THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF ILLINOIS . 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Prom the collection of 
 James Collins, 
 
 Drumcondra, Ireland, 
 Purchased, 1918. 
 

POLITICAL MAP OF IRELAND. 
 
 This Map is intended to give a bird's-eye view of the representation of Ireland. 
 The daik line marks the boundary between Ulster and the rest of Ireland. 
 
 Lon^Uule We.t 8 of Greenwich, 
 
 Ulster is a province of considerable extent, occupying about one-quarter of the area, and containing about 
 the same proportion of the inhabitants of the whole of Ireland. If all these people were <>/ one mind, their wishes 
 would demand serious attention. But it Is not so. Four of the counties of Ulster return Nationalists 
 exclusively ; the remaining five return Nationalists and Conservatives. No fewer than 17 out of the S3 Uepre- 
 sentatives of Ulster are Nationalists; and all the Eepresentatives of the rest of Ireland are Nationalists 
 except the two members representing Dublin University, which has always been a close Tory stronghold. ' 
 
 Londam EegOnPauL. Trench Jt Co. F S.Wdler, ERGS. 
 
POlJTICAL MAP OF IRELAND. 
 
 Tfe'lt i{,i ■ ■ •. !■ . • 4 » binl'M-evjt ^;>w ••(' Ihc r»TOT*<>rit«tn»ii of If>'?«iv>t 
 Tb*! *» . . m-larn i*tw<aps lU'li'f ani) tV) ivtst i)f Ireland. 
 
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 iMnJtM^, Atfti: J^Kbt rruMn, iC ^ 
 
A KEY 
 
 TO 
 
 THE lEISH QUESTION. 
 
 IIAINLY COMPILED FROM THE 
 
 SPEECHES AND WRITINGS OF EMINENT BRITISH STATESMEN 
 
 AND PUBLICISTS, PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 WITH SOME CHAPTERS OX THE REIGN OF EVICTION 
 IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 
 
 BT 
 
 J. A. FOX, 
 
 AIJTHOE OF "why IKKLAND WANTS HOME BULK," 
 "COEECION WITHOUT CEIME," ETC. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER, & CO., Lt? 
 
 1890. 
 
"When the complaints of a brave and powerful people are ob- 
 served to increase in proportion to the wrongs they have suffered ; 
 when, instead of sinking into submission, they are roused to resist- 
 ance, the time will soon arrive at which every inferior consideration 
 must yield to the security of the sovereign, and to the general 
 safety of the state. There is a moment of difficulty and danger at 
 which flattery and falsehood can no longer deceive, and simplicity 
 itself can no longer be misled. Let us suppose it arrived." 
 
 — Junius. 
 
 The rights of translation, and of reproduction are reserved. 
 

 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 " The pages of Irish history have been stained with tears and 
 " blood," Mr. Bright has observed ; " it is a long agony of which 
 " the only interest lies in its long-deferred close," according to 
 Mr. Goldwin Smith. 
 
 As a record of events during seven hundred years, hardly 
 anything could be more dreadful than the history of Ireland. 
 It exhibits little variety except in the nature and intensity of 
 the successive calamities which have afflicted the unfortunate 
 kingdom. How feelingly does not Edmund Spenser even — 
 one of her worst enemies — acknowledge Ireland's unmerited 
 sufferings : — 
 
 " I doe much pity that sweet land to be subject to so many 
 " evills as I see more and more to be layed upon her, and doe 
 " half beginne to think that it is her fatall misfortune, above 
 " all other countreyes that I know, to be thus miserably tossed 
 " and turmoyled with these variable stormes of affliction- ... 
 " [Perhaps] Almighty God reserveth her in this unquiet state 
 " still, for some secret scourge which shall by her come unto 
 " England ; it is hard to be known, but yet more to be feared." 
 
 From the arrival of Henry II. to the accession of Elizabeth, it 
 has been truly said the country had not enjoyed seven years of 
 tranquillity at any one period; while for forty years of that Queen's 
 reign a terrific war had been raging in Ireland. The most tried 
 commanders and the finest armies in Europe were from time to 
 time despatched to the sister isle; sums of money far exceeding 
 the revenue of England at that period, and estimated to be equal 
 in value to thirty millions sterling of our circulation, were 
 expended in the effort to crush rebellion, finally uproot the 
 
 4^i"7'.'^35 
 
vi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Catholic religion, and trample the Irishry in the dust. But all 
 in vain. After Elizabeth, Cromwell tried his hand at the work, 
 and, like Elizabeth, depopulated the kingdom once more, by 
 fire and sword and famine and expulsion. Lord Clarendon, 
 the historian, has given it as his opinion that the sufferings of 
 the Irish at the hands of the Puritans had never been surpassed, 
 except by the sufferings of the Jews in the course of their de- 
 struction by Titus. There was a little peace, extending over 
 some years, during the reign of Charles II. Yet during this 
 period even, it was said by the Lord-Lieutenant Essex : — 
 
 " This country [Ireland] has been continually rent and torn 
 " since his Majesty's restoration. I can compare it to nothing 
 " better than the flinging the reward, on the death of the deer, 
 " among the pack of hounds, where every one pulls and tears 
 " where he can for himself." 
 
 Still was Cromwell's task also ineffectual. 
 
 After the sword, and the famine created by the sword, came 
 the reign of confiscation and proscription, which was in its turn 
 found to be equally inefficacious for purposes of final conquest. 
 When the penal laws against religion and education, and the 
 laws against commerce and manufacturing industry, were re- 
 laxed or abolished, then was ushered in the era of eviction, 
 coercion, and the exodus. Of this last period, we are still in the 
 midst of its fell experience. Mr. Gladstone has declared that 
 the era of eviction is absolutely more grievous than the one that 
 preceded it, that of the penal laws. Writing in the Nineteenth 
 Century of February 1887, he said : — 
 
 "We broke up, by the Act of 18 15, the old traditions of the 
 " country, transformed the old law in the interests of the land- 
 "lordSj and to succeed the centuries of extirpation, of confisca- 
 " tion, and of penalty, we ushered in the century of evictions. 
 "... To the mass of the Irish people, it would have been a 
 " less terrible and smaller grievance to re-enact the Penal Laws." 
 
 Prince de Joinville, son of Louis Philippe, in a remarkable 
 pamphlet published in 1844, appropriately spoke of those cycles 
 of wretchedness which are the never-failing portion of the 
 Irishman, thus : — 
 
INTRODUCTION. vu 
 
 *' Like Ixion at his wheel, the Irishman eternally traces the 
 "same circle of woes, and meets at every inflection of his 
 "jaded round a torture the more; always repeating his bloody 
 "struggle for deliverance, and finding that each but leads to 
 " fresh agonies." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone has dwelt upon the fact with his customary 
 emphasis. Speaking at Hampstead, on the nth of May 1887, 
 he is reported to have said : — 
 
 " There is no such record of failure in human affairs, go where 
 " you will to seek it. There is no such record of failure as in 
 " the treatment of Ireland by England for 700 years, during 
 " which time I must say there has hardly been 700 days — 
 " certainly not 700 weeks — of content and satisfaction. Every 
 " horror and every shame that could disgrace the relations 
 " between a strong country and a weak one is written upon 
 " almost every page of the history of our dealings with Ire- 
 " land." 
 
 To furnish the reader with a useful, and, at the same time, 
 an accurate epitome of this record of 700 years' failure of 
 English statesmanship in Ireland is the purpose of the pre- 
 sent work. It may not inaptly be compared to the well-known 
 equestrian figure of William III., standing in College Green, 
 Dublin. It is but a thing of " shreds and patches." But I 
 can conscientiously say that I have spared no pains, no labour, 
 no research, during a residence of some months in that city, 
 to make it reliable and comprehensive at the same time. I 
 wish it had been in my power to relieve the story it conveys 
 of some of its sadness, if only with a few joyous notes by way 
 of contrast. But the individual who succeeds in evolving 
 gladness out of Irish history must be, not a man, but a magi- 
 cian. He must deal not in facts but fictions, and sacrifice truth 
 to poetry. He must not visit the Irish peasant family in their 
 wretched cabin, or view its melancholy surroundings outside, — 
 all of which supply in themselves a compendious story of " every 
 " horror and every shame that could disgrace the relations be- 
 " tween a strong country and a weak one." 
 
 The ineptitude and foolishness of the aggravating measures by 
 which the present Government hope to overcome the Irish, to- 
 
viii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ■wards whom the sword and the famine and the rack have been 
 put aside as obsolete, might move one to laughter but for their 
 inherent meanness and malignity. No man living who knows 
 anything of Irish history, except he carried a sheep's head on 
 his shoulders, could anticipate success from so stupid a policy. 
 O'Connell used to describe such instruments of torture as Lord. 
 Salisbury's eccentric kinsman now in Ireland as "shave 
 beggars ; " that is, underlings who hoped to climb into higher 
 office by trying their 'prentice hands in that unhappy country 
 where no responsibility is ever incurred by misgovernment. 
 Already has he reached the goal of his ambition in the Cabinet 
 without displaying a single qualification which might not come 
 under Carlyle's concise definition of the character of the late 
 Count Cagliostro. After a few months he takes his departure ; 
 another " shave beggar," perhaps, takes his place; and there is the 
 same interminable round of combined effrontery and mendacity, 
 with a view to render all hope of decent and rational govern- 
 ment impossible in Ireland. Meanwhile, perhaps even those 
 Primrose dames and members of the English Church Congress 
 who are now lost in admiration of the methods of government 
 adopted by Mr. Balfour in Ireland, may feel inclined, when 
 they shall have perused the Appendix to this work, to ques- 
 tion whether he had not been better employed at home in 
 the Scottish Highlands in some honest endeavour to repair, as 
 far as he is able, the evil work done there by his departed 
 father. It is no mere figure of speech, but an unhappy, weU- 
 ascertained fact, that the lovely district of Strathconon, in 
 Eoss-shire, depopulated by that individual in 1840-8, and now 
 let out as a deer-forest to a sporting brewer, or other tenant, 
 at a rental of jC^jS °° ^ y^ar, by the Chief Secretary for Ire- 
 land, is a district bedewed with the tears, if not the blood, of 
 age and innocence, — the infirm parents and helpless children of 
 a deeply wronged and plundered tenantry. 
 
 As far as possible, all but British or Protestant authorities 
 have been studiously excluded from my list of quotations ; 
 though I trust I need hardly say that I consider an Irish 
 Catholic authority quite as good for historical purposes as a 
 
INTRODUCTION. ix 
 
 British Protestant one. But desiring beyond all things that 
 the reader should have no doubt as to their source, the sacrifice 
 has been made of excluding from my repertory even the splendid 
 speeches of O'Connell and Shiel, as well as those of their not 
 unworthy successors, Mr. Sexton, Mr. Dillon, Mr. O'Brien, and 
 Mr, Davitt. In like manner, and with a like purpose, no 
 quotations will be found in these pages from the admirable 
 writings of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy or the late Mr. Alexander 
 M. Sullivan, M.P. If, therefore, any falsehoods or fallacies 
 should be detected in my work, they shaU at least be British 
 or Protestant ones exclusively. 
 
 The authorities quoted are so numerous, to avoid inter- 
 larding the text with detailed references trying to the eyes of 
 the reader, I have contented myself with giving the number 
 of the volume in which they are to be found (where there is 
 more than one), without the page, chapter, or edition. Every 
 standard work of authority is now-a-daj-^s supplied with an 
 index aflfording facilities for obtaining the additional infor- 
 mation required. It may be added that the Parliamentary 
 speeches generally are taken from Hansard, and the platform 
 addresses, as a rule, from the columns of the Times. I have 
 included some chapters in English and Scottish history in 
 my work, the object of which is, I trust, self-evident. The 
 Scottish Appendix will be found of painful as well as urgent 
 importance, and merits the serious attention of every friend of 
 humanity, regardless of creed, country, or politics. Those 
 English and Scottish readers who may desire a reference to 
 some sound readings in Irish history will find the following 
 dozen works useful for the purpose. The list is merely a 
 practical one for ordinary enquirers, and by no means pretends 
 to be anything like exhaustive of the subject : — 
 
 1. Gladstone's " Speeches on the Irish Question in 1886 " 
 (Elliot, Edinburgh). 
 
 2. Lecky's " History of England" (the Irish chapters of). 
 
 3. Lecky's " Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland." 
 
 4. Walpole's "Short History of Ireland" (Kegan Paul, 
 Trench & Co.). 
 
X INTRODUCTION. . 
 
 5. Barry O'Brien's " Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland " 
 (Sampson Low & Co.). 
 
 6. Cornewall Lewis's " Crime and Disturbance in Ireland." 
 
 7. Sigerson's " Irish Land Tenures " (Longmans). 
 
 8. Godkin's "Land War in Ireland." 
 
 9. Bright's " Speeches on Ireland." 
 
 10. O'Connor's " Parnell Movement." 
 
 1 1. Macneill's " English Interference with Irish Industries " 
 (Cassell). 
 
 12. Urquhart's " Story of Ireland;" 36 pages, price one penny, 
 — the work of an earnest and accomplished Baptist minister. 
 
 There are also excellent stores of valuable Irish literature to 
 be had at the following offices : — 
 
 The Irish Press Agency, Victoria Street, Westminster, S.W. 
 The Liberal Central Association, Parliament Street, S.W. 
 The Home Eule Union, Palace Chambers, Bridge Street, S.W, 
 The National Press Agency, Whitefriars Street, E.C. 
 The National Eeform Union, Manchester. 
 Messrs. Gill & Son, Publishers, Dublin. 
 
 I have but one favour to ask of my readers — not for my own 
 sake, but for the sake of the cause we have aU at heart — that 
 they wiU, when quoting from my pages, be so good as to 
 acknowledge the source of their information. Such a course 
 affords the very best means of spreading the "light." A 
 speech or a newspaper article is soon forgotten, whereas a book 
 remains a permanent record of its contents. Those who may 
 in this way be induced to study A Key to the Irish Question, 
 side by side with the author's companion volume, Wky Ireland 
 Wants Home Mule, wiU readily acknowledge that the term 
 " Justice to Ireland " is very inadequate to represent what is 
 due to that most afflicted of kingdoms. Our watchword ought 
 rather to be " Restitution to Ireland," for the unmerited sorrows 
 and sufferings of the past — our efforts to destroy and consign 
 to oblivion the enmity of seven centuries by a manly, resolute, 
 and unstinted friendship in the future. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 INTEODTJCTION ^ 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 jU^THE EEIGN OF EVICTION IN GREAT BRITAIN . . I 
 
 IL WHAT CHURCHMEN AND JURISTS THOUGHT OF IT . 15' 
 
 III. THE GENESIS OF CRIME AND OUTRAGE IN ENGLAND 
 
 AND SCOTLAND • -30 
 
 IV. DEMOS AROUSED AND DETERMINED IN BRITAIN. . 38 
 V. CRIME AND OUTRAGE IN ENGLAND AND IRELAND COM- 
 PARED 45 
 
 VI. THE FERTILITY AND INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES OF IRE- 
 LAND 51 
 
 VIL THE INDEFATIGABLE INDUSTRY OF THE IRISH PEOPLE 
 
 AT HOME AND ABROAD 56 
 
 VIIL LAND TENURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND— A 
 
 DISTINCTION WITH A DIFFERENCE . . . . 70 
 IX. IS THERE FREEDOM OF CONTRACT BETWEEN LAND- 
 LORD AND TENANT IN IRELAND? .... 75 
 X. IS A NOTICE OF EJECTMENT EQUIVALENT TO A SEN- 
 TENCE OF DEATH? 79 
 
 XL IRISH EVICTIONS FROM AN ENGLISH STANDPOINT . 88 
 
 XII. THE IMMEDIATE CAUSE OF OUTRAGE IN IRELAND . I09 
 
 ,XIIL WHO AND WHERE IN IRELAND ARE THE ASSASSINS? II 8 
 
xu CONTENTS. 
 
 CBkr. PAOB 
 
 XI^ THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW IN IRELAND . 121 
 
 XV. THE FORFEITURES AND PLANTATIONS . . . I30 
 
 XVL CONFISCATION AND PLANTATION OF ULSTER . .137 
 
 XVIL PLANTATION AND TRANSPLANTATION. . . .147 
 
 XVIIL ADVENTURERS— PLANTERS — UNDERTAKERS . . 156 
 
 XI^^^THE TRUTH ABOUT ULSTER 1 64 
 
 XX. PENAL LAWS— PERSECUTION FOR CONSCIENCE SAKE— 
 
 AND COMPULSORY IGNORANCE 170 
 
 XXI. DESTRUCTION OF MANUFACTURING AND COMMERCIAL 
 
 INDUSTRIES 186 
 
 XXII. THE CONSTANT NEGLECT AND SETTING ASIDE OF IRISH 
 
 INTERESTS IN PARLIAMENT 193 
 
 XXIIL A FURTHER PROOF ON THE SUBJECT— THE IRISH 
 
 FISHERIES 209 
 
 XXIV. A FINAL PROOF ON THE SUBJECT — THE WASTE 
 
 LANDS 215 
 
 XXV. " THE EVER-FAILING AND EVER-POISONOUS MEDICINE " 222 
 
 XXVL THE ABSENTEE 237 
 
 XXVII. EVERLASTING FAMINE— REAL THOUGH ARTIFICIALLY 
 
 CREATED 247 
 
 XXVIII. PUTTING THE SADDLE ON THE RIGHT HORSE . . 267 
 XXIX. MILITARY FAMINES — MASSACRE OF THE INNO- 
 CENTS 272 
 
 XXX. ASSASSINATION AS AN IMPLEMENT OF STATE- 
 CRAFT 280 
 
 XXXI. POPULATION AND DESTITUTION 286 
 
 XXXII. TWO FEATURES IN AN IRISH LANDSCAPE . . 296 
 
 XXXIIL ENGLAND'S THREEFOLD OBLIGATIONS TO IRELAND . 300 
 
 XXXIV. THE POPES IN THEIR DEALINGS WITH IRELAND . 314 
 
CONTENTS. xiu 
 
 CHAP. J"*"' 
 
 XXXV. AMERICAN IRELAND 322 
 
 XXXVI. HOW THE UNION WAS CARRIED 329 
 
 XXXVII. THE PAENELL COMMISSION— A FORECAST . . . Zl%/^ 
 
 XXXVIII. MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES : — 
 
 Griffith's Valuation — The Irish Members and Mr. Cham- 
 berlain—Our Sympathy reserved for the Foreigner — 
 A Government not of Love but of Fear — The Worst 
 Government in the World — How Loyalty has been 
 Secured in Ulster — The House of Irish Landlords — 
 Boycotting, Old and New — The Two Battering Rams 
 — Napoleon's projected Invasion of Ireland — The Con- 
 fessions of a Unionist — The Vagaries of a Unionist — 
 A Unionist in his Right Mind — A Virtuous People — 
 An Indestructible Nation 347 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 LAND TENURE IN THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS, OLD AND NEW 373 
 
 THE DUCAL EVICTIONS . . . • 376 
 
 NOBLE LORDS AND RIGHT HONOURABLE GENTLEMEN CONTINUE 
 
 THE SPORT 382 
 
 THE MASSACRE OF THE ROSSES 392 ' 
 
 SOLITUDINEM FACIUNT, FORESTAM APPELLANT . . -395 
 
 WHAT THE HIGHLANDERS HAVE DONE TO DESERVE SUQH 
 
 TREATMENT 404 
 
 CONTRASTS 408 
 
 NEMESIS ! > . . 415 
 
 INDEX 421 
 
 . a 
 
A 
 
 KEY TO THE IKISH QUESTION. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 THE REIGN OF EVICTION IN GREAT BRITAIN. 
 
 " A crime of a crying nature, that barreth God of His honour, and the 
 "king of his subjects." — Lord Kkepeb Coventry (1635). 
 
 Speaking in Dublin, in October 1866, Mr. Bright said: — 
 " Ireland has been a land of evictions, a word which, I suspect, 
 "is scarcely known in any other civilised country." Herein 
 Mr. Bright was mistaken, since the thing, if not the word, was 
 familiar enough in England some centuries back, as it has been 
 in Scotland from 1782, and throughout every decade of the 
 present century. Modern English landlords are entirely free 
 from any reproach of the kind, for no body of men better under- 
 stand the rights and more cheerfully discharge the duties of 
 property, as has been abundantly proved by the extensive reduc- 
 tions they have voluntarily made in their rents during the past 
 dozen years of agricultural depression. But in the time of the 
 Tudors, and previously, English landlords did the evil work of 
 eviction in England, as Irish landlords have been doing it in 
 Ireland during the reign of Victoria. There is, however, an im- 
 portant difference in the operations of the two periods. Under 
 the autocratic rule of the Tudors, and later, they were denounced 
 by the Church, Catholic and Protestant, by the great lawyers, 
 and by eminent English statesmen. Now, while the Episcopal 
 Church, Catholic and Protestant, commands us to love God 
 with all our hearts, and our neighbours as ourselves, churchmen, 
 
2 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 by their silence, connive at turning those neighbours out of 
 their cabins, and putting their poor belongings into the street. 
 The modern lawyers dig out old statutes of Edward III. to stifle 
 the voice of the oppressed, and ministers of the Crown employ 
 the forces of the Crown to assist the depopulator in applying 
 the battering-ram to the walls, and the petroleum torch to the 
 roof-tree of the humble dwellings of Her Majesty's poor commons. 
 In the reign of Stephen, the old Saxon chronicler gives a 
 frightful account of the doings of the feudal barons of the time. 
 According to English historians generally, no more ghastly pic- 
 ture of a nation's misery has ever been painted. To till the 
 ground was to plough the sands of the sea. If two men or 
 three came riding to a town, Mr. Freeman observes, in Volume V. 
 of his Norman Conquest, "all the township fled for them, and 
 " weened that they were reavers." And there was no redress ; 
 60 that men at length openly said that Christ and His saints 
 " had gone to sleep." Some of the proceedings of tlio denizens 
 of the baronial castles, as they are described by Philps in tlie 
 first volume of his History of Progress in Great Britain, read 
 like the proceedings of their motley descendants in Ireland in 
 the nineteenth century. Take, for example, the artificial famines 
 of such frequent recurrence which they created : — 
 
 " If from lands that were unshackled by the law," he observes, 
 " a thrifty husbandman took a piece and proceeded to cultivate 
 " it, he thereby invited the notice of some baron greedy of pos- 
 " session, to whom he was compelled by force to yield it up, 
 "and be content to occupy it as a fief, upon the best conditions 
 " that could be obtained. . . . The struggles which the people 
 " made to resist the Norman dominion were so severe, that the 
 "whole face of the country for a time appeared a scene of 
 " wretchedness. Each estate throughout the kingdom became 
 " the centre of a petty and distracting tyranny. Such were the 
 " efi'ects of the Conquest, that four great famines occurred within 
 "a few years subsequent thereto, which were attributable to 
 " these devastations." 
 
 Very little is known of that gradual process of emancipation 
 by which English tenants emerged from the class of slaves who 
 first tilled English lands. Before the Conquest the Saxon farmer 
 
EEIGN OF EVICTION IN GREAT BRITAIN. 3 
 
 was degraded to the position of a feudal dependent on his lord. 
 But the latter was himself, by degrees, pushed from his pedestal 
 by the baron of the Conqueror, and compelled to descend to a 
 lower grade in the system. The ravages of the Black Death iu 
 1348, which carried away one-half the population of England, 
 led to an entire dislocation of agricultural industry. For a short 
 time the number of " landless men " who could find no employ- 
 ment sensibly increased; though by this fearful lessening of 
 the people they became, after a while, masters of the situation. 
 But it was only for a time. Royal ordinances and the remorse- 
 less ingenuity of the lawyers speedily helped the landowners to 
 attempt their reduction to a new and worse form of servitude. 
 By the Statute of Labourers (1349-50) : — 
 
 "Every man or woman, of whatsoever condition, free or 
 "bond, able in body, and within the age of threescore years, 
 "... and not having of his own whereof he may live, nor 
 " land of his own about the tillage of which he may occupy 
 "himself, and not serving any other, shall be bound to serve 
 " the employer who shall require him to do so, and shall take 
 "only the wages which were accustomed to be taken in the 
 " neighbourhood where he is bound to serve." 
 
 The labourer .was forbidden to quit the parish where he lived 
 in search of better paid employment. If he disobeyed he 
 became a " fugitive," and subject to imprisonment at the hands 
 of a justice of the peace. But so ineffectual was the attempt to 
 enforce this penalty, owing to the insufi&ciency of the stipulated 
 wages for a man's support, with corn at a high price, it was 
 further ordered that the runaway should be branded with a hot 
 iron on the forehead. This was not all Succeeding legislation 
 in the same century, on the part of the landowners, forbade the 
 child of any tiller of the soil to be apprenticed in a town ; and 
 the king was prayed " that no bondman or bondwoman shall 
 "place their children at school, as has been done, so as to 
 " advance their children in the world by their going into the 
 " Church." A little learning was evidently held to be a dangerous 
 thing even in those days ! But the rude poetry of Piers Plow- 
 man, and the stirring sermons of John Ball, the Kentish priest, 
 
4 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 sounded the knell of this feudal slavery. The " Ploughman * 
 bids the landowner no longer extort gifts from his tenant, and 
 work no injustice on the poor man ; reminding him that tlie 
 latter may be his superior in the life to come. For, " though 
 " he be thine underling here, well mayhap in heaven that he be 
 " worthier set and with more bliss than thou." This was the 
 gospel of equality and dignity of labour — a declaration of the 
 rights of man in truth — and it was afterwards preached, with 
 like point and purpose, though with not a little development, 
 by the Kentish priest also, as follows : — 
 
 " Good people, John Ball greeteth you all. . . , Things will 
 " never go well in England ... so long as there be villains 
 " [tenants in serfage] and gentlemen. By what right are they 
 " whom we call lords greater folks than we 1 On what grounds 
 "have they deserved it? Why do they hold us in serfage? 
 "If we all came of the same father and mother, of Adam and 
 " Eve, how can they say or prove that they are better than we, 
 " if it be not that they make us gain for them by our toil what 
 " they spend in their pride ] . . . When Adam delved and Eve 
 " span, who was then the gentleman ? " 
 
 Here was resistance to tyranny preached from the housetop, 
 in rebellious speech and writing. And what was the tyranny, 
 or rather the latest form of it ? Disastrous French and Spanish 
 wars abroad required heavy subsidies at home. A poll-tax was 
 imposed by Parliament on every person in the kingdom, the 
 poorest to contribute as large a sum as the richest ! It was a 
 burden not to be endured. Essex peasants ranged themselves 
 under the leadership of Jack Straw, and their Kentish fellow- 
 sufferers, in multitudes, hearkened to the command of Wat 
 Tyler. The whole of the Eastern Counties were in arms, and the 
 rising extended to Surrey and Sussex, Hampshire and Somerset. 
 And yet the claim of those rebels was no more, in the language 
 of one of our most popular historians, than that they should 
 be ruled in accordance with the dictates of " plain and simple 
 "justice."^ They knew how to distinguish their enemies. 
 Every lawyer who fell into the hands of the Kentish men 
 
 1 Green. 
 
REIGN OF EVICTION IN GREAT BRITAIN. 5 
 
 on their line of march was put to death ; and a like vengeance 
 befell the principal ofi&cials engaged in the levy of the iniquitous 
 poll-tax. But the latter was but a drop in the English peasants' 
 cup of bitterness, as will be seen from the subject of their inter- 
 view with the boy-king, Richard II. He bravely confronted 
 the infuriated rebels, on their reaching the outskirts of London, 
 contrary to the advice of some of his ministers ; one of whom, 
 Archbishop Sudbury, was, on account of this attempt to prevent 
 a royal conference with the people, dragged from his sanctuary, 
 and beheaded on Tower Hill. "What will ye?" demanded 
 Eichard of the armed multitude. " We will that you free us 
 " for ever," they shouted, " us and our lands ; and that we be 
 " never named nor held for serfs." The king replied, " I grant 
 " it," and bidding them to return home peacefully, pledged himself 
 to issue the necessary charters of freedom and amnesty at once. 
 But the methods of tyranny are multiform, and the tyrant 
 finds it hard to relax his grasp. The main body of the simple, 
 credulous peasants dispersed quietly, as they were bid, to their dis- 
 tant homes ; thepanic ceased amongstthe nobles, who took courage 
 from the death of Tyler; and the Parliament of landowners 
 refused to ratify the promise of the king. They were, in fact, as 
 obstinately bent on " doing what they liked with their own," as 
 their rack-renting fellows five centuries later in Ireland. It was 
 null and void, they said ; their serfs were their goods, and even 
 the king could not take their goods from them, but by their own 
 consent. " And this consent," they declared, " we have never 
 "given and never will give, were we all to die in one day." 
 Once more they contrived to get their heels on the neck of their 
 serfs ; yet it was only by threats of death that verdicts of guilty 
 could be wrung from Essex jurors, when the leaders of the revolt 
 were dragged before them. The bold course taken by Tyler 
 killed serfdom in the long run. Jack Cade's list of grievances, 
 seventy years afterwards, were such as might have suited the 
 banners of our nineteenth century political reformers. There 
 was no mention of serfdom amongst them ; so that Wat Tyler 
 is one of those historical characters whose services to humanity 
 have been underrated, while the man that assassinated him is com- 
 
6 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 monly neld up to our admiration by the historian as the typical 
 friend of the king, and the enemy of lawlessness and disorder. 
 
 During the protracted Wars of the Roses, in the next century, 
 the lords of the soil condescended a little to spare the lives of 
 their dependents, and even encouraged them to increase and 
 multiply in observance of the Divine command. The object 
 •was purely a selfish one, having a dynastic purpose, inasmuch 
 as it enhanced their own importance to have as many followers 
 as possible in the field of battle. But the iron must have con- 
 tinued to penetrate to the soul of the poor peasant notwith- 
 standing, for there were repeated risings in various parts of the 
 kingdom meanwhile. That they did not take place without 
 sufficient reason may be inferred from the fact that Chief Justice 
 Fortescue, one of the greatest men of his time, is found excus- 
 ing them on the ground that "nothing may make the people 
 "rise but lacke of goods or lacke of justice." The motive for 
 tolerating an increase in the numbers of the English people 
 ceased to operate, however, after the bloody settlement at 
 Bosworth, on the accession of Henry VII. Depopulation 
 thenceforward proceeded apace. Yet the king himself was 
 opposed to it, and during his reign there was a Statute of Tillage 
 enacted, limiting pasture land, and requiring the holder of two 
 farms — none were allowed to hold more — under penalty, to 
 reside in the parishes in which their farms were. It is very 
 interesting and instructive : — 
 
 " That greedy and covetous people gather together into few 
 "hands as well great multitude of farms as great plenty of 
 "cattle, whereby they enhanced the old rates of the rent, or 
 "else brought it to such excessive fines that no poor man is able 
 " to meddle with it, and have so enhanced the prices of all corn 
 "and cattle, almost double above the prices which have been 
 " accustomed. By reason whereof a marvellous multitude and 
 "number of the people of this realm be not able to provide 
 " meat, drink, and clothes necessary for themselves, their wives, 
 "and their children, but be so discouraged with misery and 
 " poverty that they fall daily to theft, robbery, and other incon- 
 •' veniences, or pitifully die for hunger and cold, which things 
 "be principally to the high displeasure of Almighty God, to 
 
EEIGN OF EVICTION IN GREAT BRITAIN. 7 
 
 " the diminishing the king's people, and may turn to the utter 
 " destruction and desolation of this realm, which God defend." 
 
 On an appeal hy the tenants, Henry ordered them to be 
 restored to their dwellings, telling the landlord he was entrusted 
 with his estate for the purpose of keeping men on the land. 
 In those days, and down to the Kestoration, all landed property 
 was held in tenancy from the king, who Avas owner of the soil 
 as the representative of the nation. Even in the reign of his 
 successor, the eighth Henry, laws were enacted prohibiting the 
 enclosure of commons and consolidation of farms. In fact our 
 bluff King Hal required the landlords to rebuild all farm houses 
 which had been destroyed by them since the fourth year of the 
 reif^n of Henry VII. No bad example of the wisdom of our 
 ancestors ! Complaints of the hardships caused to the rural 
 population by the process of "emparkment" were also numerous 
 and urgent. In 15 14 a petition was presented to Henry VIII. 
 to beg him to remedy the state of things brought about by the 
 action of the great landowners in throwing many small farms 
 into one large one, and by the consequent neglect of tillage. 
 The petition states that many gentlemen, merchant adventurers, 
 clothmakers, and others have occupied ten, twelve, and even 
 sixteen farms. By reason of this it says whole villages of twenty 
 and thirty houses have been cleared of their inhabitants, and 
 a solitary shepherd was employed on land which had hitherto 
 provided occupation for sixty or eighty persons.^ That there 
 must have been a good many such monopolists at one period 
 we have proof. John Bayker, a poor artificer or craftsman, a 
 native of Wiltshire, addressed a petition to Henry, in the course 
 of which he said : — 
 
 " Your grace may see how hard hearted they [the ' fee farmers 
 " or rulers '] are unto their tenants that they rather let houses fall 
 " than build. Is it not a pitiful thing to come into a little 
 " village town where there have been twenty or thirty houses, 
 " and now one-half of them nothing but bare walls standing 1 
 
 1 State Papers quoted by Gasquet in his Henry VIII. (Hodges), a new 
 and valuable addition to our historical literature. 
 
8 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " Is it not a pitiful thing to see one man have in his hand what 
 " sufiBced for two or three men when the habitations were 
 •' standing ? No doubt this thing is the cause of much incon- 
 •' venience within your realm." 
 
 But the steady rise in the price of wool in this reign gave a 
 fresh impulse to the movement for consolidating smaller hold- 
 ings, and introducing sheep-farming on an enormous scale. The 
 mercantile classes, too, now rising to prosperity for the first time, 
 began to invest largely in land. And these "farming gentle- 
 " men and clerking knights," as Bishop Latimer scornfully styled 
 them, like the new Lancastrian owners of the confiscated estates 
 in the previous reigii, having neither old traditions nor friendly 
 associations to restrain them, proceeded to a wholesale eviction 
 of the unfortunate tenants. They were to some extent in the 
 position of the novi homines who, in purchasing Irish encum- 
 bered estates after 1848, were liberally provided by Parliament 
 with the privilege of confiscating the fruits of the Irish peasants' 
 industry at the same time. Those whom they spared this pro- 
 cess of extermination in England were yet scourged with scor- 
 pions by an extortionate multiplication of their rents. Latimer 
 himself gives an interesting account of the sufferings of the 
 yeomen of the time in consequence, by contrasting the comforts 
 provided by a small farm, held at a moderate rent, in his own 
 family, with the comparative poverty of the yeoman who suc- 
 ceeded his father on the same farm when it was held at a rack 
 rent. The passage is to be found amongst the bishop's dis- 
 courses preached before Edward VI., and is as follows :— 
 
 " My father," observes the sturdy Bishop of Lincoln, " was a 
 " yeoman, and had no lands of his own ; only he had a farm of 
 " three or four pounds by the year at the uttermost, and here- 
 " upon he tilled so much as kept half-a-dozen men. He had 
 " walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine ; 
 " he was able and did find the king a harness with himself and 
 " his horse while he came to the place that he should receive 
 " the king's wages. I can remember that I buckled his harness 
 " when he went to Blackheath Field. He kept me to school, 
 " or else I had not been able to have preached before the king's 
 "majesty now; he married my sisters with five pounds, or 
 
REIGN OF EVICTION IN GREAT BRITAIN. 9 
 
 " twenty nobles, apiece, so that he brought them up in godli- 
 "ness and fear of God. He kept hospitality for his poor 
 " neighbours, and some alms he gave to the poor, and all this 
 " he did of the same farm ; where he that now hath it payeth 
 " sixteen pounds by year or more, and is not able to do any- 
 " thing for his prince, for himself, nor for his children, or give 
 " a cup of drink to the poor." ^ 
 
 The farmers, according to Sir Thomas More, were got rid of 
 by fraud or force, or tired out by repeated wrongs into parting 
 with their holdings. The entire system of society was, he says, 
 " nothing but a conspiracy of the rich against the poor, and the 
 " wrong was yet made greater by means of the law." The 
 oppressed English peasants made short work of the lawyers as 
 well as the law in the reign of the second Eichard, for surely, 
 as Mr. Goldwin Smith justly observed while he was yet 
 capable of writing in a judicial frame of mind about Ireland, "a 
 "people cannot be expected to love and reverence oppression 
 " because it is consigned to a statute-book and called law." But 
 the league of greedy landlords and impish lawyers was again 
 omnipotent in More's time. The result was the miserable doom 
 of the unemployed labouring class, whose existence was " so 
 "wretched that even a beast's life seems enviable," he said. 
 There is a pathetic passage from the pen of the same illustri- 
 ous author, descriptive of the agonies endured by the evicted in 
 the reign of the Tudors, Avhich will be found in Utopia. It 
 was once likened by Lord John Russell, after reading it in the 
 House of Commons, on the 25th of January 1847, to the de- 
 scription of modem eviction scenes in Ireland in the reign of 
 Victoria : — 
 
 "Therefore is it," observes More, "that one covetous and 
 " insatiable cormorant, and very plague of his native country, 
 
 1 The English yeoman is as extinct as the dodo. In 1660, when the 
 population was about S,ooo,cxX), one-seventh were reckoned yeomen. Their 
 farms have been consolidated into large estates, the agricultural labourers 
 having taken their place, who are themselves now in process of extinction. 
 Between 1857 and 1877, the labourers' numbers were reduced from 
 2,084,150 to 1,447,500, or 30 per cent, in twenty years. There are fearful 
 wrongs underlying these facts. 
 
lo A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION, 
 
 " may compass about and enclose many thousand acres of ground 
 " within one pale or hedge ; the husbandmen be thrust out of 
 " their own, or else either by covin and fraud, or violent oppres- 
 " sions, they be put beside it ; or by wrongs and injuries they 
 "be so wearied, that they be compelled to sell all. By one 
 " means, tlierefore, or by the other, either by hook or by crook, 
 "they must needs depart away, poor, silly, wretched souls! 
 " men, women, husbands, wives, fatherless children, widows, 
 " woeful mothers with their young babes, and the whole house- 
 " hold, small in substance, and much in numbers, as husbandry 
 " requireth many hands. Away they trudge, I say, out of their 
 " known and accustomed homes, finding no place to rest in ; all 
 " their household stuff, which is very little worth, though it 
 " might well abide the sale ; yet being suddenly thrust out, 
 " they be constrained to sell it as a thing of nought. And, 
 " when they have wandered abroad till that be spent, what can 
 " they then do but to steal, and then Justly, pardy, be hanged, or 
 " else go about a-begging 1 And yet then also they be cast into 
 " prison as vagabonds, because they go about and work not ; 
 " whom no man will set at work, though they never so willingly 
 •' prefer themselves thereto." 
 
 To explain more fully what More means, as to the direct 
 consequence of an English eviction in those days, it should be 
 mentioned that in 1535, by the 27th of Henry VIII., c. 25, the 
 "sturdy beggar," a troublesome development of the "vagabond," 
 both claiming lineal descent from the " landless man," was to be 
 whipped when first caught, next to have his ear cropped, and for 
 a third offence, to suffer death as a felon and an enemy to the 
 commonwealth. The "poor silly souls," as More calls the 
 evicted peasants, had not then quite a good time of it in Merry 
 England. They were "free-born Englishmen" — free to starve or 
 be hanged. But whether they relieved their sorrows by singing 
 " Rule Britannia," as in these days, the historian omits to say. 
 Henry VIII. later in life objected to have his multiplied matri- 
 monial joys disturbed by the insurgent wailings of the " vaga- 
 bonds," as it was henceforward the courtly fashion to stigmatise 
 the evicted. Coverdale speaks of the multitude who went 
 about, begging at this time, in his translation of the Bible 
 (1535)' Henry summarily hanged 72,000 of them : twenty being 
 
EEIGN OF EVICTION IN GREAT BRITAIN. ii 
 
 often aeen dangling together from the same gallows. Indeed 
 it is difficult to see what else he could have done under the 
 circumstances. Conjointly with the lords of the soil, he had, 
 by confiscating the religious houses, despoiled the unfortunate 
 of their last refuge for shelter and a crust — their only patrimony, 
 so to speak. Whoso profited by the spoliation, a great English 
 historian shall inform us : — 
 
 " Those families within or without the bounds of the peerage," 
 observes Hallam, " who are now deemed the most considerable, 
 " will be found, with no great number of exceptions, to have 
 " first become conspicuous under the Tudor line of kings, and if 
 " we could trace the title of their estates, to have acquired no 
 " small portion of them mediately or immediately from monastic 
 " or other ecclesiastical foundations," 
 
 And how did the survivors view the proceeding ? Did they 
 dare to withstand the tyrant and disturb the peace of the realm 1 
 Most undoubtedly they did so dare. Agrarian discontent, 
 crystallised over by a regard for the "old religion," now 
 threatened, roused the whole of the northern counties into open 
 rebellion, which was only quelled by deceitful negotiation on 
 the part of the king.^ Henry sowed the wind, and left it to his 
 son and successor, Edward VI,, to reap the harvest. Edward 
 was unfortunately persuaded to lay hands on such religious 
 establishments as survived Henry's reign. But, observes Strype, 
 in the second volume of his Ecclesiastical Memorials — "though the 
 " public good was pretended thereby . . . yet private men, in 
 " truth, had most of the benefit, and the king and commonwealth, 
 " the state of learning, and condition of the poor, left as they 
 " were before, or worse." There was, therefore, but a harvest of 
 further risings and insurrections, accompanied by terrible out- 
 rages in the way of reprisal on the part of the peasants (this 
 time in the east and west of England), which cost the Govern- 
 ment, in round numbers, some ^30,000 in the counties of 
 
 1 The two reasons which actuated the Devonshire insurgents in 1549 
 V ere, " the oppression of the gentry in enclosing their commons," and 
 " the laying aside the old religion, which because it was old and the way 
 " their forefathers worshipped God, they were very fond of." 
 
12 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 Norfolk, Devon, and Cornwall alone ; an enormous sum at that 
 period, being equal to about fifteen times its present value, not 
 to speak of the frightful slaughter of the outraged people. 
 Afterwards the king and his council issued a proclamation, also 
 quoted by Strype, which is worthy of note, inasmuch as it is 
 therein expressly stated that the kingdom is brought : — 
 
 "Into marvellous desolation, houses decayed, parishes dimi- 
 " nished, the force of the realm weakened^ and Christian people, 
 " by the greedy covetousness of some men, eaten and devoured 
 " by brute beasts, and driven from their houses by sheep and 
 " bullocks." 
 
 One might imagine that he was reading, in this pitiful story 
 of England in the sixteenth century, of the achievements of 
 the crowbar-brigade in Ireland and Scotland in the nineteenth. 
 There is nothing new under the sun, and it is rather singular 
 that enterprising writers on the Irish question have not here- 
 tofore made the discovery in regard to the modern clearance 
 system in Ireland. " We are commanded," observes a contem- 
 porary author quoted by Strype, in bitter sarcasm directed against 
 the professors of the gospel, who revelled in those far-off days, 
 as now, in "joining house to house and field to field" — in 
 defiance of the warning contained in Isaiah (v. 8) — " We are 
 " commanded to love God above all things, and our neighbours 
 " as ourselves, while we put them out of their houses, and lay 
 " their goods in the street." To her credit be it told, 
 Mary Tudor issued a Commission to grapple with and restrain 
 the landlords. Its powers were almost unlimited, even to the 
 extent of a compulsory reduction of their rents (2nd and 3rd 
 Philip and Mary, c. i). Indeed, it might have furnished hints 
 for Mr. Gladstone's less drastic legislation of 1870. In Ireland, 
 at the same time, she proved that community of religion did 
 not quite signify community of justice, for this princess antici- 
 pated the iniquitous proceedings of her royal and republican 
 successors in Munster and Ulster, by confiscating the country 
 and exterminating the sept of the O'Connors, in favour of 
 English settlers, in the province of Leinster. 
 
 But these Eoyal Commissions were as barren of any result, 
 
EEIGN OF EVICTION IN GREAT BRITAIN. 13 
 
 in the long run, as those which have reported on the agrarian 
 discontents and disturbances in Ireland throughout the present 
 century. Strype tells how the gentry, great and small, concerned 
 in the clearances and enclosures were highly offended with 
 Mary's brother, Edward VI., and his Council, for authorising 
 the Commission of Inquiry in 1549, after the rebellion. It 
 put them on their trial, so to speak, as well as their wretched 
 victims. They took particular exception to the proceedings of 
 John Hales, one of the Commissioners, for his blunt honesty 
 in seeking a practical remedy for the disorders ; they intimi- 
 dated the witnesses for the oppressed commons by threats of 
 ejectment ; and, finally, packed the juries with their own imme- 
 diate retainers to the exclusion of independent men. Apparently 
 for the sake of peace, and probably under pressure. Hales sued 
 the king for a general pardon all round. But, while the poor 
 insurgents readily submitted, some of the landlords, on being 
 pardoned, at once returned to their old practices, and, according 
 to Strype, " became more greedy [of enclosures] than ever they 
 " were before." Of Elizabeth it is also to be said that at one 
 period at least she, too, apparently endeavoured to curb the 
 excesses of the landlords by various legislative enactments. 
 Speaking in the House of Commons in 1601, in respect to 
 a certain statute regarding tillage, thep. under discussion, her 
 trusted counsellor, Kobert Cecil (Lord Salisbury)— one of the 
 great ancestors of our present Prime Minister — is reported in 
 D'Ewes' Journals, p. 674, to have observed as follows : — 
 
 " I do not dwell in the country, I am not acquainted with the 
 " plough ; but I think that whosoever doth not maintain the 
 " plough destroys this kingdom. ... If we debar tillage, we 
 " give scope to the depopulator." 
 
 But the lords of the soil were too powerful even for Eliza- 
 beth,^ despotic though she was. After a while her affairs abroad 
 and in Ireland so much engrossed her attention she could no 
 longer suffer herself to be pestered with the cries of the 
 wretched at home. She dutifully followed in the footsteps of 
 her father and brother in dealing with the nuisance. In 
 
14 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 Edward's reign the Protector did what he could, perhaps, to 
 stay the arm of the depopulator. But failing in this the 
 Council authorised the punishment of branding with a hot 
 iron " vagabonds " whose alternative lay between vagrancy and 
 death. The barbarous cruelty is thus pithily described by 
 Lingard, in Volume V. of his History of England : — 
 
 " Two justices of the peace might order the letter Y to be 
 " burned on his breast, and adjudge him to serve the informer 
 " two years as his slave. His master . . . might fix an iron 
 " ring round his neck, arm, or leg ; and was authorised to 
 " compel him to labour at any work, however vile it might 
 " be, by beating, chaining, or otherwise. If the slave absented 
 " himself a fortnight the letter S was burned on his cheek or 
 "forehead, and he became a slave for life; and if he offended 
 " a second time in like manner, his flight subjected him to the 
 " penalties of felony." 
 
 Fifty years afterwards the " sturdy beggars " and " vaga- 
 bonds " created by depopulation were, by express orders of 
 Elizabeth, mercifully executed by martial law. In the fourth 
 volume of his great work on Agriculture and Prices, Professor 
 Thorold Rogers says the mass of the people were losers by the 
 Eeformation, owing to the " wantonness " of Henry VIII. in 
 despoiling the religious houses, and the rapacity of the " aristo- 
 " cratic camarilla" which he planted round the throne of his 
 infant son in claiming a share in the plunder. Neither Mary 
 nor Elizabeth could afford to quarrel with the spoilers, though 
 the latter were, according to Mr. Froude, looked upon by 
 Englishmen of the time " as poisonous mushrooms " of un- 
 wholesome origin. The gradual degradation of the English 
 peasant commenced at the epoch of Henry's death, and there 
 is now, at length, after many vicissitudes, no place on this 
 English earth for the agricultural poor to find a footing. They 
 have really no reason to be born into the world at all in the 
 Merry England of our time. And thus, after a continuous 
 struggle extending over many centuries, has been compassed 
 the violation and cancelling of Heaven's great charter — "The 
 " earth hath He given to the children of men." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 WHAT CHURCHMEN AND JURISTS THOUGHT OF IT. 
 
 " As for turning poor men out of their holds they take it for no offence, 
 " but say the land is their own, and so they turn them out of their shrouda 
 " like mice." — Beenard Gilpin (1553). 
 
 Those persecuted Englishmen had the courage on one occasion, 
 in 1546, not only to petition, but, according to Strype, to 
 threaten with everlasting punishment the king, Henry VIII., 
 in regard to further neglect of their complaints. After urging 
 that he should leave to his successor " a common weal to govern, 
 " and not an island of brute beasts," they go on to declare : — 
 
 " If you suffer Christ's poor members to be thus oppressed 
 " [by the landowners], look for none other than the rightful 
 "judgment of God, ... for of all of them that, through your 
 " negligence, shall perish, shall be required at your hands." 
 
 And here it may be convenient to say that English kings 
 did at various times hearken to the cry of misery which went 
 up to the throne from their people; eminent Churchmen, 
 Catholic and Protestant, denounced the tyranny exercised by the 
 landowners ; and even Parliaments, though it might be unwill- 
 ingly, enacted stringent measures, from time to time, to shield 
 the peasants against them, from the reign of Henry II. down- 
 wards. Nor were the great jurists silent either, though their 
 decisions here quoted are only heard of at a later period than 
 this now under review. For instance. Sir Edward Coke 
 appeared to regard eviction as the unforgiven sin. He said 
 that the 37th Henry VI., 46 (Plow. Com. in Nicol's case, 
 12 Kep. 30), in reference to the destruction of highways and 
 bridges, " applies, and a multo fortiori, in the case of depopu- 
 " lation ; for this is not only an offence against the king, but 
 
1 5 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " against all the realm. . . . The offence itself cannot be par- 
 " doned as in the case of a bridge and highAvay, quia malum in 
 "se." And again, in Poulter's case, ii Rep. 29, &, he said: — 
 
 " It appeareth by the Statute, 4th Henry IV., c. 2, that 
 " depopulatores agrorum were great offenders by the ancient 
 " law. They were called depopulatores agrorum, for that, by 
 " prostrating or decaying of the houses of habitation of the 
 " King's people, they depopulate, that is, dispeople, the touns." 
 
 The same eminent authority also tells us that " the com- 
 " mon law gives arable land the precedency and pre-eminency 
 " over meadows, pastures, ruins, and all other grounds whatso- 
 " ever ; " and that averia carucx, beasts of plough, have, in some 
 instances, more privileges than other cattle have (4 Eep. 39). 
 It may be added that, by positive statute, they were liable to 
 distress only when all other chattels failed (5 1 Henry III., de 
 Distridione Scaccarii, and 28 Ed. I., c. 12). In like manner, 
 Sir Matthew Hale, another distinguished judge and lawyer, 
 declared that diminishing the subjects of the Crown was a 
 capital felony, as being contrary to the general policy of the 
 country. It appears in 2nd Henry V. that a dyer was bound 
 that he should not use the dyer's craft for two years ; and Hale 
 held in a case of the kind that : — 
 
 " The bond was against the common law," and swore " by 
 " God, if the plaintiff was here, he should go to prison until he 
 " paid a fine to the king ; and so," he added, " for the same 
 " reason, if an husbandman is bound that he shall not sow his 
 " land, the bond is against the common law " (Ipswich Tailor's 
 case, 2 Eep. 53). 
 
 The Law Dictionaries of J. Cunningham (1764) and Sir 
 Thomas Tomlin (1835) cast an interesting light on this deci- 
 sion, by laying it down that " so careful is our law to preserve 
 " tillage, that a bond or condition to restrain it, or sowing of 
 "lands, &a, is void" (11 Rep. 53). At common law, we know, 
 no mail could be prohibited from working in any lawful trade, 
 "for the law abhors idleness, the mother of all evils." Again, 
 the Lord Keeper, Coventry, when the judges were going cir- 
 cuit in 1635 {'State Trials, yoL iii.), impressed upon them in 
 
WHAT CHURCHMEN AND JURISTS THOUGHT. 17 
 
 a special manner the duty of bringing the offence of depopula- 
 tion under the notice of the grand jurors, and seeing that the 
 penalties provided by law were strictly enforced : depopulation 
 bein'^, he said, " a crime of a crying nature, that barreth God of 
 
 His honour and the king of his subjects." And furthermore 
 it deserves to be mentioned that in the fourth year of the 
 reign of Henry VII., an Act of Parliament, which Lord Bacon 
 describes, in his Reign of that monarch, as being profound " and 
 " admirable," was passed against the wilful laying waste of houses 
 by converting plough lands into pasture. And that act never 
 having been repealed was, it is said, capable of enforcement to 
 restrain the landlords in their rage for eviction at any time in 
 the present century in Ireland if Governments sincerely regarded 
 the lives or happiness of the Queen's subjects in that country. 
 
 Nor did eminent churchmen, Catholic and Protestant, fail to 
 denounce the wrongdoers, in language that is startling to read 
 even now. To begin with, John Rous, the celebrated monk 
 and antiquary of "Warwick, presented a petition to Parliament, 
 in 1450, against the system of depopulation then prevalent, 
 which will be found in his History of the Kings of England. 
 Within twelve miles of the town of Warwick, he says, no less 
 than sixty-five other towns and hamlets are reduced to ruin, 
 and he invokes the vengeance of Heaven on the evictors of his 
 day, whom he likens to basilisks — " whose devouring eyes con- 
 " sume all they fall upon ; " and who are " more culpable than 
 " thieves, whom the law condemns to be hanged. . . . Yorr 
 " oppressors of the poor," he exclaims, "God and all the host of 
 " Heaven detest your infamous society, and the devil only, with 
 "his satellites, can with pleasure admit you into his company." 
 And he quotes passages from the canon law to show that only 
 to two classes of malefactors did thp Church deny the right 
 of sanctuary and benefit of clergy, viz., public robbers and 
 devastators of lands and highways — '^Scilicet latronem publi- 
 " cum et devastatorem agroram et viarum." 
 
 Hugh Latimer, Bishop of Lincoln, was not behind his Catholic 
 predecessor in denouncing the Clearance System, and politely 
 consigning the " Crowbar-brigade" to the bottomless pit in like 
 
 B 
 
i8 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 manner, as may be seen in the second volume of Strype's Eccle- 
 siastical Memorials : — 
 
 " You landlords," he observes, " you rent raisers, I may say 
 " you step-lords, you unnatural lords, you have for your posses- 
 " sions yearly too much. Well, well, this one thing I will say 
 " unto you — from whence it cometh, I know, even from the 
 "devil." As for those surveyors, or overseers, who mapped 
 out the lands for consolidation, "the greedy pit of the hell- 
 " burning fire, without great repentance, doth tarry and look for 
 " them ; a redress God grant." And the Bishop solemnly ex- 
 presses a hope, which, he says, comforts him, that the dread- 
 ful day of judgment is at hand, " which shall make an end of 
 " all these calamities and miseries." Further, by way of setting 
 the episcopal seal on the fate of the impenitent depopulators, 
 he omits not to quote from Matthew xxv., " Depart from me, ye 
 " cursed," &c. 
 
 Another distinguished Protestant divine, Bernard Gilpin, in 
 the course of a sermon preached before Edward VI., in 1553, 
 which will also be found in the same work, bitterly complains 
 of and anathematises the evictors thus : — 
 
 " As for turning poor men out of their holds they take it for 
 " no offence, but say the land is their own, and so they turn 
 "them out of their shrouds like mice. ... Lord! what a 
 " number of such oppressors worse than Ahab are in England, 
 " which sell the poor for a pair of shoes (Amos ii. 5, 6). Of 
 " whom, if God should serve but three or four as He did Ahab, 
 " to make the dogs lap the blood of them, their wives, and pos- 
 " terity, I think it would cause a great number to beware of 
 " extortion, and yet, escaping temporal punishments, they are 
 " sure, by God's Word, their blood is reserved for hell-hounds." 
 
 Finally, Robert Crowley, a young Oxford divine, who received 
 his orders at the hands of Bishop Ridley, in " An Information 
 " and Petition against the Oppressors of the Poor Commons of 
 " this Realm," observes, according to Strype, that : — 
 
 " If there were no God, then would I think it lawful for men 
 " to use their possessions as they lyste. . . . But, forasmuch as 
 " we have God, and he hath declared unto us by the Scriptures 
 " that he hath made the possessioners but stuardes of his ryches, 
 
WHAT CHUECHMEN AND JURISTS THOUGHT. 19 
 
 "and that he will hold streight accompt with them for the 
 " occupying and bestowing of them, I think that no Christian 
 " ears can abide to hear that more than Turkish opinion. . . . 
 " Behold, you engrossers of fermes and tenements, the terrible 
 " threatenings of God, whose wrath you cannot escape. The 
 " voice of the poor (whom you have, with money, thrust out of 
 "house and home) is weU accepted in the ear of the Lord, 
 " and hath stirred up his wrath against you. . . . And doubt 
 "not, ye lease-mongers, that take groundes by lease to the 
 " extente, to let them again for double and tripple the rente, 
 " your part is in this plage. For when you have multiplied 
 " your rentes to the highest, so that ye have made all your 
 " tenants poor slaves, to labour and toyle, and bring to you all 
 " that may be plowen and digged out of your groundes, then 
 "shall death suddenly strike you; then shall your conscience 
 " pricko you ; then shall you think, with desperate Cain, that 
 " your sin is greater than that it may be forgiven. For your 
 " own conscience shall judge you worthy no mercy, because you 
 " have showed no mercy. The same measure that you have 
 " made to others shall now be made to you. You have showed 
 " no mercy, how then can you look for mercy 1 . . . God hath 
 " not sette you to survey his landes, but to play the stuardes in 
 " his household of this world, and to see that your poor fellow- 
 " servants lack not their necessaries. . . . And if any of them 
 "perish thorowe your default, knowe, then, for certeintye, that 
 " the bloud of them shall be required at your hands. If the 
 " impotent creatures perish for lack of necessaries, you are their 
 " murderers, for you have their inheritance, and do not minister 
 " unto them." 
 
 In the foregoing pages the reader has before him a few 
 specimens of the burning eloquence with which eminent Catholic 
 and Protestant Englishmen pleaded, in the pulpit and out of 
 the pulpit, for mercy on the descendants of the conquerors at 
 Cressy, Poictiers, and Azincourt. It is true they pleaded in 
 vain; yet their honour is none the less deserved. Contrast 
 their Christian conduct with that of the unfeeling silence of the 
 bishops of the Churches, Catholic and Protestant, who occupy 
 the English Episcopal bench of the nineteenth century, when 
 they read in their morning papers how the descendants of the 
 Irishmen who helped to conquer at the Nile, Trafalgar, in 
 
20 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION". 
 
 India, and at Waterloo are deliberately placed at the mercy of 
 land-sharks and land-grabbers for extermination in their native 
 country, a.d. 1889. Oh! ye English men and women, who 
 in your hearts revere the memory of honest Hugh Latimer, 
 sometime Bishop of Lincoln, contrast his noble, fearless language 
 in the cause of humanity, three centuries ago, with that of the 
 Archbishop of York of to-day, who only a few months since 
 bespoke an enthusiastic welcome at the English Church Con- 
 gress for the cruel man specially selected by Lord Hartington 
 and the Prime Minister to superintend the inhuman and mur- 
 derous work of evicting women and children at this hour in 
 Ireland ! 
 
 Even if it were necessary, it would yet be impracticable, in a 
 publication of this kind, to pursue the English agrarian troubles 
 further. They had a fitful existence during the period covered 
 by the Stuart dynasty, as may be inferred from the judicial 
 decisions of the great lawyers. The poor-law system, on its 
 present basis, was first established, in 1601, by the 43 rd Eliza- 
 beth, c. 2 ; and the Law of Settlement, in the reign of Charles 
 II., finally put an end to them, by compelling the evicting 
 landowners to support the evicted in England. The exciting 
 cause was thus removed, and thenceforward the "landless man" 
 of English history practically disappears from view, except when 
 some smart London caricaturist finds fun in contemptuously 
 representing him in the conventional guise of Hodge, with a 
 moon-struck face, from which every lineament betraying human 
 intelligence has almost vanished. In Ireland, however, to which 
 kingdom the Law of Settlement was not extended, the agrarian 
 struggle continues in all its intensity. The Irish are, in fact, 
 fighting the battle of the poor and the dispossessed of the three 
 kingdoms. And if you imagine that the reign of cruel wrong 
 in regard to the land altogether ceased in England at the Resto- 
 ration, you are most profoundly mistaken. During the first 
 thirty-seven years of the reign of George III. there were no less 
 than 1,532 Enclosure Acts passed by Parliament, affecting in all 
 2,804,197 acres of English land, which were by these means 
 taken from the many for the benefit of the few. Nor was it 
 
WHAT CHURCHMEN AND JURISTS THOUGHT. 21 
 
 the last of the series. In a small work published in 1885, 
 under the distinguished patronage of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, 
 entitled the Radical Programme, there are some further very 
 painful facts on the subject, which he commends, in a Preface, 
 
 to the careful and impartial judgment of my fellow-Eadicals," 
 just on the eve of his sudden desertion of the latter, in favour 
 of the dukes and other "gentlemen of England." It may be 
 desirable to premise that a " Common " signifies a common right 
 of property existing in several individuals (frequently the in- 
 habitants of a whole village) in a piece of ground, which Mill 
 has called the " Peasant's Park," and Blackstone has defined 
 as " a profit which a man hath in the land of another, as to 
 
 feed his beasts, to catch fish, to dig turf, to cut wood, or the 
 "like." 
 
 Here are the further facts commended by Mr. Chamberlain to 
 his fellow-Eadicals, which well deserve all the attention that 
 can be bestowed upon them : — 
 
 " These Enclosure Acts, framed and carried by Parliaments 
 " composed mainly of landlords, have deprived the labourers of 
 " the means of bettering themselves, which as a class they 
 " formerly possessed. The occupation of land, rights of keep- 
 " ing cows and feeding pigs and poultry, and of cutting turf 
 " and fuel on commons and wastes, with other advantages, 
 " have been almost completely put an end to. The Report of 
 "the Royal Commission on Agriculture, 1867, states that 'up 
 " to 1843 seven millions of acres were enclosed in England and 
 " Wales with, in the opinion of persons of great authority, very 
 " inadequate precautions to secure the rights of the smaller 
 commoners.' During a debate in the House of Lords in 1845 
 the Earl of Lincoln said, 'This I know, that in nineteen 
 " cases out of twenty, committees of this House, sitting on 
 " Enclosure Bills, have neglected the rights of the poor;' and 
 " in the House of Commons it was stated that these Bills had 
 " been introduced and passed without discussion, and that it 
 " was impossible to say how many persons had lost their rights 
 ''^ and interests by their action. • It is true,' said the speaker, 
 that these Bills had been referred to committees upstairs, 
 ^^ but every one knew how these committees were generally 
 ' conducted ; they were attended only by honourable members 
 
22 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " who were interested in them, being lords of manors, and the 
 " rights of the poor, though they might be talked about, had 
 " frequently been taken away by that system.' In numberless 
 " cases ancient rights belonged to the cottages and tenements, 
 "and -were always enjoyed by the tenant, but when enclosures 
 " took place the land awarded as compensation was given to the 
 " landlords, who disposed of it as they thought lit, and the 
 " occupiers, whose claims were ignored, were from thenceforth 
 " deprived of those rights and privileges for ever. 
 
 " The General Enclosure Act of 1845 professed to make 
 " ample provision, by means of gardens and public allotments, 
 " for the labouring poor. A study of the Act shows, however, 
 " that the real power in the matter was virtually placed in the 
 " hands of the territorial class, and that the limited and com- 
 " plicated provisions affecting the poor, and the apparent pro- 
 " tection afforded by the Enclosure Commissioners are, for the 
 " most part, illusory. The result has been the continuation as 
 " a rule, as far as the poor are concerned, of the process carried 
 "on by previous Enclosure Acts. Out of nearly 450,000 acres 
 " enclosed in the twenty- two years, from the passing of the Act 
 "to the year 1867, we have the authority of the Koyal Com- 
 " mission on Agriculture (1867) for stating that only 2119 
 " acres were assigned to the labouring poor, and no doubt sub- 
 " sequent enclosures show a similar result. The general out- 
 " come, therefore, of all legislation with regard to enclosures 
 " has been to take away from the peasantry, as a class, the 
 " rights and advantages which formerly belonged to them ; to 
 " deprive them of the possession and interest in the land, and 
 " to reduce them from a status of more or less independence to 
 " that of mere hirelings." 
 
 Such are the facts and deductions set forth in the Radical 
 Programme in 1885, Mr. Chamberlain's Preface being dated 
 the month of July in that year — that is, about four years 
 ago. But it did not always require the formality of an 
 Enclosure Act to enclose. Thousands of acres were filched 
 from the people without as much as saying " by your leave," 
 by means of improvised palings and other fences, giving point 
 to the old lines which describe it as a crime to steal the goose 
 from the common, but perfectly en regie to steal the common 
 from the goose. Mr. Chamberlain's Radical Programme im- 
 peratively demanded "there should not be a moment's hesitation" 
 
WHAT CHURCHMEN AND JURISTS THOUGHT. 23 
 
 in seekinf^ restitution, otherwise " the fear is that reforms in this 
 " direction may come too late, and that the race of husbandmen — 
 u jjjg hardy peasant class who constitute such a staying element, 
 " the * backbone ' of the nation — will have deteriorated or largely 
 " disappeared." It must be acknowledged that when Mr. Cham- 
 berlain was content to be "a common fellow" his sympathies 
 appeared to go out to the English peasant. He encouraged Mr. 
 Jesse Collings to attempt some kind of retrospective legislation, 
 and Mr. Collings, too, seemed in earnest. But alas ! poor 
 Hodge," as he is so often contemptuously designated in these 
 imbrotherly times, has been cruelly hoaxed by the Birmingham 
 Radical Programme; for, as a specimen of retributive legislation, 
 the ridiculously insufficient Allotments' Scheme of Mr, Collings, 
 which has since been converted into an Act of Parliament, could 
 only have been conceived in the interests of the "gentlemen of 
 " England." The wronged peasant is no longer sure even of the 
 three acres — an infinitesimal scrap of his ancient inheritance — 
 in the Promised Land, and the Birmingham magic cow has been 
 relegated to the riegion of other great expectations alleged to be 
 incapable of fulfilment. The peasant is still driven to take 
 refuge in the towns, there to stagnate in idleness and perennial 
 poverty, with the workhouse for a heritage in his old age. 
 There is a passage in an old English work entitled The Gentle- 
 man [of England's] Calling (1659), which is doubtless familiar 
 to Mr. Chamberlain in his new rSle, that exemplifies in a striking 
 manner his modified notions as to what should be the extent of 
 agrarian restitution in 1889, to avert the doom of the " backbone 
 " of the nation " : — 
 
 " Those that have drunk the blood of the poor, and suffered 
 " the most of it to incorporate into their estates, think by 
 " disgorging some small part of it in a legacy to ease their con- 
 " sciences ; so adapting their restitutions to their rapines, they 
 '• never commence till death has disseised them of all property." 
 
 The English agricultural labourer has been rendered stupid 
 by oppression. But his children are now learning something 
 of the origin of their poverty in the Board Schools of our great 
 cities, which will by and by urge them to demand a very different 
 
24 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 kind of restitution from the Parliament which connived at 
 their ruin. It is not the English peasant only who has hcen, 
 even iu these latter times, wrongfully deprived of his inherit- 
 ance. The Highlander of Scotland has been mercilessly directed 
 to proceed to " hell or Canada," to make room for sheep or deer, 
 just as his Celtic brother in Ireland was formerly compelled to 
 turn his thoughts to " hell or Connaught." There is really 
 nothing new under the sun. The Sutherlandshire clearances 
 have been described by Hugh Miller, whose fame is so well 
 known in England, as "a process of ruin so thoroughly disas- 
 " trous, that it might be deemed scarcely possible to render it 
 " more complete. . . . Between 1811 and 1820 fifteen thousand 
 " inhabitants of this northern district were ejected from their 
 •' snug inland farms by means for which we would in vain seek 
 " a precedent, except, perchance, in the history of the Irish 
 " massacre. ... A singularly well-conditioned and wholesome 
 •' district of country has been converted into one wide ulcer of 
 " wretchedness and woe." ^ Those Highlanders were not evicted 
 for non-payment of rent, but simply turned out of their homes 
 to convert their little holdings into enormous sheep-farms. 
 About the end of the last century the poorer people had lost 
 certain proprietary rights, and the lairds drove them out without 
 pity, and even burnt down their cabins to compel their instant 
 departure across the Atlantic. To carry out these Sutherland 
 evictions, Mackenzie, in his Highland Clearances (1881), says : — 
 
 " South countrymen were introduced, and the land given to 
 " them for sheep farms over the heads of the native tenantry. 
 " These strangers were made justices of the peace, and armed 
 " with all sorts of authority in the country, and thus enabled to 
 "act in the most harsh and tyrannical fashion, none making 
 " them afraid ; while the oppressed natives were placed com- 
 "pletely at their mercy. They dare not even complain, for 
 " were not their oppressors also the administrators of the law. 
 " But having made no resistance, they expected permission 
 " to occupy their houses till they could gradually remove. At 
 " Mayday, to their consternation, a commencement was made to 
 " pull down and set fire to the houses over their heads. Every 
 
 ^ Sutherland at it Wat and It. 
 
WHAT CHUECHMEN AND JURISTS THOUGHT. 25 
 
 " thin" that could not instantly be removed was consumed by fire 
 " or destroyed. Tlie cries of the victims, the confusion, despair, 
 « and horror on the countenance of the one, and the exulting 
 "ferocity of the other, beggar all description. Many deaths 
 «' ensued' and some lost their reason from alarm, fatigue, and 
 '• cold, the people being at the mercy of the elements. The 
 "inhabitants of Kildonan, nearly two thousand souls, except 
 " three families, were utterly rooted and burnt out, and the 
 " parish made a solitary wilderness." 
 
 No poet laureate sung the sorrows of the outcasts. The 
 author of Marmio7i did, indeed, gently — too gently — point out 
 the dangers attending such an exercise of the rights of property 
 at the time, observing that : — 
 
 " In too many instances the glens of the Highlands have been 
 " drained, not of their superfluity of population, but of the 
 " whole mass of the inhabitants, dispossessed by an unrelenting 
 "avarice, which will one day be found to have been as short- 
 " sighted as it is unjust and selfish." 
 
 Terrible scenes of eviction occurred in the Scottish highlands 
 at various periods subsequently, on the estates of other fiends 
 in human form, at Strathglass in 1831, Strathconon in 1840-8, 
 and various other places, at a still more recent date, which will 
 be found more fully set forth in the Appendix. All took 
 place under the sanction of the law, under the shadow of our 
 elastic British Constitution, and in support of the rights of 
 property now represented by — amongst others — the Duke of 
 Sutherland, who owns 1,326,453 acres, covering nearly the 
 whole area of the county which bears his name, and embracing 
 about a seventeenth part of the entire kingdom of Scotland. 
 
 The modern churchmen shine but dimly in relation to en- 
 closures, evictions, and clearances in the three kingdoms. During 
 the proceedings of 181 1-20 in Scotland, sixteen out of seven- 
 teen parish ministers actually took sides with the landlords, 
 telling the unfortunate tenants it was all in punishment of their 
 sins, and exhorting them not to fly in the face of Providence ! 
 In i860. Lord Plunket, the Protestant Bishop of Tuam, in 
 Ireland, indulged in the pastime, hitherto left to laymen in that 
 country, and evicted wholesale all those unfortunate Catholic 
 
26 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 tenants of his who refused to send their children to his 
 daughters' schools. The Times (27th of November i860) 
 — to its lasting honour — upbraided and denounced him, before 
 he could be compelled to drop the crowbar from his consecrated 
 hands, such was the exquisite delight he found in viewing the 
 falling thatch, and crumbling masonry, and fleeing inhabitants. 
 He thought he could do better for himself with the land, and 
 he was ready with complaints against the evicted to cover his 
 cupidity, — just as the Highland proprietors put forward ficti- 
 tious excuses for their barbarous conduct in their own day. 
 " It is not with much credulity," observes Edmund Burke, in 
 his Reflections on the French Revolution, " that I listen to 
 " any when they speak ill of those whom they are going to 
 " plunder. I ratlier suspect that vices are feigned or exaggerated 
 " when profit is looked for in the punishment. An enemy is a 
 " bad witness — a robber is a worse." No wonder the Countess 
 of Sutherland and her factor died serenely in their beds. It 
 Avas Providence that was in fault, the peasants were assured by 
 their spiritual guides, and so there was not even one amongst 
 all the evicted prepared to earn that " eternal glory," which his 
 eminent countryman, Sir James Mackintosh, once said " is due 
 " to men who, for the sake of justice, have been offenders against 
 " law." They marched off the land in mournful procession to 
 make room for the sheep, " poor silly souls," as More styled 
 their English fellows in like case, until at length some 2,000,000 
 acres of territory are said to have been depopulated and con- 
 verted into grazing ground in the Scottish Highlands.^ 
 
 There have, indeed, been two honourable exceptions to the 
 bench of dumb bishops, one a Protestant and the other a Catholic. 
 The latter, Dr. Bagshawe, Bishop of Nottingham, a courageous 
 and highly esteemed English ecclesiastic, denounced Irish evic- 
 tions some time ago, but he was himself denounced in turn by 
 the unfeeling English advisers of the Pope, who hold the Irish 
 peasaiit's hands while Lords Hartington and Salisbury bludgeon 
 him about the head. The other bishop, who experienced some 
 searchings of the heart when he reflected on the tragedy in his 
 
 1 For further information regarding the Scottish clearances, aee Appendix. 
 
WHAT CHURCHMEN AND JURISTS THOUGHT. 27 
 
 own loved country, was Dr. Ewing, Bishop of Argyle and the 
 Isles whose reflections, unfortunately for his fame, have only 
 heen published since his death. Writing to his brother in 1 868, 
 this good man, who was so widely revered for his piety, said : — 
 
 "I have been reading Latimer's sermons and find that the 
 " Land Question had a good deal to do with the Reformation. I 
 " suspect that the unwarrantable enclosure of commons which has 
 " deprived the poor of their own lands and houses, has not only 
 " brought in a Poor Law, but lost us half our Highland population, 
 "to the aggrandisement of a few lairds; so that it has become 
 " expedient for a nation to die for one ! A new reading ! But 
 " what are we to think of our prophets, who prophesied none of 
 "these things, but kept things easy for the landlords, dwelling 
 "on our duty of ' doing our duty in the state of lUe'1 &c. Is 
 " there no prophet in Israel who will establish the Church by 
 "establishing it in the hearts of the people? This and that 
 " man get so much praise for employing so many people. If the 
 "people had their own they would not require any one to 
 " employ them. Jesus * had compassion on the multitude.' 
 " Perhaps I am ' mouton enrage.' Oh ! for one hour of ' bonnie 
 "Dundee' — my ' Dundee ' being a trifle like Garibaldi." 
 
 Would that the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of 
 London, the Bishop of Salford (who owns the Tablet), and Mr. 
 Spurgeon (who wields the Sword and Trotvel), experienced like 
 searchings of the heart. " The name maketh not the bishop, 
 " but the life," according to Wyclif. Though it cannot either 
 with propriety or justice be assumed that the entire British 
 Episcopate are deficient as regards the common instincts of 
 humanity, it is only too true that the bishops have hitherto 
 signally failed to establish the Church "in the hearts of the 
 " people." Mr. Spurgeon lately observed that the people were 
 turning Pagans — " they are just Pagans," he is reported to have 
 said. It is extremely likely. Of all the intellectual, contro- 
 versial, and sensational sermons now preached at St. Paul's, 
 Westminster Abbey, the Pro-Cathedral, and the Metropolitan 
 Tabernacle, there is not one which breathes the spirit of Rouse 
 or More, Latimer or Bernard Gilpin, in defence of Her Majesty's 
 poor commons. It would savour too much of Politics in the 
 Pulpit, forsooth. If it be the office of a bishop to admonish, it 
 
28 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 can hardly be said that the bishops of the Church of England, 
 for instance, have discharged this primary duty in respect to 
 the inhumanity born of misgovernment in Ireland and Scotland. 
 They will have to rouse themselves into sympathy with the poor 
 and the oppressed in Great Britain and Ireland, and preach the 
 doctrines of our common humanity, if they mean to resist and 
 overcome the giant forces of socialism and unbelief now threat- 
 ening to overwhelm us with their pestilent speeches and pub- 
 lications. It is a sad and unhappy but undeniable truth that 
 many, very many, of the authors of such speeches and writings 
 are gradually making conquest of the hearts of the poor by the 
 intense earnestness of their gospel of compassionate sympathy 
 and human brotherhood. 
 
 There is a passage in the Life of the great and wise Prince 
 Albert — whose too early death has, perhaps, been the severest 
 loss this nation has suffered during the present century — in 
 which we are told how, in 1845, while yet a young man, he 
 ventured to warn the bishops privately that they should be 
 Christians and "not mere Churchmen." They should come 
 forward, he urged, and boldly and manfully advise the House 
 of Lords and the country " when the interests of humanity are 
 " at stake," and remember that the Church does not exist for 
 itself, but for the people, " and that it ought to have no higher 
 " aim than to be the Church of the people ; • . . reminding the 
 " peers of their duties as Christians," <&c. In his capacity of 
 a Scottish landowner, also, this young prince — a foreigner — at 
 the early age of thirty, offered an example worthy of imitation 
 which was sadly neglected by native Scottish peers in a like posi- 
 tion. According to TuUoch's admirable story of his Life : — 
 
 " No view of self-interest entered into his calculations. He 
 *' loved the [Highland] people, he admired their character, and 
 " he respected their prejudices as the antique vestiges of other 
 " days. ... To increase the comforts of his tenants, to elevate 
 " their moral and social condition, were objects steadily kept 
 " in view from the time the prince became a proprietor of 
 " Highland property, and they were pursued with unabated 
 " zeal to the end of his life." 
 
WHAT CHURCHMEN AND JURISTS THOUGHT. 29 
 
 The Scottish agrarian question and the Irish agrarian question 
 are so far identical, that Mr. Parnell only behaved like a chival- 
 rous gentleman, when he led his followers into the lobby of the 
 House of Commons lately, to proclaim that the Irish people, at 
 least, bore ao hostility to the children of an illustrious prince 
 and ideal Highland landlord. The Prince Consort endeavoured 
 by precept and example to impress upon the English Episcopacy 
 and the Scottish aristocracy at the same time, wherein lay the 
 path of safety as well as the path of duty — ^rebuking even the 
 disastrous sporting craze of the latter by a habit of getting 
 quickly over his own sport, with the explanation that he could 
 not understand " people making a business of shooting by going 
 " out for the whole day." 
 
 The question of the land may be considered as having reached 
 an acute stage in Scotland as well as Ireland, since the Prime 
 Minister has now advised the Prince of Wales that his son-in- 
 law, the new Duke of Fife, is the most suitable person to pre- 
 side at the Edinburgh banquet to do honour to Mr. Balfour, 
 Lord Salisbury's nephew. No more perilous counsel has been 
 given a member of the royal family in modern times. To say 
 nothing of the bad taste in offering gratuitous offence to the 
 Irish parliamentary representatives who so recently assisted Mr. 
 Gladstone to secure the royal grants, there is the painful fact 
 that the late Mr. Balfour committed flagrant offences against the 
 people if not the State by the wholesale eviction of his tenantry 
 in the Scottish Highlands barely forty years ago, as will be 
 found more or less fully related in our Appendix. Now, 
 eviction is still exactly what it was described by Lord Keeper 
 Coventry in 1635, " A crime of a crying nature, that barreth 
 " God of His honour, and the king of his subjects." Nor can 
 it be denied: that whatever profit accrued to the Balfour- 
 Salisbury family estate by this unscriptural removal of the 
 " ancient landmarks," together with the people themselves, the 
 present Mr. Balfour, whom the Prince of Wales is thus unwit- 
 tingly persuaded to honour, is the person in ostensible enjoyment 
 of that profit. Quos Detis wit perdere pritis demenfat. 
 
CHAPTEK III. 
 
 THE GENESIS OF CRIME AND OUTRAGE IN 
 ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 
 
 " The violence of outrages will always be proportioned to the ferocity 
 " and ignorance of the people, and the ferocity and ignorance of the people 
 " will be proportioned to the oppression and degradation under which they 
 '• have been accustomed to live." — Maoaulat. 
 
 It may safely be affirmed that there has never been a period in 
 English history when Englishmen have not resisted tyranny and 
 oppression by more or less formidable defiance and disregard of 
 what is conventially termed "law and order." It is so long 
 since many of us have been at school, and the columns of the 
 daily papers have absorbed so much of our attention meanwhile, 
 we have nearly, if not quite, forgotten some of the most strik- 
 ing events in our annals which go to prove the fact. But the 
 events are nevertheless there. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, a 
 distinguished statesman, made the question of crime and out- 
 rage in England and Ireland a special study. That Ireland 
 possesses no such monopoly of crime as some persons find it 
 their political interest to pretend, may be inferred from the 
 following observations in his Crime and Disturbance in Ire- 
 land : — 
 
 "When in England the opinion of a large body has been 
 " in favour of atrocious crimes, atrocious crimes have been 
 " committed." He instances the outrages perpetrated by the 
 trades unions as a sufficient proof, whereas, he says, "the 
 " tendency to violent outrage amongst the Irish peasantry 
 " is precisely one of those dispositions which are the creatures 
 " of circumstances, and is very far from being one of those 
 " habits which are proverbially said to become a second 
 " nature." 
 
THE GENESIS OF CRIME AND OUTRAGE. 31 
 
 "We are reading a good deal from time to time in our his- 
 tories and class-books of the doings of the White Boys in the 
 sister country as objects of detestation and alarm. But our Saxon 
 Ki<'ht Boys, who slew the Normans stealthily after the battle of 
 Hastings, when and where and how they could, are but the 
 objects of glowing admiration on the part of Lord Macaulay, 
 Thierry, and other historians of the Conquest : — 
 
 "Some bold men," Macaulay observes, "the favourite heroes 
 «' of our oldest ballads, betook themselves to the woods, and 
 " there, in defiance of curfew laws and forest laws, waged a pre- 
 " datory war against their oppressors. Assassination was an 
 "event of daily occurrence. Many Normans suddenly dis- 
 " appeared, leaving no trace. The corpses of many were found 
 " bearing the marks of violence. Death by torture was de- 
 " nounced against the murderers, and strict search was made for 
 " them, but generally in vain ; for the whole nation was in a 
 " conspiracy to screen them." 
 
 Keverting to the contention of Sir Comewall Lewis, what is 
 maintained is this : that whenever large masses of Englishmen 
 (or Scotchmen) have believed that their rights or their interests 
 might be asserted or promoted by crime, whether in the form 
 of assassination, insurrection, or riotous violence, crime of this 
 nature has been ruthlessly perpetrated, in furtherance of the 
 purpose of the malcontents. It is just as well we should see 
 ourselves as others see us. There is a passage in the liise and 
 Fall of the Irish Nation, by Sir Jonah Barrington, a work now 
 frequently referred to in the present controversy regarding 
 Home Rule, which is not undeserving a place here : — 
 
 " It is not," observes Barrington, " by modern or isolated 
 " events alone, that a fair judgment can be formed of the 
 " characteristic attributes of any nation ; stiU less so of a worried 
 " and misgoverned people. It is only by recurring to remoter 
 " periods, thence tracing, step by step, the conduct of Ireland 
 " throughout all her provocations, her miseries, and her perser 
 " cutions ; and then comparing the extent of her sufferings, her 
 " endurance, and her loyalty, with those of her sister countries 
 "during the same periods, that the comparative character of 
 "both can be justly appreciated, and those calumnies which 
 
32 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " have -weighed so heavily on her reputation bo effectually 
 " refuted. It is a matter of indisputable fact, that during the 
 "twenty reigns which succeeded the first submission of the 
 " Irish princes, the fidelity of Ireland to the British monarchs 
 " was but seldom interrupted, and that Irish soldiers were not 
 " unfrequently brought over to England to defend their English 
 " sovereigns against the insurrections of English rebels. But 
 " when we pursue the authenticated facts of British annals 
 " during the same twenty reigns, we find that an unextinguish- 
 " able spirit of disaffection to their princes, and an insatiable 
 " thirst for rebellion and disloyalty signalised every reign, and 
 " almost every year of British history, during the same period ; 
 " that above thirty civil wars raged within the English nation ; 
 " four of their monarchs were dethroned ; three of their kings 
 " were murdered, and during four centuries, the standard of 
 "rebellion scarcely ever ceased to wave over some portion of 
 " that distracted island ; and so deeply had disloyalty been 
 " engrafted in the very nature of the British nobles and British 
 " people, that insurrection and regicide, if not the certain, were 
 " the expected consequences of every coronation. Through 
 " these observations, the eye of England will at length be 
 " directed to these events. They will then be convinced that 
 " there lurked within the bosom of Great Britain herself the 
 •' germs of a disquietude more unremitting, a licentiousness more 
 "inflammatory, a fanaticism more intolerant, and a political 
 " agitation more dangerous and unjustifiable, than any which 
 " even her most inveterate foes can justly extract from an 
 " impartial history of the libelled country. . . . When it pleased 
 " heaven, during the French Revolution, to inflict a temporary 
 " derangement on the reason of mankind, a spirit of wild demo- 
 " cracy, under the mask of liberty, appeared in fanciful forms to 
 " seduce away or destroy the peace, the morality, the order, and 
 " the allegiance of every European people. . . . That contagion 
 " which so vitally affected the nations of Europe, originating in 
 " France, soon displayed its symptoms in ^very part of Great 
 " Britain ; and when in progress to full maturity, and not before, 
 " was carried into Ireland by collision with the English and 
 *' Scots Eepublicans." 
 
 And then Barrington refers to the state trials and the reports 
 of the Secret Committee of England, in the year 1794, in 
 vindication of his statement. By those reports of the Secret 
 Committee, it appears that Edinburgh, and various other places 
 
THE GENESIS OF CRIME AND OUTRAGE. 33 
 
 in Great Eritain, were infected long before Ireland ; and Mr. 
 Secretary Dundas annexed accurate drawings of the dififerent 
 forms, of pikes, battle-axes, &c., which were fabricated in Scot- 
 land, his own country, for the purposes of treason and murder, 
 to illustrate his alarming information on the subject. On the 
 other hand, it is only just to remember that there have been but 
 three rebellions in Ireland worthy of the name since the date 
 of the first English invasion in 1169-70, viz., the Desmond 
 Eebellion, the Eebellion of 1641, and the Rebellion of 1798 j 
 each one of which is admitted by English historians and English 
 statesmen to have been the direct outcome of misgovernment 
 and grievous wrong, as will be found clearly established in 
 these pages. Of such elementary facts in English and Scottish 
 history we shall be clearly convinced as we proceed, though 
 of necessity they must be stated briefly. In the seventeenth 
 and the eighteenth, as well as in the present century, for 
 instance, the first impulse of the English people in town and 
 country was to have recourse to violence in the endeavour to 
 exclude new machinery having for its object the cheapening and 
 simplification of labour. As far back as the reign of Charles II., 
 the weavers, thinking themselves wronged by the introduction 
 of engine-looms, they banded together to destroy as many as 
 possible of them, without regard either to law or order. In 1697 
 there was formidable rioting in London, directed against the 
 East India Company, by the silk-weavers, who took short mea- 
 sures to resist the importation of manufactured silk into Eng- 
 land. The rioters exhibited courage as well as resolution, and 
 were only dispersed with the assistance of the troops, when 
 they were on the point of success in attacking the India House. 
 And it may be mentioned, as showing how easy it is to get up 
 serious rioting in Great Britain irrespective of any specially 
 grinding tyranny to provoke it, that the imposition of a new 
 malt-tax in Scotland occasioned serious riots in Edinburgh and 
 Glasgow at the beginning of the last century. According to 
 Hume, it had been carried through the corruption of the Scottish 
 members, to whom Walpole allowed ten guineas a-week during 
 their stay in London, telling them that they must make good 
 
 c 
 
34 A KEY TO THE lEISH QUESTION. 
 
 the cost out of the Scottish revenue, or else " tie up their stock- 
 " ings with their own garters." 
 
 Between 1756, when the new town-hall of Nottingham was 
 destroyed in a com riot, and 1769, there was chronic discontent 
 in England throughout the entire country. The cause was high 
 prices of provisions, with specific grievances affecting particular 
 classes. Unlike the Irish, Englishmen have never yet exhi- 
 bited any striking degree of patience or meekness when the 
 gaunt wolf of hunger darkened their door. On the contrary, 
 they have always shown, happily for themselves, a very different 
 spirit on such occasions. Now accordingly the Durham miners 
 and the London weavers broke out into insurrection, as well as 
 the labouring classes in Berkshire, Gloucestershire, and "Wilt- 
 shire. The sailors belonging to the merchant service on the 
 Tyne and Thames shared in the general discontent, and there 
 were the mutinies of the Nore and Portsmouth, the result of 
 Admiralty blundering and oppression at the same time. Half 
 a century later Colonel Despard's conspiracy came to light, 
 having for its object to corrupt the army, seize the Bank of 
 England and the Tower, and assassinate the king. Then there 
 was a formidable plot against the life of George II., which was 
 revealed to Sheridan in 1756; and numerous attempts were 
 made from time to time by conspirators to effect the murder of 
 George III. If Irishmen had taken part in them there might 
 be some palliation found for the crime in the fact that he was 
 their cruel, bitter, unrelenting enemy. " Ignorant, dishonest, 
 " obstinate," observes Phillimore, " he was the tool of an adul- 
 " tress and her paramour." The pious monarch would not, 
 however, tolerate the ownership of land by Irish Catholics; 
 which Burke attributed to his pride and arrogance. Yet it was 
 not his Irish but his English subjects that stoned his carriage 
 when the king was on his way to and returning from the open- 
 ing of Parliament on one memorable occasion. 
 
 In the autumn of 1766 large assemblages of the people, col- 
 lected to discuss the high price of provisions and high taxes of 
 the time, were only dispersed by the military after considerable 
 loss of life. At Derby they were hotly charged by cavalry; 
 
THE GENESIS OF CRIME AND OUTRAGE. 33 
 
 and elsewhere also there were many lives lost in consequence. 
 Still they vigorously resisted starvation and oppression every- 
 where, from Cornwall to Northumberland. Dulce et decorum 
 est pro patrid mori is a very beautiful sentiment, but from 
 1757 downwards there is evidence that there were discontented 
 Britons unpatriotic enough to conspire with foreigners for the 
 invasion and assassination of their own country. One James 
 Aitken came from America to set fire to Portsmouth Dockyard, 
 and afterwards to a part of Bristol Then Bellingham, the 
 Liverpool broker, who assassinated the Prime Minister in 1812, 
 had no such overpowering provocation to extenuate his crime. 
 Mr. Perceval had not at least directed the battering-ram and 
 the petroleum fuse to level his house to the ground and after- 
 wards set fire to the debris. 
 
