their estates by the Fitzgeralds, St. Lawrences, de Burghs, Fitzmaurices, Veseys, Butlers, O’Briens, O’Conors, Dalys, etc., attests the stability of English government. 105 CHAPTER XVIII. Having endeavoured to point out the heroic methods adopted by Governments at various recurring periods in dealing with Irish land, and the crop of unsettling settle- ments ” that have been sanctioned by Parliament during the past generation, whose effects have been great deteri- oration of the soil, the demoralisation of farmers by the premiums offered to perjury, and the gradual impoverish- ment of the territorial aristocracy, while the cost of this new edition of the old game of Beggar My Neighbour is something more than 00,000 per annum, it may be asked. What alternative can be found for this lamentable state of things ? — what policy is proposed for arresting this triumphant career of a system that effects the spoliation of a class without any equivalent benefit to the rest of the community ? Every one who is conversant with the debates of a decade or two ago will recollect that the present state of things was never contemplated by our legislators of any party, and that many who took part in this legislation are stag- gered now by its unforeseen results. “ Nunc retrorsum Vela dare atque iterare cursus Cogor relictos.^^ A return to the ancient ways of contract seems imperative, and the abolition of a tribunal which has absolutely nothing judicial about it save the name. It must be io6 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. obvious that if Irish land has to run the gauntlet of Com- missioners at the close of every statutory period, we — or rather our children — are within measurable distance of a time when the whittling processes will have left an irre- ducible minimum, and that, like Othello, the Commissioners will have to confess that their occupation is gone, unless, peradventure, they find it in the few estates that have not yet been in litigation, because the tenants felt that they had no reason or inclination for seeking a more than problema- tical reduction of rent. One piece of honesty or restitution seems called for in the interests of common justice — namely, that the price of every holding that has been sold after the rent reduction has been effected in Court should be re- stored to the landlord. But by whom, it may be asked ? — By the State certainly, because sellers and buyers have acted legally and within their rights, or in innocence, to use a legal phrase ; but the diversion of this sum from the landlord is, to ordinary capacity, simple robbery ; and Mr. Gladstone, when he brought in his Bill of 1880, was eloquent in his professions that Justice was to be their guide.” Of course, this act of restitution would be a small matter when compared to a settlement of the entire question, but it would give evidence of a desire to do that which is lawful and right on the part of Parliament. The engineers’ strike, at present in full vigour in England, seems to have some analogy to the great rent strike that desolated Ireland for some time. The engineer strike is perfectly legal, though lamentable, and most fatal to the best interests of England. The rent strike was illegal in itself as well as in its methods ! Now, suppose the Government of England were to say to the employers, “You have brought much trouble by your HIBERNIA HODIERNA. lOf uncompromising attitude on English interests, and though you have acted within your rights, we, through Parliament, intend to punish you by confiscating a third of the capital you have misused for the benefit of the employes^ who have suffered cruelly, with their families, by the effects of the late disastrous strike,’^ would not the case be on all- fours with the actions of Government to landlords and tenants in Ireland ? Every wrong in England is said, in popular parlance, to have its remedy. I hope it may be generally admitted that the landowners of Ireland have had their wrong. Whence is the remedy to spring ? There are landlords who might be released frorh the present impasse by a loan of money from Government, at 3 per cent., wherewith to pay off the charges on their estates. This seems only fair play to both sides of the equation ; but such a remedial measure, though useful, as far as it goes, would hardly affect the great question. At present the open market has been closed to landlords for some time, either for purposes of selling or borrowing ; for who would lend money when a new Land Act, conceived by some adventurous politician, may further unsettle matters, while the occupiers of the farms are coy about buying, even on the liberal terms proposed, when their spiritual and temporal advisers recommend them to wait for a further decline in price ? A European war might possibly solve the situation by the appreciation of prices; but such a contingency is improbable, and greatly to be deprecated. There remains the royal remedy of a forced sale of property, which has its advantages and its disadvantages. If parks and demesne lands, and lands held in his own hands by the proprietor^ ic8 HIBERNIA HODIERNA, were to be eliminated, it may be questioned if the reduced rental of Ireland much exceeds ;^9, 000,000 per annum, and it does not appear impracticable to capitalise this income, and pay off the landlords by instalments spread over a number of years, while the interests of mortgagees could, at the same time, be safeguarded. The Stein-Hardenberg process in Prussia was a much more comprehensive measure, for caste was abolished and feudalism swept away d^un coup ; but have we a Stein in England ? With such a drastic measure in operation it is evident that the expenses of the Government of Ireland could be reduced greatly in the matter of police and officials, and the control of the island brought within rational limits. Another proposition is to have the entire area of Ireland revalued (as it should have been before the Land Com- mission was launched upon it), and then to offer every tenant a fee farm grant of his holding, while the landlord might have to content himself with a rent-charge or annuity. Such a measure as this would be a compromise ; but if it could be carried out quickly, it might relieve the situation, which is getting very strained indeed — a landlord on one side, with specific charges that must be met, while the power of sale or borrowing is practically denied to him; on the other side, a tenant who will not buy in a falling market, and who hopes to get his land ultimately for something approximating to prairie value. 109 CHAPTER XIX.. It is impossible not to refer to Mr. Gladstone in connec- tion with Ireland, as his was the hand that wrought that country such cruel woe ! Whatever Mr. Gladstone may have been in his earlier career, he certainly proved himself* a semi-inspired Opportunist in its later decades. Regardless of the provisions of the Union he imposed the Income tax upon her inhabitants, and taxed her almost sole source of income — her whiskey ; for Ireland may be said to be like Horatio — “That no revenue hast but thy good spirits.” Then in his arboricidal frenzy he laid the axe to the root of her upas trees, and having demolished the Church, as established by law, and disestablished it utterly, the land- lords came next, and I firmly believe that if they had attorned to him in time, he would have built a golden bridge for them, even if it had proved a bridge of sighs. “ Gladstone has prov’d the landlords’ friend, Let truth be ever told. When Patriots said, ‘Let’s give them lead,’ The old man said, ‘Give gold.’” But the landlords preferred principle to interest, and they were sacrificed. It is hard to believe that Mr. Gladstone foresaw the consequences of his Land Acts as one reads his perorations, though they have a very Pecksniffian ring no HIBERNIA HODIERNA, about them ; but it is a fact that every forecast he made has been falsified by events, and the Union of Hearts which was to be the fruit of his Milesian Millennium is quite as far distant as the peaceful blending of acids and alkalies, a fact which may be gathered, in this present work, by the cheers given for the Afridis, gallant tribesmen “rightly struggling to be free,^’ to use his own coinage, just as the vox populi a decade or two ago was raised loudly for the Mahdi. The Union of Hearts will probably be even more 'Signally illustrated in the coming year when the anniversary of “’98 ” is celebrated. The Pax Hibernica now means continuous litigation and legal warfare, while the new tenants are paying rack-rents such as were not extorted by landlords, and the land sub-divided, in some cases, after the old bad pattern, is gradually deteriorated in value, though to the vagaries of the climate this consummation is attributed. But farmers ever rack-rented their labourers, often receiving from them four and five times more than they paid themselves ! Meanwhile, the labourer finds the farmer a much harder taskmaster, and infinitely less liberal than the landlord, whom he helped to despoil by his vote. It is to be feared that Mr. Gladstone, in