 During the Napoleonic war the landowners and merchants 
 revelled in huge profits, while the English peasant and artizan 
 bore the burden of the prolonged struggle, without sharing 
 either the gains or the glory of those who boasted of their well 
 rewarded heroism. The war over, the landlord Parliament 
 strove to bolster up their falling rents by enacting the ex- 
 clusion of foreign corn, even though Demos should starve. 
 A spirit of disaffection rapidly spread amongst the working 
 classes, culminating at length in an outrage upon the Prince 
 Kegent, as he was returning from the opening of Parliament, 
 in January 181 7. This led to the suspension of the Habeas 
 Corpus Act In August 1819, Henry Hunt organised a 
 monster meeting, for the promotion of much needed Parlia- 
 mentary reform, in St. Peter's Fields, Manchester, This was 
 no better than insolent presumption in the eyes of the Tory 
 ministers of that day. The attempt to apprehend Hunt, as 
 a disturber of "la«^ and order," led to a fearful riot, in the 
 course of which some half-dozen persons were killed, and a pro- 
 portionate number wounded. The affair obtained the name of 
 the Peterloo Massacre, in derision of the Duke of Wellington's 
 crowning victory in 1815 ; t^® ^ero of the latter being now the 
 object of special unpopularity owing to his Tory politics. About 
 tha same time, one Benbow proposed, amidst great cheering, at 
 
35 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 a public meeting at Birch, near Middleton, that they should 
 march to London, " to present their petition at the point of the 
 sword and the pike." Alarm took possession of the " classes," 
 Parliament was summoned to meet in November, and the 
 Government at once introduced the infamous Six Acts, or the 
 " Gagging Bills," as they were called. Those Acts forbade the 
 carrying of arms or drilling ; proclaimed public meetings ; gave 
 constables the right of domiciliary search ; and eflfectually 
 muzzled the newspapers. As leader of the Liverpool Govern- 
 ment in the Lower House, Lord Castlereagh, who had served 
 his apprenticeship to coercion and corruption in Dublin Castle 
 during the ante-Union period, undertook the congenial task of 
 piloting these severe measures through the Commons ; and he 
 accomplished it. How did the English people demean them- 
 selves under the circumstances? In meekest submission, of 
 course 1 Well, we shall see. It was only after this repressive 
 legislation had been initiated that English rioting, English con- 
 spiracies, and English monster agitation really began. They 
 remembered Castlereagh even in his grave. While the suicide's 
 remains were being deposited in Westminster Abbey, the people 
 gave vent to the popular execration in which he had long been 
 held. The Tory Alison describes the vox populi as the " horrid 
 " shout of miscreants." Anyhow it was loud and exulting enough 
 to rend the air, and, as it broke upon the solemn stillness of the 
 funeral ceremony, to warn the distinguished mourners within 
 that the English masses were no longer in the humour to submit 
 to legislative class tyranny and oppression of the pattern in vogue 
 in Ireland. Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister of those 
 coercion days in England, whose administration lasted alto- 
 gether nearly fifteen years, viewed any proposal for Parliamentary 
 reform as a token of impending revolution. He was immovable. 
 What was once wittily said of another by Courier, a French- 
 man, has not inaptly been employed to describe his state of 
 mind. If Lord Liverpool had been present at the dawn of 
 creation, he must, it was said, in his horror of change, have 
 inevitably exclaimed, "Mon Dieu/ Conservons le chaos I" 
 And the Duke of Wellington, his colleague, was little better, 
 
THE GENESIS OF CRIME AND OUTRAGE. 37 
 
 except that an aristocratic contempt for tho masses, sucli as he 
 is now known to have extended to his soldiers, was at tho 
 bottom of his immobility. These were supported by Lord 
 Eldon, whose pretended zeal for religion was exemplified by his 
 never going to church. But the party had a series of rude 
 awakenings. The excitement consequent upon the Peterloo 
 Massacre was quickly followed by that arising out of the Cato 
 Street Conspiracy, in which twenty or thirty persons, under the 
 leadership of one Thistlewood, conceived the horrid project of 
 murdering the whole of the Cabinet ministers when they should 
 be assembled for dinner at the house of Lord Harrowby. That 
 the Cato Street Conspiracy might have produced disastrous 
 results owing to the widespread discontent of the time is very 
 evident. The importance of such a design is not always to be 
 measured by its success. Pike, in the second volume of his 
 History of Crime, observes : — 
 
 " Had Thistlewood and his accomplices, like the communists of 
 " Paris in 1871, set fire to the capital, and seized all the artillery 
 " which could be used for its protection ; had they, as was also 
 " intended, massacred all the cabinet ministers, and proclaimed 
 " a Republic, with the Mansion House as the headquarters of 
 " the provisional Government, they might to some extent have 
 " directed the course of English history. It is not to be sup- 
 " posed that they would have become the rulers of England, but 
 " they would probably have caused a civil war." 
 
 Those outbursts X)i popular discontent did not stand alone. 
 There were other conspiracies afoot in England at this period as 
 well. They shall be related, however briefly, by one of Eng- 
 land's most distinguished statesmen, together with the very 
 sufficient cause which gave rise to them. We may notice first 
 what he says as to the genesis of outrage in Ireland, since it is 
 the purpose of these preliminary chapters to institute compari- 
 sons between public events in Great Britain and Ireland, not 
 with any invidious object, but because it is necessary to expose 
 the argumentum ad ignorantiam of unscrupulous politicians 
 whether in Parliament or the press. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 DEMOS AROUSED AND DETERMINED IN BRITAIN. 
 
 " In my time disaffection prevailed in many parts of England and [many] 
 " wild schemes were afloat." — Lord John RnssKLL. 
 
 In a public letter addressed to Mr. Chichester Fortescue (now 
 Lord Carlingford) in 1868, Lord John Eussell made the follow- 
 ing observations on English misgovernment in Ireland ; and, at 
 the same time, explained the circumstances under which the 
 unlamented Castlereagh imposed coercion, according to Dublin 
 Castle precedent, upon the necks of the English people : — 
 
 " In Ireland," writes Lord John, " the increase of trade and 
 " the growth of manufactures were nipped in the bud by 
 " the jealousy of England. No poor law was introduced ; 
 "and from 1760 to 1829 the creation of fagot freeholds 
 " augmented greatly the struggle for small patches of land, 
 " from which alone the means of living were to be obtained. 
 '* Hence the murders, the agrarian outrages, the crimes against 
 " person and property, of which Sir Cornewall Lewis has left so 
 " frightful a catalogue in his volume on Crime and Disturbance 
 " in Ireland." 
 
 In the same public letter. Lord John made the following 
 observations respecting crime and outrage in England : — 
 
 " In my time, though not in that of most of my readers, 
 " disaffection prevailed in many parts of England. Wild 
 " schemes were afloat ; one set of men planned taking the 
 " Tower of London with a stocking filled with gunpowder. 
 " Another set conspired to murder the Cabinet ministers, while 
 " they were dining together at Lord Harrowby's, and were 
 " actually arriving for that horrid purpose when they were 
 "arrested by a detachment of the Guards. Nothing more 
 " atrocious than this Cato Street Conspiracy can well be imagined. 
 
DEMOS AEOUSED AND DETERMINED IN BRITAIN. 39 
 
 " The general state of the country in those years is thus shortly 
 " described by Sir Henry Bulwer, in his interesting and instruc- 
 " tive work, called Historical Characters : — ' The Sovereign 
 " and the Administration were unpopular — the people generally 
 " ignorant and undisciplined, neither the one nor the other 
 "understanding the causes of the prevalent disaffection, nor 
 " having any idea how it should be dealt with.' The artizans 
 " of Manchester," Lord John resumes, " thought at that time of 
 "marching to London, each with a blanket on his shoulder; 
 " Lord Castlereagh introduced bills which he called measures 
 " of severe coercion. Both people and Government were wrong ; 
 " the distress passed away ; the disaffection was cured by pros- 
 " perity and improved administration. No one then thought 
 " of saying that the Cato Street Conspiracy was owing to the 
 " wickedness of the English people, and required ' martial law ' 
 " as its remedy." 
 
 And Lord John Kussell, certainly one of the greatest consti- 
 tutional authorities of the present century, proceeds forthwith 
 to apply his argument to the condition of things in Ireland, 
 then scarcely emerging from the results of the Fenian scare ; 
 when certain heedless rhetoricians were iscreaming themselves 
 hoarse in favour of what Mr. Bright once described as the old 
 " poisonous " remedy of force. Nor did tumultuous violence 
 cease then. The agitation which preceded the Reform Bill of 
 1 832 presented scenes of terrific and memorable excitement. The 
 Tories, represented by "Wellington and Peel, were, for their oppo- 
 sition, denounced as enemies of the king and the people alike. 
 Serious riots occurred in various places, especially in Scotland, 
 and lives were lost. In most of the great towns only those 
 candidates for Parliamentary honours dared show themselves 
 who would undertake to vote for "the Bill, the whole Bill, and 
 " nothing but the Bill." In the old English agrarian risings in 
 the midland and northern counties between two and three cen- 
 turies earlier, the insurgents carried banners modestly inscribed 
 "God speed the plough," which, freely interpreted, meant, 
 "Devil take the sheep and bullocks." In 1832 the Reformers 
 marched to enormous mass meetings in drill bands, their 
 banners being more variously suggestive of insubordination and 
 •lisorder,—" Annual Parliaments," " No Corn-Laws," " Universal 
 
40 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " Suffrage," " God armeth tlie Patriot," " Equal Eepresentation 
 •'or Death !" And -when the Bill was rejected by the House of 
 Lords what did the Keformers do 1 They again resorted to riot- 
 ing — fearful rioting — in various directions. At Nottingham, for 
 instance, where the ancient castle of the Duke of Newcastle was 
 burnt ; at Derby, where the jail was forced, and the prisoners 
 liberated ; and at Bristol, where it lasted several days, till many 
 of the public buildings, and a great part of Queen's Square, 
 were destroyed, while loo persons were either killed or wounded. 
 Birmingham also suffered severely, and is said to have been 
 described by the Duke of Wellington, upon whose shoulders 
 rested much of the responsibility, as having the appearance of 
 a city sacked by an enemy's troops. 
 
 During the ten years ending in 1840, the discontent of the 
 poorer classes, arising from distress, originated the riotous agi- 
 tation for the People's Charter in 1839. Scandalous newspapers 
 mockingly directed attention to the Court festivities of the time, 
 and the Queen, in spite of her youth, beauty, and innocence, 
 was made the target of an assassin in Hyde Park. Then super- 
 vened the formidable Anti-Corn Law agitation, during which 
 the Private Secretary of Sir Robert Peel was assassinated in 
 London in mistake for Peel himself. The Eeform meetings of 
 1866, and the alarming destruction of the Hyde Park railings 
 resulting from them, are not quite ancient history. It will be 
 remembered that it was those imposing meetings and • their 
 violent oratory which enabled Mr. Disraeli to " educate " the 
 Tory squires preparatory to his famous " leap in the dark " the 
 following year,, when Lords Salisbury and Carnarvon tried, in 
 consequence, to scuttle the Derby-Dizzy ship rather than yield 
 to the just demands of the people. If those demands had not 
 been granted at the time, past experience shows clearly enough 
 that there would have -been further rioting elsewhere, as well as 
 in Hyde Park. The Eeformers of 1866-7 would not, we may 
 be sure, any more than their predecessors of 1831-2, have felt 
 themselves restrained from indulging in violence and out- 
 rage out of any special deference to the Tory ministers then 
 in power. 
 
DEMOS AEOUSED AND DETERMINED IN BRITAIN. 41 
 
 For want of space no attempt can here be made to supple- 
 ment the foregoing facts hy referring to those riots which took 
 place from time to time in the Principality, as well as in 
 Endand. But any one who remembers, or has read of the 
 Eebeccaites of 1843, will acknowledge that the Welsh people 
 possessed the power of striking terror also. For the same 
 reason it is necessary to pass over the doings of the 
 Luddites (181 1-16) j the polite warnings of Captain Swing 
 (1830-3), in regard to the intrusion of power-looms and 
 threshing-machines respectively; and deal sparingly with the 
 criminal outrages of the trades-unions in England and Scot- 
 land. Combination is one of the most obvious, and, in soma 
 circumstances, one of the most justifiable of defensive measures. 
 The oppressive laws to which the labour-classes were formerly 
 subjected, in town and country, rendered it absolutely necessary 
 for their own protection. In one form or another combinations, 
 in the shape of trades-unions, have existed for centuries, as 
 may be inferred from the fact that, as early as 1548, a statute 
 of Edward VI. is directed against them. Fines, the pillory, 
 and loss of ears followed a breach of its enactments. As late 
 as 1725 a tariff of wages was drawn up by the Manchester 
 justices, declaring that any workmen conspiring to obtain more 
 than the rate thus fixed, should, for the third offence, stand in 
 the pillory and lose each of them an ear. In fact, until 1824-5, 
 it was unlawful for men to combine, either verbally or in writ- 
 ing, for maintaining a rate of wages, or limiting the hours of 
 labour, except at the risk of being punished by imprisonment 
 as criminals. Relics of those barbarous statutes and arbitrary 
 usages survived in England long afterwards even. Under a 
 variety of Acts, agricultural servants, for instance, could be 
 sentenced to imprisonment by a justice of the peace for breach 
 of their service contracts. This liability was only abolished in 
 1875, so that it is within quite a recent period they became 
 entitled to relief, under the remedies provided by the Employers 
 and "Workmen Act of that year. The labourer, whether on the 
 land or in the workshop, is always more or less heavily handi- 
 capped in a contest with the landowner or the capitalist. The 
 
42 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 master may suffer loss, but the servant is ruined. The uneijual 
 position of the latter was sufficiently exasperating at times, and 
 all these cruel enactments only rendered it doubly so. 
 
 The best account of the operations of the trades-unions is 
 to be found in the Eeport of the Social Science Committee, 
 appointed at Bradford in 1859, of which the late Mr. W. E. 
 Forster, and Professor Fawcett, were members. A carefully 
 compiled abstract of this Report appeared in the Pall Mall 
 Gazette of the 29th of June 1887, from the very competent pen 
 of Professor Beesly, from which we learn a number of startling 
 and terrible facts. For instance, outrages by beating and 
 smearing with tar are mentioned in 181 7. In 182 1, and again 
 in 1823, men were hung for murders committed in connection 
 with the sawyers' trade. At Ashton-under-Lyne, in 1 831, an 
 employer was assassinated, and it was proved at the trial of the 
 assassins, three years later, that they had acted by an order of 
 the Spinners' Union, and were to receive;^ 10 for the fearful 
 job. Several other attempts at murder by shooting took place 
 about the same time. In 1859-60 there were many outrages 
 among the chainmakers in Worcestershire and Staffordshire. 
 Property was damaged, horses were injured, and several 
 attempts were made to blow up workshops with gunpowder. 
 In 1819-23 we read that in the Glasgow and Paisley cotton 
 trade there was a series of outrages of the most atrocious 
 character; the lowest depths of barbarity being reached in 
 vitriol-throwing and woman-beating. There were a great many 
 cases of shooting. The organisation of the Union was kept 
 very secret, and therefore no information could be gained con- 
 cerning it. Large rewards were offered for the conviction of 
 offenders, but without result. The oath by which the com- 
 bined cotton-spinners bound themselves was in the following 
 terms : — " I, A. B., do voluntarily swear in the awful presence 
 " of Almighty God, that I will execute with zeal and alacrity 
 "as far as in me lies every task or injunction which the 
 " majority of my brethren shall impose upon me in furtherance 
 •' of our common welfare ; as the chastisement of knobs, the 
 " assassination of oppressive and tyrannical masters, or demo- 
 
DEMOS AKOUSED AND DETERMINED IN BRITAIN. 43 
 
 " lition of the shops that shall he incorrigihle." In 1838, after 
 a trial of members of the Glasgow cotton-spinners' committee, 
 the sheriff said : — 
 
 " In the course of the arduous duty which oflBcially fell upon 
 "us of tracing out the ramifications of this momentous con- 
 " spiracy, and discovering and protecting the witnesses by whom 
 "it was to be established, I have often almost despaired of 
 "success, not from a doubt as to the reality of the crimes 
 " charged against the conspirators, not from a doubt of the 
 " share which the accused had in their perpetration, but from 
 " the extraordinary power and indefatigable efforts of a nume- 
 " rous association, consisting in this neighbourhood of several 
 " thousand persons, combined with hundreds of thousands 
 " throughout the whole empire " [here the sheriff was draw- 
 ing on his imagination. Professor Beesly thinks], " by whose 
 " activity and intimidation the arm of justice in this country 
 " has, for the last twenty years, in relation to crimes of this 
 " description, been so often paralysed. I rejoice to think 
 " that its misdeeds are at length completely brought to light ; 
 " and that despite all the efforts of intimidation, and all the 
 " attempts at concealment, the acts of assassination and fire- 
 " raising, by which terror has so long been spread through the 
 " West of Scotland, have been traced to their real source, and 
 " the system by which they were perpetrated fully developed." 
 
 So far Professor Beesly. But there are also other revelations 
 arising out of the Special Commissions of 1867, particularly 
 that at Shefl&eld. Like the brickmakers of Lancashire, the 
 Sheflfield grinders began with merely refusing to work with 
 non-unionists. But their methods of procedure frequently 
 ended in brutal and murderous outrage. Out of some sixty 
 trades-unions in that town, thirteen were proved to have pro- 
 moted or encouraged outrages of various degrees of criminality, 
 including personal violence and murder. Several of them had 
 been paying money for their perpetration ; or allowing it to 
 be taken from the funds for the purpose without observation or 
 inquiry. If " rattening " failed to convey suflficient warning it 
 was succeeded by anonymous threats of vengeance against the 
 refractory workmen, which, in too many instances, were carried 
 out to the last extremity. Thus, in 1854, a man named Elisha 
 
44 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 Parker had his house blown up by gunpowder, his horse ham- 
 strung, and himself disabled by a pistol-shot ; because he 
 worked with non-union men in spite of warnings requiring him 
 to quit his employment. In 1857, James Linley was shot at 
 and wounded for changing his business of grinding scissors for 
 that of grinding saws ; another of his offences being the keep- 
 ing of more apprentices than the rules of the union prescribed. 
 And, as he persisted in defying the union, he was shot dead, 
 by means of an air-gun, in 1859. Again, it was proved before 
 the Royal Commission at Manchester that in the brickmaking 
 trade outrages had been committed hardly less atrocious than 
 those at Sheffield; explosions in dwelling-houses, and ham- 
 stringing of horses being common. The evidence given at 
 Dudley and Wolverhampton revealed a similar state of- things. 
 Of the vitroil- throwing at Glasgow, the Swing fires in agri- 
 cultural counties, and various other periodical outbreaks, little 
 can here be said. It was not the severity of the law, but an 
 alteration of the law, and the abolition of harsh and exceptional 
 law, that led to the cessation of these frightful outrages in 
 Great Britain. But with all that can possibly be urged in 
 their extenuation, will anybody venture to maintain that the 
 originating provocation is for one moment to be compared with 
 those scenes of eviction that are of perennial occurrence amongst 
 the poorest of the poor in Ireland ; urging its victims by every 
 law of nature to passionate resentment against the destroyer of 
 their homes and existence, humble and wretched though they 
 be ? In one case crime is committed only for the purpose of 
 maintaining a certain rate of wages, or to obtain shorter hours 
 of labour. In the other it is perpetrated to resist, or avert, or 
 avenge what is nothing short of the moral and physical des- 
 truction of the family, mainly composed of half-starved and 
 nearly naked women and children. Would that members and 
 supporters of the Government, and their Liberal allies, remem- 
 bered these humiliating facts, and ceased to practice the dis- 
 honest art of concealment and flattery when addressing public 
 
 meetings. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 CRIME AND OUTRAGE IN ENGLAND AND 
 IRELAND COMPARED. 
 
 " The truth is, in time of peace, the Irish are more fearful to offend the 
 "law than the English, or any other nation whatsoever." — Sib John 
 Davis (1612). 
 
 As regards estimates of political, agrarian, and ordinary crime 
 in England and Ireland in more recent times, there are passages 
 ,in the Journals of Mr, Nassau Senior, the well-known English 
 political economist, which are at once discriminating and instruc- 
 tive. Speaking of the sister kingdom, he says : — 
 
 " There is really not much crime in Ireland. A few crimes 
 " of a frightful nature are committed ; they fill us with horror 
 "and terror, and their peculiarly mischievous tendency — 
 " directed as they are against the improvement of the country ^ 
 " — forces them on our attention. But burglary seems to be 
 " almost unknown. Colonel Senior never bars his doors or 
 " his windows. There is little theft, there is no poisoning, 
 " little unchastity. One of the evils most common in a dis- 
 " turbed country is the insecurity of the roads. Though Ire- 
 " land has been disturbed for centuries the roads have always 
 " been safe." 
 
 The Irish peasants, it is true, have sometimes given vent to 
 their fury on the dumb animals which have supplanted them 
 on the land, and in the estimation of the landlord and the 
 Government. But the circumstance has not been a common 
 
 ^ Mr. Senior approved of depopulation and the clearance system, con- 
 sidering sheep and bullocks preferable to human beings. This it was 
 that led him to regard it as highly reprehensible in the latter to resist 
 (Violence by violence, in the process of eviction. One is amazed at the 
 erroneous conscience possessed by so singularly able a man. 
 
46 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 one, thougli it has been exaggerated in the press beyond all 
 rational inference. And it has been the chief stock-in-trade of 
 the unscrupulous platform orator during the last few years, 
 in the absence of anything better calculated to -serve his dis- 
 honest purpose. It "will generally be seen that audiences, to 
 which men of the stamp of Mr. Chamberlain, for instance, 
 pander, are far more readily impressed by stories of the kind, 
 well or ill-founded, affecting brute beasts, than by even the most 
 terrible narrative of suffering endured by human beings, whether 
 aged or infantile, in the process of eviction from the shelter 
 of their humble home and fireside. The houghing of a single 
 bullock, or the disfigurement of a horse's tail, inspires such 
 curious humanitarians with horror, real or affected, when such 
 detestable and cowardly offences occur in Ireland. But we hear 
 of no extraordinary exclamations of horror or indignation in the 
 press or on the platform when Mr. John Colam reads his prosaic 
 report on Cruelty to Animals in England, at the annual meet- 
 ing of his society in Jermyn Street, St. James's, though the 
 sixty-fourth and last report published shows that there were 
 close upon five thousand convictions for offences committed on 
 dumb animals in England and "Wales in 1 887 alone. The injustice 
 of this too common charge against the Irish is aggravated by the 
 fact that offences of the kind in Ireland may be, and un- 
 doubtedly often are — like threatening letters — committed in the 
 interests of the landlords, or other persons who think it useful to 
 their cause to blacken the character of the peasants. Yet they 
 were made one of the chief grounds upon which Mr. Forster 
 obtained his Coercion Act in 1881, when he stated to the House 
 of Commons that there had been exactly loi " cases " — not con- 
 victions — of maiming cattle during the previous year throughout 
 the length and breadth of Ireland. Mr. Gladstone, writing to 
 a correspondent in regard to such offences, in October last year, 
 said, with his usual discernment and sense of justice : — 
 
 "The Irish are a very humane people, and the occasional 
 " deviation from humanity in regard to cattle has a peculiar 
 •' history which ought to make us blush as well as them." 
 
CRIME IN ENGLAND AND IRELAND COMPARED. 47 
 
 Of course Mr. Gladstone is referring to the extraordinary 
 preference which the Government, as well as the landlords, have 
 uniformly shown for the brute creation over human beings in 
 Ireland, as exemplified by their systematic support of the land- 
 lord policy of wholesale eviction at all times. There are too 
 many amongst us, including our poet laureate, whose affection for 
 the dumb auimals is only surpassed by their indifference towards 
 the sad lot of their fellow-creatures in Ireland. To such persons, 
 living in an atmosphere of cant without being conscious of it, 
 one might commend the lines of Coleridge : — 
 
 " He prayeth well, who loveth well 
 Both man, and bird, and beast ; 
 He prayeth best, who loveth best 
 
 All things both great and small ; 
 For the dear God who loveth us, 
 He made and loveth all." 
 
 Another too common superstition in regard to crime in 
 Ireland, which is much cherished by a large number of people, 
 is also due to the platform orators in question. They impose 
 on their dupes by telling them persistently that we are, in Great 
 Britain, such a law-abiding people, there is no such thing as 
 screening criminals amongst us, whereas in Ireland to secure 
 the capture of a criminal is almost impossible on account of the 
 alleged sympathy of the population. No doubt there is often 
 sympathy there for the perpetrator of agrarian outrages, who does 
 but execute the lex talionis on the evicting landlord or his 
 agents. But what are the facts in regard to the question generally 1 
 Under the head of " criminal and judicial statistics," WTiitaker's 
 Almanack for 1888 shows that the proportion of apprehensions 
 to indictable offences is actually much higher in Ireland than in 
 England, the numbers being 59 per cent, in Ireland in 1884, while 
 in England they were only 43.2 per cent, during the same year. 
 
 Again, addressing a meeting of Primrose Dames at Birming- 
 ham on the 26th of April last, Mr. Joseph Chamberlain wound 
 up a bitter harangue in this manner : — 
 
 " I say without hesitation that this Parnellite agitation — this 
 " Gladstonian-Parnellite agitation — was the most immoral agita 
 
48 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION, 
 
 " tion this country has seen, and in the course of it women have 
 " suffered even more than men. Women in Ireland have seen 
 " the men of their families, their fathers, their brothers, and 
 " their children shot down at their feet in spite of their prayers 
 " and entreaties. Women have afterwards been jeered and 
 " mocked at in their affliction, women have been boycotted and 
 " ruined, and in some cases driven to madness, and women have 
 " throughout suffered by all the practices which we deplore." 
 
 Now, during the whole ten years that have elapsed since the 
 agrarian agitation commenced in 1879, such cases as are here 
 referred to might be counted on the fingers of one hand — cer- 
 tainly of two hands — which would give one such revolting 
 case for every year. When Mr. Forster endeavoured to secure 
 his Coercion Act in 1881 he unfolded before the House of 
 Commons a minute description of " carding " in Ireland, which 
 means applying a kind of curry-comb to the back of the victim. 
 His audience was struck dumb with horror, but it was after- 
 wards ascertained that he had unearthed but one solitary atro- 
 city of the kind for the entire year of 1880 throughout the 
 whole of Ireland. Mr. Joseph Chamberlain spits out his venom 
 in this instance only to damage the English Liberal party by 
 odious associations. What an amount of unabashed malice a 
 person must be possessed of to presume so far upon our 
 ignorance in this matter, with so much reliable information at 
 hand. The Blue-Book of criminal statistics for England and 
 Wales for 1885 exhibits in painful detail the fact that 43,962 
 indictable offences were committed during the year, and that 
 19,207 persons only were apprehended in connection with them, 
 a state of things which shows that sympathy with criminals, if 
 it is to be judged, as in Ireland, by the number of unpunished 
 crimes, prevails in England as in other countries. In the year 
 1885 there were 136 murders in England, 49 attempts to 
 murder, 652 cases of shooting at, wounding, stabbing, &c., 269 
 cases of manslaughter, and 156 unnatural offences. There were 
 also 290 cases of rape, and 569 unsuccessful indecent assaults; 
 besides 633 other assaults, 3169 burglaries, 2302 attempts at 
 burglaries, 373 cases of robbery with violence, 276 cases of horse 
 
CRIME IN ENGLAND AND IRELAND COMPARED. 49 
 
 stealing, 181 of sheep stealing, and 27,797 larcenies, all of which 
 make up a catalogue of horrors which Ireland— where the vast 
 majority of criminal offences are purely agrarian in their character 
 —could scarcely hope to emulate. If merely the coping of a 
 ■waU he thrown down there, the incident is carefully telegraphed 
 hy the ubiquitous "Our own Correspondent" as an agrarian 
 outrage. Under the head of " MaUcious Offences and Wilful 
 " Damage " in England and "Wales, the same Blue-Book reports 
 as follows : — 
 
 Destroying Fences, Walls, and Gates . . 2,903 
 
 Fruit and Vegetable Productions . 1,416 
 
 „ Trees and Shrubs . . . 1,666 
 
 Other Offences 16,683 
 
 In the same year there were no less than 12,563 aggravated 
 assaults committed on peace ofiBcers. And though there is, it 
 is true, neither treason nor treason-felony in this appalling 
 kalendar, yet in other respects it comprises almost every crime 
 under heaven which can render man obnoxious to the Almighty. 
 Speaking at Cirencester in 1880 Sir Michael Hicks Beach 
 candidly said that his experience in Ireland (as Lord Beacons- 
 field's Chief Secretary) : — 
 
 " Had taught him one lesson. Tliey must not believe all the 
 " exaggerated reports they had heard ; they must not consider 
 " as true of the whole of Ireland what might be true of one 
 " or two small parts of the country. It did not follow that 
 "because murder had been committed in the West that, 
 " therefore, the City of Dublin was not as safe as the town of 
 " Cirencester. He feared that press correspondents, anxious, 
 " no doubt, to gratify the desire of the public for news, were 
 " not always particular in the kind of news they supplied, and 
 " certainly the press correspondents in Ireland were not more 
 " particular than their brethren in England." 
 
 After the defeat of Mr. Gladstone's Government in 1874, Mr. 
 Goschen, who was one of its members, declared in a public 
 speech that his colleagues and he had been "lied out of offioe." 
 Mr. Disraeli cynically accounted for the resignation of tlie 
 Government differently, by saying that Mr. Gladstone had 
 
so A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 become discontented because of his majoirity being reduced to 
 eighty — " Dizzy " himself having kept office for a time by shift? 
 and subterfuges without any majority at all. However, accept- 
 ing Mr. Goschen's explanation of the defeat, it must be very 
 painful to a gentleman of so sensitive a nature to be now daily 
 sitting side by side in sweet communion with the Lords Ananias 
 and Ladies Sapphira, who are at the present moment keeping his 
 old friends out of office, and himself in, by sheer lying of the 
 same bold and uncompromising character in regard to Ireland. 
 Yet is he not very much behind the worst of them in trotting 
 out the old stale commonplaces about " crime and outrage," 
 and "law and order" in that country whenever he is told off 
 for the purpose. He may mince his words, and be not quite 
 so shameless in his harangues as his friend, Mr. Chamberlain ; 
 but he contrives to ignore the facts and obscure the argument 
 without more scruple. The " party " require it, and what the 
 party require he must do, so long as he consents to wear their 
 habiliments. Whenever such men address themselves to the 
 "law-abiding" instincts of Englishmen or Scotchmen, they 
 are only trying to " take them in," for whenever Englishmen or 
 Scotchmen have been made hungry by misgovernment they 
 have defied and trampled upon the law. It is painful to be 
 obliged to speak of persons in such high office thus, but it is 
 unavoidable in the circumstances. There is Mr. Matthews, the 
 Home Secretary, who afforded facilities to visitors to our 
 Government prisons bent upon the wicked design of tempting 
 unfortunate prisoners, by promises of lenient treatment, to 
 fabricate evidence tending to discredit the Irish parliamentary 
 representatives — thus suborning perjury to serve the meanest 
 political purpose. Again, Mr. Smith, the First Lord of the 
 Treasury, indecently selected three judges of his own political 
 complexion to try the parliamentary opponents of her Majesty's 
 Government in a manner unknown to the Constitution, every 
 member of which was or should have been well informed before- 
 hand that the principal and only important count in the indict- 
 ment confided to Sir Richard Webster and Sir Henry James 
 was founded upon flagrant lying, forgery and fraud. 
 
CHAPTER VL 
 
 THE FERTILITY AND INDUSTRIAL RESOURCES 
 OF IRELAND. 
 
 "For this island, it is endowed with so many dowries of nature, . , . espe- 
 " cially the race and generation of men^valiant, hard, and active, as it is 
 " not easy, no not upon the Continent, to find such confluence of commodities, 
 " if the hand of man did join with the hand of Nature." — ^LoBD Baoon. 
 
 Ireland is naturally fertile, possesses great industrial resources, 
 and is admirably situated for successful commercial enterprise. 
 The country abounds in fine harbours. Bantry Bay, and Cork 
 Harbour, are almost unrivalled, feach of them being capable of 
 sheltering the entire naval forces of the empire. And there 
 are besides quite a dozen harbours in addition, in which the 
 largest men-of-war might ride in safety; with about seventy 
 harbours fitted for the ordinary purposes of commerce. In 
 short, a learned English authority, Newenham, in his View of 
 Ireland, observes that most of the harbours of Ireland rank, in 
 all respects, with the noblest in the world; several of them 
 excelling those of which any other country can boast. Thfe 
 fertility of the pastoral and agricultural land in Ireland has 
 also, from the earliest times, evoked the surprise and admira- 
 tion of English and foreign writers. The Venerable Bede, one 
 of the most trustworthy of our ecclesiastical historians, is led 
 to observe that — '^Scotia, which is also called Ireland, is an 
 " island of a truly fruitful soil ; but more eminent even for its 
 " most holy men," — of whom something will be found in these 
 pages, in explanation of England's indebtedness to Ireland. 
 Edmund Spenser, the author of the FaevT/ Queen, has described 
 Ireland in the language of poetical hyperbole as a country 
 formerly of such "wealth and goodness" that the gods 
 used to resort thereto for "pleasure and for rest." But 
 
52 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 he has also described it in the language of sober prose and truth, 
 as follows : — 
 
 " And sure it is yet a most beautiful and sweet country as 
 " any is under heaven, being stored throughout with many 
 "goodly rivers, replenished with all sorts of fish most abun- 
 " dantly, sprinkled with many very sweet islands and goodly 
 " lakes, like inland seas that will carry even shippes upon their 
 " waters. . . . Also full of very good ports and havens opening 
 " upon England, as inviting us to come into them, to see what 
 " excellent commodities that country can afford ; besides, the 
 " soyle itself e fit to yeeld all kinde of fruit that shall be 
 " committed thereunto. And lastly, the heavens most mild 
 " and temperate, though somewhat more moist than the parts 
 " towards the east." 
 
 Sir John Davis, Attorney-General for Ireland in the reign of 
 James I., and an Englishman, has left behind him, in his Dis- 
 coverie, an interesting picture of Ireland in the quaint language 
 of the time, thus : — 
 
 " I have observed the good temperature of the air, the fruit- 
 " fulness of the soil, the pleasant and commodious seats for 
 " habitation, the safe and large ports and havens, lying open for 
 " traflBc to all the western parts of the world, the long inlets of 
 " many navigable rivers, and so many great lakes and fresh 
 " ponds within the land, as the like are not to be seen in any 
 " part of Europe ; and lastly, the bodies and minds of the 
 " people endued with extraordinary abilities of nature." 
 
 Arthur Young, the most distinguished of English travellers 
 who have written about Ireland, through which he passed about 
 1777, exhibits marvellous industry in his searches after truth, 
 so that his Tour is at the present day a standard work of re- 
 ference, Alas ! to our shame be it said, you might travel 
 throughout Ireland in this year of our Lord, 1889, equipped 
 with pocket editions of Arthur Young, as well as of Dean Swift, 
 who preceded him by half a century, and find the economic con- 
 dition of the country and its inhabitants generally in much the 
 same state as that in which it was in the last century, as 
 described by them. Speaking of the counties of Limerick and 
 Tipperary, Young observed as follows : — " It is the richest soil 
 
INDUSTRIAL EESOURCES OF IRELAND. 53 
 
 « I ever saw, and such as is appKcable to every purpose you 
 " can wisli." And referring to Ireland generally, he says, in 
 Part 11. of his Tour: — 
 
 " Natural fertility, acre for acre, over the two kingdoms, is 
 "certainly in favour of Ireland; of this I believe there can 
 "scarcely be a doubt entertained, when it is considered that 
 "some of the more beautiful and best cultivated counties in 
 " England owe almost everything to the capital, art, and industry 
 " of the inhabitants." 
 
 Mr. MacLagan, M.P., in his Land OuUure, 1869, observes : — 
 " The tillage lands of the South of Ireland, though not so rich 
 " as the pasture lands of Tipperary, Limerick, and the Meaths, 
 "are also of great fertility. I join heartily in the eulogium 
 " pronounced by Arthur Young and other judges of the richness 
 "of the soils of Ireland." — "In natural fertility," observes 
 Kichard Cobden, in the first volume of his Political Writings, 
 " and in the advantage of navigable streams, lakes, and harbours, 
 " Ireland is more favoured than England, Scotland, or Wales." — 
 " Superior to England as a soil," observes De Lavergne, in his 
 Essay on Rural Economy. "As for the soil of Ireland," he 
 writes, "it produces excellent pasture spontaneously. ... In 
 "Ireland nature supplies grass in abundance." — Buchanan, in 
 his History of Scotland, speaks of it as the richest pasturage in 
 Europe. There is hardly any diversity of opinion on the sub- 
 ject. According to Sir Robert Kane, in his Industrial Resources 
 of Ireland, that kingdom, which has now a population below 
 5,000,000, is capable, under proper management, of sup- 
 porting in comfort 20,000,000 souls. M. de Beaumont says 
 25,000,000 ; Poulett-Scrope, 33,000,000. Sir Charles Napier, 
 of Scinde, on the authority of Sir Humphry Davy, declared 
 that 50,000,000 " could be well fed and happy in Ireland ; " 
 while Arthur Young puts the figure at 100,000,000 which the 
 country is capable of supporting. Yet we every day hear from 
 public men of distinction who ought to know better that Ire- 
 land only requires the further depletion of her population by 
 a million or two to secure her prosperity. Sir "Walter Scott, 
 
54 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 vfho made two tours in the country, writing to Joanna Eaillie 
 in October 1825, predicts of Ireland that : — 
 
 " Despite all the disadvantages which have hitherto retarded 
 " her progress, she will yet be the queen of the trefoil of king- 
 " doms. ... I never saw a richer country, or, to speak my 
 " mind, a finer people." 
 
 Macaulay, in one of his Parliamentary speeches (1844), said : — 
 
 " Ireland is superior, probably, in internal fruitf ulness to any 
 " area of equal size in Europe, and possessed of a position which 
 " holds out the greatest facilities for commerce, at least equal to 
 " any other country of the same extent in the world." 
 
 Yet one more literary celebrity, Thackeray, has spoken of 
 Ireland, during a tour there, as — "This fairest and richest of 
 " countries." And the late Mr. Joseph Kay, Q.C., a man of 
 extensive knowledge, who studied the land question in various 
 European countries, wrote of Ireland from a commercial stand- 
 point as follows, in Volume I. of his Social Condition of the 
 People : — 
 
 " Let us endeavour to describe the present state of Ireland 
 " in as few words as possible. Ireland is splendidly situated, 
 " in a commercial point of view, commanding the direct route 
 " between northern Europe and America, with some of the finest 
 " harbours in the world. Its soil is proverbially rich and fruit- 
 " ful ; and has won for it throughout the world the appellation 
 "of the 'Emerald Isle.' Its rivers are numerous, large, and 
 " well adapted for internal commerce." 
 
 Earl Grey, speaking in the House of Lords on the 23rd of March 
 1840, also dwelt upon the splendid sources of wealth contained 
 in Ireland : — 
 
 " Ireland has been gifted by Providence with a soil of sur- 
 " passing fertility, with great mineral wealth, with a climate 
 " mild and genial. In her large extent of coasts and numerous 
 " harbours — her great natural facilities for internal navigation 
 " — in her command of water power, she has great natural 
 " resources, and every requisite for commercial greatness. The 
 " natural resources of Ireland are not only great, but unusually 
 "great." 
 
INDUSTRIAL KESOURCES OF IRELAND. 55 
 
 Mr. Bright, too, has spoken the language of sobriety and 
 truth in record to the fertility of Ireland and the industry of 
 its inhabitants. In Dublin, on the 2nd of Noven?.ber 1866, he 
 said, as he is reported in the first volume of his Speeches : — 
 
 " Years ago, when I have thought of the condition of Ireland, 
 " of its sorrows and wrongs, of the discredit that its condition 
 " has brought upon the English, the Irish, and the British 
 " name ; I have thought, if I could be in all other things the 
 " same, but by birth an Irishman, there is not a town in this 
 " island I would not visit for the purpose of discussing the great 
 " Irish question, and of rousing my countrymen to some great 
 " and united action. I do not believe in the necessity of wide- 
 " spread and perpetual misery. I do not believe that we are 
 " placed on this island, and on this earth, that one man may be 
 •' great and wealthy, and revel in every profuse indulgence, and 
 " five, six, nine, or ten men shall suffer the abject misery which 
 " we see so commonly in the world. With your soil, your climate, 
 " and your active and spirited race, I know not what you might 
 " not do. There have been reasons, to my mind, why soil and 
 " climate, and the labour of your population, have not produced 
 "general comfort and competence for aU." 
 
 The observations which occur in the next chapter in regard 
 to Mr. Bright were written before his lamented death. But as 
 they do not conflict with the respect due to his memory, though 
 questioning the justice of some of his more recent speeches and 
 letters in reference to Ireland, they are allowed to stand. His 
 services at a period when to advocate Ireland's cause was an 
 unpopular undertaking should not be forgotten — and are, in- 
 deed, never forgotten, even when it requires no little patience 
 to revert to the memory of the past. Next to those of Mr. 
 Gladstone, John Bright's earlier speeches in regard to Ireland 
 still aflfbrd the most comprehensive as well as the most eloquent 
 exposition of her multiform grievances. Nor do they suffer any 
 appreciable injury even when put in contrast with those latter- 
 day utterances of his, when failing health rendered him irrit- 
 able, and impatient of contradiction. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE INDEFATIGABLE INDUSTRY OF THE IRISH 
 PEOPLE AT HOME AND ABROAD. 
 
 " Of all the vulgar shifts to evade the study of social and moral influ- 
 " ences upon the soul of man, the most vulgar is to attribute differences of 
 " conduct and character to indestructible national differences. What race 
 " is there that would not be indolent and thoughtless if things were so 
 " arranged for it that it can have nothing to gain by being prudent and 
 " laborious ? " — John Stuart Miuu 
 
 The charge of laziness made against the Irish dates from the 
 very beginning of the eighteenth century, if not before. It 
 has been a convenient popular tradition sedulously cultivated 
 by the Irish landlords, to explain away the evil results of their 
 own rapacity and oppression for two centuries. And, sad to 
 say, for a moiety of the time at least, it has been commonly 
 accepted by a considerable portion of the periodical press of 
 this country as one of those economic truths which there is no 
 denying. Whatever guilt attaches to the cruel slander has 
 long been deservedly laid at the door of the Irish landlords by 
 enlightened Englishmen ; and it is to be hoped that this humble 
 attempt, however imperfect, to dissipate it, once for all, will be 
 welcomed by honourable minds generally. The testimony in 
 disproof of the slander shall be submitted from competent 
 English (or Scotch) authorities of eminence almost exclusively, 
 and of such a character as will commend it to the judgment of 
 impartial men. 
 
 In the course of a letter addressed to the Daily News of 
 the loth of October 1887, Mr. S. Laing, ex-M.P. for Orkney, 
 who Avas formerly Secretary to the Treasury, and Finance 
 Minister of India, charges it upon the head of Mr. Bright 
 
INDEFATIGABLE INDUSTRY OF THE IRISH. 57 
 
 that he has latterly upheld the theory "that the misery of 
 "the Irish people is owing to their incorrigible laziness;" 
 and at the same time, Mr. Laing imputes to Mr. Joseph 
 Chamberlain an equally unfounded theory in regard to the 
 alleged ability of the Irish tenants to pay their rents. As to Mr. 
 Chamberlain's opinions on Irish subjects, whether economical, 
 political, or polemical, they are no longer of any particular 
 account, and therefore require no extensive discussion hera But 
 we are all inclined to be jealous of Mr. Bright's good name, 
 even though he has been a little out of temper with his old 
 friends, and former principles, of late. If he has really laid 
 himself open to Mr. Laing's charge, then he is undoubtedly in 
 direct conflict with his former self respecting the virtues of the 
 Irish people, as may be seen by a glance at his speeches in 
 the House of Commons, Dublin, and Limerick, in 1866 and 
 1868 respectively, from which an extract appears in the pre- 
 ceding and present chapter. And he is also in direct conflict 
 with the testimony of one whose name and opinions he is known 
 to hold in equal reverence, viz., Eichard Cobden, from whose 
 political writings also an appropriate extract on the subject will 
 be found, later on, in the course of the present chapter. 
 
 Sir John Davis, in his Discoverie (16 12), throws a flood of 
 light on the system of land tenure in existence in Ireland in 
 his day, which simply took away every incentive to industry 
 and honest labour : — 
 
 " The extortion of coin and livery produced two notorious 
 " effects," he says, " first it made the land waste; next, it made 
 " the people idle ; for when the husbandman had laboured all 
 " the year, the soldier in one night consumed the fruits of all 
 "his l&hoMx—longique perit labor irritus anni. . . . And here- 
 *' upon of necessity came depopulation, banishment, and extirpa- 
 "tion of the better sort of subjects; and such as remained 
 "became idle and lookers-on, expecting the event of those 
 "miseries and evil times: so as their extreme extortion and 
 " oppression hath been the true cause of the idleness of this 
 " Irish nation ; and that rather the vulgar sort have chosen to 
 " be beggars in foreign countries, than to manure their fruitful 
 "land at home. . . . For, who would plant or improve, or 
 
58 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 "build upon that Land, which a stranger whom he knew not 
 " should possess after his death 1 For that (as Salomon noteth) 
 " is one of the strangest Vanities under the Sunne." 
 
 Sir "William Petty (seventeenth century), the ancestor of the 
 present Marquis of Lansdowne, in his Political Anatomy of 
 Ireland, attributes the Irish " lazing" to "want of employment 
 " and encouragement to work." He asks : — 
 
 " "Why should they breed more cattel, since 'tis penal to 
 " import them into England ? . . . And how should merchants 
 " have stock, since trade is prohibited and fettered by the 
 " Statutes of England ? And why should men endeavour to get 
 " estates, . , . where tricks and words destroy natural rights 
 " and property ? " 
 
 ' Ye are idle ! Ye are idle ! " was the rebuke addressed to 
 the Israelites by Pharaoh — no bad prototype of the typical 
 Irish landlord — when they complained to his majesty that they 
 were expected to make bricks without straw. "We are, observes 
 Swift :— 
 
 " Apt to charge the Irish with laziness, because we seldom 
 " find them employed ; but then we don't consider they have 
 " nothing to do. Sir William Temple, in his excellent remarks 
 " on the United Provinces, inquires why Holland, which has 
 '* the fewest and worst ports and commodities of any nation in 
 " Europe, should abound in trade ; and Ireland, which has the 
 " most and best of both, should have none ? . . . The want 
 " of trade with us," continues Swift, " is rather owing to the 
 " cruel restraints we lie under, than to any disqualification 
 " whatsoever in our inhabitants." 
 
 Speaking of the industry of those Irish peasants who have 
 security for the fruits of their labour, Arthur Young writes 
 emphatically thus : — 
 
 " Their industry has no bounds, nor is the day long enough 
 " for the revolution of their incessant labour." And of the 
 " little occupiers," i.e., small farmers, who have like security, — 
 " It is from the whole evident that they are uncommon masters 
 •I of the art of overcoming difficulties by patience and contriv- 
 "■ance. ... Give the farmer of twenty. acres in England no' 
 
INDEFATIGABLE INDUSTRY OF THE IRISH. 59 
 
 "more capital than his brother in Ireland and I yiU venture 
 " to say he will be much poorer, forM would be utterly unable 
 " to go on at all." 
 
 Sir Walter Scott, writing to Miss Edgeworth, from Edin- 
 burgh, on the 4th of February 1829 (Life), says that :— 
 
 " The great number of the lower Irish Avhich have come over 
 " here since the peace, accommodates Scotland with a race of 
 " hardy and indefatigable labourers, without which it would be 
 " impossible to carry on the very expensive improvements which 
 <' have been executed. Our canals, our railroads, and our various 
 " public works are all wrought by Irish. I have often employed 
 " them myself at burning clay, and similar operations, and have 
 " found them as labourers quiet and tractable, light-spirited, too, 
 " and happy to a degree beyond belief, and in no degree quarrel- 
 " some." 
 
 Mr. Poulett-Scrope, formerly M.P. for Stroud, in How Ire- 
 land is Governed (1834), observes : — 
 
 "Give him [the Irishman] a motive for industry, and the 
 " opportunity of exerting it, and neither Englishman nor 
 " Scotchman will surpass him in close and patient toil, frugality, 
 " and providence. Mr. Nimmo (and no one could be more com- 
 " petent to judge of the fact) asserts this as the result of his long 
 " experience as an engineer, in the employment of the labourers 
 " of the three countries [England, Ireland, and Scotland]. He 
 " inclines, indeed, to give the preference to the Irish labourer." 
 
 The next witness to testify to the character of the Irish for 
 industry is Mr. Joseph Kay, Q.C. The following is but a short 
 passage from an elaborate eulogium on the subject in the Social 
 Condition of the People : — 
 
 "The Irish are, physically and intellectually considered, one 
 " of the most active and restless [races] in the world. In every 
 " colony of our empire and among the motley multitude of the 
 " United States the Irish are distinguished by their energy, their 
 " industry, and their success. They make as good soldiers, 
 " colonists, and railway constructors as any other people. They 
 " are industrious and successful everywhere but in Ireland." 
 
 Kichard Cobden, another competent judge as to the industrial 
 
6o A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 merits of a people, in his Political Writings, deals with the 
 question concisely, thus : — 
 
 "The Irish are the hardiest labourers on earth; the docks 
 " and canals of England, and the railroads of America, are the 
 " produce of their toil ; in short, they are the hewers of wood 
 " and drawers of water for other nations." 
 
 Drummond (a Scotchman), the famous Under-Secretary for 
 Ireland, w^ho understood the Irish people thoroughly, literally 
 died in their service, in 1840, and has since been mourned by 
 two generations of Celts, has said, according to his Memoirs by 
 M'Lennan : — 
 
 " In a state of destitution no race of people are more patient 
 " and resigned. . . . Yet the same race who endure the last 
 " extremes of want without a murmur, are no sooner placed in 
 " a condition of supporting themselves by independent industry, 
 " than they cast aside the torpor which distinguishes them in 
 " a depressed state, and become active, diligent, and laborious. 
 "... And it ought to be mentioned to their honour, that in 
 " such emergencies [of destitution] they have scarcely ever been 
 " known to extort, by violence, that relief which cannot be 
 " obtained from their own lawful exMtions, or the benevolence 
 " of others, . . . even when sometimes exposed to all the 
 " miseries of famine, rendered tenfold more agonising by the 
 " knowledge that there was food enough and to spare within a 
 " few miles." 
 
 Speaking in the House of Commons on the 25th of January 
 1846, Lord John Eussell, when urging the necessity for some 
 permanent alteration in the land laws, laid it down in the most 
 emphatic language that the miseries of Ireland were due neither 
 to the character of the soil nor to any want of industry in its 
 cultivators. He said : — 
 
 " There is no doubt of the fertility of the land ; that fertility 
 *' has been the theme of admiration with writers and travellers 
 " of all nations. There is no doubt either, I must say, of the 
 " strength and industry of the inhabitants. The man who is 
 " loitering idly by the mountain-side in Tipperary or in Derry 
 " [where he has nothing to do], whose potato-plot has furnished 
 " him merely with occupation for a few days in the year, whose 
 
INDEFATIGABLE INDUSTEY OF THE IRISH. 6i 
 
 " wa<Tes and whose pig have enabled him to pay his rent and 
 " eke out afterwards a miserable subsistence — that man, I say, 
 " may have a brother in Liverpool, or Glasgow, or London, who 
 " by the sweat of his brow, from morning to night, is competing" 
 *' with the strongest and steadiest labourers of England and Scot* 
 " land, and is earning wages equal to any of them. I do not, 
 •' therefore, think that either the fertility of the soil of Ireland, 
 " or the strength and industry of its inhabitants, is at fault." 
 
 Lord Grey, like Sir "Walter Scott, gave testimony from his 
 personal knowledge of Irish labourers in the House of Lords 
 about the same time as follows : — 
 
 " In the county with which I am connected [Northumberland] 
 " we have been in the habit of seeing every year large numbers of 
 "Irishmen come over as reapers during harvest, many of them 
 " from Donegal and other districts, where the greatest wretched- 
 " ness and misery prevail. What is the character of those men? 
 " We have always found them grateful beyond measure for good 
 " treatment ; tractable, industrious, cheerful, and gay — in some 
 " respects, no doubt, thoughtless and easily excited, but, on the 
 " other hand, exhibiting, upon the whole, a degree of prudence 
 " and forethought not often seen in men of their rank in life 
 " and amount of education. Living in the most economical 
 " manner when in work, and saving their hard earnings in order 
 " that they may pay their rents when they got home — this is 
 " the character of the people of Ireland, in England ; and I say 
 " with such a people and such a country, is it not clear that the 
 " fault must be with their rulers if lawlessness and wretchedness 
 " prevail amongst them t I cannot doubt it to be so." 
 
 Thornton, in his Plea for Peasant Proprietors (1848), says of 
 the Irish : — 
 
 " They are indolent, because they have no inducement to 
 " work after they have obtained from their labour wherewithal 
 "to pay their rent, and to save themselves from starvation. 
 "Whatever additional produce they might raise, would only 
 " subject them to further exactions [at the hands of their land- 
 " lords]. . . . They are reduced to the verge of destitution, 
 " because they are permitted to retain no more of the fruits of 
 " their labour than will barely suffice for their subsistence." 
 
 An enraged political economist in petticoats, speaking at a 
 
62 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 Uuionist meeting at Nottingham, on the 26th of September last, 
 under the combined patronage of Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, 
 M.P., and the Duke of St. Albans, made a coarse, abusive 
 attack on the unfortunate Irish, because, as she alleged, of 
 their wanting " more industry," &c. Miss Harriet Martineau, 
 a lady of much greater distinction in the world of politics 
 than Mr. Chamberlain's unfair supporter, in her Letters from 
 Irelarid (1852), held a somewhat different opinion on the 
 subject : — 
 
 " Three things are very striking to us under this head [of 
 " Irish industry]," observes Miss Martineau, " the heartiness of 
 " the labour where men are well paid — the languor of the people 
 " where people are ill paid — and the toil that people will 
 " undergo, under the stimulus of hope, even where the gains 
 " are very small. We have seen Irishmen working, with every 
 " muscle and every faculty, in an establishment where the work 
 " must be well done, where every man is paid according to his 
 *' merits. . . . We have learned that in the neighbourhood of 
 " Dublin women will walk five Irish miles [equal to seven 
 " English] for fruit, and walk all the rest of the day to bring it 
 " back and sell it, and be well pleased if they get a shilling 
 " a day — satisfied if they get sixpence. There seems to be no 
 " room foi a theory of constitutional indolence here." 
 
 The reader will recollect that it was an object of Buckle, the 
 indefatigable author of the History of Civilisation, to show that 
 the character of a people is more or less dependent on material 
 circumstances. Writing in regard to the time-honoured but 
 unfounded tradition of laziness amongst the Irish, he says, in 
 Volume I. of his great work : — 
 
 [That the condition of the English working-classes] " is one of 
 " sumptuous splendour, compared with that in which only a 
 " few years ago [alas ! it is yet so] the Irish were forced to live. 
 " The misery in which they were plunged has no doubt always 
 " been aggravated by the ignorance of their rulers, and by that 
 " scandalous misgovemment which until very recently [should 
 " have said "still," writing in 1857], formed one of the darkest 
 *' blots on the glory of England. Inglis, who, in 1834, travelled 
 " through Ireland with a particular view to its economical state, 
 " says, as the result of very careful inquiries, * I am quite con- 
 
INDEFATIGABLE INDUSTRY OF THE IRISH. 63 
 
 ♦' fident that if the whole yearly earnings of the labourers of 
 " Ireland were divided by the whole number of labourers, the 
 " result would be under fourpence a day for the labourers of 
 " Ireland ! ' If these things were oftener considered," continues 
 Buckle " we should not hear so much about the idleness and 
 " levity of the Celtic race ; the simple fact being that the Irish 
 " are unwilling to work, not because they are Celts, but because 
 "their work is badly paid. When they go abroad they get 
 " (rood wages, and therefore they become as industrious as any 
 "other people. Even in 1799 it was observed that the Irish, 
 " as soon as they left their own country, became industrious and 
 " energetic." 
 
 The next witness to the industrial character of the Irish 
 people was a popular Anglo-Irish statesman, John Temple, 
 Viscount Palmerston, Speaking in the House of Commons, on 
 the 27th of February 1865, Lord Palmerston said, with a touch 
 of genuine sincerity, as though some feeling of compunction, in 
 regard to his own neglectful treatment of his country in the 
 past, haunted him for the moment : — 
 
 " It is impossible for any man to know anything of the Irish 
 " people without wishing them every happiness which can be 
 " conferred upon them. They are a light-hearted and a warm- 
 " hearted race ; they are most industrious too, wherever they 
 " can see the prospect that by industry they will get the reward 
 " to which industry entitles men. It is quite a mistake to sup- 
 " pose that the Irish are an idle race, unwilling to labour, and 
 " not prepared to make great exertions for the sake of accomplish- 
 " ing any legitimate object." 
 
 Now for Mr. Bright, who held an exalted opinion of the 
 Irish, in all their moods, twenty years ago. Why has he 
 altered that opinion 1 Is there any reason why he should have 
 done so, except that he was mildly reproached with deserting 
 his first love, by Mr. Sexton and other Irish members of Parlia- 
 ment, some time back 'i Speaking in the House of Commons 
 on the 17th of February 1866, Mr. Bright enlarged upon the 
 virtues of the Irish people in the following manner : — 
 
 " An hon. member from Ireland a few nights ago referred 
 " to the character of the Irish people. He said, and I believe 
 
<( 
 
 64 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION, 
 
 " it is true, that there is no Christian nation with which we are 
 " acquainted among the people of which crime of the ordinary 
 " character, as we reckon it in this country, is so rare as it ia 
 " among his countrymen. He might have said also, that there 
 " is no people, whatever they may be at home, more industrious 
 " than the Irisft in every country but their own. He might 
 have said more, that they are a people of a cheerful and 
 "joyous temperament, that they are singularly grateful for 
 " kindnesses ^hown to them, and that of all people of our 
 " race they are filled with the strongest sentiment of veneration. 
 *' And yet, with such materials, and with such a people, after 
 " centuries of government — after sixty-five years of government 
 " by this House — you have them embittered against your rule, 
 " and anxious only to throw off the authority of the Crown and 
 " Queen of these realms. This is merely an access of the com- 
 " plaint Ireland has been suffering under during the lifetime of 
 " the oldest man in this House, that of chronic insurrection." 
 
 The late Colonel King-Harman, M.P., was, like many other 
 Irish landlords, " the victim of circumstances." It is probable, 
 if his ancestors had been more reluctant to " blister " the family 
 estate with heavy mortgages, he would have been found fight- 
 ing in the Nationalist ranks in 1888. Anyhow, he was not 
 found traducing the character of his countrymen a few years 
 back. On the contrary, we find him writing to the Times, 
 during the distressed period of 1879-80, as follows : — 
 
 " There is, no doubt, a certain amount of imposition and of 
 " seeking after unearned food, instead of honest work, among a 
 " few of the idle and worthless, who must always be found in 
 " any community, and who will be found in Ireland, as else- 
 " where. As a rule, however, I say boldly that our people in 
 " the "West are making a brave fight, and are generally found 
 " asking for work, and not clamouring for charity. I could tell 
 " of instances of families who are getting relief meal, at the 
 " rate of half-a-pound per head per diem, helping their neigh- 
 " hours. Is this demoralisation?" 
 
 Pray, listen to what witnesses so competent as the members 
 of the recent Cowper Royal Commission, one of the last of an 
 interminable series of Commissions, have to say regarding the 
 character of the Irish people : — " The Irish people are naturally 
 
INDEFATIGABLE INDUSTRY OF THE IRISH. 65 
 
 " honest, hard-working, and deeply attached to their native 
 " land, and all these causes will tend to make them, when in- 
 " vested with ownership, good citizens and loyal subjects." 
 
 Mr. S. Laing, already quoted, writing to the Daily News, on 
 the loth of October 1887, observes : — 
 
 " In going round Bodyke the exclamation burst from me, — 
 " ' Oh ! that John Bright and Mr. Chamberlain were by my 
 " side ! ' The theory of the former is that the misery of the 
 " Irish people is owing to their incorrigible laziness ; that of the 
 " latter that the bulk of the tenantry are able and anxious to 
 " pay their rents, and only prevented from doing so by the 
 " terrorism of a handful of agitators. If Mr. Bright could see 
 " the network of huge walls enclosing little patches of fields, 
 " every stone of which represents hard navvy labour in clearing 
 " the barren wilderness ; and the plots which have been re- 
 " claimed by the toil and moil of the poor occupiers in delving, 
 " draining, and liming ; and this in the face of the utmost pos- 
 " sible discouragement by having their rents raised on them as 
 "fast as they improved ; or if he would inquire where, if those 
 " poor fellows were willing to work, they could get a day's work 
 " at a shilling a day, I think he would soon modify his theory 
 " of Irish laziness." 
 
 Sir Henry A. Blake, ex-Govemor of Newfoundland, writes 
 to the Times of the 29th of November 1888, as follows : — 
 
 " As I find in the remarks upon the opposition to my late 
 " appointment as Governor of Queensland an assumption that 
 " in all parts of the world the Irish population will oppose any 
 " Governor who has served the Imperial Government in Ireland, 
 " perhaps you will allow me to say that a large proportion of 
 " the population of Newfoundland are Irishmen, who show an 
 " example of energy and agricultural industry, and are among 
 " the most successful of the inhabitants, whether in the pro- 
 " fessions, in business, trade, or agriculture, and that among 
 " my fellow-countrymen I have always found the most hearty 
 " loyalty to our beloved Queen, and an attitude of warm friend- 
 " ship towards her Majesty's representative." 
 
 Dr. Selwyn, the deceased Bishop of Lichfield, formerly of 
 New Zealand, might be imagined looking over the shoulders of 
 the Cowper Commissioners when they were drafting their Report. 
 
« 
 
 66 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 In his speech on the second reading of Mr. Gladstone's Irish 
 Church Bill, in the House of Lords, twenty years ago, that 
 eminent ecclesiastic said : — 
 
 " In New Zealand, Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen live 
 " together upon the best terms. The qualities of each particular 
 " class become blended with each other to the improvement of 
 " all. No dissension as to tenant right can arise, because every 
 " tenant has the right of purchasing the land he holds at a fixed 
 price. Under these circumstances the tenants, instead of 
 being lazy and drunken, strain every nerve in order to save 
 " the money which will enable them to become the proprietors 
 " of the land they occupy. In this way it happens that the 
 " most irregular people of the Irish race become steady and 
 " industrious, acquiring property, and losing all their wandering 
 " habits, until it becomes almost impossible to distinguish be- 
 " tween the comparative value of the character of Irish and 
 " Scotch elements. Of their loyalty to the Crown, I can speak 
 " from my own observation, for the only regiment that is em- 
 " ployed in keeping order in New Zealand is her Majesty's 
 " Koyal Irish." 
 
 With reference to the more strictly commercial aspects of the 
 Irish industrial question, there are two witnesses who furnish 
 some interesting facts. Mr. J. T. Brunner, M.P. for Northwich, 
 is the head of a very extensive manufacturing concern in Cheshire. 
 In 1888 he wrote to the Manchester Guardian as follows, when 
 correcting a misinterpretation which was put upon a sentence 
 in a recent speech of his : — 
 
 " The people of Ireland are very honest people, and few men 
 " know it better than I, for I have been concerned in selling to 
 " them for twenty-six years, and the bad debts during that time 
 " on that business amount to less than a tenth part of a farthing 
 " in the pound. It is one of my arguments in favour of Home 
 **Kule that the Irish people are so honest. Let them have 
 " freedom, and they will not rob anybody. For the rest I shall 
 " not cease to protest against landlords robbing their tenants' 
 " creditors, as well as their tenants, either in Ireland or in Great 
 " Britain, until the iniquitous landlord-made law is amended in 
 ^' all the three kingdoms." 
 
 y\ 
 
INDEFATIGABLE INDUSTRY OF THE lEISa 67 
 
 Again, Messrs. Sennet Brothers, of Blackfriars, London, 
 wrote to the Star of the 22nd of January 1888, as follows : — 
 
 " We have lately heard and read that employers in London 
 "and elsewhere have decided, either from political or religious 
 " causes, not to employ Irish labour. We wish to bring to 
 " your notice a few facts on behalf of the Irish working class. 
 " For over a century our firm has employed from 300 to 400 
 " workpeople, 95 per cent of whom are of pure Irish extraction. 
 "During all our experience we have never had any cause for 
 " complaint We have never had a case of theft, an occasion to 
 " call a constable into our factory, or a case of insubordination 
 " where we might have had to trouble a magistrate. We have 
 "always found the Irish obedient, industrious, and kindly 
 " disposed towards their fellow- workpeople when in trouble." 
 
 Lord Dufferin, ex-Govemor-General of India, in his Irish 
 Emigration, states that between 1848 and 1864 the Irish 
 emigrants in America — "to their immortal honour, within 
 " seventeen years after their departure, had sent back to 
 "Ireland upwards of ;^ 13,000,000." And Serjeant Heron, 
 Q.C., in 1862, in a paper read before the Statistical Society of 
 Dublin, said : — 
 
 " A sum equal to one-fourteenth of the rental of Ireland is 
 " annually received from foreign charitable persons [American 
 " Irish]. . . . In 1852 Ireland received a larger sum in charity 
 " from America than was realised by the profits of the trade of 
 " exporting horned cattle to England." 
 
 So that the Irish not only work and grow wealthy in the 
 United States and the Colonies, but they earn and lay by 
 enough to enable them to send home annually large sums to 
 their parents and friends left behind in Ireland. Indeed we 
 have no record of any other people exhibiting such manifest 
 proofs of industry and filial affection at one and the same time. 
 The late Mr. W. E. Forster, speaking in the House of Commons, 
 August 13, 1880, when he was Chief Secretary for Ireland, 
 made the following observations in regard to this characteristic, 
 which are well worth reproducing here : 
 
 " There wa3 one point in which the Irish labourers or small 
 
68 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " tenants compared favourably with the English labourers. If 
 " some of their actions were brought before us in a way that 
 " tried our patience and made us indignant, it was well to 
 " recollect the way in which Irish labourers helped their neigh- 
 " hours and the members of their own families. The enormous 
 "sums lately sent over from Irishmen in America to their 
 " families were a wonderful tribute to the Irish character. 
 "And when the Irish labourers came to England to earn the 
 " wages with which they paid their rent, it would be difficult 
 " to find English labourers in similar circumstances who would 
 " send home their money without leaving a considerable portion 
 " of it in the public-houses of the district." 
 
 Even in times of distress, when the exiled Irish in' America 
 send over large sums to their friends at home, most of it goes 
 into the landlords' pockets to pay the rent Indeed, the latter 
 fact is so much a matter of public notoriety that a well-known 
 philanthropist, Mr. Yere Foster, made a public appeal for funds 
 for emigration purposes, in a letter addressed to the Times, 
 on the 4th of October 1886, in which the following significant 
 passage occurs : — 
 
 " Though Irish landlords have suffered great diminution of 
 " income, I feel justified in making a special appeal to them, 
 " because a large portion of the rents of their poorer tenants is 
 " usually paid by means of remittances from America ; these 
 *' remittances being generally sent home by Irish girls for that 
 " purpose." 
 
 Sir Charles Lyell, in his Second Visit to the United States, 
 vol. i. (1849), says that the rich American capitalists: — 
 
 " Speak with kindness of the Irish, saying they are most 
 " willing to work hard, keep their temperance vows, and, in spite 
 " of the considerable sums drawn from them by the Cathohc 
 " priests [their church not being there endowed by the State], are 
 " putting largely out of their earnings into the savings banks. 
 " It is also agreed that they are most generous to their poor 
 "relations in Ireland, remitting money to them annually, and 
 " sometimes enough to enable them to pay their passage across 
 "the Atlantic." 
 
 In an article on American Land Tenure in the Cobden Clvib 
 
INDEFATIGABLE INDUSTRY OF THE IRISH. 69 
 
 Essays (1881), from the pen of Mr. C. M. Fisher, the following 
 passage appropriate to the subject occurs : — 
 
 " In America, industry and hard work, when directed to the 
 " cultivation of land, offer greater rewards than in Ireland ; and 
 " this fact appears to have a marked effect upon many an Irish 
 " emigrant. ... I could point to many instances in the State 
 " of Vermont, and in others, where a comparatively ignorant 
 *'and penniless Irish emigrant had, almost immediately after 
 *' arrival, arranged for the purchase, on time, of a lot of land ; 
 " then worked as a labourer until he had got together a few 
 " dollars to purchase implements, seed, and a little food ; the 
 " latter in the shape of a barrel of flour, some salt pork, tea, &c., 
 " forming sufficient for one season ; and who had, without any 
 " other aid, managed to struggle on until a succession of harvests 
 *' found him a rich man in comparison with his former con- 
 " dition. ... I believe it to be the first great ambition of every 
 " Irish emigrant to become the owner of real estate." 
 
 Lastly, the late Eev. Henry Ward Beecher, another com- 
 petent witness, having, in October 1886, been asked at an 
 interview by a press representative in London — " Do you find 
 "the Irish in America to make good citizens?" — he replied: — 
 
 " They do, indeed, after they have been taught, make most 
 " useful citizens, and have a very large share in the government 
 " of the country. They are judges, and are distinguished in all 
 " professions and businesses. They are most industrious, hard- 
 " working, and thrifty, and they have rendered good service 
 " to the State. I addressed a meeting where there were 600 
 " Irishmen celebrating St. Patrick's Day, not one of whom had 
 " come out to America with money, and yet they were all men 
 " who had amassed large fortunes by their own energy and 
 " industry. The Irish in New York invest their savings first 
 " in one brick house and then in another. In some districts," 
 he added, " the school boards have passed out of the hands of 
 " the old Yankee farmers into the hands of the Irish labourers ; 
 " and they have better schools now than when the stingy old 
 " farmers had the care of them." 
 
 It may be Said, in conclusion, that the testimony in favour of 
 the indefatigable industry of the Irish people might be extended 
 almost indefinitely, if there existed any occasion to trouble the 
 reader with further proofs on the subject. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 LAND TENURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND^ 
 A DISTINCTION WITH A DIFFERENCE. 
 
 " The difference is so material as to render any analogy that may be 
 "drawn a very imperfect and faUacioua mode of reasoning." — BiNNs' 
 Ireland. 
 
 Habdlt anything belonging to the Irish agrarian question is so 
 little understood in England and Scotland as the precise nature 
 of the relations of the landlord with the tenant. We often 
 hear, for instance, of outrages being committed on persons who 
 take land from which others have been evicted; and it is 
 natural that Englishmen, seeing that similar effects do not 
 follow from similar causes in this country, should be inclined 
 to consider a case clearly made out against the Irish. In fact, 
 you will often hear even persons of education ask dogmatically 
 why the Irishman does not at once surrender his house on find- 
 ing himself unable to pay his rent, just as a London citizen 
 does, without imposing upon the landlord the necessity of 
 battering down or setting fire to the premises. Now such 
 inferences as these are wholly and altogether wrong — funda- 
 mentally wrong — as the following authorities will clearly 
 show. 
 
 One of the main elements of the tenant's case in Ireland, one 
 of the things which distinguish his case from that of the tenant 
 in England, and one of the considerations that compelled the 
 framers of the Land Acts of 1870 and 1881 virtually to con- 
 stitute him a part owner with the landlord, is the fact that, as a 
 rule, he alone has made the improvements on the land. More- 
 over, it is he, the tenant, who has built the house. The Devon 
 
 Parliamentary Commission of 1845, in the second volume of 
 
 70 
 
LAND TENURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 71 
 
 their Digest, explain this difference in the tenure of land in 
 Great Britain and Ireland as follows : — 
 
 " It is well known that in England and Scotland, before a 
 •' landlord offers a farm for letting, he finds it necessary to pro- 
 *' vide a suitable farm-house, with necessary farm-buildings, for 
 " the proper management of the farm. He puts the gates and 
 " fences into good order, and he takes upon himself a great part 
 " of the burden of keeping the buildings in repair during the 
 "term; and the rent is fixed with reference to this state of 
 " things. Such, at least, is generally the case, although special 
 " contracts may occasionally be made, varying the arrangement 
 •' between landlord and tenant. In Ireland the case is wholly 
 " different. ... In most cases [there] whatever is done in the 
 *' way of building or fencing is done by the tenant ; and, in 
 " the ordinary language of the country, dwelling-houses, farm- 
 " buildings, and even the making of fences, are described by 
 " the general word ' improvements,' which is thus employed to 
 " denote the necessary adjuncts, without which, in England or 
 " in Scotland, no tenant would be found to rent it." 
 
 There have also been Royal Commissions of Inquiry into the 
 Irish Land Question during the present decade. One of these, 
 the Bessborough Commission, reported, by a majority of its 
 members, as follows : — 
 
 " It is not denied by any one that in Ireland it has been the 
 " general rule for tenants to do more, at all events, than the 
 "mere agricultural operations necessary to insure them such 
 " a profit as could be realised within the time which constituted 
 " the legal term of their tenancies ; and this of itself is enough 
 " to establish in their favour a presumption that they were 
 " morally entitled to a larger interest in their holdings than was 
 " ever recognised by law." 
 
 And Mr. Kavanagh, ex-Tory M.P. for Carlow, who may be 
 fairly considered the representative on the Commission of the 
 Irish landlords, was even more explicit. He wrote in a separate 
 report : — 
 
 "The assertion, which is, I believe, a fact, that on the majority 
 " of holdings, the improvements, if such they can be called, if 
 " not altogether, have been chiefly made by the tenants." 
 
72 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 The Duke of Eichmond's Commission reported in 1881 : — 
 
 " It seems to be generally admitted that the most conspicuous 
 *' difference between the relations of landlord and tenant as they 
 " exist in Ireland, and in England and Scotland, is the extent 
 " to which in Ireland houses are erected, and improvements are 
 " made by the tenant, and not by the landlord." 
 
 Again, Lord Carlingford, formerly Chief-Secretary for Ireland, 
 who drew up the minority report of that Commission, wrote of: — 
 
 " A country like Ireland, where the dwelling-houses, farm- 
 " buildings, and other elements of a farm, including often the 
 "reclamation from the waste of the cultivated land itself, have 
 " been, and must, in our opinion, continue to be, for the most 
 "part, the work of the tenants." 
 
 It may be added that Section V. of the Land Act of 1870 
 declares the presumption to be that all improvements, except as 
 therein provided, have been made by the tenant, so that the 
 legislature has already, in fact, admitted the justice of the 
 tenants' contention on this most important and material point. 
 Further, the Act of 1881 incontestably puts the tenant in the 
 position of part owner of his farm upon the same grounds. And 
 although most persons would consider the foregoing authorities 
 sufficient to establish the fact of there being a fundamental 
 difference in the systems of land tenure in England and Ireland, 
 one or two individual opinions of competent persons may not 
 prove an unwelcome addition on the subject. For instance, 
 there was an Irish Tory Chief Justice, Baron Pennefather, 
 who, in his charge to a jury in an ejectment case, Hilary Term, 
 1843, observed : — 
 
 "The whole code relating to landlord and tenant in this 
 " country [Ireland] was framed with a view to the interests of 
 " the landlords alone, to enforce the payment of rent by the 
 " tenants. The interests of the tenants never entered into the 
 " contemplation of the legislature. . . . The legislation on this 
 "subject is a progressive code, giving in each successive act 
 " additional remedies to the landlord." 
 
 There was a speech made in 1869 by Lord Clarendon, who 
 held the position of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland throughout the 
 
LAND TENURE IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 73 
 
 troubled insurrectionary period of 1848, which is highly instruc- 
 tive ; not so much for what it says — though this is important 
 enough — as for what it omits to say. Speaking at the West 
 Herts Agricultural Society's meeting on the 27th of September 
 in that year, he said, according to a Times report of his speech : — 
 
 " I have now the honour of addressing practical men, and I 
 " would ask any gentleman here present if he were to take a 
 " farm at will, on Avhich the landlord never did and never in- 
 " tended to do anything ; then suppose that he were to build 
 " upon that farm a house and homestead, erected fences on 
 "and drained it, and was then turned out at a six months' 
 " notice by the landlord, who took to himself the whole benefit 
 " of the tenant's labour and expenditure — I ask if there could 
 " be language strong enough in this country, in these meetings 
 " that are now being held, and in the press, to condemn the 
 " felonious act of such a landlord as that ? " 
 
 Now this is all very good, coming from Lord Clarendon — 
 excellent in fact. But pray listen to the following comment 
 upon it by a gentleman specially employed by the Times to 
 report upon the Irish land question in the same year — Mr. 
 O'Connor Morris, now a Chairman of Quarter Sessions in 
 Ireland : — 
 
 " A distinguished minister," Mr. Morris observes, in his 
 Letters, "has lately branded such acts with a remarkable 
 "epithet, and has asked. What is to be said of those who 
 " commit them 1 Lord Clarendon must excuse me for saying, 
 " whatever may be thought of this matter, this spoliation was 
 " in no sense ' felonious.' Law enabled that landlord to evict 
 " that tenant ; law armed the sheriff with the writ of execu- 
 " tion ; law possibly was found to send the police to assist at 
 " that scene of righteous justice ; law warranted that equitable 
 "confiscation; law looked on while that broken man was 
 "expatriated after a sanctioned robbery. It is putting the 
 " question on a wrong issue to lay the blame on any individual 
 "person; it is the law, in this instance, that connived at 
 " felony," 
 
 Lord Clarendon was a distinguished man, and doubtless was 
 trying to discharge his duty, when in Ireland, to the best of 
 his ability. Even in the midst of the great famine. Parliament 
 would do nothing towards amending the laws which Lad 
 
74 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 created it. Once more patriotic men loudly and indignantly 
 raised their voices in Ireland to denounce such systematic mis- 
 govemment. Lord Clarendon, then Lord-Lieutenant (1847-52), 
 having no moral resources in the country upon which he could 
 rely, was driven to the humiliating expedient, afterwards exposed 
 by a trial in which he was virtually the defendant, of sub- 
 orning one or two Dublin newspapers for the purpose of stigma- 
 tising those men as treason-mongers. They were all men of 
 high character, some of them members of Parliament, who 
 strove by constitutional and afterwards by unconstitutional 
 means — when the constitution was, as it is now, suspended — 
 to overthrow, inter alia, this very system of legalised robbery 
 of the poor peasants. Juries were shamelessly packed with 
 their avowed enemies, to the ruthless exclusion of every man, 
 Catholic and Protestant, who was suspected of harbouring 
 within his bosom the faintest national spirit; so as to ensure 
 convictions involving the penalty of death. All the officials of 
 the Crown, together with the judges, were notorious partizans, 
 whose conduct had probably been arraigned in Parliament more 
 than once. In the case of the trial of O'Connell and his fellow- 
 prisoners only a few years before (1844), Lord John Russell 
 openly impugned, in Parliament, the constitution of the jury, and 
 referred to the evidence of the Irish Master of the Rolls before 
 the House of Lords, wherein it was stated, as the result of many 
 years' experience, that it was the general practice of the Crown 
 in criminal cases, as it is still, to set aside all Catholics and all 
 Liberal Protestants, including even Quakers, from the Irish jury- 
 box. But this was only when he, Lord John, was in opposition. 
 He is now, in 1848-9, Prime Minister, which makes all the dif- 
 ference. Well might each one of those unhappy Irish prisoners, 
 in the circumstances exclaim, in the pathetic words of Algernon 
 Sidney, spoken from the dock, when he protested against the 
 judgment of the infamous Jefferies : — " My Lord, I humbly 
 " conceive I have had no trial. I was to be tried by my country. 
 " I did not find my country in the jury that tried me." 
 
 And in this manner it was that the voice of humanity was 
 once more stifled in Ireland. 
 
CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 75 THERE FREEDOM OF CONTRACT BETWEEN 
 LANDLORD AND TENANT IN IRELAND? 
 
 " This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood." 
 
 — Merchant of Venice, iv. i. 
 
 Many well-disposed persons have been misled by Lord Salis< 
 bury's reckless dictum — " Take your choice ; you have freedom 
 " of contract ; pay or go." To accuse the Prime Minister of 
 deliberate misstatement would be highly unbecoming, and yet 
 to charge him with ignorance would be oflFering one in his posi- 
 tion almost as great an insult. But all the same it is impossible 
 to avoid saying that his assertion is founded upon fiction, 
 without a single element of truth to support it. Here is the 
 proof, taken from the report addressed to Parliament by a recent 
 Koyal Commission, of which a great Irish proprietor, Lord 
 Bessborough, was chairman : — 
 
 " We grant that it would be inexpedient to interfere with 
 " freedom of contract between landlord and tenant, if freedom 
 " of contract really existed ; but freedom of contract, in the case 
 " of the majority of Irish tenants, large and small, does not 
 '• really exist." 
 
 Although, perhaps, not all public speakers and writers are 
 conscious of it, as a matter of fact there is a great deal of cant 
 in the too common preaching of the sacredness of what is termed 
 " contract " in land, and the necessity of maintaining it in 
 Ireland. Speaking generally, there is really no such thing 
 known in Ireland as freedom of contract in land, and conse- 
 quently no such thing as a real contract between the great 
 majority of Irish tenants and their landlords. The fact has 
 
 75 
 
76 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 been expressly acknowledged in the reports of recent Royal 
 Commissions, having the most notable English and Irish land- 
 owners amongst their members. Take this additional declara- 
 tion of the Bessborough Commission as an example : — 
 
 "When the rent is raised the tenant must, as a rule, submit. 
 " The evidence shows that under a system of gradual small in- 
 " creases of rent tenants have submitted long past the point at 
 " which they consider themselves to be unfairly rented. . • . 
 " Not to come to terms with his landlord means for him (the 
 " tenant) to leave his home, to leave his employment, to forfeit 
 " the inheritance of his fathers, and, to some extent, the invest- 
 " ment of his toil, and to sink at once to a lower plane of 
 " physical comfort and social rank. It is no matter to him of 
 " the chaffer of the market, but almost of life and death. The 
 " farmer bargains with his landlord under sentence of losing 
 " his living, if the bargain goes off." 
 
 Again, there is a statement of Lord Carlingford in his 
 supplementary report as a member of the Richmond Royal 
 Commission, appointed by a Tory Government : — 
 
 " We believe," he said, " that even the large farmers are 
 " sometimes constrained to submit to very onerous and dis- 
 " couraging conditions, increasing the rent unduly, or contract- 
 " ing them out of the Land Act ; while the smaller tenant will 
 " endure almost anything, or promise to pay almost any rent 
 " demanded, in order to avert or postpone the loss of his hold- 
 " ing or home. . . . Without referring to the present deplorable 
 " condition of many parts of Ireland, we are convinced that, in 
 " ordinary times, freedom of contract cannot be said to exist 
 " between the majority of Irish occupying tenants and their 
 " landlords." 
 
 A few individual opinions on the subject will not be without 
 interest. The Times, of the 7 th December 1842, deals with 
 the question of alleged freedom of contract in Ireland thus : — 
 
 " A landlord is not a tradesman ; he stands to his tenantry, 
 " or he ought to do so, in loco parentis ; he is there as well for 
 " their good as his own ; they are not mere contractors with him 
 " to hold his land as capital, and pay him the full interest, or 
 " incur a forfeiture ; they are rather agents placed in his hands, 
 
NO FEEEDOM OF CONTKACT. ^^ 
 
 " and under his care and protection, for the purpose of working 
 "the land, and whose natural relation with him cannot be 
 " determined except by negligence or ill conduct. If the land 
 "be treated as money, and the tenantry as borrowers, people 
 "may be sure that the landlord will be an usurer. This is 
 " generally true ; but in Ireland the tenant, who is thus treated 
 "as though he had been an unfettered party to the original 
 " agreement, has not the shadow of the character of a voluntary 
 " contractor. It is with him either to continue in the quarter 
 " of an acre which he occupies or to starve. There is no other 
 " alternative. Rackrent may be misery, but ejectment is ruin. 
 "... What has been the result ? Conspiracy, hatred, revenge, 
 " and murder — most cold-blooded, most brutal murder." 
 
 Mr. Nassau Senior, in the second volume of his Journals, 
 observes as follows in confirmation of this view : — 
 
 " The treaty between landlord and tenant [in Ireland] is not 
 " a calm bargain in which the tenant, having offered what he 
 " thinks the land worth to him, cares little whether his offer 
 be accepted or not ; it is a struggle like the struggle to buy 
 bread in a besieged town, or to buy water in an African 
 caravan. . . . The landlords are unable or unwilling to expend 
 " money on their estates. They allow the tenants themselves 
 " to make the provision by building and reclaiming land from 
 " its original state of bog or heather, or stony field. It is thus 
 " that many estates have been created ; and almost all have 
 " been enlarged by generation after generation of tenants with- 
 " out assistance. It was the tenants who made the Barony of 
 " Farney — originally worth ;^3ooo — worth ;<^5o,ooo a year." 
 
 Mr. Senior might have added, they were very badly used for 
 their pains subsequently. Speaking in the House of Commons 
 in 1880, in the course of a debate on the Disturbance Bill, 
 Mr. W. E. Forster, then Chief Secretary for Ireland, made the 
 following cogent observations on the subject : — 
 
 " What is this law of ejectment [in Ireland] ? It has been 
 " proved that it is a special Irish law, giving special powers to 
 " the Irish landlord, not to recover rent, but to recover land if 
 "the rent be not paid. We must remember that we cannot 
 " always for contract debts seize what we find in a man's house 
 " [in England]. You cannot seize instruments of trade, and, 
 " to some extent, land is the instrument of these [Irish] people's 
 
 t( 
 
78 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 "trade. And yet those who administer the law [i.e., the 
 " Government] are not allowed to leave the law to itself, but 
 " are to back it with all the force we have at our disposal, when 
 " it cannot be denied that in the vast majority of cases the 
 " non-payment of rent arises from inability to pay, and that 
 " inability arises from the bad harvests." 
 
 Finally, Professor Thorold Rogers, who should be an autho- 
 rity on the subject of contracts, in vol. v. of his Agriculture and 
 Prices, says : — 
 
 " To enforce contracts is undoubtedly the first duty of society 
 " and law. But the duty is conditioned by an obligation which 
 " is frequently lost sight of by interested partisans. The state 
 " is not only justified in determining, but is bound to deter- 
 "mine . . . what contracts it will enforce. Some contracts it 
 " declares to be immoral and contrary to public policy. These 
 " it not only declines to enforce, but not infrequently punishes 
 " those who presume on attempting to complete such contracts. 
 " Others it repudiates or modifies, as complete or partial duress 
 "is employed by one of the parties against the other. . . . 
 " Between beggary and occupancy there has been no alternative 
 " to the Irish cottier and the Highland crofter, and the land- 
 " owner in these unhappy regions has used powers which the 
 " situation gave him mercilessly and to the full. ... A famine 
 " rent is extorted under duress, as is also a rent exalted by the 
 " threat of eviction, when the certain loss of the occupier is 
 " apparent to him, and of course not a whit less known to the 
 " owner or the agent. It is justice on the part of the state to 
 " protect a tenant against so one-sided a contract, and it is in 
 " accordance with the public policy that the state should inter- 
 " pret contracts for the use of land equitably." 
 
 The English idea of the " sacredness of contract " is founded 
 upon the fallacy, that the systems of land tenure in England 
 and Ireland are identical. No man of distinction in the three 
 kingdoms, except Lord Salisbury, would pretend belief in such 
 identity of tenure. Mr. Gladstone, speaking in Parliament in 
 1870, said : — 
 
 " We cannot name a point in which the relations of landlord 
 " and tenant in Ireland and in Great Britain are the same, 
 " except only in what may be called the abstract and general 
 "idea." 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 75 A NOTICE OF EJECTMENT EQUIVALENT TO A 
 SENTENCE OF DEATH? 
 
 " If you cut away the land from beneath the [the Irish peasant's] feet 
 " his next step must be into space, or, at least, into the limbo of beggardom. 
 " To each man the possession of a patch of land becomes absolutely neces- 
 " sary to existence." — Lobd Duffebin. 
 
 Let us now observe what representative Englishmen, statesmen 
 and publicists, have said of Irish evictions eflfected under the 
 circumstances described in the House of Commons, on the 
 22nd of May 1882, by Sir George Trevelyan, at that time 
 Chief Secretary for Ireland : — 
 
 "Every day the Government gets reports of evictions," he 
 said, "and whenever these evictions are of tenants who can 
 " pay their rents and wUl not, the Government is very carefully 
 " informed by their officers. That is not the case with all 
 •' evictions ; and at this moment, in one part of the country, 
 " men are being turned out of their houses, actually by batta- 
 *' lions, who are no more able to pay the arrears of these bad 
 *' years than they are able to pay the national debt. ... In 
 "three days 150 families, numbering 750 persons, were turned 
 " out in one district alone. At the headquarters of the Union, 
 " though only one member of each famUy attended to ask for 
 "assistance, there was absolutely a crowd at the door of the 
 " workhouse. It was not the case that these poor people 
 " belonged to the class of extravagant tenants. They were not 
 " whisky-drinkers ; they were not in terror of the Land League. 
 " One man who owed ^S borrowed it on the promise of repay- 
 " ment in six months with ^4 of addition — a rate of interest 
 " which hon. members could easily calculate — that he might live 
 " in his home. The cost of the process of eviction amounted 
 "to ;^3, 17s. 6d. I am told that in this district there are 
 
 79 
 
8o A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " thousands in this position — people who have been beggared for 
 " years, people who have been utterly unable to hold up their 
 " heads since those bad years, and whose only resource from 
 " expulsion from their homes is the village money-lender." 
 
 In 1834 Mr. PouUet-Scrope, M.P. for Stroud, addressed a 
 public letter to Lord Melbourne, then Prime Minister, from 
 which the following brief but pregnant extract is taken. A 
 longer passage from the same important public document wUl 
 be found at page 1 10 : — 
 
 "If the peasant and his family are ejected (by the cheap 
 " and summary process which landlord-made law provides) from 
 " their cabin, which sheltered him from his birth, and his 
 " fathers before him — what remains ? He must die ! The law, 
 " at least, says so. The law allows him no other alternative." 
 
 Thornton, in his Plea for Peasant Proprietors, observes : — 
 
 " The outrages by which life and property are endangered in 
 " Ireland, result naturally from the wretchedness and despera- 
 " tion of the people. The law is disobeyed because to the 
 " multitudes, who have nothing to lose, it affords no protection, 
 " while it withholds from them everything they covet Self- 
 " preservation is the first law of nature, and they who cannot 
 " keep their lives by any other means, must fight for them. 
 " To an Irish cottier a writ of ejectment is equivalent to a 
 " sentence of starvation, and he not unnaturally endeavours to 
 " retain possession of his land by sending a bullet through the 
 " head of every competitor. It is the fear of destitution that 
 " goads him on to crime." 
 
 Doubleday, in the second volume of his Life of Sir Robert 
 Peel, appears to be in complete agreement with Thornton. 
 He says : — 
 
 "Where ejectment for non-payment of rent from his little 
 " holding is all but equivalent to a sentence of death, by slow 
 " starvation, upon a man and his family, men placed in a 
 " position so dreadful, acting upon the law of nature, which 
 " places self-preservation first in the list of motives, will escape 
 " the ejectment by murdering the agent." 
 
A SENTENCE OF DEATH. 8i 
 
 In the Times of the 30th of May 1850, there appeared a 
 leading article, in the course of which the equivalent of a 
 notice of ejectment is set forth in no measured language as 
 follows : — 
 
 "By his holding the peasant lives; his potato plot maintains him 
 " and his family — wretchedly indeed ; but miserable as the pit- 
 " tance is on which he lives, it is derived from his holding. To 
 " that holding he clings with desperate tenacity, and lest he should 
 " be evicted, he will promise anything. The unfortunate man can 
 " find no farmer near in want of hands and ready to give wages. 
 " The grave or the workhouse is now his only alternative. . . . 
 " The judgment of eviction to a tenantry of this description is, 
 " in many cases, a judgment of death. For the proprietorial 
 " acts, which lead to such extensive suffering [as that now 
 "existing in Donegal and elsewhere in Ireland], the law has 
 " provided no punishment, and even the voice of Society is 
 " mute. . . . Can we wonder at the wild torrent of vengeance 
 " and of hate which bears away before it all thoughts of duty 
 "and obedience? — ought we to be startled if before it lie 
 " prostrate all fear of doing evil, all thoughts of the terrible 
 "future, and the consequence that must inevitably follow the 
 " breach of that law which bids us do no murder ? " 
 
 And the Times thus extenuates and excuses the homicidal 
 madness of the Irish peasant in his desperation and despair : — 
 
 " What, we ask, are likely to be the feelings of a man cast 
 " into the road, with his wife and wailing children around him, 
 " without shelter, without food, without hope ? Burning in- 
 " dignation is in his heart — ignorant, and mad with desperate 
 " recklessness, he turns in his anger on the direct instrument 
 " of his misery. Revenge weaves for itself a fatal web of 
 " sophistry, and eagerly listens to any suggestion which gives 
 " to the gratification of its passion and hate the character of the 
 " wild justice which was long since declared to be the slave's 
 " sole protection." 
 
 It is not a little surprising, then, to find the Times of the 25th 
 of February last founding an envenomed attack, the second of the 
 kind within a few weeks, on Mr. Gladstone, on the assumption 
 that he is the author of the remarkable saying in regard to the 
 consequences of Irish evictions which is really the property of 
 
 F 
 
82 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTIOIT. 
 
 the Times itself. There were circumstances which rendered 
 those attacks peculiarly discreditable to that journal at the 
 moment, which cannot be further alluded to here. The right 
 honourable gentleman was rudely assailed as though he had been 
 guilty of some criminal recklessness of speech in Parliament ; 
 and when he repudiates the charge, the Times plainly insinuates 
 that the speech was uttered all the same, and afterwards garbled 
 for publication in Hansard ! If the reader will compare what 
 Mr. Gladstone really said (see next page), as he is reported in 
 Hansard, with the Times' own utterance on the subject, which 
 we have just read, it will be seen at once that it is the latter 
 that has used the stronger language of the two. Where Mr. 
 Gladstone uses the word " starvation," the Times uses the word 
 " death ;" and we know that a man may be suffering from star- 
 vation while he is still alive. Meanwhile, here is the comment 
 of the Times, which is a curiosity under the circumstances : — 
 
 " Mr. Gladstone — it will be observed, we think, with general 
 " surprise — declares that he has never said, ' in solemn or in 
 " any other tones, that an eviction is a sentence of death.' The 
 " statement thus repudiated has been quoted hundreds of times 
 " in the press and on the platform, and is, indeed, a common- 
 " place rhetoric with Mr. Gladstone's followers and allies, but 
 " here again we are ready to do Mr. Gladstone complete justice. 
 " "We have found in Hansard the original phrase, and, for a 
 "good many reasons, it is worth giving in full. 'And this 
 " eviction,' said Mr. Gladstone in the debate on the Disturbance 
 "Bill in 1880, speaking of an eviction, as he explained, for 
 " non-payment of rent, ' it is no exaggeration to say, in a country 
 " where the agricultural pursuit is the only pursuit, and where 
 " the means of the payment of rent are entirely destroyed for 
 " the time by the visitation of Providence, that the poor occupier 
 " may, in these circumstances, regard the sentence of eviction as 
 " coming for him very near to a sentence of starvation.' The 
 " passage as it stands is not quite grammatical, but is intelligible 
 " enough, and it conveys to the ordinary mind the impression 
 " that from the tenant's point of view an eviction is equivalent 
 " to a sentence of a peculiar and most painful form of death. 
 "... We may add that Mr. T. P. O'Connor in his work on 
 "The Pamell Movement, refers admiringly to this 'famous 
 " doctrine,' stated in its bluntest form, and quotes the passage 
 
A SENTENCE OF DEATH. 83 
 
 "from Hansard; but, in reliance, no doubt, on his recollection 
 " of what he heard himself in the House of Commons, alters the 
 " last word from ' starvation ' to * death.' Other reports confirm 
 " this reading, which, however, is quite unimportant. We think 
 *' we may leave to our readers to decide for themselves whether 
 " Mr. Gladstone spoke ' in solemn tones ' or not." 
 
 If Mr. Gladstone had really said so there would be nothing 
 surprising in the saying, which has been uttered by several 
 persons of more or less eminence from time to time, as will be 
 seen from a perusal of the present chapter. Meanwhile there 
 has been a singular lapse of memory on the part of the Times. 
 Here is what Mr. Gladstone felt himself constrained to say in 
 April 1870, on the occasion of his introducing his first Land 
 Bill in Parliament — "We have made ejectments cheap and 
 •'easy, and notices to quit have descended upon the Irish 
 " people like snow-flakes." Ten years afterwards, in the debate 
 on Mr. W. E. Forster's Compensation for Disturbance Bill, he 
 spoke as follows : — 
 
 "In the failure of the crops, crowned by the year 1879, the 
 " act of God had replaced the Irish occupier in the condition in 
 " which he stood before the Land Act. Because what had he 
 " to contemplate ? He had to contemplate eviction for his non- 
 " payment of rent : and as a consequence of eviction, starva- 
 " tion. And ... it is no exaggeration to say, in a country 
 " where the agricultural pursuit is the only pursuit, and where 
 " the means of the payment of rent are entirely destroyed for a 
 " time by the visitation of Providence, that the poor occupier 
 " may under these circumstances regard a sentence of eviction 
 " as coming, for him, very near to a sentence of starvation." 
 
 Distinguishing between the two classes of outrages — those of 
 the tenant and those of the landlord — Mr. Gladstone, speaking 
 in the House of Commons, on May 24, 1882, also said : — 
 
 " Eviction is the exercise of a legal right which may be to 
 " the prejudice of your neighbour, which may involve the highest 
 " responsibility, nay, even deep moral guilt. There may be 
 " outrages which — «11 things considered, the persons and the 
 " facts — may be less guilty in the sight of God than evictions." 
 
 Mr. Fronde has expressed himself in regard to crime in much 
 
84 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 the same spirit, and apportions the 'guilt in a like independent 
 manner thus : — 
 
 "Unjust laws provoke and compel resistanca Violence 
 " follows, and crime and guilt j but the guilt, when the account 
 " is made up, does not lie entirely with the poor wretch who is 
 " called the criminal." 
 
 Mr. J. H. Tuke's testimony, in his Donegal and Connaught in 
 1880, is similar to that of Lord Dufferin : — 
 
 " Take away from the tenant his little holding, and nothing 
 " is left to him but the workhouse, . . . which is simply unen- 
 " durable to an Irish peasant. Except in some of the towns 
 " there is not even an unoccupied house which a man could 
 " hire if he obtained work apart from his holding. Hence the 
 " tenacity with which the holding is retained and defended. 
 " They [the peasants] are like shipwrecked sailors on a plank 
 " in the ocean ; deprive them of the few inches by which they 
 *' ' hold on,' and you deprive them of life. Deprive an Irish- 
 " man of the few feet of land by which he ' holds on,' and you 
 " deprive him of all that makes life possible." 
 
 It would be easy to multiply quotations of this kind from 
 the writings and speeches of English public men, past and 
 present, but the exigencies of space require that even a subject 
 so urgent for discussion should be kept within moderate bounds. 
 It will be observed that Mr. Tuke speaks of the workhouse as 
 being "unendurable" to the Irish peasant. Mr. Godkin, a 
 distinguished Presbyterian clergyman, at one time editor of 
 the Londonderry Standard, is more outspoken than Mr. Tuke. 
 Speaking of the process of eviction, and its consequences, he 
 wrote as follows, in the course of a published letter inviting a 
 tenant-right deputation to the maiden city in 1850 : — 
 
 " I declare before heaven my firm conviction that it would 
 " be more humane and merciful in the law, when the levelling 
 " brigade goes forward to destroy a village, to pull down houses 
 " over the heads of families — the frantic mother instinctively 
 " clinging to the roof-tree as for life — I declare solemnly that I 
 " think it would be more merciful to order out the police, to 
 " make them surround the village, and shoot dead on the spot 
 " every one of the men, women, and children, than doom them 
 " to the moral death and physical degradation of those pest- 
 
A SENTENCE OF DEATH. 85 
 
 "houses — the overcrowded and disorderly poorhouses of Ire- 
 " land." 
 
 Nowhere in the world are women so pure as in Ireland. 
 But nowhere are they more to be pitied when they lose their 
 virtue. The family considers itself irretrievably disgraced, and 
 casts them out utterly. No matter what may be their repent- 
 ance, there is for them no forgiveness at home. There, at least, 
 it may be truly said : — 
 
 " Every woe a tear may claim 
 Except an erring sister's shame." 
 
 Is it surprising that the evicted Irish peasant, reduced to the 
 alternative of the workhouse, should occasionally be driven to 
 fury by anxiety for his innocent children under the circum- 
 stances 1 "Who is there, reduced to so pitiable a plight, with a 
 knowledge of the too probable fate that is in store for some, at 
 least, amongst those little ones, that could resist dark imaginings ? 
 He must be a stoic, not an ordinary mortal, to struggle against 
 them successfully. 
 
 The Irish are by nature, perhaps, the cleverest race in Europe. 
 But there is an illogical side to their character, as regards the 
 way in which they resist tyranny and oppression. It was one of 
 those idiosyncrasies which sorely puzzled the acute mind of Lord 
 Melbourne, on his first arrival in Ireland as Chief Secretary, 
 in 1827. He readily understood whence arose the anarchic 
 sympathy with agrarian outrage which was not shown towards 
 ordinary crime there. But he was constantly asking with 
 an unsatisfied curiosity, notwithstanding, for the details of 
 cases illustrating the internecine war which raged in those 
 days between the many and the few. His biographer, Mr. 
 M'CuUagh Torrens, M.P., tells, in the first volume of his 
 Memoirs, how, soon after his arrival in Dublin, a private dinner 
 party was specially got up for his enlightenment on the subject. 
 Several instances were related to him in the course of the even^ 
 ing of lawless vengeance dealt out by the infuriated peasantry 
 on men little above their own rank in life, such as bailifis, 
 process-servers, tithe collectors, and small proprietors themselves 
 (who were probably holding minor agencies for rent collecting^ 
 
86 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 The patience of the new Secretary was at length exhausted. 
 What followed must have set the plates and glasses clattering 
 on the board. " And why" he suddenly asked, " donH they go 
 " at the big ones ? " It was meekly explained to him that absen- 
 teeism accounted for the " illogicality " in some measure, and Sir 
 Philip Crampton, who was one of the party, mentioned the case 
 of a well-known Tipperary landlord who was commonly called the 
 "woodcock," because he was so hard to hit; to prove, as he said, 
 that there was no special tenderness shown to rank or fortune. 
 "But the significance of the question," observes Mr. Torrens, 
 " and the tone in which it was put were not to be forgotten." 
 Afterwards, the same eminent statesman, Lord Melbourne — 
 the future, long continued, Prime Minister of England, the 
 friend and trusted counsellor of our present gracious sovereign — 
 in a letter which will also be found in the first volume of the 
 same Memoirs, gave utterance to a judgment on one victim of 
 assassination amongst the Irish landlords, which, unhappily, 
 it cannot be denied, might stand for many of his class during 
 the present century, more particularly in periods of distress 
 since 1815 : — 
 
 " If one-half of what is told me of him be true," Lord Mel- 
 bourne said, "and it comes from many different quarters — if he 
 " had had forty thousand lives, there could have been no wonder 
 " if they had all been taken." 
 
 The Irish priests tell their people that they should obey the 
 laws of man, however iniquitous, rather than shed one drop 
 of human blood ; and this also was the dictum of O'Connell. 
 Otherwise, the emergency man and his battering-ram, Mr. 
 Balfour and his Removables — cum multis aliis quce nunc pre- 
 scribere longum est — would speedily disappear from Ireland, as 
 did the Irish toads when they were frowned upon by St. 
 Patrick ; for, as Mr. Bright once forcibly expressed it — speaking 
 hypothetically of the Irish landlords in like case — they would 
 be obliged to flee the country " like red shanks." But while 
 the Irish priests conceivB this extreme view of the precepts 
 of the Gospel, English representative men will be found to 
 maintain tbat the law of self-preservation comes from God's right 
 
A SENTENCE OF DEATH. 87 
 
 hand ; and eminent foreign jurists like Grotius have defined 
 this law of- nature, the "Dictate of Reason." Nor are our 
 Scotch friends at variance with their English and Continental 
 neighbours on the question. Take the following from the 
 Digest of the Law of Scotland (fifth edition, 1854), by Alexander 
 Macallan, Advocate, as an example : — 
 
 " "UTiat the Law of Nature has commanded, cannot be for- 
 " bidden, or even dispensed with by positive law; and, in like 
 " manner, what 'it prohibits cannot be commanded, or even 
 " permitted by human authority. The Law of Nature being 
 " indeed the command of God, to whom all His creatures owe 
 •' absolute obedience, no earthly lawgiver, who is himself subject 
 " to that Law, hath a right of abrogating or controlling it." 
 
 " Starve my wife and children, and see if bayonets will put 
 " me down, except by death ! " exclaims Sir Charles Napier, the 
 hero of Scinde, after reproaching the Irish with too tamely 
 submitting to the *' laws of man." But it is not expedient to 
 discuss a delicate topic of this kind in a work intended for 
 popular reading. The purpose is rather to expose the hypocrisy 
 of those politicians who pretend to believe that Irish peasants 
 have been guilty of some abnormal number of crimes through- 
 out the agrarian agitation of the last half century. The Devon 
 Commission, Lord George Bentinck, Mr. Gladstone, and many 
 other high authorities, will be found declaring in these pages 
 that the patience of the Irish people, in all the dread circum- 
 stances of the present era, is unexampled in history. Their 
 patience, indeed, it is often said, has been the cause of their 
 ruin, because it is upon this safe foundation that persons like 
 Lords Hartington and Salisbury construct their so-called " firm 
 " and unflinching " policy of exasperation. It is shown in these 
 opening chapters that the virtue is one which has not been quite 
 so well understood or practised by Englishmen and Scotchmen 
 under oppression, fortunately for themselves; even when the 
 conditions have not been nearly so galling to the oppressed — 
 when they have not, for instance, involved questions of life or 
 death. And the Irish may yet give point to Macaulay's verse, 
 and prove, " in some wild hour, how much the wretched dare." 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 IRISH EVICTIONS FROM AN ENGLISH STANDPOINT. 
 
 " Some of the evictions that have already taken place this winter — we 
 " do not care to specify them — have been inhuman spectacles, fit only for 
 " a barbarous country and a barbarous age. They revolt the consciences 
 " of men influenced by feelings of sympathy for the suffering poor. The 
 " Government . . . may well take into consideration the question whether 
 " it is not time to dissociate, by wider legislative sanction, the action 
 " of the Executive from the enforcement of decrees which are heartily 
 " condemned by public sentiment as gross violations of Humanity and 
 "Right." — Standard, January i8, 1887. 
 
 Is the new edition of Chambers' Encyclopoedia, which began 
 publication in 1887, there is an article on " British Agricul- 
 " ture," which is very instructive and useful for reference in dis- 
 cussing the Irish question. For well nigh ten years past it has 
 been customary amongst a certain class in this country to speak 
 of the agitation for a reduction of rents in Ireland aa a vast 
 conspiracy against truth, justice, and honesty. From Lord 
 Salisbury himself down to the humblest of his followers, this 
 has been the constant unvarying cry. Indeed, Lord Salisbury 
 has not been ashamed to speak of the Irish people as pick- 
 pockets and connivers at wholesale robbery of the Irish land- 
 lords ; never minding the fact that tribunals legally established 
 by Parliament have made sweeping reductions of rent as a 
 matter of equity in Ireland ; showing that the tenants were the 
 robbed, not the robbers. Lord Salisbury is also well aware, as 
 a landed proprietor, that English landlords have voluntarily, as 
 might be expected from them, agreed to enormous abatements 
 of their rental in this country too, and for tlie same reason, viz., 
 on account of the gigantic depreciation in the value of land in 
 
 Great Britain as well as in Ireland since 1875. Well, all that 
 
 88 
 
EVICTIONS FKOM AN ENGLISH STANDPOINT. 89 
 
 can be said on the subject in the face of these indisputable facts 
 is this — if there has been any conspiracy against truth in the 
 matter at all, it certainly has not been organised by the friends 
 of the Irish tenants, either in this country or in Ireland. How 
 then are we to account for the unmeasured abuse of the Irish 
 people so commonly indulged in by the Prime Minister ? One 
 is forbidden by respect for his high office from replying to the 
 question as it deserves : — 
 
 "Though Great Britain is the greatest manufacturing and 
 " mercantile nation in the world," observes Chambers, " agricul- 
 " ture is nevertheless her most important industry. Agriculture 
 " has profited greatly by the increasing wealth flowing in from 
 " other sources. . . . With the increasing prosperity of the 
 "industrial classes, prices of farm-produce rose apace, and in 
 " the years 1870-73, British agriculture attained to an unpre- 
 " cedented point of prosperity. Unfortunately this flourishing 
 " state of matters was not long lived. Gradually the tide of 
 " prosperity receded, and the disastrously wet and sunless year 
 " of 1879 completed the wreck of many an industrious farmer. 
 " Since then the tendency has been continually downwards, and 
 " even yet there is but faint indication of improvement. A 
 " succession of bad years, with an excess of rain and a deficiency 
 " of sunshine, have curtailed the produce of crops, and lessened 
 " the store of fertility in the soih Through increased foreign 
 " competition and diminished purchasing power amongst the 
 "industrial classes, the price of wheat fell between 1880 and 
 " 1886 from 50s. to 30s. per quarter, barley from 40s. to 25s., 
 " and oats and other products almost as much in proportion. 
 " For a time beef and mutton maintained their value wonder- 
 " fully, but at last they also gave way. Between 1884 and 
 " 1887 beef has fallen from 80s. to 55s, per cwt., and the 
 " decrease in mutton has been almost as great. This enormous 
 " decline in prices — representing from ^^3 to ^^5 per acre for 
 " wheat, and from J^d to ;^8 upon a two-year-old bullock — has 
 " dealt a terrible blow upon British farming. Thousands of 
 " [British] farmers, formerly in comfortable circumstances, have 
 " been utterly ruined, and for the time being a large extent of 
 " poor, stiff, and stubborn land has been thrown out of cultiva- 
 " tion ; while a still larger area is being farmed at a loss to the 
 " occupiers, and little or no benefit to the owner. This, of 
 " course, cannot long continue, and as leases fall out or tenants 
 
90 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " succumb, farms either revert to the proprietors' hands or are 
 "let at greatly reduced rents. The depression has fallen most 
 *• heavily upon strong clay lands, and in some parts of England 
 " land of this kind brings in hardly enough to pay the tithe, 
 " not to speak of any rent to the proprietor ; consequently it 
 "lies untenanted and uncared for. It is impossible to accu- 
 " rately foreshadow the immediate future of British agriculture, 
 " but it seems more than probable that, at anyrate for a con- 
 " siderable time to come, farming will be conducted with less 
 " capital than formerly, and altogether at an easier pace, witli 
 " a lower level of prices. . . . According to the Income Tax 
 "return, the landowners' capital in 1875 amounted to no less 
 " than ;^i, 672, 775,000 — an increase of ;<^276,375,ooo in twenty 
 " years. Since then the value of landed property has tumbled 
 " down headlong ; and it is probably within the mark to say 
 *' that to-day the capital of the landowners of the kingdom 
 "is less than it was in 1875 by 30 per cent. — or say by 
 " ;^5oo,ooo,ooo. In an official return made to the House of 
 " Commons for the years 1883-84, the gross annual value of 
 " 'land,' as assessed for income-tax in the United Kingdom, is 
 " stated at ;^65,442,ooo. This, at twenty-five years' purchase, 
 " would amount to ;^ 1,63 6,050,000 ; but there is no doubt that 
 " the value of the landowners' property is now very I'ar short of 
 " that formidable sum. ... In the Parliamentary Return just 
 "referred to for 1883-84, the tenant-farmers' capital is given 
 " at ;^3oo,ooo,ooo. This is probably above rather than below 
 " the mark. The loss in farmers' capital since 1875 can hardly 
 " be under _;^i 00,000,000 ; and, reckoning the landowners' loss 
 " at five times as much, there has been a loss through the agri- 
 " cultural depression of no less than ;^6oo,ooo,ooo — a vast 
 " sinking of property in the short space of twelve years, far 
 " exceeding the increase of the preceding thirty years. . . . All 
 " over, the decline in rent has run from 10 to 50 per cent., first- 
 " class farms coming down from 50s. to 30s., or even less, and 
 "medium land from 30s. to 20s., 15s., or even as low as los. 
 " per acre." 
 
 The writer might have added the notorious fact, that, in some 
 parts of England at least, the landlords have even occasionally 
 invited the bankrupt farmers to remain on their farms for two 
 or three years free of rent, in the hope of happier times to come, 
 on the friendly understanding that they agreed to pay the taxes 
 
EVICTIONS FROM AN ENGLISH STANDPOINT. 91 
 
 only, in cases where it was known there was no longer a 
 question of eking out rent of any kind. Now apply this 
 knowledge of ours here before us to the condition of things in 
 a wretchedly poor country like Ireland, which is destitute of 
 manufacturing industries, for reasons described elsewhere, which 
 are, alas ! deeply discreditable to the English ParliamenL Mr. 
 Thomas Knipe, a member of a recent Boyal Commission on 
 Land, quoted the following ofl&cial returns in his separate report 
 to Parliament, to show the extent of the fall in the value of 
 agricultural produce and live stock in recent years in Ireland : — 
 
 " The estimated value of grain and all other crops in Ireland," 
 Mr. Knipe observed, " amounted to in the years — 
 
 1875. 1881. 1886. 
 
 63 millions, 46 millions. 31 millions sterling. 
 
 " Showing a depreciation in value, in the year 1886, of 32 
 "millions sterling, as compared with 1875; and 15 millions 
 " within the last five years alone, or since the last Land Act 
 " was passed. The same Official Returns give the value of the 
 " live stock in all Ireland for the years — 
 
 1881. 1886. 
 
 50 millions. 41 millions sterling. 
 
 "It will be seen from the same returns that the combined 
 " values of agricultural produce and live stock for the year of 
 " 1886, as compared with the average of the four years 1881— 
 " 1884, show a reduction of 23 per cent. 
 
 " The agricultural rent of Ireland as returned by Sir John 
 " Ball Greene amounts to about 13 millions sterling. In 1881, 
 " therefore, 28 per cent, of the total value (say 46 millions) of 
 " agricultural produce was due for rent, and in 1886, when the 
 " value had fallen to 31 millions, rent claimed 42 per cent." 
 
 Putting these English and Irish facts together, it is impossible 
 to resist the conclusion that the continued agrarian agitation to 
 bring about a further reduction of Irish rents, in accordance with 
 the altered circumstances of the times, is one perfectly justifi- 
 able. English landowners have voluntarily and of their own 
 good will made enormous reductions of rent to meet the neces- 
 sities of the case. In Ireland, and the Scottish Highlands, 
 
92 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 landlords have resisted every attempt to persuade them to 
 adopt a similar course, until at length Parliament was com- 
 pelled to interfere in behalf of the tenants. Yet in spite of 
 such powerful interference even, the Irish landlords have con- 
 trived in many instances to evict the tenants mercilessly for 
 failing to continue payment on the scale of the old rents. 
 
 Many of our leading journals are strangely in error in direct- 
 ing their indignation wholly against Lord Clanricarde, being 
 ignorant apparently that even greater sinners against the canons 
 of humanity are to be found amongst the evicting landlord 
 forces scattered throughout Ireland. One of these, the Marquis 
 of Sligo, has probably evicted more human beings than any 
 man of his class, living or dead. In the parish of Aughagower, 
 in the county of Mayo, a Captain Houston, a tenant of his, 
 occupied some years ago a territory of two hundred square 
 miles, out of which every living soul, except a few herds, are 
 said to have been remorselessly banished by this landlord. In 
 another parish, that of Louisburgh, scores of once comfortable 
 townlands have been literally cleared in like manner by the 
 agency of Lord Sligo, and Lord Lucan, another exterminating 
 absentee landlord, lately deceased — a parish which had a popu- 
 lation of 2,200 families, that is more than 10,000 souls, in 1846, 
 according to Lavelle's Irish Landlord. Lord Sligo succeeded to 
 the title and estates in 1845, ^^ ^ typical absentee, and the 
 possessor of an annual rental valued at ;^20,497 by Govern- 
 ment, for taxation purposes ; as set forth in the Irish Domesday 
 Book printed by order of the House of Commons in 1876. Only 
 a few years ago, the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph, 
 writing from Claremorris, County of Mayo, said of him : — 
 
 " It must not be supposed that Lord Sligo's tenants have no 
 " grievance against the ' office,' at which impersonal thing they 
 " hurl bitter words. It was the * office ' that took from them 
 "years ago the privilege of pasturing their cattle upon the 
 " adjacent hills. It was the 'office ' which laid a tax of 25 per 
 " cent, upon the proceeds of their industry in making kelp. It 
 " was the ' office ' which insisted that, while drift seaweed might 
 " be freely gathered, weed growing on the shore may not be had 
 
EVICTIONS FROM AN ENGLISH STANDPOINT. 93 
 
 " without payment. It was the ' office ' which demanded half' 
 " a-crown per homestead for cutting turf, on pretence of making 
 " roads to the bogs, and left the roads unmade. And it was 
 " the ' office ' which, four or five years ago, raised the rents 25 
 " per cent., established a new tenancy, and deprived the holders 
 " of the right to claim compensation under the Land Act for 
 " their improvements." 
 
 One should know something of the Irish agrarian question to 
 understand the full drift of this indictment by the influential 
 London journal. But unhappily there is something worse yet, 
 infinitely worse in its nature, if not its consequences, to be told 
 than what is revealed in the columns of the Daily Telegraph. 
 In 1 88 1 the present writer visited some of the evicted peasants 
 on the estate of Lord Sligo on mountain land above Louisburgh, 
 for the purpose of investigating on the spot the circumstances 
 which led to their eviction. They were as dreadful as those of 
 which we are daily reading nowadays in our morning paper. 
 But the poor tenants having been re-admitted as *' caretakers " 
 of their cabins, there was a brief respite before the final execu- 
 tion of the landlord's decree against them. What this care- 
 taking means requires a short explanation, though it must be 
 understood that at best it only falls to the lot of a comparatively 
 small portion of the evicted. Their " caretaking," then, only 
 means a reprieve for six months, and if in that time they are 
 not able to pay their rack-rents, as well as the heavy law costs 
 that have accumulated against them, they lose the right of con- 
 tinuing as tenants. But, as they were not able to pay the rack- 
 rent itself when it fell due, it is highly improbable, unless some 
 fresh aid arrived from their sons or daughters, if they had any, 
 in America meanwhile, that they were able to pay both the rent 
 and law costs before the six months' period of redemption 
 expired. During these six months, no crops could he sown by 
 them, and they were in this dreadful position, that they were 
 liable as caretakers to be re-evicted at a weeKs notice. The office 
 receipts realised the fact, hinted at by the Daily Telegraph, that 
 Lord Sligo's tenants had been for years systematically oppressed 
 and defrauded in various ways. A Eoyal Commission has 
 
94 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 now brought to light the circumstance that this landlord, amongst 
 others, compelled his wretched tenants, who are supported by 
 public charity in periods of distress, to pay poor-rate when they 
 were legally entitled to exemption from it — Lord Sligo pocket- 
 ing the spoil from year to year. The small holdings around 
 Westport are commonly held "in co.," — that is, as in "company," 
 the local term where English is spoken ; and this " co "-system 
 is sometimes used by absentee and other unscrupulous landlords 
 to defraud these defenceless creatures out of the total remission 
 or abatement of the poor-rate, to which by law they are entitled. 
 A Eoyal Commission dealing with the subject reported in the 
 following manner for the information of Parliament and the 
 British public : — 
 
 " It might be supposed that in these congested districts (in 
 " Gal way, Sligo, &c.), the majority of occupiers are rated under 
 " j£4f aiid are not liable, therefore, for the payment of poor- 
 " rates. It was stated in evidence, however, that a custom pre- 
 " vaUs in some of these western unions of joining together a 
 " certain number of small occupiers, valued severally under ;^4,as 
 " tenants 'in co. ' on the rent-roll. Thus, although they occupy 
 " distinct holdings, the aggregate value of the ' co.' tenancy is 
 " raised to above ^4, and the landlord is able to evade his 
 " liability for the entire amount of the poor-rate which he 
 " would have to pay if the ratings were separate. We found 
 " cases, notably on the property of Lord Sligo, where no 
 " reduction in respect of poor-rates was allowed in the rent to 
 " tenants above ^^4, and where the tenants valued below that 
 " amount were also obliged to pay all rates. This arrangement," 
 the Commissioners go on to remark, *' appears to be opposed to 
 " the principle of the Act of Parliament." 
 
 Since- 1845, Lord Sligo has been engaged in the work of 
 eviction, aided by all the resources of the Crown, and his rage 
 and cupidity are not yet satiated. He is now reaching the 
 three score years and ten of the Psalmist, and here is how he 
 is engaged, from a safe vantage ground in England, in regalin^ 
 himself in his old age, in heaping up fresh odium on the British 
 Government and the British name. In the course of last year 
 (1888), the Kev. W. Joyce, the parish priest of Louisburgh, 
 
EVICTIONS FEOM AN ENGLISH STANDPOINT. 9; 
 
 county of Mayo, wrote to the Freeman's Journal, that the Mar- 
 quis of Sligo's eviction campaign in that county was renewed. 
 Three families, without subsistence, evicted at dawn a few days 
 before Christmas, had to take shelter in ditches, and were not 
 admitted as caretakers. He was called to administer the last rites 
 of the Church to a blind woman eighty years of age, and bedridden 
 for many years, whom he found thrown on the bare rock outside 
 her door, with rags insufficient to decently cover her. Being 
 unwilling to administer the sacraments (including the anointing 
 with oil) in such a position, he begged Lord Sligo's representatives 
 to re-admit her for the purpose, but they refused. No other 
 house being at hand, he had to force the door and set her inside 
 for the purpose. After that he believed the people removed her 
 — fearing the law, Mr. Joyce concluded. Of course if there 
 were any government in Ireland worthy of the name, nobody 
 supposes that Lord Sligo and his fellows would be permitted 
 to act in this manner towards the most defenceless of the 
 Queen's subjects with complete impunity. On the contrary, 
 they would be put in the dock as criminals, instead of those 
 starving peasants who are driven to madness by their rapacity 
 and oppression, if the "rights of property" did not block the way. 
 Amongst the tales of horror related to the present writer in 
 Mayo on this occasion, one of the most striking referred to the 
 late Lord Lucan, another absentee landlord, who was a brother- 
 in-law of Lord Cardigan, and divided with him the responsibility 
 for the destruction of the gallant Light Brigade at Balaclava. 
 His property joined Lord Sligo's in Mayo, and the two absentee 
 peers were rivals in the work of exterminating their tenants. 
 As Lord Lucan only died last year the reader may feel inclined 
 to enjoin nil nisi honum ; but unfortunately there is no nisi in 
 the matter, any more than in recalling the deeds of the Emperor 
 Nero, or King Pedro of Castile. Indeed, it is due to the 
 memory of the Roman emperor to recollect the testimony of 
 Pliny, that when similar consolidations and clearances were 
 ruining Italy and the provinces, six lords owned half Africa 
 until Nero summarily put them to death at his own sweet will. 
 As far as the eye could reach, and farther still beyond th« 
 
96 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTIOK 
 
 horizon, around Castlebar, Lord Lucan had cleared the country 
 of human beings, after the great famine of 1846-7, and substi- 
 tuted brute beasts in their stead ; the law and the Government 
 aiding and abetting in the atrocious work. There is a piquant 
 commentary of Swift on such criminal folly, written early in the 
 last century : — " The good of this is, that the more sheep we* 
 " have, the fewer human creatures are left to wear the wool or 
 " eat the flesh." And what became of all the people ? " They 
 " died in such numbers in the neighbouring workhouse," ob- 
 served Mr. de Burgh Sidley, a young Episcopal clergyman of the 
 neighbourhood, " that the Earl humanely rented the Poor-Law 
 " Guardians some additional land close by to accommodate the 
 "exceptional mortality;" thus making something out of his 
 victims even in their pauper graves. Lavelle, in his Irish 
 Landlord, adds that Lord Lucan, after devastating the country- 
 side in this manner, adroitly contrived to get it transferred to 
 another electoral Poor-Law division, so as to escape payment 
 of the additional poor-rate, which his cruelty had rendered 
 necessary in the circumstances. 
 
 On one occasion a zealous and popular young Protestant clergy- 
 man (not Mr. Sidley, who was not then born) took occasion to 
 write to the hero of Balaclava for assistance to build a certain 
 school, which would in due course be filled, mostly, by the chil- 
 dren of the Earl's own tenants. No answer came to the letter. 
 But shortly afterwards, Lord Lucan, being in Ireland on one of 
 his flying excursions, paid a visit to his clerical correspondent 
 for the purpose of demanding what claim he had to write to 
 him for a subscription of the kind. The young clergyman 
 modestly replied that he thought he had a good moral claim, 
 inasmuch as there were a considerable number of his tenants to 
 be benefited by the projected school " Nothing of the kind, 
 " sir," replied the landlord hotly ; when the clergyman attempted 
 to stand to his guns by going into details. He stalked out of 
 the house angrily, declaring that there was not a tenant of his 
 in existence in the place in question. However, having ob- 
 served the firmness of his correspondent's assertion, Lord Lucan 
 went straight to the Clerk of the Union to inspect the rate-books, 
 
EVICTIONS FROM AN ENGLISH STANDPOINT. 97 
 
 •when lo ! he discovered, to his deep chagrin, that there were as 
 yet some of the " vermin " left unexterminated. Next day he 
 returned to the clergyman, saying — " I have to apologise to you ; 
 " you were quite right about my tenants. But," he quickly 
 added, as a demoniacal scowl came into his face, "you need 
 " build no school on their account, for I shall have cleared every 
 " soul of them out of the place by the ist of November." A 
 bright young Catholic priest, the Rev. John Stephens, was 
 sitting at the opposite side of the luncheon table, and there 
 were some young ladies elsewhere in the room where this con- 
 versation was related. I pushed away the wine-glass, the stem 
 of which I had been holding between my fingers, horror-stricken, 
 and looked steadily into the benevolent face of my host for the 
 sequel to the story. "Did he?" was all that I could gasp. 
 " He did," said my host, " he carried out his decree of that morn- 
 " ing, after certain legal formalities had been complied with, to 
 " the very letter." There was a dead silence for a few moments, 
 which was broken by my asking the venerable ecclesiastic what 
 had become of the evicted families. " That is just the thing," 
 he said, his voice now quivering with emotion, " I have often 
 " tried to account for in my own mind, because I always felt 
 " that I had been the innocent cause of their destruction. I can. 
 " only say I traced nearly all of them to the workhouse, where 
 •' they were quickly decimated by disease, and so gradually died 
 " there, the whole of them; Few, if any, escaped to America, 
 " I am afraid." — *' Was there any use in inquiry at the work- 
 " house 1 " — " Not the least, they are all dead long ago," was 
 the prompt reply. And now Lieutenant-General, the Earl of 
 Lucan, has himself gone to his account, at the ripe old age of 
 seventy-eight. 
 
 " And the Lord said, Where is thy brother ? And he said, 
 " I know not : Am I my brother's keeper ? And the Lord said, 
 " What hast thou done 1 the voice of thy brother's blood crieth 
 " unto me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from 
 " the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy 
 " brother's blood from thy hand." 
 
 In his Gleanings in Ireland, Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne, 
 
 a 
 
98 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 recently dead, the famous " S.G.O." of the Times, says that the 
 evictions of the starved and dying peasantry took place in such 
 circumstances there, that were but one such case to happen in 
 England there would be no peace in the press till the landlord, 
 sheriff, bailiff, and all the posse had taken their trial for man- 
 slaughter. And "S.G.O." was quite safe in saying so. Such 
 a demand for vengeance on the oppressor, and his instruments 
 of oppression, would be generally welcomed here as a healthy 
 sign that the English heart beats in the right place. But in 
 Ireland it is different. There the law, and the myrmidons of 
 the law, are in favour of the oppressor ; the Government sup- 
 plies him with magistrates and police and soldiers to execute 
 his cruel decrees against the starving population. But then it 
 is the law, which must be supported, say our Tory politicians. 
 Jefferies, Lord Campbell says, was always a great stickler for the 
 law throughout his infamous career. Horse, foot, artillery, gun- 
 boats, and battering-rams — these are but the implements of the 
 law. Defenceless, half-starved women and innocent children, 
 born in the image of Christ — these are only its victims : — 
 
 " Was it difficult to conceive the kind of feeling towards the 
 British authority with which the children in these Irish homes 
 must have grown up?" inquires Lord Aberdeen, the most 
 popular Viceroy who has ruled Ireland during the present cen- 
 tury. " These evictions were always carried out in the Queen's 
 " name, and many an ignorant peasant had probably never been 
 " brought into contact with the authority and emblems of the 
 " throne except in connection with these dismal proceedings." 
 
 If you imagine that the Irish peasants are specially prone to 
 take the law into their own hands — to have recourse to the law 
 of nature, the law of self-preservation in fact — in such dire 
 circumstances, Lord Lucan, now lying in his cold tomb, shall 
 himself arouse you from such vain imaginings. In 1887, that 
 is, the year before his death, after making " war " — the word is 
 Mr. Bright's — on his unhappy tenantry for exactly forty years, 
 he addressed the following indignant remonstrance to the editor 
 of the Daily News on account of some erroneous information 
 contributed to that journal in regard to him : — 
 
 <( 
 
EVICTIONS FROM AN ENGLISH STANDPOINT. 99 
 
 " Sir," observed Lord Lucan, ** my attention has been called 
 " to your paper of Saturday last, the 30th October, in which 
 "your Special Commissioner, in a letter from Castlebar of 
 " October 28th, alluding to me, states that ' the popular party 
 "gloat over the spectacle of an aged peer compelled to ride 
 " over his amateur Castlebar farm attended by a brace of con- 
 " stables to protect him from public vengeance.' I am happy 
 " to be able to state that you have never attempted to circulate 
 " a grosser untruth. I have never received, never required, and 
 " most certainly never desired, any police protection whatever. 
 "During the forty years that I have been active in the dis- 
 " charge of my public and private business, ... I have never 
 " been offered by anybody, in writing or otherwise, one word 
 " menacing or oflfensiva" 
 
 While these pages are going through the press, Irish evictions 
 are proceeding as usuaL The modus operandi is much the same 
 as it has been at any time during the last seventy-five years. 
 But a decided novelty has been introduced to supplement the 
 implements of war in the campaign of 1889. Last year an old 
 man of eighty, named Dunne, weakly yielding to the effects of 
 exposure after eviction, gave up the ghost at the same time that 
 he gave up possession of his home. Mr. Gladstone dwelt upon 
 this tragical ending of the process of eviction shortly after at 
 Bingley Hall, Birmingham, when he demonstrated with voice 
 and gesture that a man might attain venerable years long past 
 the time prescribed by the Psalmist, without the loss of a single 
 one of the five senses — ergo, there is no reason why he should 
 be put to death prematurely, as it were, before the time appointed 
 by the Almighty. Lords Hartington and Salisbury — perhaps 
 alarmed at the energy of Mr. Gladstone's denunciation — have 
 now prescribed, doubtless upon consultation with that eminent 
 medical scientist, James Barr of Liverpool, that the field forces 
 engaged in evictions shall in future be provided with a galvanic 
 battery (and two emergency doctors attached), in addition to the 
 indispensable battering-ram, the petroleum fuse, the crowbar, 
 and the ambulance-waggon, with a view to revive the drooping 
 spirits of the aged and infirm, should the execution of the legal 
 process prove too much for their sensibility. Here is how the 
 
loo A KEY TO THE lEISH QUESTION. 
 
 new instrument was humanely put into operation with success 
 upon the body of an old man of eighty-six, named Donovan, 
 as related in the Daily News of the 29th of March last : — 
 
 *' Cork papers report an attempted eviction near Eosscarberry, 
 " the brutality of which is worthy of the palmiest days of Irish 
 "landlordism. Mr. M. A. R. Becher, J. P., Bally dirane, is the 
 " landlord, and the tenant is a young man named Donovan. 
 " The valuation of the farm is ;^24, 153., and the old rent, which 
 •' has been reduced to ^^29 by the Land Commission, was j£42. 
 " The tenant owed two years' rent, and the local Catholic 
 " clergyman tried to effect a settlement, but though he offered 
 " on behalf of the tenant very reasonable terms the landlord 
 " was obdurate, and proceeded about a couple of months ago to 
 " evict the family. The designs of the landlord were frustrated 
 " on this occasion by the iUness of Donovan's wife and the weak 
 " condition of his father. The last attempt to evict the famUy 
 " began a little after six o'clock in the morning. The Donovans 
 " were startled by a loud knocking at the door, and young 
 " Donovan, surmising the cause, barred and bolted the door, 
 "and offered what resistance he could, which was but little. 
 " The shrieval party consisted of a sheriff's officer, his assistant, 
 " and a Cork bailiff, protected by a force of twenty-five police. 
 " The bailiffs effected an entrance by using the crowbar on the 
 "door, and then proceeded to remove the furniture and other 
 " effects. In the meantime two doctors examined old Donovan, 
 " who was lying weak and debilitated in bed. They pronounced 
 " the old man of over eighty-six winters fit for removal. The 
 " bailiffs having cleared the house, took the poor man out of 
 " bed, and, despite entreaties, remonstrances, and threatenings of 
 " the consequences, proceeded to put on his trousers, stockings, 
 " shoes, and vest. While putting on the coat the old man 
 " swooned off from weakness. The doctors in the yard were 
 " apprised of what had occurred. They were quickly on the 
 "scene, and exhibited much uneasiness. They applied the 
 " galvanic battery and other means to restore and revive anima- 
 " tion. A bailiff was despatched for stimulants to the landlord's 
 " house some distance off, and some brandy was procured. For 
 " a time matters looked most serious. It was considered that 
 " life was fast ebbing. After some time the old man showed 
 " signs of animation, and then the doctors, after communicating 
 " with the police and sheriff's party, retired, leaving old Donovan 
 " in his bed, and the family in possession." 
 
EVICTIONS FROM AN ENGLISH STANDPOINT. loi 
 
 In the next case, reported in the London papers of the same 
 date, there is a little more variety in the scene, and the extent 
 of the suffering is greater. There are two doctors — one a friend 
 of humanity — an old woman of eighty, and a boy of thirteen, 
 who has spent seven years of his young life in bed. The emer- 
 gency men were in unusual force, and the Koyal Irish Con- 
 stabulary, who are earning an historic record for their stolid 
 bravery on these occasions, were there also in overpowering 
 numbers, and doubly armed to overcome all resistance. The 
 emergency doctor was there too, and no doubt scientifically 
 attached to the galvanic battery, as prescribed by Lords Harting- 
 ton and Salisbury. Alas ! for such a display of administrative 
 power, however, the sheriff actually became nervous ; and even 
 the emergency doctor hired for the occasion failed at the critical 
 moment to put his trust in the recuperative power of the old 
 woman — should she prove as faint-hearted as old Donovan — 
 under the influence of the battery. The Star tells the first part 
 of the story, and the Daily News the remainder : — 
 
 "Twelve houses from which the tenants were evicted at 
 " Clongorey [Midland Counties] were burned on Wednesday 
 " night by the agent and about thirty emergency men. The 
 "tenants who were evicted on Tuesday made no resistance 
 " whatever. The greater number of them lived in miserable 
 " cabins on holdings which varied in extent from ten to forty 
 " acres, and had fallen into arrears through the destruction of 
 " their crops by floods. On Wednesday night the people went 
 " to bed as usual about ten o'clock [wherever they could find 
 " shelter]. About three o'clock a.m. they were startled by 
 " cries of * fire,' and on going out they found that the whole 
 " country around was one glare of light. The houses of the 
 " evicted tenants were on fire in every quarter. A number of 
 " neighbours collected, and some of them, thinking the fire was 
 " accidentally caused, made an essay to quench it, but they 
 " were prevented by both the police and emergency men. The 
 " emergency men waited to witness the completion of their 
 " work, and then returned to the police barrack at Clongorey. 
 " At half -past four, protected by policemen, they again came 
 " out, accompanied by the agent, and set to work to demolish 
 "the evicted houses in the hamlet of Clongorey. Houses 
 
I02 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " having hay, straw, or other inflammable material stored near 
 " them were reserved for the daylight, and were pulled down 
 " yesterday in the usual way with pickaxe and crowbar. The 
 " emergency men, who during the day were completing the 
 " demolition of the houses, were protected by about fifty police- 
 " men, thirty of them armed with rifles, and twenty with 
 " batons. A number of people who pushed up to witness the 
 " work that was being done, were shoved and beaten back by 
 " the policemen. The police practically directed the work. 
 " Early on "Wednesday County-Inspector Lock, accompanied by 
 " the agent, went round to the houses, and was asked to give 
 " an opinion as to which of them should be allowed to stand as 
 " fit for occupation by his policemen [as a barrack]. He told 
 " the agent that he would approve of only one house for that 
 " purpose, and that house only is now standing." 
 
 "I was led to the one unevicted house in the village," 
 observes the special correspondent of the Daily News (of the 
 30th of March), " and found myself in the presence of an old 
 " woman, eighty years of age, who has been bedridden for the 
 " last five years. This old woman, I learned, could not be re- 
 " moved. The dispensary doctor had furnished a certificate 
 " that she was too weak to be taken from her bed. The leader 
 " of the emergency men thought this was all nonsense. The old 
 " woman, it was said, was only ' excited.' She was put about by 
 " the crowd of people around the house, and in the meantime 
 " the ambulance-waggon stood at the door to carry her away 
 "from her home. But this was rather a delicate business, 
 " The sheriff became nervous, and the emergency doctor 
 " brought there for the occasion would not vouch for the 
 " strength of the venerable invalid. The sheriflf would not 
 " accept the responsibility of the removal, and so she had per- 
 " force to remain. ' I came to this house sixty years ago,' she 
 " said. * I'm a widow for fifty years and have always paid my 
 " rent. I have ten grandchildren, and my son and daughter, 
 " thirteen of us altogether, and they wanted to put me out now. 
 " But if they would wait a while it would be all over.' And 
 " so indeed it will be with the widow Kelly. Finally the 
 " emergency army ^ left the premises, and the only harm they did 
 *' to the widow's house was to knock the roof off' the porch, and 
 
 1 Are the emergency men only policemen disguised as such? If the 
 Government have adopted the battering-ram, as now openly avowed, what 
 is there to dissuade them from also adopting the emergency men ? 
 
EVICTIONS FROM AN ENGLISH STANDPOINT. 103 
 
 *' it was probably because they couldn't evict the ■widow, and 
 " were afraid of burning her to death, that they did not set fire 
 " to the building. In another cabin the emergency men found 
 " a young boy, thirteen years of age, who had been bedridden 
 " for seven years. The local doctor had given a certificate that 
 " he was not fit to be removed ; but they removed him all the 
 " same. He was taken out of his bed and carried out of the 
 " house in the arms of an emergency man, who placed him on a 
 " stool outside the door of his dwelling. The landlord of the 
 " property is Mr. Peter De Pentheny O'Kelly, of Barretstown 
 " House, Clongorey, who about a year ago took up his residence 
 "in the north of the county of Dublin. The property is 
 " managed by trustees, of whom the principal is Matthew Aidan 
 " Maher, of Enniscorthy, a Danish gentleman named Oxholom, 
 " and another man residing in the county Kilkenny." 
 
 *' I question," says Mr. Sadler, the Tory M.P. for Newark, 
 in his Ireland, some sixty years ago, " whether the broad eye of 
 " God beholds upon the face of the earth a greater mass of 
 " misery than is constantly created by these 'clearances.'^ . . . 
 " As to the prime promoters of and actors in such proceedings, 
 " who glory in their shame, no language can sufficiently express 
 " the turpitude of their conduct." Mr. Sadler had not lived 
 long enough to witness the full development of the clearance 
 system in Ireland. And then, with the best and kindest inten- 
 tions, he lost himself in the vain effort to fix the responsi- 
 bility in the right quarter. He was, in those days, as a voice 
 crying in the wilderness. Mr. Gladstone, who succeeded him 
 as M.P. for Newark, was not in political existence at the 
 time, to proclaim from the housetop even the half truth that 
 Parliament was particeps criminis in the matter of Irish land- 
 lord barbarities. The wholesale evictors of his day Sadler 
 did, indeed, denounce as " human monsters ; " but be their 
 criminality what it may in the sight of Heaven, their succes- 
 sors, the Lansdownes, Lucans, Sligos, De Pentheny O'Kelly, 
 Becher & Co., are but the instruments of successive govern- 
 ments. We hear much of the law nowadays, but nothing of the 
 
 ^ Scotch companion pictures of these scenes will be found at page 24, 
 and in the Appendix. 
 
104 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 interpretation put upon the law, even by eminent constitutional 
 lawyers. More than twenty years ago Mr. Isaac Butt, Q.C., 
 M.P., wrote as follows of cruel, widespread suffering then 
 inflicted in Donegal by a certain absentee proprietor, without 
 a shadow of provocation or justification :— 
 
 " Let any man tell me the difference between an expulsion 
 " of the whole population of the [Irish] highland regions of 
 " Glenveigh by a squadron of Cromwell's troopers in 1650, and 
 " an expulsion of its population in 1850 by the man who has 
 " inherited or purchased Cromwell's patent. The very ' pomp 
 " and circumstance ' are the same. Military force ejects the 
 " people now as it would have done then. The bayonets of the 
 " soldiery drive now as they did then the old population from 
 " their homes. Cruel men come now as they would have done 
 " then, and, amid the wailing of women and the cries of children, 
 " level the humble habitations that have given shelter to the 
 " simple dwellers in that glen. What, I ask, is the difference'? 
 " By what mockery of all justice and truth can we call the one 
 " the act of inhuman conquest, the other the legitimate exercise 
 " of the sacred rights of property Avith which no one is to 
 " interfere 1 Where is the difference to the evicted family 1 
 " Where is the difference to the mother that leads away her 
 " starving children from the home where her toil had found 
 " them bread 1 What is a ' clearance ' such as this but the 
 " extermination of military conquest put in force under the 
 " forms of law 1 . . . Ireland has endured all that constitutes 
 " the agony of the conflict [arising from a war of conquest], and 
 " more, far more, than the degradation and misery of defeat. 
 " These are the things which almost justify the reasoning of 
 "those who argue that it were better for the peasantry of 
 "Ireland to risk all in one wild and mad insurrection, than 
 " wait to be wasted away by the slow combustion of suppressed 
 "civil war; that all the misery which even an unsuccessful 
 "revolt could bring upon them were better and lighter than 
 " these which a tame submission to the present system entails." 
 
 As regards the evictions now proceeding in Donegal, Miss 
 Ellen Chapman, an English lady, writes as follows in a recent 
 number of the Leader newspaper : — 
 
 " Having had the good luck to be bom in a free country, I 
 " have always been in the habit of acting according to the 
 
EVICTIONS FEOM AN ENGLISH STANDPOINT. loj 
 
 " dictates of my heart and conscience, without fearing that so 
 " doing would get me into trouble with the powers that be ; 
 *' and so I came to Gweedore this week to see into things for 
 " myself. No one in England can picture the state of things 
 " here, I knew they were as bad as they well could be, but 
 " no just idea could be formed, without seeing it, of how bad 
 " it really is. The poverty passes description. It is wonder- 
 " f ul how people can live through it. You may go over a whole 
 " townland in this region and not find enough furniture to 
 " furnish a day labourer's back kitchen in England. The people 
 " are absolutely without furniture, clothes, seed, potatoes, bed- 
 " ding, or any of the commonest necessaries of life. Even the 
 " scanty supply of meal which keeps body and soul together is 
 " obtained by the kindness of the storekeepers, who are them- 
 " selves little above want in many cases. The land is bad, 
 " nothing but bog and rock, only made to produce a scanty crop 
 " by almost superhuman labour ; and yet the people are kindly 
 " and gentle, with some of their native grace and beauty still 
 " left, in spite of all these terrible drawbacks." 
 
 Of course Mr. Arthur Balfour will, with his usual polite- 
 ness, suggest that Miss Chapman may be a lady, but that she 
 is — an economist of truth all the same, as is everybody whose 
 evidence comes into conflict with the scrupulous and veracious 
 Chief Secretary for Ireland; his removable magistrates and 
 policemen. The lately deceased author of John Halifax, Gentle- 
 man, Mrs. Craik, was a lady generally esteemed by the British 
 public, though she falls short, no doubt, of the high Balfourian 
 standard in the matter of strict truth. In her work, Concerti- 
 ing Men, published by Messrs. Macmillan & Co. only last year, 
 Mrs. Craik, speaking of the general characteristics of life 
 amongst those Donegal peasants, says : — 
 
 " Their sturdy morality was refreshing. Here, as everywhere 
 " in Ireland, existed the strong purity which characterises the 
 " Irish peasant. In the village of Gweedore, during sixty years, 
 " one instance only was known of a girl losing her character. 
 " There, too, nearly the whole of the adult population were 
 " pledged teetotalers, and their honesty is proverbial. . . . What 
 " English or Scotch village could be named, in which, as at Gwee- 
 " dore, during sixty years, there has been but one fallen woman ? 
 *' What country town is there where, as in the Donegal famine 
 
io6 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 *• times, a heap of furniture, brought in exchange for meal, lay 
 " whole months in the market-place, no one laying on it a dis- 
 " honest finger. These facts which criticisers and calumniators 
 " never hear, all suggest the one question raised by Mrs. Hart — 
 " Is not Ireland worth saving 1 . . . Work, work ! Wherever 
 " she went that was always the cry.^ They clamoured for it ; 
 " they implored for it ; and when they got it they did it. In 
 " wild, half-civilised Donegal is not at all the feeling which I 
 " have heard attributed to great masses of the London unem- 
 " ployed — that they will rather beg threepence than earn a 
 " shilling." 
 
 These, then, are the unhappy people upon whom our Chris- 
 tian Government lets loose the forces of the Crown to uproot 
 and destroy them, young and old. And yet, only think of it I 
 These ' outcasts, with tangled hair and torn scanty raiment, 
 are, every soul of them, as precious in the sight of Heaven as 
 the youthful scions of the house of Cecil at Hatfield, wearing 
 birds of Paradise in their bonnets. Nay, they are as precious 
 as those young ladies' reverend and noble brother who preaches 
 Christ and Him crucified from the pulpit of the parish church 
 on this awful anniversary (Good Friday) of man's redemption. 
 This virtuous people are at the mercy o^ Lord Hartington, but 
 for whose support such villainy could not exist. This thing 
 going on at Falcarragh and elsewhere in Ireland, is, in the 
 well-measured words of a distinguished English M.P. (Mr. 
 Waddy, Q.C.), MUEDER, not of the body only, but of the soul 1 
 And, as we have already shown in our second chapter, hundreds 
 of years before Mr. Waddy so spoke in the English Parlia- 
 ment, Robert Crowley, a disciple of Bishop Ridley, pronounced 
 it in words of thunder from the English pulpit. There is at 
 least no denying Thomas Carlyle's blunt observation : — 
 
 " All men, we must repeat," he observes in his Chartism, 
 " were made by God, and have immortal souls in them. The 
 " sans-potato is of the selfsame stuff as the superfinest Lord 
 " Lieutenant. Not an individual sa?is-potato but had a life 
 " given him out of heaven," 
 
 1 "We drove 400. miles through the country," Mrs. Hart observed, 
 " and though the people were actually starving, we were never begged 
 ' from but once. Work, work was all they clamoured for." 
 
EVICTIONS FROM AN ENGLISH STANDPOINT. 107 
 
 But there are preacliers many centuries older than Thomas 
 Carlyle. The holy prophets of God were startled by the 
 prosperity of the wicked, and observed how much vanity is 
 increased unto men by oppression. What follows is not un- 
 like the writing on the wall, for it clearly foreshadows the 
 miserable fate that has so frequently overtaken the oppressors 
 of the poor in Ireland : — 
 
 Job xxi. : — " Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, 
 " are mighty in power ? . . . Their houses are safe from fear, 
 " neither is the rod of God upon them. . . , They send forth 
 " their little ones like a flock, and their children dance. . . . 
 *' They spend their days in wealth, and in a moment go down 
 " to the grave." ^ 
 
 In Scotland also, where men have disappeared, with " the 
 "ancient landmarks," the warnings of the sacred writer are 
 visibly in course of fulfilment in every strath and glen : — 
 
 Proverbs xxii. : " He that oppresseth the poor to increase 
 " his riches . . . shall surely come to want. . . . For the 
 " Lord will plead their cause, and spoil the soul of those that 
 ** spoiled them." 
 
 While these pages are going through the hands of the printer, 
 the following appears in the Parliamentary report of the Daily 
 News of the 24th of June 1889, under the head of "The 
 Ponsonby Evictions : " — 
 
 " Mr. Balfour, in reply to Mr. Sexton, stated that the police 
 " engaged in evictions on the Ponsonby estate were assailed 
 " with abuse by persons in a Catholic chapel-yard, and were 
 " obliged to disperse those persons. . . . There was no reason for 
 " saying a young girl was assaulted. In his opinion the police 
 " were justified in clearing the ground under the circumstances. 
 
 " Mr. Sexton asked whether the right hon. gentleman would 
 " afford any means of testing the question as to whether the 
 " girl used improper language. 
 
 " Mr. Balfour said that with regard to that point it would 
 " be perfectly possible for the girl or her relations to bring an 
 " action against the man. He had made no imputation with 
 
 1 Latin text : " In puncto ad infema descendunt." The Douai transla- 
 tion is terribly literal : " In a moment they go down to hell." 
 
lo8 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " regard to the girl's character, but unfortunately it too frequently 
 " occurred that girls who might be in other respects perfectly 
 •' well behaved used filthy and obscene language at evictions." 
 
 Every English traveller who has visited Ireland, including 
 Thackeray and Sir Francis Head, has spoken with admiration of 
 the extraordinary virtues of Irish women. We have seen what 
 Mrs. Craik has said of the women of Donegal. The Catholic 
 Bishop of Killala, in Mayo, an eminent ecclesiastic well known 
 to and esteemed by many English travellers, informed the present 
 writer, in 1881, that he knew of only one case of bastardy 
 throughout his entire diocese at that time. Mr. Balfour now 
 states that Irish girls, " in other respects perfectly well behaved, 
 " too frequently use filthy and obscene language at evictions ! " 
 Referring to a predecessor of Mr. Balfour in the office of Chief 
 Secretary for Ireland, Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Gladstone has, in 
 a published letter, spoken of the " blackguardism " of the means 
 by which he helped to carry the Union in 1800. Mr, Gladstone 
 never uses an inapt or an inaccurate epithet to stigmatise the 
 flagitious conduct of those in positions of power and responsi- 
 bility. AVe have here in Mr. Balfour's language in the House 
 of Commons, applied to virtuous Irish girls, a perfectly fair 
 specimen of some of the means by which it is now sought to 
 bolster up and perpetuate that Union. Not satisfied with turn- 
 ing unhappy women out of their homes at the point of the 
 bayonet, this shameless official would deprive them of their 
 native modesty because they do not vociferously sing " God 
 save the Queen " on being thrust out into the street ! Did 
 Balfour pere pursue the same tactics, including the use of 
 similar slander, when he cleared out the virtuous population of 
 Strathconan in the Scottish Highlands in 1840-48 — many 
 hundreds of souls in all, a large number of whom were infirm — 
 to make room for sheep and deer, under the circumstances of 
 exceptional harshness and cruelty described at page 386 in the 
 Appendix, on the authority of Mackenzie's Highland Clear- 
 ances ? 
 
CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 THE IMMEDIATE CAUSE OF OUTRAGE IN IRELAND. 
 
 " Let those who are anxious to condemn a whole nation for the fault of 
 " a few miserable and degraded wretches, brutalised by the very tyranny 
 " which arraigns, their brutality, consider under what circumstances the 
 " country has been placed. . . . Even under the influence of the horror 
 " inspired by great crime, there are those 'Who will remember that such 
 " excesses are the miserable legacy that tyranny leaves to societies whose 
 " morals she has sapped and whose sympathies she has blunted." — 
 Times, October 12, 1859. 
 
 Four centuries ago, a famous English judge and eminent writer, 
 Chief- Justice Fortescue, in his Absolute and Limited Monarchy, 
 uttered some wise words, in regard to widespread discontent 
 culminating in insurrection, which are good for all time : — 
 
 "Nothing may make the people rise," he said, " but lacke of 
 " goods or lacke of justice ; but yet, certainly, when they lacke 
 " goods they will arise, saying they lacke justice. Nevertheless, 
 " if they be not poor they will never arise, but if their prince 
 " so leve justice that he gyve himself al to tyrannye." 
 
 In Ireland they lacked justice as well as goods, and so had a 
 double motive given them for rising. Writing to the Bishop of 
 Waterford in the last century, and referring to the Whiteboys, 
 Lord Chesterfield, sometime Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, indulged 
 in a little plain speaking on the subject which Lord Mahon says 
 the early editors of his works thought it judicious to suppress. 
 Having first ascribed Whiteboyism " to the sentiment in every 
 " human breast that asserts man's natural right of liberty and 
 " good usage, and that will and ought to rebel when oppressed 
 " and provoked to a certain degree," he declared : — 
 
 " If the military force had killed half as many landlords as it 
 
 " had Whiteboys [whom they had driven into revolt], it would 
 
 109 
 
no A KEY TO THE lEISH QUESTION. 
 
 " have contributed more eflfectually to restore quiet. For the 
 " poor people in Ireland," Lord Chesterfield added, " are worse 
 " used than negroes by their masters." 
 
 In the Early Life of the poet Shelley, he is reported to have 
 spoken as follows, on the 28th of February 18 12, at the Fish- 
 amble Street Theatre, in Dublin : — 
 
 " He was an Englishman ; when he reflected on the outrages 
 " that his countrymen had committed here for the last twenty 
 " years he confessed that he blushed for them. He had come 
 "to Ireland for the sole purpose of interesting himself in 
 " the misfortunes of this country, and impressed with a full 
 " conviction ... of the baneful effects which the union with 
 " Great Britain had entailed upon Ireland. He had walked 
 "through the fields of the country and the streets of the city, 
 " and he had in both seen the miserable effects of that fatal 
 " step. He had seen that edifice [the Parliament House] which 
 " ought to have been the fane of their liberties converted to a 
 " temple of mammon. . . . Many of the crimes which are 
 " daily committed he could not avoid attributing to the effect 
 " of that measure, which had thrown numbers of people out of 
 " the employment they had in manufacture, and induced them 
 " to commit acts of the greatest desperation for the support of 
 " their existence." 
 
 Another poet, and true friend of freedom in every land — 
 Byron — is said to have expressed himself sarcastically in the 
 House of Lords, in the course of one of the few speeches he 
 made there, to the effect that it was a great pity that the Irish 
 people had not been born black, because if they had been many 
 philanthropic people in England would have taken such a tender 
 interest in their welfare that all their grievances would have 
 been remedied long ago. 
 
 In 1834 Mr. Poulett-Scrope, M.P., wrote to Lord Melbourne, 
 Prime Minister of the day, the remarkable letter on the Irish 
 Land Question, already referred to, and from which the follow- 
 ing is a further extract : — 
 
 "Though God gave the land of Ireland to the people of 
 " Ireland — to the many — the law has given it unconditionally 
 " to the few. Even in the best of times, if the landlord refuses 
 " to any peasant the holding of a plot of land, if other starving 
 
IMMEDIATE CAUSE OF OUTEAGE IN IRELAND, iii 
 
 wretches outbid his offer for the patch of soil whose possession 
 is as necessary to his existence as the air he breathes — if sick- 
 ness or misfortune prevent his punctual payment of the 
 enormous rent he has promised, and he and his family are 
 ejected (by the cheap and summary, process which landlord- 
 made law provides) from his cabin which sheltered him from 
 his birth, and his fathers before him — what remains'? He 
 must die ! The law, at least, says so. The law allows him 
 no other alternative. He may contrive to prolong a precarious 
 existence on the charity of his poor neighbours (as he asks 
 in vain from the rich), or he may take by force or stealth 
 what is necessary to preserve life. But the law does not 
 recognise these means of living; on the contrary the law 
 forbids them. The law says, if he cannot rent land or obtain 
 work he shall starve. This is the real wrong — this is the 
 giant grievance — this is the most crying, the most urgent of 
 the just complaints of the Irish people. And it is against 
 this state of the law that they combine in their Whiteboy 
 associations — associations that will never be put down until 
 the law extends that protection to the lives of the poor which 
 it now lavishes almost exclusively on the property of the rich. 
 And who will say that the peasantry ought not in the state of 
 the law to combine for their mutual protection ? Is there no 
 point of oppression at which resistance to the law becomes a 
 duty 1 We have the recent authority of the head of the law 
 for the principle — a principle as old as it is true — that allegi- 
 ance is only due where protection is afforded ; and where the 
 law refuses its protection it cannot claim allegiance. Does the 
 law, then, protect the Irish peasant? Not from starvation. 
 The law affords the Irish peasant no protection from so 
 horrible a fate. Hundreds are at present exposed to it. 
 Millions know they are liable to it. Can the law justly re- 
 quire their allegiance 1 Can we expect them willingly to pay 
 it 1 No. The peasantry of Ireland feel that the law places 
 their lives at the mercy of the few, whom it invests with 
 sovereign power over the land of their native country, with 
 power to sweep them at will off its surface. They feel that 
 the continuance of the system of clearing estates, which has 
 been for so many years in progress, is a question of life and 
 death to them. And therefore do they combine against it. 
 . . . But for the salutary dread of the Whiteboy associations 
 ejectments would desolate Ireland and decimate her popu- 
 lation, casting forth thousands of families like noxious weeds 
 
112 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " rooted out of the soil on which they have hitherto grown, 
 " perhaps too luxuriantly, and flung away to perish on the road- 
 "side. Yes, the Whiteboy system is the only check on the 
 " ejectment system, and, weighing one against the other — horror 
 " against horror and crime against crime — it is perhaps the lesser 
 " evil of the two." 
 
 The press hooted Lord Melbourne from office because of his 
 good understanding with O'Connell. Mr. Poulett-Scrope re- 
 addressed his public letter to the less sympathetic Sir Robert 
 Peel. As well might he have addressed it to a milestone. 
 Meanwhile, as regards Irish agrarian outrages generally, their 
 origin is briefly and succinctly described as follows in Sir 
 Cornewall Lewis's standard work on Irish disturbances : — 
 
 " The tendency to violent outrage amongst the Irish peasantry 
 " is precisely one of those dispositions which are the creatures 
 " of circumstances, and is very far from being one of those 
 " habits which are proverbially said to become a second nature. 
 "... All [Ireland's] disturbances arise from the local and 
 " limited causes which have been described [in the evidence of 
 " several parliamentary committees] as continually urging the 
 " peasantry to measures of self-defence." 
 
 Binns, an English Assistant-Commissioner of Agriculture, 
 who knew the sister country well, in the second volume of his 
 Miseries, Sfc, of Ireland (1837), observes: — 
 
 " I might, by referring to authentic sources of information, 
 " draw a series of terrific pictures of persecution, intolerance, and 
 " desolation [in Ireland] to which it would be difficult, perhapa 
 " impossible, to find parallels in the history of any nation not 
 " absolutely barbarous. It becomes us, who are, in some 
 " degree, responsible for the misdeeds of our predecessors, and 
 " are certainly bound to repair the evils they have efi'ected, — it 
 " becomes us, I repeat, to bear constantly in mind that ever 
 " since her connection with Great Britain, Ireland has been a 
 " grievously oppressed country ; that for the ignoble purpose of 
 " extinguishing her religion, and seizing the property of its 
 " votaries, she has been deprived of those political privileges 
 " which were her birthright, and which, sooner or later, she 
 " will possess ; that so far from the Irish being a turbulent 
 " people, they are made so by circumstances under the control 
 " of England ; and that, dissatisfied as they are and have been — 
 
IMMEDIATE CAUSE OF OUTRAGE IN IRELAND. 113 
 
 " the wrongs they have endured, the insults they have suffered, 
 " would have justified a course of conduct incomparably more 
 " violent than any which Ireland in her wildest moments, in her 
 " fiercest paroxysms of excitement, has displayed. ... It cannot 
 " certainly be denied that, systematically and wickedly oppressed 
 " as the Irish are, to rise in self-defence is at least a natural 
 " course of proceeding, however fearful in its consequences." 
 
 The man who would venture to say a good word for the 
 Tirhes in this month of May 1889, after the collapse which has 
 lately taken place before the Eoyal Commission, must expect to 
 find himself severely reproached by indignant Liberals and 
 Nationalists alike throughout the United Kingdom. Truth, 
 however, obliges the present writer to acknowledge that he has 
 in course of recent researches come across many leading articles 
 in the columns of the Times of the last forty years, in reference 
 to Ireland, which reflect honour upon some of the writers in 
 that journal. It has not been found possible to make room 
 for any considerable number of examples of the kind, but a few 
 thoroughly outspoken passages from those articles will be found 
 scattered through these pages. On the 30th of May 1850, for 
 instance, the Times, referring to a recent agrarian murder in 
 Tipperary, gave utterance to the following scathing denunciation 
 of Irish landlords : — 
 
 "The murder of Mr. Mauleverer is the hideous result of 
 " some fearful wrong. ... If the proprietors of the soil, in 
 " maintaining the rights which the law has given them, thus 
 " recklessly inflict misery without stint upon the helpless and 
 " unfortunate peasantry — if they say that, without the perpetra- 
 " tion of barbarities which would disgrace a Turkish Pasha, 
 " their rents cannot be collected — if they are to bring in the 
 " attorney-multiplying process, and with process multiplying 
 " costs, and reducing the peasantry to hopeless slavery, and if 
 " they are thus to convert the country into a battlefield for the 
 "landlord, and process-servers, and bailiffs, and sheriffs, and 
 " sheriffs-officers on the one side, and the furious peasantry and 
 " banded assassins on the other, then we say it is the bounden 
 " duty of the legislature boldly to . interfere, and either to 
 "enforce upon the present landlords the duties, while it main- 
 " tains the rights of property, or to . . . create a new landed 
 
 H 
 
114 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " proprietary, whose intelligence and wealth will enable them to 
 " secure the peace of society, and thus lay the foundation of 
 " national prosperity." 
 
 Again, the Times of the 3rd of May 1856 published a leader 
 on Irish evictions taking place that year in Gal way county, 
 which conveys some idea of the nature of the provocation daily 
 tempting the Irish peasant to passionate outbursts of crime and 
 outrage : — 
 
 ^D^ 
 
 " It appears," observes the Times, " that a Mr. Pollock has 
 " purchased estates in the "West of Ireland occupied by about 
 "500 tenants, whose families make up altogether a population 
 "of 2,500 souls. This gentleman appears to be seized with a 
 " perfect mania of eviction. He has issued notices to quit to 
 " the whole of these unfortunate people, not one of whom is in 
 " arrear with his rent, and all of whom are most anxious to 
 " remain on the land which they regard with the affection so 
 " strongly felt and desperately clung to by the Irish peasant. 
 " But it is the will of the new lord of the soil to change its 
 " destination from arable to pasture, and having come to this 
 " conclusion for financial reasons, he clears away the human 
 " encumbrance from his land with as little remorse as he would 
 " weeds or stones, a mortgage, a judgment, or an annuity. 
 " These miserable people represent that to many of them the 
 " change is certain death, and entreat the House of Commons 
 " to intervene on their behalf. Here is a case where every feel- 
 " ing of our nature is enlisted on the side of the poor tenants. 
 " They have faithfully discharged their contract, and are willing 
 " to do so for the future. They may have no right to main- 
 " tain their tenancy, but the land they occupy was bought 
 " with the full knowledge of their occupation, and Parliament 
 " in affirmance of natural justice has repeatedly declared that 
 " the first charge upon land, more sacred than any individual 
 " proprietors can create, is the maintenance of its people. That 
 " is the principle of the Irish rate-in-aid. That is the principle 
 " of the Irish and English poor-law. But the Irish ]X)or-law 
 " has no parochial law of settlement, and the evils, therefore, 
 " consequent upon pauperising a whole population are little felt 
 " by the landowner, being divided over the ratepayers of a large 
 " district, or several districts. In this case the House of Com- 
 " mons has declared it can do nothing. The evil is enormous. 
 " Such conduct is condemned equally by landlords and tenants. 
 
IMMEDIATE CAUSE OF OUTRAGE IN IRELAND. 115 
 
 " It shocks every feeling of humanity. It is a reproach to the 
 " civilisation of the age, and by so signally illustrating the 
 " abuses of property, tends to bring into discredit the institution 
 " of property itself, the groundwork of human society, the bond 
 " that holds communities together. The Irish peasant suffers 
 " almost as much by the miserable and squalid hovels in which 
 "he is compelled to live as by the heartless and cruel proceed- 
 ?' ings which drive him forth from them to beg, to perish, or to 
 live idly in a union workhouse." 
 
 <c 
 
 Parliament was impotent in this case to save the doomed 
 people, the Times imagined. But Parliament, of which the 
 ever alert Mr. Joseph Biggar was not then a member, was 
 capable of rushing a bill through at a single sitting to spare 
 this identical individual, PoUock, the infliction of accumulated 
 fines, amounting in the aggregate to ;^7o,ooo, to which he 
 had rendered himself liable as a milk contractor to the local 
 Irish workhouse, he being — odd as it may seem in the circum- 
 stances — a " guardian of the poor ! " However, speaking in 
 the House of Commons, on the 29th of April 1856, Mr. 
 Disraeli thus commented on the Pollock clearances : — 
 
 " The exercise of rights under the law [of ejectment] as 
 " described [in the course of debate] was most intolerable in 
 " a Christian nation. ... If there was anything which could 
 " raise a prejudice against the Encumbered Estates Court it 
 " would be, that it gave to strangers who might even be non- 
 " resident the opportunity, if they thought fit, for depopulating 
 " large districts." 
 
 Lord John KusseU was not perhaps so powerful a minister as 
 Sir Kobert Peel, but he was much more inclined to be just to 
 Ireland. In his Recollections (1875) he observes : — 
 
 " Thousands of human beings, who from their wretched huts 
 " had swarmed to the elections, men with wives and helpless 
 " children, were rooted out as noxious weeds when they had 
 " served their purpose as ladders whereby their landlords might 
 " climb to wealth and power. They were now useless instru- 
 " ments, and hundreds of them were driven out in the cold 
 " days or bleak nights of winter, their miserable cabins levelled 
 " with the ground, and they themselves, scantily clothed, left 
 
Il6 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " to struggle with the inclemency of the elements, to die by the 
 " roadside, or to perish of famine after weeks of suffering and 
 " exhaustion. Is it ' the fickleness, the perversity, and the 
 " levity of Irishmen ' that have caused the great mass of the 
 " people to recollect with pain and with resentment the heedless 
 " laxity with which their freeholds were bestowed upon them, 
 " and the cruelty with which they were driven out, when their 
 " votes were no longer available, to pine and to perish ? Or is 
 " it not rather a proof that the people have been ill-governed 1 
 " Is it wonderful that such injuries, apparent benefits so fal- 
 " lacious, real sufferings so undeserved, should have sunk deeply 
 " into their minds, and created a feeling of revenge against 
 " which the lounger in St, James's may protest while he repeats, 
 " after the London newspaper, a declamation against ' the fickle- 
 " ness, the perversity, the levity of Irishmen 1 ' " 
 
 There is another English minister whose speech should find 
 a place here, though it is not quite in the order of date. Mr 
 Horsman, at one time Chief Secretary for^Ireland, said in the 
 House of Commons (1850) : — 
 
 " It was all very well to speak of the ' rights of property,' but 
 " were there no rights of humanity or rights of life ? If they 
 " went to first principles, who would deny that property was for 
 " the benefit of all, not the few? There was no law which told 
 " human beings they should die in hundreds." 
 
 But Lords Hartington and Salisbury say there is, and they 
 treat English and Scottish public opinion to the contrary with 
 sovereign contempt. An Oxford undergraduate, Mr, Harrison, 
 was lately in the clutches of the magistrates and police in 
 Donegal for having, according to the Times — " persisted in 
 " putting in loaves of bread, after being warned not to do so," 
 to save a considerable number of evicted and besieged men, 
 women, and children from actual starvation within the humble 
 dwellings built with their own hands, but in which they are 
 at this moment declared, by a legal fiction, to be trespassers. 
 And Mr, Conybeare, an English M,P., has since been sent to 
 prison likewise for the same singular offence. Meanwhile many 
 additional witnesses might be quoted to connect agrarian crime 
 in Ireland with misery and oppression, as, for instance. Lord 
 
IMMEDIATE CAUSE OF OUTRAGE IN IRELAND. 117 
 
 Granard, Major "Warburton, Sir Matthew Barrington, Colonel 
 Shaw Kennedy, Sir John Howley, Mr. Piers Gale, Mr. Tompkins 
 Brew, Lord Powerscourt, Judge Moore, Mr. Sylvanus Jones, 
 Mr. Drummond, Sir "William Somerville, &c., all of whom were 
 either landlords, judges, magistrates, crown solicitors, or other 
 persons in responsible positions, and nearly all of whom gave 
 explicit and emphatic evidence on the subject before English 
 Parliamentary Committees or Eoyal Commissions, between 1823 
 and 1839. It is wholly impossible, however, to find room for 
 more than the bare mention of the fact within the limits of a 
 publication of this kind. Where heavy oppression is united 
 with extreme poverty, and especially where, as in Ireland, the 
 poverty is directly rcferrable to the oppression, there must 
 always be found a hideous progeny of crime resulting from so 
 unhappy a union. It is inevitable that it should be so, since 
 the wretched criminal knows from long experience that it is 
 the only consideration which weighs in the mind of the 
 oppressor to mitigate his cruelties. In the third volume of his 
 Short Studies on Great Subjects, Mr. Froude has boldly de- 
 livered himself on the subject as follows : — 
 
 " The landlord may become a direct oppressor. He may care 
 ' nothing for the people, and have no object but to squeeze the 
 ' most that he can out of them fairly or unfairly. The Russian 
 ' government has been called despotism, tempered with assassi- 
 ' nation. In Ireland landlordism was tempered by assassination. 
 ' . , . Every circumstance combined in that country to ex- 
 ' asperate the relations between landlord and tenant. The 
 ' landlords were, for the most part, aliens in blood and in 
 ' religion. They represented conquest and confiscation, and 
 ' they had gone on from generation to generation with an in- 
 ' difference for the welfare of the people which would not have 
 ' been tolerated in England or Scotland. The law had to in- ' 
 ' terfere at last to protect the peasantry in the shape of Mr. 
 ' Gladstone's Land Act — the best measure, perhaps the only 
 ' good measure, which has been passed for Ireland for the last 
 ' 200 years." 
 
CHAPTEE XIII. 
 
 WHO AND WHERE IN IRELAND ARE THE 
 ASSASSINS? 
 
 " It was not among the Celts of Ireland that agrarian crime began. It 
 " was in a population, the population of Tipperary, dashed with a stronger 
 " and more vivacious blood, that the spirit of resistance arose." — Glad- 
 
 STONB. 
 
 Many eminent writers on Irisli subjects have pointed out the 
 curious fact to which Mr. Gladstone here gives expression, that 
 assassination had its origin with the descendants of the Crom- 
 wellian settlers in Ireland. In the second volume of his 
 England in the Eighteenth Century Mr. Lecky observes : — 
 
 " A proneness to crimes of combination has been one of the 
 " worst and most distinctive evils of modern Irish life. But 
 " that proneness has been nowhere more conspicuous than in 
 " counties where the inhabitants are chiefly descended from 
 " Englishmen ; it has not been a characteristic of other Celtic 
 " nations ; and it is a curiously significant fact that it has never 
 " been shown among the great masses of Irishmen who are 
 " congregated in England, the United States, and the Colonies, 
 " though in other respects their moral character has often 
 " deteriorated." 
 
 Sir Cornewall Lewis, in his Crime and Disturbance in Ireland, 
 is induced to favour the same view, as the result of his own 
 investigations on the subject : — 
 
 "There is a great difference," he says, "in the physical 
 " appearance of the peasantry in different parts ; the Celtic 
 " blood is purest in the mountains of Kerry and Galway. On 
 " the other hand, in Kilkenny and Tipperary, the peasantry 
 " have not the Celtic stamp strongly marked. . . . Yet Tipperary 
 
WHO AND WHERE ARE THE ASSASSINS? 119 
 
 " is the most disturbed county in Ireland, and Kilkenny one of 
 " the worst." 
 
 Mr. O'Connor Morris, who has been already quoted in these 
 pages as an authority on the Land Question in Ireland, 
 observes in his Letters addressed to the Times (1868-70) : — 
 
 "It is a most significant fact that agrarianisra has always 
 " been most active in districts disturbed for ages by civil strife, 
 " and by violent changes in the ownership of land, in which 
 " an infusion of Teutonic blood has, without recasting, added 
 " fierceness and energy to the character of the Celt. . . . Except- 
 " ing Wexford, agrarianism in the south of Ireland has prevailed 
 " in the counties abounding in English blood ; it is, in truth, 
 " alien to the genius of the aboriginal race." 
 
 It is worth observing that our English writers do sometimes 
 feel a glow of admiration for those Cromwellian descendants of 
 vivacious blood, when an iniquitous land system has driven 
 them to wreak extremest vengeance on the Irish landlord. It 
 will be remembered how Macaulay takes not a little pride in 
 those deeds of assassination in which the oppressed Saxons 
 indulged in England after the Norman Conquest. The follow- 
 ing extract from an article in the Daily Telegraph, of the 22 nd 
 of January 1872, supplies another illustration of the same 
 tendency, in regard to Irish agrarian crime in the nineteenth 
 century : — 
 
 " It is curious to distinguish the thoroughly Celtic offences 
 " of counties like Kerry from the Anglo-Celtic crimes of the 
 " more central and less purely Irish parts of the island. The 
 " southern and western parts of Ireland are the most purely 
 " Celtic ; Tipperary and Wexford, Meath and Westmeath, 
 " King's County and Queen's County, have had a certain infu- 
 " sion of English settlers. And just in these very counties has 
 " landlord-shooting always been most prevalent. The evictions 
 " to which the Celts of the South and West submitted with 
 " tears and lamentations, the farmers of Tipperary and West- 
 " meath resented with muskets from behind a hedge." 
 
 But patience, in Ireland, is like other Irish virtues, its own 
 reward. Kerry, for example, is one of those purely Celtic 
 counties referred to by Sir Cornewall Lewis and the Daily Tde- 
 
I20 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 graph, wliich has exhibited it in a remarkable degree. How is 
 it that this county has at length lost its typical virtue ? Mr. 
 O'Connor Morris thus explains the manner in which the Celtic 
 peasant of Kerry has been rewarded for his exercise of that 
 virtue which his priest instructs him is one of the "twelve 
 " fruits of the Holy Ghost " :— 
 
 " With very large and honourable exceptions, the peasantry 
 " of Kerry have made Kerry what it is, have enclosed the 
 " country, in part reclaimed it, and covered it with dwellings 
 " made by themselves ; and yet, save in comparatively few 
 " instances, they are mere tenants-at-will with an annual posses- 
 " sion. . . . The state of things existing in Kerry and else- 
 " where, in which the occupiers of the soil have acquired rights 
 ," in it, by expending on it the industry of years, yet are liable 
 "to be driven from it at a few months' notice ; in which what 
 " are vast moral claims of property are not supported even by 
 " safe possession ; in which titles to things in the peasant's 
 " mind especially sacred — the home he has made, the field he 
 " has enclosed, the boundary he has drawn — are exposed to 
 " destruction by the stroke of a pen ; this extending over nine- 
 " tenths of a district is, in my judgment, not to be justified ; 
 " and at this point all that can be said for the land system 
 " of Ireland breaks down in argument." 
 
 If the Kerry peasant had been endowed with an infusion of 
 a stronger and more vivacious blood, like his half-brother in 
 Tipperary, there is no reason to doubt that the rack-renting 
 landlord's posse would not have been permitted quite so free 
 a hand in wielding the crowbar in the former county ; because, 
 as Mr. Froude has expressed it, Irish landlordism, like Russian 
 despotism, " is tempered by assassination." It is the fashion 
 with some persons to speak of the Celt as though his was a 
 specially vindictive nature. But the passages to be found in 
 this volume, referring to the evictions which have proceeded 
 unchecked in the Scottish Highlands for more than a century, 
 afford a fresh proof that this is not so. Even ministers of the 
 Presbyterian Church in Scotland may now be heard expressing 
 the very natural regret that their people have been so patient 
 with their persecutors in the past — a happy omen for the future. 
 
CHAPTEE XIV. 
 THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW IN IRELAND. 
 
 " I have said this, and I will say it again in this House, that there are 
 " many cases in Ireland in which the law-makers are far more responsible, 
 " and far more guilty, than the law-breakers." — Gladstone. 
 
 Reference has already been made to the substantial difference 
 between the laws of England and Ireland, as, for example, in 
 the case of a certain Act of Parliament in the fourth year of 
 the reign of Henry VII., and the Law of Settlement of the 
 reign of Charles II., which might have been effectually applied 
 to stop the cruel evictions which have taken place in the latter 
 kingdom during the present century. The Law of Settlement 
 checked the clearance system in England, by compelling the 
 evicting landlord to maintain the evicted families at his own 
 expense. In Ireland, on the other hand, when a district is laid 
 waste, the evicted, to escape death by starvation, are driven to 
 take refuge in the workhouse, often at a long distance, and the 
 landlord's humble, unoffending neighbours are taxed to support 
 his wretched victims there. These various Acts have scarcely 
 been ignored by successive Governments on the score of anti- 
 quity, since an older statute, for the arrest of "night-walkers," 
 of Edward III., who flourished a century and a half earlier 
 (1330) than Henry, has of late years been revived and actually 
 put in force against highly respectable people, including ladies 
 who exhibited too keen a sympathy with the victims of land- 
 lord oppression in Ireland. In the House of Commons, on the 
 29th of March last, the Solicitor-General for Ireland, in answer 
 to Mr. W. A. Macdonald, said that Mr. P. J. Conlan, proprietor 
 of a Carlow newspaper, was prosecuted for publishing incite- 
 ments to subjects of her Majesty to violate the law of the land 
 
122 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 (meaning coercive and exceptional law), and he was ordered to 
 give bail, or in default to be imprisoned. The Justices acted 
 in this matter, he said, under a statute of Edward III. In- 
 deed, the contrast is striking in other respects as well. The 
 reign of Edward III. was marked by the enactment of more 
 important laws in England than the whole of those passed since 
 the Conquest. Trial by jury began to supersede other forms of 
 trial, and Justices of the Peace were introduced for the first time. 
 Now, five hundred years after his death, in one important 
 portion of the dominions of her Majesty, Queen Victoria, trial 
 by jury for political offences, unless it be a packed jury, is 
 practically discarded; the ancient office of a Justice of the 
 Peace, such as it was in Ireland, is virtually suspended, if not 
 abolished; and law — exceptional and coercive law — is admin- 
 istered by paid magistrates. These salaried officials were, as a 
 class, described some years back in the second volume of the 
 Journals of Mr. Nassau Senior, on the unexceptionable authority 
 of Lord Rosse, as " being generally elderly roaes, with broken 
 " fortunes and damaged reputations, who are "made stipendiaries 
 " because their patrons do not venture to make them anything 
 " else." Yet the office of Eesident, paid Magistrate is one of 
 the highest importance, as may be gathered from the following 
 extract from a letter in the Times of January 6, 1886, from Earl 
 Cowper, ex-Viceroy of Ireland, who was certainly in a position 
 to know : — 
 
 " In Ireland all local matters are really managed through the 
 " instrumentality of the Eesident Magistrate, and the Resident 
 " Magistrate is in constant communication with the Castle. 
 " This state of things has partly arisen from the helpless nature 
 " of the Irish, and has partly contributed to prolong that help- 
 " lessness. A hateful system of bureaucratic government is the 
 " result — hateful in itself, and only rendered tolerable in my 
 " time by the large-mindedness and fairness, as well as industry 
 "and skill, of the eminent man [Sir Robert Hamilton] who 
 " then filled the post of permanent Under-Secretary." 
 
 What Englishman is there, if he have not entirely surrendered 
 his judgment and influence to the promotion of mere party inte- 
 
ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW IN IRELAND. 123 
 
 rests, who is not ashamed of the disgraceful, continuous scuffle 
 now taking place daily between these magistrates and the people 
 in Ireland ] One is painfully reminded at the present moment 
 of the warnings uttered by Edmund Burke on this very subject 
 towards the close of the last century. Alas ! how ineffectual 
 have they not proved to inspire our rulers with wisdom or even 
 common sense : — 
 
 " The people have no interest in disorder," observes Burke. 
 " When they do wrong it is their error and not their crime. 
 " But with the governing power of the State it is far otherwise; 
 " they certainly may act ill by design, as well as by mistake." And 
 he quotes Sully, the great French Minister of another generation, 
 to the same eflfect, — " 'Pour la populace ce n^ est jamais par envie 
 " d'attaquer qu'elle se souleve, mats par impatience de souffrirj 
 " Nations," Burke continues, " are not primarily governed by 
 " laws ; less by violence. . . . Nations are governed by the 
 " same methods and on the same principles by which an indi- 
 " vidual without authority is often able to govern those who 
 " are his equals or superiors by a knowledge of their temper 
 " and a judicious management of it — I mean, when public 
 " affairs are steadily and quietly conducted ; not when Govern- 
 " ment is nothing but a continued scuffle between the magistrate 
 " and the multitude, in which sometimes the one and sometimes 
 " the other is uppermost, in which they alternately yield and 
 " prevail in a series of contemptible victories and scandalous 
 " submissions." 
 
 Irish magistrates, whether paid or unpaid, have an unfortu- 
 nate reputation in English literature. In his Irish History and 
 Irish Character Mr. Goldwin Smith observes of them : — 
 
 . " The descendants of the Cromwellian landowners [of Ireland] 
 " became probably the very worst upper class with which a 
 " country was ever afflicted. . . . Their drunkenness, their blas- 
 " phemy, their ferocious duelling, left ' the squires of England 
 " far behind. . . . Not a century has passed since these ruffians 
 " and tyrants filled the Seat of Justice in Ireland," — where they 
 used frequently to punish the people by illegal imprisonment in 
 their (the " ruffians' ") own houses, Mr. Smith might have fur- 
 ther added. 
 
 Arthur Young, in Part II. of his Tour in Ireland (1777), 
 shows that, in his day even, Irish Government lay very much 
 
124 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 in the hands of the magistrates, just as Lord Cowper testifies it 
 to be the case a century later : — 
 
 " The execution of the laws lies very much in the hands of 
 " Justices of the Peace, many of whom are drawn from the most 
 " illiberal class in the kingdom. If a poor man lodges a com- 
 " plaint against a gentleman, or any animal that chooses to call 
 " itself a gentleman, and the justice issues out a summons 
 " for his appearance, it is a fixed afi'ront, and he [the justice] 
 "will infallibly be 'called out.' Where manners are in con- 
 " spiracy against law, to whom are the oppressed people to have 
 " recourse ? ... By what policy the Government of England 
 " can for so many years have permitted such an absurd system 
 "to be matured in Ireland, is beyond the power of plain sense 
 " to discover." 
 
 "When Sir Arthur "Wellesley, afterwards the Duke of "Wel- 
 lington, had surrendered his command in the County Limerick, 
 preparatory to his departure for the Peninsula in 1808, he left 
 behind him, for his successor, Brigadier-General Lee, an official 
 letter, dated Cork, July 7 th, in that year, which is a curious 
 commentary on the characteristics of Irish landlords of the 
 period. Of all the magistrates and persons of influence in the 
 entire county, he is only able to name three to whom he could 
 specially refer Lee for trustworthy information, viz., Chief 
 Baron O'Grady, Mr. Dickson, a late High Sheriff, and Colonel 
 Vereker, M.P. for the City of Limerick. Speaking of reported 
 outrages generally, Sir Arthur "Wellesley said : — 
 
 " It frequently happens that disturbances exist only in a 
 " very small degree, and probably only partially, and that the 
 " civil power is fully adequate to get the better of them. At 
 " the same time, the desire to let a building to Government for 
 " a barrack, the desire to have troops in the county, either on 
 " account of the increased consumption of the necessaries of 
 " life, or because of the increased security which they would 
 " give to that particular part of the country, would occasion a 
 " general rise in the value and rent of land, which probably at 
 " that moment might be out of lease — or in some instances the 
 " desire to have the yeomen called out on permanent duty — 
 " occasions a representation that the disturbances are much 
 " more serious than the facts would warrant. TJpon these 
 
ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW IN IRELAND. 125 
 
 letter after letter is written to the commanding 
 " oflBcer, and to Government ; the same fact is repeated through 
 " many different channels ; and the result of an inquiry is, 
 " generally, that the outrage complained of is by no means of 
 " the nature or of the extent which has been stated. The 
 " obvious remedy for this evil, and that which is generally 
 " resorted to, is to call for information on oath of the trans- 
 " actions which are complained of. But this remedy is not 
 " certain, for it frequently happens that the information on oath 
 " are equally false with the original representations." 
 