spite of his splendid powers of mind and stupendous energy, will not go down to posterity as a great or consistent statesman, and his popularity in Ireland when, on the occasion of his paying a visit to the late Lord Meath, he received homage such as is rarely paid to Royalties, is already more than evanescent. As a minor poet wrote — “ He disestablished many things, and most in vain, And chang’d his sovereign to a suzerain.” HIBERNIA HODIERNA, III Anyone incredulous as to the non-unio7i of hearts might change his opinion if he glanced at the denunciations of England by high functionaries and Peers, as well as by the masses, in the matter of the financial relations, in the public prints of the period. “ Robbery ” is the word generally used. The best hope, perhaps, for Ireland is that the interest in her material well-being is strangling politics more or less, and that all sorts and conditions of men are trying to develop her resources. The very fact of a Recess Com- mittee of very mixed politicians issuing a report under the auspices of Mr. Horace Plunkett, a Conservative Member, shows a tendency towards union and co-operation, and Mr. Plunkett, the apostle of the co-operative principle, has already carried it to a successful issue in the Creameries established throughout Ireland on the lines projected by the late Canon Bagot. The Agricultural Bill proposed by the Recess Committee was impracticable, but the demand for a Government subsidy to create schools of instruction in modern methods of agricultural husbandry is likely to be responded to ; and in his organisation scheme Mr. Plunkett has unquestionably benefited the country by delivering it from somewhat unconscionable middlemen who charged exorbitant rates, but middlemen are a necessary evil, and they have been taught a lesson of moderation. It is something that Irish industries should have become a fashionable foible ; that ladies of quality like Lady Cadogan, Lady Mayo, Lady Fingall, The Duchess of Aber- corn, and Lady Aberdeen should throw themselves into the movement, and that Irish ingenuity and deftness of II2 HIBERNIA HODIERNA. manipulation should be acknowledged. Possibly these industrial exercises and exhibitions may prove a prelude to the foundation of factories on her western littoral, and the utilisation of the splendid harbours that are the natural portals to America, Ireland has certainly not advanced by leaps and bounds under the Gladstone regime which subsequent Govern- ments have adopted rather inconsequently, though at last Mr. Balfour was induced to issue a Commission of Enquiry, which, most ably and impartially conducted by its President, Sir E. Fry, has shown, inter alia, that the Commissioners and Sub-Commissioners have worked by rule of thumb — nay, by a rule of many thumbs, everyone, like Jack Horner in the nursery rhyme, having a finger in the^ precious pie. I believe they did their best according to their limited lights, and no one has impugned their motives, though astonished at their practice. CHAPTER XX. Something should, perhaps, be said about the Press of Ireland, that, as a rule, cannot be called ‘‘Too good For Human Nature’s daily food.” But one thing is quite certain — namely, that the public prints are very well supported, even at the expense of other literature, for, go where you will, you will see men with papers in their hands ; while in the chief towns the jarvies and jehus may be seen in their leisure moments conning the columns of news, sport, and politics. The Unionists have some very good organs to represent their views, and amongst them I may name the Irish Tvnes^ The Express^ and the Belfast Daily News as of high class and quality — well written, well edited, and well managed ; in point of fact, any one who has mastered one of these journals with his morning muffin need not be afraid to meet the enemy in the gate, as he will be thoroughly posted in the freshest news of town and country, and have got some insight into the controversies of the period. So far as I know, these papers are paying well, though dependent upon the support of the minority, but none of them have attained the prosperous position of the Irish Times^ that, about a generation ago, was bought for a comparative song by Sir John Arnott, and now yields in yearly income a great deal more than the original capital HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 114 expended in its purchase and plant; but then Sir John Arnott is known to possess the alchemy of success in all his undertakings, which may be a