 A very general impression prevails that there is an excep- 
 tional disproportion between the number of committals and 
 convictions of persons charged with crime in Ireland, as com- 
 pared with England. An Irish judge of this period has 
 explained how it occurred in his time. Mr. Justice Fletcher 
 addressed to the Grand Jury of Wexford, in 18 14, a charge 
 teeming with specimens of magisterial iniquity. How he 
 escaped conspiracy and prosecution for his courageous out- 
 spokenness has not been explained. Two of his colleagues on 
 the bench, Justices Fox and Johnson, had suffered degradation 
 and ruin only ten years earlier, at the hands of the Government 
 and the " garrison," for daring to attempt to bring to book two 
 powerful Irish magistrates, viz., Lords Abercorn and Ennis- 
 killen, who had been charged with conniving at financial fraud 
 and murder, respectively : — 
 
 " Here let me solicit your particular attention," observes Mr. 
 Justice Fletcher to the Grand Jurors, " to some of the most 
 ' grievous mischiefs, flowing from the misconduct of certain 
 ' magistrates. One is occasioned by an excessive eagerness to 
 ' crowd the gaols with prisoners, and to swell the calendars 
 ' with crimes. Hence the amazing disproportion between the 
 ' number of committals and convictions — between accusation 
 ' and evidence — between hasty suspicion and actual guilt. 
 ' Committals have been too frequently made out (in other 
 ' counties) upon light and trivial grounds, without reflecting 
 ' upon the evil consequences of wresting a peasant (probably 
 ' innocent) from the bosom of his family — immuring him for 
 ' weeks or months in a noisome gaol, amongst vicious com- 
 ' panions. He is afterwards acquitted, or not prosecuted, and 
 ' returns a lost man, both in health and morals, to his ruined 
 
126 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " and beggared family. This is a hideous but common picture. 
 "... Gentlemen, another deep-rooted cause of immorality has 
 " been the operation of the County Presentment Code of Ire- 
 " land — abused, as it has been, for the purpose of fraud and 
 " peculation. Will you not be astonished, when I assure you, 
 " that I have had information judicially from an upright country 
 " gentleman and Grand Juror of unquestionable veracity in a 
 '' western county, that in the general practice not one in ten 
 " of the accounting affidavits was actually sworn at all 1 Magis- 
 " trates have signed and given away printed forms of such 
 " affidavits in blank, to be filled up at the pleasure of the 
 " party. This abuse produced a strong representation from me 
 " to the Grand Jury, and had I known the fact in time I would 
 " have made an example of those magistrates who were guilty 
 " of so scandalous a dereliction of duty. Another source of 
 " immorality may be traced in the Eegistry of Freeholds. 
 " Oaths of registration are taken, which, if not perjury, are 
 " something very near it. The tenantry are driven to the 
 " hustings, and there collected like sheep in a pen, they must 
 " poll for the great undertaker, who has purchased them by his 
 "jobs; and this is frequently done, with little regard to con- 
 " science or duty, or real value for the alleged freehold." 
 
 The following brief narrative illustrates in a striking manner 
 the different ideas which govern the landowners in Ireland and 
 England. Captain Drummond, E.E., a Scotchman, went to 
 Dublin with Lord Mulgrave in 1835, as Under-Secretary for 
 Ireland. On the 22nd of May 1838, in reply to an application 
 for some further coercive measures against the peasantry of 
 Tipperary, he wrote a letter of refusal to the magistrates of that 
 county in which he gave expression to the elementary truth 
 that — " property has its duties as well as its rights ; " — an axiom 
 well understood and every day cheerfully acted upon by the 
 great body of English landowners. That the Tipperary magis- 
 trates and landlords thought differently of it will not sur- 
 prise any one who follows the course of events in Ireland. 
 Lord Donoughmore, the Lord Lieutenant of the county, 
 to whom the letter was officially addressed, decided, with the 
 approval of his brother magistrates, to suppress it. On the 
 motion of Mr. Hume, however, it was laid on the table of the 
 House of Commons, and being reprinted, was disseminated 
 
ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW IN lEELAND. 127 
 
 throughout Ireland. It created considerable excitement amongst 
 all classes; but by the magistrates, i.e., the landlords, it was 
 characterised as an unfeeling and deliberate insult. Shortly 
 afterwards, Lord Donoughmore stated the reason for its sup- 
 pression to a Committee of the House of Lords. He said : — 
 
 " I considered the reply of such a nature I was very unwilling 
 to make it public " (and Lords Glengall, Hawarden, and Lismore, 
 his brother magistrates in the county, concurred in this view). — 
 " Your lordship considered it a dangerous thing," he was asked 
 by the Committee, "with regard to the landowners of the 
 "country?" — "I considered it of that nature," he replied. — 
 " Will your lordship have the goodness to point out the passages 
 " which appeared to you to have that tendency 1 " — " The part 
 "to which I particularly objected was this: — 'Property has its 
 " duties as well as its rights ; to the neglect of these duties in 
 " times past is mainly to be ascribed that diseased state of 
 " society in which such crimes take their rise.* " 
 
 Drummond's memory is revered in Ireland. A beautiful statue, 
 by Hogan, paid for by popular subscription, stands in the 
 Dublin City Hall to attest the fact. The story of his valuable 
 life has been admirably told by Mr. E. Barry O'Brien in a 
 volume published by Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co. But the 
 Donoughmore incident would be incomplete without an " adden- 
 dum." The descendants of the Cromwellian landowners, who 
 filled the Seat of Justice in Ireland, to whom Mr. Goldwin 
 Smith refers in another page, abounded in Tipperary; where 
 faction-fighting was systematically fostered and encouraged by 
 them for a selfish purpose of their own. The late Sir John 
 Howley, Chairman of the County, succeeded after much 
 exertion in repressing the barbarous custom-, for which he 
 received the thanks of William IV. He has left a singular record, 
 which will be found in the learned work of Professor Sigerson, 
 entitled Modem Ireland (Longmans & Co.), of the difficulties he 
 encountered from the magistrates in the discharge of this duty. 
 They felt it to be their interest to keep alive the bitter 
 animosities engendered by the system, with a view to divert 
 the minds of the miserable peasantry from brooding over their 
 grievous wrongs. Even in charges of murder and manslaughter 
 
128 A KEY TO THE IKISH QUESTION. 
 
 arising out of the custom, they urged upon the Chairman, " the 
 " necessity of inflicting only a mere nominal punishment " for 
 the crime : — 
 
 "The greater part of the magistrates," observes Sir John, 
 " instead of assisting me, as I had a right to expect, in the 
 " praiseworthy and humane effort to put down faction-fighting, 
 ** did everything they safely could to thwart me, and thereby 
 " keep alive this shameful, detestable custom, . . . When I 
 " asked what they meant by ' necessity,' they frankly declared 
 " they could not live in the country unless the system of 
 " faction-fighting were kept up, as they believed it was necessary 
 " for their own safety to have the people divided." 
 
 Sir John refusing to be a party to this wicked perversion of 
 justice, the magistrates actually seceded in a body from the 
 bench, having failed to intimidate him into acquiescence with 
 their views by threats of moving him out of the chair. 
 
 Finally, Lord Eosse, an influential peer, who was Chancellor 
 of the University of Dublin, and belonged to the official and 
 Castle circles, had in 1862 a conversation with Mr. Nassau 
 Senior, which will be found recorded as follows in that gentle- 
 man's Journals. Lord Eosse said : — 
 
 " One mode of improving the magistracy would be to get rid 
 " of the stipendiary magistrates. No appointments are so 
 " infamously jobbed ; no special education, no talents, no 
 " character seem to be thought necessary for a stipendiary 
 " magistrate. Half of those whom we have had here have been 
 " habitual drunkards ; more than a half of them were unable to 
 " show themselves on any day except a Sunday. (The system 
 " of imprisonment for debt was not then abolished.) We called 
 " them Sunday birds ; there was one at Shinrone whose dead 
 " body was seized by his butcher, who would not suff"er it to 
 " be buried until his bill had been paid. The present man is 
 " the only good one we have had. ... I would reform the 
 " stipendiary magistracy. On this institution the security of 
 " the country mainly depends. As soon as an outrage has been 
 " committed it is the duty of the stipendiary magistrate to 
 " collect into a focus the slight and transitory indications which, 
 " if acutely perceived and sedulously followed up, will lead to 
 " detection. No function requires more zeal, vigour, and in- 
 " telligence. The men selected for it are generally elderly 
 
ADMINISTRATION OF THE LAW IN IRELAND. 129 
 
 " roues, witli broken fortunes and damaged reputations, who are 
 " made stipendiaries because their patrons do not venture to 
 " make them anything else. I have implored Lord Lieutenant 
 " after Lord Lieutenant noi to allow so important an ofiBce to be 
 " thus jobbed away. All I could get from any one of them 
 " were promises that the appointments should be as little bad 
 " as they could make them." 
 
 One shrinks from the invidious task of sketching the char- 
 acter of Irish Stipendiary (Eemovable) Magistrates since the 
 date of Mr. Nassau Senior's publication in 1862, though the 
 materials at hand are ample for the purpose. It is described 
 in the newspapers from day to day, sometimes twice daUy. 
 They have undergone a process of considerable development as 
 instruments of the present government in Ireland. "Whether 
 that development has been for the better, or otherwise, the 
 public are now, perhaps, in a position to judge for them- 
 selves. One thing is certain, these Government officials are 
 never punished for their misdeeds, and the people have thus 
 been taught by long experience to look upon the scenes enacted 
 in their Courts as little better than a travesty of justice. It 
 has always been the same, and is likely to continue so while 
 appointments to the office are, as Lord Rosse expressed it, " so 
 " infamously jobbed." Half a century earlier, in 18 12, Wake- 
 field, an English traveller in Ireland, referred to the Irish 
 magistrates as follows in his Account of Ireland : — 
 
 " "When insurrections take place in Ireland the whole blame 
 . " is attributed to the people, although they most commonly 
 " occur from the corruption or the neglect of the magistracy. 
 " It is seldom, however, that the hand of justice is raised to 
 " puiush them for their misconduct. The accounts of dis- 
 " turbances never reach my ears from Ireland without exciting 
 " a wish that an inquiry might be instituted into the manner 
 " in which magistrates conduct themselves on such occasions." 
 
 It is also painfully true that even the superior judges in 
 Ireland are so greatly in excess of the requirements of justice 
 that fully one-half of them might be dispensed with altogether, 
 except for the vested interests in jobbery of the patronage- 
 mongers in Dublin Castle. 
 
CHAPTEE XV. 
 THE FORFEITURES AND PLANTATIONS. 
 
 " I say, where there is this misery going on for centuries after a conquest, 
 " acquiescence in the conquest cannot take place ; a sense of permanent 
 " settlement and of the possessors' prescriptive title to their property 
 " cannot spring up ; the conquered cannot blend themselves into one 
 " nation with the conquerors." — Matthew Aenold. 
 
 He who desires to understand the condition of Ireland must 
 realise to himself the full import of the historical fact that all 
 the rights of landed property rest on confiscations — not, be it 
 remembered, upon confiscations of remote antiquity, like those 
 which followed the coming of the Normans into England — but 
 upon confiscations of comparatively recent date. Almost the 
 entire property of the island is derived either from the settle- 
 ment of Ulster by James the First, or the Cromwellian settle- 
 ment of the rest of the country. The latter is the title of by 
 far the greater portion. " Probably no man at the Irish Bar 
 " has ever seen a devolution of title that did not commence 
 " with a patent granting a forfeited estate," observed the late Mr. 
 Isaac Butt, Q.C., M.P. Lord Clare said, speaking in the Irish 
 House of Lords, that in the course of the seventeenth century 
 the whole soil of Ireland had been confiscated at least once, a 
 considerable portion of it three times ; i.e., including the for- 
 feitures succeeding the Ee volution of 1688. But there was an 
 earlier era of forfeitures than this. Speaking of the proceed- 
 ings of the first Norman adventurers in Ireland, Sir John Davis 
 says that all Ireland was cantonised among ten persons of the 
 English nation ; " and though they had not gained possession 
 *' of one-third part of the whole kingdom, yet, in title, they 
 " were owners and lords of all, so as nothing was left to be 
 
THE FORFEITURES AND PLANTATIONS. 131 
 
 " granted to the natives." Afterwards came the enormous for- 
 feitures of the reign of Elizabeth. Her servants in Ireland did 
 not dabble in the Wood of youth and innocence without a 
 purpose and the expectation of some huge rewards. And they 
 were not disappointed. Leland, in the second volume of his 
 History of Ireland, says that more than one-half of Ulster 
 became vested in the Queen, " to be disposed of as most 
 " expedient for the interests and security of her government." 
 Edmund Spenser, who is a contemporary authority, puts it 
 much higher, as may be found in the sixth volume of his 
 works. Of the 9,000 ploughlands which Ulster contained, he 
 represents all but four or five hundred as having escheated to her ; 
 with at least five-sixths of Connaught. As to Munster, at the 
 time Spenser wrote, it would appear as if that province were 
 already in the hands of her " undertakers ; " while in Leinster, 
 even, exceedingly large tracts, consisting of entire counties, were 
 similarly circumstanced. And then there was the vile pretence 
 of religion to sanction the iniquity, at a time when, according 
 to Mr. Froude, no single man in the kingdom sincerely believed 
 in the new creed. Sir William Herbert, writing from Kerry 
 to Cecil, Lord Burleigh, in 1588, said — " Our pretext in the 
 " enterprise of plantation was to establish in these parts piety, 
 "justice, inhabitation, and civility, with comfort and good 
 " example to the parts adjacent. Our drift now is, being here 
 " possessed of land, to extort and make the state of things 
 "turbulent, and to live by prey and by pay." 574,628 Irish 
 acres (eight Irish acres are equal to thirteen English) of land 
 in Munster were declared forfeited to the Crown on the fall of 
 the Desmonds. This was parcelled out to " gentlemen under- 
 " takers " on certain conditions ; one being that they were bound, 
 within a limited time, to people their estates with/' well-affected 
 " Englishmen." No native Irish were to be accepted as tenants, 
 and every precaution was taken to prevent the English colonists 
 amalgamating with them. Kaleigh became an undertaker, and 
 by a legal instrument, bearing the Queen's name, dated from 
 Greenwich, the last day of February 1586, he had given to him 
 42,000 acres of this land. Kaleigh earned this property by some 
 
132 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 terrible services. An Italian garrison, which had come to aid 
 the Irish in Munster, having fallen into the power of the 
 English, Leland describes what followed thus : — 
 
 " "Wingfield was commissioned to disarm them, and when 
 " this service was performed an English company was sent into 
 " the fort. The Irish rebels found they were reserved for 
 ".execution by martial law. The Italian general and some of 
 " the officers were made prisoners of war, but the garrison was 
 " butchered in cold blood ; nor is it without pain that we find 
 " a service so horrid and detestable committed to Sir "Walter 
 " Raleigh." 
 
 Raleigh fared sadly later on. By the death of Elizabeth he 
 lost a powerful friend. James I. regarded him with a dislike 
 which he was at no pains to conceal. By the machinations of 
 the second Cecil, an ancestor of the present Marquis of Salis- 
 bury, who, to please Elizabeth, would have befriended him in the 
 previous reign, he was now charged with complicity in a plot 
 against the King. There was not a tittle of evidence to con- 
 nect Raleigh with it ; but, all the same, Coke, the prosecuting 
 Attorney-General, stigmatised him as a " damnable atheist," a 
 " spider of hell," and a " viperous traitor " to boot. He was 
 sent to the Tower under sentence of death, where he languished, 
 in sore straits, for thirteen years : — 
 
 " The desolator desolate, 
 The victor overthrown, 
 The arbiter of others' fate, 
 A suppliant for his own." 
 
 In the interval an ancestor of the present Marquis of Hartington, 
 coming that waj', neither looked on him nor passed him by, but 
 readily took compassion on him. The good Samaritan was 
 none other than Richard Boyle, " the great Earl of Cork." 
 With this introduction, "VValpole, an English historian, in his 
 Short History of Ireland (Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co.), shall 
 tell what happened on the road to Jericho, with an inter- 
 esting biography of the compassionate giver : — 
 
 " He [Boyle] was the son of a Herefordshire squire, a man 
 " of very considerable ability, but utterly unscrupulous. Having 
 
THE FORFEITURES AND PLANTATIONS. 133 
 
 ' found it advisable to absent himself from England by reason, 
 ' as his enemies say, of his ' forgeries, rasings, and perjuries,' 
 ' or because, as he himself puts it, ' it pleased divine Provi- 
 ' dence to lead him into Ireland,' 'he arrived in Dublin in 1588 
 ' [being then twenty-two years of age], with little else in the 
 ' world but two suits of clothes, a diamond ring, a gold bracelet, 
 'and ;£2'], 3s. in money.' He managed to wriggle himself 
 ' into the office of deputy-escheator of the lands of Munster, 
 ' under cover of which, by a series of frauds, he became pos- 
 * sessed of a considerable extent of the forfeited Irish estates. 
 ' He was twice indicted for felony, and committed to prison in 
 ' Dublin six times in five years ; but by his adroitness, and 
 ' the skilful use of bribes, he succeeded in cheating justice, 
 ' and becoming secretary to Sir George Carew. * God having 
 ' blessed him with a reasonable estate,' as he piously says in 
 ' his memoir, his new patron, tlie_ President of Munster, made 
 ' his fortune for him. He advised and assisted him to advance 
 ' money to the amount of some ;^ 1,5 00 to Sir "Walter Ealeigh 
 ' on the security of his vast grant of land in Cork and Water- 
 ' ford. The mortgage was foreclosed, and Raleigh's widow 
 ' and children afterwards complained, in a fruitless petition to 
 ' the Crown, that the estates had been 'juggled away.' Carew 
 ' introduced him [Boyle] to Sir Geofifrey Fenton, the Queen's 
 ' Surveyor-General, whose daughter he married ; and he knighted 
 ' him on the day of his wedding. Protected by Carew, Essex, 
 ' and Cecil, with all of whom he was careful to ingratiate him- 
 ' self, he escaped the reward of his misdeeds, and was suc- 
 ' cessively created Baron Youghal, Viscount Dungarvan, Earl of 
 ' Cork, and a Privy Councillor." 
 
 The reader may feel an interest in being reminded that, 
 whereas Raleigh suffered a violent death at the hands of the 
 public executioner on the 29th of October 16 18, in the sixty- 
 sixth year of his age, " the great Earl of Cork," his benefactor, 
 died quietly in his bed in 1 644, at the ripe old age of seventy- 
 eight. Such is the reward of a pious life and a charitable deed ! 
 But there is an Irish biographer of Richard Boyle, Mr. T. M. 
 Healy, M.P., who brings the story down to date, so to speak, 
 by reminding us how the Duke of Devonshire has, by means 
 of a long purse, even deprived the people of their fishery rights 
 on the Blackwater. Mr. Healy indulges in somewhat plainer 
 
134 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 speaking than the English historian, and unkindly omits all 
 acknowledgment of the pious aspirations of his subject. Other- 
 wise, except for an unimportant financial discrepancy, they are 
 in substantial agreement. In his pamphlet, A Word for Ire- 
 land, Mr. Healy writes : — 
 
 " Sir "W. Raleigh got some 42,000 acres (exclusive, as usual, 
 " of waste, bog, and mountain) out of the plunder of the Earl 
 " of Desmond's territories. A London judge's clerk, named 
 " Eichard Boyle, who had graduated in Ireland as a forger, a 
 " horse-thief, and conniver of murder,^ Avas raised to the Deputy 
 " Escheatorship of Munster, about 1590. Raleigh being in 
 " prison and straitened, Boyle offered him ;^5.ooo for his 
 " 42,000 acres, which being accepted, he paid Raleigh ji^soo on 
 " account, and swindled him out of the balance. Later on, 
 "Boyle having now become Earl of Cork, got' from James I. 
 " patents for all his plunder — the parchments of which, his 
 " historian mentions, covered a hall forty-eight feet long by three 
 " feet wide. He married all his children into English aristo- 
 " cratic families, and the Duke of Devonshire in this way got 
 " his County Cork and Waterford estates, out of which he draws 
 " some ^^30,000 a year^ for land which cost his ancestor Boyle 
 " ;^5oo. His Grace also now claims the fishery rights of the 
 " Blackwater from the town of Lismore to the sea at Youghal, 
 " some twenty miles, by virtue of the patent of James I. to this 
 " horse- thief ; and in the course of eleven years of litigation, 
 " and nearly a dozen trials, has put the unfortunate fishermen 
 •' of the district to thousands of pounds expense to assert his 
 " claims to the river." 
 
 Now, how does the Duke of Devonshire discharge the duties 
 of property, to which Lord Hartington is the heir, while exacting 
 its rights'? Well, he fails in the very first condition that is 
 essential to the efficient discharge of those duties. He is an 
 absentee. How would the English people around Chatsworth 
 and Bolton Abbey take it if, like the Irish people around 
 Lismore Castle, in the County Waterford, they never saw the 
 face of their landlord; never heard the sound of his carriage 
 
 1 Boyle had been engaged in better studies earlier at Cambridge and 
 in the Middle Temple. 
 
 - ;^3i>6o4, according to the Government valuation. 
 
THE FORFEITUEES AND PLANTATIONS. 135 
 
 wheels ; never saw the colour of his coin over the counter of the 
 butcher, or the baker, or the shoemaker, in the neighbouring 
 town or village 1 Yet such is the daily experience of the latter. 
 But if the Duke of Devonshire does not put in an appearance 
 at Lismore, one of the loveliest spots in the United Kingdom, 
 his heir, Lord Hartington, does, indeed, occasionally visit 
 Ireland. Alas ! his visits are not arranged for any beneficent 
 purpose in regard to the Devonshire estates j not directed to 
 the South of Ireland, with a view to gladden the eyes of the 
 Devonshire tenants. No, unhappily, Lord Hartington directs 
 his steps to an opposite quarter of the kingdom. He goes 
 amongst the Orangemen of Belfast, with the ignoble object of 
 intensifying and perpetuating racial and sectarian animosities ; 
 to stir up afresh the poisoned founts of bitterness which have, 
 generation after generation, marred all the efforts of good men 
 to reconcile Ireland with England. He, the leader of a party 
 and a responsible statesman, condescends to join hands with 
 the Chamberlains and the Churchills, unprincipled and unscru- 
 pulous as they have proved themselves, in this flagitious and 
 abominable occupation. In his very last speech at Belfast, in 
 October, 1888, Lord Hartington resorted "to language of out- 
 " rageous violence," as it was styled by Mr. Gladstone, at Bingley 
 Hall, a few weeks afterwards : — 
 
 " Lord Hartington," observes Mr. Gladstone, " said at Belfast 
 " on the 19th of October that the present struggle began as a 
 " struggle between union and separation. That was bad enough ; 
 " but according to him it has got gradually worse since, and 
 " it is now — these are his own words — ' a struggle of honesty 
 " against dishonesty, of order against disorder, of truth against 
 *' falsehood, and of loyalty against treason.' And in the same 
 " speech Lord Hartington said that the party with which we 
 " are connected is nearly one-half of the voting power of the 
 " country ; so that, according to him, nearly one half of his 
 " countrymen support dishonesty against honesty, disorder 
 " against order, falsehood against truth, and treason against 
 " loyalty." 
 
 Little did Mr. John Morley imagine, when writing as follows 
 
136 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 in the Nineteenth Century of November 1882, that his earnest 
 and indignant words in regard to Irish absentees would one 
 day be found to fit to a nicety the conduct of one of the 
 colleagues then sitting by his side at the Cabinet Council : — 
 
 " Great lords, who never go near their estates from year's 
 " end to year's end," observes Mr. Morley, " are very edify- 
 " ing on the ruin that will befall the helpless tenantry if 
 " they are left to themselves. "With virtuous indignation, the 
 " class that has for generations been in the habit of spending 
 " its Irish rents to the tune of millions a year in any place in 
 " the world except Ireland, solemnly warns the tenants that 
 " they are depleting the country of its capital. It was no 
 " Radical, but the immortal Tory who wrote Waverley, of whom 
 " his biographer tells us that when he visited Ireland in 1825, 
 " when the landlords had things all their own way, his very 
 " * heart was sickened ' by the widespread manifestations of 
 " the wanton and reckless profligacy of human mismanagement 
 " and the tyrannous selfishness of absenteeism." 
 
 One does not of course know whether the Duke of Devon- 
 shire and Lord Hartington mean to keep their hold upon the 
 fruits of the Raleigh foreclosure until such time as the descen- 
 dant of the Cecil who unjustly shut up Raleigh in the Tower ^ 
 shall be enabled to provide the necessary funds out of the 
 pockets of the British taxpayer to buy them and their class out of 
 Ireland. Anyhow, if they had lived in the 28th year of Henry 
 VIII., instead of being " bought out," they would by the Act of 
 Absentees in that year be simply turned out, without a shilling 
 compensation for their loss of ;^3 1,000 a year, as " enemies of 
 " the Commonwealth of England," — as was the case with the 
 Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord Berkeley, and 
 others in that reign. But in these days Parliament, despising 
 the wisdom of our ancestors, regards the happiness of an 
 absentee English duke and marquis of incomparably greater 
 importance to the state than the contentment of a multitude of 
 Irish peasants. 
 
 1 Was Cecil a party to and beneficiary by Boyle's swindle on Raleigh ? 
 His father became rich " by taking his neighbours' goods," according to 
 Isaac Bannister (see Chapter XXX.). 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 CONFISCATION AND PLANTATION OF ULSTER. 
 
 " Violence, fraud, the prerogative of force, the claims of superior cun- 
 " iiing — these are the sources to which those titles may be traced. The 
 " original deeds were written with the sword, rather than with the pen ; 
 " not lawyers, but soldiers, were the conveyancers ; blows were the current 
 " coin given in pa5rment; and for seals, blood was used in preference to 
 " wax." — Hekbekt Spencke. 
 
 In order to carry out tliis great • revolution in land tenure in 
 Ulster, royal commissions were issued to survey the country, 
 and to inquire into titles. Tyrone and Tyrconnell, the great 
 chiefs of the Northern province, had made their peace with 
 James I., and settled down in their respective territories as 
 loyal subjects. But the Government narrowly watched for an 
 opportunity to destroy them, to carry out a new scheme of 
 plantation. Eumours of threatened arrest, for the pretended 
 plots mentioned by Edmund Burke in the next page, reached 
 the chiefs, and they fled the country in terror of their lives. 
 The plantation in Munster had been an acknowledged failure, 
 on account of the enormous grants made to the undertakers ; an 
 error which must be avoided in Ulster. Here again the natives 
 were excluded as tenants, the new settlers being drawn from 
 England and Scotland as in Munster. The corporation of 
 London and the twelve city guilds obtained the entire county 
 of Coleraine, on the condition that they maintained the forts of 
 Culmore, Coleraine, and Derry. The unfortunate natives tried 
 to argue that they had rights of inheritance which could not be 
 forfeited by the attainder of their chieftains; but Sir John 
 Davis, the Attorney-General, a very able man, but a polished 
 hypocrite, bade them be contented with the assurance that the 
 
138 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 Xing meant to be " a father " to them, rather than a lord and 
 master. Green, the historian, has enumerated the virtues of 
 this friend of the fatherless. How often do we hear from 
 heaven -born statesmen that nothing can be done — nothing 
 should be done — for these persecuted Irish peasants, starving 
 on insufficient or uncultivable land, except to deport them to a 
 foreign country. Why should they, poor souls, ever have taken 
 up their residences in the wilds of Donegal or Kerry or Mayo, 
 in the midst of a savage bog, or on the sterile mountain side 1 
 Edmund Burke shall tell you the reason why, and that it was 
 no voluntary act of theirs, God help them : — 
 
 " If we read Baron Finglas, Spenser, and Sir John Davis," 
 he says, in a letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, " we cannot 
 " miss the true genius and policy of the English Government in 
 " Ireland before the Revolution, as well as during the whole 
 " reign of Queen Elizabeth. . . . The original scheme was never 
 " deviated from for a single moment. Unheard of confiscations 
 " were made in the northern parts, upon grounds of plots and 
 " conspiracies never proved upon their supposed authors. The 
 " war of chicane succeeded to the war of arms and of hostile 
 " statutes, and a regular series of operations were carried on, 
 " particularly from Chichester's time, in the ordinary courts of 
 " justice, and by special commissions and inquisitions ; first 
 " under pretence of tenures, and then of titles in the Crown, for 
 " the purpose of the total extirpation of the interests of the 
 " natives in their own soil, until this species of subtle ravage 
 •' being carried to the last excess of oppression and insolence 
 " under Lord Strafford, it kindled the flames of that rebellion 
 " which broke out in 1641." 
 
 The English historian, "Walpole, observes, in his SJiort History 
 0/ Ireland, writing of the Expulsion of 16 11 : — 
 
 " Slowly and sullenly the Irish gentry removed themselves 
 "and their belongings into the contracted locations to which 
 " they had been appointed, away from the * fat lands ' to the 
 " ' lean lands,' from the rich pasture to the barren moor. Slowly 
 " and sullenly the mass of the people followed them^ thrust out 
 " of their homes, to find new refuges wherein to laylheir heads ; 
 " some amongst the servitors [a grade below the ' undertakers '], 
 " some in the ' lean lands,' some transplanted in gangs at the 
 
CONFISCATION AND PLANTATION OF ULSTER. 139 
 
 " command of the Government into waste land, which no one 
 " wanted, in Munster and in Counaught. Exiled to make room 
 " for the planters, evicted, though promised security, they 
 " wandered forth bearing in their hearts a store of bitter hatred 
 " for the invaders who had broken faith with them ; and yearn- 
 " ing for the vengeance which they were to snatch in 1641." 
 
 "What were the causes of the Kebellion in that year, and 
 what led up to it ? — 
 
 "Upon the accession of James I. in 1603," says Mr. Smiles, 
 the author of Self Help, in his History of Ireland, " the penal 
 " laws enacted in the reign of Elizabeth were revived in all 
 " their original harshness. Sir Arthur Chichester, the new 
 " Lord Lieutenant, a man cruel and avaricious in his character, 
 " and eager to amass wealth and possessions, no matter in what 
 " manner, willingly seconded all the designs of the persecuting 
 " monarch. The Catholic chapels were shut up, and the most 
 " wanton oppressions and extortions were resorted to, such as fine, 
 " imprisonment, and deprivation of oflSce, for enforcing attend- 
 " ance at the Protestant service. To put an end to aU doubts, 
 " also as to James's being favourable to religious toleration, he 
 " issued a proclamation, giving due notice to all concerned, of 
 "his thoroughly intolerant disposition and character. This 
 " singular proclamation commences thus : — ' Whereas, his 
 " Majesty is informed, that his subjects of Ireland had been 
 " deceived by a false report, that his Majesty Avas disposed to 
 " allow them liberty of conscience, and the free choice of a 
 " religion ; he hereby declares to his beloved subjects of Ireland, 
 " that he will not admit of any such liberty of conscience as 
 " they were made to expect by such report,' &c. And then the 
 " proclamation goes on to order the expulsion of the Catholic 
 " bishops, Jesuits, and all other ministers of the Catholic 
 " worship, and to prohibit altogether the exercise of the 
 " Catholic religion both in England and Ireland." 
 
 Hallam, in the second volume of his^ Constitutional History, 
 observes : — 
 
 " The primary causes of the rebellion are . . . to be found 
 " in the two great sins of the English Government, in the penal 
 " laws as to religion, which pressed on almost the whole people, 
 " and in the systematic iniquity which despoiled them of their 
 " possessions." 
 
140 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 And, again, in the tliird volume of the same work, he 
 says : — 
 
 " The [English] Commons had, at the very heginning of the 
 " rebellion, voted that all the forfeited estates of the insurgents 
 " should be allotted to such as should aid in reducing the island 
 " to obedience ; and thus rendered the war desperate on the 
 " part of the Irish." 
 
 This is in complete agreement with Mr. Lecky's view of the 
 subject. In liis Eighteenth Century he says : — 
 
 " The rebellion only assumed its general character in conse- 
 " quence of the resolution of the English House of Commons, 
 " that no toleration should be henceforth granted to the 
 " Catholic religion in Ireland. It was this policy that drove 
 " the Catholic gentry of Ireland very reluctantly into rebellion. 
 " The rebellion was a defensive war, entered into in order to 
 " secure a toleration of the religion of the Irish people. ... It 
 " may boldly be asserted that the statement of a general and 
 " organised massacre is utterly and absolutely untrue. As is 
 " almost always the case with popular risings, there were in the 
 " first outbreak of the rebellion some murders, but they were 
 " very few, and there was nothing whatever in the nature of a 
 " massacre. . . . The rebellion was not one due to any single 
 " cause, but it represented the accumulated wrongs and 
 " animosities of two generations. All the long train of agrarian 
 " wrongs from Mullaghmast to the latest inquisitions of Went- 
 " worth, all the long succession of religious wrongs from the 
 " Act of Uniformity of Elizabeth to the Confiscation of the 
 " Irish College under Charles, contributed to the result." 
 
 Who are they who fanned that rebellion into gigantic 
 proportions ? — 
 
 " Whatever were the professions of the chief governors [Lords 
 " Justices]," observes Leland, in the third volume of his History 
 of Ireland, " the only danger they really apprehended was that 
 " of a too speedy suppression of the rebels. Extensive for- 
 " feitures were their favourite object and that of their friends." 
 
 The Ecverend Dr. Warner stigmatises the Lords Justices as 
 " miscreants," who had recourse to the rack, though against the 
 law, with a view to extort confessions which they, the Lords 
 
CONFISCATION AND PLANTATION OF ULSTER. 141 
 
 Justices themselves, had put into the mouths of their tor- 
 tured victims; and bywhose orders, "men, women, and children 
 "were promiscuously slain." 
 
 Finally, Carte, in the first volume of his Ldfe of Ormonde, 
 explains the matter as follows : — 
 
 "There is too much reason to think that, as the Lords 
 " Justices really wished the rebellion to spread, and more 
 " gentlemen of estates to be involved in it, that the forfeitures 
 " might be the greater, and a general plantation be carried on 
 " by a new set of English Protestants all over the kingdom, to 
 " the ruin and expulsion of all the old English and natives that 
 " were Roman Catholics ; so, to promote what they wished, 
 " they gave out speeches upon occasions, insinuating such a 
 " design, and that in a short time there would not be a Roman 
 " Catholic left in the kingdom . . . extirpation [was] preached 
 " for gospel." 
 
 The character of the Lords Justices, to whom was entrusted 
 the government of Ireland during the absence — which was most 
 frequently constant — of the Lord Lieutenant, may be inferred 
 from a couple of specimens of the class. In the second volume 
 of Ormonde's Letters, it is stated that — " Sir William Parsons 
 " hath by late letters advised the governor to the burning of 
 " corn, and to put man, woman, and child to the sword ; and 
 " Sir Adam Loftus hath written in the same strain." One of 
 these, "William Parsons, afterwards Sir "William, was another 
 upstart whose career resembled that of Boyle, his contemporary 
 and colleague as a Privy Councillor : — 
 
 " An Englishman of low birth, and with no education beyond 
 " that of reading and writing," observes "Walpole, in his King- 
 dom of Ireland, " he had gone over to Ireland with jQ^o in his 
 " pocket to seek his fortune. Having got into the service of 
 " one Kenny, the escheator-general, and saved some money by 
 " a combination of hard work and sharp practice, he married a 
 " niece of Sir Geoffrey Fenton, the surveyor-general, and in a.d. 
 " 1602 succeeded to that office, and became a commissioner of 
 " the escheated lands in Ulster. Taking advantage of his 
 " position he took care not to be left out in the allotment of 
 "lands, obtaining 1890 acres in Tyrone and 2000 acres in 
 
142 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " Fermanagh alone. By these means and others still more 
 " scandalous, as in the case of the estates of the O'JJyrnes of 
 " Wicklow, he secured over 8000 acres and amassed an immense 
 " fortune. Having secured the patronage of Buckingham he 
 " set at defiance all accusations made against his proceedings, 
 " and in company ■with the Earl of Cork was one of the most 
 " influential members of the Privy Council. He was the 
 " ancestor of the Earls of Eosse of the first creation." 
 
 Parsons' proceedings in regard to the O'Byrnes of "Wicklow 
 were simply frightful. He entered into a conspiracy with a 
 number of others (Sir Eichard Graham, Sir James EitzPiers 
 Fitzgerald, Sir Henry Belling, and Lord Esmond), to obtain a 
 conveyance of O'Byrnes' land to themselves : — 
 
 " They accordingly," continues "Walpole, " trumped up a 
 " charge against him and his five sons of corresponding with an 
 " outlawed gentleman of the family of Kavenagh. They lodged 
 " an information against them, on the testimony of one Thomas 
 " Archer, which they wrung from him by torture on a hot grid- 
 " iron, and that of three vagrant Irishmen who owed O'Byrne 
 " a grudge for his having issued his warrant against them as a 
 "justice of the peace. Two of the young O'Byrnes were there- 
 " upon confined in Dublin Castle, and Phelim and all the five 
 " were prosecuted at the Carlow assizes for treason. The grand 
 " jury threw out the bill, for which they were heavily fined by 
 " the Castle Chamber, and a fresh indictment was preferred at 
 " the WickloAV assizes. The grand jury was this time carefully 
 " packed with neighbouring undertakers to secure the finding 
 " of a true bill, and notorious convicted thieves whom Phelim 
 " had convicted at petty sessions were called as witnesses, and 
 " pardoned on giving evidence of the prisoners' guilt. The 
 " scandal was so abominable and glaring that Sir Francis 
 " Annesley and some other gentlemen took up the case and 
 " obtained a royal commission to inquire into the matter, which 
 " resulted in the O'Byrnes being set at liberty. Their estates, 
 " however, covering half the county of Wicklow, of which 
 " during the prosecution Parsons and Esmond had been put in 
 " possession by the Sheriff of Wicklow, were not restored to 
 " them, and the plot in that respect was eminently successful." 
 
 After all this. Parsons was made a Lord Justice, and it will 
 not surprise any one to be told that the sept of the O'Byrnes 
 
CONFISCATION AND PLANTATION OF ULSTER. 143 
 
 ■were amongst the first to rise in rebellion in 1641. That 
 rebellion, if we are to believe Carte, he. Parsons, ardently 
 desired and purposely stimulated in order to reap a new crop of 
 confiscations. 
 
 Doctor, afterwards Sir William Petty, the ancestor of Lord 
 Lansdowne, the present Governor-General of India, was another 
 distinguished individual of the period, though he does not quite 
 come up to the standard of Boyle and Parsons. He was Physi- 
 cian-General to the forces, and was employed to survey the con- 
 fiscated lands in the time of the Commonwealth. Money was 
 scarce in those days in the Irish military chest, and when Petty 
 sent in his little bill he was allotted large parcels of the confis- 
 cated estates for his services instead, probably being privileged 
 to select and survey them for himself. Anyhow, Carte, in the 
 second volume of his lAfe of Ormonde, suggests that he was a 
 man very capable of taking care of himself, and that he boasted 
 of having witnesses, whom he was accused of suborning, " who 
 " would swear through a three-inch board." "Within a few years 
 he was the owner of 50,000 acres in Kerry alone, though his 
 pay in 1659 was only 20s. a day. He died in the odour of 
 sanctity, of course, or as he expresses it himself in his will — 
 " in the practice of such religious worship as I find established 
 " by the law of my country." His present descendant is a typical 
 Irish absentee landlord of the good old style, who evicts his 
 tenants wholesale, levelling and burning their poor cabins, as at 
 Luggacurran, built not by him, but by themselves, when they 
 are unable to pay rack-rents for their holdings, and never 
 subscribes a shilling towards relief funds in times of distress, 
 either there or elsewhere, to save them from starvation. Of 
 this latter fact there is, indeed, sad proof. The Keverend Mr. 
 M'Cutchan, the Protestant Rector of Kenmare, stated to Sir 
 Charles Russell, Q.C.,M.P. (New Views on Ireland, Macmillan), 
 that :— 
 
 " If the shopkeepers had not acted with greater humanity and 
 " forbearance than the landlord, five-sixths of Lord Lansdowne's 
 " tenants would have been absolutely ruined [during the distress 
 " of 1879-80 in Kerry] ; and indeed," adds Sir Charles himself. 
 
144 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " to my observation, it did not seem that they were, in fact, far 
 " removed from ruin as it was." 
 
 Is not this exercising all the " rights " without discharging 
 any of the duties of property with a vengeance ? 
 
 It may be worth while mentioning here that the " mandate " 
 for his cruel proceedings, if he ever condescended to ask for it, 
 which CromweU carried to Ireland was due in great measure to 
 the exaggerated reports which reached London of the slaughter 
 of the Protestants in the rebellion of 1641. Sir John Temple, 
 who profited largely by the confiscations which followed, was 
 the prime offender of the period- He was in 1648 appointed a 
 Commissioner of the Great Seal; in 1653, a Commissioner of 
 Forfeited Estates ; when he took care to be the recipient of large 
 land grants for himself in the counties of Carlow and Dublin. 
 He was afterwards made Master of the Kolls and Vice-Chancellor 
 of Ireland. He was, in fact, one of the vultures that, in the words 
 of Mr. Goldwin Smith, " descended upon Ireland." In 1646 this 
 unscrupulous rascal, self-convicted, published a book in which 
 it was represented that, within a period of two years — " above 
 " 300,000 British and other Protestants were cruelly murthered 
 " in cold blood, destroyed some other way, or expelled out of 
 " their habitations." He made no attempt to distinguish between 
 murder and expulsion ; he derived his information from deposi- 
 tions which Edmund Burke described as " rascally," and which 
 generally bear no date, are full of contradictions, and place the 
 principal massacres at the outbreak of the rebellion, when all 
 the evidence shows there was scarcely anything of the kind. 
 Finally, his number of 300,000 is at least five times the total 
 number of Protestants living in the country, outside of walled 
 towns, where alone massacres took place. Various estimates of 
 the true numbers were afterwards published from time to time. 
 Eapin and the Long Parliament reduced them one half; 
 Clarendon and Hume put them down to 40 or 50,000 ; others 
 still further reduced the figures to 12 and 10,000 respectively, 
 until at length a more modern authority than any. Dr. Cooke 
 Taylor, a Protestant of Cromwellian family, "after a very careful 
 
CONFISCATION AND PLANTATION IN ULSTER. 145 
 
 " examination of all the statements," believes that the number 
 of persons killed by the insurgents was less than 5,000, and that 
 about an equal number were slain by their opponents. The 
 Reverend Dr. Warner, another Protestant writer, who is said by 
 Walpole to have made " an especially careful investigation of 
 " the evidence," reckons the fallen at 4,028, and thinks that of 
 those a small proportion only could have been " massacred." 
 The Government were ultimately ashamed of Temple's lying 
 publication, but unfortunately not before the evil work resulting 
 from it was past recall. Indeed it is read by weak-minded 
 persons even at this day. Of course Temple's distress over the 
 publication in his later years must have been genuine enough, 
 when he discovered that he had devised falsely to an extent 
 which seriously interfered with his obtaining further perquisites 
 at the Restoration. In Curry's Review of the Civil Wars in Ire- 
 land there is the following curious statement on the subject : — 
 
 " Sir John Temple published his history of the Irish rebellion 
 " in the year 1646, by the direction of the Parliament party, 
 " which then prevailed, and to which, though long before in 
 " actual rebellion, he was always attached. The falsehoods it 
 " contains are so glaring, and numerous, that even the Govem- 
 "ment, in the year 1674, seems to have been offended, and 
 " himself ashamed of the republication of it. This we gather 
 " from a letter of Capel, Earl of Essex, then Lord Lieutenant of 
 " Ireland, to Mr. Secretary Coventry, of that date, wherein we 
 " find these words : — ' I am to acknowlcfdge yours of the 22nd 
 " of December, in which you mention a book that was newly 
 " published, concerning the cruelties committed in Ireland, at 
 " the beginning of the late war. Upon further inquiry I find 
 " Sir J. Temple, Master of the EoUs here (Ireland), author of 
 " that book, was this last year sent to by several stationers of 
 " London, to have his consent to the printing thereof; but he 
 " assures me, that he utterly denied it, and whoever printed it 
 " did it without his knowledge. This much I thought fit to 
 " add to what I formerly said upon this occasion, that I might 
 " do this gentleman right, in case it were suspected, he had any 
 " share in publishing this new edition.' Stat. Let. Dub. ed. 
 "p. 2. His Lordship was, at this time, soliciting a grant of 
 " three (he would have it five) hundred pounds a year on the 
 " forfeited estates, for Sir John Temple, which he at last obtained 
 
146 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " (see these letters), and the Ministry seems to have made this 
 " republishing of his history an objection, which his Lordship 
 " thus endeavours to remove." 
 
 The Eev. George Hill, a Protestant chronicler of this chapter 
 of Irish history, sums up the sad results of the handiwork of 
 James I., who deluded the Irish with false promises of being a 
 " father " to them, through the agency of his Attorney-General — 
 the Sir Richard Webster of the day — in the following impressive 
 words in his Plantation of Ulster : — 
 
 " But the Paradise of plenty, if not of peace, to which these 
 " strangers [who supplanted the natives] at times attained was 
 " only secured by a very heavy and dreadful sacrifice of the 
 " interests of Ireland as a nation, for to this settlement in Ulster 
 " may be traced the awful scenes and events of the ten years' 
 " civil war commencing in 1641, the horrors of the revolutionary 
 " struggle in 1690, and the re-awaking of these horrors in 1798. 
 " The dragon's teeth so plentifully sown in this Ulster Planta- 
 " tion have indeed sprung up at times with more than usually 
 " abundant growth, yielding their ghastly harvests of blood and 
 " death on almost every plain, by almost every river-side, and 
 " almost in every glen of our Northern province." 
 
 The Irish people would indeed have short memories if they 
 forgot all about the plantation of Ulster even at this day. It is 
 not in human nature to forget the consequences which have 
 flowed from that sweeping act of injustice. But recollection is 
 one thing and covetousness another, and it may be said with 
 absolute confidence that there is not an Irishman living at this 
 moment who contemplates interference with the prescriptive 
 rights of the descendants of the motley adventurers of the 
 seventeenth century. That the Irish landlords, and the Ascend- 
 ancy class generally, should harbour such a suspicion is natural 
 enough, for their conscience must be burdened by a heritage of 
 guilt. But no Englishman who regards truth and justice can 
 peruse this story of proscription and confiscation in Ireland 
 without feelings of profound sympathy and respect for the 
 Irish people. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 PLANTATION AND TRANSPLANTATION. 
 
 " These fertile plains, that soften'd vale, 
 " Were once the birthright of the Gael ; 
 " The stranger came with iron hand, 
 " And, from our fathers, reft the land." 
 
 — Roderick Dhu. 
 
 Lord Chancellor Clare, the colleague of Castlereagh, speak- 
 ing in the Union debates in the Irish House of Lords, in 
 February 1800, menacingly reminded the Anglo-Irish landlords 
 opposing that measure, of their origin and the precarious nature 
 of the title to their estates. The rebellion of 1641, after deso- 
 lating the country for seventeen years, had terminated in the 
 extinction of the principal families, and in nearly a total revolu- 
 tion of the property of Ireland. Upon the final adjustment of 
 the Acts of Settlement and Explanation, it appears by the Down 
 Survey that 7,800,000 acres of land were set out by the Court 
 of Claims, principally, if not entirely, to the exclusion of the 
 old proprietors. With singular power Lord Clare depicted the 
 iniquity of English confiscations in Ireland as follows : — 
 
 " Cromwell's first act was to collect all the native Irish who 
 " had survived the general desolation, and who had remained in 
 " the country, and to transplant them into the province of Con- 
 " naught, which had been completely depopulated and laid waste 
 " in the progress of the rebellion [of 1641]. They were ordered 
 " to retire thence by a certain day, and forbidden to repass the 
 " Shannon under pain of death, and this sentence of deportation 
 " was rigidly enforced until the Eestoration. Their ancient 
 " possessions were seized and given up to the conquerors, as 
 " were the possessions of every man who had taken part in the 
 " rebellion, or followed the fortunes of the King after the 
 
148 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " murder of Charles the First. And this whole fund was dis- 
 " tributed among the officers and soldiers of Cromwell's army, 
 " in satisfaction of the arrears of their pay, and adventurers who 
 " had advanced money to defray the expenses of the war. And 
 " thus a new colony of new settlers, composed of all the various 
 ".'sects which then infested England — Independents, Ana- 
 " baptists, Seceders, Brownists, Socinians, Millennarians, and 
 " dissenters of every description, many of them infected with 
 " the leaven of democracy, poured into Ireland, and were put 
 " into possession of the ancient inheritance of its inhabitants. 
 " And I speak with great personal respect of the men, when I 
 " state that a very considerable portion of the opulence and 
 " power of this kingdom of Ireland, continues at this day in the 
 " descendants of those motley adventurers." 
 
 Then referring to what took place after the Restoration, he 
 proceeds : — 
 
 " Three-fourths of the lands and personal property of the 
 " inhabitants of this island [having been vested] in the king, 
 " commissioners are appointed with full and exclusive authority 
 " to hear and determine all claims upon the general fund, 
 " whether of officers and soldiers for arrears of pay, of adven- 
 " turers who had advanced money for carrying on the war, of 
 " innocent Papists, as they are called — in other words, of the 
 " old inhabitants of the island, who had been dispossessed by 
 " Cromwell, not for having taken part in the rebellion against 
 " the English crown, but for their attachment to the fortunes of 
 " Charles the Second. But with respect to this class of sufferers, 
 " who might naturally have expected a preference of claim, a 
 " clause is introduced by which they are postponed, after a 
 " decree of innocence by the commissioners, until previous 
 " reprisals shall be made to Cromwell's soldiers and adventurers 
 " who had obtained possession of their inheritance. . . . I wish 
 " gentlemen, -who call themselves the dignified and independent 
 " Irish nation, to know that 7,800,000 acres of land were set 
 " out, under this act [of Settlement and Explanation] to a motley 
 " crew of English adventurers, civil and military, nearly to the 
 " total exclusion of the old inhabitants of the island, many of 
 " whom, who were innocent of the rebellion, lost their inheri- 
 " tance, as well for the difficulties conjured up in the Court of 
 " Claims in the proofs required of their innocence, as from a 
 " deficiency in the fund for reprisal to English adventurers. 
 
PLANTATION AND TRANSPLANTATION. 149 
 
 " arising principally from a profuse grant made by the crown to 
 " the Duke of York. . . . It is a subject of curious and impor- 
 "tant speculation to look back to the forfeitures of Ireland 
 " incurred in the last century. The superficial contents of the 
 "island are calculated at 11,042,682 acres. Let us now 
 " examine the state of forfeitures : — 
 
 " Confiscated in the reign of James the First : — 
 
 The whole of the province of Ulster, acres . . 2,836,837 
 Set out by the Court of Claims at the Restoration . 7,800,000 
 Forfeitures of 1688 1,060,792 
 
 Total . . . 11,697,629" 
 
 Finally, Lord Clare endeavoured to alarm the anti-Unionist 
 landlords by reminding them of their peculiar position : — 
 
 " The situation of the Irish nation at the Revolution [of 1688J 
 " stands unparalleled in the history of the inhabited world. If 
 " the wars of England, carried on here [i.e., in Ireland] from the 
 " reign of Elizabeth, had been waged ' against a foreign enemy, 
 " the inhabitants would have retained their possessions under 
 " the established law of civilised nations, and their country have 
 " been annexed as a province to the British Empire. But the 
 " continued and persevering resistance of Ireland to the British 
 " Crown during the whole of the last century was mere rebellion, 
 " and the municipal law of England attached upon the crime. 
 " What, then, was the situation of Ireland at the Revolution, 
 " and what is it at this day ? The whole power and property 
 " of the country has been conferred by successive monarchs of 
 " England upon an English colony, composed of three sets of 
 " EngUsh adventurers who poured into this country at the 
 " termination of three successive rebellions. Confiscation is 
 " their common title ; and from their first settlement they have 
 " been hemmed in on every side by the old inhabitants of the 
 " island, brooding over their discontents in sullen indignation. 
 " It is painful to go into this detail, but we have been for years 
 " in a fever of intoxication, and must be stunned into sobriety. 
 " What, then, was the security of the English settlers for their 
 " physical existence at the Revolution, and what is the security 
 "of their descendants at this day? The powerful and com- 
 " manding protection of Great Britain. If by any fatality it 
 " fails, you are at the mercy of the old inhabitants of the 
 " island." 
 
I50 A KEY TO THE lEISH QUESTION. 
 
 And he wound up his menaces by further impressing upon 
 the Irish landlords the melancholy truth that : — 
 
 " The Parliament of England seems to have considered the 
 " permanent debility of Ireland as the best security of the British 
 " crown, and the Irish Parliament to have rested the Security 
 " of the colony upon maintaining a perpetual and impossible 
 " barrier against the ancient inhabitants of the country. " 
 
 The ingratitude to the sufferers, referred to by Lord Clare, 
 which Charles II. exhibited after the Restoration is notori- 
 ous. " The king," says Carte, " considered the settlement 
 " of Ireland as an affair rather of policy than justice," and 
 he acted accordingly; the Irish being sacrificed, observes Mr. 
 Lecky, "with little reluctance." "No men," according to the 
 former, " had so great shares [of the confiscated lands] as those 
 " who had been instruments to murder the king." Charles 
 readily confirmed the grants to Cromwell's soldiers, and aban- 
 doned the loyal friends of his family to misery and despair. 
 When a group of the latter visited his court for redress, it 
 was the custom of the Merry Monarch to put on a sympathising 
 air, and exclaim, "My poor people, how my heart bleeds for you !" 
 But the farce was carried on a little too long. Some high-spirited 
 Irish officers, who had been beggared by their fidelity to him in 
 misfortune, boldly gave vent to their disappointment even in 
 the royal presence. One of them, a Colonel Costello, having lost 
 all patience with the ungrateful monarch, is said by Derrick to 
 have replied to his sympathetic formula as follows : — 
 
 " Please your majesty, I ask for no compensation for my ser- 
 " vices and sacrifices in your majesty's cause. I see that to your 
 " friends, and to my countrymen in particular, you give nothing, 
 " and that it is your enemies alone who receive favour and 
 " reward. For ten years' service, for many wounds, and for the 
 " total loss of my estates, I ask nothing. But in the ardour of 
 " youth, and in the belief that I was asserting the sacred cause 
 " of liberty, I fought for one year in the service of the usurper — 
 " give me back such portion of my estates as that year's service 
 " entitles me to 1 " 
 
 It will, perhaps, render the purport of Lord Clare's entire speech 
 
PLANTATION AND TRANSPLANTATION. 151 
 
 better understood to mention that the order to cross the Shannon 
 was proclaimed by beat of drum in the middle of autumn, 
 1653; and every human being transplanted from the other 
 three provinces to Connaught must obey that order before the 
 first day of May in the following year, on pain of death. The 
 flight was thus arranged for the winter. The following passage 
 from an English historian will explain how comes it that the 
 Irish peasant of the present day is so often to be found settled 
 in the midst of savage bogs and moorland, and on the almost 
 uncultivable slopes along the mountain side. It will be seen 
 that the selection was no voluntary act of his, unhappy man : — 
 
 " Slowly," observes Walpole, " the beggared nobility and 
 " gentry [and commons] set out on their sorrowful pilgrimage. 
 " The Anglo-Irish, who in Henry II. 's reign had dispossessed 
 " the native Irish, were driven forth from the estates they had 
 ' ' held for five hundred years [to make room for Cromwell's sol- 
 " dier-colonists]. The season was wet, the roads were well-nigh 
 " impassable, and the squalid multitude, as they straggled into 
 " the west, found that the barren land to which they had been 
 " sent was all too small for the promised accommodation. When 
 " the exiles reached Connaught, they were pillaged by the 
 " officers employed to set out their allotments, who had to be 
 " bribed, either with money or a portion of the land awarded, 
 " before they would stir in the business. These worthies — the 
 " Kings, the Binghams, the Coles, the St. Georges, the Ormsbys, 
 " the Gores, the Lloyds — having cheated the transplanters of a 
 " portion of their lots, bought up the remnant for a few shillings 
 " the acre, to the extent of eighty thousand Irish acres. ^ . . . 
 " Here [in Connaught] they were to be hemmed in, as in a 
 " penal settlement, with the ocean on the one hand and the 
 " Shannon on the other, forbidden to enter a walled town 
 " under the death penalty, with a fringe of disbanded soldiers 
 " planted in a belt one mile wide all round the sea coast and 
 " along the line of the river, to keep them from approaching 
 " the border line." 
 
 Here it may be mentioned that the event which brought the 
 Cromwellian war of suppression to a conclusion, was the re- 
 
 ' The same kind of rascality was practised on the occasion of the Ulster 
 plantation, according to Leland. 
 
■1 
 
 152 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 duction of Galway (in the time of the Commonwealth a city 
 second in importance only to London itself, according to Henry 
 Cromwell), which surrendered to Sir Charles Coote, in April 
 1652, after a siege of nine months, having endured great priva- 
 tions meanwhile. During the two years which followed the 
 surrender, one-third of the population of Connaught, of which 
 Galway was the capital, was swept off by famine and plague : — 
 
 "In 1655," observes Collier, in his abridged History of 
 Ireland, "in violation of the conditions upon which the city 
 " of Galway had surrendered, it was ordered that all the Irish 
 " and Catholic inhabitants should be removed from the town, 
 " that they might be replaced by English Protestants. The 
 " inhabitants, without distinction of rank or sex, were driven out 
 " of the town in the midst of a severe winter, and were forced 
 " to take shelter by the ditches, and in poor cabins in the 
 " country, many, without fire or sufficient clothing, dying ia 
 " consequence." 
 
 But there is, unhappily, something more terrible yet to tell 
 of the results of the Cromwellian war. Emigration — forced 
 emigration — dates a long way back in Ireland. Cromwell, in 
 order to get rid of some of his enemies, for instance, did not 
 hesitate to transport 40,000 Irish from their own country, "to 
 "fill all the armies of Europe with complaints of his cruelty, 
 " and admiration of their own valour," observes Dalrymple, in 
 the first volume of his Memoirs of Great Britain. Nor were 
 those below the military age spared either. According to Sir 
 William Petty,' in his Political Anatomy, 6,000 young boys and 
 girls were also sent away, who are said by Lynch {Cambrensis 
 Eversus) to have been sold for slaves. Broudin, quoted by 
 Lingard, in volume vii. of his History of England, numbers 
 the exiles at 100,000 altogether. Petty is in agreement with 
 Broudin as to the number of 100,000, and adds, in his Hihemia 
 Delineated, there was reason to believe that numbers were " sent 
 "to perish in the tobacco islands." Of those thus transported, 
 it is said not a single one survived at the end of twenty years. 
 In Thurloe's Correspondence the formation of press-gangs to 
 collect the male and female youth for transportation is even 
 
PLANTATION AND TRANSPLANTATION. 153 
 
 set forth at length, Henry Cromwell excusing the use of force 
 in the enterprise on account of its "being so much for their 
 " owne goode." And though, he observes, " wee have mett with 
 " some more than ordinary crosse providences in this my under- 
 " takinge, yet I doubt not but the lord will smille uppon it 
 "in the issue." However undesirable it is to revive these 
 evil memories by further details, yet is it instructive to observe 
 the mingled blasphemy and presumption with which one of the 
 foremost men of the Commonwealth was prone to invoke the 
 most sacred and hallowed names to sanction the enactment of 
 the most atrocious cruelty for the most infamous of all purposes. 
 What that purpose really was wiU be understood from the fol- 
 lowing passage from the work of the English historian, Walpole, 
 already quoted : — 
 
 ""Whole regiments [of the disbanded soldiers of the Irish 
 " army] were eagerly recruited by the agents of the Kings of 
 " Spain and Poland, and the Prince of Conde. As many as 
 " 34,000 were in this way hurried into exile. There remained 
 " behind, of necessity, great numbers of widows and orphans, 
 " and deserted wives and families ; and these the Government 
 " proceeded to ship wholesale to the West Indies — the boys for 
 " slaves, the women and girls for mistresses to the English 
 " sugar-planters. The merchants of Bristol — slave-dealers in 
 " the days of Strongbow — sent over their agents to hunt down 
 " and ensnare the wretched people for consignment to Barbadoes. 
 " Orders were given them on the governors of gaols and work- 
 " houses for boys ' who were of an age to labour,' and women 
 " who were marriageable and not past breeding,' Delicate 
 " ladies were kidnapped, as well as the peasant women, and 
 " forced on board the slave-ships. Between six and seven 
 " thousand were transported before the capture by the un- 
 " scrupulous dealers of some of the wives and daughters of the 
 "English themselves forced the Government to prohibit the 
 " seizure of any person without a warrant." 
 
 Mr. Lecky, in the second volume of his Eighteenth Century, 
 teUs us another result of this most cruel war : — 
 
 " The war ended at last in 1652. According to the calcula- 
 " tion of Sir William Petty, out of a population of 1,466,000, 
 " 616,000 had in seven years perished by the sword, by plague, 
 
154 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " or by famine artificially produced. 504,000, according to this 
 "estimate, were Irish, 112,000 of English extraction. Famine 
 " and the sword had so done their work that in some districts 
 " the traveller rode twenty or thirty miles Avithout seeing one 
 " trace of human life, and fierce wolves — rendered doubly savage 
 " by feeding on human flesh — multiplied with startling rapidity 
 " through the deserted land, and might be seen prowling in 
 " numbers within a few miles of Dublin." 
 
 Unfortunately this story of Irish forfeitures and confisca- 
 tions is not even yet complete. It will be recollected that Lord 
 Clare estimated that the forfeitures at the Revolution exceeded 
 a million acres, Irish measure. From these William IIL distri- 
 buted immense grants, numbering seventy-six in all, amongst his 
 Dutch and English friends. To William Bentinck, eldest son 
 of the Duke of Portland, he gave 135,820 acres; to Keppel, 
 the Earl of Albemarle, 108,633 acres ; to a former mistress, the 
 Countess of Orkney, 95,649 (out of the Crown property absorbed 
 by James at the Restoration) ; to Sidney, Lord Romney, 49,517 
 acres; to Ruvigny, created Earl of Gal way, 36,148 acres; and 
 to Ginkel, whom he made Earl of Athlone, 26,480 acres. These 
 immense grants were within eight years resumed by the English 
 Parliament in spite of the king, vrith the possessions he had 
 restored to the Irish proprietors, and the whole offered by auc- 
 tion to the highest bidder regardless of right or justice. And 
 then there was an infamous pension list quartered on the 
 Irish Exchequer, which increased in ten years (1723-33) from 
 _j^30,ooo to ;^69,ooo a year. One king after another had paid 
 for his illicit pleasures in this way, as is clearly set forth in 
 the pages of Lecky, Eroude, and others. The money went to 
 England to be distributed amongst disreputable people there 
 for whom it was not thought expedient to solicit such gifts of 
 the English Parliament, and it was said that all of the latter 
 were clearly illegal. Catherine Sedley, the mistress of James IL, 
 had allotted her ^^5,000 a year, Madame de Walmoden, 
 one of the mistresses of George II. , had a pension of ;^3,ooo, 
 and Lady Stanhope drew _;^2,6oo a year. The Duchess of 
 Kendal (the German who was to have shared with Wood the 
 
PLANTATION AND TEANSPLANTATION 155 
 
 profits on the copper coinage denounced by Swift), and the 
 Countess of Darlington, the two mistresses of George I., 
 had given them pensions of the united annual value of 
 ;^5,ooo. Sophia Kilmansecke, another mistress of George IL, 
 was created Countess of Leinster and endowed with ^^2,000 
 a year. Lady Walsingham, the daughter of the Duchess of 
 Kendal, had a pension of ;^i,Soo ; and Lady Howe, the 
 daughter of Lady Darlington, had a pension of ;^5oo. The 
 Duke of St. Albans, the bastard son of Charles II., enjoyed 
 a pension of ;^8oo a year. Lastly, the Queen Dowager 
 of Prussia, sister of George IL ; Count BernsdorfF, who was 
 a prominent German politician under George I., and a num- 
 ber of other less noted German names, may also be found 
 on the Irish pension list. No wonder the Duke of St. Albans 
 lends his distinguished friendship to Mr. Chamberlain in resist- 
 ing the Irish Revolution. Mr. Lecky relates a pitiful story of 
 Irish national bankruptcy in the early part of the last century, 
 when profligate kings and royal prostitutes and royal bastards 
 were thus enjoying themselves at the expense of the wofully 
 misgoverned and plundered country. At a time when every 
 kind of Irish industry was in course of destruction, if it had not 
 been already destroyed, by the jealousy of the English Parlia- 
 ment, Mr. Lecky says : — 
 
 "A patent was granted to some French refugees in 1700, 
 " and Cromelin, a native of St. Quintin, laboured for many 
 " years with great skill and energy to spread the hemp and flax 
 " industry. He maintaiaed that the soil and climate of Ireland 
 " were eminently adapted for the cultivation of flax, and that as 
 " good hemp could be grown over the country south of Dundalk 
 " as in any part of the world. It was represented that it would 
 " be extremely desirable if Cromelin could be induced to settle 
 " in the centre of the island, and spread his industry among the 
 " half-starving population. He agreed to establish himself in 
 " Kilkenny. He obtained an extension of his patent, and an 
 " immediate payment of ^2,500. But this small sum was 
 " beyond the resources of the country ; and a letter is extant in 
 " which the Lords Justices complain that Ireland was at this 
 " time too poor to raise it." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 A D VENTURERS— PLA NTERS— UNDER TA KERS. ' 
 
 " From Scotland came many, and from England not a few ; yet all of 
 "them generally the scum of both nations." — Reid's History of the Pres- 
 byterian Church. 
 
 Under the operation of the various confiscatory schemes and the 
 penal laws, the Irish gentry of the seventeenth and eighteenth 
 centuries, as well as the Irish Catholic people generally, gradually 
 disappeared from public view. " If you would find the ancient 
 " gentry of Ireland," Swift once observed, writing in the last 
 century, " you must seek them on the coal- quay, or in the 
 "Liberties [an impoverished district of Dublin]." Taylor, 
 another Protestant writer, who was a Fellow of Trinity Col- 
 lege, Dublin, in the second volume of his Civil Wars, indig- 
 nantly writes as follows of the Protestant ascendancy, which, 
 after "William's success in Ireland, constituted an aristocracy 
 that was, until quite lately, insolently oblivious of their not 
 too creditable origin : — 
 
 " They felt," observes Taylor, " that they were despised for 
 " the meanness of their origin by the ancient Irish gentry ; and 
 " they, of course, exerted themselves to weaken the influence 
 " of persons whose nobility eclipsed their own humble claims. 
 " With singular impudence, they denounced all Irish names as 
 " vulgar ; and the sons of Cromwell's fanatical soldiery, the 
 " meanest and worst part of the Parliamentary army, affected 
 " to look down on the O's and Macs, descended from kings, 
 " and ' over the ashes of whose ancestors minsters had been 
 "buUded.'" 
 
 Now, what was the character, moral and religious, of the 
 " motley adventurers," as Lord Clare styled them, who sup- 
 
t 
 
 ADVENTUREES— PL ANTERS— UNDERTAKERS. 1 57 
 
 planted those native " lovers of justice " described by Sir John 
 Davis, Sir Edward Coke, and the historian Leland? "When 
 Crown grants of Jand were made to the planters or adventurers, 
 it was expressly stipulated that their tenants were to be Eng- 
 lish or Scotch, and Protestants. They were commonly dis- 
 tinguished by the name of "undertakers," because they were 
 obliged by the conditions of their settling in Ireland to observe 
 certain specific engagements or undertakings. Robert Paine, who 
 was an English " undertaker " himself, has left on record, in his 
 Briefe Description of Ireland (in the reign of Elizabeth), a not 
 very attractive commentary on some of his countrymen there 
 " planted." After warning those at home in England against the 
 evil reports of disappointed adventurers who spoke of the danger 
 of living in Ireland, he writes of the latter as follows : — 
 
 " Yet are they freede from three of the greatest dangers ; 
 " first, they cannot meete in all that land any worsse than them- 
 " selves ; secondly, they neede not feare robbing for that they 
 " have not anyething to loose ; lastly, they are not like to runne 
 " in debte, for that there is none will trust them. The greatest 
 " matter which troubleth them is, they cannot get anythinge 
 " there but by honest trauell [labour], which they are altogether 
 " ignorant of." 
 
 As to the unfortunate Irish inhabitants themselves, on the 
 other hand here is Paine's testimony : — 
 
 " Although they did never see you before, they will make 
 " you the best cheare their country yeeldeth for two or three 
 " days, and take not any thing therefor. . . . They keepe their 
 " promise faithfully, and are more desirous of peace than our 
 " English men, for that in time of warres they are more charged, 
 " and also they are fatter praies for the enemie [Paine's own 
 " countrymen], who respecteth no person. . . . Nothing is more 
 " pleasing unto them, than to heare of good justices placed 
 " amongst them. They have a common saying which I am 
 " persuaded they speake unfeignedly, which is, Defend me and 
 " spend me ; meaning from the oppression of the worser sorte 
 " of our [English] countriemen. They are obedient to the laws, 
 " so you may travel through all the land without any danger or 
 " injurie offered of the verye worst Irish, and be greatly releeved 
 " of [by] the best." 
 
158 A KEY TO THE lEISH QUESTION. 
 
 A Presbyterian minister, whose father accompanied the first 
 settlers in the reign of James I., thus describes the men who 
 then went over to regenerate Ireland, in a MS. History (by the 
 Reverend Andrew Stewart) quoted in the first volume of Eeid's 
 Presbyterian Church : — 
 
 " From Scotland came many, and from England not a few ; 
 " yet all of them generally the scum of both nations, who, from 
 " debt, or breaking and fleeing from justice, or seeking shelter, 
 " came hither, hoping to be without fear of man's justice in a 
 " land where there was nothing, or but little as yet, of the fear 
 " of God. . . . Most of the people were void of all godliness, 
 "... On all hands Atheism increased, and disregard of God, 
 " iniquity abounded with contention, fighting, murder, and 
 " adultery, &c." 
 
 This testimony for the dissolute, disreputable character of 
 the majority of those who had supplanted the natives on their 
 own Irish soil is confirmed by another Presbyterian minister 
 of distinction, Robert Blair, who settled in Ulster in 1623, 
 that is, within a dozen years of the commencement of James's 
 cruel confiscatory experiment : — 
 
 "Although," he says {Life, Edinburgh, 1754), "amongst 
 " those whom divine providence did send to Ireland, there were 
 " several persons eminent for birth, education, and parts, yet 
 " the most part were such as either poverty, scandalous lives, 
 " or, at the best, adventurous seeking of better accommodation, 
 " had forced thither ; so that the security and thriving of re- 
 " ligion was little seen to by those adventurers, and the 
 " preachers were generally of the same complexion with the 
 "people." 
 
 It would lead to serious injustice to leave the reader under 
 the impression that the entire discredit appertaining to the 
 Protestant Church in Ireland formerly lay exclusively with the 
 Presbyterian and other dissenting bodies planted in the country. 
 It was not so. It really fared no better with the Episcopal 
 establishment. Elizabeth's lay legate, Sir Henry Sidney, writing 
 to Her Majesty in 1576, says : — 
 
 " The Church [the Protestant Established] is foul deformed, 
 " and cruelly crushed ; upon the face of the earth, where Christ 
 
ADVENTUEERS— PLANTERS— UNDERTAKERS. 1 59 
 
 " is professed, there is not a Churcli in so miserable a case. 
 "... The most part of such English ministers as came over 
 " here [to Ireland] are either imlearned or of bad note, for 
 *' which they have forsaken England." 
 
 Those observations of Sidney's will be found in Edmund 
 Spenser's State of Ireland. But the poet has something to add 
 from his own knowledge on the sad subject : — 
 
 " Some of them [the Irish Protestant bishops] whose dioceses 
 " are in remote parts, somewhat out of the world's eye, doe not 
 " at all bestowe the benefices which are in their own donation, 
 " upon any, but keepe them in their owne hands, and set their 
 " own servants and horse-boys to take up the tithes and fruites 
 " of them ; with the which, some of them purchased great lands, 
 " and built faire casteUs upon the same. Of which abuse if 
 " any question be moved, they have a very seemly colour 
 " and excuse, that they have no worthy ministers to bestow 
 " them upon ! . . . Whatever disorders you see in the Church 
 " of England, you finde here, and many more. Namely, 
 " gross simony, greedy covetousness, fleshly incontinence, care- 
 " lesse sloath, and generally all disordered life in the common 
 " clergymen. . . . The clergy are generally bad, licentious, and 
 " most disordered." 
 
 "Whatever the value to be attached to the bishops' excuse for 
 keeping the Church benefices in their own hands, whether 
 " seemly " or otherwise, it is at least an historical fact that many 
 of the Presbyterian clergy who had gone over with the Scotch 
 colony were inducted into Ulster Established Church livings 
 in James's reign. By way of emphasising his description of 
 this ecclesiastical collapse in Ireland, Spenser contrasts these 
 unworthy shepherds with those others belonging to the older 
 faith who just then lived secretly in Ireland at the risk of their 
 lives : — 
 
 "It is greate wonder," observes the author of the Faery 
 Queen, " to see the oddes which is betweene the zeale of popish 
 " priests, and the ministers of the gospel ; for they spare not to 
 " come out of Spayne, from Rome, and from Hemes, by long 
 " toile and dangerous travayling hither, where they know 
 " perill of deathe awaiteth them, and no reward or riches is to 
 " be found, only to draw the people unto the Church of Rome ; 
 
j6o A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " whereas some of our idle ministers, having a way for credit 
 " and estimation thereby opened unto them, and having the 
 " livings of the country offered to them, without paines and 
 " without perill, will neither for the same, nor any love of God, 
 " nor zeale for religion, or for all the good they may doe by 
 " winning soules to God, be drawne forth from their warm 
 " nests to looke out into God's harvest." 
 
 Sir John Davis, in James's reign, has no more cheering 
 account to give of the Establishment in Ireland than that of 
 Sidney and Spenser. He complains of the character of the 
 parish clergy, who were imported from England, as were their 
 bishops, and, "like the priests of Jeroboam, taken from the 
 " basest of the people " : — 
 
 " The churches are ruined and fallen down," he says, "There 
 " is no divine service, no christening of children, no receiving 
 " of the sacrament, no Christian meeting or assembly, no not 
 " once a year ; in a word, no more demonstration of religion 
 " than amongst Tartars and cannibals." 
 
 •o" 
 
 How could it be otherwise 1 When Bedell, who was really 
 a worthy English divine, arrived to take possession of his see of 
 Kilmore, he found his predecessor had so leased the Episcopal 
 lands, and sold the perpetual advowsons — founding a family on 
 the ruins of two plundered bishoprics — that he. Bedell, was 
 compelled to institute legal proceedings against the Episcopal 
 widow and her son to obtain restitution of the temporalities. 
 But if the bishops were mostly men of indifferent character, 
 what could be expected from the lives of the clergy ; of whom 
 Strafford gives so bad an account in his letters to Laud? 
 Indeed Bale, the notorious Bishop of Ossory, excused the 
 corruptions amongst his own clergy by stating that they were 
 disobedient in things appertaining to God's glory through the 
 evil example of Browne, the Archbishop of Dublin ! The story 
 was precisely the same throughout the entire period of the 
 Stuart dynasty, and so continued down into the reign of the 
 Georges in the last century. There were four archbishops and 
 eighteen bishops to look after the spiritual interests of a 
 Protestant population not exceeding 100,000, all told; so that 
 
ADVENTURERS-PLANTERS— UNDERTAKERS. i6i 
 
 it was the shepherds, not the flocks, that were in droves. And 
 they were enormously wealthy ; the land belonging to their sees 
 being equal to 998,000 English acres, or one-nineteenth part of 
 the entire surface of the kingdom. There was therefore really 
 nothing for them to do amongst this sparse population, and 
 they did nothing except to plunder the revenues of the Church 
 for the benefit of their own families, as in the case of the see of 
 Kilmore just mentioned. One of them, Primate Stone, who has 
 been ironically described as " the beauty of holiness," is believed 
 to have indulged in the luxury of a harem at his country house 
 near Dublin. And he is accused of having in this manner man- 
 aged the Irish Parliamentary opposition, while he was Lord 
 Justice, by pandering to the vices of its younger members. Cur- 
 wen, Archbishop of Dublin, was accused of open crimes — " unfit 
 to relate " — by his archiepiscopal brother, Lof tus of Armagh, one 
 of the founders of the Ely family — himself no great shining 
 light either. Notwithstanding his blasted character, and that 
 he was, according to Bishop Mant's modem Irish Church 
 history, "labouring under heavy moral imputations," he, Cur- 
 wen, somehow got himself translated to Oxford. Many others 
 obtained their sees in Ireland by taking over with them the 
 cast-off mistresses of their English patrons. Of Loftus, the 
 titular Primate, Mr. Froude has said that " sacked villages, 
 " ravished women, and famine- stricken skeletons crawling about 
 " the fields were to him matters of everyday indifference." 
 Browne, Archbishop of Dublin ; Staples, Bishop of Meath ; 
 and Bale, Bishop of Ossory, were amongst the blackest of the 
 black sheep. Staples was an enemy of , Browne, as Loftus was 
 an enemy of Curwen, and inveighed against him in the course 
 of a sermon at Christchurch, Dublin, in the presence of the 
 Boyal Commissioners and the CounciL In Kilmainham Church 
 also, when Browne himself was present. Canon Dixon says, in 
 his Cliurch of England, vol. ii., that Staples called him a heretic 
 and a beggar ; " and raged against him with such a stomach that 
 " the three-mouthed Cerberus of hell could not have uttered it 
 " more viperously." Bale, too, who is himself described by Mr. 
 Froude as " a foul-mouthed ruffian," in a moment of unconscious 
 
 L 
 
1 62 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 virtue, complained of the same Archbishop of Dublin, whom he 
 neatly described as " an epicureous archbishop, a dissembling 
 " proselyte, a brockish swine, a glutton, a drunkard, a hypocrite, 
 " and a frequent supporter of bawds and * * * " 
 
 But let us be content with casting a veil over the repulsive 
 subject here. Swift's attempt to account for the anomalous 
 character of those curious successors of the apostles has never 
 been seriously challenged as a gross exaggeration. In his day 
 you dare not hold the mirror up to nature in Ireland except in 
 the guise of allegory or fable. So the Protestant dean of St. 
 Patrick's was obliged to be careful of his phraseology when 
 dealing with the scandalous character of the Episcopal exporta- 
 tions from England, some of whom wielded civil power as Lords 
 Justices in the absence of the Viceroy. It was necessary, there- 
 fore, to observe caution. But as you might safely write B C 
 very large on the ungodly backs of many, without violation of 
 your own conscience. Swift overcame the danger and difficulty 
 by accounting for the origin of the Irish bishops thus : — 
 
 " Excellent and moral men," he observed, " have been 
 " selected on every occasion of vacancy. But it unfortunately 
 " has uniformly happened that as these worthy divines crossed 
 " Hounslow Heath [just outside London] on their way to Ireland 
 " to take possession of their bishoprics, they have been regularly 
 " robbed and murdered by the highwaymen frequenting that 
 " common, who seize upon their robes and patents, come over to 
 " Ireland, and are consecrated bishops in their stead." 
 
 Here and there were to be found, doubtless, men of high 
 worth and character amid the general gloom ; such men, for 
 example, as Berkeley of Cloyne, Bedell, Archbishop Usher, &c. 
 And the Irish Catholics reverenced them as they deserved. 
 Bedell dying in their custody during the rebellion of 1641, they 
 buried him with military honours, and prayed for the peace of 
 bis soul, " Requiescat in pace, ultimus Anglorum." But the 
 number of such good men was insufficient to relieve the colour- 
 ing of Swift's dark picture. The spiritual zeal of the ecclesiastical 
 army encamped in Ireland was practically nil. Idleness was the 
 besetting but by no means the only prevailing vice. As may 
 
ADVENTURERS— PLANTERS— UNDERTAKEES. 163 
 
 be imagined, that vice was cursed with a hateful and prolific 
 progeny ; lewdness and drunkenness being common amongst the 
 shepherds, high and low, until at length they fell into a kind of 
 hopeless, despairing stupor : — 
 
 " " Die I must, but let me die drinking in an inn ! 
 
 Hold the wine-cup to my lips sparkling from the bin ! 
 So, when angels flutter down to take me from my sin, 
 ' Ah, God have mercy on this sot,' the cherubs will begin." 
 
 It is impossible to close this chapter without testifying to 
 the excellent personal character of the Protestant clergy of all 
 creeds and classes of the present generation in Ireland. But 
 they are lamentably prejudiced by old associations. In three of 
 the four Irish provinces they are isolated amongst a multitude 
 of Catholics, who never offer them the slightest offence. Yet 
 they cannot get over the recollection of the ascendancy days 
 when many of their Episcopal churches, though empty, were 
 endowed by the State, and themselves officially recognised as 
 the only ecclesiastical polity in Ireland. It is very sad. In 
 various other European kingdoms Protestants live in harmony 
 with their Catholic fellow-countrymen. Even in England the 
 sectarian bitterness of former generations has all but died out, 
 and the working man's dislike (where it exists) of the Catholic 
 priest is not on account of his creed, but because of his too 
 commonly taking sides with the " classes " against him. Ireland 
 alone furnishes a field for unscrupulous politicians — the Har- 
 tingtons, Churchills, and Chamberlains — who do not care a straw 
 for dogmatic religion of any kind, eXcept to use it as a lever 
 wherewith to foment sectarian animosities and disorder. In 
 any other European kingdom such indecent politicians as those 
 who visit Belfast consecutively would be sharply dealt with by 
 the government of the country, as wUf ul disturbers of the public 
 peace if not as enemies of the commonwealth. Cannot respect- 
 able Irish Protestants be made to understand how they are, 
 from time to time, rendered subservient to the selfish a,ims of 
 such dishonest brawlers 1 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE TRUTH ABOUT ULSTER. 
 
 '" " The truth is that Ulster is by no means the homogeneous Orange and 
 " Protestant community which it suits the Orangemen to represent it. In 
 " some counties the Catholics are in a large majority, and it must be ac- 
 " knowledged, we fear, that the Nationalists have a much stronger hold 
 " on many parts of Ulster than it is at all satisfactory to contemplate." — 
 Times, June 1884. 
 
 The redoubtable Colonel Saunderson, M.P., Mr. Johnston of 
 Ballykilbeg, M.P., and their Chaplains of Orange Lodges, Revs. 
 Kane and Hanna, are in the habit of wandering about Eng- 
 land and Scotland, making bombastic speeches as to the terrible 
 things in store for the British Empire if Mr. Gladstone attempts 
 to give Ulster her share in the government of Ireland. They 
 pretend before unsophisticated audiences, knowing no better, 
 that Ulster is, as the orators so often proclaim it, a Protestant 
 province. But what are the facts'? According to the census 
 of 1 88 1 the three great religious bodies into which Ulster is 
 divided are in the following proportions : — 
 
 Catholics 833,566 
 
 Presbyterians . . . ,451,629 
 Episcopalians . . . .379,402 
 
 So that the Catholics compose one-half the population. And 
 yet some wise men want a separate Parliament for the Pro- 
 testant moiety ; for the Ulster Catholics would certainly not be 
 contented with exclusion from the Parliament of the kingdom 
 assembled in Dublin. Meanwhile, even in the existing imperial 
 Parliament at Westminster the Nationalists hold a majority of 
 the thirty-three Ulster seats. In fact, there are but two Ulster 
 counties, Down and Antrim, in which the Protestants are in 
 
THE TRUTH ABOUT ULSTER. 165 
 
 any considerable majority. Would you have a separate legis- 
 lature to accommodate the anti-national whims of a mere corner 
 of the northern province under the circumstances ? Could any- 
 thing more completely expose the unreality and insincerity of 
 the scheme of the wise men than the coloured Map of Ireland 
 accompanying this volume ? 
 
 Another point that is occasionally dinned into unsophisticated 
 ears is this, — that whereas the population in the other three 
 Irish provinces is declining from year to year, on account of 
 emigration, in Ulster it is stationary, if not actually increasing, 
 owing to the prosperity there prevailing. "Well, the Eegistrar- 
 General's emigration returns for 1888, lately presented to Par- 
 liament, show that the proportion of emigrants from Ulster has 
 been, since 1851, in the aggregate, nearly equal to that of two 
 out of the three other Irish provinces conjoined, viz., Leinster 
 and Connaught, as well as to the total emigration from Mun- 
 ster, the third. Here are the figures : — 
 
 Totalnumber of Irish emigrants from 1 85 1 to 1889 . 3,276,103 
 From Munster ..... 1,117,921 
 
 „ Ulster 965,808 
 
 ,, Leinster ..... 609,797 
 
 „ Connaught . . . . . 471,909 
 
 If the Colonel should think of suggesting to the credulous 
 old ladies of both sexes who compose his audiences that the 
 emigration from Ulster has been arrested of late, and try to im- 
 pose upon them with some fresh fiction in regard to the alleged 
 prosperity of that province, there are further facts to confute 
 him from the same returns. There went to the United States 
 — less favoured than Canada by Ulster Protestants — last year 
 85 per cent, of the Irish emigrants generally, to which Ulster 
 contributed its quota as follows : — 
 
 From Munster 
 „ Ulster 
 „ Connaught 
 „ Leinster 
 
 The explanation is not far to seek 
 
 • 22,735 
 
 • 17,439 
 . 14,773 
 
 • 11,959 
 Parliamentary returns 
 
 obtained by the late Mr. Eylands, M.P., and Sir George 
 
i66 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 Trevelyan, M.P., in 1882 and 1884 respectively, conclusively 
 show that Ulster stands third on the list of Irish provinces as 
 regards Income Tax Assessment and Valuation of Rateable 
 Property. This fact is explained, in turn, by observing that 
 there are 538,000 agricultural holdings in Ireland whose 
 average rental does not exceed ^6 a year each, and of these the 
 Times stated, a few years ago, following the high authority of 
 Sir James Caird, that they belonged to a class of holdings from 
 which the rental was, if the present agricultural depression con- 
 tinued, " practically irrecoverable by anybody." The following 
 table shows that Ulster has not only by far the largest number 
 of such miserable holdings, but more than Munster and Leinster 
 have when added together ; and furnishes a vivid explanation 
 of the abnormal emigration from the former province, because 
 men do not flee from but seek prosperity : — 
 
 Ulster ..... 207,833 
 Connaught . . . .128,124 
 
 Munster ..... 105,429 
 Leinster ..... 97,000 
 
 538,386 
 
 Ulster, it is sad to tell, is primus amongst the Irish provinces 
 in immorality only; Antrim, Armagh, Londonderry, Down, 
 and Tyrone counties being the plague spots of the most moral 
 country in Europe. These counties, the Fall Mall Gazette says, 
 are the only ones " returning Orange members to the present 
 "Parliament," and, somewhat unkindly, adds: "It seems that 
 " Orangeism and illegitimacy go together, and that illegitimate 
 " children in Ireland are in proportion to Orange Lodges." 
 Nevertheless, as regards the character of the people of Ulster 
 generally. Catholic and Protestant, it stands deservedly high. 
 Nowhere will you meet more estimable men and women. But 
 they do themselves injustice by tolerating the Orangemen, who 
 were once (1836) described by Drummond, the famous Irish 
 Secretary, as " demons " who should have been stamped out long 
 ago by a united public opinion. The Ulster Orangemen are for 
 ever boasting of the prowess of those whom they are pleased. to 
 
THE TEUTH ABOUT ULSTER. 167 
 
 call their " Fathers." The reader is provided with full length 
 portraits of those ancestral worthies in the preceding chapter, 
 painted by no hostile hand. There is probably no other people 
 in existence who, if they had the misfortune to come of such a 
 . stock, would not modestly endeavour to hold their tongue on 
 the subject. The Orangemen keep up the family traditions in 
 one unfortunate respect. That is undeniable. But as to their 
 hereditary prowess, it is as imaginative as that of the royal 
 Georgian hero who could not be persuaded it was not he but the 
 Duke of Wellington who gained the battle of Waterloo. They 
 have gone on asserting that it is to them England owes it that 
 she has been able to maintain a foothold in Ireland at all, until 
 at length they really believe the fiction to be a fact. Mr. Glad- 
 stone courteously remonstrated with them in regard to the 
 delusion, during the Home Kule debate of the i6th of April 
 1886, as follows, but in vain : — 
 
 " I have said that the landlords were our garrison in Ireland. 
 " Let me a little unfold that sentence. We planted them there, 
 "and we replanted them. In 1641, in 1688, and again in 
 " 1 798, we reconquered the country for them. I heard a gallant 
 " gentleman speak a few nights ago in this House, who seemed 
 " to be under the pious impression that rebellion in Ireland had 
 "been put down by the superhuman action of a certain regi- 
 " ment of militia — I really forget which. I beg pardon of my 
 " old supporter [Colonel Saunderson, previously a Liberal], but 
 "... if he has read the history of the rebellion of 1641 he 
 " will find that it was efi'ectually and finally put down, and 
 " only put down by Cromwell, who, whatever he may have 
 " been, was not an Irish Protestant. The rebellion of 1688-89 
 " was put down, not by the Protestants of the North, but by 
 " the introduction mainly of foreign hosts ; and the rebellioB 
 " of 1 798, to which I think the honourable member specially 
 " referred, was unquestionably put down, not by the action of 
 " what is termed the loyal minority, which undoubtedly, I 
 " do not say from its own fault, had not at that period earned 
 " the name, but when the Irish Government in Dublin was in 
 "despair the rebellion was put down by their inducing the 
 " British Government in London to equip and send to Ireland 
 "a large and adequate force of British soldiers. — (Lord K 
 
1 68 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION". 
 
 " Churchill : They had the Yeomanry.) — No doubt they had 
 " the Yeomanry, but the Yeomanry could not do it." 
 
 The Orange Yeomanry and Militia did indeed distinguish 
 themselves in the rebellion of 1798. Lord Cornwallis, who 
 was Irish Viceroy and Commander-in-Chief, writing to General 
 Koss, on July the 24th, in that year, said of them : — 
 
 " The Yeomanry are in the style of the Loyalists in America, 
 " only much more numerous and powerful, and a thousand 
 " times more ferocious. . . . They now take the lead in rapine 
 " and murder. The Irish Militia with few officers, and these 
 " generally of the worst kind, follow closely on the lieels of the 
 " Yeomanry in murder and every kind of atrocity." 
 
 Nothing will cure the Orangemen — who are, happily, estimated 
 not to exceed 25,000 grown up men in Ulster — of their idolatry 
 in regard to William III., who never once in his life recognised 
 their participation in his campaigns in Ireland or anywhere else. 
 Yet would they, if they were not compelled to " move on " by the 
 police, fall down and worship his equestrian statue in Dublin. 
 Londoners would not be angry if some evil-disposed Jacobite — 
 if such a contemptible being now exist — were to overturn and 
 destroy every memorial of the Hanoverian as well as the Dutch 
 dynasty in the metropolis ; always excepting those of that royal 
 lady " in whom," according to Macaulay, " her subjects have 
 " found a wiser, gentler, and happier Elizabeth." Yet not 
 the worst of them is so ludicrous as a work of art as that of 
 "William III. standing in front of Trinity College, in the Irish 
 metropolis. It is now a good many years ago since a detonating 
 substance of some kind having been placed under the horse's 
 tail, the hero of the Boyne was thrown heavily, when the 
 Orangemen raised a shriek all over the kingdom loud enough 
 to have portended the incomprehensible disaster which befell 
 Sennacherib when his Assyrian hosts were slain by the " angel 
 " of the Lord " 2000 years before. Cardinal Newman, who spent 
 some years in Dublin, relates the tragic story humorously as 
 follows, in his Present Position of Catholics : — 
 
 " Some profane person one night applied gunpowder, and 
 *' blew the king right out of his saddle, and he was found by 
 
THE TRUTH ABOUT ULSTER. 169 
 
 "those who took interest in him, like Dagon, on the ground 
 " You might have thought the poor senseless block had life to 
 " see the way the people took on about it, and how they spoke 
 "of his face, and his arms, and his legs; yet these [Irish] 
 " Protestants, I say, would at the same time be horrified had I 
 " used ' he ' and * him ' of a crucifix, and would call me one of 
 " the monsters described in the Apocalypse did I but honour 
 " my living Lord as they their dead king ! " 
 
 On the 22nd of July 1889, with innumerable sources of 
 
 better information at his hand, the Duke of Argyle — who has 
 
 been compendiously described by Lord Kosebery as a "por- 
 
 *' tentous political pedagogue " — treated the House of Lords to 
 
 one of his foolish historical speeches on Ireland, in the course 
 
 of which he proved to his own satisfaction the vast superiority 
 
 of Belfast to other parts of the country in all things, including 
 
 education. He even ventured to favour the House to statistics 
 
 on the subject. The Duke knows well enough what he is about. 
 
 If the Irishman be permitted to carry on the agrarian war much 
 
 longer, the Highlander, misled by his evil, example, may shortly 
 
 be expected to fly in the face of Providence and the Scottish 
 
 Peerage in like manner ; so that there will be no rackrents left 
 
 to support the dignity of the clan Campbell in their Highland 
 
 fastness at Inverary. But let us have the facts : — 
 
 " The percentage of persons able to read and write in the four Irish pro- 
 " vinces is thus tabulated in the Census returns of 1881 : — 
 
 Leinster .... 58.5 I Munster .... 53.2 
 Ulster ..... 53.4 I Counaught .... 41.5 
 
 " A further Parliamentary return shows that there are thousands of illi- 
 " terate voters in every Ulster county, including the so-called ' Loyalist ' 
 " strongholds, and the figures for the boroughs, which are as follows, are 
 " very significant : — 
 
 Belfast . . 1,559 I Dublin . . 869 I Limerick. . 425 
 
 Cork . . 1,297 1 / Derry . . 637 | WaterforJ . 416 
 
 Galway . . 381 
 
 " It would thus appear that not only does Belfast, the headquarters of 
 " Orangeism and civilisation, contain the largest number of illiterate 
 " voters, but it has nearly twice as many as Dublin, which has nearly 
 "52,000 more population. Derry, too, with a population of 29,162 has 
 "212 more 'illiterates ' than Limerick, which has a population of 48,670, 
 "and 221 more 'illiterates' than Waterford, the population of which is 
 " about equal to its own." ^ 
 
 ^ Why Ireland Wanti Home Rule. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 PENAL LA WS— PERSECUTION FOR CONSCIENCE' SAKE 
 —AND COMPULSORY IGNORANCE. 
 
 " Scarce any pains were taken in the age of Elizabeth, or indeed in 
 " subsequent ages, to win the [Irish] people's convictions . . . except by 
 " penal statutes or the sword." — Hallau. 
 
 Within a period comparatively recent there was no accusation 
 so commonly uttered, and thought to he so well founded hy 
 educated people in and out of Parliament, as that charging the 
 Catholic priests in Ireland with keeping the people in ignorance. 
 The people were indeed kept in ignorance until a recent period 
 in Ireland, but by whom 1 Protestant historians shall inform 
 us. Until the beginning of the eighteenth century the claims of 
 domestic education and the sacred privileges of the family hearth 
 had been respected, even by Elizabeth, by Cromwell, and the 
 Long Parliament. Ascendancy hatred, however, was more keenly 
 desirous to reach Catholicism even behind this hitherto inviolable 
 intrenchment, and to leave Catholics no alternative but to 
 stagnate in utter ignorance or to imbibe Protestant learning. 
 For the attainment of this end a penal law banished from 
 Ireland all Catholic teachers, and sentenced them to death in 
 case of return. Wealthy families might, however, it was 
 found, evade this law by sending their children to schools on the 
 Continent ; so, another law was passed (7 William III. c. 4), 
 which forbade Catholics under the severest penalties — forfeiture 
 to the Crown of all real and personal estate — to send their 
 children across the seas without special permission. Parlia- 
 mentary returns have exhibited the fact that, as a consequence, 
 when the national system of education was first established in Ire- 
 land, some fifty years ago, there were 1,409,000 of the population 
 who could only read but not write; and 3,765,000 who could 
 
LAWS AGAINST RELIGION AND PROPERTY. 171 
 
 neither read nor write. Yet nowhere in the w:orld is there such 
 a thirst for knowledge as amongst the Irish peasant children. 
 In visiting Irish poor schools under the Government Board of 
 Education and the Christian Brothers — the latter a splendid 
 body of men, specially gifted as successful teachers — one finds 
 most surprising and unexpected proofs on the subject. In the 
 girls' schools conducted by the various religious communities of 
 ladies, under Government inspection, they are even more con- 
 spicuous. Of these ladies Sir John Forbes, one of the Queen's 
 physicians, has said, in his Memorandums in Ireland (1852): — 
 
 " They accept and follow, to the letter, the precepts and the 
 " practice of the great Founder of the Christian religion ; not 
 " by useless self-sacrifice and barren holiness, but by actively 
 "ministering to the welfare and necessities of their fellow- 
 " creatures, in accordance with that grand fundamental law of 
 " all true religion — To do unto others as one would desire that 
 •' others should do unto him." 
 
 A single specimen is characteristic of the entire class. In 
 the schools conducted by the Sisters of Mercy at Gort 
 and Kinvara, on the borders of Clare and Galway County, 
 for instance, children of tender age walk distances of two, 
 three, or four English miles each way, barefooted, over the 
 roughest roads, and in all kinds of weather. A young nun sign- 
 ing herself " Sister Mary Dominic," and writing .from Gort 
 Convent, County Galway, has, by direction of the Mother 
 Superior (Mrs. M. Doyle), courteously supplied the following 
 additional information illustrative of this thirst for knowledge 
 amongst the poor children of the Irish peasant class : — 
 
 " We have about 150 country children at Gort and 80 at 
 " Kinvara, varying in age from five to fifteen years, very 
 " many of whom are singularly beautiful and clever. The total 
 "number of children attending is more than double this 
 " estimate. Their breakfast before leaving home in the 
 " morning consists of potatoes and milk generally, but very 
 " often there is no milk. Not more than half of them bring 
 " food with them to school As far as her funds permit, 
 " our Mother Superior supplies the poorer children with bread 
 " during school hours, and we endeavour to put them through 
 
172 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " a drying process before commencing lessons ; they are so 
 " wretchedly clad for our moist climate, which often compels 
 " them to remain away altogether, not only from school but 
 " from church. We teach them to sing, and to as many joyous 
 " tunes as possible, because the sisters, who visit them in their 
 " humble homes, know how much it tends to lighten the poverty 
 " of the ' family circle.' Mother Aloysius [a member of the com- 
 " munity who nursed some of the Crimean heroes in the hospitals 
 " at Scutari and Balaclava] ^ always reminds us how the soldiers 
 " were cheered by music when they were faint with hunger, and 
 " even when they were lying wounded. As to our funds, we have 
 " a bazaar periodically, for which we receive gifts in money and 
 " kind from England and Scotland as well as Ireland, and 
 " from generous Protestants — including a member of the Royal 
 " family — as well as Catholics. But we have to be exceedingly 
 " careful in the distribution of such gifts, so as not to diminish 
 " the spirit of contentment amongst the children, who are taught 
 " to ascribe their humble lot to the will of Providence, and not 
 "to be ashamed of their unavoidable poverty. There is not one 
 " of them who would condescend to beg under any circum- 
 " stances, not because they despise the little luxuries which a 
 " few pence would bring them, but really because they would 
 " be ashamed to do so. Mother Superior asks me to present her 
 " compliments to Mr. Fox, and, in reply to his further inquiry, 
 " say that the children's idea of Home Rule is remunerative 
 " employment, shoes and stockings, bread and milk for breakfast, 
 " and no more rags." 
 
 In 1 747, John "Wesley first visited Ireland, and showed his 
 keen insight into the national life by observing that "the 
 " Protestants, whether in Dublin or elsewhere, are almost all 
 " transplanted lately from England. Nor is it any wonder that 
 " those who are born Papists generally live and die such, when 
 " the Protestants can find no better way to convert them than 
 " Penal Laws and Acts of Parliament." His burning zeal met 
 with a hearty response from the ardent Celtic nature, observes 
 the Reverend H. S. Lunn, M.D., an accomplished young 
 
 ^ Fourteen Irish Sisters, forming an independent corps, nursed the sick 
 and wounded during the war. One dying on the scene of her labours, 
 was followed to the grave by officers and soldiers in considerable numbers. 
 
LAWS AGAINST RELIGION AND PROPERTY. 173 
 
 English "Wesleyan minister, lately residing in Ireland; and after 
 an enthusiastic tour of a fortnight he, Wesley, left that country 
 describing its people as "loving beyond expression." 
 
 Mr. Lecky, in his Leaders of Public Opinion, supplies a clear 
 account of the penal laws, freed from legal jargon and the 
 interpolation of the statutes, as follows : — 
 
 "The last great Protestant ruler of England was "William 
 " III., who is identified in Ireland with the humiliation of 
 " the Boyne, with the destruction of Irish trade, and with the 
 "broken Treaty of Limerick. The ceaseless exertions of the 
 " extreme Protestant party have made him more odious in the 
 " eyes of the people than he deserves to be ; for he was 
 " personally far more tolerant than the great majority of his 
 " contemporaries, and the penal code was chiefly enacted under 
 "his successors. It required, indeed, four or five reigns to 
 " elaborate a system so ingeniously contrived to demoralise, to 
 " degrade, and to impoverish the people of Ireland. By this 
 " code the Koman Catholics were absolutely excluded from the 
 " Parliament, from the magistracy, from the corporations, from 
 " the bench, and from the bar. They could not vote at 
 " Parliamentary elections or at vestries ; they could not act as 
 " constables, or sheriflfs, or jurymen, or serve in the army or 
 " navy, or become solicitors, or even hold the positions of game- 
 " keeper or watchman. Schools were established to bring up 
 " their children as Protestants ; and if they refused to avail 
 " themselves of these, they were deliberately assigned to hope- 
 " less ignorance, being excluded from the university, and 
 " debarred, under crushing penalties, from acting as school- 
 " masters, as ushers, or as private tutors, or from sending their 
 " children abroad to obtain the instruction they were refused 
 "at home. They could not marry Protestants, and if such 
 " a marriage were celebrated it was annulled by law, and the 
 " priest who officiated might be hung. They could not buy 
 " land, or inherit or receive it as a gift from Protestants, or hold 
 "life-annuities, or leases for more than thirty-one years, or any 
 " lease on such terms that the profits of the land exceeded one- 
 " third of the rent. If any Catholic leaseholder by his industry 
 " so increased his profits that they exceeded this proportion, 
 " and did not immediately make a corresponding increase in his 
 " payments, any Protestant who gave the information could 
 "enter into possession of his farm. If any Catholic had 
 
174 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " secretly purchased either his old forfeited estate, or any other 
 " land, any Protestant who informed against him might become 
 " the proprietor. The few Catholic landowners who remained 
 " were deprived of the right which all other classes possessed of 
 " bequeathing their lands as they pleased. If their sons 
 " continued Catholics, it was divided equally between them. 
 " If, however, the eldest son consented to apostatise, the estate 
 " was settled upon him, the father from that hour became only 
 " a life-tenant, and lost all power of selling, mortgaging, or 
 " otherwise disposing of it. If the wife of a Catholic aban- 
 " doned the religion of her husband, she was immediately free 
 " from his control, and the Chancellor was empowered to assign 
 " to her a certain proportion of her husband's property. If any 
 " child, however young, professed itself a Protestant, it was at 
 " once taken from the father's care, and the Chancellor could 
 " oblige the father to declare upon oath the value of his 
 " property, both real and personal, and could assign for the 
 " present maintenance and future portion of the converted child 
 ' ' such proportion of that property as the court might decree. 
 
 " No Catholic could be guardian either to his own children or 
 " to those of another person ; and therefore a Catholic who died 
 " while his children were minors had the bitterness of reflecting 
 " upon his deathbed that they must pass into the care of Pro- 
 " testants. An annuity of from twenty to forty pounds was 
 " provided as a bribe for every priest who would become a 
 " Protestant. To convert a Protestant to Catholicism was a 
 " capital offence. In every walk of life the Catholic was pur- 
 " sued by persecution or restriction. Except in the linen trade, 
 " he could not have more than two apprentices. He could not 
 " possess a horse of the value of more than five pounds, and any 
 " Protestant, on giving him five pounds, could take his horse. ^ 
 " He was compelled to pay double to the militia. He was for- 
 " bidden, except under particular conditions, to live in Galway 
 " or Limerick. In case of war with a Catholic power, the 
 " Catholics were obliged to reimburse the damage done by the 
 " enemy's privateers [and they were not allowed to carry arms 
 
 ^ This is an error ; it should be five guineas for the exchange, according 
 to Meriton's Abridgment of the Irish Statutes (Dublin, 1700). But the 
 penalty for refusing or neglecting to surrender the horse was £2'^ > i^i t^^ 
 case of a Catholic peer, ;^ioo ; and for a second offence of the same kind, 
 imprisonment for life and forfeiture of all goods ; the offender being held 
 guilty of premunire by the 7 William III. c. 5. 
 
LAWS AGAINST RELIGION AND PROPERTY. 175 
 
 " themselves]. The Legislature, it is true, did not venture 
 " absolutely to suppress their worship, but it existed only by a 
 "doubtful connivance — stigmatised as if it were a species of 
 " licensed prostitution, and subject to conditions which, if they 
 " had been enforced, would have rendered its continuance 
 " impossible. An old law which prohibited it, and another 
 " which enjoined attendance at the Anglican worship, remained 
 " unrepealed, and might at any time be revived ; and the former 
 "was, in fact, enforced during the Scottish rebellion of 17 15. 
 " The parish priests, who alone were allowed to officiate, were 
 " compelled to be registered, and were forbidden to keep curates 
 " or to officiate anywhere except in their own parishes. The 
 " chapels might not have bells or steeples. No crosses might 
 " be publicly erected. Pilgrimages to the holy wells were for- 
 " bidden. Not only all monks and friars, but also all Catholic 
 " archbishops, bishops, deacons, and other dignitaries, were 
 " ordered by a certain day to leave the country ; and if after 
 " that date they were found in Ireland they were liable to be 
 " first imprisoned and then banished ; and if after that banish- 
 " ment they returned to discharge their duty in their dioceses, 
 " they were liable to the punishment of death. To facilitate 
 " the discovery of offences against the code, two justices of the 
 " peace might at any time compel any Catholic of eighteen years 
 " of age to declare when and where he last heard Mass, what 
 " persons were present, and who officiated ; and if he refused to 
 " give evidence they might imprison him for twelve months, or 
 " until he paid a fine of twenty pounds. Any one who har- 
 " boured ecclesiastics from beyond the seas was subject to fines 
 " which for the third offence amounted to confiscation of all his 
 " goods. A graduated scale of rewards was offered for the dis- 
 " covery of Catholic bishops, priests, and schoolmasters ; and a 
 " resolution of the House of Commons pronounced the prose- 
 " cuting and informing against Papists ' an honourable service to 
 " the Government.' " 
 
 Such were the principal articles of this famous code — a code 
 which Burke truly described as : — 
 
 " A complete system, full of coherence and consistency ; well 
 " digested and well disposed in all its parts ; a machine of wise 
 " and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, 
 " impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debase- 
 " ment in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from 
 
176 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " the perverted ingenuity of man. . . . Where the laws were not 
 " bloody they were worse ; they were slow, cruel, and outrageous 
 " in their nature, and kept men alive only to insult in their 
 " persons every one of the rights and feelings of humanity." 
 
 Burke has also reminded us that the Revocation of the Edict 
 of Nantes fell far short in its effects of the result of the penal 
 laws in Ireland. The number of the sufiferers, he said — " if 
 " considered relatively to the body of each community, is not 
 " perhaps a twentieth part of ours ; . . . and then the penalties 
 " and incapacities which grew from that revocation are not so 
 " ruinous by a great deal to the civil prosperity of the state." 
 The effects of these laws Mr. Lecky has described thus : — 
 
 " The economical and moral effects of the penal laws were, 
 " however, profoundly disastrous. The productive energies of 
 " the nation were fatally diminished. Almost all Catholics of 
 " energy and talent who refused to abandon their faith emi- 
 " grated to foreign lands. The relation of classes was per- 
 " manently vitiated ; for almost all the proprietary of the 
 " country belonged to one religion, while the great majority of 
 " their tenants were of another. The Catholics, excluded from 
 " almost every possibility of eminence, deprived of their natural 
 " leaders, and consigned by the Legislature to utter ignorance, 
 " soon sank into the condition of broken and dispirited helots. 
 " A total absence of industrial virtues, a cowering and abject 
 " deference to authority, a recklessness about the future, a love 
 " of secret illegal combinations, became general among them. 
 " Above all, they learned to regard law as merely the expression 
 " of force, and its moral weight was utterly destroyed. For the 
 " greater part of a century, the main object of the Legislature 
 " was to extirpate a religion by the encouragement of the worst 
 " and the punishment of some of the best qualities of our nature. 
 " Its rewards were reserved for the informer, for the hypocrite, 
 " for the undutiful son, or for the faithless wife. Its penalties 
 " were directed against religious constancy and the honest dis- 
 " charge of ecclesiastical duty. It would, indeed, be scarcely 
 " possible to conceive a more infamous system of legal tyranny 
 " than that which in the middle of the eighteenth century 
 " crushed every class and almost every interest in Ireland." 
 
 It may be as well, perhaps, to append some of the statutes to 
 
LAWS AGAINST RELIGION AND PROPERTY. 177 
 
 illustrate Mr. Lecky's interpretation of them. They were very 
 numerous. A few of the Penal Acts then in force, or since 
 enacted against Catholics were — By 7th William III., no Pro- 
 testant in Ireland was allowed to instruct any Papist. By 
 8th of Anne, no Papist was allowed to instruct any other 
 Papist. By 7th William III., no Papist was permitted to be 
 sent out of Ireland to receive instructions. Ignorance was 
 thus enforced by Act of Parliament. By these statutes, 
 the great body of the Irish people were legislatively pro- 
 hibited from receiving any instruction whatever, either from 
 a Protestant or a Catholic, either at home or abroad, or 
 from going out of Ireland to be instructed. Even so late 
 as the 12th George I.,, any Catholic clergyman marrying a 
 Protestant and a Catholic was to be hanged. By 7 th George 
 II., any barrister or attorney marrying a Catholic to be dis- 
 barred. By 2nd Anne, Papist clergymen, coming into Ireland 
 and performing religious exercises, to be hanged. But perhaps 
 two of the most extraordinary of those penal enactments were 
 that of the 9th George II., by which Papists residing in Ireland 
 should make good to Protestants all losses sustained by the 
 privateers of any Catholic king ravaging the coasts of Ireland ; 
 and the 29th George II., which has been interpreted as obliging 
 barristers and attorneys to waive their privilege, and betray 
 their clients, if Papists. It is scarcely necessary to add that, 
 as a matter of course, all Catholics — that is, five-sixths of the 
 entire population of the kingdom — were absolutely disfranchised 
 by the ist George II. (c. 9, s. 7), and deprived of the privilege 
 of voting at municipal as well as parliamentary elections. And 
 it should also, perhaps, be mentioned, as illustrative of the state 
 of servitude in which our fellow-subjects daily lived in the last 
 century in Ireland, that in the Memoirs of Mr. Charles O'Connor 
 of Belanagare, it is stated that, in 1759, it was declared from 
 the bench in Dublin, by the Lord Chancellor of the day — 
 •' That the laws did not presume an Irish Papist to exist in the 
 " kingdom, where they were only supposed to breathe, through 
 " the connivance of Government ! " 
 
 Sir Henry Parnell, a distinguished ancestor of the present 
 
 M 
 
178 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 distinguished statesman of the name, in his History of the Penal 
 Laws, says — "The Irish Legislature passed the first Act towards 
 " conciliating the Catholics in 1 744." And a singular concession 
 it was, being entitled — "An Act to enable His Majesty's subjects, 
 " of whatever persuasion, to testify their allegiance to him " 
 (13 <fc 14 George II. cap. 35). Previously, Catholics were not 
 allowed to approach the king even to testify their loyalty. On 
 the other hand, it was not difficult to approach his viceroy in 
 Dublin Castle half a century later, when Pitt and Castlereagh 
 were engaged in deluding some of the Catholic bishops with 
 fair promises, never to be fulfilled, in the midst of the Rebellion 
 of 1798 — which Mr. Lecky says was deliberately provoked by 
 Government for the purpose of helping them to carry the Union, 
 There was at least one address presented to Lord Cornwallis at 
 that period, from Bishop Lanigan of Ossory and his priests, 
 which had a ludicrous ending, as it deserved. One of his 
 Excellency's eyes, by some natural defect, appeared, like the 
 pendulum of a clock, to be generally in motion. The bishop 
 and clergy having never before seen the Marquis, unfortunately 
 commenced their address with the most mal Apropos exordium — 
 " Your Excellency has always kept a steady eye on the interests 
 "of Ireland." The address was publicly presented at Levee. 
 His Excellency, however, was graciously pleased not to return 
 any answer to that part of their compliment. Curran, on seeing 
 the address, said that it was equal to the Mayor of Coventry's 
 famous speech to Queen Elizabeth, — "When the Spanish 
 " Armada attacked your Majesty, ecod they got the wi'ong sow 
 " by the ear." The Queen on that historic occasion, it wUl be 
 remembered, thoughtfully desired the Corporation of Coventry 
 to return home, and she would send them a reply. 
 
 Apropos of Burke's reference to the Edict of Nantes, Mr. 
 Lecky says, in the first volume of his Eighteenth Century ; — 
 
 "Almost all the great persecutions of history, those of the 
 " early Christians, of Catholics and Protestants ou the Continent, 
 " and, after the Revolution, of Catholics in England, were 
 " directed against small minorities. It was the distinguishing 
 *' characteristic of the Irish penal code that its victims con- 
 
LAWS AGAINST RELIGION AND PROPERTY. 179 
 
 " stituted at least three-fourths of the nation, and that it was 
 " deliberately intended to demoralise as well as degrade." 
 
 And this distinguishing peculiarity of the Irish penal laws is 
 also pointed out by Dr. Johnson, as related in his Life by 
 Boswell, as follows : — 
 
 " The Irish are in a most unnatural state, for we there see 
 "the minority prevailing over the majority. There is no 
 " instance, even in the Ten Persecutions, of such severity as 
 " that which the Protestants of Ireland have exercised against 
 " the Catholics." 
 
 In his Crime and Disturbance in Ireland, Sir Comewall Lewis 
 looks back upon the era of the penal laws, as being in great 
 degree responsible for the miserable condition of modern 
 Ireland; being no doubt in agreement with Mr. Lecky, that 
 the present of a nation can only be explained by its past ; and 
 that "in dealing with strong sentiments of disloyalty and 
 " discontent it is of the utmost importance to trace the his- 
 " torical causes to which they may be due." He, Sir C. Lewis, 
 says : — 
 
 "Deprived of all self-respect by the operation of the Penal 
 " Statutes, prevented from rising in the world, or from bettering 
 " their condition, by legal disabilities and the legalised oppres- 
 " sion of their landlords ; without education, excluded from 
 " a public participation in the rites of their own religion, they 
 " endured all and more than the evils which belonged to the lot 
 " of a serf, without looking forward to the interested protection 
 " and relief which a master would afford to his bondman." 
 
 One of our latest and best English historians. Green, is also 
 well deserving of quotation on the subject. In his Short 
 History of the English People, he observes as follows : — 
 
 " The history of Ireland, from its conquest by William III. 
 " up to this time [1815], is one which no Englishman can recall 
 " without shame. Since the surrender of Limerick every 
 " Catholic Irishman, and there were five Catholics to every 
 " Protestant, had been treated as a stranger and a foreigner 
 "in his own country. The House of Lords, the House of 
 
i8o A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " Commons, the right of voting for representatives in Parlia- 
 " ment, the magistracy, all corporate offices in towns, all ranks 
 " in the army, the bench, the bar, the whole administration of 
 " Government or Justice, were closed against Catholics. Few 
 " Catholic landowners had been left by the sweeping con- 
 "fiscations which had followed the successive revolts of the 
 " island, and oppressive laws forced even these few, with scant 
 " exceptions, to profess Protestantism. Necessity, indeed, had 
 " brought about a practical toleration of their religion and their 
 " worship ; but in all social and political matters, the native 
 " Catholics, in other words, the immense majority of the people 
 " of Ireland, were simply hewers of wood and drawers of water 
 " to their Protestant masters." 
 
 And elsewhere the historian describes the mournful conse- 
 quences thus : — 
 
 "The silence of death settled down upon Ireland. For a 
 " hundred years the country remained at peace. But the peace 
 " was the peace of despair. No Englishman who loves what is 
 " noble in the English temper can tell without sorrow and 
 " shame the story of that time of guilt." 
 
 In this awful story of persecution by means of penal laws 
 in Ireland, there is just one redeeming feature, which is often 
 touching and even beautiful. The laws were invented by men 
 who cared not a straw for religion of any kind, and were only 
 directed to the acquisition of the real and personal estate of the 
 Catholics. Every historian, almost, who has related the story 
 has testified to the fact. Arthur Young, most painstaking of 
 English travellers, made a kind of house-to-house inquiry on 
 the subject, towards the end of the last century, with the same 
 result. He observes in his Tour : — 
 
 " I have conversed on the subject with some of the most dis- 
 " tinguished characters in the kingdom, and I cannot after all 
 " but declare that the scope, purport, and aim of the laws of 
 " discovery as executed, are not against the Catholic religion, 
 " which increases under them, but against the industry and pro- 
 " perty of whoever professes that religion." 
 
 This aflTorded the many generous, conscientious Protestants 
 of the time a rare opportunity of showing themselves superior 
 
LAWS AGAINST RELIGION AND PROPERTY. i8i 
 
 to the villainy which wicked and covetous men had foisted upon 
 their Christian creed. There were innumerable cases in which 
 the oppressed Catholics were able to retain a vestige of their 
 property only through the secret connivance and most faithful 
 friendship of such good men. Of course it is probable enough 
 that the trust was occasionally betrayed by designing knaves ; 
 but, so far as the present writer's researches have gone, such 
 cases of betrayal on the part of Irish Protestants are not 
 commonly mentioned by Irish historians. Hubert Burke, in the 
 third volume of his Tudor Dynasty (Hodges i), relates of a 
 Protestant barber named Hill, who died in Clonmel, a poor 
 man, in 1813, at an advanced age, that leasehold property to 
 the amount of thousands of pounds was enjoyed by Catholics 
 through his honourable connivance, the covenants being executed 
 in his name. And he adds, that " a volume might be written 
 " on the generous conduct of some Irish Protestants during the 
 •' evil doings inflicted on Ireland by the English penal laws." 
 
 The law in regard to horses was, indeed, had recourse to by 
 Protestants of the baser sort sometimes, to the detriment of 
 their Catholic neighbours, and the result was not seldom 
 tragical. Wyse of "Waterford had had his horses demanded of 
 him in this way on the public road, and he was compelled to 
 surrender them for the customary five guineas each. From 
 that date he made protest against the robbery by driving 
 bullocks as beasts of burden only. Geoghegan, a Westmeath 
 gentleman, shot his horses dead rather than give them up alive ; 
 and afterwards proffered his choice of a pair of pistols to the 
 rascal who had demanded the sacrifice of him. But one of the 
 most tragical cases was that of a high-spirited young Catholic 
 gentleman, named O'Leary, in Cork, who had been an officer 
 in the Hungarian service. His horse had beaten that of a 
 Protestant named Morris on a racecourse, between whom and 
 O'Leary there was some grudge in regard to the property of the 
 
 ^ Mr. Gladstone has spoken of this work as "a distinct and valuable 
 " addition to our knowledge of a remarkable period." It furnishes a vivid 
 picture of a great era in English history. 
 
i83 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 latter. Morris meanly claimed the winning horse ; which the 
 owner, however, refused to hand over for the legal price, though 
 the refusal constituted a most serious oflfence under the penal 
 statute. A scuffle ensued, from which O'Leary was obliged to 
 fly for his life. By summary process he was proclaimed an out- 
 law on the spot, and pursued by soldiers, who shot him dead from 
 an ambush. His brother, however, wreaked a bloody vengeance 
 on Morris, by firing several shots into him through a street 
 window in Cork, from the effects of which he died shortly after, 
 his assailant escaping to America. Imagine, if you can, the kind 
 of Christian civilisation which prevailed in Ireland in these 
 days, little more than a hundred years ago (1773), when we are 
 told further by Windele, that the law pursued the murdered 
 O'Leary even in death, refusing him burial in consecrated 
 ground till many years afterwards. By an Act of Parliament 
 (2 Anne, c. 7), it was forbidden under a penalty of ;^io to 
 Catholics to bury their dead in any monastery, church, or 
 abbey, not used for Protestant service. In life members of 
 the two creeds were forbidden to intermarry; in death they 
 were forbidden to rest apart. 
 
 The penal law in regard to horses was found so detrimental 
 to good breeding, that it was at one time enacted in Ireland (8 
 Anne, c. 3) that Papists might possess "stud mares and stallions, 
 " and the breed or produce thereof under the age of five years," 
 of a greater value than ^^5. A similar law enacted against 
 English Catholics is frequently alluded to in the correspondence 
 of Pope ; and readers of the English poets will scarce need be 
 reminded of the Prologue to Dryden's Doji Sebastian : — 
 
 " Horses by Papists are not to be ridden, 
 
 " But sure the muses' horse was ne'er forbidden, 
 
 " For in no rate-book it was ever found 
 
 " That Pegasus was valued at five pound." 
 
 Both Pope and Dryden were themselves Papists, and the fact no 
 doubt occasionally brought home to them the cruelty of being 
 forbidden by law, on account of their creed, to ride on horseback 
 like their Protestant acquaintances, except at the risk of losing 
 all their worldly possessions. Still the position of the English 
 
LAWS AGAINST RELIGION AND PROPERTY. 183 
 
 Catholics, -who surrendered their faith without any such pro- 
 longed struggle, was very different from that of their co- 
 religionists in Ireland ; where the persecuted, on account of the 
 tenacity of their faith, were the vast, overwhelming majority 
 of the population of the kingdom. It was this distinction, too, 
 that rendered the insolence of the insignificant Ascendancy 
 party specially odious in Ireland; and tolerable only because 
 it was backed up and encouraged by the whole power of 
 England. There is a grotesque example of such insolence 
 found in Irish literature, illustrating how the very dregs of the 
 Cromwellian settlers in the kingdom gave themselves airs of 
 superiority in their social relations with the Catholics. During 
 the agitation which preceded the Catholic Eelief Act, a grandilo- 
 quent Dublin Town Councillor, who was a tailor by trade, is 
 reported to have spoken as follows, at one of those Corporation 
 banquets from which the Catholics were jealously excluded in 
 the good old days of the Ascendancy : — 
 
 V- "My word," exclaimed this Knight of the goose, "these 
 " Papists may get their emancipation, they may sit in Parlia- 
 " ment, they may preside upon the Bench ; a Papist may become 
 " Lord Chancellor or Privy Councillor, but never, never shall 
 " one of them set foot amongst the ancient and loyal Guild of 
 " Tailors ! " 
 
 By the Relief Act of 1 793, the Catholics for the first time 
 became entitled to the Parliamentary franchise, which they 
 had not enjoyed since the first year of the reign of George II. 
 (1727), a period of sixty-six years. Quickly availing them- 
 selves of their new privileges, they at once began to influence 
 the elections, though it was only by open voting under the 
 direction of their landlords, and they did not dare for yet 
 another generation to give an independent vote. Irish landlords 
 of the present day are often found bewailing the fact that their 
 tenants have divided their holdings amongst members of the 
 same family till the quantity left to each is insufficient for sub- 
 sistence. But this is only a blind cleverly contrived to deceive 
 or mislead the British newspaper reader. The landlords 
 connived at and encouraged the practice themselves, to increase 
 
1 84 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 their rental and their political influence at the same time. To 
 extend this influence, the landlord freely leased his poor serfs 
 small patches of land sufiicient to enable them to claim the 
 franchise. In this way those subservient creatures multiplied 
 till, in 1826, under the influence of O'Connell, they broke away 
 from their chains, and in defiance of threats of extirpation, 
 supported the Protestant friends of Catholic Emancipation at 
 the general election of that year. For the newly enfranchised, 
 however, the first inclination towards independent voting 
 meant ruin for their entire class. Their landlords and masters 
 watching the symptoms of a rebellious spirit against their 
 ungentle rule, were beforehand with them, and introduced 
 measures in Parliament as early as 181 5 — to facilitate ejectment 
 — which have not even yet run their full course, being in active 
 operation at the present day to effect the extermination of their 
 descendants. Speaking in the House of Commons on the 5 th 
 of March 1829, Sir Robert Peel was quite pathetic over the loss 
 of power which the landlords sustained by the electoral revolt 
 of the peasants at that period : — 
 
 (( 
 
 "It is vain to deny or to conceal the truth in respect to 
 that franchise [the forty-shilling franchise]," Sir Robert 
 observed. *' It was, until a late period, the instrument through 
 " which the landed aristocracy — the resident and the absentee 
 " proprietor, maintained their local influence — through which 
 "property had its weight, its legitimate weight, in the national 
 " representation. . . . That weapon which [the landlord] has 
 "forged with so much care, and has heretofore wielded with 
 " such success, has broken short in his hand." 
 
 Thanks to the Duke of "Wellington (oblivious of his obligations 
 to Irish soldiers) and Peel, however, means were quickly found 
 to re-establish the equilibrium as of old. Both statesmen openly 
 confessed sixty "years ago, that they would not have conceded 
 Catholic Emancipation, if the measure could have been avoided 
 without incurring greater dangers. But having to do it under 
 compulsion, they paid off the emancipated by concurrent dis- 
 franchisement ; and took very special care that none of the 
 long expected fruits of their victory should moisten the lips of 
 
LAWS AGAINST RELIGION AND PROPERTY. 185 
 
 the Catholics for many a year to come. No wonder we find 
 the present Lord Derby, more than half a century afterwards, 
 saying that " Irishmen, to speak plainly, are not likely to thank 
 " us for a gift, which was only conferred because it could not 
 " be safely withheld." And yet, with the knowledge that the 
 British Government have always been the persecutors, in 
 Ireland, every political charlatan who mounts a platform in 
 the three kingdoms endeavours to instil into the minds of the 
 English people that the Catholics must of necessity be the 
 persecutors of the Protestants in that country, when the Irish 
 have Home Rule. There is absolutely no foundation for any 
 such unworthy suspicion, as the reader will be convinced on 
 perusing the Eighteenth Chapter of the author's companion 
 volume. Why Ireland wants Home Rule. The opinions of 
 eminent Protestant writers are clear on the subject ; such as 
 Leland, in his History of Ireland ; Taylor, in his Civil Wars of 
 Ireland ; Sydney Smith, in his Works; and Mr. Lecky, who 
 says, writing of the Irish Catholics in his History of England in 
 the Eighteenth Century, volume the second : — 
 
 " Their original conversion to Christianity was probably ac- 
 " companied by less violence and bloodshed than that of any 
 " equally considerable nation in Europe ; and in spite of the 
 " fearful calamities which followed the Reformation, it is a 
 " memorable fact that not a single Protestant suflfered for his 
 " religion in Ireland during all the period of the Marian per- 
 " secution in England. The treatment of Bedell, a Protestant 
 " prelate, during the outbreak of 1641, and the Act establishing 
 " liberty of conscience, passed by the Irish Parliament in 1689, 
 " in the full flush of the brief Catholic ascendancy under James 
 "II., exhibit very remarkably this aspect of the Irish character. 
 " And it was displayed in another form scarcely less vividly 
 " during the Quaker missions, which began towards the close of 
 " the Commonwealth, and continued with little intermission for 
 " two generations. The experience of John Wesley, half a 
 " century later, was very similar ; and he has more than once 
 " in his Journal spoken in terms of warm appreciation of the 
 " docile and tolerant spirit he almost everywhere encountered 
 "[in Ireland]." 
 
[CHAPTEE XXI. 
 
 DESTRUCTION OF MANUFACTURING AND 
 COMMERCIAL INDUSTRIES. 
 
 " In acting upon these commercial restrictions," observes Sir Walter 
 Scott in his life of Swift, " wrong was heaped upon wrong, and insult was 
 " added to injury, with this advantage, on the side of the aggressors, that 
 " they could intimidate the injured people of Ireland into silence, by raising, 
 " to drown every complaint, the cry of rebel and Jacobite. These evils 
 " Swift beheld, with all the natural ardour of a disposition which rose in 
 " opposition to tyranny. ' Do not,' said he to Delany, ' the corruptions 
 " and villainies of men eat your flesh, and exhaust your spirits ? ' " 
 
 The national system of education in Ireland was designed by 
 the late Lord Derby, and so styled officially was regarded as a 
 satire by the Irish people, who soon saw that its primary object 
 was to erase from the youthful Irish mind every trace of national 
 spirit, and, in some measure, of national knowledge. The old 
 practice of suppressing political information was still rife. In 
 the last century, Hutchinson, Lucas, Molyneux, and Swift, for 
 exposing the iniquitous laws which had reduced Ireland to 
 beggary, were persecuted, prosecuted, or exiled, and their works 
 burnt by the common hangman. Swift was obliged to veil his 
 truths in sarcasm or allegory to get them printed at all, at a time 
 (1720) when the Lords Justices actually prohibited the sale of 
 Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in 
 Ireland, considering that work of a seditious nature. The 
 school text-books were now so contrived, chiefly by the un- 
 scrupulous handling of Archbishop Whateley, as to exclude 
 all information in regard to Irish history. The very name of 
 Ireland was practically boycotted in the early editions, and from 
 the later ones were expunged by the censor as perilous reading, 
 suggestive of treason and rebellion to the untutored mind of 
 
DESTRUCTION OF COMMERCIAL INDUSTRIES. 187 
 
 young Paddy, Scott's noble lines, "Breathes there a man 
 " with soul so dead," together with Campbell's spirited lyric, 
 " The Downfall of Poland." The selfishness of the English 
 Parliament in destroying Irish manufacturing industries of 
 every kind in the last century, to guard against an imaginary 
 injury to English trade and commerce by competition, has 
 been the theme of denunciation, by English writers, for 
 more than a hundred years, beginning with Arthur Young, and 
 ending with Mr. Froude and Mr. Green. But in this text- 
 book of the Irish National Board of Education, the Irish child 
 was taught that the manufactures and commerce of Ireland 
 were destroyed " by unlawful combiaations " on the part 
 of her own sons ! What, however, are the facts 1 Till the 
 reign of Charles II. England placed no restriction on Irish 
 commerce or manufactures. The first Navigation Act of 1660 
 put England and Ireland on terms of equality. "But," as 
 Mr. Froude observes in his English in Ireland, " the equality 
 " of privilege lasted only till the conclusion of the settlement, 
 " till the revenue had been assigned to the Crown." In the 
 amended Navigation Act of 1663, Ireland was left out. This 
 Act, which was entitled " An Act for the Encouragement of 
 *' Trade," prohibited all exports from Ireland to the colonies. A 
 subsequent British Act declared the importation of Irish cattle 
 into England to be "a publick and common nuisance" (18 Car. 
 II., cap. 2). It likewise forbade the importation of beef, pork, 
 and bacon. Butter and cheese from Ireland were subsequently 
 excluded, and the previous statute excluding cattle was made 
 perpetual. In 1670 the exportation to Ireland from the Eng- 
 lish plantations of sugar, tobacco, cotton-wool, indigo, ginger, 
 fustic or other dyeing wood, the growth of the said plantations, 
 was prohibited by statute. Restrictions were placed on the glass 
 trade, silk, hops, Irish beer and malt, and every other branch 
 of trade besides. 
 
 But the most destructive of all English prohibitions regarded 
 the wool and woollen trade, whatever pretence the English 
 Parliament attempted to put forward against Ireland, as though 
 she were an enemy's country. By the 10 & 11 "Will. IIL, cap. 
 
l88 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 lo, the export of wool and of the woollen manufacture from 
 Ireland were prohibited under the forfeiture of goods and ship, 
 and a penalty of ;^5 oo for every such offence. The English Parlia- 
 ment decreed, moreover, that whoever infringed the law made 
 in favour of English manufactures, should be liable to a trial 
 before the courts both of England and Ireland ; and in case of 
 an acquittal in the latter country, he might at any time be 
 again seized and tried in an English court. Ireland's greatest 
 industries were thus, one by one, sacrificed to England's com- 
 mercial jealousy, vlntil at length Edmund Burke felt himself 
 constrained to ask : — 
 
 "Is Ireland united to the Crown of Great Britain for no 
 " other purpose than that we should counteract the bounty of 
 " Providence in her favour, and in proportion as that bounty 
 " has been liberal that we are to regard it as an evil which is to 
 " be met with in every sort of corrective ? " 
 
 As Mr. Lecky has told the story of the penal laws in 
 Ireland, so now Mr. Froude shall relate how trade and com- 
 merce were destroyed in that kingdom. Mr. Froude says, in 
 the first volume of his English in Ireland : — 
 
 " England governed for what she deemed her own interest, 
 " making her calculation on the gross balance of her trade 
 " ledgers, and leaving her moral obligations to accumulate, as if 
 " right and wrong had been blotted out of the Statute-book of 
 " the universe, . . . The English deliberately determined to 
 " keep Ireland poor and miserable as the readiest means to 
 " prevent it being troublesome. They destroyed Irish trade 
 " and shipping by navigation laws. They extinguished Irish 
 " manufactures by differential duties. They laid disabilities 
 " even on its wretched agriculture, for fear that Irish .importa- 
 " tions might injure the English farmer. . . . With their 
 " shipping destroyed by the Navigation Act, their woollen manu- 
 " factures taken from them, their trade in all its branches 
 " crippled and confined, the single resource left to those of 
 " the Irish who still nourished dreams of improving their un- 
 " fortunate country was agriculture. The soil at least was 
 *' their own, which needed only to be drained, cleared of weeds, 
 " and manured, to produce grass crops and corn crops as rich as 
 " the best in England. Here was employment for a population 
 
DESTRUCTION OF COMMERCIAL INDUSTRIES. 189 
 
 " three times more numerous than as yet existed. Here "was a 
 " prospect, if not of commercial wealth, yet of substantial com- 
 " fort and material abundance. . . . But the tenants were for- 
 " bidden in their leases to break or . plough the soil. The 
 " people no longer employed ■were driven away into holes and 
 " comers, and eked out a wretched subsistence by potato 
 " gardens, or by keeping starving cattle of their own on the 
 " neglected bogs. . . . The disgrace of allowing a nation of 
 " human beings to subsist under such conditions forced itself at 
 " last on the conscience of the Irish Parliament, and though 
 " composed of landowners, who were tempted as much as others 
 " to let their farms on the terms most profitable to them, the 
 "House of Commons, in 1716, resolved unanimously to make 
 " an effort for a general change of system, and to reclaim both 
 " people and country by bringing back and stimulating agri- 
 " culture. They passed a vote that covenants which prohibited 
 " the breaking soil with the plough were impolitic, and should 
 " have no binding force. They passed heads of a bill, which 
 " they recommended with the utmost earnestness to the con- 
 " sideration of the English Council, enjoining that for every 
 " hundred acres which any tenant held he should break up and 
 " cultivate five, and, as a further encouragement, that a trifling 
 " bounty should be granted by the Government on corn grown 
 " for exportation. And what did England answer 1 England, 
 "which was so wisely anxious for the prosperity of the Pro-, 
 " testant interest in Ireland : England, which was struggling so 
 " pathetically to make the Irish peers and gentlemen under- 
 " stand the things that belonged to their peace ? The bounty 
 " system might, or might not, have been well calculated to pro- 
 " duce the effect which Ireland desired. It was the system, 
 " however, which England herself practised with every industry 
 " which she wished to encourage, and it was not on economic 
 "grounds that the Privy Council rejected a bill which they 
 " ought rather to have thrust of their own accord on Irish ac- 
 " ceptance. The real motive was probably the same which had 
 "led to the suppression of the manufactures; the detestable 
 " opinion that to govern Ireland conveniently Ireland must be 
 " kept weak. Although the com consumed in Ireland had been 
 " for many years imported, the English farmers were haunted 
 " with a terror of being undersold in their own and foreign 
 " markets by a country where labour was cheap. A motive so 
 " iniquitous could not be confessed, but the objections which 
 " the Council were not ashamed to allege were scarcely less dis- 
 
I go A KE? TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " graceful to them. The English manufacturers having secured, 
 " as they supposed, the monopoly of Irish wool on their own 
 " terms, conceived that the whole soil of Ireland ought to be 
 " devoted to growing it." 
 
 And in his second volume, Mr. Froude makes these addi- 
 tional reflections on English government in Ireland : — 
 
 " If the high persons at the head of the great British Empire 
 " had deliberately considered by what means they could con- 
 " demn Ireland to remain the scandal of their rule, they could 
 " have chosen no measures better suited to their end than those 
 " which they had pursued unrelentingly through three-quarters 
 " of a century. By definite acts of unjust legislation they were 
 *' forcing the entire people to abandon themselves to the potato, 
 " and to sit down to brood over their wrongs in a paralysis of 
 " anger and despair." 
 
 Finally, the same historian thus describes the condition of 
 Ireland in 1779 in consequence : — 
 
 " The grand juries represented that the fields and highways 
 " were filled with crowds of wretched beings half-naked and 
 " starving. Foreign markets were closed to them. The home 
 " market was destroyed by internal distress, and the poor arti- 
 " sans who had supported themselves by weaving were without 
 " work and without food. They had bought English goods as 
 " long as they had the means to buy them. Now, in their 
 " time of dire distress, they had hoped the English Parliament 
 " would be their friend. They learnt with pain and surprise 
 " that the only boon which could give them relief was still 
 " withheld. They besought the king to interpose in their 
 " favour, and procure them leave to export and sell at least the 
 " coarse frieze blankets and flannels, which. the peasants' wives 
 " and children produced in their cabins. Eloquence and en- 
 " treaty were alike in vain. The English Parliament, though 
 " compelled at least to listen to the truth, could not yet bend 
 " itself to act upon it. The House of Commons still refused 
 " to open the woollen trade in whole or in part, and Ireland, 
 " now desperate and determined, and treading ominously in the 
 " steps of America, adopted the measures which long before had 
 " been recommended by Swift, and resolved to exclude from 
 " the Irish market every article of British manufacture which 
 " could be produced at home." 
 
DESTRUCTION OF COMMERCIAL INDUSTRIES. 191 
 
 So far Mr. Froude. Others shall now briefly describe the 
 manner in which the stolid obstinacy in injustice on the 
 part of the British Parliament was finally overcome. It was 
 the old story of apprehension on account of the struggle with 
 the American continent. Less than fifty years ago Sir Robert 
 Peel told the House of Commons one night in trembling ac- 
 cents that he was glad he had just sent a " message of peace to 
 " Ireland," in the shape of an addition to the inadequate May- 
 nooth grant, as there had arisen " the cloud no bigger than a man's 
 " hand" over the Western continent on account of the threatening 
 Oregon difficulty. Surely so great a minister should have been 
 ashamed of such an avowal, when if England would only act 
 justly towards Ireland, by attempting some great healing measure 
 of restitution for the unhappy past, the United Kingdom might 
 safely defy the world in arms. The Earl of Shelbume, speak- 
 ing in the English House of Lords, on the ist of December 
 1779, thus described the determined attitude of Ireland under 
 the circumstances referred to by Mr. Froude : — 
 
 "Ireland disclaimed any connection with Great Britain, she 
 " instantly put herself in a condition of defence against her 
 " foreign enemies [amongst whom England was at that time the 
 " worst, and, if the truth must be told, the only one] ; op- 
 " pressed at one time by England, and at length reduced to a 
 " state of calamity and distress experienced by no other country 
 " that ever existed, unless visited by war or famine, and per- 
 " ceiving that all prospect of justice or relief was in a manner 
 "finally closed, and that she must perish or work out her own 
 " salvation, she united as one man to rescue herself from that 
 "approaching destruction which seemed to await her. The 
 " people instantly armed themselves, and the numbers armed 
 " soon increased to upwards of 40,000 men, and were daily 
 " augmenting. This most formidable body was not composed 
 " of mercenaries, who had little or no interest in the issue, but 
 " of the nobility, gentry, merchants, citizens, and respectable 
 " yeomanry, men able and willing to devote their time and part 
 " of their property to the defence of the whole and the pro- 
 " tection and security of their country. The Government had 
 " been abdicated, and the people resumed the powers vested in 
 " it, and in doing so, were fully authorised by every principle 
 " of the Constitution, and every motive of self-preservation." 
 
192 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 And Edmund Burke, speaking at the Guildhall, Bristol, in 
 1780, has described in memorable words the humiliating capitu- 
 lation which immediately followed; and which would follow 
 again to-morrow if the Irish were only united now as then, for 
 our present Prime Minister has no stomach for determined 
 opposition of any kind : — 
 
 *' The British Parliament," Burke observed, " in a former 
 *' session, frightened into a limited concession by the menaces 
 " of Ireland, frightened out of it by the menaces of England, 
 " were now frightened back again, and made an universal sur- 
 " render of all that had been thought the peculiar, reserved, 
 " uncommunicable rights of England — the exclusive commerce 
 " of America, of Africa, of the West Indies, all the enumerations 
 " of the Acts of Navigation, all the manufactures — iron, glass, 
 " even the sacred fleece itself — all went together. No reserve, no 
 " exception, no debate, no discussion. A sudden light broke in 
 " upon us all. It broke in, not through well-contrived and well- 
 " disposed windows, but through flaws and breaches, through 
 " the yawning chasms of our ruin. We were taught wisdom by 
 " luimiliation. No town in England presumed to have a preju- 
 " dice or dared to mutter a petition. What was worse, the whole 
 " Parliament of England, which retained authority for nothing 
 " but surrenders, was despoiled of every shadow of its superin- 
 " tendence. It was, without any qualification, denied in theory 
 " as it had been trampled upon in practice." 
 
 As the reader very properly requires chapter and verse for 
 this incredible story throughout, perhaps it is as well to men- 
 tion that, in the present instance, Mr. Froude supplies both. 
 Referring to the addresses presented to William III. by the two 
 Houses of Parliament in 1698 clamouring for the total destruc- 
 tion of the Irish woollen manufactures, the historian says : — 
 
 " The King replied briefly that the wish of Parliament should 
 " be carried out, and Ireland was invited to apply the knife to 
 " her own throat. Two letters of William to the Lords Justices 
 " survive in Dublin Castle, embodying the words of the two 
 "Addresses, and recommending to the Legislature the worst 
 " and most fatal of all the mistaken legislative experiments to 
 " which a dependent country was ever subjected by the folly of 
 " its superiors. The Irish House, in dread of abolition if they 
 " refused, relying on the promise of encouragement to their linen 
 " trade, and otherwise unable to help themselves, acquiesced." ^ 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE CONSTANT NEGLECT AND SETTING ASIDE OP 
 IRISH INTERESTS IN PARLIAMENT. 
 
 " Except on two emergencies Parliament has done nothing for the people 
 " of Ireland ; and, more than that, their complaints have been met — com- 
 " plaints of their sufferings have been met — often by denial, often by 
 " insult, often by contempt." — John Bright. 
 
 In the reign of Edward I. eight thousand marks were offered 
 to the king, through Ufford, Justiciary, provided he would 
 extend English laws to the Irish people. Edward's reply is 
 sufficiently characteristic both of his wisdom and his rapacious- 
 ness. In volume iii. of his History of England, Hallam 
 observes : — 
 
 " Edward is satisfied of the expediency of granting the 
 " request, provided it can be done with the general consent of 
 " the prelates and nobles of Ireland [English by birth or descent], 
 " and directs the justiciary, if he can obtain that concurrence, to 
 " agree with the petitioners for the highest fine he can obtain, 
 " and for a body of good and stout soldiers. But this necessary 
 " consent of the aristocracy was withheld. Excuses were made 
 " to evade the king's desire. It was wholly incompatible with 
 " their systematic encroachments on their Irish neighbours to 
 " give them the safeguard of the king's writ for their possessions. 
 " The Irish renewed their supplication more than once, both to 
 " Edward I. and Edward III. ; they found the same readiness 
 " in the English court ; they sunk at home through the same 
 " unconquerable oligarchy." 
 
 In the reign of Elizabeth the object and policy of English 
 domination were different. Leland says, for instance, that 
 wherever the Irish had driven the royalists into their fortified 
 towns, and freed themselves from English molestation, " they 
 
 N 
 
194 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " had cultivated their lands, and established an unusual 
 " regularity and plenty in their districts." But Irish peace, 
 plenty, and prosperity formed no part of English policy. It 
 appears rather that the oppression of Ireland, the slaughter of 
 her inhabitants, and the perpetuation of social discord, were 
 regularly established as a measure of State policy. The follow- 
 ing are the words of the historian : — 
 
 " Some of her (Elizabeth's) counsellors appear to have con- 
 " ceived an odious jealousy which reconciled them to the 
 " distractions and miseries of Ireland. ' Should we exert 
 " ourselves,' said they, ' in reducing this country to order and 
 " civility, it must soon acquire power, consequence, and riches. 
 " The inhabitants will thus be alienated from England ; they 
 " will cast themselves into the arms of some foreign power, or 
 " perhaps erect themselves into an independent and separate 
 " State. Let us rather connive at their disorders ; for a weak 
 " and disordered people never can attempt to detach themselves 
 " from the Crown of England.' We find Sir Henry Sydney 
 " and Sir John Perrot, who perfectly understood the affairs of 
 " Ireland, and the dispositions of its inhabitants, both express- 
 " ing the utmost indignation at this horrid policy, which yet 
 " had found its way into the English Parliament." 
 
 Yet is it the policy of Lords Hartington and Salisbury at the 
 present time, the " detestable policy," as Mr. Eroude calls it, 
 of keeping Ireland in rags and dissension that she may be more 
 easily governed. According to Sir John Davis, in his well- 
 known Di&eoverie : — 
 
 "For the space of 200 years at least, after the arrival of 
 " Henry II. in Ireland, the Irish would gladly have embraced 
 " the laws of England, and did earnestly desire the benefit and 
 " protection thereof; which being denied them, did of necessity 
 " cause a continual bordering war between the English and 
 " Irish. ... It is manifest, that such as had the government 
 " of Ireland under the Crowne of England [till the reign of 
 " Henry VIIL] did intend to make a perpetuall separation and 
 " enmity betweene the English and the Irish ; pretending (no 
 " doubt) that the English should in the end roote out the Irish ; 
 
CONSTANT NEGLECT OF IRISH INTERESTS, 195 
 
 " which the English not being able to do, did cause a perpetuall 
 " warre betweene the nations." 
 
 Mr. Froude, in the tenth volume of his History of England, 
 supplies a connecting link between the period, at the end of the 
 fourteenth century, indicated by Sir John Davis, and the reign 
 of James I. by observing that : — 
 
 " The suppression of the Catholic services, enforced wherever 
 " the English had power, and hanging before the people as a cala- 
 " mity sure to follow as the limits of that power were extended, 
 " created a weight of animosity which no other measure could 
 " have produced, and alone made the problem of Irish adminis- 
 " tration hopelessly insoluble. The language of the Archbishop 
 " of Cashel to Cardinal Alciati shows that before the Government 
 " [of Elizabeth] attempted to force a religion upon them which 
 " had not a single honest advocate in the tvhole nation, there 
 " was no incurable disloyalty. If they [the Irish] were left 
 " with their own lands, their own laws, and their own creed, 
 " the chiefs were willing to acknowledge the English Sovereign. 
 " It cannot be said that England deserved to keep a country 
 " which it mismanaged so disastrously. The Irish were not to 
 " be blamed if they looked to the Pope, to Spain, to France, to 
 " any friend on earth, or in Heaven, to deliver them from a 
 " power which discharged no single duty that rulers owe to 
 " subjects." 
 
 It would not be possible within the limits of a short chapter 
 to recount the vain struggles of Ireland for equal laws and just 
 Government from the reign of Eliaabeth to the Union in 1801. 
 It was one long, dismal, almost unbroken period of wars and 
 famines ; wholesale confiscations and atrocious penal laws ; not 
 to speak of the annihilation by England of Irish manufacturing 
 industry in the eighteenth century. Just as Mr. Froude found 
 the disastrous relations between the two kingdoms under the 
 Tudors, so does Mr. Gladstone find them under the Georges, 
 two centuries later. Speaking at a National Conference on the 
 Bulgarian question, held at St. James's Hall, on the 8th of 
 December 1876, and referring to that misrule in 1776, Mr. 
 Gladstone said : — 
 
 " We can understand the case [of the Turk] by looking nearer 
 
196 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " liome. We have in it the difference of race, the difference 
 " of religion, and we have these differences accompanied by 
 " unrestrained political ascendancy. It is when you combine 
 " these three conditions that you put the ascendant class in a 
 " position in which they yield to corruption. . . . The state of 
 " things existing in Ireland a hundred years ago, we all now 
 " look back upon with shame and pain. We admit that it was 
 " intolerable. ... If there had been, at that time, any clean- 
 " handed Power in Europe able to interfere, and able to right 
 " the wrongs of Ireland, that Power would have deserved the 
 "gratitude of mankind." 
 
 When making his great Home Rule speeches in Parliament 
 in 1886, Mr. Gladstone effectively quoted Mr. Froude in sup- 
 port of some of his arguments. It is interesting to see how 
 Mr. Froude, in turn, supports Mr. Gladstone, as regards the 
 extent of English misrule in Ireland towards the close of the 
 eighteenth century. This is how Mr. Froude speaks of the 
 events which preceded the rebellion of 1 798 : — 
 
 " The long era of misgovernment had ripened at last for the 
 " harvest. Rarely since the inhabitants of the earth have formed 
 " themselves into civilised communities had any country suffered 
 " from such a complication of neglect and ill-usage." 
 
 Ilfor will it be seriously contended that the Irish policy of the 
 British Government between the Union in 1801 and the pass- 
 ing of the Emancipation Act in 1829 was actuated by any 
 desire to do justice or to redress grievances. On the contrary, 
 the obnoxious system of Protestant ascendancy was maintained 
 as long as possible, and Catholic Emancipation was only reluc- 
 tantly and ungraciously conceded out of fear of rebellion and 
 civil war. Pray hear Mr. Lecky : — 
 
 "Year after year," he observes, in his Leaders of PuUic 
 Opinion, " Grattan and Plunket brought forward the case 
 " of their fellow-countrymen with an eloquence and a per- 
 " severance worthy of their great cause ; but year after year 
 " they were defeated. It was not till the great tribune 
 " [O'Connell] had arisen, till he had moulded his co-religionists 
 " into one compact and threatening mass, and had brought the 
 " country to the verge of revolution, that the tardy boon was 
 
CONSTANT NEGLECT OF IRISH INTERESTS. 197 
 
 " conceded. Eloquence and argument proved alike unavailing 
 " when unaccompanied by menace, and Catholic Emancipation 
 " was confessedly granted, because to withhold it would be to 
 " produce a rebellion." 
 
 For six years after the passing of the Emancipation Act, 
 from 1829 to 1835, it remained a dead letter as far as the 
 Government could keep it so. The Irish people could no 
 longer be prevented from sending representatives of their own 
 religion to Parliament ; but not a single Catholic was admitted 
 to the magistracy or appointed to any civil office in Ireland ; 
 and this state of things went on not only under the Tory 
 Ministry of the Duke of Wellington, but also under their 
 successors, the Whig Ministry of Lord Grey, which came into 
 office in 1831. It was impossible, writes Lord Wellesley, the 
 Viceroy, in a confidential letter to ministers, to suppose a whole 
 nation could repose confidence in the Government, when so 
 large a portion of the people were practically excluded from all 
 share in the higher offices of the state, " while their right of 
 "admission was established by law." Of the period between 
 the Union and 1829, Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, M.P., gives the follow- 
 ing summary in his Peel and O'Connell : — 
 
 "Ireland had been in a disturbed and distracted condition 
 " ever since [the Union]. It had been impossible during 
 " almost any two consecutive years to govern it by the ordinary 
 law. Every year, with rare exceptions, brought the demand 
 " on Parliament for coercive laws for Ireland, differing only in 
 " method and degree. The most common forms were the 
 " suppression of trial by jury, the suspension of the Habeas 
 " Corpus Act, the prohibition of public meetings, and of the 
 " right to carry arms ; but occasionally there was added the 
 " provision of martial law, and the curfew clauses. No attempt 
 " had been made to apply remedial measures to the country. 
 " The grievances which the people suffered under the tithe 
 " system were allowed to pass unchecked. No proposal was 
 " made to interfere with the arbitrary power of landlords ; on 
 " the contrary, the Acts of 181 5 and 181 7 greatly increased the 
 "powers of landlords, and facilitated ejectment. During the 
 "interval, also, the taxes in Ireland had been nearly trebled 
 " in amount, without equivalent benefit to the English ex- 
 
 it 
 
(( 
 
 198 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " chequer, and without adding materially to the resources and 
 " power of the empire. Previous to the Union the Irish 
 "Parliament had rarely voted more than 12,000 men for the 
 army. Subsequent to it, the force maintained in Ireland, 
 " during the war with France, was increased to 40,000 ; and 
 " after the peace, was never less than 25,000 men." 
 
 All through the present century there have been no end of 
 Commissions and Select Committees to inquire into the con- 
 dition of the agricultural population whenever Parliament was 
 alarmed by serious disturbance in Ireland. Those Commissions 
 and Committees reported and recommended in vain. The story 
 of Parliamentary dealings with the Irish Fisheries and Waste 
 Lands to be found elsewhere is sufficiently illustrative of Parlia- 
 mentary incompetence generally to deal with Irish questions. 
 The Committees, for instance, expressed their entire conviction 
 of the practicability of cultivating with profit an immense extent 
 of land lying waste ; but their recommendations, as has been 
 stated, never led to anything. As far back as 1845, ^^^ y^^^ 
 before the repeal of the Corn Laws, the Devon Commission, 
 perhaps the most important of all the Commissions which have 
 inquired into the state of Ireland, reported as follows : — 
 
 " The whole of that vast mass of evidence taken by the Com- 
 " missioners in reference to the mutual relation existing between 
 " the proprietors and occupiers of land in Ireland, is at once 
 " conclusive, painfully interesting, and most portentous in its 
 " character. It proves that the safety of the country, and the 
 " respective interests of both these classes, call loudly for a 
 " cautious but immediate adjustment of the grave questions at 
 " issue between them. In every district of the country we find 
 " that a widely-spread and daily-increasing confusion as to the 
 " respective rights and claims of these classes exists ; and it is 
 " impossible to reject the conviction that, unless they be dis- 
 " tinctly defined and respected, much social disorder and national 
 " inconvenience must inevitably be the consequence. . . . Land- 
 " owners do not appear aware of the peril which thus threatens 
 " their property, and which must increase every day that they 
 " defer to establish the rights of the tenant on a definite and 
 " equitable footing. Although it is certainly desirable that the 
 *' fair remuneration to which a tenant is entitled for his outlay 
 
CONSTAiTT NEGLECT OF lEISH INTERESTS. 199 
 
 " of capital or labour in permanent improvements should be 
 " secured to him by voluntary agreement rather than by com- 
 " pulsion of law, yet, upon a review of all the evidence furnished 
 "to us upon the subject, we believe that some legislative 
 " measure will be found necessary to give efiBcacy to such agree- 
 " ments, as well as to provide for those cases which cannot be 
 " settled by private arrangement. We earnestly hope that the 
 " Legislature will be disposed to entertain a bill of this nature, 
 " and to pass it into law with as little delay as is consistent with 
 " a full discussion of its principles and details." 
 
 Year after year the attempt was renewed, sometimes by the 
 Government of the day, sometimes by private members, to give 
 effect to the recommendation of the Devon Commission, and 
 thus, by a simple act of justice, to cut away the foundation that 
 underlay the whole network of Irish grievance and discontent. 
 But the story of the attempt of 1845 was repeated for many 
 long years. Bill after bill, aiming at providing for the tenant 
 the right of compensation for his improvements, was introduced, 
 was opposed by the Government of the day at the instigation of 
 the landlords, and then, as a matter of course, was either re- 
 jected by a vote of Parliament or dropped. A few specimens of 
 the opposing oratory of the period will suffice to show the spirit 
 in which attempts of the kind were viewed by even the most 
 distinguished statesmen. Speaking in the House of Commons 
 on the 27th of February 1865, the Prime Minister, Lord 
 Palmerston, thus contemptuously dismissed any hope that might 
 possibly be entertained in respect to the recommendations of 
 this most important Eoyal Commission : — 
 
 " As to tenant-right," he observed, " I may be allowed to say 
 " that I think it is equivalent to landlords' wrong. Tenant- 
 " right, as I understand it to be proposed, would be little short 
 " of confiscation ; and although that might cause the Irish land- 
 " lords [of whom he was himself one] to emigrate, it certainly 
 " would not keep the tenants at home." 
 
 In the same year, on the 23rd of June, Mr. Cardwell, 
 another representative statesman, dismissed the subject of 
 tenant-right into space in like manner : — 
 
200 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " I am exceedingly glad," he said, " that we are not about 
 " to separate under the imputation of having given an uncer- 
 " tain sound upon this subject. ... I wish to express my 
 " individual opinion that, by whatever name it may be called, 
 " compulsory compensation for improvements effected against 
 " the will of the landlord is not a principle which is consistent 
 " with the rights of property." 
 
 As though any one had ever heard of improvements being 
 effected on a landlord's property against his will ! The Irish 
 people could not even obtain an inquiry in that year into the 
 operation of a recent trifling Land Act, described by Mr. Gladstone, 
 in 1868, as being an act " most restricted in its terms," which 
 had proved a dead letter. Mr. Roebuck attacked the proposal 
 for an inquiry in language of studied insult towards the Irish 
 Nationalist members, then few in number, and his rancorous 
 insolence was rewarded by cheers from both sides of the House 
 of Commons, Lord Palmerston significantly nodding his assent. 
 It was one of these occasions when Irish complaint was met, as 
 Mr. Bright has said, " by denial, by insult, and by contempt." 
 The bare notion of considering any proposal for the recognition 
 of the tenants' improvements on the land was determinedly flouted 
 by Lord Palmerston. Yet the custom of tenant right had 
 existed in Ulster for generations ; and was, as Lord Palmerston 
 well knew, the foundation of any exceptional prosperity there 
 existing. Nay, it was given in evidence before the Devon 
 Commission, by Mr. Hancock, the agent of one of the most 
 extensive Ulster landed proprietors (Lord Headfort), that not 
 all the military resources of the Horse Guards would enable the 
 Ulster landlords to violate that custom, if they dared attempt 
 it. Mr. Hancock said : — 
 
 "The landlords are compelled to recognise tenant right; as, 
 *' in several instances in this neighbourhood, where they have 
 " refused to allow tenant right, the incoming tenant's house has 
 " been burned, his cattle houghed, or his crops trodden down by 
 " night. The disallowance of tenant right, as far as I know, is 
 " always attended with outrage. A landlord cannot even resume 
 " possession to himself without paying for it. In fact, tenant 
 " right is one of the sacred rights of the country, which cannot 
 
C( 
 
 CONSTANT NEGLECT OF lEISH INTERESTS. 201 
 
 ' be touched with impunity. And if systematic attempts were 
 ' made amongst the proprietors of Ulster to invade tenant right, 
 I do not believe there is a force at the disposal of the Horse 
 " Guards suflScient to keep the peace of the province." 
 
 Yet, if you were to listen to a certain class of politicians in Par- 
 liament, you might almost be persuaded to believe that Ulster 
 Protestant tenants were such pious, peaceful mortals as to be — 
 no matter what the provocation — incapable of pulling a trigger 
 against the landlord. Mr. Hancock was not of that opinion. 
 Lord Palmerston died on the i8th of October 1865. Had 
 he lived into the next year he would have witnessed the result 
 of his fatuous policy in the rise of a formidable political 
 organisation of Irish Americans, whose declared object was the 
 overthrow of British authority in Ireland, and the establish- 
 ment of an Irish republic, in friendship with the United States, 
 upon the ruins. Who was responsible for the long weary 
 months of anxiety and apprehension experienced by English 
 statesmen at that period in consequence? The Irish land- 
 lords 1 Not a bit of it. Let us put the saddle on the right 
 horse. The responsibility lay with the numerous politicians of 
 eminence, on both sides of the House of Commons, who had 
 systematically turned a deaf ear to those petitions of the Irish 
 people, for even a modicum of justice and mercy, with which 
 Parliament was annually besieged. Proofs on the subject are 
 lying about everywhere, abundant, innumerable, and overflowing. 
 The Times has not always been the enemy of Ireland, as will 
 occasionally be seen in these pages. On the 26th of June, in 
 the memorable year of 1845, *'^® 7®^^ ^^ t^^ Devon Commission, 
 and just upon the eve of the great famine, the leading journal, 
 in aj fit of indignation against Parliament, thus scornfully 
 criticised the farcical character of those various Royal Com- 
 missions of Inquiry, and the manifest insincerity of their chief 
 promoters on both sides of the House of Commons : — 
 
 " The jealous eyes of rival empires," observed the Times, 
 " have long been fixed on the nation which has so sternly held 
 " its conquest [in Ireland], and still so thoroughly maintains its 
 " ascendancy, to watch how it treats a humbled realm. We 
 
202 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " are forced to [acknowledge], that though the fact [of frightful 
 "destitution, affecting 4,500,000 human beings, equal to half 
 " the entire population of Ireland before the famine] is the 
 " most notorious in the whole world, the Legislature has for 
 " those forty-five years [since the Union] done little more than 
 " continually ask the question whether it be so or no. It has 
 " thought it enough to depute its curiosity to a Commission, 
 " and entomb the answer in a report. Almost annual Com- 
 " missions have superseded their predecessors, only to add one 
 " more volume to the forgotten series. AVTien it is no longer 
 " decent or possible to go on asking or forgetting, the next 
 " thing is to baffle and delude. . . . It is a fatal assumption to 
 " ascribe these calamities exclusively to the errors and infirmities 
 " of the Irish character ; and set about alternately coercing and 
 " cajoling, as it were a child or a maniac we had to deal with. 
 " No empire has ever yet treated a whole section of its subjects 
 " as inferior in heart and mind without incurring the condemna- 
 " tion of posterity. Easy and self-flattering as such a course 
 " may be to the powerful party, it never will go down with the 
 " world at large." 
 
 Four years later, on the 23rd July 1849, ^^- Horsman (after- 
 wards Chief Secretary for Ireland) moved — " That an humble 
 " address be presented to Her Majesty, praying her to take into 
 " her consideration the condition of Ireland." He asked : — 
 
 "What have we done for Ireland? . . . Ireland is now 
 " entering on the aggravated trials of a fourth year of famine. 
 " All her social state was disorganised ; the ruin in some dis- 
 " tricts was so complete that sixty per cent, of her population 
 " are receiving relief. [What are the causes which have pro- 
 " duced such results ?] Bad legislation, careless legislation, 
 " criminal legislation, have been the cause of all [the disasters 
 " we are now deploring]. ... Of a population of eight millions, 
 " there were (as the Archbishop of Dublin's Commission stated), 
 " no less than two millions three hundred thousand for the 
 " greater part of the year out of work, and in distress. And 
 " such was their physical prostration, that in the four poorest 
 " counties, the average duration of life for the ten years pre- 
 " ceding the famine, was twenty-six years." 
 
 A study of Hansard about the period of the great Irish 
 famine 1846-7 would lead one to believe that Lord John 
 
CONSTANT NEGLECT OF IRISH INTERESTS. 203 
 
 Russell meditated some generous policy in regard to Ireland. 
 But having joined the Protectionists in ousting Sir Eobert Peel 
 from office shortly before on an Irish Coercion Bill, the latter 
 was now always on the watch to pay him off with a like com- 
 pliment in return. When Lord John brought in his Irish 
 Waste Lands Bill as a measure of mercy in behalf of a starving 
 people, he was easily turned aside from his course by a "bland 
 " admonition " from Sir Robert, as it is termed by Mr. Disraeli in 
 his Biography of Lord George Bentinck. Never mind whether the 
 subject was specially commended to the attention of Parliament 
 by the Devon Commission only a year or two before ; or the 
 fact that Sir Robert had himself proposed dealing with it at one 
 proximate period of his own career ; the positions are now reversed 
 though the conditions may be the same. And, besides, had not 
 both Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel jointly given the coup 
 de grace to Lord George Bentinck's alternative measure for the 
 construction of an extensive system of Irish railways ? Thus : — 
 
 " While Tories marr'd what Whigs had scarce begun, 
 While Whigs undid what Whigs themselves had done." 
 
 It was but the old story of Ireland furnishing a battlefield 
 for English parties, and providing them with weapons with which 
 they might assail one another to their hearts' content. But as 
 for measures having for their object the real interest of the Irish 
 people, those were not to come, as Mr. Bright said in a pub- 
 lished letter of the 27th of January 1868, while "our rulers, 
 " though uncomfortable, are not sufficiently alarmed [by Ire- 
 " land] to yield." The chain must remain unbroken pend- 
 ing some new catastrophe, like that of the revolt of the 
 American colonies ; when, as Mr. Froude expresses it in the 
 second volume of his English in Ireland — Ireland will be 
 taught once more " the deadly lesson that her real wrongs would 
 " receive attention only when England was compelled to re- 
 " member them through fear." 
 
 The following table shows the constant rejection of remedial 
 measures in Parliament since 1829, and is in melancholy con- 
 trast with another table of statistics inserted elsewhere, showing 
 
204 
 
 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 the facility with which Coercion Acts, almost as numerous, were 
 passed, sometimes hurriedly, through both Houses of Parliament 
 within the same period of half a century : — 
 
 1829. Brownlow's Bill dropped in LorJs. 
 
 1830. Grattaii's Waste Land Bill refused. 
 
 1 83 1. Smith's Bill for Relief of the Aged dropped. 
 
 1835. Sharman Crawford's Bill dropped. 
 
 1836. Sharman Crawford's Bill dropped. 
 1836. Lyncli's Reclamation Bill dropped. 
 1845. Lord Stanley's Bill dropped. 
 
 1845. Sharman Crawford's Bill dropped. 
 
 1846. Mr. Sharman Crawford's Bill. . . Abortive. 
 
 1846. Lord Lincoln, Secretary for Ireland's Bill do. 
 
 1847. Mr. Sharman Crawford's Bill . , . do. 
 
 1848. Sir W. Somerville's Bill . ... do. 
 
 1848. Mr. Sharman Crawford's Bill ... do. 
 
 1849. Mr. Pusey's Bill do. 
 
 1850. Sir W. Somerville's Bill . ... do. 
 
 1850. Mr. S. Crawford's Bill .... do. 
 
 1851. Mr. S. Crawford's Bill .... do. 
 
 1852. Mr. S. Crawford's Bill .... do. 
 
 1853. Mr. Napier's Bill do. 
 
 1853. Mr. Serjeant Shee's Bill .... do. 
 
 1855. Mr. Serjeant Shee's Bill .... no. 
 
 i856-i8;7. Mr. Moore's Bill .... do. 
 
 1858. Mr. Maguire's Bill do. 
 
 "We have no published record of the abortive Land Bills pre- 
 sented to Parliament between 1858 and 1868, when Mr, Glad- 
 stone first notified his intention of dealing w^ith the Irish 
 difl&culty. The list of Coercion Acts passed (not merely Bills 
 presented) by Parliament since the date of the Union in 1801, 
 will, however, be found tolerably complete in another page. 
 Meanwhile we resume our list as follows : — 
 
 Date. 
 
 Bill. 
 
 Introduced by 
 
 Result. 
 
 1871 
 
 Landed Property, Ireland, 
 
 
 
 
 Act, 1847, Amendment Bill 
 
 Serjeant Sherlock 
 
 Withdrawn. 
 
 1872 
 
 Ulster Tenant Right Bill . . 
 
 Mr. Butt . . . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 1873 
 
 Ulster Tenant Eight Bill . . 
 
 Mr. Butt . . . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 
 Landlord and Tenant Act, 
 
 
 
 
 1870, Amendment Bill . . 
 
 Mr. Butt . . . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 >i 
 
 Landlord and Tenant Act, 
 1870, Amendment Bill, 
 
 
 
 
 No 2 
 
 Mr. Heron . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 
 
CONSTANT NEGLECT OF IKISH INTERESTS. 
 
 205 
 
 Date. 
 
 BiU. 
 
 Introduced by 
 
 Result. 
 
 1874 
 
 Landlord and Tenant Act, 
 
 
 
 
 1870, Amendment Bill . . 
 
 Mr. Butt , . . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 
 Landlord and Tenant Act, 
 
 
 
 " 
 
 1870, Amendment Bill, 
 
 
 
 
 No. 2 
 
 Sir J. Gray . . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 ft 
 
 Ulster Tenant Right Bill . . 
 
 Mr. Butt . . . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 
 Irish Land Act Extension Bill 
 
 The O'Donoghue . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 1875 
 
 Landed Proprietors, Ireland, 
 
 
 
 
 Bill 
 
 Mr. Smyth . . . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 5) 
 
 Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, 
 
 
 
 
 Act, 1870, Amendment Bill 
 
 Mr. Crawford . . 
 
 Rejected. 
 
 1876 
 
 Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, 
 
 
 
 
 Act, 1870, Amendment Bill 
 
 Mr. Crawford . . 
 
 Withdrawn. 
 
 J1 
 
 Tenant Right on Expiration 
 
 
 
 
 of Leases Bill 
 
 Mr. MulhoUand . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 99 
 
 Land Tenure, Ireland, Bill . 
 
 Mr. Butt . . , 
 
 Rejected. 
 
 1877 
 
 Land Tenure, Ireland, Bill . 
 
 Mr. Butt . . . 
 
 Rejected. 
 
 )) 
 
 Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, 
 
 
 
 
 Act, 1870, Amendment Bill 
 
 ■Mr. Crawford . . 
 
 Withdrawn. 
 
 1878 
 
 Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, 
 
 
 
 
 Act, 1870, Amendment Bill 
 
 Mr. Herbert . . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 ?» 
 
 Tenant Right Bill .... 
 
 Lord A. Hill . , 
 
 Rejected by Lords. 
 
 )) 
 
 Tenant Right. Ulster, Bill . 
 
 Mr. Macartney . 
 
 Withdrawn. 
 
 J) 
 
 Tenants' Improvements, Ire- 
 
 
 
 
 land, Bill 
 
 Mr. Martin. . . 
 
 Rejected. 
 
 
 Tenants' Protection, Ireland, 
 
 
 
 
 Bill 
 
 Mr. Moore . . . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 1879 
 
 Ulster Tenant Eight Bill . . 
 
 Mr. Macartney , 
 
 Rejected. 
 
 1) 
 
 Ulster Tenant Right Bill, 
 
 
 
 )9 
 
 No. 2 
 
 Lord A. Hill . . 
 
 Withdrawn. 
 
 Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, 
 
 
 Bill 
 
 Mr. Herbert . . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 )5 
 
 Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, 
 
 
 
 
 Act, 1870, Amendment Bill 
 
 Mr. Taylor . . . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 )> 
 
 Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, 
 Act, 1870, Amendment Bill, 
 
 
 
 
 No. 2 
 
 Mr. Downing . . 
 
 Rejected. 
 
 (i 
 
 Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, 
 
 
 
 i88o< =« 
 
 Act, 1870, Amendment Bill 
 
 Mr. Taylor. . . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 Is 
 
 Ulster Tenant Right Bill . . 
 
 Mr. Macartney . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 
 ' 
 
 Fixity of Tenure, Ireland, 
 
 
 
 
 
 Bill 
 
 Mr. Litton . . . 
 
 Rejected. 
 
 
 
 Landlord and Tenant, Ireland, 
 
 
 
 
 _o 
 
 Act, 1870, Amendment Bill 
 
 Mr. O'O. Power . 
 
 Dropped. 
 
 » • 
 
 1 
 
 Compensation for Disturb- 
 ance, Ireland, Bill (to pre- 
 vent eviction under circum- 
 stances of excessive hard- 
 
 
 
 
 
 ship) 
 
 Mr. W. E. Forster 
 
 Rejected by Lords. 
 
 1886 
 
 Tenants' Relief, Ireland, Bill 
 
 Mr. C. S. Parnell 
 
 Rejected. 
 
 1887 
 
 Arrears Bill 
 
 Mr. Parnell . . 
 
 Rejected. 
 
 1889 
 
 Agricultural Tenants, Ireland, 
 
 
 
 
 Bill 
 
 Mr. Crilly . . . 
 
 Rejected. 
 
2o6 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 The reader shall not be troubled with more than one or two 
 further quotations on the subject of this chapter. The first is 
 from the pen of Mr. James Bryce, M.P., writing in the Home 
 Rule Handbook (1887), and is only inserted here to show that 
 the Irish people have still serious reasons to doubt the willing- 
 ness of Parliament to render justice to Ireland : — 
 
 "The chief business of the session of 1880," Mr. Bryce 
 observes, " was the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, which 
 " Mr. Forster brought in for the sake of saving from immediate 
 " eviction tenants whom a succession of bad seasons had ren- 
 " dered utterly unable to pay their rents. This Bill was pressed 
 " through the House of Commons with the utmost difficulty, 
 " and at an expenditure of time which damaged the other work 
 " of the session, though the House continued to sit into Sep- 
 " tember. The Executive Government declared it to be neces- 
 " sary, in order not only to relieve the misery of the people, but 
 " to secure the tranquillity of the country. Nevertheless, the 
 " whole Tory party, and a considerable section of the Liberal 
 " party, opposed it in"the interests of the Irish landlords, and 
 " of economic principles in general ; principles which (as com- 
 " monly understand in England) it certainly trenched on. 
 " When it reached the House of Lords it was contemptuously 
 " rejected, and the unhappy Irish Secretary left to face as he 
 " best might the cries of a wretched peasantry and the rising 
 " tide of outrage. What was even more remarkable was the 
 " coolness with which the Liberal party took the defeat of a 
 " bill their leaders had pronounced absolutely needed. Had 
 " it been an English bill of the same consequence to England 
 " as it was to Ireland, the country would have been up in arms 
 " against the House of Lords, demanding the reform or the 
 " abolition of a Chamber which dared to disregard the will of 
 " the people. But nothing of the kind happened. It was 
 " only an Irish measure. We relieved ourselves by a few 
 " strong words, and the matter dropped." 
 
 In the session of 1887, Mr. Parnell presented his Arrears 
 Bill to Parliament with a similar result, the dissentient Liberals 
 making common cause with the Tories to secure its rejection. 
 But it is a remarkable fact that what they refused to the Irish 
 tenants they have granted to the Scotch crofters, more or less 
 liberally. In some instances, not only have reductions of from 
 
CONSTANT NEGLECT OF IRISH INTERESTS. 207 
 
 20 to 70 per cent, been made to the crofters, but their arrears 
 have been wiped out altogether when necessary. Nor does the 
 contrast stand alone. We have lately concluded the County 
 Councils' elections in England. It will be interesting to hear 
 how Parliament has dealt with this important question as regards 
 Ireland. Mr. John Morley, addressing the Oxford University 
 Union, on the 29th February 1888, said : — 
 
 " I will ask you for a single instant to listen to the history 
 " of the promise of the extension of local government in 
 " Ireland. In 1842, forty-six long years ago, a Commission 
 " reported in favour of amending the system of county govern- 
 " ment in Ireland. A bill was brought in to carry out that 
 " recommendation in 1849. It was rejected, and was brought in 
 "again in 1853. It was rejected, and in 1856 it was rejected ; 
 "and again, another in 1857, was also rejected. Then there 
 " was a pause in the process of rejection until 1868, when the 
 " Parliament and the Government of the day resorted to the 
 " soothing and comforting plan of appointing a Select Com- 
 " mittee, which, just like the previous Commission, issued a 
 " copious and admirable report, but nothing more was done. 
 "In 1875, a bill was brought in for county reform in Ireland, 
 " and in 1879 another bill was brought in, which did not touch 
 " the evils that called for remedy. In 188 1, in the time of the 
 " Gladstone administration, and at a time when Ireland, remem- 
 " ber, was in a thousand times a worse condition than the most 
 " sinister narrator can say she is in now, the Queen in her 
 " speech was made to say that a bill for the extension of local 
 " government of Ireland would be introduced, but nothing 
 " was done. In 1886 that distinguished man whom you had 
 " here last week himself said — I heard him say it one afternoon 
 " — made this promise in the name of the Government of which 
 "he was an important member : *It was the firm intention of 
 " the Government to bring in a measure with the view of 
 " placing all control of local government in Ireland in the hands 
 " of the Irish people.' Some of you cry, ' Hear, hear,' but 
 " that is all gone. Listen to what Lord Hartington, the master 
 " of the Government, has since said. The noble lord has said 
 " that no scheme for the extension of local government in 
 " Ireland can be entertained until there has been a definite 
 " repudiation of nationality by the Irish people (cheers). You 
 " will agree with me that it postpones the extension of local 
 
2o8 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION, 
 
 " f:jovernment in Ireland to a tolerably remote day (cheers). 
 " This is only one illustration among many others, which taken 
 " together, amount to a demonstration of the unfitness and in- 
 " competence of our Imperial Parliament for dealing with the 
 " political needs, the admitted and avowed political needs, of 
 " Ireland. One speaker said something about fisheries— there 
 "was a Select Committee appointed in 1884, and there was 
 " another Royal Commission reporting a few weeks ago on Irish 
 " industries generally, fisheries included ; hut I am not sanguine 
 " enough to think that more will be done in consequence of the 
 " recommendations of that Commission than has been done in 
 " consequence of the recommendations of others. Again, there 
 " are the Irish railways. On the question of railways, there 
 " was a Eoyal Commission in 1867, and a small committee was 
 "to report in 1868. There were copious and admirable re- 
 " ports. There is another copious and admirable report laid on 
 " the table of the House of Commons this week. Nothing has 
 " been done, and I do not believe anything will be done." 
 
 Strange language to come from an ex-Cabinet Minister, who 
 will probably be Prime Minister of England in due course. Yet 
 is it very much in the despairing tone of many other Englishmen, 
 more or less eminent, as, for instance, Sydney Smith, Goldwin 
 Smith, Lord Derby, &c. "What did Ireland ever ask that 
 " was granted ] what did she ever demand that was not re- 
 " fusedr' inquires Sydney Smith. — " Occasionally a serious effort 
 " has been made by an English statesman to induce Parliament 
 " to approach Irish questions in a spirit of sympathy, and with 
 " a desire to be just, but such efforts have hitherto met with no 
 "response," observes Mr. Goldwin SmitL — "It is regrettable 
 " that for the third time in less than a century, agitation, 
 " accompanied with violence, should have been shown to be 
 " the most effective instrument for redressing whatever Irishmen 
 " may be pleased to consider their wrongs," exclaims Lord 
 Derby. The two chapters following should convince any 
 reasonable man that the Irish are not to be blamed if they have 
 lost all confidence in the sincerity of Parliament to legislate in 
 a practical manner with a view to redress their grievances. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 A FURTHER PROOF ON THE SUBJECT— THE IRISH 
 
 FISHERIES. 
 
 "The Irish fisheries, if improved, would prove a mine under water, 
 " as rich as any under ground." — Sib William Temple. 
 
 The story of the Irish Fisheries " 'twere long to tell, and sad to 
 " trace." There cannot be a more disheartening subject than to 
 follow the contrast between what Ireland is and what Nature 
 intended her to be. Her coasts, rivers, and harbours are amongst 
 the finest in the world; but they are destitute of commerce. 
 Her shores teem with fish to an almost incredible extent ; but 
 the Irish are subject to the perpetual decree, sie vos non nobis. 
 Sir James "Ware {temp. James I.) reckoned amongst the advan- 
 tages of Ireland, "her great and plentiful fisheries of salmon, 
 "herring, and pilchards," while Sir "William Temple, who is 
 quoted at the head of this chapter, writing in the last century, 
 has observed : — 
 
 " Had it not been for circumstances prejudicial to the increase 
 " of trade and riches in the country, which seems natural, or 
 " at least to have ever been incident to the Government of 
 " Ireland, the native fertility of the Irish soil and seas in so 
 " many rich commodities, improved by a multitude of people and 
 " industry, with the advantage of so many excellent havens, and a 
 " situation so commodious for all foreign trade, must needs have 
 " rendered this kingdom one of the richest in Europe, and made 
 " a mighty increase both of strength and revenue to the crown 
 " of England." 
 
 " Next to the cultivation of land," observes Arthur Young, 
 in Part II. of his Tour (1777), "there is no object in the 
 " [Irish] national economy of so much importance. No manu- 
 
 o 
 
2IO A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " factures, no trade, can be of half the consequence to Ireland 
 " that many of her fisheries might prove if encouraged with 
 " judgment." 
 
 In proportion to the area of the country, the Irish coast line 
 is of exceptionally large extent, being estimated to exceed 2,500 
 miles. From an early period Ireland has been noted for the 
 great quantity of fish resorting to its shores. In the time of 
 Edward lY. the Irish fisheries were considered of so much 
 importance as to be made the subject of special legislation ; an 
 Act of the 5 th of his reign providing that no foreign vessel 
 should fish on the banks near the Irish coast, unless on payment 
 of an annual duty of 13s. 4d. — no such small sum in those 
 days. In 1556, Philip II., coming to know of this element of 
 national wealth through his connection with the Netherlands, 
 he agreed to pay ^^1,000 a year for permission to fish on the 
 northern coast for twenty-one years. Then the Dutch gave 
 Charles I. _;^3 0,000 for the privilege of fishing off the west 
 coast; and in 1650, that is, in the time of the Eepublic, 
 Sweden, in recompense for services to England, was permitted 
 to send 100 vessels to the Jrish fisheries. It is not necessary 
 to refer to the discouragement by England of the Irish fishing 
 industry previous to the Union. A single example of the kind 
 will suffice to show that the Irish fisheries were, in due course, 
 subjected to the same abominable treatment as Irish industries 
 generally. As far back as 1698 we find that petitions were 
 sent to the English Parliament from Folkestone and Aldborough, 
 which are mentioned in the Journals of the House of Commons, 
 complaining of the injury they sustained " by the Irish catching 
 " herrings at Waterford and Wexford, and sending them to the 
 "Streights, and thereby forestalling and ruining petitioners' 
 " markets." And there was one from Yarmouth to the efi'ect 
 that English, Scotch, and Dutch vessels were constantly taking 
 cargoes of fish from the Irish, and that if such were allowed 
 there was no use in trying to catch herrings in the English 
 Channel. The prayer of this petition was heard, and ordinances 
 were issued forbidding " any Irish to appear out of harbour, or 
 " fish whilst English fishermen were so engaged," according to 
 
THE IRISH FISHERIES. 2li 
 
 Davis's Irish Deep Sea Fisheries. This was not a little dis- 
 couraging. In 1786 the sea fishery became so extensive it was 
 found necessary to pass a special act to regulate it. There was 
 an export bounty of 2s. 4d. a barrel on herrings, but such was 
 the jobbery then prevalent, only ii|d. of the amount reached 
 the merchant. Professor Sullivan, the President of the Queen's 
 College, Cork, in his admirable Report on the Cork Exhibition 
 of 1883, mentions that during the existence of this bounty there 
 was a period in which it was not paid at all ; while an opposi- 
 tion import bounty on cured fish was regularly paid. If Ireland 
 could flourish under such a system of paternal government as this, 
 it must be, as suggested by Swift, " against every law of nature 
 " and reason, like the thorn of Glastonbury, that blossoms in 
 " the midst of the winter." But what has been the course of 
 English legislation on the subject since the Union in 1800. It 
 is told in a Parliamentary report of 1870, which has been 
 obligingly annotated for the present writer's information by Sir 
 Thomas Brady, the well-known Irish Inspector of Fisheries. 
 