pleonasm for genius. The FreemarHs Journal a decade ago was a splendidly successful paper — very well written and pleasant to peruse, even if its political views were repugnant to the reader. Its finance was known to be faultless, and its circulation was very extensive, even if dwarfed by the great organ of Fleet Street. Now the fissiparous National party of Ireland has many organs, and trumpets, that give certain and uncertain sounds, and the Free^nan has in conse- quence fallen, to a certain extent, from its high estate; nor are its dividends as large as of old. It has, however, a very respectable antiquity, as it was first started in 1763, and its price was even then but a penny ! In a few years it was the organ of the Irish patriots Flood and Grattan, and it became the property, in 1791, of the notorious Francis Higgins, known popularly as ‘‘the sham squire,’’ whose memoirs and times were dealt with in an interesting volume by the late Mr. FitzPatrick. The Independent represents the Parnellites, and the remaining parties have their papers, whose common bond of union seems to be the most caustic criticism of England and her government. Indeed, much of the Dublin National Press fulfils daily and weekly, early in the morning and late at night,"the role of the umbra, or slave, whose function it was, at the Roman feasts, to make unpleasant observations as to the uncertainty of life, and perhaps suggest indigestions and apoplexies amongst the roses. So in the great banquet of National life these prints have always something sting- ing to say as to “ Dirty little England ” and its crooked. HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 1 1 5 perfidious policies, which are contrasted with the happier inspirations of other great Powers. In fact, if a stranger, who was perhaps too much of an Anglophil for the Dublin atmosphere, took up these papers on his arrival in the Milesian metropolis for the first time, he would find a prescription here that would alter his views — if they were to be altered — and give him a new view of the big bully — Great Britain. A few provincial papers eschew politics in toto with the batteries of leaders and essays, which must be very good to be readable, and make neiv news their raison dietre, I must say they prove very successful and are worthy of admiration. Newspapers are nearly as much in vogue in Ireland as in America ! ii6 CHAPTER XXI. Whatever Ireland may have been in the past ages, when they killed men and women for the wearing of the green/' I cannot help thinking it about the freest country in creation so far as human laws are concerned, though it is the fashion sometimes to call it down-trodden and oppressed." Let Dublin, the capital, serve as a text. How often on Sunday is “ the Sabbath stillness" broken by the sound of bands discoursing most martial music, and what, a few decades ago, would have been styled rebel tunes," while the tambour major^ in fantastic costume, is the observed of all observers, and more especially of the patriotic young Ireland that marches rhythmically through the streets and thoroughfares, ^‘no man making them afraid" — not even a policeman. ‘‘ The Eagle suffers little birds to sing, And is not careful what they mean thereby ; Knowing that with the shadow of his wing He can at pleasure stint their melody.” Again, while unfortunate barbers are hauled before the magistrates for exercising their tonsorial functions on a Sunday in parts of England, races and steeplechases are run in the suburban zones of Dublin almost every Sunday ; and wagering goes on there freely. Lotteries are penal in England. Here in Dublin they seem perennial, if pour le bon motif, or to raise funds for HIBERNIA HODIERNA. 1 1 7 some pious work or institution, and occasionally a carriage and pair — one of the prizes — is driven up and down Sackville Street to enkindle holy ardour and speculative zeal in the faithful. Of course, the great secular lotteries guaranteed by the State, with their big prizes — and that boasted amongst their agents a brother of the late Lord Beaconsfield, a most excellent citizen — were abolished long ago. The crusade against betting has never been carried on in Ireland as in England, though the ^‘goody- goodies ” are not an unknov/n sect in the Green Isle. Moreover, a Sunday rarely passes into the ewigkeit in Ireland without some utterances having been made some- where that, if strictly weighed in the Constitutional balances, might be deemed more or less indictable ; but no one is “a penny the worse ” for their utterance. In