 In the first years of the present century a company, aided by 
 the Marine Society of London, was formed with a capital of 
 p^5 0,000, to fish the Nymph Bank, a well-known fishing ground 
 off the Waterford coast. No Government aid was asked, and the 
 undertaking would have done much to develop the fishing 
 industry of the district. English jealousy prevailed, however. 
 On the introduction of a bill to enable the Company to proceed 
 with its operations, petitions against the project poured in from 
 Harwich, Gravesend, Feversham, and other fishing communities, 
 and the bill was thrown out on the second reading in 1804. 
 In 18 1 9 it Avas decided to extend to Ireland the same system of 
 bounties and other encouragement to the fisheries which had 
 been for some time previously in operation in England and 
 Scotland. An act was accordingly passed appointing a Fishery 
 Board for Ireland. Notwithstanding a gross abuse of adminis- 
 tration, which permitted to be expended on salaries ^^68,1 42, 
 against a total expenditure on the fisheries of only ;^i63,376, 
 the period (1819-30) during which the Irish fisheries were thus 
 encouraged was one of unexampled prosperity. The number af 
 
212 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 vessels in receipt of bounty rose from 27 in 1819 to 12,611 in 
 1829, and the men employed from 188 to 63,421 in the same 
 period. In 1830 bounties were discontinued, for England 
 and Scotland as well as Ireland, and the Irish Fishery Board 
 was abolished. From 1809 to 1829 Scotland had received 
 for her fisheries ;^i,i89,744; Ireland, during same period, 
 ^330,000. And although bounties were discontinued in 
 Scotland as in Ireland, Scotland retained every other advantage, 
 including an efficient Fishery Board and staff of officers. The 
 highly advantageous branding system continued there also to 
 stimulate the enormous exportation of fish ; and ;^5oo a year 
 was granted for repairing boats of poor fishermen. Nor was 
 this all. From Parliamentary returns for 1842, it appears that 
 in the twelve years subsequent to 1829, Scotland received in 
 Government grants for her fisheries ^^192,977 — Ireland, 
 nothing. But whose fault was this, that the Scotch were so 
 highly favoured, while the Irish fisheries were left out in the 
 cold? There is but one answer to such a question. The 
 majority of the Irish Parliamentary representatives were, up to 
 the date of the Parnell movement, the most unpatriotic and self- 
 seeking body that ever betrayed any kingdom. In 1838, a biU 
 was introduced by the then Chief Secretary, Lord Morpeth, to 
 give effect to certain recommendations, especially with regard 
 to loans, of a Commission on Irish Fisheries appointed a few 
 years previously. This time it was our Scotch friends — and they 
 are true friends of both England and Ireland now — who sent up 
 a dismal chant. Leith, Montrose, Eyemouth, Stromness, and 
 other places petitioned against the bill. A hostile deputation, 
 headed by the Duke of Sutherland, waited on the Govern- 
 ment, and finally the bill was withdrawn. In 1849 another 
 attempt was made to revive the Irish fisheries. The usual 
 Parliamentary Select Committee was resorted to, only " to baffle 
 " and delude " the Irish^as the Times said of one of the same 
 type seven years previously — and the matter ended there. In 
 1852 a comprehensive bill, supported by the entire public 
 opinion of Ireland, was introduced by an Ulster man, Mr. 
 Connolly, membej for Donegal, but without success. In 1866, 
 
THE IRISH FISHERIES. 213 
 
 & Munster man, Mr. J. A. Blake, introduced a still better bill on 
 the subject. It was referred to the customary Select Committee, 
 •which reported favourably on its provisions ; and there the 
 matter ended, in strict accordance with the prescribed routine. 
 Nor was any practical benefit conferred on the Irish sea fisheries 
 until 1874, when, after years of agitation on the subject, a fund, 
 amounting to about _;^7o,ooo, which had lain in the hands of 
 the Treasury since 1822, the year of one of the great famines, 
 and which was the balance of charitable contributions collected 
 for the relief of distress in that year, and called the Irish Re- 
 productive Fund, was transferred to the Irish Inspectors, for 
 advancement in loans to fishermen. The effort to get anything 
 out of the Treasury for the benefit of Ireland — even her own 
 money — involves a prolonged struggle which has often deterred 
 men from making the attempt. It is sincerely to be hoped 
 that " My Lords " condescended to pay compound interest for 
 thirty years on the _;^7o,ooo, when transferring the principal to 
 the Irish Fishery Inspectors for a loan fund. 
 
 From 1830 the Irish fisheries declined seriously (in 1836 
 boats had decreased by 2,500 and crews by 10,000 men), and 
 were almost extinguished by the famine, from the effects of 
 which they have never recovered. The number of boats now 
 fishing is 5,785, crews 21,825, as compared with boats 12,611, 
 crews 63,421, in 1829. The Statesman's Year Book gives the 
 value of the fish landed in 1887, according to ofi&cial returns, in 
 England, ^^4, 104,445 > Scotland, ^^1,396,963 ; Ireland (1886), 
 ;^643,ooo. Ireland is a poor country, her fisheries are to her of 
 vital importance, and are admittedly undeveloped. The loan 
 fund is quite inadequate to supply first-class boats, that is boats 
 of fifteen tons and upwards, of which England has over 3,000, 
 Scotland 4,000, Ireland but 516. Yet Ireland is admittedly 
 favoured in regard to the natural advantages she possesses for 
 fishing industries. Her white fish is famous for its fine 
 qualities ; and the haddock of Dublin Bay are celebrated for 
 their delicacy of flavour. The harvest of the sea requires no 
 busy or laborious spring time to precede it ; no sun to colour 
 and ripen it ; no cultivation of any kind to bring it to maturity. 
 
214 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 Nothing is required but the means to gather it ; and statesmen 
 are not ashamed to abdicate this primary duty of government 
 to provide the means to encourage a great national industry 
 (and thus secure a nursery for our navy); allowing it to be 
 discharged, as best it may, by private benevolence. Yet the 
 security which these poor Irish fishermen have to offer should 
 entitle them to more generous dealing. . Here is how the Tory 
 St. James's Gazette set forth their undoubted claims in an 
 article which appeared in that journal on the 30th of October 
 1886 :— 
 
 " In every case in which money has been advanced for the 
 *' development of an Irish fishery the result has been satisfactory. 
 "Lady Burdett-Coutts had at one time ;^i 0,000 out on free 
 " loan in the town of Baltimore [County Cork], and repayments 
 " have been unfailingly punctual, while Baltimore itself has 
 " grown from nothing into a great fishing port. Fifty times that 
 " amount has been advanced in the aggregate at other places by 
 "various persons, and it has all been repaid. The Fishery 
 " Commissioners advanced ;^20,ooo in County Clare, and only 
 " ;£^30 remained unpaid. The general result has been to 
 " enormously increase the fishery trade of the south-western 
 " counties — Cork, Kerry, and Clare — as well as to create other 
 " trades which depend upon the fisheries. In former times we 
 "had recourse to the bounty system. In 181 9 a bounty 
 " was given for fish taken, for fish cured, and for boats built. 
 " That ceased when the Fishery Commission ceased ; but 
 " whereas in Scotland the fishermen had enjoyed the bounties 
 " for about three-score years, and had been well set going, the 
 " Irish fishermen enjoyed them only for three years. This is 
 " one of the most clearly defined of Irish grievances." 
 
 It is only necessary to add one more fact, which, however, 
 is very instructive, for the Court as well as the Parliament. 
 When the Baroness Burdett-Coutts goes to Ireland to see how 
 her humble proteges are getting on, no princess in Europe, 
 crowned or uncrowned, receives a more enthusiastic and respect- 
 ful welcome from her people. Nor does any princess in Europe 
 better deserve it. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 A FINAL PROOF ON THE SUBJECT— THE WASTE 
 
 LANDS. 
 
 " Is it conceivable that an English govertiment and an English parlia- 
 " ment, omnipotent within a great Empire, cannot come forward, and 
 " by a strong will, and strong hand, and strong resolve, do whatever is 
 " necessary to be done with regard to the condition of Ireland ? " — John 
 Bright (1880). 
 
 Throughout the history of Imperial legislation for Ireland, 
 there is, perhaps, no other instance of a public work of such 
 obvious importance, and recommended with so much authority, 
 as the reclamation of waste lands, which has been again and 
 again overlooked or cast aside as if by a decree of fate. Legis- 
 lation on the subject has at various times been advanced a stage, 
 two stages, and even three stages, but always with the same 
 result, to return to its authors like the labours of Sisyphus. 
 " Give us," said William III.'s Dutch settlers, " our own law 
 " of empoldering, and we will reclaim the Bog of Allen." But 
 their request was unheeded, and the bog still lies unreclaimed. 
 In 1732, a bill of Arthur Dobbs, afterwards Governor of Caro- 
 lina, for the Reclamation of Waste Lands, was carried through 
 both Houses of the Irish Parliament ; but the indispensable 
 sanction of the Crown was refused, almost as a matter of course. 
 In 1809 an English Royal Commission made four separate 
 reports on the subject, which received no attention. In 18 10 
 there was a Commission "on bogs and accounts;" and in 18 14 
 a Commission on bogs only. Then there was a perfect rage for 
 Parliamentary Committees on reclamation ; as if to show that 
 those who had carried the Union by bribery, corruption, insur- 
 rection, and false promises, meant at last to fulfil the latter. In 
 1810-11-13-14-19-23-30-35 there were Select Committees. 
 
2i6 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION". 
 
 The last four of the series particularly recommended that the 
 Irish " "wastes " should be reclaimed, but waste they still remain. 
 In 1815, a Parliamentary Commission, composed of Mr. Nimmo, 
 the celebrated Scotch engineer, Mr. (afterwards Sir Eichard) 
 Griffith, and other men of distinction, reported in favour of a 
 scheme of reclamation, after an inquiry extending over several 
 years, and personally visiting nearly every county in Ireland, 
 but nothing came of it. Sixty years ago a bill on the subject 
 passed three readings in the House of Commons, two readings 
 in the House of Lords, was referred to a Committee of Peers, 
 was reported on favourably, and yet did not become law. Just 
 by way of lending the semblance of variety if not reality to the 
 joke, there was a Committee on the Poor, presided over by Mr. 
 Spring Eice (afterwards Lord Monteagle), in 1830, which re- 
 ported as follows : — 
 
 " When the immense importance of bringing into a productive 
 " state five millions of acres, now lying waste, is considered, it 
 " cannot but be a subject of regret and surprise that no greater 
 " progress in this undertaking has yet been made. ... If this 
 " work could be accomplished, not only would it afford a tran- 
 " sitory but a permanent demand for productive labour, accom- 
 " panied by a corresponding rise of wages and improvement in 
 " the condition of the poor. The severe pressure of clearing 
 " farms and ejecting sub-tenants might be thus mitigated, and 
 " the general condition of the peasantry improved." 
 
 This committee must have been overcome by the evidence 
 before them as to the appalling condition of the Irish poor in 
 those days, as in these, or they could never have forgotten that 
 if the landlords' sport of ejectment and eviction ceased, there 
 would be no employment, no occupation for the military forces 
 of the Crown, and the other resources of civilisation, in Ireland. 
 Parliament accordingly treated the recommendation of their 
 own committee with the contempt they thought it deserved ; 
 and the sport of eviction has proceeded gaily from that day to 
 this in the "sister" country. In 183 1 there were actually 
 Treasury " Minutes " on the subject ; and "My Lords " recom- 
 mended the Commissioners of Woods and Forests to set to 
 
THE WASTE LANDS. 217 
 
 work — in a country where there are no forests — on the Crown 
 bog-lands. In this way some 400 acres were reclaimed at a 
 place named Pobble O'Keefe (King William's Town), in Kerry, 
 " with great profit and advantage " it was reported. A Mr. 
 "Weale was despatched to the scene of operations to make an 
 official inquiry on the subject in behalf of the Government. 
 He set forth the result of his investigations as follows : — 
 
 " I could scarcely credit the evidence of my senses, that such 
 " extensive tracts of land, presenting a variety of fertile soils, 
 " and combining many other natural advantages, which were 
 " obviously capable of contributing largely to the wealth and 
 " prosperity of the nation, had not participated in the general 
 " improvement of the country, and remained neglected by the 
 " hand of civilisation from the period at which its ancient 
 " proprietors, the last Earls of Desmond, had been dispossessed 
 " of it." 
 
 Edmund Spenser has explained how these " last Earls " were 
 driven to rebel by Elizabeth's commanders with a distinct view 
 to their dispossession. This, by the way. "Weale also reported 
 officially, that " this large district of country contained but two 
 " small villages, and only two resident proprietors, the distance 
 "between whose houses is thirty-eight British miles." The 
 rest were absentees, he said ; and we may reasonably conclude 
 that those gentry now exerted themselves vigorously, as did 
 their class in the reign of Edward I., and in every reign since, 
 including the present, to dissuade " My Lords " and the Com- 
 missioners of Woods and Forests from proceeding in their mad 
 career towards the extinction of turbulence and discontent in 
 the district of Pobble O'Keefe or elsewhere. Anyhow, "My 
 " Lords " were pleased there and then to draw rein, perhaps not 
 reluctantly, and the grand scheme of reclamation of Irish waste 
 lands vanished like a pleasant dream. But the Commissions 
 and Select Committees lived on notwithstanding, and continued 
 to issue reports and recommendations as before ; still indulging 
 the Irish in the pleasures of hope, while memory might have 
 warned that most sanguine and too credulous people that the 
 pretence of reclaiming this desert of theirs was as delusive as 
 
2i8 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 the mirage which ensnares the fainting traveller to his destruc- 
 tion in the far-off regions of another continent. A Select Com- 
 mittee in 1835 reported to Parliament as follows : — 
 
 " These reports [Weale's and such like] point out the advan- 
 " tages derivable to the state, the community, the labouring 
 " classes, and to England, from reclaiming the waste lands of 
 " Ireland, and are founded on the most convincing evidence of 
 " the facility with which such wastes may be reclaimed. But 
 " it appears from the evidence obtained by your committee, 
 " that no efforts have beeen made to realise the advantages 
 " pointed out, except in a few instances. In these, however, 
 " the success has been most complete, and, therefore, present 
 " undeniable proofs of the practicability and importance of the 
 " operations proposed in the reports." 
 
 Hope told a flattering tale in this instance, as in so many 
 others, for it even imposed upon a man of robust intellect like 
 Archbishop "Whately. He now took up the question ; got 
 another Commission appointed to deal with it, in 1836 ; obtained 
 from that body a favourable report; and still the fates pre- 
 vailed. Mr. George Poulett Scrope, M.P. for Stroud, a 
 distinguished geologist and writer on social reforms, devoted 
 a considerable portion of his parliamentary life to advocating 
 the desirability of reclamation, with a pertinacity worthy of 
 success, but all in vain. In 1842, Sir Kobert Peel took the 
 matter in hand in a practical manner, by initiating a scheme of 
 arterial drainage, which, however, collapsed under the pressure 
 of the great famine a few years later. In 1845, the celebrated 
 Devon Commission reported " that there was scarcely any 
 " subject upon which evidence was so concurrent as the desirable- 
 " ness of Waste Lands Reclamation ; " but, like a good many more 
 of the desirable reforms suggested in the same quarter, this also 
 fell upon deaf ears. In 1847, Lord John Eussell, then Prime 
 Minister, brought forward an elaborate proposal on the subject, 
 which met with the usual fate in due course, this time falling 
 " prostrate before a bland admonition " of Sir Robert Peel 
 himself, according to Mr. Disraeli. Finally, after more than a 
 quarter of a century had elapsed, Mr. J. G. M'Carthy, ex-M.P. 
 
THE WASTE LANDS. 219 
 
 for Mallow, and now an Irish Land Commissioner, courageously 
 attempted to resuscitate an interest in the question in Parlia- 
 ment by the introduction of a "Waste Lands (Ireland) Bill" 
 in 1875. How that honourable gentleman struggled against 
 the fates, and was rewarded for his temerity, when he thought 
 success was almost within his grasp, by being worsted in the 
 struggle, had best be told in his own words, perhaps, as set forth 
 in the course of a letter in the Times of October 28, 1879 : — 4 
 
 " The great national work of arterial drainage is at a stand- 
 " still. To remedy this state of things," observes Mr. M'Carthy, 
 "I brought in the 'Waste Lands (Ireland) Bill' of 1875. It 
 " was substantially an embodiment of Lord John Russell's 
 " proposal of 1847, to which I have referred. The then Chief 
 " Secretary, Sir M. Hicks-Beach, admitted that ' the attention 
 " of the House could hardly be occupied with any question of 
 " greater importance,' and suggested that, * if anything could be 
 " done by way of Government interference to secure that works 
 " of arterial drainage should be more generally carried out, that, 
 " indeed, would be a matter which the State could reasonably 
 " undertake.' I re-modelled my measure in deference to the 
 " Governmental suggestion. The Waste Land Bill of 1878 was 
 " mainly a proposal to promote arterial drainage on the principle 
 " of Sir Robert Peel's legislation of 1842 ; but, of course, it 
 " retained Lord John Russell's peasant proprietary proposals. It 
 " was prepared with great technical skill by Mr. George Orme 
 " Malley, Q.C., whose work is the authority on the drainage 
 " question. It was supported by Irish members of all sections, 
 " and by English members so distinguished and so various in 
 " their standpoints as Mr. Bright and Sir Robert Peel, 3»Ir. 
 " Cowen and Sir Eardley Wilmot, Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. 
 " Read, Sir Charles Forster and Lord Kensington, Sir Francis 
 *' Goldsmid and Lord de Grey. But, as so often happens with 
 " Irish Bills, just as the division was about to be taken, a crowd 
 " of honourable members, who perhaps never set foot in Ireland 
 " or even heard a word of the debate, rushed from club and 
 " smoking-room, and caused the rejection of the bill by a small 
 " majority. If it had been passed reproductive works would 
 " now be in beneficent operation all over Ireland, and no 
 " danger of famine would exist." 
 
 -'n^ 
 
 So far Mr. J. G. M'Carthy. In England more than seven 
 
220 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 millions of acres of waste lands have been reclaimed since 1820. 
 In France more than four millions have been reclaimed since 
 1830, In Prussia more than a million of acres have been 
 reclaimed since 1872. In Ireland, where the waste lands 
 extend over one-fifth of the entire surface of the country, 
 nothing worth recalling has been done towards their reclamation. 
 The fates are clearly against it. Mr. Bright — not hoping but 
 despairing — dwelt upon the subject with his customary elo- 
 quence in the course of a speech in the House of Commons in 
 1880, and he was rewarded with " loud cheers " for his pains : — 
 
 " In the year 1847, in January of that year," Mr. Bright said, 
 " I recollect hearing Lord John Russell, in the House of Com- 
 " mons, explaining the objects and intentions of the Government 
 " with regard to some provision for the famine that was then 
 " overtaking the Irish people, and one of the proposals was 
 " this — to take into the hands of the Government, through 
 " some managing power and authority, waste lands in Ireland 
 " which were capable of being profitably cultivated, and by some 
 " arrangements finding homes, and farms, and employment for a 
 " considerable number of people. Now, Ireland contains about 
 " twenty millions of acres. I do not know the number of acres 
 " that may be called waste lands. I have heard it put at two 
 " millions and more, but I will assume, for the sake of my 
 *' illustration, that there are one million of acres in Ireland 
 " that are capable of cultivation, and would repay the cultivator ; 
 " and that it would be as wise to cultivate as the average portion 
 " of the Irish land that is now cultivated. Well, what would a 
 " million acres do 1 It would make not less than 40,000 farms 
 " of 25 acres each. It would be possible, probably, to bring 
 " over from those extreme western parts, where the climate is 
 " precarious, and the land so stoney and so poor — it might be 
 " possible to invite little farmers, peasant occupiers from those 
 " districts, and to place them upon waste lands thus divided 
 " and thus cultivated. "What is a million ; what is five millions ; 
 " what is ten millions to this country to pursue to a successful 
 "issue a great question like this? ... Is it conceivable that 
 " an English Government and an English Parliament, omni- 
 *' potent within a great Empire, cannot come forward, and by a 
 " strong will, and strong hand, and strong resolve, do what- 
 " ever is necessary to be done with regard to the condition of 
 " Ireland t" 
 
THE WASTE LANDS. 221 
 
 Many other glaring examples of the same kind might be 
 enumerated exemplifying the habitual disregard of Irish interests 
 by Parliament. It has been the misfortune of the Legislature, 
 when attempting to do anything at aU, to deal out half measures 
 only, and do nothing heartily. The Tithes Act for the relief of 
 Irish Catholics from an odious impost was only conceded after 
 a series of murderous pitched battles had taken place between 
 the peasantry and the police engaged in the levy. Yet it re- 
 lieved nobody except the parsons — of the odium of collection — 
 for the Catbolics continued to pay tithes just the same, in the 
 shape of increased rackreuts to the landlords. The Encumbered 
 Estates Act in like manner, from which so much was promised, 
 resulted in nothing but further grievous wrong and disappoint- 
 ment. Mr. Gladstone has emphatically declared that, by the 
 criminal neglect of the Legislature, it led to wholesale confisca- 
 tion of the laborious agricultural improvements of the Irish 
 tenants. The Irish Church affords another case in point. For 
 forty years it had figured in parliamentary debate as a kind of 
 ecclesiastical " Aunt Sally." English and Scotch representative 
 men of the most diverse creeds and politics relieved their souls 
 from time to time by pelting it with missiles out of the dust- 
 heap. " Why cumbereth it the ground t " was persistently asked, 
 until Mr. Gladstone laid his axe to the root of this " upas-tree," 
 splitting up the trunk to satisfy the religious world that it was 
 a thing without virtue or vitality. Yet the present Lord Derby 
 asked the House of Lords in 1870, "whether the Irish Church 
 " would not now have been probably standing upon its legs 
 " [though morally it had not a leg to stand upon] but for the 
 " Fenian organisation." Of course it would ; and men's minds 
 are now filled with well-founded apprehension by the mournful 
 fact that the class to which Lord Derby himself belongs, and 
 with which he appears to be in duU agreement, will come to 
 no terms of rational compromise with the people, either in 
 Scotland or Ireland, in regard to the land, till the working 
 classes of the three kingdoms take to breaking windows, .as 
 in 1831-32. 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 "THE EVER-FAILING AND EVER-POISONOUS 
 MEDICINE." 
 
 " Coercion ! damnable coercion ! What has been the ruin of Ireland 
 " but this accursed coercion 1 " — Sir Chaelks Napieb ok Scindk. 
 
 If remedial legislation was seldom forthcoming for Ireland there 
 was always plenty of coercion in store for her. This policy of 
 coercion has been one of the great distinguishing features in 
 the history of the Legislative Union between Great Britain and 
 Ireland. It has been carried out almost without intermission 
 since 1800. The Acts of Parliament embodying it have been 
 called by various titles, many of them seemingly harmless. 
 They are hardly ever called Coercion Acts — they are Arms 
 Acts, Suppression of Disturbance Acts, Change of Venue Acts, 
 Public Peace Acts, Outrage Acts, Crime and Outrage Acts, 
 Peace Preservation Acts, Protection of Life and Property Acts, 
 Crimes Acts, Criminal Law and Procedure Acts, &c. But 
 whatever the title, every one of the Acts referred to, of which 
 there have been eighty-seven, suspended, in one respect or 
 another, and for varying periods, the ordinary law and the 
 operation of one or more of the fundamental principles of the 
 British Constitution, under the pretext of putting down crime, 
 but in reality to maintain a shameful system of misgovernment. 
 Of the Act of 1887, Mr. Gladstone has thus severely written, 
 in a published letter dated the 31st of May 1887 : — 
 
 " It is pretended that we are legislating against crime. Be 
 " it known to you that there is less crime in Ireland per million 
 " than there is in England or in Scotland, and the bill which 
 " pretends to legislate against crimes really legislates against 
 " measures similar to those which are adopted by trades-unions 
 
EVER-FAILING AND EVER-POISONOUS MEDICINE. 223 
 
 " in England — the bill legislates against combinations and not 
 " against crime, or rather against combinations, while professing 
 " to legislate against crime. The bill is itself a crime." 
 
 Brougham spoke as follows in the House of Commons in 
 opposition to one of those enactments, on the 26th June 1823, 
 as reported in the fourth volume of his Speeches : — 
 
 " It cannot be denied that the sole object of England has 
 " been to render Ireland a safe neighbour. AVe have been 
 " stewards over her for this long period of time. I repeat we 
 " shall one day have to give an account of our stewardship — a 
 " black account it will be, but it must be forthcoming. AVhat 
 " have we done for the country which we are bound to aid, 
 " protect, and cherish ? In our hands her population seems a 
 " curse to her rather than a blessing. ... In England justice 
 " is delayed, but thank Heaven it can never be sold. In Ireland 
 " it is sold to the rich, refused to the poor, and delayed to all. 
 " We stand, as regards Ireland, on the brink of a precipice. 
 " We are driving six millions of people to despair, to madness ! 
 ". . . The greatest mockery of all — the most intolerable insult — 
 " the course of peculiar exasperation — against which I chiefly 
 " caution the House, is the undertaking to cure the distress 
 " under which she labours by anything in the shape of new 
 " penal enactments. It is in these enactments alone that we 
 " have ever shown our liberality to Ireland. She has received 
 " penal laws from the hands of England almost as plentifully 
 " as she has received blessings from the hands of Providence. 
 " What have these laws done 1 Checked her turbulence, but 
 " not stifled it. The grievance remaining perpetual, the com- 
 " plaint can only be postponed. We may load her with chains, 
 " but in doing so we shall not better her condition. By coercion 
 " we may goad her on to fury, but by coercion we shall never 
 " break her spirit She will rise up and break the fetters we 
 " impose, and arm herself for deadly violence with the frag- 
 "ments." 
 
 The political speeches of Bulwer are so seldom quoted now-a- 
 days, the following passage from one delivered on Coercion in 
 the House of Commons, on the 27th of February 1833, ^J ^ini» 
 will be read with interest at the present time. He spoke as 
 follows on a motion of Lord Althorp to introduce one more 
 bill to secure further repressive legislation for Ireland : — 
 
224 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " "We take the time for exercising new coercions at the very 
 " moment when, by our new experiment of conciliation, we 
 " have virtually declared that seven centuries of coercion 
 " have been unavailing," observes this eminent Conservative 
 statesman. . . . "I am sure that no people on the face 
 " of the earth can be governed by the system his Majesty's 
 " ministers propose. To-day concession ; to-morrow coercion. 
 "... This system, at once feeble and exasperating, of allow- 
 " ing the justice of complaint, and yet of stifling its voice ; 
 " of holding out hopes and fears, terror and conciliation, all 
 " in a breath ; is a system . . . that would make the most 
 " credulous people distrustful, and the mildest people ferocious. 
 "... Do what you will ; if you pass these laws, I warn you 
 " that it will be in vain. You can never counterbalance, in the 
 "opinion of the Irish people, this attack upon the vitals of 
 " their freedom. No individual reforms, however salutary, 
 " can pacify or content a nation that you rob of its constitution. 
 "... You flatter yourselves that under shelter of those laws 
 " you will be able, with efiect, to apply your remedial measures ; 
 " it is just the reverse ; they will blight all your remedies, and 
 " throw their own withering shadow over all your concessions. 
 " I do not fear an open rebellion against the armed force and 
 " discipline of England ; but if you madden the people, it is 
 " impossible to calculate the strength of insanity. But I allow 
 " that an open rebellion is the least evil to be feared ; I fear 
 " more a sullen, bitter, unforgiving recollection, which will dis- 
 " trust all our kindness, and misinterpret all our intentions ; 
 " which will take all grace from our gifts ; which will ripen a 
 " partial into a general desire for a separate legislature, by a 
 " settled conviction of the injustice of this, so that at last the 
 " English people themselves, worn out with unavailing experi- 
 " ments, wearied with an expensive and thankless charge, and 
 " dissatisfied with a companionship which gives them nothing 
 " but the contagion of its own diseases, will be the first to ask 
 " for that very dismemberment of the Empire which we are 
 " now attempting to prevent." 
 
 The years have nearly trebled since Brougham and Bulwer 
 thus spoke, and the Coercion Acts have more than trebled with 
 them. Mr. Bright frequently denounced, also in vain, the 
 administration of the same "ever-failing and ever-poisonous 
 " medicine," as he termed it, speaking in the House of Commons 
 on the 17th of February 1866; that is, forty-three years after 
 
EVER-FAILING AND EVER-POISONOUS MEDICINE. 225 
 
 Brougham. But Parliament has only one remedy for the 
 various diseases which afflict unhappy Ireland. It may be 
 likened to that of the successful candidate for the degree of 
 doctor of medicine in Molifere's Le Malade Imaginaire, who 
 had but one course of treatment for all diseases : — " Clysterium 
 donate, postea seignare, ensuita purgare ; " and was at no loss if 
 the patient was no better for this specific, but boldly ordered 
 it to be repeated : — " Reseignare, repurgare, et reclysterisare ! " 
 
 Here is a tabulated list of our Parliamentary " doses " since 
 the Union (from which Ireland was told to expect innumerable 
 blessings), all carefully labelled, so that he who runs may read : — 
 
 ^to° t Habeas Corpus Suspension, 
 g (Seven Coercion Acts. 
 
 1807 1st February, Coercion Act. 
 1807 Habeas Corpus Suspension. 
 1807 2nd August, Insurrection Act. 
 1808-9 Habeas Corpus Suspension. 
 
 1814) 
 
 to y 
 
 1816J 
 
 Habeas Corpus Suspension. 
 Insurrection Act. 
 
 1817 Habeas Corpus Suspension. 
 
 1817 One Coercion Act. 
 
 iS22\ Habeas Corpus Suspension. 
 
 to VTwo Coercion Acts in 1822 and 
 1830 j one in 1823. 
 
 1830 Importation of Arms Act. 
 
 1831 Whiteboy Act. 
 
 1831 Stanley's Anns Act. 
 
 1832 Arms and Gunpowder Act. 
 
 1833 Suppression of Disturbance. 
 
 1833 Change of Venue Act. 
 
 1834 Disturbances Amendment and 
 
 Continuance. 
 
 1834 Arms and Gunpowder Act. 
 
 1835 Public Peace Act. 
 
 1836 Another Arms Act. 
 
 1838 Another Arms Act. 
 
 1839 Unlawful Oaths Act. 
 
 1840 Another Arms Act. . 
 
 1 841 Outrages Act. 
 1841 Another Arms Act. 
 1843 Another Arms Act. 
 
 1843 Act Consolidating all Preyious 
 
 Coercion Acts. 
 
 1844 Unlawful Oaths Act. 
 
 1845 Additional Constables near 
 
 Public Works Act. 
 
 1845 Unlawful Oaths Act. 
 
 1846 Constabulary Enlargement. 
 
 1847 Crime and Outrage Act. 
 
 1848 Treason Amendment Act. 
 
 1848 Removal of Arms Act. 
 
 1848 Suspension of Habeas Corpus. 
 
 1848 Another Oaths Act. 
 
 1849 Suspension of Habeas Corpus. 
 
 1850 Crime and Outrage Act. 
 
 1851 Unlawful Oaths Act. 
 
 1853 Crime and Outrage Act. 
 
 1854 Crime and Outrage Act. 
 
 1855 Crime and Outrage Act. 
 
 1856 Peace Preservation Act. 
 1858 Peace Preservation Act. 
 i860 Peace Preservation Act. 
 1862 Peace Preservation Act. 
 1862 Unlawful Oaths Act. 
 
 1865 Peace Preservation Act. 
 
 1866 Suspension of Habeas Corpus 
 
 Act (August). 
 
 1866 Suspension of Habeas Corpus. 
 
 1867 Suspension of Habeas Corpus. 
 
 1868 Suspension of Habeas Corpus. 
 
 1870 Peace Preservation Act. 
 
 1871 Protection of Life and Property. 
 1871 Peace Preservation Con. 
 
 1873 Peace Preservation Act. 
 1875 Peace Preservation Act. 
 1875 Unlawful Oaths Act. 
 
 ^ . * I Peace Preservation Acts (sus- 
 gg J pending Habeas Corpus). 
 
 1881) 
 to vArms Act. 
 
 1886 j 
 1882 ) 
 
 to ). Crimes Act. 
 188s) 
 1886) 
 
 to )'Arms Act. 
 
 1887 j 
 
 1887 Criminal Law and Procedure 
 (Ireland) Act. 
 
226 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 Under the title of Coercion vnthout Crime, the following 
 pages were published by the present writer as a Tract in 1887. 
 They contain no more than a summary of the charges of Her 
 Majesty's Judges to the various Grand Juries throughout 
 Ireland — noAV proclaimed under the Coercion Act — at the 
 Summer Assizes of 1887, held at the very time the Coercion 
 Bill was passing through Parliament. Mr. Gladstone was 
 pleased to address the author the following letter on receipt of 
 a copy, which doubtless secured it the exceptional attention 
 it immediately received in the press, many of the newspapers 
 reprinting its contents in their columns in extenso : — 
 
 "Hawaeden Castle, 
 August ID, 1887. 
 
 " Dear Sir, — The evidence which you have supplied in your 
 " tract, Coercion without Crime, from the charges of the Judges, 
 " reporting on matters of fact within their judicial cognisance, 
 " appears to illustrate vividly the freedom of Ireland from 
 " crinie ; and, unless it can be effectually answered, to illustrate 
 " strongly the absurdity as well as the cruelty of the measure 
 " which was directed by the Legislature against combination 
 " under the name of crime, and which is now at bye-elections 
 " coming under review by a portion of the constituencies of the 
 " country. Your faithful servant, W. E, Gladstone." 
 
 It is only necessary to add, that it was lately sworn in 
 evidence before the Parnell Commission by the manager of the 
 Times, that the facsimile of one of Mr, Parnell's forged letters 
 was printed in that journal on the morning of the second read- 
 ing of the Coercion Bill — which bill Mr. Gladstone describes 
 as a crime in itself — with a distinct view to influence the result 
 of the division then about to take place. Under all the circum- 
 stances, the Tract has by no means lost its exceptional value as 
 an epitome of judicial facts versus ministerial fictions : — 
 
 Antrim Co. (Population, 421,943). 
 
 Mr. Justice Holmes to the Grand Jury of Antrim Co. : — 
 
 " He saw that there were in all twenty bills to go before 
 "them. He had looked into the character of the offences 
 
EVER-FAILING AND EVER-POISONOUS MEDICINE. 227 
 
 "they represented, and found they were such as might be ex- 
 " pected to arise naturally under any circumstances in a thickly 
 " populated community and a large town. There seemed, as 
 " far as he could see, to be nothing exceptional in any of the 
 " cases, and he was informed by his brother judge — and he had 
 " looked through them with the greatest care and detail — that, 
 " in his opinion, there did not arise anything upon which it 
 " was necessary to offer the grand jury any special instruction. 
 " He had been informed by Mr. Justice Andrews that he had 
 " carefully considered the returns presented to him, and that 
 " they indicated the state of the country since last assizes, and 
 " that he was of opinion the information they contained was of 
 " an eminently satisfactory character." 
 
 Aemaoh Co. (Population, 163,177). 
 
 Mr. Justice Andrews to the Grand Jury of Armagh Co. : — 
 
 " There are seven cases to be submitted to you for your con- 
 " sideration, and I do not find anything in them requiring 
 " observations from me. It gives me great pleasure to con- 
 " gratulate you on the orderly and well-behaved condition of 
 " your important county." 
 
 Carlow Co. (Population, 46,568). 
 
 Mr. Baron Dowse, to the Grand Jury of Carlow Co. : — 
 
 " He was glad to be able to inform them — and he believed it 
 " was a very usual announcement — that their labours at the 
 " present assizes would not be very much. There were only 
 " two bills to go before them. They had a right to be satisfied 
 " with the present condition of things." 
 
 Cavan Co. (Population, 129,476). 
 Mr. Justice Lawson to tlie Grand Jury of Cavan Co. : — • 
 
 "He was glad to observe that their duties were of a very 
 " light description. There were only three unimportant offences 
 " to be sent before them, and those were of a class they would 
 " find no difiiculty in disposing of, and required no observations 
 " from him." 
 
 Clake Co. (Population, 141,457). 
 Mr. Justice O'Brien to the Grand Jury of Clare Co. : — 
 
 "The criminal business you will have to deal with at the 
 " present assizes in performance of your duty as grand jurqrs 
 
228 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " consists of but very few cases. The cases that will be laid 
 " before you constitute but a very trifling amount. I have said 
 " that open crime is not the great evil of the county. You may 
 " leave crime entirely out of the question. There is, to a certain 
 " extent, an absence of open and serious crime." 
 
 Cork Co. (Population, 495,607). 
 Mr. Justice Johnson to the Grand Jury of Cork Co. : — 
 
 " The number of cases to go before you is not large, having 
 " regard to this great county, nor in their character are they 
 " very important." 
 
 Cork City (Population, 80,124). 
 Mr. Justice O'Brien to the Grand Jury of Cork City : — 
 
 " There are very few bills to be laid before you, one of them 
 " only of the least importance. I see reason to make, from the 
 " materials laid before me by the authorities, the general obser- 
 " vation, that this city practically is absolutely and entirely free 
 " from crime." 
 
 Donegal Co. (Population, 206,035). 
 
 Mr. Justice Lawson to the Grand Jury of Donegal Co. : — 
 
 " Congratulated them on the peaceful condition of the county 
 " as indicated by the circumstance that there were but four new 
 " bills to go before them, on none of which it was necessary to 
 " make any observation." 
 
 Down Co. (Population, 272,107). 
 
 Mr. Justice Holmes to the Grand Jury of Down Co. : — 
 
 " The bills that are to go before you are, having regard to the 
 " population and extent of the county, few, and the cases are 
 " of such a character, with, perhaps, one exception, as might be 
 " expected to arise in a thickly-populated community, present- 
 " ing no feature in either their character or their incidents that 
 " your own experience will not enable you to deal with." 
 
 Drogheda (Population, 12,297). 
 
 Mr. Justice Holmes to the Grand Jury of Drogheda, who pre- 
 sented him with a pair of tchite gloves : — 
 
 " It is, indeed, a matter of great satisfaction to me on this 
 " the first occasion that I have been called on to preside in a 
 
EVEK-FAILING AND EVEK-POISONOUS MEDICINE. 229 
 
 " court of assize to find the calendar a blank, and to be able to 
 " congratulate you heartily upon the freedom from crime which 
 " exists in the county of the town of Drogheda." 
 
 Fermanagh Co. (Population, 84,879). 
 
 Mr. Justice Murphy to the Grand Jury of Fermanagh Co. : — 
 
 " Nothing can exceed the peace and quiet obtaining in this, 
 " as I trust I may call it, your prosperous county. The bills to 
 *' go before you are only two in number." 
 
 Galwat Co. (Population, 242,005). 
 
 Lord Chief Baron to the Grand Jury of Galway Co. : — 
 
 " Regretted to say the number of cases to go before them was 
 " considerable — far more than was usual in this county. There 
 " were twenty- three cases to be tried, including four cases 
 " carried forward from the last assizes." 
 
 "Kerry Co. (Population, 201,039). 
 
 Mr. Justice O'Brien to the Grand Jury of Kerry Co. : — 
 
 " I need not say to you that the prominence the county of 
 " Kerry has occupied of late years in reference to crime makes 
 " its condition an object of great anxiety and inquiry, and from 
 " means of information afforded to me, including amongst other 
 " materials the usual returns presented by the constabulary to 
 " the judge of assize, it appears that the actual amount of crime 
 "is much less than for the corresponding period last year. 
 " That diminution is capable of being traced through almost all 
 " the classes of crime which are in their own nature necessarily 
 " connected with the state of the county ; in particular the 
 " ofiFence which is commonly know as moonlighting, and which 
 " is the cause of so much terror and alarm to the well-disposed 
 " in this county, for a considerable period of time seems to have 
 " almost entirely disappeared." 
 
 KiLDARE Co. (Population, 75,804). 
 
 Mr. Justice Harrison to the Grand Jury of Kildare Co. : — 
 
 " I am happy to tell you that I believe your duties so far as 
 *' they are of a criminal nature will at this assize be light indeed. 
 " There are only five cases to go before you, and there are none 
 " of them of a very grave or serious nature. There is nothing, 
 
23© A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " as far as I have been able to ascertain, reflecting in any way 
 " on the peace of your county." 
 
 Kilkenny Co. (Population, 99,531). 
 
 Mr. Baron Dowse to the Grand Jury of Kilkenny Co. : — 
 
 " I am glad to say that you have not very many cases to go 
 " before you at the present assizes. The number of bills is six, 
 " which represent only five cases. I have to congratulate you 
 " upon the tranquillity of your county." 
 
 Kilkenny City (Population, 12,299). 
 
 Mr. Justice Harrison to the Grand Jury of Kilkenny City, who 
 presented him with a pair of white gloves : — 
 
 " I have very great pleasure in receiving this emblem of the 
 " innocence of your city, as I may call it. I think it is not 
 " merely an emblem of the present state, but it clearly repre- 
 " sents the general condition of this fair city of Kilkenny. 
 " There is not merely no criminal case to go before you, but I 
 " find from the return of the police inspector that there were 
 " only one or two cases specially reported since the last assizes." 
 
 King's Co. (Population, 72,852). 
 
 Lord Chief Justice to the Grand Jury of King's Co. : — 
 
 " There are only three cases to go before you, none of which 
 " call for any comment." 
 
 Leiteim Co. (Population, 90,372). 
 
 Lord Chief Baron to the Grand Jury of Leitrim Co. : — 
 
 " There are not many cases to go before you, and none of 
 "them require any observations from me." 
 
 Limerick Co. (Population, 180,632). 
 
 Mr. Justice Johnson to the Grand Jury of Limerick Co. : — 
 
 " The list which has been furnished to me of the criminal 
 " business which is to come before you discloses that there are 
 " but twelve cases — with the exception of one, which appears to 
 " be of a moonlighting character, the rest are all cases of ordinary 
 " crime." 
 
EVER-FAILING AND EVER-POISONOUS MEDICINE. 231 
 
 LiMEEiCK City (Population, 38,562), 
 
 Mr. Justice O'Brien to the Grand Jury of Limerick City : — 
 
 " I believe practically there is no criminal business at all to 
 " be done. The list laid before me merely shows three cases for 
 " trial, in one of which a bill has been found already. Another 
 " case on the list is described as manslaughter, but it appears 
 " really to be a very trivial case." 
 
 Londonderry Co, (Population, 164,991). 
 
 Mr. Justice Murphy to the Grand Jury of Londonderry Co. : — 
 
 " There were only twelve bills to go before them — eleven for 
 " offences within the county, and one for an offence committed 
 " on the high seas on board a vessel coming to the port. None 
 " of the offences disclosed were of other than the ordinary kind 
 •' that might be expected in so large and populous a county." 
 
 Longford Co. (Population, 61,009). 
 
 Mr. Justice Murphy to the Grand Jury of Longford Co. : — 
 
 " There are only two cases to go before you. I am happy to 
 " say that the number is so very few." 
 
 Louth Co, (Population, 77,684). 
 
 Mr. Justice Andrews to the Grand Jury of Louth Co. : — 
 
 " There are only four bills to go before you. . . . As far as I 
 " can learn there is nothing to show me that the county is not 
 " in a peaceable and orderly state.'' 
 
 Mayo Co. (Population, 245,212). 
 
 Lord Chief Justice to the Grand Jury of Mayo Co. : — 
 
 "There were fourteen cases to be submitted for their con- 
 " sideration. So far as he was aware, none of them presented 
 " any feature of immediate diflBculty." 
 
 Meath Co. (Population, 87,469). 
 
 Mr. Justice Andrews to the Grand Jury of Meath Co. : — 
 
 " There are only three cases to go before you. None of the 
 " cases in the oflBcial return are of such a character as to cause 
 " uneasiness, and I congratulate you on the peaceable condition 
 " of the county." 
 
232 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION, 
 
 MoNAGHAN Co. (Population, 102,748), 
 
 Mr. Justice Holmes to the Grand Jury of Monaghan Co. : — 
 
 " There are but two cases to go before you. I am justified in 
 " congratulating the county upon the absence of crime." 
 
 Roscommon Co. (Population, 132,490). 
 
 Lord Chief Baron to the Grand Jury of Eoscommon Co. : — 
 
 "There are only eight cases to go before you — five for 
 " assaults, two for larceny, and one for rescue." 
 
 Queen's Co. (Population, 73,124). 
 
 Mr. Baron Dowse to the Grand Jury of Queen's Co. : — 
 
 " The business to go before them on the present occasion Avas 
 " light, there being only two cases to be investigated by them. 
 " These were the only cases, and he would take care that the 
 " bills were sent up to them at once, and he hoped they would 
 " take up whichever case was likely to be shortest, so that the 
 " court might have something to do." 
 
 Sligo Co. (Population, 111,578). 
 
 Lord Chief Justice to the Grand Jury of Sligo Co. : — 
 
 "I have merely to remark that the Crown Solicitor informs 
 " me that there are only two bills to be submitted for your con- 
 " sideration, of the ordinary character, and so far as I am aware 
 " there is no other subject calling for any observations from 
 " me." 
 
 TiPPERART Co. (Population — North and South — 199,612). 
 
 Mr. Justice Harrison to the Grand Jury of North Tipperary 
 Co. :— 
 
 "There was nothing serious to come before them at the 
 " present assizes. He would say it was certainly a very satis- 
 " factory state of things found to exist in their very important 
 " and fine county. He felt happy in congratulating the Grand 
 "Jury that their county was in a peaceable and satisfactory 
 " condition." 
 
EVER-FAILING AND EVER-POISONOUS MEDICINE. 233 
 
 TiPPERART (South). 
 
 Mr. Justice Harrison to the Grand Jury of Tipperary 
 (South) :— 
 
 " There were only three cases to go before them — a very 
 " small number for so large a district as the South Riding of 
 " the County Tipperary — none of them of a grave nature." 
 
 Tyrone Co. (Population, 197,719). 
 
 Mr. Justice Lawson to the Grand Jury of Tyrone Co. : — 
 
 " With respect to the state of the county I have nothing ex- 
 " traordinary to say. The list of cases at the present assizes is 
 " a very moderate list. There are altogether twelve cases for 
 " trial. Of these two are standing over from a former assizes, 
 " and therefore bills will go before you in ten cases. Gentle- 
 " men, these are of the usual kind that you may expect in a 
 " great and populous county like this, and don't show any bad 
 " feeling or anything of that kind." 
 
 TVaterford Co. (Population, 112,768). 
 
 ]\Ir. Baron Dowse to the Grand Jury of Waterford Co. : — 
 
 " There were but four bills to go before them, and they were 
 " of an ordinary character. He congratulated them on the 
 " satisfactory condition of their county." 
 
 Waterford City (Population, 29,181). 
 
 Mr. Justice Harrison (who, it may be presumed, received white 
 gloves) to the Grand Jury of Waterford City : — 
 
 " He had great pleasure in saying there was no criminal 
 " business to go before them ; and, moreover, there was no 
 " special criminal case reported since the last assizes." 
 
 Westmeath Co. (Population, 71,798). 
 
 Mr. Justice Lawson to the Grand Jury of Westmeath Co. : — 
 
 " Your business will be very light, as there are only two 
 " cases to go before you, neither of which presents any feature 
 *' of difficulty." 
 
234 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 Wexford Co. (Population, 123,854). 
 
 Mr. Justice Harrison to the Grand Jury of Wexford Co. : — 
 
 " I am very glad to say that, so far, at all events, as the 
 " number of cases to go before you for investigation is con- 
 " cerned of a criminal nature, they are fewer than in my 
 " experience I have known in any other county of the large 
 " extent of Wexford. There are only two cases to go before 
 " you, I can only congratulate you on the general peace of 
 " this county, and hope, if I have the honour of coming here 
 " again, the condition of your county will be that you will not 
 " even have two cases that you are asked now to consider." 
 
 WicKLOw Co. (Population, 70,386). 
 
 Mr. Baron Dowse to the Grand Jury of Wicklow Co. : — 
 
 " I have already since the commencement of this enlarged 
 *' Leinster circuit addressed four county Grand Juries. I had 
 " very little to say to them, and I have still less to say to you. 
 " The number of bills to go before you on the present occasion 
 " — and when I say that I look with a sympathetic air to my 
 " friends the Crown counsel (laughter) — is only 'two. One is a 
 " case of concealment of birth, and the other is a rather serious 
 " case — a case of stabbing ; and that is the whole business that 
 " 3'ou will be called upon to investigate as the criminal grand 
 " jury at the present assizes. I am here to discharge the gaol, 
 " and there is nobody in it — (laughter) — for I understand that 
 ** the two offenders are out upon bail." 
 
 It will be observed that Baron Dowse is here, and elsewhere, 
 laughing at the Irish officials on account of the absence of crime 
 in the country just as his brother Holmes had carried the 
 Coercion Bill through Parliament. Now, however, at the 
 Summer Assizes of 1889, this learned judge, who dearly loves 
 a joke, assures the various Grand Juries on his circuit that 
 Irish crime was steadily decreasing owing to Mr. Balfour's 
 "vigorous administration of the law," Is it surprising that 
 the Irish should have so little respect for the law when its 
 administrators have so little respect for themselves ? This story 
 of comparative crimclessness in Ireland might be extended in- 
 definitely, if one were to go through the charges seriatim of 
 
EYEE-FAILING AND EVEE-POISONOUS MEDICINE. 235 
 
 the Assistant Judges at Quarter Sessions in Ireland as •well. 
 But this is somewhat beyond the scope and limits of the present 
 publication. As an example, however, of what might be 
 expected to result from such further inquiry, it may be 
 mentioned, for instance, that Mr. Ferguson, Quarter Sessions 
 Judge, presiding at Bandon, in Cork County, which is described 
 officially as "an important district," had a pair of white gloves pre- 
 sented to him in 1887, in token of there being no criminal busi- 
 ness to go before him. The judge took occasion to observe that 
 a similar condition of things prevailed in another of his districts, 
 Macroom, where the only criminal case submitted to the Grand 
 Jury was ignored by them as being destitute of any importance. 
 In marked contrast to the brevity of his brother judges in 
 addressing the various Grand Juries was the charge of Mr. 
 Justice O'Brien in Clare County. The actual business of the 
 Assizes was a mere trifle compared with the calendar of crime 
 in any ordinary English county, as the foregoing extract from 
 tliat charge clearly shows. But, unfortunately, this judge 
 commonly glides over the facts relevant to his duty, and in- 
 dulges in a discursive essay upon sociology generally ; until, at 
 length, he laid himself open to Mr. Gladstone's severe reminder 
 in 1887, that — "He has not been appointed and made a judge, 
 " and placed in a position in the enjoyment of very great 
 " social and pecuniary privilege, in order that he may indulge 
 " his vein for authorship and for discussion." What renders it 
 the more inexcusable in Mr. Justice O'Brien to play into the 
 hands of a Tory Government, to enable them to forge fetters 
 for his countrymen, is the fact that in the very same town of 
 Eunis where he delivered his recent charge to the Grand Jury, 
 he, not so many years ago, canvassed the electors for a seat in 
 Parliament as a Home Buler and Nationalist. But, of course, 
 he is, in this respect, no worse than many of his confreres 
 on the Bench, for it is thus, unhappily, men climb to such 
 eminence in Ireland. Nor is there a pin to choose between 
 him and Mr. Justice Holmes, who obtained his judgeship by 
 piloting the eighty-seventh Coercion Act through Parliament, 
 in the course of which he did not scruple to stoop to vilification 
 
236 A KEY TO THE IKISH QUESTION. 
 
 as •well as misrepresentation of his unhappy countrymen. This 
 is the same gentleman who not later than a few short years 
 ago charged upon the head of Lord Spencer — then engaged 
 in tremendous difficulties as Her Majesty's representative in 
 Ireland — the blood of Giflfen, an Orange dupe, accidentally 
 killed by the police in the course of a vulgar scuffle in Ulster. 
 There is surely something of irony in the circumstance that the 
 very first Assize at which he (Mr. Justice Holmes) delivered a 
 charge a Grand Jury should have presented him with a pair 
 of white gloves ! It requires no great stretch of the imagination 
 to assume that if the Orange conspirators — as Sir George 
 Trevelyan has rightly stigmatised them — now ruling in Dublin 
 Castle could have arranged things differently, and found even 
 one Bloody Assize throughout the Southern and Western 
 Provinces of Ireland for this brand-new judicial creation of 
 theirs, Mr. Justice Holmes would have been told o£f forthwith 
 for the congenial duty of presiding there, in order to lend to 
 the numerous fictions of the Government and their unscrupulous 
 Liberal allies in Parliament the air of just ever so little a 
 foundation in fact. It is thus that, in Ireland, the very seat of 
 Justice itself is contaminated and prostituted by the selection 
 of shameless hirelings, and political partizans to fill it. In Eng- 
 land justice may be delayed, but it is never poisoned at its source 
 or in the administration ; while in Ireland, as Lord Brougham 
 has expressed it, justice " is sold to the rich," and " refused to 
 " the poor;" too many of the judges in that country being mere 
 mercenary creatures of the Government, which appointed them, 
 from whom they hope for further advancement by rendering 
 satisfaction in their judgments against the people — advancement, 
 if not for themselves, at least for their children or other relatives. 
 The reader has but to consider whether the Coercion Act of 
 1887 is not, as described by Mr. Gladstone, "a crime in 
 " itself." The cry of the party now is, that their policy has put 
 down crime, whereas the Irish judges were bound, one and all, 
 to declare from the judgment seat, that there was absolutely 
 no. crime worth speaking of in Ireland at the very time the 
 Government and their Liberal allies were forcing their bill 
 through Parliament ! 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 THE ABSENTEE. 
 
 " The cutpurse of the Empire." — Sadlee. 
 
 Absenteeism is, it should perhaps be explained, coeval with the 
 English invasion, but early English monarchs tried to apply a 
 remedy, though probably for military and other State reasons 
 rather than through compassion for its victims. For instance, 
 Eichard II. asked his Parliament, in 1377, to make a law 
 " obliging all persons who possessed lands, rents, or other in- 
 " come in Ireland to reside there, or else to pay a tax to the 
 " amount of two-thirds of their Irish revenues." Sir John 
 Davies (temp. 1612) explains how Eichard's ordinance was acted 
 upon in the reign of Henry IV., Henry V., and Henry VI. ; 
 the latter not fearing to put it in execution even against the 
 Duke of Norfolk, by depriving him of two parts of the profits 
 of Dorbury's Islapd and other lands in the County of "Wexford. 
 And afterwards, upon the same grounds, all the Irish estates of 
 the House of Norfolk, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord Berkeley, 
 and others were entirely resumed by the Act of Absentees, 
 made in the twenty-eighth year of Henry VIII. The loth of 
 Charles I. imposed a tax on absentees of four shillings in the 
 pound ; that is, on Irish persons " dwelling in England and 
 "elsewhere out of Ireland . . . unless such persons should 
 " reside within the kingdom [Ireland] for six months in every 
 ** year." And the Irish historian, Haverty, relates how, at a 
 later period, during the Lord Lieutenancy of Earl Harcourt 
 (1773), a bill of the same nature was presented to the Irish 
 Parliament, " to lay a tax of two shillings in the pound on the 
 " income of Irish absentee landlords, who would not reside in 
 
238 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " Ireland at least six months in eacli year." It is reported to 
 have been a popular measure, rendering the Viceroy who pro- 
 posed it a favourite with the people. But, as might have been 
 expected, having been proposed for the consideration of the very 
 class against whom it was hoped it would operate, it was, of 
 course, unlike the law of Richard II., thrown out. Later still, 
 under the administration of Sir Robert Peel (1841-46), a new 
 tax was levied upon Irish absentees, in the shape of the Income- 
 tax, if they were unable to prove that they resided for the greater 
 portion of the year at home. But it is evident that this was 
 not meant to be a coercive measure, and the result will be seen 
 in the deplorable disregard, by the landlords, of the duties of 
 property during the great famine of 1846-47, as reported by 
 the Society of Friends. If the Government oven now enforced 
 the statutes of Henry VIII. they would have more than 
 ;^5, 000,000 of annual revenue with which to develop the in- 
 dustrial resources of Ireland. 
 
 Almost every writer on Irish topics has denounced absen- 
 teeism as one of the greatest evils afflicting the sister king- 
 dom. Room can only be found here for a limited selection of 
 opinions on the subject ; but these are of a character to entitle 
 them to the utmost possible confidence. "A great part of 
 " the estates, both real and personal, in Ireland," writes Sir 
 "William Petty in his Political Anatomy, " are owned by absen- 
 " tees and such as draw over the profits raised out of Ireland, 
 " refunding nothing, so as Ireland, exporting more than it im- 
 " ports, doth yet grow poorer to a paradox." Curwen, in his 
 State of Ireland, vol. ii., deplores the ruin it inflicts, while 
 " the waters of oblivion could never wash out the stains which 
 " the scenes of woe " he had one day witnessed on an absentee 
 estate had impressed on his mind, he says. Referring to the 
 countless ruined mansions scattered throughout the country, 
 Croker writes, in his South of Ireland, as follows : — 
 
 *' They who reared those piles, and filled these rooms with 
 " mirth, who gave plenty and employment to the poor, are now 
 " in their tombs, and their living successors, dead to patriotism, 
 " dwell in other lands, and leave the homes of their ancestors a 
 
THE ABSENTEE. 239 
 
 " wilderness. Every one must wish such absentees could be 
 " made to reside in their country — to enrich it with their for- 
 " tunes, ornament it with their taste, improve the morals of 
 " the people by their example, refine them by their politeness, 
 "and protect them by their authority; then might we hope 
 " to see the laws respected, the rich beloved, and Ireland tran- 
 " quil and happy." 
 
 " But," observes Sadler, in his Ireland, its Evils and its 
 Remedies : — 
 
 " This abandonment simply is not all with which absenteeism 
 " stands charged. It substitutes for neglected duties positive 
 " wrongs of the deadliest character. Absent in body, it is, in- 
 " deed, ever present in the spirit of cruelty and oppression. 
 '• Its very existence implies a train of evils, which have been, 
 " for centuries past, the most cruel scourges of the country." 
 
 Swift, of course, denounced and satirised the absentees in the 
 Drapier Letters and elsewhere. But it is more important to 
 add here that, of the various estimates which have been formed 
 as to the actual amount of cash — to say notliing of the moral 
 evil of their system — they abstract from Ireland, a sum of 
 between six and seven millions sterling appears to be the most 
 reasonable. Of this enormous tax on so poor a country, nothing 
 is known to be ever returned, even in time of deepest distress 
 and famine. Of the Irish absentee landlords it may be truly said, 
 in scriptural phrase — " By their fruits ye shall know them." 
 Sir Robert Inglis, MP., referring on one occasion to the 
 assertion that absentee Irish landlords did not discharge the 
 duties of proprietors, said he found it stated in a speech of 
 Bishop Jebb, during the famine of 1822, that a large subscrip- 
 tion was raised in a western county by the resident proprietors ; 
 but the absentees, who received out of it a rental of ;!^83,ooo 
 a year, only subscribed ;^83. Lord Stanley, M.P. (the 
 late Earl of Derby), who was at one time Chief Secretary 
 for Ireland, also reproached this unique class of Irish landed 
 proprietors, in 1831, with' their scandalous neglect of duty 
 towards their tenants. He mentioned two persons in Mayo 
 
240 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTIOX. 
 
 having between them ^^10,400 a year, "out of exorbitant 
 "rents," he said, who subscribed exactly ;^ioo towards a collec- 
 tion made at another period of distress in that county. All 
 that can be said in their favour is, that they were more liberal 
 than their fellows mentioned by Bishop Jebb. Again, in 
 1846-7, during the great famine, the Transactions of the 
 Society of Friends exhibit in the clearest light how those gentry, 
 titled and untitled, regarded the duties of property in Ireland. 
 The members of this influential Society, stationed in diflerent 
 parts of the country, reported to the central body organised for 
 the relief of distress as follows : — 
 
 " Co. Armagh, — In this parish we have no resident landlord. 
 " Some absentees hold considerable property in it, and as yet 
 " we have not received contributions from any, except from 
 " two small proprietors. There is little expected from the 
 " others. The resident farmers have subscribed handsomelj^ 
 " according to their means. Population, 8000. 
 
 " Go. Cavan. — This district is especially desolate, from there 
 " being no resident gentry in the parish. The principal estate 
 " is in the hands of a trustee, who cannot give any relief. The 
 " remainder of the parish is subdivided amongst many small 
 " landlords, who are all absentees, and none of them contribute 
 " anything ; all complaining that they have lost their rents. 
 " One gentleman, who has a few townlands in this parish, but 
 " resides on his property in another, does so much at his own 
 ' ' house, that I cannot ask him to do much here. All look 
 " to the curate alone. ■ The rector is taken up with his own 
 " division, and we are left to ourselves. I believe this to be 
 " one of the poorest districts in Cavan, if not the poorest. 
 " Deaths are taking place from actual want, and if a change 
 
 does not speedily come, I fear we shall be amongst the most 
 " wretched in Ireland. Extent, 54 townlands, about 12 square 
 
 miles. Population, about 6000. 
 " Co. Cavan. — There is but one landed proprietor, who has 
 " been for three or four years residing abroad. I consider this 
 " parish as peculiarly unfortunate in having no resident gentry 
 " to assist at this crisis, for with all the exertions I can make, I 
 " find it impossible to supply the demands made upon me 
 " by such numbers for daily support. Extent, 4 miles square. 
 " Population, 2800. 
 
 " Co. Clare. — I have to say, in answer to the remark made 
 
 K 
 
 <( 
 
« 
 
 THE ABSENTER 241 
 
 " in your letter, that, in the distribution of a public fund, it is 
 " desirable in all cases, as far as possible, that it be done 
 " through a regular organisation of the benevolent and intelli- 
 " gent inhabitants of the district claiming relief ; that, alas ! in 
 " the district for which my daughter is exerting herself, there is 
 " not one person above the rank of a peasant residing ; that the 
 " greater part is inhabited by very poor people ; and that it all 
 " belongs to absentees, who have not contributed a shilling for 
 " relief, or to persons over whose properties receivers of the 
 " courts are appointed. 
 
 " Co. Cork. — This electoral division being about sixteen 
 " miles from Macroom, the sufferers are unable to make their 
 way to the workhouse for relief; and the outdoor pit- 
 " tance of sixpence a week, which is the utmost given by the 
 " guardians of the union to the sick, is so inadequate to the 
 " wants of those who are suffering from disease, that the com- 
 " mittee cannot contemplate their misery without feelings of 
 " deep sorrow. As not a single resident landlord is to be met 
 " with in the whole of this electoral division, the committee 
 " can only hope to sustain the sick from the charity of those 
 " strangers on whom God hath bestowed the means of relieving 
 " their afflicted brethren. 
 
 "Co. Donegal. — This parish contains upwards of 10,000 
 " inhabitants. Of the fourteen landlords to whom the ground 
 "belongs there are but two resident, of whom one holds a 
 " small property, and the other is much encumbered. The 
 " consequence is much neglect and wretchedness among the 
 " people, especially the cottiers, who are generally regarded by 
 " the landlords as a great injury to their properties, and are 
 " therefore discountenanced in every possible manner. Of 
 " these cottier or pauper families there may be about 600 or 
 " 700, comprising about 3,000 individuals. 
 
 " Co. Donegal. — Two-thirds, exactly, of this parish is the 
 " property of two absentee proprietors, both of whose proi- 
 " perties are in Chancery for debt. Extent, 4 miles by 3. 
 
 " Co. Donegal. — The absentee landlord of the greater part 
 "of the parish has not subscribed one farthing. Extent, 
 " 50,000 acres. Population, 10,000. 
 
 " Co. Donegal. — The Ecclesiastical Commissioners have 
 " large estates, but cannot contribute anything unless they are 
 " enabled to do so by Act of Parliament. There are other absentee 
 " proprietors who have not subscribed. Population, 14,000. 
 
 " Co. Fermanagh. — The principal proprietor in this district is 
 
(( 
 
 242 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " an absentee ; who, as he has but a small interest in the 
 " property, takes very little trouble on himself about it. There 
 " are a good many petty landlords, who try to make what they 
 " can of the land, and, consequently, have it set at the highest 
 "rates. Population, 6,511. 
 
 " Go. Galway. — The landed proprietors are all absentees, nor 
 " have they contributed a penny towards relieving their tenants 
 " since the distress commenced. We have no gentry, nor a 
 *' second person in the character of a large farmer within the 
 " parish. Population, 4,000. 
 
 " Co. Galway. — The secretaries of the Relief Committee 
 " made application, by writing, to twelve landed proprietors, 
 " urging the necessity of subscriptions for the relief of the dis- 
 '* tressed people, but received no reply ; only two resident ; no 
 " subscriptions have been received from either. Large farmers 
 
 are a class unknown here. Extent of district, 16 miles. 
 " Population, 1 2,000. 
 
 " Co. Galway. — This district has been one of the most 
 " severely visited in Ireland. Last year the potato crop almost 
 " universally failed, so that this is the second year of scarcity. 
 " It is painful to see the alteration of the people's appearance, 
 " and too much credit cannot be given them for their patience 
 " under this visitation of the Almighty. No outrages have 
 " occurred in the district, and the violations of property have 
 " been trifling. The position of a country gentleman left single- 
 " handed, as I am, to deal with such a calamity, and doomed 
 " daily to hear tales of woe which he cannot alleviate, is truly 
 " miserable. I pray, however, that I may be sustained through 
 " it, and am truly thankful to the Almighty for the many kind 
 " aids He has provided for us. 
 
 " Co. Galway. — The district within which I am principally 
 " connected contains a population of nearly 4,000 souls, of 
 " whom a full third are in actual destitution, another third are 
 " in deep distress, and not above a sixth are able to support 
 " themselves. In this district I am the only resident proprie- 
 "tor, and though the absentee properties are crowded with 
 " paupers, afflicted with fever, and prostrated with famine, thetr 
 " contributions are small, and their personal assistance nought. 
 " There is, besides, much property in the hands of receivers 
 "under the courts, where the usual indulgence cannot be given, 
 " where contribution is out of question, and where the utmost 
 " ijjisery consequently prevails. 
 ; "Co. Longford. — This district labours under peculiar dis- 
 
THE ABSENTEE. ' 243 
 
 " advantages, and is one of the poorest localities in Ireland. 
 " The property belongs entirely to absentee proprietors, and has 
 " but one resident gentleman within the circumference of eight 
 " miles, and it is also deprived of the residence of either the 
 " Protestant clergyman or his curate. For this reason the vice- 
 " lieutenant was obliged to call on the resident magistrate, who 
 " lives twelve miles from many parts of the district, to act as 
 " chairman. It is occupied by small tenants holding from four to 
 " ten acres, and very few upwards. The land is bad, and ill culti- 
 " vated, and the inhabitants never look forward to anything 
 " better than potatoes, and having lost them, are totally destitute. 
 
 " Co. Mayo. — There are fifteen absentee landlords ; their 
 " agents do not live in the parish, and seldom come near it ; no 
 " non-resident landlord has sent any subscription. The resident 
 " landlords, in some cases, are giving assistance to those around 
 " them, but no general subscription has been entered into. I, 
 " as vicar of the parish, called a meeting, but no one attended, 
 
 " as they said there was no one to represent , who is the 
 
 "principal landlord and an absentee. Extent, 14 miles by 12. 
 "Population, about 16,000. 
 
 " Co. Mayo. — The landed proprietors of this district are all 
 " absentees, with one exception. They have not contributed a 
 " farthing to relieve their tenantry. No large farmers. Extent, 
 " 7 miles by 4. Population, 5,000. 
 
 " Co. Mayo. — The landed proprietors of this poor parish are 
 " absentees ; there has not been a farthing received from any of 
 " them. There are not more than four large farmers — these 
 "have not subscribed to any relief fund, though they have, 
 " according to their means, given much in private charity. 
 "Extent, 4,194 acres. Population, 2,500. 
 
 " Co. Mayo. — Almost the whole parish' belongs to absentee 
 " landlords, who have given nothing towards the relief of the 
 "distress, although there have been several deaths amongst 
 " their own immediate tenantry from insufficiency of food. 
 " The only resident proprietors are my brother and myself, and 
 " there is no clergyman of any denomination in the parish, 
 "Population, 10,000. 
 
 " Queen's Co. — We have not one resident landlord in the 
 " district. Applications have been made to each non-resident, 
 " and up to the present time we have received but ;^44. 
 "Extent, 18,000 acres. Population, over 10,000. 
 
 " Co. Roscommon. — All the proprietors but are absen- 
 
 " tees, and give no assistance whatever. A large portion of 
 
244 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 ' the district is in the hands of receivers under the Court of 
 ' Chancery. Extent, 6 miles by ij. Population, 3,907. 
 
 " Co. Roscommon. — All the landed proprietors are non- 
 ' resident, excepting the chairman of the committee. The 
 ' rents of three of the largest townlands of the parish have been 
 ' received for the last thirty years by a receiver under the Court 
 ' of Chancery ; during which time — there being no landlord to 
 ' interest himself about them — the land has been divided and sub- 
 ' divided into very small holdings, and an immense population has 
 ' sprung up, who are reduced to the deepest want by the failure 
 
 * of their usual food. Extent, 1,300 acres. Population, 5,810. 
 
 " Co. Roscommon. — The absentee landlords in this district 
 
 * are numerous. This town is peculiarly situated, as it is the 
 ' property of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who, by Act of 
 ' Parliament, are precluded from granting any aid ; so that, 
 ' with a population of nearly 2,000, it is in a state of un- 
 ' exampled distress. 
 
 " Co. Roscommon. — Our electoral division is so destitute at 
 ' present, that there is no Poor-Law Guardian. We have not 
 ' received any government grant, and all societies refuse us aid 
 ' — except yours — on account of our having no committee. 
 ' There are no gentlemen in the neighbourhood to form one, 
 
 " Co. Tipperary. — There is not a resident proprietor in the 
 ' district. The farmers on the relief committee have contri- 
 ' buted. Population, 4,000. 
 
 " Co. Tipperary. — The proprietor of the soil is an absentee. 
 ' The property is in Chancery, and no subscription is to be had, 
 
 although urgently applied for. There is no resident proprietor. 
 
 Population, about 11,000. 
 
 " Co. Westmeath. — Our proprietors are, almost without excep- 
 
 * tion, absentees. Extent, 5 miles by 3. Population, 2,526. 
 
 " Co. Wicklow. — This district has the misfortune of being on 
 
 * the estate of an absentee nobleman, whose embarrassments 
 
 * have placed the entire property in the hands of creditors, 
 ' and is now being sold under the Courts to satisfy their 
 ' demands." 
 
 In 1879-80 there was a serious famine, which might have 
 kindled into one of the dimensions of its predecessor in 1846-7 
 but for the charity of the world, principally of the United 
 States and the Australian Colonies. The late lamented Mr. 
 Dwyer Gray, M.P., then Lord Mayor of Dublin, organised a 
 
THE ABSENTEK 245 
 
 committee of relief, composed of gentlemen of the most varied 
 creeds, politics, and even nationalities. A most devoted member 
 ■was the late Archbishop Trench. The present writer was 
 asked by his brother members, unanimously, to visit the County 
 of Mayo, where the distress was most alarming, for the purpose 
 of furnishing reports on the subject. In this, the poorest 
 county in the entire kingdom, it was found that five of the 
 largest landed proprietors were absentee gentlemen of rank, 
 whose estates alone extend over an area of 369,000 acres. The 
 Parliamentary returns prepared by the Local Government 
 Board set forth the valuation of this vast acreage, for taxation 
 purposes, as j^j 1,000, which probably represents a rental con- 
 siderably over ;^ 1 00, 000 a year; in other words, a sum largely 
 in excess of the total amount distributed throughout the county 
 by the various charitable organisations during the crisis of 
 1879-80, and nearly a third of the valuation of the whole of 
 Mayo. And this, it is to be remembered, merely comprises the 
 property of a few of the class, since the county is interspersed 
 with their estates, numerous if smaller, in various directions. 
 They were true to the traditions of absenteeism ; for although 
 the Mansion House Relief Committee was engaged for more 
 than a whole year in keeping their tenants alive by doles of 
 charitable relief from week to week, not one of the absentees in 
 question, viz., the Earl of Arran, Lord Dillon, Earl of Lucan, 
 Marquis of Sligo, Sir Roger Palmer, subscribed as much as a 
 shilling to the charitable fund. And it was precisely the same 
 in other Irish counties. A poor starving man, the tenant of a 
 titled absentee, was asked at one place in Mayo if his landlord 
 ever visited the country, and it was ascertained that he had not, 
 any more than two of his predecessors, ever been seen there. 
 " I have never set eyes on them in this world," he replied. 
 And looking around upon the poverty of his cabin, his ragged 
 wife and children, and his own pale and sickly face, one might 
 well wonder whether he would ever set eyes upon them in the 
 next world either. The resident proprietors felt angry and 
 indignant with the others, whose contemptuous neglect of aU the 
 duties of property brings additional odium on the entire class 
 
r 
 
 246 A KEY TO THE IBISH QUESTION. 
 
 of landowners in the county. There are numerous instances in 
 Mayo where the absentees have laid themselves open to the 
 severe but just and accurate criticism of Sydney Smith, respect- 
 ing their heartless and unfeeling disregard of duty : — 
 
 "The absentee proprietor looks only to revenue," observes 
 Sydney, in his Selected Essays, " and cares nothing for the dis- 
 ** order and degradation of a country which he never means to 
 " visit. There are very honourable exceptions to this charge ; 
 " but there are too many living instances that it is just. The 
 " rapacity of the Irish landlord induces him to allow of the 
 " extreme division of his lands. When the daughter marries, 
 " a little portion of the little farm is broken off — another 
 " corner for Patrick, and another for Dermot — till the land is 
 " broken into sections, upon one of which an English cow could 
 " not stand. Twenty mansions of misery are thus reared 
 " instead of one. A louder cry of oppression is lifted up to 
 " heaven, and fresh enemies to the English name and power are 
 " multiplied on the earth." 
 
 Nor is Mr. Froude less justly severe, in the second volume of 
 his English in Ireland, when he says : — 
 
 " The absentee landlords of Ireland had neither community 
 " of interest with the people nor sympathy of race. They had 
 " no fear of provoking their resentment, for they lived beyond 
 "their reach. They had no desire for their welfare, for as 
 "individuals they were ignorant of their existence. They 
 " regarded their Irish estates as the sources of their income ; 
 "their only desire was to extract the most out of them which 
 " the soil could be made to yield ; and they cared no more for 
 " the souls and the bodies of those who were in fact committed 
 "to their charge than the owners of a "West Indian plantation 
 "for the herds of slaves whose backs were blistering in the 
 " cane fields." 
 
 Scorn, contempt, and indignation have been hurled at the 
 Irish absentee generation after generation in vain. Deaf to 
 every remonstrance, he pursues his evil course of selfish grati- 
 fication in the streets of London or Paris, not infrequently arm 
 in arm with his half-brother from the Scottish Highlands. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 EVERLASTING FAMINE— REAL THOUGH 
 ARTIFICIALLY CREATED. 
 
 Query — " Whether there be upon earth any Christian or civilised people so 
 " beggarly, so wretched, and destitute as the common Irish?" — Bebkelet, 
 Bishop of Cloyne {1734). 
 
 In the reign of Henry VIII., in the few districts then subject 
 to the King's writs within the pale, the people were so oppressed 
 by the courts of law, they were glad to abandon their freeholds 
 for ever. In the Marches not subject to the King's law they 
 were as much oppressed by individual extortion. In the second 
 volume of the State Papers of this reign, the Reporter of 1515, 
 looking at the inevitable consequences of such misrule 
 exclaims : — 
 
 " "What common folk in all this worlde is so poor, so feeble, 
 " so evil-beseen in town and field, so bestial, so greatly op- 
 " pressed and trod under foot, and fared so evil, with so great 
 " misery and with so wretched life, as the common folk of 
 " Ireland. What pity is here, what ruth is to report, there is 
 " no tongue that can tell, no person that can write. It passeth 
 " far the orators and muses all to show the order of the nobles, 
 " and how cruel they entreateth the poor common people." 
 
 Sir John Davis, an Englishman, who was Attorney-General 
 in Ireland in the reign of James I., explains one of the principal 
 causes of the perennial misery in that country from the earliest 
 times succeeding the English invasion. The system of Coyne 
 and Livery, i.e., food for man and horse, and money also at the 
 will and pleasure of the soldier, Davis says : — 
 
 "Drew greater plagues on Ireland than the oppressions of 
 ' the Israelites did on Egypt ; lasted 400 years together, and 
 
248 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " was the most heavy oppression that was ever used in a 
 " Christian or a heathen kingdom." And he apparently agrees 
 with a writer whom he quotes, in thinking, " though it were 
 " first invented in Hell, j'et if it had heen used and practised 
 " there, as it hath been in Ireland, it had long since destroyed 
 " the kingdom of Beelzebub." 
 
 A few quotations from competent authorities will show what 
 part the landlords had in creating and perpetuating this misery. 
 The Irish viceroys, like so many of the Irish landlords, con- 
 stantly lived away from the country, drawing their salaries 
 regularly, and delegating their duties to Lords Justices in their 
 absence. Lord Townshend, who was one of the first who con- 
 descended to take up his residence in Ireland, thus writes to 
 George III., in behalf of his subjects {English Record Office, 
 1767-72), that is within a dozen years or so of the successful 
 Irish revolt against Great Britain, and the establishment of 
 G rattan's Parliament : — 
 
 "I hope to be excused for representing to his Majesty the 
 " miserable situation of the lower ranks of his subjects in this 
 " kingdom. What from the rapaciousness of their unfeeling 
 " landlords, and the restrictions on their trade, they are among 
 " the most wretched people on earth.'" 
 
 Wakefield, another Englishman, who travelled in Ireland in 
 1 8 1 2, says, in his Accouiit of Ireland, volume i. : — 
 
 " It is an undoubted fact that, as landlords, they exact more 
 " from their tenants than the same class of men in any other 
 " country. . . . Even if the unfortunate wretch has a little 
 " ready cash to begin with, it only serves in ninety-nine cases 
 " in a hundred as a temptation to the landlord, who, when the 
 " fact becomes known to him, finds means to obtain it under 
 " the name of a fine for possession." 
 
 In his charge to a Grand Jury in 18 14, Mr. Justice Fletcher 
 reveals another peccadillo to which some of the landlord class 
 were not averse : — 
 
 " Gentlemen, I have seen times, when persons who, think- 
 " ing the lives named in their tenants' leases were lasting some- 
 " what too long, have, by the aid of the law, found means 
 
EVERLASTING FAMINE. 249 
 
 " to recommend a trip across the Atlantic to the persons thus 
 " unreasonably attached to life ; and thus achieved the down- 
 " fall of a beneficial lease, and a comfortable rise of their in- 
 " come in consequence. Such things have occurred — I have 
 " known the fact." 
 
 In 1822 a committee of kindly English gentlemen "was 
 formed at the London Tavern for the purpose of visiting Ire- 
 land and helping the famished peasantry. Here is a single 
 sentence from the report of this committee : — 
 
 " The distress which has almost universally prevailed has 
 " not been occasioned so much by an excessive population, as 
 " by a culpable remissness on the part of persons possessing 
 " property and neglecting to take advantage of those great 
 " resources and of those ample means of providing for an in- 
 " creasing population which nature has so bountifully bestowed 
 " on this country." 
 
 In January, 1844, the Edinburgh Review tells us something 
 more of those gentry and their peculiar dealings with their 
 dependents : — 
 
 " The one million families "who now occupy the soil of 
 " Leinster, Munster, and Connaught scarcely know the exist- 
 " ence of the civil law courts, except as the sources of processes, 
 " distresses, and ejectments. There are many parts of Ireland 
 " in which a driver and a process-server — the former, a man 
 " whose profession it is to seize the cattle of a tenant whose 
 " rent is in arrear ; the latter, an agent for the purpose of 
 " ejecting him — form regular parts of the landlord's establish- 
 " ment. There are some in which the driver, whether em- 
 " ployed or not, receives an annual payment from every tenant. 
 " On many estates every tenant is served every year with a 
 " notice to quit, for the mere purpose of keeping him at the 
 " landlord's mercy ; and still more, the abatements from rent, 
 " which every landlord must occasionally make, instead of 
 " being absolutely remitted, are kept in legal force, to be used 
 " when any motive, pecuniary, or political, or personal, may 
 " induce the landlord to exact them." 
 
 The reader who wishes for any more witnesses to the 
 character of Irish landlordism will find them in Why Ireland 
 Wants Home Rule. Here it is necessary to resume the story 
 
250 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 of Irish famine. In the Life of Usher (1656), the Protestant 
 Primate, he will be found relating, as a thing within his own 
 knowledge, how women were known to lie in wait for and 
 rush out upon a defenceless horseman, and, like famished 
 wolves, drag him from his saddle and seize the horse for the 
 purpose of devouring him. In 17 18, the Protestant Bishop 
 Nicholson has the same experience, as related in Mr. Lecky's 
 Eighteenth Century. One of his horses, accidentally killed on 
 a journey, was surrounded by " fifty or sixty famished cottagers, 
 " struggling desperately to obtain a morsel of flesh for them- 
 *' selves and their children." The years 1725,' 1726, 1727, 
 and 1728 "presented scenes of wretchedness unparalleled in 
 " the annals of any civilised nation," says a writer in volume i. 
 of the Gentleman's Magazine. In 1727, another Protestant 
 Primate (Boulter) observed in a letter to the Duke of New- 
 castle, that since his arrival in Ireland famine had not ceased 
 among the poor; and there was such a dearth of grain that 
 thousands of families were obliged to quit their dwellings to 
 look for support elsewhere. The learned and kind-hearted 
 Bishop of Cloyne, under date 21st May 1741, writes to a 
 friend in Dublin of the terrible famine of that year : — 
 
 " The distresses of the sick and poor are endless. The havoc 
 " of mankind in the counties of Cork, Limerick, and some ad- 
 " jacent places, hath been incredible. The nation probably will 
 " not recover this loss in a century. The other day I heard one 
 " from the county of Limerick say that whole villages were 
 "entirely dispeopled. About two months since I heard Sir 
 " Richard Cox say that five hundred were dead in the parish, 
 " though in a county I believe not very populous. It were to be 
 " wished people of condition were at their seats in the country 
 " during these calamitous times, which might provide relief and 
 " employment for the poor." 
 
 This, the third visitation of the kind within the short period 
 of twenty years, according to Mr. Lecky, is thus spoken of by 
 that historian : — 
 
 "Of that famine [of 1740-41] we have many contempora- 
 " neous descriptions. According to one writer, 400,000 persons 
 
EVERLASTING FAMINE. 251 
 
 " died. Bishop Berkeley has left behind him touching de- 
 " scriptions of the misery that came before his own eyes and 
 " smote his loving heart ; and another writer gives a picture as 
 " terrible as any even in the history of famines." 
 
 The writer, who is thus referred to by Mr. Lecky, describes 
 with terrible energy as follows the scenes which he witnessed 
 around his own dwelling in Tipperary in 1741 : — 
 
 " Multitudes have perished and are daily perishing under 
 " hedges and ditches — some by fevers, some by fluxes, and 
 " some through downright cruel want — in the utmost agonies 
 " of despair. I have seen the labourer endeavouring to work 
 " at his spade, but fainting for want of food, and forced to quit 
 " it. I have seen the aged father eating grass like a beast, and 
 " in the anguish of his soul wishing for his dissolution ; I have 
 " seen the helpless orphan exposed on the dunghill, and none 
 " to take him in for fear of infection ; and I have seen the 
 " hungry infant sucking at the breast of the already expired 
 " parent." 
 
 The cemeteries became too small for the burial of those who 
 died on the roadside, or whose bodies had to be sought for in 
 their abandoned cabins. But with all that, the official mind 
 was little disturbed, either in Dublin or London, with the un- 
 paralleled calamity, according to Sir C. E. Trevelyan, Bart., 
 who, in his Irish Crisis, offers the following striking commen- 
 tary on the subject for our reflection : — 
 
 "The famine of 1741," he says, "was not regarded with any 
 " active interest in England or in any foreign country, and the 
 " subject is scarcely alluded to in the literature of the day. No 
 " measures were adopted, either by the Executive or the Legis- 
 *' lature, for the purpose of relieving the distress caused by this 
 " famine. There is no mention of grants or loans ; but an Act 
 " was passed by the Irish Parliament [then the mere shadow of 
 "an independent legislature] of 1741 (15 George II., cap. 8), 
 " for the more effectual securing the payment of rents, and 
 " preventing frauds by tenants ! " 
 
 Amongst the Records in the Birmingham Tower of Dublin 
 Castle, there has been found a letter of Mr. Secretary Legge, 
 
252 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 dated London, May 4, 1740, and addressed to the Irish govern- 
 ment, which expresses very naively that the official feelings in 
 London were as little troubled in regard to Irish famine as the 
 Irish landlord parliament itself. In London, ministers were 
 only concerned about the revenue, just as in Ireland the landlords 
 only looked out for the rent: — "I hope the weather," Legge 
 observes, "which seems mending at last, will be of service 
 " to Ireland, and comfort our Treasury, which, I am afraid, 
 " has been greatly chilled with the long frost and embargo." 
 The reader will scarcely be surprised to hear, under the cir- 
 cumstances, that in the midst of the famine, when about 
 200,000 of the people had perished of hunger and pestilence, a 
 proclamation was issued by the Lord-Lieutenant, an ancestor 
 of Lord Hartington, ordering a general Fast for the success of 
 his Britannic Majesty's arms against the King of Spain ! But 
 whether this grim joke originated with the Duke of Devonshire 
 himself, or his royal master, the historian omits to say. As, 
 however, the population of the kingdom was little more than 
 2,000,000 at that period, the unresisted slaughter of a fifth of 
 the whole shows that neither the monarch nor his ministers 
 particularly regarded the loss. Sheep farming and bullock 
 rearing required but few caretakers in the days when George II. 
 was king; almost as few as the Scottish deer forests do now. 
 Sir William Temple informs us, in volume iiL of his Works, 
 that " hundreds of thousands of the population of Ireland were 
 "periodically swept off by the plague," which followed the famine, 
 of course. And Sir William Wilde, a Census Commissioner in 
 1857, says that twenty-five out of the hundred years of the last 
 century, were there years " of absolute want." There was, in 
 fact, a constant tradition of destitution in Ireland. Speaking 
 in the House of Commons, on the i6th of December 1778, 
 Lord Nugent described the population as suffering all the misery 
 and distress which it was possible for human nature to endure. 
 Throughout the entire period, from the beginning of the present 
 century, there was continuous destitution. In 181 7 the fevers 
 produced by indigence and famine attacked 1,500,000 persons 
 in Ireland, of whom immense numbers perished. 
 
EVERLASTING FAMINE. ?S3 
 
 The Annual Register of 1822 said : — 
 
 " The whole provinces of Connaught and Munster are in a 
 " state of actual starvation. In the month of June there were 
 " in the county of Clare alone (the whole population of which 
 " is little more than 200,000) 99,639 persons subsisting on 
 "charity from hour to hour; in Cork there were 122,000 
 " individuals in the same situation, and in the city of Limerick, 
 " out of a population of 67,000, there were 20,000 who had not 
 " a morsel to eat save what pity gave." 
 
 Three years later, in the Diary of Sir "Walter Scott, dated 
 November 20, 1825, there is this passage, written after a visit 
 to Ireland : — 
 
 " The poverty of the Irish is on the extreme verge of human 
 " misery ; their cottages would scarce serve for pig-styes, even 
 "in Scotland; and their rags seem the very refuse of a rag- 
 " shop. . . , Then for their food, they have only potatoes, and 
 " too few of them." 
 
 Ten years afterwards, Gustave de Beaumont, a celebrated 
 French publicist, who was in Ireland in 1835-7, ^^^ i^ ^ 
 Ireland, Social, &c., volume iL : — 
 
 " To see Ireland happy you must carefully select your point 
 " of view, look for some narrow, isolated spot, and shut your 
 " eyes to all the objects that surround it ; but wretched Ireland, 
 "on the contrary, bursts upon your view everywhere. ... I 
 " have seen the Indian in his forests and the negro in his 
 " chains, and thought, as I contemplated their miserable condi- 
 " tion, that I saw the very extreme of human wretchedness. But 
 " I did not then know the condition of unfortunate Ireland." 
 
 In 1842, when O'Connell was agitating for Kepeal of the 
 Union, Kohl, an eminent German traveller, favoured the world 
 with his impressions thus : — 
 
 " To him who has seen Ireland, no mode of life in any 
 " other part of Europe, however wretched, will seem pitiable. 
 " Nay, even the condition of savages will appear endurable, and 
 " to be preferred. . . . Indeed, look in whatever direction we 
 " may for a comparison, the Irishman stands alone, and his 
 " misery is without an equal. This can never be placed in too 
 
254 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " strong a light ; for if it is true that the misery of the Irish- 
 " man is unique on this globe, every friend of humanity must 
 " feel himself called upon to devote his thoughts and his exer- 
 " tions to provide a remedy for the evil." 
 
 Speaking of the condition of Ireland seventy years earlier, 
 Mr. Gladstone once said that any power forcibly interfering to 
 put matters right there -would have become entitled to the 
 gratitude of mankind. Were not things every whit as bad 
 during the entire period now under review? Hear the next 
 witness, an English writer. In 1843, a few years before the 
 great famine, our own brilliant novelist, Thackeray, thus gives 
 his impressions on the subject, in his Irish Sketch Booh : — 
 
 " In this fairest and richest of countries, men are sufTering 
 " and starving by millions. There are thousands of them at 
 " this minute stretched in the sunshine at their cabin doors 
 " with no work, scarcely any food, no hope seemingly. Strong 
 " countrymen are lying in bed 'for the [hunger,' because a man 
 " lying on his back does not need as much food as a person 
 " afoot. Many of them have torn up the unripe potatoes from 
 " their little gardens to exist now, and must look to winter, when 
 " they shall have to suffer starvation and cold too. ... It is 
 " not the exception, it is the condition of the people. . . . The 
 " epicurean and traveller for pleasure had better travel anywhere 
 " than here ; where there are miseries that one does not dare to 
 " think of ; where one is always feeling how helpless pity is, 
 •* and how hopeless relief, and is perpetually made ashamed of 
 " being happy." 
 
 As to the sufferings of the population during that famine, in 
 1846-7, it would require a volume to depict them. But who 
 was responsible for all this perennial misery, in one of the most 
 fertile countries in Europe, inhabited by a race that is probably 
 the most industrious in the world? The landlords? As 
 creatures of successive governments, certainly. But Parliament 
 has always looked on at their proceedings, and as Mr. Gladstone 
 has acknowledged, not "only looked on, but encouraged and 
 " sustained them." When the fate of millions of the Queen's 
 subjects was trembling in the balance, between life and death, 
 the great Sir Robert Peel, Lord John Eussell, Lord Palmerston, 
 
EVERLASTING FAMINE. 255 
 
 and other English statesmen were contending with one another 
 in the House of Commons nightly, like so many gladiators in 
 the arena, each one in the delightful anticipation of discovering 
 some weak point in the proposals of his adversary, when ex- 
 hibiting too generous or too practical a plan for saving the 
 lives of the starvelings. Ireland was but the battlefield. The 
 English people were, as is usual with them, charitable, and well 
 disposed to succour the afflicted ; but the governing bodies, 
 in office or in opposition, well, — their responsibility for what 
 followed can neither be transferred nor extenuated nor ignored. 
 The Eeverend F. F. Trench, perpetual curate of Cloghjordan, 
 a cousin of the late eminent Protestant Archbishop Trench, thus 
 relates some of his dread experience in Cork County in 1847 : — 
 
 " In order to understand aright the position in which I was 
 " placed during the time when the remarks which I am about 
 " to relate were made, I should mention that Rev. Dr. Traill 
 " (the rector of the parish), Eev. Mr. M'Cabe (the curate), Dr. 
 " Sweetman, and myself, were going from house to house, and 
 " occasionally standing in the street or road, surrounded by 
 " hundreds of clamorous beggars and wretched objects, many of 
 " them with evidently dying children in their arms. We went 
 " into three houses close to each other, and more dreadful 
 " objects I never saw. Dr. Sweetman said, ' Now, nothing can 
 " recover those you saw ; they must all die. Sir, the people 
 " die unconsciously to themselves ; they are foolishly delirious ; 
 " they die before your eyes. The pulse does not average fifty ; 
 "there is water between it and your hand. Look down the 
 " street — you need not select any house — and it's worse in the 
 " country.' This I afterwards found to be the case. On 
 " entering another house the doctor said, ' Look there, sir, you 
 " can't tell whether they are boys or girls.' Taking up a 
 " skeleton child, he said, ' Here is the way it is with them all ; 
 " their legs swing and rock like the legs of a doll,' and I saw 
 " that it was so in this instance. * Sir, they have the smell of 
 " mice.' After I had seen a great number of these miserable 
 "objects, the doctor said, 'Now, sir, there is not a child you 
 " saw can live for a month ; every one of them are in famine 
 " fever, a fever so sticky that it never leaves them.' ... In 
 " the first house I entered," Mr. Trench continues, " I saw a 
 " dead child lying in a comer of the house, and two children 
 
256 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " pale as death, with their heads hanging down upon their 
 " breasts, sitting by a small fire. Mrs. Moore, who accompanied 
 " me into the house, told me the sad history of the family. 
 " The father had died on the road coming home from work. 
 " One of the children, a lad seventeen years of age, had been 
 "found, in the absence of his mother, who was looking for 
 " food, lying dead, with his head leaning on the hob close to 
 " the fire, and with his legs held out of the fire by the little 
 " child which I then saw lying dead. Two other children had 
 " also died. The mother and the two children still alive had 
 " lived on one dish of barley for the last four days. For these 
 " famished children I obtained from Mrs. Moore a cake of 
 " brown bread, and sent it to them by the mother. In about a 
 " minute after I entered the house again, to see whether they 
 " were eating this cake voraciously, and found the children 
 *' sitting in the same posture. I feared they had not got the 
 " bread, but they had devoured it. I questioned them closely 
 " — asked them what colour it was. The child who replied said 
 " it was black ; it was coarse brown bread. . . . Amongst a 
 "population of about 16,000 still living, I did not see a child 
 " playing in the streets or on the roads ; no children are to be 
 " seen outside the doors but a few sick and dying children. I 
 " made this same remark in Bantry, and along the road for 
 ♦' twenty miles leading to it. I did not see a child in the 
 " streets, and this I remarked to several persons, clergy and 
 " magistrates, whose experience was the same as my own." 
 