every town I have visited cabs and carriages are compelled to carry lights or lamps. In Dublin — not a well-lit town — they carry none ; of course this is municipal entirely. Moreover, in Ireland both hunting, coursing, and shoot- ing are carried on continually on Sunday to the disturbance of game, and the wounding of tender consciences. The hunting referred to is of hare and fox with trencher-fed hounds, that are collected after Mass, and are followed by men and boys on foot. Coursing is a more serious matter, for greyhounds are aided and assisted by curs of low degree, and the quarry gets little fair play ; and as for shooting, it is carried on freely on Sunday, more especially during the hours of Divine worship. I do not think the law is often invoked against these Sunday poachers, who, if they do not actually kill many head of game, do infinite mischief in disturbing it, I 3 ii8 HIBERNIA HODIERNA, It may be said that the Puritanical Sabbatarianism of Protestants has had something to do with this prevalence of poaching, for games such as cricket and archery were not only permitted, but actually sanctioned on Sundays by the Common Law of England. 1^9 APPENDIX 1. THE KILRUDDERY HUNT. Hark ! hark ! jolly sportsmen, awhile to my tale, Which to pay your attention Pm sure cannot fail ; Tis of lads and of horses and dogs that ne’er tire. O’er stone walls and hedges, thro’ dale, bog, and briar : A pack of such hounds, and a set of such men, ’Tis a shrewd chance if ever you meet with again ; Had Nimrod, the mightiest of hunters, been there, ’Fore God he’d have shook like an aspen for fear. In seventeen hundred and forty-four, The fifth of December — I think ’twas no more — At five in the morning by most of the clocks We rode from, Kilruddery in search of a fox. The Loughlinstown landlord, the bold Owen Bray, And Squire Adair, sure, was with us that day— Joe Debill, Hall Preston, that huntsman so stout, Dick Holmes, a few others, and so we set out. We cast off our hounds for an hour or more. When Wanton set up a most terrible roar. “Hark to Wanton !” cried Joe, and the rest were not slack. For Wanton’s no trifler esteemed in the pack ; Old Bonny and Collier came readily in. And every hound join’d in the musical din ; Had Diana been there she’d been pleas’d to the life, And one of the lads got a goddess to wife. APPENDIX /. Ten minutes past ten was the time of the day When Reynard broke cover ; and this was the way : As strong from Killegal, as tho’ he could fear none, Away he brush’d round by the house of Kilternan, To Carrickmines thence, and to Cherriwood then. Steep Shankill he climb’d, and to Ballyman Glen, Bray Common he cross’d, leap’d Lord Anglesey’s Wall, And seem’d to say “ Little I value you all.” He ran bushes and groves up to Carbury Byrne’s, Joe Debill, Hall Preston kept leading by turns : The earth it was open, but he was so stout, Tho’ he might have got in he chose to keep out. To Malpas high hill was the way then he flew. At Dalkey Stone Common we had him in view : He drove on thro’ Bullock, thro’ Shrub- Glenageary, And so on to Monkstown where La wry grew weary. Thro’ Rochestowm Wood like an arrow he pass’d. And came to the steep hills of Dalkey at last ; Then gallantly plung’d himself into the sea, And said in his heart ‘‘ Sure none dare follow me.’ But soon to his cost he perceived that no bounds Could stop the pursuit of the staunch mettl’d hounds : His policy here did not serve him a rush. Five couple of Tartars were hard at his brush. To recover the shore then again was his drift. But ere he could reach to the top of the clift. He found both of speed and of running a lack. Being waylaid and killed by the rest of the pack. At his death then were present the lads that I’ve sung, vSave Lawry, who, riding a garron, was flung ; Thus ended at length a most delicate chase That held us five hours and ten minutes’ space. APPENDIX /. I2I We return’d to Kilruddery’s plentiful board, Where dwell hospitality, truth, and My Lord ; We talk’d o’er the chase, and we toasted the health Of the men that ne’er struggled for places or wealth. “ Owen Bray baulk’d a leap,” says Hall Preston, ’twas odd ; ‘‘’Twas shameful,” cried Jack, ‘‘by ! ” Said Preston, “ I holloa’d. Get in tho’ you fall. Or I’ll leap over you, your blind gelding, and all ! ” Each glass was adapted to freedom and sport, For party affairs we consign’d to the Court. Thus we finish’d the rest of the day and the night In gay flowing bumpers and toasts of delight : Then, till the next meeting, bid farewell each brother. So some they went one way, and some went another ; And as Phoebus befriended our earlier roam So Luna took care in conducting us home. Limits of space will only permit me to record the last quatrain of Mr. Frankland’s poem on the “ Kilkenny Hunt” : it points a good moral : — No jealousy here mars the charm of a run. No jostling while going, no boasting when done ; Good fellows they’re all, whether cautious or bold. And kind fellowship reigns ’twixt the young and the old ! 