 The present writer had the same remark to make in Mayo 
 during the famine of 1879. All desire for amusement had 
 vanished from the children there. In the same year, Mr. Stewart 
 Trench, the author of the Realities of Irish Life, writes as 
 follows of Kerry County ; asking terrible questions by the way, 
 Avhich an English statesman. Lord George Bentinck, shall pre- 
 sently be found replying to : — 
 
 •' Making the fullest allowance for deaths by natural causes," 
 observes Mr. Trench, " and the partial emigration which took 
 ♦' place, at least 5,000 people must have died of starvation 
 " within the Union of Kenmare ! They died on the roads, and 
 " they died in the fields; they died on the mountains, and they 
 " died in the glens ; they died at the relief works, and they died 
 ♦' in their houses ; so that little * streets ' or villages were left 
 
EVERLASTING FAMINE. 257 
 
 " almost without an inhabitant, and at last some few, despairing 
 " of help in the country, crawled into the town, and died at 
 " the doors of the residents and outside the Union walls. . . . 
 " Several of the respectable shopkeepers in the town of Kenmare 
 " informed me that, at this period, four or five dead bodies were 
 " frequently found in the streets, or on the flags, in the morning, 
 " the remains of poor people who had wandered in from the 
 " country in search of food ; and that they dreaded to open their 
 " doors lest a corpse should be found leaning against it. . . . 
 " Some were buried underground, and some were left unburied 
 " on the mountains where they died, there being no one able to 
 " bury them. The descriptions which have been given me of 
 " these scenes, by trustworthy eye-witnesses, would appal the 
 " stoutest heart, and are far too horrible to relate. Nothing 
 " which happened in Schull could exceed the horrors of the 
 " famine in Kenmare and the surrounding mountains, and all 
 " this took place because there was no one there with sufficient 
 " administrative capacity to import corn in time, and to bring 
 " the food and the people together ! It has been stated that I 
 " have committed an error in saying that there was no one there 
 " with sufficient energy to import corn, and that the authorities 
 " were paralysed by the magnitude of this sudden disaster. I 
 " adhere to my statement. The passage cannot mean that com 
 " was never, or under any circumstances, imported into Kenmare, 
 " but that it was not imported in time to save the people's lives. 
 " It may be true that large quantities of corn were ultimately 
 " imported, and a flotilla of abundance of food may from time to 
 " time have lain in the harbour of Kenmare. But either it was 
 " imported ' too late,' or the people did not get it when most 
 " wanted. Otherwise — why did 5,000 people die of starvation 
 " vdihin the Union of Kenmare ? 
 
 " When first this dreadful cry resounded through the land, 
 " the question which occurred to every thinking and practical 
 " mind was, ' Why should these things be ? ' Ireland was not, 
 " like any part of India, cut off from extraneous supplies. It 
 " was true the potatoes had rotted, and it was true the people 
 " had depended on the potato almost alone for food. But there 
 " was abundance of corn, abundance of flour, and abundance of 
 " meal in the country, not to speak of herds of sheep and cattle 
 " innumerable ; and in the midst of such plenty, why should 
 "the people die? There was also abundance of money to pur- 
 " chase food ; money was freely offered from many quarters, and 
 " was ready to flow forth in a mighty stream frofn the charitable 
 
 R 
 
258 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " people of England to almost any extent. If so, I may again 
 " ask, why should the people die ? " 
 
 Mr. Trench might have added that the people died in 
 thousands, and in tens of thousands, also, either on board the 
 floating pest-houses which carried away those attempting to flee 
 to Canada or the United States, or in the Lazaretto prepared in 
 anticipation of their arrival on the transatlantic shore. The 
 official report of the Montreal Emigrant Society for 1847 ^^^' 
 tains the following pathetic passage, descriptive of the last 
 scene of all, as it is published in the Montreal Herald of the 
 15th of January 1848 : — 
 
 " From Grosse Island, the great charnel-house of victimised 
 " humanity, up to Port Sarnia, and along the borders of our 
 " magnificent river ; upon the shores of Lakes Ontario and Erie, 
 " wherever the tide of emigration lias extended, are to be found 
 " the final resting-places of the sons and daughters of Erin ; 
 " one unbroken chain of graves, where repose fathers and 
 " mothers, sisters and brothers, in one commingled heap, with- 
 " out a tear bedewing the soil or a stone marking the spot. 
 " Twenty thousand and upwards have thus gone down to their 
 
 graves." 
 
 The Trenches wrote of the condition of things in the South 
 of Ireland. In the West and parts of the North it was just 
 tlie same. In a work published by the Society of Friends, 
 descriptive of the scenes met with by various members of that 
 most charitable body, throughout the country generally, in 
 1846-47, there are some terrible pictures. Mr. "William Bennett 
 thus describes his experience in the "West. Writing from Mayo, 
 on the 13th of March 1847 : — 
 
 " Language utterly fails me in attempting to depict the state 
 " of the wretched inhabitants, within the bounds of our 
 " Christian land, under our Christian Government, and entailing 
 " upon us, both as individuals and as members of a human 
 " community, a Christian responsibility from which no one of 
 " us can escape. My hand trembles while I write. The scenes 
 " of human misery and degradation we witnessed still haunt 
 " my imagination with the vividness and power of some horrid 
 
EVERLASTING FAMINE. 259 
 
 " and tyrannous delusion, rather than the features of a sober 
 " reality. 
 
 " We entered a cabin. Stretched in one dark corner, scarcely 
 " visible, from the smoke and rags that covered them, were 
 " three children huddled together, lying there because they 
 " were too weak to rise, pale and ghastly, their little limbs, on 
 " removing a portion of the filthy covering, perfectly emaciated, 
 " eyes sunk, voice gone, and evidently in the last stage of 
 " actual starvation. . . . Above, on something like a ledge, was 
 "a young woman with sunken cheeks, a mother, I have no 
 " doubt, who scarcely raised her eyes in answer to our inquiries ; 
 " but pressed her hand upon her forehead with a look of un- 
 '•' utterable anguish and despair. Many cases were widows, 
 " whose husbands had been recently taken off by the fever, 
 " and thus their only pittance obtained from the public works 
 " was entirely cut off. In many, the husbands or sons were 
 " prostrate under that horrid disease — the result of long-con- 
 " tinued fever and low living — in which first the limbs and 
 " then the body swell most frightfully and finally burst. We 
 " entered upwards of fifty of these tenements. The scene was 
 " invariably the same, differing in little but the manner of 
 " the sufferers, or of the groups occupying the several corners 
 " within." 
 
 The late Mr. W. E. Forster, M.P., Ex-Chief-Secretary for 
 Ireland, did good work also there, in company with his father, 
 a member of the same charitable society, during the same 
 period. Writing from Galway, on the 25th January 1847, 
 he said : — 
 
 " Perhaps the poor children presented the most piteous and 
 " heartrending spectacle. Many were too weak to stand ; their 
 " little limbs attenuated, except where the frightful swellings 
 " had taken the place of previous emaciation. Every infantile 
 " expression had entirely departed ; and, in some, reason and 
 " intelligence evidently flown. Many were remnants of fami- 
 " lies crowded together in one cabin ; orphaned little relatives 
 " taken in by the equally destitute and even by strangers, foi 
 " these poor people are kind to each other, even to the end. 
 " In one cabin was a sister, just dying, lying beside her little 
 " brother, just dead. I have worse than this to relate; but it 
 " is useless to multiply details, and they are, in fact, unfit. As 
 
26o A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " we went along, our wonder was not that the people died, hut 
 " that they lived ; and I have no doubt whatever that in any 
 " other country the mortality would have been far greater; and 
 " that many lives have been prolonged, perhaps saved, by the 
 " long apprenticeship to want in which the Irish peasant has 
 * ' been trained, and by that lovely, touching charity which 
 " prompts him to share his scanty meal with his starving 
 " neighbour." 
 
 These are but a few of the records of the time telling of 
 the slaughter of 1846-47, which are at best but feeble, scanty, 
 fugitive pictures of an appalling and almost universal calamity. 
 But it has been well observed by the Government Census 
 Commissioners of Ireland in their Report on Tables of Deaths 
 for the Year 1851 : — 
 
 " That no pen has recorded the numbers of the forlorn and 
 " starving who perished by the wayside or in the ditches ; or of 
 " the mournful groups, sometimes of whole families, who laid 
 " down and died, one after another, upon the floor of their 
 "miserable cabins, and so remained, uncoffined and unburied, 
 " till chance unveiled the appalling scene. No such amount of 
 " suflfering and misery has been chronicled in Irish history 
 " since the days of Edward Bruce ; and yet, through all, the 
 " forbearance of the Irish peasantry, and the calm submission 
 " with which they bore the deadliest ills that can fall on man, 
 " can scarcely be paralleled in the annals of any people." 
 
 "What steps did the Government take to avert this great 
 famine or mitigate its horrors 1 Did the Government take any 
 practical steps at all? During the existence of an earlier 
 famine in 1831, General Sir Charles Napier, writing from India 
 to his brother "William, asks (in volume i. of his lAfe) : — 
 
 " What are ministers about for Ireland ? It is nonsense to 
 " leave a whole people to private charity. . . . But as the 
 " Irish are patient and obedient to the laws of man, instead of 
 " adopting God's law of self-preservation, no exertion is made 
 " to help them. Pretty encouragement to be good subjects ! 
 " There are plenty of Avays to help Ireland and they will not 
 " try. . . . The accounts of suffering [there] put me in a fever ; 
 " but my predominant feeling is to stamp on Lord Grey's full 
 " belly until he does something decisive." 
 
EVEELASTING FAMINE. 26r 
 
 And in the same volume, there is another characteristic 
 letter (this time to his sister), in the following year, concern- 
 ing the action of the Government in Ireland, in which he 
 observes : — 
 
 " They are sending more bayonets and 'bullets to Ireland, 
 " justice halting a long way after military execution. God for- 
 " give me, but if one did not know the King is a good fellow 
 " himself this is enough to shake loyalty, . . . Stanley would 
 " make blood flow to produce love. Coercion ! damnable 
 " coercion ! What has been the ruin of Ireland but this 
 " accursed coercion, which these Whigs have been crying down 
 " for forty years, and now cry up, being in office. . . . O'Connell 
 " is called a devil, but he is doing an angel's duty. Fools that 
 " the Whigs are. Can they put down famine with bayonets 1 
 " Starve my wife and children and see if bayonets will put me 
 " down, except by death." 
 
 Again, in 1847, the gallant soldier does not forget afflicted 
 Ireland at his distant command. In proof of the thoroughly 
 earnest, practical nature of his views, he writes in that year on 
 the nth of May to H. Napier to the following effect, as will be 
 seen on reference to volume iv. of his Life : — 
 
 " I am able to send eleven thousand tons of wheat to Ireland, 
 " if I can get ships, and at ^^ per ton ! and yet keep enough in 
 " Scinde for our consumption in case of a bad coming harvest." 
 
 His biographer. Lieutenant - General Sir William Napier, 
 observes on this : — " Lord EUenborough [Governor- General 
 " of India] pointed out to the ministers how shipping could be 
 " had ; and how this wheat could be applied to save the starv- 
 " ing Irish. But he and Sir Charles Napier were treated alike 
 " with scorn." This is a very serious charge in the circumstances. 
 Kead in the light of Lord George Bentinck's correspondence 
 with Croker which follows, the rejection of this proposal of Sir 
 Charles Napier, supported by Lord EUenborough, appears to 
 demand some kind of explanation. If the reader will look into 
 voL iii. of the Croker Correspondence, and carefully examine 
 the consecutive pages 139 to 143, he will find that no less dis- 
 tinguished an authority than Lord George Bentinck gives it as 
 his deliberate opinion, which he repeats more than once, that 
 
263 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " a well-counted million of Irish perished of famine, and of 
 *' fever consequent upon famine, before assistance reached them" 
 from " the Ministries of the day." Furthermore, he will find 
 that Lord George directly charges upon the head of the English 
 Government the death by starvation of this " well-counted 
 " million." He says, in a letter to Croker, dated from "Welbeck, 
 September 1847 (that was before the Irish famine had finished 
 its devastations) : — 
 
 " Such was the improvidence of the "Whig Government that 
 " for three months they allowed the opportunity to pass for 
 "laying in stores at two-fifths of the price at which the great 
 "mass of the food for Ireland was eventually purchased. 
 " They allowed one million of people to perish, and the Irish 
 " people to draw the odious comparison and contrast between 
 " the English Government, which preferred keeping seventeen 
 " ships of war idle in the Tagus nursing a Coburg, and the 
 " Congress of the United States, which sent two ships of war — 
 " one, the Macedonian, they took from us — loaded from stem 
 "to sternpost, and from her keel to her gunwale, with 1800 
 " tons of breadstuffs. And I verily believe there is not an 
 " Irishman in Ireland who has not marked the contrast. Lord 
 " Hardwicke, the first seaman in the British navy, declared his 
 " readiness, with forty-eight hours' notice, to get the guns out 
 " of seven of these [ships in the Tagus], to have their port- 
 " holes battened down, and I think he said to have their top- 
 " gallant masts taken out, and be away for New York, and he 
 " said in eight weeks back again on the coast of Ireland with 
 " 80,000 quarters of corn.. [This corn. Lord George says, was 
 " selling for 20s, 4d. per quarter at New York and Philadelphia 
 "on the nth of December 1846, but it suddenly rose in 
 " Liverpool market to 70s., and at last, he believes, to 80s. a 
 " quarter.] I made this statement in the House of Commons, 
 " and Lord Hardwicke said something of the kind in the House 
 " of Lords the first night of the session [of 1S47]. The Govem- 
 " ment laughed at the proposition, and brought in a Bill for the 
 " Suspension of the Navigation Laws, , . . Lord John Kussell 
 " had pledged himself to the mercantile interest — tliat is, to 
 " the corn speculators and corn merchants of the city of London 
 " — 'that the supply of the people should be left to private en- 
 " terprise, and that private enterprise and free trade should not 
 " be interfered with.' But this is not all ; there was a fleet 
 
EVERLASTING FAMINE. 263 
 
 " of eight hundred grain-laden ships from the Black Sea lying 
 " wind-bound for seven weeks in the Gat of Gibraltar. Of 
 " these the greater part were bound for England, the rest for 
 " the French Atlantic ports. Louis Phillipe sent all his war 
 "steamers to tug the French ships through the Gat of Gibraltar. 
 " "We had five war steamers lying in the Tagus and the Douro ; 
 " our [grain] ships were left to wait the change of wind, and 
 " when at last they arrived in the Thames in May [1847], the 
 " grain from being so long on board, had in'many — I believe in 
 " most cases — become so heated that I am assured you might 
 " wind the stinking corn nearly a quarter of a mile to the lee- 
 " ward of the fleet." 
 
 Finally, Lord George Bentinck charges the Government with 
 falsifying the official returns of corn imported into Ireland at a 
 later period, under virtue of the suspension of the Navigation 
 Laws, and thinks the entire arrivals only amounted to 20,000, in- 
 stead of the 220,000 quarters officially reported to Parliament and 
 the country ! The greater criminality rests in the fact, which no 
 one has ever yet attempted to explain, that the Government per- 
 mitted Ireland to be denuded of abundant grain crops, sufficient 
 to resist any encroachment of famine whatever in that country, 
 out of deference to free trade and the principles of political 
 economy. Their wooden-headed, or hard-hearted officials in 
 Ireland ably represented the Government, by carrying out their 
 instructions to the letter. Sir 'Charles Napier might rail at 
 them from India, in what was no doubt considered " acrimonious 
 " terms " in the jargon of Downing Street and Dublin Castle ; 
 j\Ir. Stewart Trench might ask for some explanation of their 
 imbecility as it was every day unfolding itself before his eyes in 
 Kerry; Lord George Bentinck, a possible Prime Minister of 
 England, might denounce them as being, with open eyes, 
 accessory to the slaughter of a well-counted million of the Irish 
 people ; — it was all vain, as though it were a decree of fate that 
 the starvelings should turn their faces to the wall and die, 
 trusting to the merits of Christ for the reward which their 
 unparalleled patience, and abstinence from crime, must bring 
 them in another and a better world beyond the grave. 
 
 Six months before the date of the Crolcer Correspondence^ 
 
264 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 speaking in the House of Commons, on the 4th of February 
 1847, Lord George Bentinck thus testified to that wonderful 
 patience of the Irish people, thus : — 
 
 " I can only express my great surprise," he said, " that, with 
 " the people starving by thousands — with such accounts as we 
 " have read during the last -two days, of ten dead bodies out of 
 " eleven found lying unburied in one cabin ; of seven putrid 
 " corpses in another ; of dogs and swine quarrelling over, and 
 " fighting for the dead carcasses of Christians ; of the poor con- 
 " signed cofSnless to their graves, and denied the decencies of 
 " Christian burial, that the price of the cofBn saved might pro- 
 " long for a few days the sufferings of the dying, I, sir, for one, 
 " look with amazement at the patience of the Irish people." 
 
 Here is a specimen of the cruel subterfuges to which the 
 Government had recourse while they were daily permitting the 
 exportation of the grain-food grown, as has been already stated, 
 in abundance in Ireland. Even now it is sufficient to madden 
 the most cold-blooded of Saxons to reflect upon it. A deputa- 
 tion from the island of A chill had an interview with Sir R. 
 Routh, at his office, in Dublin Castle, on Saturday night, 
 October the loth, 1847. The deputation stated the peculiar 
 circumstances of Achill — the total destruction of the potato crop 
 there, and the absence of grain crops in any quantity, owing to 
 the exposed position of the island. The principal object of the 
 deputation was to procure a supply of food from the Govern- 
 ment Stores, for which the inhabitants were ready to pay. Sir 
 R. Routh replied that no supply of food of any consequence 
 could be expected before the latter end of November, and that 
 even then it was not his intention to recommend to the Govern- 
 ment to sell the food at a price lower than that demanded by 
 the merchants, as it was essential to the success of commerce 
 that the mercantile interests should not be interfered with. 
 Rev. Mr. Monahan, one of the deputation, remarked that the 
 Government acted diflferently last year, and sold cheap for the 
 purpose of bringing down the markets. Sir R. Routh admitted 
 the fact, but regretted it, as it gave bad liabits to the people, 
 and led them to expect the adoption of a similar course now, 
 whereas the Government was determined not to interfere with 
 
EVERLASTING FAMINE. 265 
 
 the merchants, but to act more in accordance with the en- 
 lightened principles of political economy. Rev. Mr. Monahan 
 said he could not understand why the Government was to bo 
 fettered by notions of political economy at such a crisis as this. 
 Sir R. Routh remarked that nothing was more essential to the 
 welfare of the country than strict adherence to free trade, and 
 begged to assure the rev. gentleman that, if he had read care- 
 fully and studied Burke, his illustrious countryman, he would 
 agree with him. Sir R. Routh. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say that Edmund Burke was never 
 guilty of writing or speaking words that might be used either 
 to justify or to extenuate the atrocious policy here enunciated 
 by this carefully drilled oflScial — a policy which is so weU and 
 so thoroughly exposed in the correspondence of Lord George 
 Bentinck, and the writings of Mr. Stewart Trench. A leading 
 Dublin journal wittily remarked at the time, that Sir R, Routh's 
 reply to the Achill deputation had not even the merit of origi- 
 nality ; for there was an Eastern story, in which it was related 
 how a deputation of Sheiks came, once upon a time, to the 
 Calif, and announced the sad intelligence that all their date 
 trees had withered, and his subjects were perishing throughout 
 the region whence they had come. They demanded assistance : 
 but before the Calif could make any reply, an old MooUah, 
 who stood by, told them to return home and read the Koran. 
 Unfortunately the Dublin Castle speech was no "story" but a 
 veritable fact. In the meanwhile, the well-counted million of 
 deaths by famine was being largely supplemented from month 
 to month, while the exportations of food were also being largely 
 supplemented at the same time, out of regard for the principles 
 of free trade and political economy. It was, in very truth, the 
 case of a nation dying of starvation in the midst of plenty. 
 From a revenue return presented to Parliament on i8th July 
 1849, i** appears that Ireland paid, during the three famine 
 years 1847, 1848, 1849, ending 5th January, (altogether) in 
 taxes to the British exchequer, ;^i3,293,68i, while her 
 starving people exported to England for payment of rent to 
 absentee landlords : — 
 
266 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 595,926 cattle. 
 839,118 sheep. 
 698,021 pigs. 
 
 959,640 quarters •wheat-flour. 
 3,658,875 „ oats and meal. 
 
 Under the title of A Mystery, the translator of Calderon's 
 dramatic plays published a pathetic poem on the subject, of 
 ■which the following were the opening lines : — 
 
 " They are dying ! they are dying ! where the golden com is growing, 
 They are dying ! they are dying ! where the crowded herds are lowing ; 
 They are gasping for existence where the streams of life are flowing, 
 And they perish of the plague where the breeze of health is blowing." 
 
 It is said that more than one Irish coroner's jury, holding 
 quest over the slaughtered innocents in the early days of the 
 famine — the inquests ceased to be held, as being unnecessary, 
 after a time — brought in a verdict of manslaughter against Lord 
 John Russell, the Prime Minister ; in some instances including 
 Sir Eobert Peel in the indictment. Many of the newspapers 
 of the time made merry over this fresh specimen of the imper- 
 turbable Irish bull. Yet those who now carefully peruse the 
 foregoing passages from the Crolcer Correspondence will readily 
 admit that such verdicts were neither irrational nor illogical, — 
 certainly not in the opinion of a distinguished contemporary 
 English statesman, the rising hope of a great political party, 
 viz.. Lord George Bentinck. The history of the Irish famine 
 of 1846-7 has yet to be written. The records of the period are 
 becoming more abundant from year to year, to reveal not only 
 the terrible extent of the visitation, but also the inexplicable 
 policy of the Government of the day in permitting the flower 
 of a kindred nation to perish in deference to " the principles 
 " of political economy." What the judgment of the historian 
 will be it is impossible to have any doubt. There is, however, 
 an abiding consolation to be found in tlie unexampled charity 
 of the British and American people amidst the general gloom. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 PUTTING THE SADDLE ON THE RIGHT HORSE. 
 
 " The deeds of the Iriah landlords are to a great extent our deeds. We 
 " are particeps criminis ; we, with power in our bands, looked on ; we not 
 " only looked on but we encouraged and sustained." — Gladstone. 
 
 It is difficult to condone the conduct of the leaders of the 
 various parties then in Parliament, as to the manner in which 
 they dealt with the terrible calamity of 1846-7 in Ireland. 
 But it is even more difficult to explain their inaction subse- 
 quently, when the landlords, taking advantage of that calamity, 
 proceeded still further to crucify their tenantry. There is no 
 need to bring forward here any lengthy descriptive passages 
 to illustrate the nature of the barbarities then perpetrated in 
 Ireland under the pretext of legal right. Unhappily we have 
 similar Irish eviction scenes daily reproduced in the news- 
 papers at the present time, to excite our horror and despair, — 
 despair on account of the incompetence of Parliament to inter- 
 fere, and the hardened selfishness of party government, which is 
 responsible for that incompetence. The following short extract 
 from an official report of Captain Kennedy regarding a single 
 day's proceedings of the crowbar-brigade in a typical Irish 
 Poor Law Union in 1848, tells us how the evil work was 
 then progressing in Ireland, within ear-shot — almost within 
 sight — of Lord John Russell (the Premier) and Sir Eobert 
 Peel, the Duke of "Wellington and Lord Aberdeen, the late 
 Lord Derby and Lord Palmerston. Each one of these distin- 
 guished statesmen had reached, or was destined to reach, the 
 highest position to which a subject can aspire in the State; 
 while three of them, viz., the Duke of "Wellington, Sir Robert 
 Peel, and Lord Derby had, prior to 1846, served in the office 
 
268 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 of Chief Secretary for Ireland in addition. There is hardly 
 room, therefore, to set up a plea of ignorance or incapacity in 
 this case. Here, then, is a single page from Captain Kennedy's 
 official reports, which were being dinned into the ears of these 
 parliamentary leaders week after week for a period extending 
 over eighteen months, viz., from November 1847 to May 
 1849:— 
 
 " Notwithstanding that fearful and, I believe, unparalleled 
 " numbers have been unhoused in this Union within the 
 " year (probably 15,000)," observes Captain Kennedy, writing 
 from Kilrush Union, County Clare, on the 7th of May 1849, 
 "it seems hardly credible that 1200 more have had their 
 " dwellings levelled within a fortnight. ... I find that my 
 " constant and untiring exertions make but little impression 
 "upon the mass of fearful sufiiering. As soon as one horde 
 " of houseless and all but naked paupers are dead, or provided 
 " for in the Avorkhouse, another wholesale eviction doubles the 
 " number, who, in their turn, pass through the same ordeal of 
 " wandering from house to house or burrowing in bogs or 
 " behind ditches till, broken down by privation and exposure 
 " to the elements, they seek the workhouse or die by the road- 
 " side. The state of some districts of the Union during the 
 " last fourteen days baffles description. ... As cabins become 
 " fewer, lodgings, however miserable, become more difficult to 
 " obtain ; and the helpless and houseless creatures [including 
 " innumerable women and children] thus turned out of the only 
 " home they ever knew, betake themselves to the nearest bog or 
 " ditch, with their little all, and, thus huddled together, disease 
 " soon decimates them." 
 
 In the House of Commons, two years before, Lord John 
 Eussell quoted Romeo's address to the Apothecary, for the 
 purpose of extenuating, if not justifying, agrarian crime in 
 Ireland : — 
 
 " Famine is in thy cheeks, 
 Need and oppression starveth in thine eyes, 
 Contempt and beggary hangs upon thy back ; 
 The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law ; 
 The world affords no law to make thee rich. 
 Then be not poor, but break it." 
 
PUTTING THE SADDLE ON THE EIGHT HORSE. 269 
 
 Sir Robert Peel was not less emphatic in denouncing the 
 barbarities revealed in this report. Speaking in the House of 
 Commons on the 8th of June 1849, he observed — "I must 
 " say that I do not think that the records of any country, civil 
 " or barbarous, present materials for such a picture as is set 
 " forth in the statement of Captain Kennedy." Sir Robert 
 then dwelt on some of the details, one being the case of two 
 children lying asleep on the dead body of their evicted father, 
 while their mother was fast dying close by. Another was 
 that of a woman lying in a hopeless stage of dysentery. 
 After eviction from her cabin she took refuge in a cow-shed, 
 and now her only chance of escaping expulsion from this 
 last also lay in the fears of the bailiffs to approach her on 
 account of the infection. The third case which aroused the 
 momentary indignation of Sir Robert Peel was that of an evicted 
 poor man who had patched up a temporary shelter in the bog 
 for his family. While his wife and children were searching 
 the sea-shore for particles of food, and he was himself engaged 
 in breaking stones at a distance, the bailiffs fired the hut, as 
 they had previously levelled his cabin. " Three such tragical 
 "instances," Sir Robert observed, "I do not believe were ever 
 " presented either in point of fact, or as conjured up in the 
 " imagination of any human being." This was by no means 
 an isolated case. The great statesman could not plead ignorance 
 of the inhumanity of the proceedings of the landlords against 
 their tenantry ; their 1 illegality at times was equally conspi- 
 cuous. For instance, speaking in the House of Commons on 
 another occasion, Sir Robert thus revealed his perfect familiarity 
 with the nature and circumstances of the atrocious work going 
 on in Ireland : — 
 
 " It would appear," he said, " from the evidence of Major 
 " M'Kie, who was employed by the Poor Law Commissioners, 
 " that the forcible ejectments were illegal; that previous notice 
 " had not been given ; and that ejectments were perpetrated 
 " under circumstances of great cruelty. The time chosen for 
 " the most part was night, on the eve of the new year. The 
 " people were forced out of their houses with their helpless 
 
270 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " children, and left exposed to the cold on a bleak western 
 " shore on a stormy winter's night ; that some of the children 
 " were ill ; that the parents implored that they might not be 
 "exposed; that their houses might be left till morning; their 
 " prayers for mercy were in vain, and some of them have since 
 " died." 
 
 Of the landlords but " few " were resident, Captain Kennedy 
 reported. Their agents, however, did duty for them in their 
 absence, and superintended the levelling or burning down of 
 the cabins of the famine and plague-stricken people, in the 
 depth of the winter of 1848-9. What did parliament, directed 
 by its trusted leaders, do to stay the uplifted arm of the 
 evictor? Did Lord John Russell, the Prime Minister, come 
 to any humane understanding with Sir Robert Peel, or the 
 other eminent men just named, having for its object the 
 putting of some kind of restraint upon the cruel action of 
 the Irish landlords t It is very painful to have to make the 
 confession, but neither one nor the other attempted anything 
 of the kind. Parliament considered it sufficient to pass an 
 Act providing (i) that the landlords should give forty-eight 
 hours' notice of their intention to evict to the Poor Law 
 Guardians of the district; (2) that the operations of the 
 crowbar brigade should be suspended before sunrise and 
 after sunset; (3) that such operations should thenceforward 
 be illegal on Christmas Day and Good Friday. Finally, the 
 seventh section of the Act provided that the cabins should not 
 be pulled down or unroofed over the heads of the inmates, 
 but that the latter should first be allowed time to escape out- 
 side, that is, to prevent their being murdered or permanently 
 maimed inside. Having accomplished this remarkable piece of 
 legislation, with the aid of their respective followers, these six 
 foremost English statesmen simply played the part of Pilate, 
 washing their hands occasionally in public by way of deprecating 
 the atrocious cruelties of the landlord garrison in the sister coun- 
 try. Is it surprising under the circumstances that Mr. Gladstone 
 should be found confessing, forty years later, that " "We " are 
 particeps criminis with the Irish landlords ; that " "We " looked 
 
PUTTING THE SADDLE ON THE EIGHT HORSE. 271 
 
 on ; nay that " We " encouraged and sustained them in their evil 
 ■work t On one of these statesmen, in particular, it reflects last- 
 ing discredit, viz., the great Duke of "Wellington. Of the armies 
 which helped to conquer India, half the force, including the 
 Duke himself, was composed of Irish officers and soldiers, 
 according to Mr. Froude. And the proportion of Irishmen in 
 the British army was not less during the Peninsular War 
 (according to the same authority) in which the Duke gained his 
 proudest laurels. There was surely something inexplicably mean 
 in his political life when he forgot the services of his country- 
 men in this manner, and stood idly looking on while they were 
 being exterminated by their landlords. The gallant Nelson, in 
 the Duke's political position, would scarcely have acted thus. 
 He would have remembered that Britons might sing "Kule 
 Britannia " very small but for the fact that a like proportion of 
 Irish sailors manned his ships at the Nile and Trafalgar. And 
 he would, in common gratitude, have generously legislated for 
 their kinsmen ; at least it would have been in accordance with 
 his chivalrous nature so to do. As it was, Parliament was deaf 
 to the voice of humanity ; but not deaf to the cries of the land- 
 lords for fresh manacles for their tenants, to secure their peace- 
 able expulsion from house and home, to die in the ditch. The 
 suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in 1848 was rushed 
 through the House of Commons at a single sitting, almost 
 without discussion, with a result that, according to Mitchell's 
 History of Ireland, in this year alone, in the words of Captain 
 Larcom's official Government report, " 70,000 occupiers, with 
 their families, numbering about 300,000 in all, were rooted out 
 of the land." And the following year, according to Mr. Joseph 
 Kay, more than 50,000 families were turned out of their homes 
 in like manner ; while to-day, as has been the case during and 
 since the famine of 1879-80, the Irish people are being ex- 
 pelled from the shelter of their homes " actually by battalions," 
 in the words of Sir George Trevelyan, an ex-Chief Secretary 
 for Ireland; the Government openly aiding and abetting in 
 their expulsion, in spite of the indignant protests of millions of 
 the inhabitants of England and Scotland. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 MILITARY FAMINES— MASSACRE OF THE 
 INNOCENTS. 
 
 "The land fainted by reason of the famine." — Genesis xlvii. 13. 
 
 Famines, artificially created, confiscations, exterminations, assas- 
 sinations, succeeded one another almost unremittingly in unfor- 
 tunate Ireland. Elizabeth and her successors governed by them, 
 and made them, as it were, the normal conditions of the 
 English domination. In a -work of Mr. Godkin (The Land 
 War), a former Irish correspondent of the Times, and an 
 accomplished, honourable man, there is a quotation from a 
 letter written by Lord-Deputy Chichester, about the year 1607, 
 which reads like a verse out of the prophecies of Joel, — " A fire 
 " devoureth before tliem; and behind them a flame burneth": — 
 
 " I have often said and written," observes Chichester, " it is 
 " famine that must consume the Irish, as our swords and other 
 " endeavours worked not that speedy effect which is expected ; 
 " hunger would be a better, because a speedier weapon to em- 
 " ploy against them than the sword. ... I burned all along 
 " the Lough [Neagh] within four miles of Dungannon, and 
 " killed 1 00 people, sparing none, of what quality, age, or sex 
 " soever, besides many burned' to death. We killed man, 
 " woman, and child, horse, beast, and whatsoever we could 
 " find." 
 
 Such was the fate of Ulster, by this date pretty well nigh 
 cleared of its inhabitants. Sad to be obliged to write it, 
 the poet Spenser, the author of the Faerie Queen, who, like 
 Chichester, profited materially by the conBscations following 
 this mode of warfare, shared the Lord-Deputy's opinion that 
 famine alone was capable of subduing the Irish. He actually 
 
MILITAEY FAMINES AND MASSACEES. 273 
 
 submitted a detailed plan of his own, for the reduction of 
 Munster, to Elizabeth, from which the following is an extract, 
 to be found in his State of Ireland .• — 
 
 " The end will (I assure mee) bee very short, and much 
 *' sooner than it can be in so greate a trouble, as it seemeth, 
 " hoped for : altho' there should none of them fall by the 
 " sword, nor bo slaine by the soldiour ; yet thus being kept 
 " from manurance, and their cattle from running abroad, by 
 " this hard restraint they would quietly consume themselves, 
 " and devour one another ! " 
 
 Nor did the terrible programme remain a dead letter. The 
 author of the Faerie Queen himself tells us how it was carried 
 out after the revolt of the Earl of Desmond : — 
 
 " Notwithstanding that the same was a most rich and plentifull 
 " countrey full of come and cattel, ... yet, ere one yeare and 
 " a half, they were brought to such wretchednesse as that any 
 " stony heart would have rued the same. Out of every comer 
 "of the woods and glynns, they came; creeping forth upon 
 " their hands, for their leggs could not beare them ; they looked 
 " liked anatomies of death, they spake like ghosts crying out of 
 " their graves ; they did eate the dead carrions, happy where 
 " they could finde them, yea, and one another soone after, inso- 
 " much as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape out of 
 " their graves ; and, if they found a plot of watercresses or 
 " shamrocks, there they flocked as to a feast for the time, yet 
 " not able long to continue there with all ; that in shorte space 
 " there was none almost left, and a most populous and plentifull 
 " countrey suddainlie left voyde of man and beast" 
 
 Here is how Sir "William Pelham, another Lord-Deputy, 
 writes to Elizabeth as to the modus operandi under his command. 
 The extract will be found in Walpole's Short History of Ire- 
 land, as follows : — 
 
 " Touching my manner of proceeding, it is thus : I give the 
 " rebels no breath to relieve themselves ; but by one of your 
 " garrisons or the other, they be continually hunted. I keep 
 " them from their harvest, and have taken great preys of cattle 
 "from them,, by which it seemeth the poor people that lived 
 " only upon labour, and fed by their milch cows, are so dis- 
 
 s 
 
274 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " tressed as they follow their goods and offer themselves with 
 " their wives and children, rather to he slain by the army than 
 " to suffer the famine that now beginneth to pinch them." 
 
 But the murderous policy must proceed, though it is very 
 difficult to divine its object. And that they were slain by the 
 sword as well as by famine will be clearly seen from the follow- 
 ing description of military doings in Munster. Mr. Lecky, in 
 the second volume of his Eigldeenth Century, relates the story 
 of another Irish famine as follows : — 
 
 "The Lord President [of Munster, Sir George Carew] (he 
 " himself assures us), having heard that the Munster fugitives 
 " were harboured in certain parts of that province, diverted his 
 " forces thither, ' burnt all the houses and com, taking great 
 " preys, . . . and, harassing the country, killed all mankind 
 " that were found therein.' From thence he went to other 
 " parts, where ' he did the like, not leaving behind him man or 
 " beast, corn or cattle, except such as had been conveyed into 
 " castles.' Long before the war had terminated, Elizabeth was 
 " assured that she had little left to reign over but ashes and 
 " carcasses. It was boasted that in all the wide territory of 
 " Desmond not a town, castle, village, or farmhouse was un- 
 " burnt; and a high English official, writing in 1582, computed 
 " that in six months more than 30,000 people had been starved 
 " to death in Munster, besides those who were hung or who 
 " perished by the sword. . . . The slaughter of women as well 
 " as of men, of unresisting peasants as well as of armed rebels, 
 " was openly avowed by the English commanders. The Irish 
 " annalists told with horrible detail, how the bands of Pelham 
 ** and Ormond ' killed blind and feeble men, women, boys and 
 " girls, sick persons, idiots, and old people ;' how in Desmond's 
 " country, even after all resistance had ceased, soldiers forced 
 " men and women into old bams which were set on fire, and if 
 " any attempted to escape they were shot or stabbed ; how 
 " soldiers were seen ' to take up infants on the point of their 
 " spears, and to whirl them about in their agony ; ' how women 
 " were found ' hanging on trees with their children at their 
 " breasts, strangled with their mother's hair.'" 
 
 Mr. Eroude, in volume xL of his History of England, nar- 
 rating what was enacted by the Queen's troops in the Desmond 
 war, confirms Mr. Lecky thus : — ^ 
 
MILITARY FAMINES AND MASSACRES. 275 
 
 "The entire province of Munster was utterly depopulated. 
 " Hecatombs of helpless creatures, the aged, and the sick, and 
 " the blind, the young mother and the babe at the breast^ had 
 " fallen under the English sword." 
 
 In the southern province, the result of these barbarities, 
 dignified with the name of war, was exactly what might have 
 been expected. The contemporary English historian Holinshed 
 shall describe it : — 
 
 " The people were not only driven to eat horses, dogs, and 
 ' dead carrions, but also did devour the carcasses of dead men, 
 'whereof there be sundry examples. . . . The land itself, 
 ' which before those wars was populous, well inhabited, and 
 'rich in all the good blessings of God, being plenteous of 
 ' come, full of cattel, well stored with fish and sundrie other 
 ' good commodities, is now become waste and barren, yielding 
 ' no fruits, the , pastures no cattel, the fields no come, the aire 
 ' no birds ; the seas (though full of fish), yet to them yielding 
 ' nothing. Finally, every waie the curse of God was so great 
 ' [this is surely calling the sacred name in vain], and the land 
 ' so barren both of man and beast, that whosoever did travell 
 ' from the one end to the other of all Munster, even from 
 ' "Waterford to the head of Smeerweeke, which is about six 
 ' score miles, he would not meet anie man, woman, or child, 
 ' saving in towns and cities ; nor yet see any beast, but the 
 ' very wolves, the foxes, and other like ravening beasts, many 
 ' of them laie dead, being famished, and the residue gone else- 
 ' where." 
 
 The same horrors had been enacted in other parts of Ireland 
 a few years previously (1576) : — < 
 
 " At Christmas," writes Sir Nicholas Malby, President of 
 Connaught, to Walsingham, as cited by Mr. Froude in volume 
 xi. of his History of England, " I marched into their [the 
 " Burkes'] country, and finding courteous dealing with them 
 " had like to have cut my throat. I thought good to take 
 " another course ; and so with determination to consume them 
 " with fire and sword, sparing neither old nor young, I entered 
 " their mountains. I burnt all their com and houses, and com- 
 " mitted to the sword all that could be found, where were slain 
 " at that time above sixty of their best men, and among them 
 
276 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " the best leaders they had. This was Shan Burke's country. 
 " Then I burnt Ulick Burke's country in like manner. I 
 " assaulted a castle where the garrison surrendered. I put 
 " them to the misericordia of my soldiers. They were aU slain- 
 " Thence I went on, sparing none which came in my way, 
 " which cruelty did so amaze their followers that they could 
 " not tell where to bestow themselves. Shan Burke made 
 " means to me to pardon him and forbear killing of his people. 
 " I would not hearken, but held on my way. The gentlemen 
 " of Clanrickard came to me : I found it was but dallying to 
 " win time ; so I left Ulick as little corn and as few houses 
 " standing as I had left his brother, and what people was found 
 " had as little favour as the other had. It was all done in rain 
 " and frost and storm, journeys in such weather bringing them 
 " the sooner to submission. They are humble enough now, and 
 " will yield to any terms we like to offer them." Mr. Froude 
 continues : — " Where the people were quiet there was the rope 
 " for malefactors, and death by ' natural law ' for those whom 
 " the law written would not touch. Where they broke out 
 " there was the blazing homestead, and death by the sword for 
 " all, not for the armed kerne only, but for the aged and infirm, 
 " the nursing mother, and the baby at the breast." 
 
 Shortly before the death of Elizabeth, she was greatly in- 
 censed against her favourite Essex because of his failure to 
 suppress an Irish rising; and despatched Lord Mountjoy to 
 Ireland instead, with the largest army yet sent into the unhappy 
 kingdom. He took his instructions from Elizabeth and her 
 counsellor, Cecil, Lord Salisbury's ancestor, as was the custom 
 with those who preceded him, and endeavoured to trample out 
 rebellion in the old way recommended by Edmund Spenser and 
 adopted by Chichester. Hitherto we have been reading of war 
 north, south, and west ; now Mountjoy takes us into the mid- 
 land counties of Ireland. Here is how the new Viceroy pro- 
 ceeded around Leix, as related by his secretary, Moryson, a 
 not uncandid historian when dealing with the story of Irish 
 famines : — 
 
 " Our captains, and! by their example (for it was otherwise 
 " painful) the common soldiers, did cut down with their swords 
 '* all the rebels' corn, to the value of ;^i 0,000 [an enormous 
 
MILITARY FAMINES AND MASSACRES. 277 
 
 " value reckoned by the standard of the time] and upward, the 
 " only means by which they were to live and to keep their 
 " Bonnaghts (or hired soldiers). It seemed incredible that, 
 "by so barbarous [?] inhabitants, the ground should be so 
 " manured, the fields so orderly fenced, the towns so fre- 
 " quently inhabited, and the highways and paths so well 
 " beaten as the Lord Deputy here found them. The reason 
 " whereof was that the Queen's forces during these wars never 
 " till then came among them to create a famine." 
 
 Moryson tells us the result of Mountjoy's visit : — 
 
 "No spectacle was more frequent in the ditches of the 
 " towns, and especially in wasted countries, than to see multi- 
 " tudes of these poor people, the Irish, dead, with their mouths 
 " all coloured green by eating nettles, docks, and all things 
 " they could rend above ground." 
 
 Hume says, writing of this period : — 
 
 " The small army which the English maintained in Ireland 
 " they never supplied regularly with pay, and as no money 
 " could be levied from the island, which possessed none, they 
 " gave the soldiers the privilege of free quarters on the natives. 
 ' ' Rapine and insolence inflamed the hatred which prevailed 
 " between the conquerors and the conquered, and want of 
 " security among the Irish introduced despair. For the Eng- 
 " lish carried further their ill-judged tyranny. . . . They even 
 " refused, though earnestly solicited, to communicate to them 
 " the privileges of their laws, and everywhere marked them 
 " out as aliens and enemies." 
 
 In a letter written by Lord Upper Ossory, quoted by Carte 
 in the second volume of his Ldfe of Ormonde, the writer 
 observes : — 
 
 "That St. Leger" (who was Lord President of Munster) 
 " was so cruel and merciless, that he caused men and women 
 " to be most execrably executed ; and that he ordered, among 
 "others, a woman great with child to be ripped up, from 
 "whose womb three babes were taken out; through every of 
 " whose little bodies his soldiers thrust their weapons ; which 
 "act," adds Lord Upper Ossory, "put many into a sort of 
 " desperation." 
 
278 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 Mr. Froude is sometimes almost inclined to be as ferocious 
 in regard to Ireland as one of Elizabeth's commanders. But, 
 appalled by these cruelties, he cannot help confessing that 
 though : — 
 
 " The English nation was shuddering over the atrocities of 
 " the Duke of Alva ; [and] the children in the nurseries were 
 *' being inflamed to patriotic rage and madness by tales of 
 " Spanish tyranny ; yet Alva's bloody sword never touched 
 *' the young, the defenceless, or those whose sez even dogs can 
 " recognise and respect." 
 
 In Keble's Lyra Innocentium there are some beautiful lines 
 exemplifying the power of children over the wicked : — 
 
 " A little child's soft sleeping face 
 The murderer's knife ere now bath staid ; 
 The adulterer's eye, so foul and.ba^e, 
 Is of a little child afraid. 
 They cannot choose but fear, 
 Since in that sign they feel God and good angels near." 
 
 Simple and beautiful character as was the poet of the English 
 Church of the nineteenth century, he evidently knew little of 
 the unspeakable crimes perpetrated under the guise of religion 
 three centuries earlier by the myrmidons of the Cecils, who 
 feared not God nor His " good angels near." After Elizabeth, 
 James I. prepared the way for fresh famines of the same type. 
 Mr. Froude, in the first volume of his English in Ireland, thus 
 refers to the Cromwellian Era succeeding : — 
 
 o 
 
 "The blood spilt in the winter of 1641-42 vas not washed 
 " out till, according to the elaborate computation of Sir "William 
 " Petty, out of an entire population of a million and a half, 
 " more than half a million had by sword, famine, and pestilence 
 " been miserably destroyed." 
 
 Of the same period, Mr Lecky writes as follows in the second 
 volume of his Eighteenth Century : — 
 
 " The orders issued to the soldiers were not only ' to kill 
 " and destroy rebels and their adherents and relievers, but 
 " to bum, waste, consume, and demolish all the places, towns, 
 "and houses where they bad been relieved and harboured, with 
 
MILITARY FAMINES AND MASSACRES. 279 
 
 " all the corn and hay therein ; and also to kill and destroy all 
 " the men there inhabiting capable to bear arms.' But, horrible 
 " as were these instructions, they but faintly foreshadowed the 
 " manner in which the war was actually conducted. I shall 
 " not attempt to go through the long catalogue of horrors that 
 " have been too often paraded ; it is sufficient to say that the 
 " soldiers of Sir Charles Coote, of St. Leger, of Sir Frederick 
 " Hamilton, and of others, rivalled the worst crimes that were 
 "perpetrated in the days of Carew and of Mountjoy. 'The 
 " soldiers,' says Carte, ' in executing the orders of the justices, 
 " murdered all persons promiscuously, not sparing the women, 
 "and sometimes not children.' . . . The saying, 'Nits will 
 " make lice,' which was constantly employed to justify the 
 " murder of Irish children, then came into use." 
 
 In his Memoirs, Lord Castlehaven gives a fearful account 
 of the conduct of the troops under Coote's command, "who 
 " killed men, women, and children promiscuously." Leland 
 speaks of "his ruthless and indiscriminate carnage;" while 
 Warner says "he was a stranger to mercy." 
 
 Such is a compendious sketch of what may be called the 
 military famines and massacres with which Ireland was visited 
 from time to time. They would, however, be incomplete without 
 some reference to the system of assassination organised by the 
 Cecils, father and son, sanctioned by Elizabeth at their teaching 
 as the merest exercise of statecraft, and impressed on her vice- 
 regal governors and commanders as a plain matter of necessity 
 if not military duty. And yet all these crimes of various reigns 
 were committed on the pretence of evangelical religion, though 
 in reality for purposes of robbery and confiscation only. It 
 will be seen in the next chapter with what nimbleness the elder 
 Cecil jumped from Protestantism to Popery in Mary's reign, 
 and from Popery back to Protestantism in that of Elizabeth, — 
 though Mr. Froude says that the virgin queen herself "had 
 " never concealed her contempt and dislike for Protestantism." 
 All the same Cecil looked for profit in the double somersault, 
 and, as will be seen in the next chapter, he contrived to secure 
 it for himself as well as for his interesting posterity of to-day. 
 
CHAPTER XXX. 
 ASSASSINATION AS AN IMPLEMENT OF STATECRAFT. 
 
 " In plain English, the term ' practises against rebels ' meant the 
 " deliberate assassination of rebels." — Edwabds' Life of RctlHgh. 
 
 Cecil, Lord Burleigh, Lord Salisbury's distinguished ancestor 
 and founder of the family, was a curious mixture of piety and 
 profanity. His biographer, Nares, says — " He confessed himself 
 "in Mary's reign with great decorum, and heard mass in "Wim- 
 " bledon Church; for the better ordering of his spiritual concerns 
 " taking a priest into his house." He unkindly adds, however, 
 that Burleigh " was not moved by superstition in these proceed- 
 "ings, but by pure unmixed hypocrisy." He had previously 
 secured the valuable endowments of the Abbey of Peterborough 
 from the universal plunder, and no doubt helped himself in 
 Edward's reign from the subsequent scramble for what was yet 
 left of the patrimony of the poor. He was at once a heaven- 
 bom minister and a many-sided man. He took office under 
 Somerset only to desert him, which drew from the latter — 
 "Ah, my false friend! I thought he was a religious man; I 
 " have been deceived." Miss Strickland describes him as a 
 man of " many religions." He embittered the last hours of 
 Latimer and Ridley by saying " they were about to die as 
 " traitors to their sovereign," having himself been guilty of 
 treason, both to Mary and Elizabeth, when he plotted with 
 Northumberland for setting their claims aside in favour of 
 Lady Jane Dudley. Isaac Bannister, an Anabaptist preacher, 
 describes Burleigh, in the early part of Elizabeth's reign, as 
 " becoming rich by taking his neighbours' goods," adding the 
 bitter truth, that " he went to his half-Popish devotions four 
 
ASSASSINATION AN IMPLEMENT OF STATECEAFT. 281 
 
 " times a day, thus endeavouring to make Heaven an accom- 
 " plice in his hypocrisy " — a not uncommon endeavour in our 
 ovra days too. Yet, according to the Burleigh State Papers, 
 he was quite moderate in his rapacity. " In the whole 
 " time (26 years) that I have heen labouring for her Majesty 
 " [Elizabeth]," Burleigh says dolefully, " I have not benefited 
 " as much as I was within four years of King Edward," when 
 the expenses of the Royal Household are said to have risen fnom 
 ;^i9,ooo to ;^ioo,ooo a year! "He was so moderate in his 
 " desires," observes Macaulay, " that he left only three hundred 
 " distinct landed estates behind him." Clarendon has said of 
 him that " no man was so great a tyrant in this country," and 
 we know the part he played, in conjunction with Leicester and 
 "Walsingham, in securing the long imprisonment and. final 
 execution of Mary Stuart. Green, the historian, is at his wit's 
 end to account for Burleigh's various characters, and at length 
 explains that in his time " every English subject was called upon 
 " to adjust his conscience as well as his conduct to the varying 
 "policy of the State!" Still, with all that, Burleigh's piety 
 was proverbial, and shone like a solitary star in the firmament 
 on a tempestuous night. If you turn to Strype's Ecclesiastical 
 Memorials, you will there see that this man of various creeds 
 and politics, who impartially approved of the murder of Protes- 
 tants and Papists in turn, as heretics or traitors, is actually the 
 author of A Prayer for the Use of the Public, written about 
 the time he was raised to the peerage. Piety and strict ortho- 
 doxy have run in the family ever since, like the other precious 
 fruits proceeding from the endowments of the Abbey of Peter- 
 borough, In proof of the latter, Lord Salisbury will not to- 
 day even sell a decent site for a church to the Methodists at 
 Hatfield; while the hereditary piety is exemplified in the address 
 delivered before the English Church Congress by his exemplary 
 nephew, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, shortly after poor 
 old Dunne was put to death in that kingdom by process of 
 eviction, — thus, in the words of Isaac Bannister, " endeavouring 
 to make Heaven an accomplice " in that foul judicial murder. 
 It will be remembered that Isaak "Walton, the contemporary 
 
282 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 of the Cecils, father and son, advises the Complete Angler to put 
 the worm on the hook tenderly "as though you loved him." 
 It was said of Burleigh that he had no objection to the rack as 
 an instrument of torture provided it were used " as charitably 
 " as such a thing can be." The age in which he lived was, in 
 Ireland at least, an age of assassinations. They were amongst 
 the ordinary means employed by Elizabeth in the government 
 of that kingdom. Burleigh, indeed, according to Mr. Froude, 
 confessed in a letter addressed to the Queen's "War Treasurer in 
 Dublin, in 1582, when England resounded with the cruelties 
 practised by the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, " that the 
 " Flemings had not such cause to rebel by the oppression of the 
 *' Spaniards," as the Irish against the tyranny of England. But 
 the torturing and assassinations proceeded notwithstanding. 
 Men were driven into rebellion by injustice and cruelty, and 
 then when they were found too brave to be readily put down 
 by fair fighting in the open, their leaders were ensnared by 
 offers of friendship into perpetual imprisonment ; or they were 
 poisoned with luxurious presents of food or drink; or they 
 were assassinated singly or in batches, at their fireside or at 
 public conferences, — sometimes when exercising hospitality 
 towards their assassins. All these things are to be found duly 
 recorded in the state papers of the time. Essex bitterly 
 lamented his "banishment and proscription to the cursedest 
 " of all islands," because, he said, when writing to his' royal 
 mistress, " the rebels were so many and so framed to be soldiers, 
 " that the war of force would be great, costly, and long." How 
 costly it proved to Essex himself, history tells us. " For I have 
 " heard some great warriors say," observes Edmund Spenser, 
 another contemporary authority, " that in all the services they 
 " had seen abroad in forraigne countreyes, they never saw a 
 " more comely man than the Irish man, nor that commeth on 
 " more bravely in his charge." Sir "William Pelham, who was 
 another of Elizabeth's commanders, also testified that "the detest- 
 " able service of Ireland was the grave of every English reputa- 
 " tion." According to Mr. Froude, Sir Henry "Wallop alone of all 
 English commanders expressed remorse at the work of consum- 
 
ASSASSINATION AN IMPLEMENT OF STATECRAFT. 283 
 
 ing Ireland by fire and sword. Kaleigh learned wisdom in 
 Ireland, having found it easy, he said, to defeat the Irish when 
 they had nothing better to fight with than " darts." Afterwards, 
 when they had provided themselves " with as good pikes and 
 " muskets as England hath," he testifies that they were more 
 than a match for their ruthless enemies. Indeed, Kaleigh adds 
 this wise saw, which merits the consideration of the superior 
 persons ruling Ireland at the present time, — " Stultum est eos 
 " invadere quos nequeant in officio retinere." 
 
 These were the insiirmoun table difficulties of English govern- 
 ment in Ireland in the reign of Elizabeth which led to un- 
 soldierly methods of warfare in that kingdom. Mr, Edwards, 
 in the first volume of his Life of Raleigh, says the second Cecil 
 (Lord Salisbury) and his subordinates in Ireland, including 
 Kaleigh himself, were little troubled with scruples of conscience 
 as regards what were termed "practises against rebels." In plain 
 English the term meant, he says, " the deliberate assassination 
 " of rebels, or even of persons vehemently suspected of an 
 " intention to rebel." Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Henry Sidney, 
 and Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton, had "practised" in like 
 manner a few years earlier. Raleigh, Carew, Sussex, and 
 Cecil, were at one in this important matter ; and Kaleigh had 
 actually commended Gilbert, who was his half-brother, for 
 slaughtering indiscriminately with the sword the Irish women 
 and children as well as the men. Depend upon it, they did 
 not act so without authority. By Elizabeth's instructions — for 
 which Cecil was of course responsible — to Carew in 1598-99, on 
 his going over to carry her exterminating schemes into execution 
 in Ireland, she authorised her officers to " put suspected Irish to 
 " the rack," and to torture them " when they should find it 
 "convenient." Carew fulfilled her Majesty's instructions to 
 their full extent, and at the conclusion of his government she 
 had the satisfaction of finding that Munster was nearly depo- 
 pulated. There is a spirited letter of Ormonde to Burleigh of 
 September 10, 1583, which exhibits clearly enough what kind of 
 service Elizabeth and Burleigh exacted of the royal commanders 
 in Ireland even fifteen years earlier : — 
 
284 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " My Lcrd Burleigh, the clause in the Queen's letter seems 
 " most strange to me. I will never use treachery to any one, 
 " for it will both touch her Highness' honour too much, and my 
 " own credit. Whosoever gave the Queen advice thus to write 
 "is fitter to execute such base service than I am." 
 
 But, as in the case of employing the rack for the purpose of 
 extorting criminal confessions from innocent victims, so there was 
 observed also by the Cecils a certain qualification in respect to 
 the modes of practising against rebels. One of these counsellors 
 of Elizabeth (who is herself shown by Mr. Froude to have con- 
 doned such proofs of zeal in her service) avowed, for example, 
 " that he had a rooted objection to the killing of a rebel by 
 " poison," when it was proposed to Elizabeth by Sussex in 
 writing, without eliciting the royal reproof, thus to efiect the 
 " removal " of Tyrone in Ulster. And not without good reason 
 too did he take exception to the proposal. The Tudors were 
 mostly monarchs of uncertain temper ; and there was in 
 existence about this time a statute of uncommon severity 
 against poisoning (22 Henry VIII., c. 9), which prescribed 
 that the offender should be boiled to death in the presence of 
 the populace, *' without the benefit of clergy." The Cecils little 
 regarded the ministrations of the clergy, little believed in the 
 pains and punishments of the next world, or they would not 
 so freely indulge in the practice of assassination of any kind. 
 But this penalty of boiling alive was altogether too nasty a 
 thing to dwell upon, even as a substitute for the axe and the 
 block. On the other hand, "an ambush for the purpose of throat- 
 " cutting," the biographer of Kaleigh further observes, " Cecil 
 " thought legitimate enough." At the present time the Parlia- 
 mentary representatives from the sister country appear to be 
 more than a match for the commonplace lieutenants of the 
 Prime Minister in the field of argument and fair discussion. 
 Is it family pride that induces Lord Salisbury to attempt to rid 
 himself of the Irish difficulty by taking away the character of the 
 Irish members by means of a Royal Commission, when it is no 
 longer permissible, even to the heir of the Cecils, to take away 
 their lives t Anyhow, it is a somewhat dangerous occupation 
 
ASSASSINATION AN IMPLEMENT OF STATECEAFT. 285 
 
 to engage in filling up the measure of the iniquities of one's 
 fathers.^ 
 
 This may not be the least appropriate place to insert another 
 passage from Mr. Godkin's Land War, in which he asks 
 ■what are the agrarian outrages in Ireland, but the desperate 
 struggles of a threatened race to break the instruments which 
 would wrench them from their native soil ? In the self-defensive 
 war, this outspoken Presbyterian author says : — 
 
 " They cannot cope with the armed power of England in the 
 " open field ; and they are driven upon the criminal resource of 
 " the oppressed in all ages and all lands — secret combination 
 " and assassination. For this crime they feel no remorse ; first, 
 " because it is war — ^just as the soldier feels no remorse for kill- 
 " ing the enemy in a battle ; and, secondly, because their con- 
 " querors, and the successors of those conquerors, have taught 
 " them too well by repeated examples the terrible lesson of 
 " making light of human life. Poor ignorant creatures, they 
 " cannot see that, while the most illustrious noblemen in England 
 "won applause and honours by shooting down Irish women 
 " and children like seals or otters [during and after the time of 
 " Elizabeth], the survivors of the murdered people should be 
 " execrated as cruel, barbarous, and infamous, for shooting the 
 " men that pull down the roof-trees over the heads of their 
 " helpless families, and trample upon their household gods. 
 " These convictions of theirs are very revolting to our feelings ; 
 " but they are facts, and as facts the Legislature must deal with 
 " them. If there be a people otherwise singularly free from crime 
 " who regard the assassination of the members of a certain class 
 " with indifiierence or approbation, the phenomenon is one which 
 " political philosophy ought to be able to explain, and one which 
 " cannot be got rid of by suspending the constitution and bring- 
 " ing railing accusations against the nation." 
 
 * The second Earl of Salisbury, a third Cecil, taking offence at some 
 losses he had sustained by a rigorous exaction of certain forestal rights on 
 the part of the King, he became a regicide ; for he approved the execution 
 of Charles I. by his presence in the House of Lords on the fatal 30th of 
 January. His son became a Papist, abetted the most objectionable acts 
 of the second James, and might have lost bis estates in consequence but 
 for the Act of Indemnity of William III. A versatile family truly ! 
 
CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 POPULATION AND DESTITUTION. 
 
 " Let us think of the half -million who, within two years past, have 
 " perished miserably in the workhouses and on the highways, and in their 
 " hovels — more, far more than ever fell by the sword in any war this 
 " country ever waged ; let us think of the crop of nameless horrors which 
 " is even now growing up in Ireland, and whose disastrous fruit may be 
 " gathered in years and generations to come." — John Bbight (1848). 
 
 It is often asserted that the misery of Ireland arises from an 
 excess of population beyond the power of the country to supply 
 subsistence. But it will be acknowledged, on looking back over 
 the statistical and other facts recorded in these pages, that there 
 is no room for any such ofif-hand conclusion. Take the ex- 
 perience of a single famine period. In 1822, a public subscrip- 
 tion of ;^304,i8i was raised to procure food for the starving 
 peasantry. In that same year, according to a work entitled 
 Statistical Illustrations, Ireland exported articles of subsistence 
 alone to no less an amount (at the very reduced value of the 
 time) than ;!^4iSi8,832 ; and, in the three years, 1821, 1822, 
 and 1823, to the enormous amount of upwards of sixteen millions 
 sterling; while nearly the whole of the remaining exports, 
 exceeding in the aggregate ten millions more, of those three 
 years, were composed of the products of the Irish soil. It 
 was the old story of 1846-7 anticipated; which leaves not a 
 loophole of escape from responsibility for English statesmen on 
 the plea of inexperience in dealing with Irish famine in the 
 latter years. The following tables of population at various 
 periods in Irish history, since the first English invasion, 
 furnish a complete answer to those ingenious people who 
 Imagine that continuous famine in Ireland is due to over 
 
POPULATION AND DESTITUTION. 
 
 287 
 
 population of the country. One has only to turn to the 
 chapters on famine at page 247, to find how it ravaged the 
 country at all times alike, whether the population was great or 
 small : — 
 
 Tear. 
 
 Authority. 
 
 Population. 
 
 
 1172 
 
 Sir William Petty, 
 
 300,000 
 
 Reign of Elizabeth 
 
 
 The historian Moryson. 
 
 700,000 
 
 Previous to 
 
 1 641 
 
 Petty. 
 
 1,200,000 
 
 
 1652 
 
 Petty. 
 
 850,000 
 (reduced by war 
 and famine) 
 
 
 1672 
 
 Petty. 
 
 1,320,000 
 
 After Bevolntion of 
 
 1688 
 
 Captain South. 
 
 1,034,000 
 
 
 1718 
 
 Thomas Dobbs. 
 
 2,169,048 
 
 
 ^73^ 
 
 Poll-Tax Collectors. 
 
 2,010,221 
 
 
 1762 
 
 De Burgo. 
 
 2,317.384 
 
 
 1777 
 
 Hearth-Money Collectors. 
 
 2,690,556 
 
 Era of Grattan's Pai 
 
 
 
 
 liament 
 
 1792 
 
 Reverend Dr. Beaufort. 
 
 4,088,226 
 
 The population at the time the Act of Union was passed in 
 1 80c has been estimated at 5,300,000; and Thomas Newenham 
 reckons it to have been, in 1805, 5,395,456 ; and an incomplete 
 census, in 1812, 5,937,856. The Census Commissioners have 
 subsequently ascertained the following figures : — 
 
 In 1821 
 
 
 
 
 6,801,827 
 
 » 1831 
 
 
 
 
 7,767,401 
 
 „ 1841 
 
 
 
 
 8,196,597 
 
 „ 1851 
 
 
 
 
 6,574,278 
 
 „ i86r 
 
 
 
 
 51798,967 
 
 „ 1871 
 
 
 
 
 S.412,377 
 
 „ 1881 
 
 
 
 
 5. 1 74,836 
 
 The Dublin Chronicle, a journal of former times, gives an in- 
 teresting Bub-division of the estimates of population in 1787 ; 
 that is during the first few years of Grattan's Parliament, which 
 contrasts very favourably with the statistics of wretchedness of 
 the present century, to be found scattered throughout these 
 pages: — 
 
288 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 Labourers employed 
 
 600,000 
 
 Handicraftsmen, &c. 
 
 580,000 
 
 Employed in manufactures 
 
 520,000 
 
 Shopkeepers, dealers, &c. 
 
 260,000 
 
 Mariners, fishermen, &c. 
 
 46,000 
 
 In the army . 
 
 12,000 
 
 Clergy of all creeds 
 
 11,500 
 
 Resident nobility and gentry 
 
 10,000 
 
 Taw and medicine 
 
 5,200 
 
 In the revenue 
 
 4,000 
 
 Unemployed poor, vagrants, &c. . 550,000 
 
 It ■will appear almost incredible, but it is a fact that the 
 number of poor actually in receipt of relief under the Poor 
 Law in Ireland of late years is largely in excess of the total 
 number of the unemployed, vagrants, &c., throughout the king- 
 dom in 1787; while the population is about the same, owing 
 to the abnormal proportion of deaths from destitution mean- 
 while, and the vast emigration of the inhabitants since 1837. 
 The Daily News of the 15th of March 1887, in the course of 
 a carefully-written article, shows how Ireland has been going 
 down hill during the last thirty years, especially in this respect ; 
 her poverty ever deepening, though the population has been 
 reduced by a million and a half in the interval : — 
 
 " Whilst in England and "Wales, notwithstanding steady and 
 " large growth of population, there has been an actual decrease 
 " in the number of paupers, in Ireland the proportion of paupers 
 " to population shows a woful increase. In the following 
 " tables we give an account of admissions to Irish workhouses 
 "during the year ended September 1884, in comparison with 
 " admissions during different periods in the last twenty-five 
 
 " years : — 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Total No. adm. 
 in Sickness. 
 
 No. adm. who 
 were not Sick. 
 
 Total ad- 
 mitted. 
 
 Total No. 
 Relieved. 
 
 1859 
 1871 
 
 1884 
 
 44,260 
 49.540 
 53.105 
 
 70,334 
 131,490 
 200,237 
 
 "4.594 
 181,032 
 
 253.342 
 
 153,706 
 225,510 
 299,963 
 
 " These are staggering figures, but what are we to say of those 
 " for the last two years 1 A Local Government Board return 
 " has just been issued, from which we take the following : — 
 
POPULATION AND DESTITUTION. 289 
 
 No. OP Persons who ebckived Poor Relief during the 
 Years ended Sept. 1885-86. 
 
 
 In Workhouses. 
 
 Out-door. 
 
 Total. 
 
 1885 
 
 329.550 
 
 120,939 
 
 450,489 
 
 I8S6 
 
 357,621 
 
 348,205 
 
 705,826 
 
 *' At this rate all Ireland will be in receipt of poor relief in 
 " a few years. In three years the paupers have much more 
 " than doubled. They now number one in every seven of 
 "the population. In Connaught, with a population in round 
 "numbers of 800,000, 247,134 persons received poor relief 
 " last year, or 309 in every 1000. In England and Wales the 
 " ratio of paupers per 1000 in the same year only fractionally 
 " exceeded 28." 
 
 "The Domains of the Poor." 
 
 What is the actual state of land tenures in Ireland ? The 
 following table shows it as given in the latest official returns 
 of 1881 :— 
 
 218,000 holdings 
 
 averaging 
 
 £^ 
 
 each 
 
 = 
 
 ^436,000 
 
 196,000 
 
 
 H 
 
 7 
 
 
 = 
 
 1,372,000 
 
 78,000 
 
 
 >> 
 
 12 
 
 
 = 
 
 936,000 
 
 46,000 
 
 
 )> 
 
 18 
 
 
 = 
 
 828,000 
 
 47,000 
 
 
 }> 
 
 25 
 
 
 = 
 
 1,175,000 
 
 24,000 
 
 
 » 
 
 35 
 
 
 = 
 
 840,000 
 
 14,000 
 
 
 >> 
 
 45 
 
 
 = 
 
 630,000 
 
 24,000 
 
 
 >J 
 
 75 
 
 
 = 
 
 1,800,000 
 
 12,000 
 
 
 J> 
 
 200 
 
 
 
 2,400,000 
 
 Total, 659,000^ 
 
 
 ^ According to the Statesmarit Tear-Book, the number of holdings was 
 reduced to 564,352 in 1886, or a redaction of 95,000 heads of families (equal 
 to half a million of souls) iu five years. Where are the occupiers gone ? 
 Five-sixths of them probably to the United States, to increase the Queen's 
 enemies in that region. What profound and patriotic statesmanship have 
 we not exemplified in this portentous fact ! As a mere economic measure, 
 it would have been better for England to have exported the 750 landlords 
 who own 10,000,000 of the 20,000,000 acres of land iu Ireland. On the 
 other hand, the Irish soldiers, formerly composing one-half the anny, are 
 now only in the proportion of one-sixth. Is there even one grain of com- 
 fort to be found in these figures ! 
 
 . t 
 
290 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 It is reckoned that there are altogether about 9,000 land- 
 lords in Ireland, Of the 20,000,000 acres of land in that 
 kingdom, one-half is owned by less than 750 proprietors ; 
 and no landlords hold among them 4,000,000 acres. Sir 
 James Caird, writing to the Times on the 20th of March 1886, 
 observed :-r- 
 
 " The land in Ireland is held by two distinct classes of 
 " tenants — the small farmers who pay rent from ;^i to ;^20, 
 " and the comparatively large farmers who pay rent from ;;^20 
 "and upwards. Of the first class, there are 538,000 holdings 
 *' averaging jQs^ each. The rent payable by the first class is 
 •' ;^3,572,ooo, and by the second class, ;^6,845,ooo. Five- 
 " sixths of the Irish tenants thus pay about one-third of the 
 " total rental, and one-sixth pay nearly two-thirds. ... If the 
 " present price of agricultural produce continues, I should fear 
 " that from the land held by the large body of poor farmers in 
 " Ireland any economical rent has for the present disappeared." 
 
 Upon this the Times, after describing Sir James Caird as a 
 man " whose authority on agricultural questions is universally 
 " recognised," declared : — 
 
 " It is not too much to say that the rental of the 538,000 
 " holdings is practically irrecoverable by anybody, whether 
 " landlord, English government, or Irish government." 
 
 Still, with all their poverty, those humble peasants would pay 
 their way if they could. General Sir Redvers BuUer, who was 
 sent to Ireland by Government on special service a few years 
 ago, having these facts before him, arrived at a just opinion 
 shortly afterwards. This is what he stated before a recent 
 Royal Commission as the result of his official experience in 
 Ireland : — 
 
 " My view of the country is this," he said, " that the majority 
 " of the tenants meant to pay rents, and where they can pay 
 " them, they do pay them. But the rents have been too high. 
 "... I think that there should be a discretion in giving de- 
 " crees against the tenants; and that there should be some means 
 " of redressing the grievances of rents being still higher than 
 '•they can pay. You have got a very ignorant poor people, 
 " and the law should look after them, instead of which it has 
 
POPULATION AND DESTITUTION. 291 
 
 " only looked after the rich. . . . The people sympathise with 
 " the National League because they think it has been their 
 " salvation. Nobody did anything for the tenants until the 
 " League was estabUshed." 
 
 "The Mansions op the Poor." 
 
 Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, writes, in A Word to the Wise, 
 a publication of a century and a half ago : — 
 
 " The house of an Irish peasant is the cave of poverty. It 
 *' may be affirmed with truth that the very savages of America 
 " are better clad and better lodged than the Irish cottagers 
 " throughout the fine fertile counties of Limerick and Tip- 
 " perary." 
 
 Arthur Young, writing more than a century ago, says : — 
 
 " Shoes or stockings are scarcely ever found on the feet of 
 " children of either sex, and a great number of men and women 
 " are without them. The cottages of the Irish are the most 
 " miserable-looking hovels that can well be conceived. They 
 " generally consist of only one room. Mud kneaded with straAv 
 " is the common material of the walls. . . . The furniture of 
 " the cabins is as bad as the architecture — in very many con- 
 " sisting of a pot for boiling potatoes, a bit of a table, and one 
 " or two broken stools. Beds are not found universally, the 
 " family lying on straw, equally partook of by cows, calves, and 
 "pigs." 
 
 Newenham, another excellent English authority, of later date, 
 observes : — 
 
 "The habitations of the Irish peasantry, it must be admitted, 
 " are, for the most part, little better than the huts of savages. 
 " The accommodations of the former in few respects only surpass 
 " those of the latter." 
 
 ■ A Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1823, on 
 the employment of the poor in Ireland, reported that : — 
 
 " One-half of the population of the distressed districts [which 
 " contained 2,907,000 souls and 5,544,000 acres of land] de- 
 " pended upon charitable assistance for support. The cabins 
 " [of the peasantry] scarcely contain an article that can be called 
 
292 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " furniture ; in some families there are no such things as hed- 
 " clothes, and the greater part [of the peasantry] drink nothing 
 " but water." 
 
 Sir George Comewall Lewis says in his work on Irish dis- 
 turbances : — 
 
 " Arthur Young describes the physical state of the Irish 
 "peasantry in 1776-78 in terms which might with scarcely 
 "an alteration be applied to them at the present time (1837). 
 " The engraving of an Irish cabin, contained in his work, is an 
 " exact representation of the hovels in which the Irish peasants 
 " still live." 
 
 The Times published the following letter from the Duchess 
 of Marlborough's Dublin Relief Committee in March 1880 : — 
 
 " The normal state of the peasantry of the wild parts of the 
 " west appears to be an almost utter want of clothing except 
 " coarse rags, and of covering except old sacks. Major Gaskell 
 " mentions in his report that he hardly ever saw in Donegal 
 " such a thing as bed-clothes. People were all lying on heaps 
 " of straw, their only covering being some old bags. In Clare, 
 " Captain Fletcher, another inspector, says the same, and that 
 " any kind of rough material fit for bed-covering would be an 
 " enormous boon. Thousands of children all through the 
 " country have been kept from school by want of clothes, and 
 " are described very much as Zulu children. In the islands the 
 " case is still worse, some of the people being described as per- 
 " fectly naked, with the exception of an old rag or shawl about 
 «• them." 
 
 In the course of a speech he made in the last session of 
 Parliament (1888), Mr. Gladstone quoted the Irish eviction 
 returns given in Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics (a work of 
 authority), which are greatly in excess of those made from 
 quarter to quarter by the Irish constabulary. Upon this he 
 was flatly contradicted by Mr. Balfour ; who showed complete 
 ignorance of his subject when he imagined that the constabulary 
 returns were all sufficient as a guide to the number of evictions. 
 They are nothing of the kind. Mr. Mulhall has since vin- 
 dicated his statistics,* with apparent completeness, in a letter 
 
POPULATION AND DESTITUTION. 293 
 
 to the Times. But long before Mr. Balfour became so notorious 
 as he now is, the late Professor Cairnes, the most eminent 
 political economist of his day, demurred to those returns as 
 being entirely illusory, observing that evictions were carried 
 on to a far greater extent than the recorded returns would 
 indicate. He says, in his Political Essays : — 
 
 " No eviction appears in these returns which has not come 
 " under judicial cognizance, and been actually carried into eflfect 
 "by the judicial authorities; whereas it is notorious that a 
 " mere ' notice to quit ' will frequently do all the work of an 
 " eviction, and that a single example of the rigour of the law 
 " will naturally reduce many tenants to submission ; " without 
 reckoning those who have been driven by "positive physical 
 " violence " from their homes. 
 
 This is the passage from Mr. Mulhall's work to which excep- 
 tion was taken with such volubility of tongue : — 
 
 " The present reign has been the most disastrous since that 
 " of Elizabeth, as the following statistics show : — 
 
 Died of famine .... 1,225,000 
 
 Persons evicted .... 3,668,000 
 
 '- Number of emigrants . . . 4,186,000 
 
 " Evictions were most numerous immediately after the famine, 
 " the landlords availing themselves of the period of greatest 
 " calamity to enforce their 'righta' Official returns give the 
 " number of families, and these averaging 7 persons we ascer- 
 " tain the actual number of persons evicteid : — 
 
 Years. 
 
 Fiimilies. 
 
 Persons. 
 
 1849-51 
 
 263,000 
 
 1,841,000 
 
 1852-60 
 
 110,000 
 
 770,000 
 
 1861-70 
 
 47,000 
 
 329,000 
 
 1871-86 
 
 104,000 
 
 728,000 
 
 Total . 524,000 3,668,000 
 
 " The number of persons evicted is equal to 75 per cent, of the 
 " actual population. No country, either in Europe or elsewhere, 
 " has suffered such wholesale extermination." Again, he says 
 that "emigration since 1837 has amounted to a number equal 
 " to 84 per cent, of the present population : — 
 
294 -A. KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 1837-50 1,085,000 
 
 1851-60 1,231,000 
 
 1861-70 867,000 
 
 1871-86 ..... 1,003,000 
 
 Total .... 4,186,000." 
 
 It is an evident clerical error to speak of tlie returns compiled 
 for the Dictionary as being " official " returns ; and Mr. Mul- 
 hall's average as to the number in each family is undoubtedly 
 higher than is usually assigned to the Irish peasant. His reply 
 in vindication of his figures shows that he did not rely on those 
 illusory returns only for his facts : — 
 
 " A letter from Mr. Balfour in your columns [the Twies\ 
 "of July 27 contains some incorrect appreciations in which 
 " that gentleman has commented on my statistics, and I hope 
 " you will permit me to offer a few remarks. First, he says 
 "the total evictions were only 113,000 families, but I read 
 " in the new edition of the British Encyclopcedia, article 
 "'Ireland,' the following passage: — ' The Government returns 
 " of evictions are incomplete ; they do not include those of 
 " cottiers, decided at petty sessions.' "We see by the census 
 "returns of 1861 that 402,000 families of cottiers had been 
 " unhoused since 1841, viz. : — 
 
 Inhabited cabins of one room in 184 1 . 491,278 
 Inhabited cabins of one room in 1 86 1 . . 89,374 
 
 Pulled down .... 401,904 
 
 " If these cottiers, most of whom had been evicted, were added 
 ' ' to the Government returns, we should have a total much 
 " nearer to my statement than Mr. Balfour's. 
 
 " Secondly, the deaths from famine were wilfully or other- 
 " wise reduced by Government Commissioners from 1,200,000 
 " to 600,000. They assumed the ordinary deaths in Ireland 
 " to be 22 per 1,000,^ whereas from 1864 to 1880 they were 
 "only 17 per 1,000. Also that 500,000 Irish settled in Great 
 
 1 "We have estimated (says the report) the ordinary death-rate of 
 Ireland to be as in England — namely, i in 45," say 22 per lOCX). 
 
POPULATION AND DESTITUTION. 
 
 293 
 
 "Britain, although, the Census of 1851 shows an increase of 
 " only 314,000 since 1841. And as the Irish Census of 185 1 
 '' was taken on March 31, the emigration for only three months 
 " of that year should be counted. We should also consider 
 " among the famine victims those who perished crossing the 
 " Atlantic, supposed to number 90,000 ; but even without these 
 " the victims were over 1,100,000. 
 
 " The statement of the Commissioners was as follows : — 
 
 Population in 1846 
 Births for 1847-51 
 
 To be accounted for 
 
 8,288,000 
 1,421,000 
 
 9,709,000 
 
 "The manner in which they were accounted for by the 
 Commissioners contrasts with the reality thus : — 
 
 
 Commissioners' 
 Keport. 
 
 True 
 Figures. 
 
 Population in 185 1 . 
 Emigrated . . . . . 
 Settled in Great Britain 
 Ordinary deaths .... 
 Died of famine . . . 
 
 Accounted for . 
 
 6,552,000 
 
 1,079,000 
 
 500,000 
 
 978,000 
 
 600,000 
 
 6,552,000 
 984,000 
 314,000 
 755,000 
 
 1,104,000 
 
 9,709,000 
 
 9,709,000 
 
 Michael G. Mulhall." 
 
 As a proof of the justice of Mr. Mulhall's ohjections to the 
 police returns of evictions as a test, it should be mentioned 
 that Mr. Joseph Kay, Q.C., in his Social Condition of the People, 
 gives the evictions in 1849 ^^ representing 50,000 families ; 
 whereas the police only certify for 16,686 families. We have 
 not even a police record for the years previous to 1849, and 
 Mr. Mulhall is entitled to include in his estimate those families 
 evicted during the entire reign from June the 20th, 1837. On 
 the other hand, his estimate of the numher slain by famine 
 during the reign is altogether inadequate, if we consider Lord 
 George Bentinck's carefully drawn estimate, to be found in a 
 preceding chapter, of what occurred in 1846-7 alone. 
 
CHAPTEE XXXII. 
 
 TWO FEATURES IN AN IRISH LANDSCAPE. 
 
 " If you would hang up all the landlords who cut woods without fencing, 
 ' ' and destroy trees without planting, you would lay your axe to the root 
 " of the evil, and rid the kingdom of some of the greatest pests in it." — 
 Arthur Young (1777). 
 
 There is one feature in an Irish landscape ■which mars the 
 beauty of God's work. It is man's doing ; it haunts the re- 
 collection of the English traveller in Ireland night and day, and 
 still pursues him years after he has returned home to his own 
 country. Mr. Bright in the course of a speech on the Regium 
 Donum in the House of Commons, on the 6th of July 1854, 
 remarked upon it thus : — 
 
 •' Many parts of the western portion of Ireland presented an 
 " appearance which told pretty well that some of the former 
 " Governments of that country [England] had been guilty of a 
 " great crime towards the sister kingdom." 
 
 Twenty years later, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, M.P., in his Pamell 
 Movement, relates this Irish story of multitudinous life reduced 
 to the stillness of death with vivid power: — 
 
 " Ireland to-day," he says, " bears the still fresh scars of the 
 " terrible sufferings of the years I am describing and the years 
 *' which immediately preceded them. The most prominent, the 
 " most frequent, the ever-recurring feature of the Irish land- 
 " scape is the unroofed cottage. There are many parts of the 
 " country where these skeleton walls stare at one with a per- 
 " sistency and a ghastly iteration that convey the idea of passing 
 "through a land which had been swept by rapidly successive 
 " and frequent waves of foreign invasion — by war, and slaughter, 
 " and the universal break-up of national life." 
 
TWO FEATURES IN AN IRISH LANDSCAPE. 297 
 
 Mr. Stead, another close observer of inanimate as "well as 
 animated nature, saw some things during his recent travels in 
 Hussia to remind him of Ireland. But there was absent from 
 the Kussian landscape, he says, that "saddest, dreariest, and 
 " most characteristic feature " referred to by Mr. Bright and 
 Mr. O'Connor, — despotic Eussia is not, in fact, strewn with 
 traces of the evil work accomplished by the crowbar brigade. 
 "Writing in the Pall Mall Gazette, in May 1888, Mr, Stead 
 observes : — 
 
 " It is not the round tower which is the distinctive Hibernian 
 " structure, but the rough triangular wedge of masonry left 
 " standing here, there, and everywhere in all parts of rural 
 " Ireland, marking the place where a family had gathered undet 
 " the sheltering roof tree of a humble home, but which now is 
 " but a desolation and a ruin. . . . Alone among the peoples 
 " of Europe the numbers of the Irish dwindle in their own 
 " land. In Russia the population increases and multiplies 
 '• amain, adding a million or a million and a half to its 
 " hundred millions every recurring year. Hence naturally the 
 " landscape is not scarred with the wreck of dismantled houses, 
 " nor is the eye pained by the perpetual reminder of the chronic 
 " civil war that rages across the Irish Sea between the e victors 
 "and the evicted." 
 
 There is another feature in the Irish landscape which is 
 commonly a puzzle to the English traveller, especially if he 
 seek for a solution of it from the Irish landlords. Ireland was 
 at one time called the "Island of "Woods," as it was earher 
 styled the "Island of Saints." At no remote period the 
 country was as abundantly adorned with natural woods as any 
 other in Europe. In the reign of Elizabeth even, when it was 
 the custom of her merciless commanders to destroy everything 
 which might afford shelter to the unhappy native population, 
 Edmund Spenser, in referring to the beauty of its rivers and 
 mountains, expatiates upon the delicious verdure of the woods 
 and forests which therein abound. Ireland, he said, was 
 adorned " with goodly woods, even fit for building of houses 
 " and shippes so commodiously, as that, if some princes in the 
 ■" world had them, they would soon hope to be lords of all the 
 
298 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " seas, of all the world." Swift's tracts and letters lament the 
 wanton destruction of timber in the reign of George I. The 
 new proprietors who succeeded under the ever-recurring for- 
 feitures and confiscations were doubtless sometimes nervously 
 fearing that God's justice might overtake them while yet in 
 possession of other persons' property. And so they felled the 
 trees remorselessly, to fetch just whatever little ready money 
 they might. In the time of "William III., the Commissioners 
 of Confiscated Estates reported, according to Macgeoghegan's 
 History of Ireland, that those on whom the latter had been 
 bestowed, or their agents, "have been so greedy to seize 
 " upon the most trifling profits, that large trees have been 
 " cut down and sold for sixpence each." When Arthur 
 Young demanded some explanation on the subject, towards 
 the end of the last century, from the descendants of the 
 men who had thus denuded Ireland of those woods which so 
 often inspired the muse of the author of the Faerie Queen by 
 their rare beauty, he was impudently told that the peasants 
 alone were responsible for their destruction. Young, however, 
 supplies the true explanation as follows, in the second part of 
 his interesting and most instructive Tour : — 
 
 " In conversation with gentlemen, I found they very generally 
 " laid the destruction of timber to the common people ; who, 
 " they say, have an aversion to a tree. At the earliest age 
 " they steal it for a walking-stick ; afterwards for a spade 
 " handle ; later for a car shaft ; and later still for a cabin 
 " rafter. That the poor do steal it is certain, but I am clear the 
 " gentlemen of the country may thank themselves. Is it the 
 " consumption of sticks and handles that has destroyed millions 
 " of acres t Absurdity ! The profligate, prodigal, worthless 
 *' landowner \i.e. landlord] cuts down his acres, and leaves 
 " them unfenced against cattle, and then he has the impudence 
 " to charge the scarcity of trees to the walking-sticks of the 
 " poor, goes into the House of Commons and votes for an Act, 
 *• which lays a penalty of forty shillings on any poor man 
 " having a twig in his possession which he cannot account for. 
 " This Act, and twenty more in the same spirit, stands at 
 " present a monument of their self-condemnation and oppression. 
 *' They have made wood so scarce that the wretched cottiers 
 
TWO FEATURES IN AN IRISH LANDSCAPE. 299 
 
 " cannot procure enough for their necessary consumption, and 
 " then they pass penal laws on their stealing, or even possessing, 
 " what it is impossible for them to buy. If by another Act 
 " you would hang up all the landlords who cut woods without 
 " fencing, and destroy trees without planting, you would lay 
 " yoiir axe to the root of tke evil, and rid the kingdom of some 
 " of the greatest pests in it." 
 
 As confirmatory of Arthur Young's summary judgment, it 
 deserves mention that early in the present centurj', the Insurrec- 
 tion Act was put in force throughout an entire barony in 
 Kilkenny, on account of the cutting down of two or three trees 
 on the property of Lady Ormonde ; as given in evidence before 
 a Committee of the House of Lords, in 1824 : — 
 
 " Can you state," a witness was asked, "on what ground it was 
 " the Insurrection Act was applied for, so far as respects that 
 " barony, and the circumstances attending it?" — "I understand 
 " that some few trees — some two or three — had been felled in 
 " the domain of Lady Ormonde, and I am not aware of any 
 " other transaction at aU that would justify the application of 
 " such a measure." ^ 
 
 As one of the penalties under this terrible Coercion Act was 
 seven years' transportation for being found out of your house 
 after nine o'clock at night, it is scarcely probable that the 
 peasants often indulged in the luxury of any wholesale destruc- 
 tion of timber under the circumstances. 
 
 ^ These observations are used to illustrate some of the manifold evils 
 flowing from coercion in Ireland, and not intended to asperse the 
 character of the Ormonde family as landlords. The present Marquis of 
 Ormonde, for instance, is a resident Irish proprietor, who does not indulge 
 in the extortion of rack-rents under threat of eviction. And there are 
 many Irish proprietors of the same type, who cannot without the most 
 extreme injustice be classed with such specimens of the race as Lords 
 Lansdowne, Sligo, Lucan, &c., though they make the grave mistake of 
 not publicly dissociating themselves from the latter, and in this way bring 
 down upon their own heads unmerited and undeserved obloquy. They 
 will never again have offered to them terms so liberal as those of Mr. 
 Gladstone in 1886. The sands in the hour-glass are running too fast. 
 
CHAPTEE XXXIII. 
 ENGLAND'S THREEFOLD OBLIGATIONS TO IRELAND. 
 
 " Ought we Englishmen not take shatne to ourselves that we have 
 " hitherto always treated that ancient, gallant people with such illiberal 
 " contempt, who had the start of the Britons for many ages in arts and 
 " sciences, in learning and laws ? " — Rev. Dr. Waenkb. 
 
 I. For Christianity and Civilisation. 
 
 It is too much the fashion nowadays amongst the " classes " to 
 deride the Irish claims to equal laws and equal government. 
 But this arises,' in some measure, from the intense ignorance 
 which prevails in regard to the inestimable obligations under 
 which Europe generally, as well as England, lies to Ireland for 
 heroic missionary enterprise in the early centuries of the Chris- 
 tian Church in the West. The reader who turns to Green's 
 History of the English People, vol. i., will find the following 
 authoritative observations on the subject : — 
 
 " It was not the Church of Paulinus which nerved Oswald to 
 " tlfe struggle for the Cross, or which carried out in Bemicia 
 " the work of conversion which his victory began. Paulinus 
 " fled from Northumbria at Ed wine's faU ; and the Koman 
 " Church, though established in Kent, did little in contending 
 " elsewhere against the heathen reaction. Its place in the con- 
 " version of Northern England was taken by missionaries from 
 " Ireland. . . . While the vigour of Christianity in Italy, and 
 " Gaul, and Spain was exhausted in a bare struggle for life, 
 " Ireland, which remained unscourged by invaders, drew from 
 " its conversion an energy which it has never known since, 
 *' Christianity was received there with a burst of popular en- 
 " thusiasm, and letters and arts sprung up rapidly in its train. 
 " The science and biblical knowledge which fled from the Con- 
 
ENGLAND'S OBLIGATIONS TO IRELAND. 301 
 
 " tinent took refuge in its schools. The new Christian life soon 
 " beat too strongly to brook confinement within the bounds of 
 " Ireland itself. Patrick, the first missionary of the island, 
 " had not been half a century dead when Irish Christianity 
 " flung itself with a fiery zeal into battle with the mass of 
 "heathenism which was rolling in upon the Christian world. 
 " Irish missionaries laboured among the Picts of the Highlands 
 " and among the Frisians of the northern seas. An Irish mis- 
 " sionary, Columban, founded monasteries in Burgundy and the 
 " Apennines. The Canton of St. Gall still commemorates in 
 " its name another Irish missionary before whom the spirits of 
 "flood and fell fled wailing over the waters of the Lake of 
 " Constance. Por a time it seemed as if the course of the 
 " world's history was to be changed, as if the older Celtic race 
 *' that Eoman and German had swept before them, had turned 
 " to the moral conquest of their conquerors ; as if Celtic and 
 " not Latin Christianity was to mould the destinies of the 
 " Churches of the West." 
 
 " Of all the countries of the West," observes Guizot, in his 
 History of France, " Ireland was for a long time that in which 
 " alone learning was supported and flourished amid the general 
 " overthrow of Europe." When Charlemagne founded the 
 Universities of Paris and Pavia, he confided both institutions 
 to the guidance of Irishmen. Clement was placed at the head 
 of the one, and Duns Scotus, the most widely learned man of 
 his time, at the head of the other. Of this early civilisation 
 Lecky says, in the second volume of his Eighteenth Century : — 
 
 " It enabled Ireland to bear a great and noble part in the 
 " conversion of Europe to Christianity. It made it, in one of 
 " the darkest periods of the dark ages, a refuge of learning 
 " and of piety. It produced not a little in architecture, in 
 "illuminations, in metal-work and music, which, considering 
 " its early date, exhibits a high degree of originality and of 
 " beauty. . . . England owed a great part of her Christianity 
 " to Irish monks, who laboured among her people before the 
 " arrival of Augustine." 
 