122 APPENDIX II. No one can have lived many months in Ireland without discovering that political men, more especially of the Patriotic Ensign, have a decided tendency to use what the Latin poet ambiguas voces, or, in other words, that they will discourse Erin-go-bragh to one set of listeners, “ Erin-go-bread-and-cheese ” to another. This plasticity of rhetoric, if not of principle, is, however, not wholly engrossed by Irishmen, though I think the largest number of shares in the going concern of adaptation is held by the plausible Patlanders. There are, in fact, two constituencies to be gained over, and both require separate treatment of tongue. Shane O’Neill, we may be sure, was the correct courtier when Elizabeth took him into favour at Windsor, but at his castle of Dundrum he was a very different personage, with more of the savage than the sybarite in his manners. Of Fitzmorice, ancestor of the Marquis of Lansdowne, Patricius Giraldinus qui Mactnoris et Lacsnace Baro diciiur. Hooker thus speaks : Notwithstanding he was trained up in the Court of England, sworne servant unto Her Majestie, in good favour and countenance at the Court, and apparilled according to his degree, and dailie nurtured and brought up in all civilitie, he was no sooner come home, but away with his English attires, and on with his brogs, his shirt and other Irish rags, being become as verie a traitor as the veriest knave of them all — and so for APPENDIX //. 123 the most part they are all, as dailie experience teacheth, dissemble they never so much to the contrarie — for like as Jupiter’s cat, let her be transformed to never so faire a ladie, and let her be never so well attired, and accompanied with the best ladies, yet if the mouse comes once in her sight, she will be a cat and show her kind.” The following letter will, I think, show that even one of the ablest of the leaders of the People of Ireland (pray spell People with the largest available type), like Miss Myrtle of the old song, “Talk of things that they don’t understand.” As I cannot find the original letter I must quote it from memory : — “ To the Editor of the Irish Times, March, 1897. “ Sir, — If Mr. T. Healy is reported correctly in the F7'eema'd s Journal he passed some severe strictures on the Land Commissioners (or many of them) declaring that they were members of Kildare Street Club, Dublin, and had never handled a plough in their lives, and did not under staiid the difference between wheat land and mangold wurzel land. Considering that wheat and mangold wurzel come constantly in rotation, I hardly think any member of Kildare Street Club could have shown more ignorance of agricultural matters, though I am aware that mangolds are often grown successfully in Ireland on reclaimed peat mosses.— Signed M. O’Connor Morris.” It is the fashion to say that land hunger has made the Irish people give sometimes five times the value for the goodwill of land to an outgoing tenant. Allowing that competition may unduly appreciate value, I cannot concur in the idea that Irish farmers are lunatics! They have seen 124 APPENDIX IP fortunes made out of land, and farmers and herds raised to ^the status of squires^ by land. They hope that their case may be similar. In the counties of Dublin, Meath, Louth, and Kildare many grazing farms are let yearly for double the rent paid by the tenant — sometimes for treble ; and as the process is repeated each recurring year, it probably does not lead to ruin. A grazing farm in the county Meath, with a nice house on it, was sold some 25 years ago for;^i3,ooo. It was subsequently mortgaged for ;^2 7,000, and sold the other day for ;^24,ooo ; and yet land has no economic value ! I think I omitted to state, a propos of the Cromwellian confiscation, that the new landowners had paid the Government some four millions for their holdings. Some of these families have, like the Ponsonbys, done good service in Church and State, yet their descendants are amongst the conhscatees now. HARRISON AND SONS, PRINTERS IN ORDINARY TO HER MAJESTY, ST. martin’s LANE, LONDON. ♦ • ■ rr . <4