 -o 
 
 Sir James Mackintosh, another distinguished lustorian, in 
 his England, voL i., is equally instructive as to the claims of 
 the Irish in other respects : — 
 
302 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 "In one respect Irish history has been eminently fortunate. 
 ' The chronicles of Ireland, written in the Irish language, from 
 ' the second century to the landing of Henry Plantagenet, have 
 ' been recently published, with the fullest evidence of their 
 ' genuineness and exactness. The Irish nation, though they 
 
 * are robbed of many of their legends by this authentic publica- 
 
 * tion, are yet by it enabled to boast that they possess genuine 
 ' history several centuries more ancient than any other European 
 ' nation possesses in its present spoken language ; they have ex- 
 ' changed their legendary antiquity for historical fame. Indeed, 
 ' no other nation possesses any monument of its literature, in 
 ' its present spoken language, which goes back within several 
 ' centuries of the beginning of these chronicles. The ancient 
 ' date of the MSS. concurs with the same internal proof as in 
 ' the Saxon chronicle to support the truth of the outline of their 
 ' narrative." 
 
 A third authority, Sir E. Creasy, generally confirms Green's 
 estimate of Irish renown in those remote Christian ages, when 
 darkness overspread the face of the rest of Europe : — 
 
 " The renown of Ireland, for the number and the eminence 
 " of her learned men and saintly ecclesiastics, was in the seventh 
 " century far spread throughout Christendom. The special 
 "evidence as to particular details of this may be obscure, but 
 " the collective proof as to the general fact is conclusive. And 
 " the proved fact of the educational and religious institutions of 
 " a country being in a flourishing condition proves, by implica- 
 " tion, the existence at the same time of a considerable amount 
 " of social order and steady government." 
 
 Hallam, in his History of England, vol. iii. , says : — 
 
 " In the seventh and eighth centuries, while a total ignorance 
 *' seemed to overspread the face of Europe, the monasteries and 
 " schools of Ireland preserved in the best manner they could 
 "such learning as had survived the re volutions, of the Koman 
 " world." 
 
 The ages which deserve an exact inquiry at the hands of the 
 English student are those when, according to Dr. Johnson, 
 -" Ireland was the school of the West, the quiet habitation of 
 " sanctity and literature ; " when, according to Camden, " our 
 
ENGLAND'S OBLIGATIONS TO IRELAND. 303 
 
 " Anglo-Saxons went to Ireland, as if to a fair, to obtain know- 
 " ledge." 
 
 Nor did Jonathan Swift, the Protestant Dean of St. Patrick's, 
 omit to remind England of her obligations to Ireland for her 
 knowledge and religion, as will be found in the following 
 reproachful lines from Scott's Worlcs, volume xii. : — 
 
 " Britain, by thee we fell, ungrateful isle ! 
 Not by thy valour, but superior guile ; 
 Britain, with shame, confess this land of mine, 
 First taught thee human knowledge and divine ; 
 My prelates and my students, sent from hence, 
 Made thy sons converts both to God and sense ; 
 Not like the pastors of thy ravenous breed. 
 Who come to fleece the flock and not to feed ! " 
 
 2. For Military Services, 
 
 Mr. Froude has no great love for the Irish, but historical 
 facts compel him to do them justice sometimes. Speaking of 
 the soldierly qualities of the Irish race at home and abroad, in 
 the second volume of his English in Ireland, he says : — 
 
 " The Irishman of the last century rose to his natural level 
 " whenever he was removed from his own unhappy country. 
 " In the Seven Years' War Austria's best generals were Irish- 
 " men. Brown was an Irishman ; Lacy was an Irishman ; 
 " O'Donnell's name speaks for him ; and Lally Tollendal, who 
 " punished England at Fontenoy, was O'Mullally of Tollendally. 
 " Strike the names of Irishmen out of our own public service, 
 " and we lose the heroes of our proudest exploits — we lose the 
 " Wellesleys, the Pallisers, the Moores, the Eyres, the Cootes, 
 " the Napiers [Mr. Froude may include the Lawrences, the 
 " Wolseleys, and the Eoberts in his next edition], we lose half 
 " the officers and half the privates who conquered India for 
 " us, and fought our battles in the Peninsula." 
 
 After the siege of Limerick, the emigration of Irish soldiers 
 to the continent, drilled and undrilled, was so great it is esti- 
 mated by high authorities, including the English Newenham, 
 that between the years of r69i and 1715 there died in the 
 service of France alone no less than 450,000 men ! England 
 
304 A KEY TO THE lEISH QUESTION. 
 
 was then, and for a long time afterwards, so denuded of service- 
 able soldiers that we find it stated by Sir "William Draper, so 
 early as 1769, that : — 
 
 " The troops in the Mediterranean Sea, in the West Indies, 
 *' in America, labour under great difficulties, from the scarcity 
 " of men, which is but too visible all over these kingdoms" — 
 that is, all over England and Scotland. " Many of our forces," 
 he adds, " are in climates unfavourable to British constitutions ; 
 " their loss is in proportion. Britain must recruit all these 
 "regiments from her own emaciated bosom, or, more pre- 
 " cariously, by Catholics from Ireland." 
 
 The English soldiers were sometimes reputed to be rather 
 wanting in stamina, or staying power, as we learn from the inter- 
 esting despatches of the veteran Marshal Schonberg, addressed 
 to his royal master, William III., from the camp at Lisburn, 
 which will be found in the second volume of Dalrymple's 
 Memoirs, as follows : — 
 
 " The English nation is so delicately bred, that, as soon as 
 " they are out of their own country, they die the first campaign, 
 " in all the foreign countries where I have seen them serve." 
 Nevertheless he adds — in allusion to some of the obstreperous 
 jingoes of that day — the " parliament and people have a pre- 
 " judice that an English new- raised soldier can beat above six 
 " of his enemies." 
 
 The Catholic Eelief Bill, passed towards the end of the last 
 century, was no more a concession to the principles of religious 
 freedom and justice than the Emancipation Act of 1829. 
 Both were measures of expediency; and when the French 
 heard of the former being mooted, there was correspond- 
 ing depression in their ranks. " Voila," was their first ex- 
 clamation, " deux cens mille hommes armes contre nous 1 " 
 The Government made haste to obtain value for their forced 
 liberality, until the Irish, only yet partially emancipated, flocked 
 to the English standards in prodigious numbers. In the parlia- 
 mentary debate upon Catholic Emancipation, on the 13th of 
 May 1805, Fox spoke of all other means of recruiting the British 
 army, when compared with what was to be obtained by the con- 
 ciliation of Ireland, as " little rivulets to that great ocean of 
 
ENGLAND'S OBLIGATIONS TO IRELAND. 305 
 
 " military resource ! " ^ In the conrse of that debate also, Mr. 
 Foster, an opponent of the Catholic claims, bore witness to the 
 important and creditable connection of the Irish soldiery with 
 the expedition to Egypt, when he admitted that " the Irish 
 " Catholics composed a principal and honourable part of the army 
 "under Lord Hutchinson, by which Egypt was vanquished." 
 And on the motion of thanks to Sir Samuel Auchmuty, for the 
 capture of Monte Video, the General who proposed it, in the 
 House of Commons, said " that the 87 th regiment, which had 
 " so gallantly fought there under Sir Edward Butler, was com- 
 " posed altogether of Catholics," that is Irish — " and that he 
 " himself knew, that, of the 4000 men who attacked the 
 " fortress, 3000 consisted of Catholics," or, in other words, 
 Irishmen. In 18 10, on the i8th of May, Sir John Cox Hip- 
 pesley mentioned in Parliament, that, of his own knowledge, 
 out of two levies of 1000 men each, made a few years before, 
 only 160 men were not Catholics; that, in another regiment of 
 900 in the south of England, 860 were Catholics ; and he added, 
 that it was then a well-established fact that the proportion of 
 Catholic (or Irish) recruits " greatly exceeded " that of Protes- 
 tants (or British) in the English army.^ In 1829, the year of 
 Catholic Emancipation, the Irish correspondent of the Times, 
 writing on the 3rd of June, makes the following interesting con- 
 tribution to the subject : — 
 
 " A moiety of the soldiers, indeed, I have heard three-fourths, 
 " now in Ireland, are Catholics and Irishmen. Even the 
 "greater part of the Highland regiments, it is well known, 
 " belong to Ireland, and have manifestly been inoculated with 
 " the feelings of those among whom they live, and from whom 
 " they were taken." 
 
 Bulwer, in the first volume of his England and the English 
 (1833), observes that "two-thirds of the army are Irish;" a 
 statement not credible How far these estimates of Grattan, 
 Bulwer, and Mr. Froude are reliable it is impossible to say, 
 without having the Adjutant-General's ofl&cial returns of the 
 time wherewith to test them. One thing, however, is clearly 
 
 * Par. Deb., vol. iv. * Par. Deb., vol. xviL 
 
 U 
 
3o6 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 enough established, that the Irish soldiers of 1815 were 
 admitted to be, physically, the strongest men in Europe. 
 In Chambers' Information for the People, and the Papers 
 of the British Association for August 1836, respectively, 
 a comparative examination of the various European o armies 
 assembled in France, after the fall of Napoleon, is said to have 
 been made by the celebrated Scotch and Belgian professors, 
 Forbes and Quetelet, with this result. It was wonderful, when 
 we consider the wretched cabins and miserable diet which were 
 their portion at home in early life. The splendid anatomy was 
 there, and only required a little extra food to clothe it in all 
 but superfluous flesh. Those Irish soldiers of the Peninsular 
 War might be classified with the German children described 
 by Tacitus, who were reared in dirt, ran about naked, and yet 
 " grew up to that size and strength of Hmb," which were amazing 
 to behold. The landlords, however, have reduced their numbers. 
 The English people little know what they are permitting to 
 be done in Ireland in their name. They 'are witnessing an 
 attempt to exterminate the descendants of those Irish soldiers 
 who, according to Mr. Froude, composed half the army which 
 conquered India for them ; which composed half the army 
 which overthrew the power of Napoleon in the Peninsula, 
 and which as certainly composed half the naval force that 
 manned the wooden walls at Trafalgar and the Nile under the 
 gallant Nelson. Is this a romance, a mere exaggeration ? It 
 is a romance certainly, but no exaggeration. One Irish regi- 
 ment alone, the 22 nd of the line, conquered the Indian province 
 of Scinde, 50,000 miles in extent, under their heroic country- 
 man. Sir Charles Napier. Pray listen to the story, as told in a 
 delightful little work of Mr. Davenport Adams, published by 
 Routledge, entitled Eminent Soldiers, and say whether there is in 
 the annals of Greece pr Kome or France anything to surpass it. 
 On the eve of the memorable battle of Meanee, in Scinde, (General 
 Sir Charles Napier, writing to a friend, described the unequal 
 numerical strength of his position in the following terms : — 
 
 " To-morrow I march towards Meanee, where report says the 
 " Amirs have 30,000 men, but have not the pluck to lead them 
 
ENGLAND'S OBLIGATIONS TO IRELAND. 307 
 
 " in person. I march at midniglit, and may begin the battle 
 " sooner than the tribes, who have sworn on the Kuran to 
 " destroy us, expect. I can take into action about 2800 men 
 " and twelve guns ; they have about the same number of guns, 
 " but their cavalry is called 20,000, and on a smooth plain ; 
 " mine are about 800, long odds, but to-morrow or the day 
 " after we shall know each other's value. I have one British 
 " regiment, the 22nd. Magnificent Tipperary ! " 
 
 Here it will be observed that even the most chivalrous of 
 commanders, and one who proved himself a true friend of 
 Ireland during the great famine in 1846-7, finds it actually 
 necessary (and unavoidable) to describe an exclusively Irish 
 regiment as "British" soldiers.^ Pray listen to what this Irish 
 regiment achieved in 1843, the same year in which Thackeray 
 described (see p. 252) strong men lying in bed with hunger in 
 Ireland, owing to shameful misgovemment and oppression in 
 their native country, Mr. Adams continues : — 
 
 " Giving the signal to advance, Napier rode forward with his 
 " stafif under a rapid musketry fire. The Baluchi right proved 
 " to be covered by the village of Kaltri, which was filled with 
 " fighting men and virtually impregnable. But on the left his 
 " swift, keen glance detected a weakness, by which he imme- 
 " diately profited. The Shikargah on this side was enclosed 
 " by a wall, with one narrow opening or gateway, through which 
 " the Baluchis evidently intended to pour forth their thousands 
 " on the British flank and rear. On examining this wall it 
 " appeared to be nine or ten feet high and to have no loopholes 
 " through which the enemy could fire. Napier, therefore, 
 " posted the Grenadier company of the 22nd in the gap, inform- 
 " ing their brave captain. Law, that he was to block it up; to 
 " die there, if need be, but never to give way. Law was faith- 
 " ful to the charge committed to him, he died there ; the open- 
 
 1 This is an abiding grievance in Scotland, as well as Ireland. There 
 is no denying the justice of the honest Highlander's remark in Zeluco, 
 with regard to the consequences of the Union between England and his 
 provincialised country : — " Oh ! " said he, " whenever a Scotchman is 
 hanged, the English cry out, see that blackguard Scotch rogue — he 
 deserves his fate ! But, whenever a Scotch regiment defeats the enemy, 
 there is nothing said of anything but the irresistible bravery of the English 
 army ! '' 
 
3o8 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " ing was herocially defended, and thus the unassuming chivalry 
 " of eighty men paralysed the action of 6000. Both sides "were 
 " keeping up a heavy cannonade when the 22nd reached the 
 " Fullaili with a run, and, encouraged by their general, clam- 
 " bered up the slope and stood upon its summit. They had 
 " thought to bear down all before them, and they hesitated for 
 " a moment before the forest of swords that waved in their 
 " front. ' Thick as standing com, and gorgeous as a field of 
 'f flowers, stood the Baluchis in their many-coloured garments 
 " and turbans ; they filled the broad deep bed of the Fullaili ; 
 *' they clustered on both banks, and covered the plain beyond. 
 " Guarding their heads with their large dark shields, they shook 
 " their sharp swords, beaming in the sun ; their shouts rolled 
 " like a peal of thunder, as with frantic gestures they rushed 
 " forward, and full against the front of the 22nd dashed with 
 " demoniac strength and ferocity. But with shouts as loud, 
 *' and shrieks as wild and fierce as theirs, and hearts as big and 
 " arms as strong, the Irish soldiers met them with that queen 
 " of weapons, the musket, and sent their foremost masses roU- 
 " ing back in blood.'" 
 
 'o 
 
 Afterwards, Napier put to flight Shir Mohamed with his 
 army of 25,000 ; pursuing his forces behind their entrench- 
 ments at Dubba in like manner. The vanquished are said to 
 have lost in this battle 5,000 men in killed alone. The victors' 
 loss amounted to 270 men and officers, of whom no less than 
 170 belonged to the gallant Irish regiment, already decimated 
 in the fearful struggle at Meanee. Sir W. F. Napier, in his 
 Conquest of Scinde, gives a finishing touch to the story of those 
 antique heroes as follows : — 
 
 " On one of those long marches, which were almost con- 
 " tinual" [in pursuit of Shir Mohamed], "the 25th Sepoys, 
 "being nearly maddened by thirst and heat, saw one of their 
 " water-carriers approaching with full skins of water ; they 
 " rushed towards him in crowds, tearing away the skins and 
 " struggling together, with loud cries of * "Water ! "Water ! ' At 
 "that moment some half-dozen struggling soldiers came up, 
 " apparently exhausted, and asked for some. At once the 
 " generous Indians withheld their hands from the skins, forgot 
 " their own sufiFerings, and gave the fainting Europeans to 
 " drink; then they all moved on, the Sepoys carrying the 22nd 
 
ENGLAND'S OBLIGATIONS TO IRELAND. 309 
 
 " men's muskets for them, patting them on the shoulders, and 
 " encouraging them to hold out. It -was in vain ; they did so 
 " for a short time but soon fell. It was then discovered that 
 " these noble fellows were aU wounded — some deeply ; but, 
 " thinking there was to be another fight, they had concealed 
 " their hurts, and forced nature to sustain the loss of blood, the 
 " pain of wounds, the burning sun, the long marches, and the 
 *' sandy desert, that their last moments might be given to their 
 " country on another field of battle." 
 
 " Their country," indeed ! Why, at that very time the 
 British Government, for whom they had just conquered one of 
 the finest provinces in the East, would not pass a bill through 
 Parliament to save their kinsfolk from eviction, starvation, and 
 death in " their country." No doubt whatever it was the inti- 
 mate knowledge possessed by the hero of Scinde of England's 
 military obligations to Ireland which put him beside himself 
 with rage when he saw how the Government failed, as is 
 shown elsewhere, to grapple with Irish famine. "My pre- 
 " dominant feeling is," he said, " to stamp on Lord Grey's " 
 [the Prime Minister's] " full belly until he does something 
 " decisive." And writing to his sister from India at another 
 time {Life, vol. i ), the veteran warrior exclaimed : — 
 
 " They are sending more bayonets and bullets to Ireland, 
 " justice halting a long way after military execution. Can they 
 " put down famine with bayonets ? Starve my wife and children 
 ** and see if bayonets will put me down, except by death." ^ 
 
 During the Crimean War, England was guarded by hired Ger- 
 man soldiers — mercenaries. Why? Because English Ministers 
 had assisted Irish and Scottish landlords to slay by famine and 
 the workhouse, or send into exile a vast population from Ire- 
 land and Scotland by process of eviction. Now they are again 
 benevolently bent on expelling the Queen's subjects in both 
 kingdoms in precisely the same manner, to increase the multi- 
 tude of her enemies in foreign parts. Wonderful statesmanlike 
 foresight, to be sure ! If Scotchmen permit it, they may indeed 
 continue to sing Auld Lang Syne, which will be a very appro- 
 
 ^ General Gordon, in bis impassive way, said something similar to the pre- 
 sent writer in 1 88 1, as to what he might do under certain circumstances. 
 
310 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 priate national air in the circumstances, but they Tvill no 
 more be capable of rushing upon the enemy to the cry of 
 "Scotland for ever." In his Tales of a Grandfather, Sir 
 "Walter Scott has observed : — 
 
 " If the hour of need should come, and it may not, perhaps, be 
 " far distant — the pibroch may sound through the deserted region, 
 " but the summons will remain unanswered. The children who 
 " have left [the Highlands] will re-echo from a distant shore the 
 " sounds with which they took leave of their own — Ha til, ha til, 
 " mi tvlidhl — 'We return — We return — we return — no more!'" 
 
 If Englishmen and Englishwomen permit Lord Hartington 
 and our present Prime Minister to exterminate those Irish and 
 Scottish peasants under the circumstances, then will the British 
 Empire surely pass away for want of a valiant race to defend it. 
 It was the fate of ancient Rome, when degenerate rulers permitted 
 the land-sharks and land-grabbers of the day to exterminate the 
 descendants of the men who conquered the world for her. It 
 was the fate of the English at the Battle of Hastings, for the 
 same reason.^ And posterity will say that England deserved 
 her fate when there are left but too few of her own peasantry 
 even to resist the incursions of the outer barbarians. 
 
 3. For Naval Renown. 
 
 " In the last war," says Grattan, in February 1792, referring 
 to the American contest, according to vol. iii. of his Speeches, 
 " of 80,000 seamen, 50,000 were Irish names; in Chelsea, near 
 " one-third of the pensioners were Irish names ; in some of the 
 " men-of-war, nearly the whole complement of men were Irish." 
 And on the 17th of October 1796, he again, in a speech in the 
 Irish Parliament on Catholic Emancipation, asserted that, with- 
 out the Irish Catholics, the British navy could not keep the 
 sea; and that their proportion there was such that their in- 
 disposition to England would be fatal " What," he exclaims, 
 
 * Sir Edward Creasy, in his History of England, says : — " The feeble- 
 " ness of the resistance of so brave a people as the English at the Battle 
 " of Hastings is attributed by Mr. Kemble to the discontent and depres- 
 " sion of the middle class at the gradual absorption of all the puUie lands 
 " by the great owners of that day." 
 
 ,1 
 
ENGLAND'S OBLIGATIONS TO IRELAND. 311 
 
 " is the British navy ! a number of planks t certainly not ; a 
 " number of British men t certainly not. No ; but a number 
 " of British and Irish, Transfer," says he, *' the Irish seamen 
 •' to the French, and where is the British navy 1 " Mr. Foster, 
 speaking in Parliament in 1805, while opposing the Catholic 
 claims, frankly admitted that Irish Catholics " supply a large 
 " proportion of the British fleet with sailors ; and that to their 
 " courage and to their ardour, Lord Nelson was indebted for 
 " his glorious victory at the Nile." ^ Again, it is remarkable 
 that Sir John Cox Hippesley, in his parliamentary speech of 
 1810, said that, out of a list in his hand of 46 ships of the line, 
 which, at two dififerent periods, had belonged to the Plymouth, 
 division, the Catholics (Irish) " greatly " exceeded " the Protes- 
 tants in the majority of the vessels. In some of the first and 
 second rates the Catholics amounted even to two-thirds, while in 
 one or two first-rates " they formed nearly the whole ; " and, in 
 the Naval Hospital, about four years before, out of 476 sailors, 
 no less than 363 were Catholics. Thus, to cite one instance out 
 of many that might be given in corroboration of Grattan's asser- 
 tion — " In the year 1 780," says Sir John Cox Hippesley, " when 
 " fewer Catholics entered the service than at present [that is, 
 "in 1 8 10], the crew of the Thuriderer, of 74 guns, Commodore 
 " Walsingham, was composed two-thirds of Catholics," or Irish.* 
 Referring to the same period, Sir J. Barrington also says in his 
 Rise and Fall — " The British navy was then manned by what 
 " were generally denominated British tars, but a large proportion 
 " of whom were in fact sailors of Irish birth and Irish feelings." 
 So convinced, indeed, were the French republican govern- 
 ment of the great and indispensable numbers of Irish sailors in 
 the British fleets, that the first idea conceived by the French 
 Minister, Charles de la Croix, for accomplishing the invasion 
 of Ireland, and rendering her an independent nation, was a 
 scheme to difi'use disaff'ection, and eventual mutiny and revolt, 
 through the Irish portion of the British naval forces. The cele- 
 brated "Wolfe Tone said (voL ii. of his Works) in February 1796, 
 " Let it never be forgotten, that two-thirds of the British seamen, 
 
 ^ Par. Deb., vol. iv. ^ Par. Deb., vol. xyii. 
 
312 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " as they are called, are in fact Irishmen," And in the first 
 Memorandum upon the condition of Ireland which he presented, 
 during the same month, to the Minister of the Directory, he 
 dwells upon the surprising calculation as conclusive in favour 
 of his proposal for an immediate invasion of Ireland. " I submit 
 " this fact," he observes, " to the particular notice of the French 
 " Government." Even these do not constitute the whole of the 
 facts. Collingwood, the friend and companion-in-arms of Nelson, 
 and second in command at Trafalgar, writing to the Earl of 
 Musgrave on the 23rd of April 1808, said: — "One hundred 
 " Irish boys came out two years since, and are now topmen of 
 " the fleet ! " And the editor of his correspondence gives the 
 following account of a proposal he then made to the Admiralty 
 with respect to the Irish : — 
 
 " He (Lord Collingwood) had found that Irish boys, from 
 " twelve to sixteen years of age, when mingled with English 
 " sailors, acquired rapidly the order, activity, and seaman-like 
 " spirit of their comrades ; and that, in the climate of the 
 " Mediterranean, they often, in less than two years, became 
 " expert seamen. . . . He accordingly proposed to the Admiralty 
 " to raise yearly 5,000 Irish boys, and to send a large proportion 
 " of them to his command," for the purpose, continues the 
 editor, of having them " taught and prepared in ships of the 
 " line, before they were sent into smaller vessels." 
 
 Here, again, as in the case of the component parts of the 
 army during the French war, it is impossible to say how far 
 there is strict accuracy in the startling statements of Grattan, 
 without the Admiralty official returns of the period. It must 
 be confessed meanwhile, that the great orator was a man very 
 careful of his facts; and by no means likely to commit him- 
 self to any unguarded statement. "Wolfe Tone, too, however 
 much it might be his interest in the emergency to exaggerate 
 the proportion of Irish sailors in the fleets, would hardly 
 have dared to deceive the French government on so vital a 
 point, seeing he had given him a recognised official rank, and 
 carried his own fortunes, for good or ill, on board one of the 
 enemy's foremost ships. Besides, the French general, Clarke, 
 afterwards Due de Feltre, tested his statements by comparing i 
 
 ; 
 
ENGLAND'S OBLIGATIONS TO IRELAND. 313 
 
 them with others from independent sources, and was well satis- 
 fied with the result. As to Collingwood's seeming preference 
 for Irish lads, it does not very seriously affect the argument, 
 except as showing that there was at least no insuperable preju- 
 dice against employing Irishmen in the navy in his day. In- 
 deed there is no reason why the Irish should not be good 
 sailors. They are Celts, and so are the Cornish men, the Manx 
 men, and the Gaeiic-speaking population of Argyle and the 
 Hebrides ; all of whom are first-rate sailors. But an interesting 
 presumptive proof has come to the knowledge of the present 
 writer as regards the extraordinary proportion of Irishmen 
 who helped to man the wooden walls of England at the Nile 
 and Trafalgar. It was communicated to him a few years back by 
 Dr. Duigan, C.B., a distinguished officer of the Naval Medical 
 Service, of whom a glowing obituary notice, penned by a 
 number of his surviving brother officers, will be found in the 
 London medical newspapers of December 1884. For some 
 special kindnesses he had shown a naval youth, who was an 
 adopted child of Lady Lucy Foley, the widow of Nelson's 
 secretary and close companion. Dr. Duigan was rewarded with 
 the friendship of that distinguished woman ; who was a Geral- 
 dine, being a sister of the iU-fated Lord Edward Fitzgerald. 
 His statement was this ; that Lady Lucy Foley had more than 
 once assured him, on the authority of her deceased husband, 
 Sir Thomas Foley, and in a manner that deeply impressed him 
 at the time, that more than half the men — in some of the ships 
 three-fourths of them — who fought those glorious battles under 
 England's greatest hero, the gaUant Nelson, were Irish. " And 
 " yet," she would add, her face lighting up with indignation, 
 " see, Doctor, how England, and her statesmen, have chosen to 
 " repay the Irish in their own country with nothing but studied 
 " insult, calumny, and oppression ! " It was the knowledge of 
 these things, reaching him when it was too late, that deeply 
 mortified Napoleon in his imprisonment at St. Helena, when 
 addressing Las Casas, he is reported to have said — " If, instead 
 " of the expedition to Egypt, I had undertaken that to Ireland, 
 " where would the power of England be to-day ? " 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 THE POPES IN THEIR DEALINGS WITH IRELAND. 
 
 ' English pride might mingle with sacerdotal ambition in the boon of a 
 " new kingdom to Adrian's native sovereign. The language of the grant 
 " developed principles as yet unheard of in Christendom." — Miluan. 
 
 The same year (1154) in which Henry II. ascended the English 
 throne, Nicolas Breakspeare, an Englishman, became Pope, under 
 the name of Adrian IV. ; the only one of his race who attained 
 such dignity. The king lost no time in sending an embassy to 
 Rome to congratulate Adrian on his election, and at the same 
 time present him with many rich gifts. The Pope in return 
 presented Henry with the kingdom of Ireland, and apparently 
 without much entreaty, claiming the right to do so on the 
 ground that " all islands upon which Christ, the Sun of Justice, 
 *' have shone, and which have received the teachings of the 
 " Christian faith, rightfully belong to the blessed Peter and 
 *' the most holy Roman Church." Adrian was a good man, but 
 he was vilely deceived, as well as such eminent ecclesiastics 
 as St. Bernard and St. Anselm, in regard to the character of 
 the Irish. The king's chief ambassador, John of Salisbury, 
 chaplain to the Archbishop of Canterbury, was no doubt put 
 up to tell the Pope a terrible story of resistance to law and 
 order in Ireland, and he was assisted by the royal historio- 
 grapher, Giraldus Cambrensis, who might have adopted Ananias 
 for a surname, and taken office with the Loyal and Patriotic 
 Union of the time. 
 
 The population of Ireland at that time is estimated by Sir "W. 
 Petty not to have exceeded 300,000. When therefore 1,500 
 highly-disciplined Anglo-Norman soldiers arrived on the coast to 
 take possession of the Papal gift, they were welcomed by native 
 
THE POPES' DEALINGS WITH IRELAND. 315 
 
 allies to a succession of easy victories over the few scattered 
 tribes there assembled. They were victories " such as are usually 
 " achieved when well-armed, well-trained, and well-led soldiers 
 " encounter an undisciplined though brave and numerous 
 " peasantry," in the words of Sir Edward Creasy. Adrian had 
 then long since gone to his account, having it is said been 
 choked by a fly in the fifth year of his pontificate. Hemem- 
 bering that the history of Ireland has been but one unbroken 
 agony during the seven centuries that have since elapsed, while 
 England has been none the happier by the ill-starred connection, 
 it may be pardonable to wish that the winged insect in question 
 had benignly chosen to operate on Nicolas Breakspeare a few 
 years earlier. Attempts have been made to prove that the 
 Pope issued no bull or brief at all to entitle Henry to become 
 Lord of Ireland. It is maintained by some that the papal 
 documents exhibited before the Irish bishops assembled at 
 "Waterford in 1175 (when the fortunes of the Anglo-Normans 
 were fleeting fast) were simply spurious. In fact it is said that 
 forgery and fraud were rife in those days, as in these, to com- 
 pass a wrongful end by the least defensible of means. And 
 there are not wanting obscure Irish writers of the intellectual 
 calibre of Cardinal Moran^ who, in their anxiety to exonerate the 
 Pope from complicity in a transaction which has brought so 
 many misfortunes on their country, have pretended the belief 
 that this is how the English king came into a wrongful possession 
 of Ireland. Unfortunately for such a line of argument the Irish 
 contemporary ecclesiastics of highest rank assembled at Water- 
 ford regarded and received the documents in question as genuine, 
 and gave in their submission to Henry accordingly. Pope Alex- 
 ander III., who succeeded Adrian, confirmed the grant or gift 
 bestowed by the latter, and not once or twice only has the Holy 
 See, "since recognised in Ireland a territory of the English 
 " crown," according to our eminent English Cardinal Newman. 
 
 * This unpopular ecclesiastic had only a charitable trader to entertain 
 him on his first visit to Dublin, after securing the red stockings. Twd 
 years later, some emotional Town Councillors obtained for him the civic 
 freedom ! No people on earth are so forgiving as the Irish. 
 
3i6 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 Mr. T. Sullivan, M.P., ex - Lord Mayor of Dublin, a 
 Catholic gentleman who should be an authority on the subject, 
 distinguishes very carefully between the actions of the Popes 
 as temporal rulers and their decisions as chief pastors of the 
 Universal Church. He says in his Story of England: — 
 
 " Every Catholic should understand that even if the authenti- 
 " city of this so-called Bull [of Adrian] were fully established, 
 " there is no religious obligation on any one to regard the 
 " granting of it as either a wise or a just act. In matters of 
 " mere statesmanship, in their dealings as temporal rulers with 
 " kings and princes, the Popes were liable to make mistakes, 
 " to be misled, to take up wrong impressions, and act upon 
 " erroneous opinions. The Popes have never erred, and they 
 " never will err, in their definitions of Catholic doctrine ; there 
 *' they are miraculously guided and instructed by the Holy 
 " Spirit ; but outside of that line they claim no infallibUity, 
 "and their acts are to be judged on their merits." 
 
 It surely matters little to the Irish people in their present 
 acute sufferings under what circumstances the Pope presented 
 their country to Henry II. The English king went to Ireland, 
 according to Adrian's idea, to sow the seeds of virtue and 
 extirpate the seeds of vice. John of Salisbury, doubtless, 
 assured his Holiness that his royal master was consumed only 
 with a burning desire to restore law and order and purity of 
 morals in that kingdom, just as our modern Salisbury assures the 
 present illustrious occupant of the Papal chair, by his unscrupu- 
 lous emissaries (Sir John Errington and the Duke of Norfolk, 
 Monsignor Persico and Cardinal Moran), that Lord Hartington 
 and he are animated solely with the same moral and religious 
 object when battering down the humble cabins of the " faithful 
 " children " of his Holiness there, whenever they are unable or 
 unwilling to pay an extortionate rack-rent to the Irish landlord on 
 the fruits of their own industry. It is more important to ascer- 
 tain whether Henry was quite the sort of man to be selected either 
 for the cultivation of virtue or the extirpation of vice, "Were his 
 followers and subjects of that era such shining lights at home as 
 to be deserving of selection for the promotion of Christianity 
 in foreign parts 1 Pike, a modem English author, in his History 
 
THE POPE?' DEALINGS WITH IRELAND. 317 
 
 of Crime, vol. L, rather dashes our confidence in the judgment of 
 Adrian when he was persuaded to confide such a high and sacred 
 mission to Henry and his people. The following passages from the 
 work of so careful a writer would tend to show that if the Pope 
 had been divinely inspired on the occasion he would have sent 
 another Augustine, not to Ireland, but to England, for the 
 reformation of morals and religion in his own country, and in 
 the highest circles even of society there. Speaking of the 
 moral condition of things in England in the twelfth century, 
 during the reign of Henry 11. , Pike says : — 
 
 " The universal want of respect for human life is shown in 
 'all the chronicles of the period. In London, where Jews 
 ' were frequently massacred by hundreds, the streets were, after 
 ' sunset, given up to rapine and murder. That which would 
 ' now be called crime became the favourite pastime of the 
 ' principal citizens, who would sally forth by night, in bands 
 ' of a hundred or more, for an attack upon the houses of their 
 'neighbours. They killed, without mercy, every man who 
 ' came in their way, and vied with each other in their brutality. 
 ' ... It might almost be safely assumed, without evidence, 
 ' that, when the chief merchants of London were in the habit 
 ' of practising burglary and murder, the inferior traders were 
 ' not scrupulously honest. There is, however, no necessity to 
 ' rely upon conjectures when contemporary documents afford 
 ' sufficient proof of the fact. False weight, false measures, 
 ' and false pretences of all kinds were the instruments of com- 
 ' merce most generally in use. No buyer could trust the word 
 ' of a seller, and there was hardly any class in which a man 
 ' might not with reason suspect that his neighbour intended to 
 ' rob, or even to murder him. 
 
 " The morals of the Court were no better than the morals of 
 ' the shop. There was no subject in which the best writers of 
 ' the period took a greater delight than in the vices of the 
 ' Court of Henry II. "Walter Mapes, Archdeacon of Oxford, 
 ' liimself a courtier and wit, has described, with sarcasm but 
 ' with evident enjoyment, the scenes of which he was a wit- 
 ' ness. He would not, he said, undertake to prove that the 
 ' Court was hell, but he had no fear of contradiction when he 
 ' stated that the Court bore as great a resemblance to hell as a 
 ' mare's shoe bears to a horse's. Hell had been described as a 
 ' place of torment, but there were no torments imagined by the 
 
3i8 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " ancient poets which were not realised in the Court ... As 
 " there were birds of ill-omen and of prey in the infernal regions 
 " described by the classical writers, so, said Mapes, there were 
 " birds of ill-omen and of prey in the Court. These were the 
 "justices, the sheriffs, &c., whose eyes were everywhere, and 
 *' who were always careful to punish the innocent. . . . The 
 " courtiers who wished to distinguish themselves in the king's 
 " presence made collections of amusing stories. . . . The infi- 
 •' delities of women were commonly the narrator's theme, and 
 " an exhortation to avoid matrimony was the most commoi^ 
 " given by a man to his friend. ... A consequence of this 
 " creed was that the husband frequently set a price upon his 
 " wife's virtue, and made a profit of his own dishonour. Fathers 
 " were ready to sell their daughters, and excused the iniquitous 
 " traflBc on the ground that the end would be the same whether 
 " they received the money or not. The unnatural procurers 
 " avenged themselves by seducing the wives and daughters of 
 " their acquaintances and employers." 
 
 Of the monarch himself Lingard gives a not less unattractive 
 picture. He says that, under a fascinating exterior :— ' 
 
 "Was concealed a heart that could descend to the basest 
 " artifices, and sport with its own honour and veracity. No 
 " one would believe his assertions or trust his promises ; yet he 
 " justified this habit of duplicity by the maxim that it is better 
 " to repent of words than of facts, to be guilty of falsehood than 
 " to fail in a favourite pursuit. . . . His temper could not brook 
 " contradiction. Whoever hesitated to obey his will, or pre- 
 " sumed to thwart his desires, was marked out for his victim, 
 " and was pursued with the most unrelenting vengeance. His pas- 
 " sion was the raving of a madman, the fury of a savage beast." 
 
 In 1 146, failing to suppress an insurrection in Wales before 
 retiring from the province, the historian adds, that Henry : — 
 
 " To console himself for this disgrace exercised his venge- 
 *' ance on his numerous hostages, the children of the noblest 
 " families in Wales. By his orders the eyes of all the males 
 " were rooted out, and the ears and noses of the females were 
 " amputated. Having thus satiated himself with blood and 
 *' covered himself with infamy, on a sudden, and without any 
 *' ostensible reason, he disbanded his army and returned to 
 " London." 
 
THE POPES' DEALINGS WITH IRELAND. 319 
 
 Many kings claiming to reign by divine right have proved 
 themselves very bad characters, and Henry II. was one of them. 
 He did corporal penance for the murder of Thomas-k-Becket, and 
 on his deathbed in 11 89 suflfered the pangs of the condemned 
 for his proceedings in "Wales and Ireland, as his last words 
 seem to reveal — " Maudit soit lejour ouje suis ne, et maudits de 
 Dieu soient lesfils quij'e laissel" On the whole Henry was 
 hardly the monarch — ^his subjects were scarcely the men — to set 
 out on a crusade against the Irish (who had themselves pre- 
 viously civilised and Christianised the greater part of Europe) to 
 make them better and more faithful children of the Pope. The 
 truth appears to be that Adrian, naturally well affected towards 
 his own country, lent a too ready ear to the English embassy, 
 though he is said to have remarked when accepting the royal 
 presents that some of the ecclesiastics who had conveyed them 
 to Kome, at one time refused to bestow upon him an old coat 
 for charity, when he badly wanted one in his younger days at 
 home in England, Meanwhile, Cardinal Newman is aghast at 
 the extreme credulity of the Pope in the circumstances, and 
 confesses to the fact with characteristic straightforwardness in 
 the first volume of his Historical Sketches, thus : — 
 
 " It is remarkable that the Holy See, to whose initiative the 
 ' union of the two countries is historically traceable, is in no 
 ' respect made chargeable by the Irish people with the evils 
 ' which have resulted to them from it. And the fact itself is 
 ' remarkable, that the Holy See really should be responsible 
 ' for that initiative. There are other nations in the world ill- 
 ' matched, besides the English and the Irish ; there are other 
 ' instances of the rule of strangers, and of the compulsory sub- 
 ' mission of the governed ; but the Pope cannot be called to 
 ' account for such political arrangements. The Pope did not 
 ' give Greece to the Sublime Porte, or "Warsaw to Russia, or 
 ' Venice to Austria, or Belgium to Holland, or Norway to 
 ' Sweden, or the cities of the Rhine to Prussia, or the Septin- 
 ' sular Republic to England ; but, even had he done so, still in 
 ' some of these instances he would have but united together 
 ' members of one race — German to German, Fleming to Flem- 
 ' ing, Slave to Slave. But it is certainly most remarkable that 
 ' a power so authoritative, even when not divine, so sagacious 
 
320 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " even ■when not supernatural ; whose acts are so literally the 
 " personal acts of the PontiflF, who represents it for the time being, 
 " yet of such solemn force and such tremendous permanence ; 
 " which, by appealing to its present prerogatives, involves itself 
 " in its past decisions; which ' openeth and no man shutteth; and 
 " shutteth and no man openeth,' — it does, we say, require some 
 " explanation, how an oracle so high and irrefragable should have 
 " given its religious sanction to a union apparently so unblest, 
 " and which at the end of seven centuries is as devoid of moral 
 " basis, or of effective accomplishment, as it was at the commence- 
 " ment. What time German and Italian, Turk and Greek, shall 
 " be contented with each other ; when ' the lion and the sheep 
 " shall abide together ; ' and ' the calf and the bear shall 
 "feed' — then, it may be argued, will there be a good under- 
 " standing between two nations so contradictory the one of the 
 " other — the one an old immemorial race, the other the com- 
 " posite of a hundred stocks ; the one possessed of an antique 
 " civilisation, the other civilised by Christianity ; the one glory- 
 " ing in its schools and its philosophy, the other in its works 
 " and institutions ; the one subtle, acute, speculative, the other 
 " wise, patient, energetic ; the one admiring and requiring (sic) 
 " the strong arm of despotic rule, the other spontaneously 
 " developing itself in methods of self-government and of in- 
 " dividual competition. And yet, not once or twice only has 
 " the Holy See recognised in Ireland a territory of the English 
 " crown." 
 
 As regards the Popes' dealings with Ireland in modem times, 
 they have been most disastrous. It would be highly indecorous 
 to hold the Popes personally responsible for the actions of their 
 advisers, even in a greater degree than in the case of Her Majesty 
 the Queen. Their empire is illimitably more extensive, and it 
 is a spiritual one. But with this reservation, it would be as 
 idle to deny the existence of the east wind as the blighting 
 influence which Rome has exercised and continues to exercise 
 on all that constitutes the material prosperity and happiness of 
 the Irish people. "Whether it be due to ignorance or to indiffer- 
 ence, the policy of Eome, in systematically playing into the 
 hands of the government in Ireland, is as inexcusable as it is 
 inexplicable. There are at this moment in that country thou- 
 sands AND TENS OF THOUSANDS of women and children who 
 
THE POPES' DEALINGS WITH IRELAND. 321 
 
 neither go to mass nor to school for want of decent rags to 
 cover their nakedness. Why? Because, as will be found 
 abundantly proved in these pages, " of the long wickedness " 
 of English rule there, to use the words of Sydney Smith. 
 Do the Papal advisers know of this terrible fact ? If they 
 do not, then their ignorance is nothing short of criminal in 
 the circumstances, for they have only to ask the Catholic 
 bishops of the various Irish dioceses for information on the 
 subject. But if they do know it, what are we to think of a 
 policy which sacrifices the happiness of the most virtuous popu- 
 lation in Europe to the machinations of unscrupulous and un- 
 feeling men who pretend to the Pope that it is necessary thus to 
 bribe Lord Salisbury in the interests of the " universal Church " 1 
 As Cardinal Newman pithily expressed it in his famous Letter 
 to the Duke of Norfolk, in reply to Mr. Gladstone's Expostulation 
 of 1874, though "the Rock of St Peter on its summit enjoj-s 
 "a pure and serene atmosphere, there is a great deal of Roman 
 ^^ malaria at the foot of it." No Irishman ever had so great 
 respect for the Popes in their spiritual office as O'Connell, but 
 neither is there any who had greater distrust and dislike for 
 those persons who arrogate to themselves the right to speak for 
 the Popes as their Ministers. When the Pope was a prisoner 
 to Napoleon in France in 18 14, Quarantotti, Vice-President of 
 the Propaganda, insolently directed Irish Catholics to submit 
 to the veto of the government in Ireland on the appointment of 
 their bishops. But O'Connell indignantly denounced both him- 
 self and his pretended mandate, and got the Catholic Board to 
 pass a resolution repudiating the authority of Rome in the poli- 
 tical concerns of his country. " I am sincerely a Catholic," he 
 said, "but not a Papist, and I totally deny that Gonsalvi or 
 Quarantotti, or even the Pope himself, can claim submission 
 to their mandates in this matter." If the Irish leaders now 
 faltered in their resolve to withstand Papistical pretensions to 
 bind Ireland, by the establishment of diplomatic relations, 
 in the fetters of contingent rags and famine, then would they 
 deserve to see their people enslaved — an object of pity to 
 mankind — for yet another generation. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 AMERICAN IRELAND. 
 
 " If there be any proposition universally true in politics it is this, that 
 " foreign attachments are the fruit of domestic misrule. It has always 
 " been the trick of bigots to make their subjects miserable at home, and 
 " then to complain that they look for relief abroad ; to divide society, and 
 " then to wonder that it is not united ; to govern as if a section of the 
 " State were the whole, and to censure the other sections of the State for 
 " their want of patriotic spirit." — Macaulat. 
 
 LoED Geet was ashamed of foreign opinion, in his day, as 
 regards our long continued misgovemment of Ireland. If he 
 now lived he would find still more reason to be so. Our kith 
 and kin in America are already politely remonstrating with 
 England on the subject. For instance, the Canadian Parliament 
 petitioned the Queen in behalf of Ireland a short time ago ; and 
 now the President of the United States, General Harrison, 
 has himself actually signed an address, got up amongst ^his own 
 people, for presentation to Mr. Gladstone with the same object. 
 Speaking in the House of Lords, on the 23rd of March 1846, 
 Lord Grey said : — 
 
 " Ireland is the one weak place in the solid fabric of British 
 " power — Ireland is the one deep (I had almost said inefiace- 
 " able) blot upon the brightness of British honour. Ireland is 
 " our disgrace. It is the reproach, the standing disgrace, of 
 " this country that Ireland remains in the condition she is. 
 " It is so regarded throughout the whole civilised world. To 
 " ourselves we may palliate it if we will, and disguise the truth; 
 " but we cannot conceal it from others. There is not, as I have 
 "said, a foreigner — no matter whence he comes, be it from 
 *• France, Russia, Germany, or America — there is no native of 
 " any foreign country, different as their forms of government 
 
AMERICAN IRELAND. 323 
 
 " may be, who visits Ireland, and -who on his return does not 
 " congratulate himself that he sees nothing comparable with 
 *' the condition of that country at home. If such be the state 
 " of things, how then does it arise, and what is its cause 1 
 " My Lords, it is only by misgovernment that such evils 
 " could have been produced ; the mere fact that Ireland is in 
 " so deplorable and wretched a condition saves whole volumes 
 " of argument, and is of itself a complete and irrefutable proof 
 " of the misgovernment to which she has been subjected. Nor 
 " can we lay to our souls the ' flattering unction ' that this mis- 
 " government was only of ancient date, and has not been our 
 " doing. . . . For nearly fifty years now Ireland has been under 
 " the immediate control of the Imperial Parliament. Since it 
 " has been so a whole generation has grown up, and is now 
 " passing away to be replaced by another, and in that time, I 
 " ask you, what impression has been made upon the evils of 
 " Ireland ? . . . The wretchedness and misery of the population 
 " have experienced no abatement. Upon that point I can quote 
 " high authority [the Report of the Devon Commission]." 
 
 Mr. Bright, speaking at Eochdale twenty years later, on the 
 23rd of December 1867, said, according to a Times report : — 
 
 " In America you have another Ireland — an Ireland which 
 " does not fear the government in Ireland — an Ireland which 
 " is full of passion with regard to what they believe to be the 
 " sufiferings of the country they have left. ... If the govern- 
 "mentof England and the government of the United King- 
 " dom, as it is called, had been a government of statesmen, 
 " does any man in the world believe they would have allowed 
 " things to come to such a pass as this ? . . . See what a posi- 
 " tion we are in. The whole civilised world points to our 
 " condition. The newspapers of France, of Germany, and even 
 " of Italy, and the newspapers of the United States ... do 
 " not now write about Poland, or Hungary, or Venice, but they 
 " write about Ireland, and they point to the people of Great 
 " Britain, and say we have not done our duty towards our 
 " sister country. . . . And if it were not a delicate subject to 
 " treat upon, which I now think it better to avoid, it would be 
 " easy to show how greatly we have lost in national power and 
 " moral influence with other nations, and especially with regard 
 "to our fears of defence. ... If it were not for the moral 
 *' sense of the people of the United States, and the good faith and 
 
524 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " honour of their government, there is no doubt but that great 
 " trouble — far greater than any we have yet seen — would have 
 " arisen on the Canadian frontier between the Irishmen in the 
 " United States and the subjects of the British Crown in Canada." 
 
 Sir Charles Dilke, in his Greater Britain (1868), asked some 
 pertinent questions of equal significance with the observations 
 of Mr. Bright about the same time. Those questions are of 
 much higher importance now, on account of the vast increase 
 that has taken place in the number of Irish emigrants in 
 the United States meanwhile. The Emigration Statistics of 
 Ireland for 1888, as compiled by the Registrar-General, have 
 been lately presented to Parliament. The emigrants from Irish 
 ports last year were 79,211. It appears that 3,276,103 natives 
 of Ireland have left that country since 1851, considerably 
 more than a million having preceded them between 1837 and 
 that year. This is considerably more than the whole popula- 
 tion of Denmark at the present time. The Irishmen go chiefly 
 to the United States. During last year about 6,000 came to 
 Great Britain, only 2,600 went to Canada, 87 to New Zealand, 
 and 3,000 to Australia; while 67,000 went to the United 
 States. The number of women who leave Ireland nearly equals 
 that of the men ; and about two-thirds of the whole number are 
 from fifteen to twenty-five years of age. Imagine this population, 
 the flower of a nation's youth and strength — sufficient to people 
 a considerable European kingdom — how it has grown and con- 
 tinues to grow in the United States, whither it is all practically 
 destined to proceed, and you may be able to realise the force of 
 Sir Charles Dilke's questions, of twenty years ago, as follows : — 
 
 " "When is this drama, of which the first scene is played in 
 " Castle Gardens [the emigration depot in New York], to have 
 " its close ? The matter is grave enough already. Ten years 
 " ago, the third and fourth cities of the world. New York and 
 " Philadelphia, were as English as our London ; the one is 
 " Irish now, the other all but German. Not that the Quaker 
 " city will remain Teutonic ; the Germans, too, are going out 
 " upon the land ; the Irish alone pour in unceasingly. All 
 " great American towns will soon be Celtic, while the country 
 "continues English; a fierce and easily-roused people will 
 
AMEEICAN IRELAND. 325 
 
 " throng the cities, while the law-abiding Saxons who till the 
 " land will cease to rule it. Our relations with America are of 
 '• small moment by the side of the one great question, Who are 
 " the Americans to be ? " 
 
 Mr. Cliffe Leslie, the well-known political economist, in his 
 Land Systems in various countries, says : — 
 
 " We believe that candid readers of these pages will pro- 
 " nounce not only that the history of Ireland has been one long 
 " profligate waste of national resources of every kind, but that 
 " one of the most monstrous episodes in that history is the waste 
 " of industrial power, and of national strength which takes the 
 " name of emigration. . . . What must be the feeling of the 
 " exiled peasantry of Ireland at the other side of the Atlantic, 
 " when a grave American professor, in a treatise on the prin- 
 " ciples of political economy, speaks as follows of Irish emigra- 
 " tion ? — ' The policy of English landlords is to depopulate their 
 " estates, to make the peasantry give place to flocks and herds 
 " as in the north of Scotland, or to compel them to emigrate to 
 " foreign lauds as in Ireland. Thus they imitate the system 
 " which has been practised for centuries in the Roman Cam- 
 *' pagna, which reduced the fields of Italy in the age of Pliny 
 " to a desert, and subsequently surrendered them to the northern 
 " barbarians because tliere were not men enough to defend 
 " them.' The political instinct must be absent from the pre- 
 " sent generation, if it does not see the wrong which is being 
 " done to the next one — a wrong in the strictest economic sense 
 " as regards the loss of security as well as of industrial power. 
 " Audiet pitgnas Vitio parentum Rata Juventus." 
 
 Prominent American politicians, having none but the most 
 friendly feelings towards England, are growing tired of the 
 eternal Irish turmoil in the States, which is due to misgovem- 
 ment in Ireland. It has become a serious interference with the 
 progress of the country, unsettling the minds of a vast mass of 
 the population, and diverting their attention more or less from 
 their daily labour. For this reason American public men are 
 growing impatient of the obstinacy in wrong-doing of the 
 " classes " here at home. It is bad enough to have one's affairs 
 talked of contemptuously by foreign neighbours. But to have 
 the finger of scorn pointed at England by her own children 
 beyond the seas is simply unendurable. This is how an ex-Yice- 
 
326 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 President — who but for his premature death might have become 
 President — of the United States, the late Mr. Hendricks, spoke 
 on the subject of English misgovernment in Ireland as lately as 
 1885 at a public meeting held at Indianapolis : — 
 
 " It is known all over the world," Mr. Hendricks observed, 
 " that Ireland, since the time of Henry II., has not had fair- 
 " play from Great Britain, On the contrary, she has been 
 " denied the rights of equal citizenship, and been despoiled of 
 " her lands. Every Irishman here to-night — every Irishman in 
 " America — is a protest against the bad government of England 
 " towards Ireland. How is it that you came here, having left 
 " almost the most beautiful land in the world ? Perhaps no 
 " part of the globe is more attractive than Ireland, and yet you 
 " left Ireland. You are here because you could not get good 
 " government in Ireland. Forty-five years ago the population 
 " of the green island was 9,000,000 of people — a large popula- 
 " tion for a region of country only the size of Indiana. To-day, 
 " after the lapse of forty-five years, that population is about 
 " 5,000,000 — a loss in less than half a century of 4,000,000 of 
 " people — almost the entire half of the population gone from 
 " Ireland. ... I would say it is a serious matter when a man 
 " or woman chooses to leave the home that has been the home 
 " of his or her ancestors for many centuries. And when on ac- 
 " count of bad government, unjust laws, and a cruel system of 
 " tenancy, there has been driven away almost half the popula- 
 " tion, the question what is to be done comes up. It cannot 
 " always remain this way." 
 
 In the month of September last, an American public man 
 who was sometime ago named by the popular voice as a candi- 
 date for the Presidency, and who will probably attain that 
 much-coveted distinction in the near future — Mr. Chauncey 
 ^L Depew, is reported to have spoken as follows to a press in- 
 terviewer in regard to a recent visit to England : — 
 
 " I had half-a-dozen talks with Earl Spencer about Home 
 " Rule. He said one strong support of the opposition to it was 
 " the widespread belief that the Irish in America were always 
 " against the Government, and opposed to the cause of law 
 "and order; that they were constant promoters of corruption 
 " and disturbance in politics ; that they took part with the 
 " Anarchists, <kc. I showed him how erroneous was this 
 *' opinion ; told him that when the Irishman came here and 
 
AMERICAN IRELAND. 327 
 
 " prospered he "became a conservative, law-abiding citizen ; 
 " pointed out to him that while the Irishman in America for- 
 " merly supported any movement hostile to Great Britain, since 
 " Mr. Gladstone had become the leader of the Home Rule party, 
 " they had ceased to be revolutionary, and had rallied to the 
 " support of Mr. Gladstone and constitutional agitation, and 
 " were generously subscribing money, not for dynamite, but to 
 " support legitimate political warfare. He replied that if the 
 " English could be made to perceive this, if they could get a 
 " correct understanding of what Irishmen were in America, it 
 " would prove a most potential factor in influencing public 
 " opinion in favour of Home Rule." 
 
 Lastly, General Harrison, President of the United States, 
 affixed his signature to a public address from the American 
 people to Mr. Gladstone, on December the 7th last, that is 
 about a month after his election to the Presidency ; thus indi- 
 cating that his administration is in cordial sympathy with the 
 Home Rule struggle. The following is the full text of that 
 remarkable document : — 
 
 " "We hereby express our heartfelt sympathy with the Irish 
 " people in their contention for the right which should freely 
 " be accorded them ; and we bid God speed to you and your 
 " associates, the friends of the Irish cause, in the great work 
 " now on hand. In America this sentiment predominates, and 
 " the ,great masses of our people would be glad of an oppor- 
 " tunity to express to you their confidence in you and in the 
 " ultimate triumph of justice. The people of Ireland patiently 
 " await the outcome. In some localities riot and bloodshed, 
 " the natural consequences of oppression, occur ; but in the 
 " main the people are in hope of a speedy triumph. The 
 " American people are with them in their desire for justice and 
 " peace, and wish you and your associates added strength and 
 " roused and renewed determination to hasten the dawning 
 " of the happy day which will bring a return of goodwill and 
 " prosperity both to Ireland and England." 
 
 His countrymen are apt to think that it is a sense of justice 
 alone which has persuaded Mr. Gladstone to attempt a final 
 settlement of the Irish question. There can be no denying the 
 existence of this motive; but there is undoubtedly another 
 which animates his unflagging labours at such a late period in 
 
328 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 his honourable career. There is operating in his mind the 
 patriotic motive as well ; to spare England, by such a settle- 
 ment, greater humiliation in the future, in the event of her 
 being engaged in any great war, than any she has yet expe- 
 rienced in her relations with the American continent As the 
 American Vice-President, Mr. Hendricks, expressed it a few 
 years ago, the present state of things " cannot always remain 
 " this way." And Mr. Bright uttered the same warning note, 
 it will be seen, in 1867, though he was then, he says, dissuaded 
 from speaking at greater length because it was " a delicate sub- 
 " ject to treat upon." If Mr. Gladstone be not permitted to settle 
 the Irish question now, it can only be by the machinations of 
 political opponents, whose motto is — "Let us live while we may." 
 Meanwhile it is well to know that some of the most influ- 
 ential of the latter are at least alive to the importance of the 
 possible consequences of their opposition. Thirty years ago 
 nearly, on the 4th of May, i860, the Times ventured upon the 
 following prophecy regarding the Irish exodus : — 
 
 " The time may come when Ireland will be no more Celtic 
 " than the Lowlands of Scotland are Saxon, the eastern coun- 
 " ties Danish, Cornwall Phoenician, or Ireland itself Milesian 
 " or Spanish. . . . There will then be again an Ireland, but a 
 " colossal Ireland, and an Ireland placed in the New World. 
 " "We shall only have pushed the Celt westwards : — ceasing for 
 " the future to be imprisoned between the Liflfey and the 
 " Shannon, he will spread from New York to San Francisco. 
 "... "We must gird our loins to encounter the Nemesis of 
 " seven centuries of misgovernment. To the end of time a 
 " hundred millions of people, spread over the largest habitable 
 " area in the world, and confronting us everywhere by sea and 
 " by land, will remember that their forefathers paid tithe to the 
 " Protestant clergy, rent to absentee landlords, and a forced 
 " obedience to the laws which these had made. ... So we 
 " shall have nourished and brought up, by us, at home, a power 
 " which is called to rule over the New "World, to extend its 
 " influence over both the oceans, and to become the master 
 "of an entire hemisphere. This New "World is the last and 
 " final home of the Celtic race." 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 HOW THE UNION WAS CARRIED. 
 
 " There are, indeed, few things more discreditable to English political 
 " literature than the tone of palliation, or even of eulogy, that ia usually 
 " adopted towards the authors of this transaction." — Leckt. 
 
 This work would hardly be complete without some account of 
 the means by which the Act of Union was forwarded and carried 
 ill 1800. Two chapters are devoted to it in the author's Why 
 Ireland Wants Home Rule, and it will be found detailed in 
 an admirable shilling volume of Mr. Swift Macneill, M.P., a 
 professor in Trinity College, Dublin, and the Protestant repre- 
 sentative of a parliamentary division of the Catholic county of 
 Donegal. Mr. Gladstone has, however, more briefly and power- 
 fully described those means of corruption and terror in the course 
 of a literary review in the Nineteenth Century of October 1887, . 
 by the series of propositions wliich will be found to follow. Mr. 
 Eoss, the editor of the ComwalUs Correspondence, relates how 
 much documentary evidence on the subject has been purposely 
 destroyed, to conceal the infamy of the principal actors in the 
 business, as was lately done, on a smaller scale, in regard to 
 the Pigott correspondence. After referring to the valuable 
 sources of information contained in the Spencer, Hardwicke, 
 Sydney, &c., papers, he observes : — 
 
 " But, upon investigation, it appeared that such documents 
 '' as might have thrown additional light on the history of those 
 "times, and especially of the Union, had been purposely de- 
 " stroyed. For instance, after a search instituted at Welbeck 
 " by the kindness of the Duke of Portland, it was ascertained 
 " that the late Duke had burnt all his father's political papers 
 " from 1 780 to his deatL In like manner the Chancellor (Lord 
 "Clare), Mr. Wickham, Mr. King, Sir Herbert Taylor, Sir 
 
330 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " Edward Littlehales, Mr. Marsdcn, the Knight of Kerry, and 
 " indeed almost all the persons officially concerned in carryingf 
 " the Union, appear to have destroyed the whole of their papers." 
 
 Mr. Gladstone is of opinion that it would not be difficult to 
 show that the British Government took an active part in the 
 work of suppression. And he refers to the Opposition speeches 
 on the Union, with other documents, carefully prepared for 
 publication, which were sold to Lord Castlereagh by an un- 
 principled publisher, and afterwards consigned to the flames in 
 Dublin Castle, the congenial scene of many such transactions: — 
 
 "The castle still stands though the senate's no more ! " 
 
 " The inference is nearly inevitable," Mr. Gladstone observes, 
 " that the history of the Union has been so exceptionally black, 
 "that it must be hidden from the eyes of men." Lord Corn- 
 wallis, who was Viceroy at this period, was so appalled by the 
 universal corruption in which he found himself compelled to take 
 part with Lord Castlereagh, who felt no such remorse, he said 
 that, but for his hope of getting away from the country, he would 
 most earnestly pray for " immediate death ! " Notwithstanding, 
 on the 19th of February 1801, when the Act was in force. 
 Lord Cornwallis sent to the Duke of Portland a sort of residuary 
 list of his unfulfilled promises to some of those who had voted 
 for the Union. It comprised thirteen legal appointments, four 
 steps in the peerage, and thirty promises of salaried places from 
 ^400 to ;^8oo, or pensions of ;^30o to ;^5oo. Thirty-five of 
 the persons mentioned in the list being Members of Parliament, 
 Mr. Ross did not consider it suitable for publication. "The 
 "stench of this shameful record was too foul for the public 
 "nostrils even in 1859, after two generations of men had 
 "passed away," observes Mr. Gladstone. The English ministers 
 in London, thinking they had paid enough for the iniquity 
 already, were disposed to repudiate any further liability on 
 account of the CornwaUis-Castlereagh compacts in Dublin. 
 Xiord Castlereagh had not calculated upon this. Fearing ex- 
 posure from such a breach of faith, he addressed his London 
 " double " a very candid matter-of-fact reminder of the awk- 
 
HOW THE UNION WAS CARRIED. 331 
 
 ward and too probable consequences likely to ensue, which that 
 ■worthy official was to communicate to Mr. Pitt and the Duke 
 of Portland without delay. The current coin of the realm was 
 his primum mobile, as he termed it himself, in numerous cases, 
 but here there was a delightful variety in the demands of the 
 claimants, which there should be no such difficulty in squaring 
 all round. "What are peerages, pensions, places, &c., when con- 
 trasted with the " consideration " of the Union 1 — 
 
 " It will be no secret," Lord Castlereagh writes, " what has 
 " been promised, and by what means the Union has been 
 "secured. Disappointment will encourage, not prevent, dis- 
 " closure ; and the only effect of such a proceeding on their 
 " part will be to add the weight of their testimony to that of 
 " the anti-Unionists, in proclaiming the profligacy of the means 
 " by which the measure has been accomplished." 
 
 Mr. Charles Grey, the 2nd Earl Grey, the eminent states- 
 man, in moving an Amendment to the first Resolution for 
 Union in Parliament, in April 1800, showed that the Irish 
 people were practically unanimous against it, and he urged 
 a suspension of the proceedings until further means were taken 
 to ascertain their opinion. " Though there were 707,000 
 " who had signed petitions against the measure," he said, " the 
 " total number of those who declared themselves in favour of it 
 " did not exceed 3,000 : and many of these only prayed that 
 " the measure might be discussed ; " a statement which elicited 
 no attempt to contradict it on the part of Mr. Pitt. On the 
 26th of June 1800 the Union Bill was read a second time by 
 117 to 73, but of that majority 72 were placemen ; so that the 
 measure was really supported by no more than 45 independent 
 members against a minority of 73. To secure a majority Lord 
 Townshend had dismissed from office a number of prominent 
 and subordinate placemen ; bought seven votes with peerages, 
 and added _;^i,ooo a year to the value of a sinecure for the 
 sake of the vote of the holder, who filled the office of Prime 
 Sergeant. He distributed additional pensions to the extent of 
 _;^2S,ooo a year. One man waived his claim to a peerage for a 
 pension of ;;^i,ooo a year. Mr. Gladstone calculates that the 
 
332 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 Government had at tlieir disposal in the years 1 799-1801 
 some ;^30o,ooo in Secret Service money for disposal in Ire- 
 land, independently of other pecuniary means, and yet, like 
 Oliver Twist, Lord Castlereagh, who was inaccessible to shame, 
 was always asking for more. Lord Cornwallis, the " Old 
 " Morality " of the period, actually borrowed a considerable 
 sum of an " Old Friend " to swell the flood of bribery and 
 corruption, and is found anxiously pressing hard for the means 
 of reimbursement in a letter dated the 9th of December 1800. 
 
 The entire story is, not redolent, but stinking of wholesale 
 bribery and corruption. Yet this is not the worst of it. As 
 ]\rr. Gladstone has expressed it, " the stain of blood is upon 
 " the policy ; not on one member only, like Macbeth's upon 
 " the hand, but over the whole body of the scheme." The 
 rebellion of 1798, with all the accumulated miseries it entailed, 
 ■was, according to Mr. Lecky, " the direct and predicted conse- 
 " quence of the policy of Pitt" in this matter cf the Union. 
 Ireland was deliberately provoked into rebellion, as in 1641, 
 and then overrun by an army, which its own gallant commander. 
 Sir Ralph Abercromby, reported in a general" order, dated the 
 26th of February 1798, "to be in a state of licentiousness, 
 " which must render it formidable to every one but the enemy." 
 Indeed, neither the Government officials nor the Irish landlords 
 showing any disposition to support his efforts in the cause of 
 humanity, Sir Ralph resigned his command. After the re- 
 bellion. Lord Cornwallis himself, as Commander-in-Chief, issued 
 a general order, dated the 31st of August 1798, calling on 
 the officers to assist him " in putting a stop to the licentious 
 " conduct of the troops, and in saving the wretched inhabitants 
 " from being robbed, and in the most shocking manner ill- 
 " treated, by those to whom they had a right to look for safety 
 *' and protection." The horrors of that period have been graven 
 deep in the minds of the Irish people, young and old, though 
 they are now fading from their memory into a blessed oblivion, 
 through the exertions, in speech and writing, of Mr. Gladstone, 
 and his most happy influence in awakening the masses of Great 
 Britain to a sense of the restitution due to the sister kingdom. 
 
 "^rr r.-^T- .^jL ' L-U ' w.* ! 
 
HOW THE UNION WAS CAERIED. 333 
 
 The following is Mr. Gladstone's outline of the main charges 
 against the course of action by which the Union was forwarded 
 and carried referred to in the beginning of this chapter : — 
 
 " I. That by the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam the prevailing 
 " and still growing religious harmony of Ireland was broken 
 " up, the party or clique of Protestant ascendancy replaced in 
 " power, the good dispositions of the Irish Parliament arrested, 
 " and the balance of strength reversed by the transfer of the 
 " commanding British and Castle influence to the opposite 
 " scale. 
 
 " 2. That, in order to sustain this altered policy, religious 
 " passions were let loose by the party of ascendancy. Orangeism, 
 " with an oath of allegiance conditional on the maintenance of 
 " sucli ascendancy, was founded to inflame those passions. 
 " The magistracy passed into a course of lawless oppression, and 
 " the party of the United Irishmen was driven into disaffection, 
 " and gradually taught to depend on foreign aid. 
 
 " 3. That this lawlessness was sustained and aggravated by the 
 *' action of the Parliament in indemnifying the guilty magis- 
 " trates for past and prospective action, and by the Government 
 " in disarming the Eoman Catholic population. 
 
 " 4. That, through the continuance of this system, a true 
 " reign of terror was established, and a portion of a population, 
 " previously declared by Parliament to have been distinguished 
 " for its loyalty, was driven into rebellion, under circumstances 
 " going far to warrant the belief that the prevailing wickedness 
 " was favoured by the Government or its agents in order to 
 " promote a ferocious repression, to make the existing condition 
 " of the country intolerable, and to force the people, through 
 " despair, into the adoption of the Union. 
 
 " 5. That, after the rebellion was put down, the system of 
 " intimidating the Irish nation was actively upheld by robbery, 
 " devastation, rape, torture, and murder, practised continually 
 " by the armed forces of the Government, together with the civil 
 " authorities ; and by the general impunity of perpetrators of 
 " crime clothed with authority. 
 
 " 6. That, while these measures were pursued out of doors, 
 " efforts of the Irish Parliament towards removing political 
 " difficulty, alleged in England as a reason for the Union, were 
 " stopped by the direct action of the British Power through its 
 " Executive in Ireland. 
 
334 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " 7. That, apparently in preparation for the measure, the 
 " efforts of the British Government had been for years directed 
 " to the increase of its influence in Parliament by creating new 
 " paid offices, and by the further multiplication of salaried and 
 " dependent members, 
 
 " 8. That the announcement by the British Government, 
 " after the Union had been rejected by the Irish Parliament, of 
 " its intention to reiterate the proposal again and again till it 
 " should be adopted was, especially when taken in connection 
 " with the state of the representation and with all the other 
 " means employed, a threat totally inconsistent with the ex- 
 " elusive right of that Parliament to make laws for the Irisli 
 " nation. 
 
 " 9. That no sufficient answer was made to the argument of 
 " high legal authorities, sustained by the general action of the 
 " Irish Bar, that the Irish Parliament, chosen to make laws by 
 " its own agency for Ireland, had no right and was not con- 
 " stitutionaliy competent to divest itself of that office and make 
 " it over to another body. 
 
 " 10. That the opponents of the Union challenged an appeal 
 " to the constituencies upon the question by a dissolution, and 
 " that this challenge was persistently refused by the Govem- 
 " ment. 
 
 " 1 1. That the profession of the British Ministry to appeal 
 " to a free and independent Ireland was totally belied by the 
 " prolonged suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, by the con- 
 " tinning existence of martial law, by its cruel enforcement, and 
 " by the maintenance of an armed force in the island exceeding 
 "at the lowest estimate 120,000 men. 
 
 " 1 2. That, concurrently with the system of physical violence 
 " and tyranny another system was pursued of inveigling the 
 " Roman Catholic nobility and gentry into neutrality or support, 
 " by holding out to them that the principal persons in power, 
 " while they declined to promote their emancipation without a 
 " Union, would not, after a Union, serve the Crown on any 
 " other condition, and that the objection of danger to Protestant 
 " institutions would be removed by the measure. 
 
 " 13. That in like manner the Roman Catholic bishops were 
 " encouraged to believe that they and their clergy would after 
 " a Union receive the countenance and direct support of the 
 " State. 
 
 " 14. That while these expectations were held out, Mr. Pitt 
 " was perfectly aware of the King's objection to all such 
 
HOW THE UNION WAS CARRIED. 33; 
 
 « 
 
 measures, not from policy alone but as involving him in 
 
 perjury. 
 
 15. That also, the Union, as was obvious, enormously 
 " diminished the influences of Irish opinion upon the Legisla- 
 " tive Body, and correspondingly augmented the power of the 
 " party of ascendancy in the two countries to withhold con- 
 " cessions to the Roman Catholics. 
 
 " 16. That Parliamentary intimidation and inducement by 
 " bribery and otherwise were practised upon a scale without 
 " example either before or after — by dismissal from oifice, by 
 " the purchase of boroughs at enormous cost, by the vast use of 
 " Secret Service money even from England, by the grant of 
 " pensions, offices, titles, commissions, and favours as well as 
 ' ' disfavours from the Government in every form. 
 
 " 17. That the practice of deterring opposition by dismissals, 
 " and attracting support by inducement and anticipated reward, 
 " even in their mildest forms, if not universally to be proscribed 
 " in cases where the action of the Government presumably 
 " represents the people or a national majority, is wholly inad- 
 " missible in cases where the Executive is essentially a foreign 
 " agency engaged in promoting a foreign, not an indigenous 
 " design, and therefore without any title to substitute in whole 
 " or in part its own views for those of the nation. 
 
 "18. That the voting on the Irish Union while the issue was 
 " still in doubt conclusively shows the independent and general 
 " sentiment of the country to have been against it. 
 
 " 19. That the opposition of the country at the time, reason- 
 " ably believed to have been testified not only by the voting of 
 " the House of Commons, but by the petitions of 700,000 Irish- 
 " men, was never invalidated or deprived of weight by subse- 
 " quent change in the national opinion. 
 
 " 20. That the accusations of foul play, in its worst as well 
 " as in its less revolting forms, against the methods and agencies 
 " which brought about the Union, are painfully sustained by 
 " the evidence before us of extensive destruction of documents 
 " and papers by the personages principally concerned, and of 
 " the means adopted by the British Government to prevent^ at 
 " the cost of the State, compromising publications." 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add that every one of these proposi- 
 tions of Mr. Gladstone is known to the student in Irish history 
 to be capable of abundant, nay, overwhelming proof. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 THE PARNELL COMMISSION— A FORECAST.^ 
 
 Lord Hbrschell, ex-Lord Chancellor of England, speaking in 
 the House of Lords on the second reading of the Charges and 
 Allegations Bill, August lo, 1888, said^ : — 
 
 •' My Lords, — I will ask you to look for a moment at the 
 " origin of the measure. About a year ago there appeared in a 
 " newspaper a series of articles, the work of an anonymous 
 " writer having obtained his information we know not whence, 
 " with what justification for his statements we have no infor- 
 " mation. These articles contained no doubt charges against 
 " some Irish members mixed up with a vast number of vague 
 " general allegations and insinuations, out of which it is very 
 " difficult indeed to extract the particular charges which were 
 " intended to be made, and there were paragraphs containing 
 " statements of fact, but which have no meaning unless they 
 "are intended to convey some insinuation. That was its 
 " origin. Thereupon the position was taken up that a member 
 " of Parliament or any public man who had been thus accused 
 " by an anonymous writer in the press was to be deemed, in 
 " spite of his denial, guilty of the acts laid to his charge unless 
 " he brought an action to establish his innocence. It is a novel 
 " doctrine indeed. I had always understood it to be one of the 
 " maxims of our law that a man is to be deemed innocent until 
 •* he is proved to be guilty — a maxim which has permeated the 
 " political and common life of this country, and one which I trust 
 " may long continue to be cherished. But now it is said, if only 
 " the charges are grave enough, and if there be scandal enough 
 " arising from them, though made by an anonymous writer in 
 " a newspaper, yet if connected with your political life, unless 
 
 ^ It should be understood that this is necessarily but a condensed 
 report of Lord Herschell's important speech. 
 
THE PARNELL COMMISSION— A FORECAST. 337 
 
 " they are disproved, any one has a right to deem them estab- 
 " lished. That is a doctrine which, if yielded to, would make 
 " public life in this country intolerable. Accusations against 
 " public men are not likely to diminish in proportion as news- 
 " paper competition increases ; and if we are told that accu- 
 " sations are to be dealt with in this way, then it seems to me 
 " a precedent is being made which will be in the highest degree 
 " mischievous and terrible. But if this doctrine is accepted it 
 " ought at least to be impartially applied, whatever the political 
 " character of the newspaper. My lords, these were accusations 
 " made by a newspaper strongly supporting the Conservative 
 " Government against the opponents of that Government ; but 
 " one has seen accusations made in a Radical newspaper against 
 " a Conservative member of Parliament, on what foundation I 
 " know not. He has brought no action. He has never dis- 
 " proved the charges, and yet two members of the Government 
 " have gone down to his constituents to countenance him and 
 " support him. 
 
 " Now, my Lords, there appeared in the Times last year a 
 " letter, and there were again before the jury the other day 
 " other letters, alleged to be written by Mr. Parnell, from which 
 "the inference was drawn that he was approving of murder or 
 " inciting to murder. It was natural that Mr. Parnell should 
 " ask, as he did, that a Parliamentary Committee might be 
 " appointed to inquire into those charges. Well, my Lords, 
 •' the Government took time to consider what course they 
 " would take ; and, having considered, it, they made this offer 
 " to Mr. Parnell — that they would appoint a Commission, con- 
 "sisting mainly of judges, to inquire into the charges against 
 " members of Parliament ; and the First Lord of the Treasury 
 " said, ' If hon. gentlemen are prepared to accept the offer 
 " which has been made I am prepared to put on the notice 
 " paper a motion for leave to bring in a bill with reference to 
 " the jud;^'es ; ' and on a later occasion he told Mr. Parnell that 
 " it was a matter for him to accept or to reject, at his pleasure, 
 " Now, if it was a matter concerning Mr. Parnell — I mean if 
 " it was to be an inquiry directed to those matters with which 
 " Mr. Parnell had personal association, to the question of his 
 " writing those letters, or of his personal association with crime, 
 " no doubt it would have been natural, and it seems to me 
 •' would not have been improper, to allow him to accept or 
 " reject such an inquiry subject to this, that he was placed, 
 " I must say, in a very difficult position. He was told, ' Ac- 
 
338 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " cept this before you know what the tribunal is to be — a 
 " tribunal which we, who are certainly not your warmest friends, 
 " are to constitute — accept it before you know what the refer- 
 " ence is to be, which is to be left to lis to determine ; or reject 
 " it, and then lay yourself open to the charge that you are un- 
 " willing to submit those matters for investigation.' What 
 " next transpired 1 At that time the only reference to the 
 " nature of the measure was that it was to be a measure for 
 " an inquiry into the charges and allegations against mem- 
 " hers of Parliament. In some respects the scope was wide 
 " enough, but still there was a considerable limitation. It 
 " applied only to a few men. The measure was introduced, 
 " and it was found to be one to inquire into the charges and 
 " allegations which had been made against members of Parlia- 
 " ment ' and other persons.' When the first offer was made to 
 " Mr. Parnell, when he was told that he must either accept or 
 " reject it, there was no mention made of these ' other persons.' 
 " I will show, in a moment, how serious a change that made in 
 " the scope and nature of the inquiry. It is an inquiry into 
 " the charges and allegations made in the Attorney-General's 
 " speech against members of Parliament and other persons. 
 " What does this involve 1 It involves the action of every 
 *' human being connected with the Land League or the National 
 " League in Ireland for the last nine years. They will all 
 " come within those compendious words ' and other persons,' 
 " which are used in the first clause of the bill. Consider for 
 " a moment the position in which it places Mr. Parnell. If 
 " it had been understood at the outset that this Commission was 
 " to deal with a general reference of that sort, there might be 
 " something to be said for the bill ; but when we consider the 
 " origin and nature of the bill, and the offer which the Govem- 
 " ment first made, which was at once to be accepted or rejected, 
 " I ask is there any one of us who would like an inquiry into 
 " definite, specific, and disgraceful charges against us to be 
 " mixed up with an inquiry as to the acts of everybody con- 
 " nected with political associations with which we have had 
 " to do 1 
 
 " I am bound to say that, in my opinion, if that is the inquiry 
 *' to be entered upon, the judges are the last persons to be called 
 " upon to undertake it. You are mixing up two very different 
 " things — inquiries into charges directly affecting individuals, 
 " and inquiries relating to outrages generally in Ireland. Would 
 " it not be at least as important to inquire how far these political 
 
THE PARNELL COMMISSION— A FORECAST. 339 
 
 " organisations, these agrarian organisations, and these outr^es 
 " are the independent outcome of a social system which has 
 " produced the same rank fruit in the shape of outrages before, 
 " as to assume that because people connected with the Land 
 " League or the National League have committed crime that 
 " therefore the crime would not have been committed but for 
 " the Land League or the National League ? "We know better. 
 " We know that when you have political agitation and excite- 
 " ment, men bent upon the commission of crime will fasten 
 " themselves on to these organisations. It is impossible to 
 " prevent or avoid it. "When it was pointed out in the other 
 " House that the accused members might be prejudiced by the 
 " wide scope of the inquiry, then a diflFerent position altogether 
 " was taken up by the Government. It was said in effect — 
 " * Oh, if you refer to the charges against members, they are of 
 " subordinate importance ; they fall into the second rank. 
 " The important matter, the thing first to be inquired into, 
 " is the connection of the Land League and National League 
 " with crime.' Now, when did that become the primary 
 " object; when did it become clear that it was essential to the 
 "public interest that there should be such an inquiry? It 
 " never suggested itself during the long years from 1880 on- 
 " wards, when those now in oflSce were in opposition. They 
 " have been two years in office, and it has never been suggested 
 " until now. Did they think it to be necessary, had they made 
 " up their minds it was essential in the public interest, when 
 " they made the offer to Mr. Parnell that he should accept or 
 " reject it 1 I say that if there ought to be such an inquiry 
 " into the Land League and the National League and their 
 " action, that inquiry should have taken place years ago. 
 
 " I pass on to deal with the constitution of the tribunal My 
 " lords, I should have thought that when a tribunal was to be 
 " constituted for the trial of matters deeply involving the poli- 
 " tical opponents of those who were constituting it, it would 
 " have been well to have sought for at least one member of the 
 " Commission whose bias and sympathies were rather with the 
 "political views and aspirations of those whose interests were 
 "so vitally at stake. ^ I would appeal to any of your lordships, 
 " if your character was going to be inquired into in a case closely 
 
 ^ The one member of the Commission who was objected to in Parlia- 
 ment was forced, if he did not force himself, upon the bench, notwith- 
 standing a very decided public protest. 
 
340 A KEY TO THE lEISH QUESTION. 
 
 "connected with politics, would you not have the right to 
 " demand that some of those who were to carry on the inquiry 
 "should have some sympathy with your political views? I 
 "know it is said that these judges are non-political. If by 
 " that is meant men who have never taken any active part in 
 "politics, that is a matter of small importance. If by non- 
 " political judges you mean men who have never thought upon 
 " politics, who have no political sympathies, M'ho have passed 
 " their lives indifferent to those political questions which deeply 
 " concern their fellow-men, I do not believe such judges exist. 
 " Some people seem to think that there are judges who live up 
 " in a balloon or in the air, who descend to take their seats on 
 " the bench in the morning and in the evening again disappear, 
 " who never enter a club or chat about the topics of the day 
 "with their fellows. I do not believe that such judges exist. 
 " I cannot help regretting that an effort was not made, before 
 "the names of those constituting the tribunal were made 
 " public, to ascertain whether any strong or decided objection 
 "was entertained to them or any one of them. 
 
 " One of the unfortunate incidents accompanying the passage 
 " of the bill was that the Attorney-General was called into con- 
 " sultation in connection with the proposals the Government 
 " were going to make to the House. He had acted as counsel 
 " for the Times newspaper. It was true he was legal adviser 
 " to the Crown, but it is difficult for the public mind to separate 
 " action in the one capacity from action in the other, and, there- 
 " fore, I think noble lords will admit that it would have been 
 " better that the incident should not have taken place, for it 
 " was natural that suspicions should have been aroused by the 
 " fact that he was consulted. Then there was another unfor- 
 " tunate incident — I mean the interview between the First Lord 
 " of the Treasury and the proprietor of the Times, the defendant 
 " in the action, at which interview there was some conversation 
 " in reference to the bill. My lords, I think that was most 
 " unfortunate. Let noble lords think what they would have 
 " felt under like circumstances. If they were the persons con- 
 " cerned, would not they have had their suspicion excited, and 
 " would not they have used vigorous language ? My lords, there 
 " was another — and I think still more unfortunate incident, 
 " because it was setting a precedent of a dangerous character. 
 " I mean the mode by which the Government brought the dis- 
 " cussion to a close, by moving that the further consideration of 
 " the bill in committee should practically terminate at a par- 
 
THE PARNELL COMMISSION— A FORECAST. 341 
 
 ticular hour. That has never been done before under such 
 circumstances. There wis much said about a similar method 
 being applied to expedite the passing of the Crimes Act last 
 year, but that measure was at least pronounced to be urgent. 
 Here is a measure which no one could pretend was urgent, as 
 regarded another day, or a week, or a fortnight's discussion. 
 
 " There is only one other consideration to which I will allude. 
 I cannot but fear that an inquiry such as this, bringing again 
 to the front all the acts and violent passions of past years, is 
 not likely to improve the state of feeling between England 
 and Ireland. I have always looked forward with hope to the 
 time when that feeling would become less bitter than it has 
 been in the past. Let us conceive for a moment what will 
 happen under this bill. You are, I suppose, to bring over 
 from Ireland all the witnesses to be examined before this 
 Commission, except the members of Parliament who are 
 attending to their duties in the House. All the other wit- 
 nesses are in Ireland. I do not suppose it is intended to 
 send a tribunal of English judges into Ireland to examine 
 witnesses. They may be brought here from the remote shores 
 of Galway and the wilds of Donegal ; they will be taken from 
 their homes and examined before a tribunal on all kinds of 
 subjects. It is true they may appear by counsel or solicitors, 
 brought with them or engaged here ; but is it possible to 
 conceive anything more likely to create irritation and bitter 
 feeling in Ireland than this? Multitudes of men may be 
 taken for days and weeks together from their business, occu- 
 pations, and friends, in order that the charges of which the 
 Commission will take cognisance may be investigated. And 
 they may not have the means to defend themselves. 
 
 " For my part, I feel that some of your lordships will not be 
 sorry when they see the consequences of this measure, that 
 their names did not appear as supporters of it. So strong is 
 my feeling in reference to this bill that, although I shall not 
 ask the House to divide, I will at least say ' Not content,' for 
 I believe it to be a measure which is as dangerous as it is 
 novel, and which may be fraught with consequences hereafter 
 which we may all of us most deeply regret." 
 
 • 
 
 Mr. Gladstone, speaking on the same subject at Ha warden, 
 on the 20th of August 1888, said : — 
 
 " I cannot undertake, gentlemen, to lay before you to-day all 
 
342 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " that is to be said upon the great subject between England and 
 " Ireland, nor even all that may be said and ought to be said in 
 " relation to the proceedings of the present majority in Parlia- 
 " ment — a majority which I must say sits there upon false pre- 
 " tences, a majority which became a majority by promising the 
 " people of this country that though they objected to Home 
 " Rule they would give Ireland equal rights and would not 
 " subject her to coercion, instead of which they have subjected 
 " Ireland to coercion without any outburst of crime to justify 
 " it, and they have denied to Ireland equal rights by making 
 " actions to be crimes in Ireland which are no crimes in Eng- 
 " land. They have not the pretence of legislating against the 
 "crime; they have legislated against the lawful combinations 
 "of the people, and against those combinations which ought 
 " never to be resorted to except in circumstances of con- 
 " siderable and actual necessity, and which constituted the 
 " only weapon of power and effect by which the Irish people 
 " are able to set up a defence for their own dearest interests. 
 " I will only refer you to the latest instances of this sad 
 " and painful, and I will say — it is not too much to call it 
 " — this disgraceful course. For the disgrace that England 
 " suffers is that which I want to bring home to the minds of 
 " Englishmen. That which wounds and stings me, that which 
 " I find utterly intolerable, is to think of the shame of England 
 " in the face of the world through using the vast and enormous 
 " strength she possesses to practice oppression upon Irishmen. 
 " What are the latest exhibitions of the feeling that I deplore, 
 " and that'in my opinion is so dishonourable to a high-minded 
 " nation — which the English people undoubtedly are 1 One of 
 " the last you have heard about is a Commission, that is very 
 " famous, to inquire into a case that is arising between Mr. 
 " Parnell and the Times. The House of Commons was so 
 " fastidious that it would not trust its own members, according 
 " to constitutional usage, on the Select Committee to examine 
 " into this question. Although that was the petition made by 
 " Mr. Parnell and his friends, and although they, knowing 
 " quite well that a majority of the Committee must be hostile 
 " to them, yet accepted that position cheerfully, and made their 
 " suit to the House of Commons, the House of Commons re- 
 " fused it ; but I do not think there is a doubt — I have never 
 " heard it denied — that had an English member been made the 
 "subject of similar accusations from the Times, and had he 
 " made such a request, there would not have been the smallest 
 
THE PARNELL COMMISSION— A FORECAST. 343 
 
 hesitation to grant it. A Commission of Judges has been 
 appointed. About it much has been said, and much, perhaps, 
 may have to be said hereafter ; but I will say nothing at the 
 present moment of the Commission itself, because there are 
 going to be proceedings before it which we must hope will be 
 judicial in their character. 
 
 " Now, let us see how they use Mr. Parnell. Mr. Pamell is 
 a man who lies at present under an accusation of the gravest 
 character — namely, of having been the author of certain 
 letters, which letters, if they were written by him, disqualify 
 him for receiving the respect of any honest man, and which, 
 should it be found that he is their author, will inevitably 
 destroy all that is valuable to him in the world — namely, his 
 political power and position. He is going to be tried upon 
 vague and general charges, it may be, besides these letters, 
 but the letters it is admitted by the most impartial men, even 
 among the Tories, constitute the main issue that has to be 
 tried, and we must hope that the Commission of Judges that 
 has been appointed will examine to the bottom and at once 
 into the case of these letters. ^ Now, what is essential in the 
 administration of justice is that the two parties should stand 
 upon an equal footing. I am going to test the proceedings 
 of the Government and of the majority by reference to the 
 equality or the inequality of the footing upon which Mr. 
 Parnell stands, as compared with that on which the Times 
 stands, so as to help you in judging of the manner in which 
 Mr. Parnell has been used. I myself have, years ago — that is 
 to say, six years ago — believed that Mr. Parnell was engaged 
 in injurious, dangerous, and even ruinous political schemes, 
 but I never chai'ged Mr. Parnell with personal dishonour. I 
 never saw the smallest ground for charging him with such 
 a thing. As to ruinous political schemes, for the last thirty 
 or forty years what have the Tories themselves been en- 
 gaged in 1 That is not a reason for taking away the charac- 
 ter of a man. Mr. Parnell is entitled to an equality of 
 footing. Let us see if he is to enjoy that equality. He is 
 called upon to go before the Commission. This Commission 
 is to inquire into all the proceedings connected with the 
 charges of disorder and crime in Ireland since the time when 
 
 ^ But unfortunately this is just the very thing which the judges have 
 not attempted to do, contrary to public expectation. 
 
344 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " the Land League was established in that country — that is to 
 "say, the year 1879. I* ^s properly observed that those in- 
 " quiries may extend over years. At any point of these in- 
 " quiries allegations and charges may be raised against Mr. 
 "Parnell. How is he to defend himself? He is to defend 
 " himself by counsel. The most eminent counsel in the country 
 " will be employed against him. If he is to have fair play he 
 " must have men of the same rank to defend him. Lord Her- 
 *' schell, in an admirable speech in the House of Lords, to which 
 " no Tory law lord could be found to offer a reply, and no 
 " Dissentient Liberal law lord meddled in the matter, and it 
 " was left entirely to the two Lord Chancellors of England and 
 " Ireland without a single independent legal support to back 
 " them — Lord Herschell has properly observed that this em- 
 " ployment of eminent counsel is an expensive luxury. They 
 " cannot and ought not to work without first-rate solicitors, and 
 "the employment of eminent counsel and first-rate solicitors 
 " in an inquiry extending over a field no man knows how 
 " wide and reaching, over a time no man knows how pro- 
 " longed. 
 
 " What does it mean to Mr. Parnell ? Mr. Parnell has 
 " announced himself in the House of Commons — he is what is 
 " called a poor man, a man of independent but of moderate 
 " means — that it means to him comparative ruin ; but in the 
 " debate on the second reading of this bill, a gentleman, whose 
 " name I will not mention, but whom I will describe in parlia- 
 " mentary language as the member for West Birmingham, made 
 *' a very clever speech, and he said that the plea had been raised 
 " on the part of Mr. Parnell that the expense of this inquiry 
 " would be ruinous. He thought there was 'great force in that. 
 " He thought the Government ought to attend to it, and to 
 " make some provision accordingly ; but the Government paid 
 " no attention whatever to that recommendation of the member 
 " for West Birmingham, and the member for West Birmingham 
 " himself, although he put it in his speech, was too modest to 
 " move any amendment for the purpose of promoting any pro- 
 " vision of that kind, or in fact to take any other measure 
 '* except the benevolent words which he uttered, and which 
 *' remained without effect. Their full importance is seen when 
 " it is considered that they will seek the utter ruin, in a pecu- 
 " niary sense, of Mr. Parnell. The Times represents a mass of 
 " enormous wealth. Of that there is no doubt. No one knows 
 *' the exact extent of that immense fortune. Upon that fortune, 
 
THE PARNELL COMMISSION— A FORECAST. 345 
 
 *' if we consider it as a result of wonderful industry and econo- 
 " mical skill, we may look with respect. I am not saying now 
 " what I may perhaps have to say by and by. It is no fault of 
 " the Times that it represents an enormous fortune, but no doubt 
 " the Times intends to report this trial, and the sales of its 
 " reports are likely to do more than reimburse all the costs; and 
 " even if they did not, to the Times the expenses would be 
 " what is called a fleabite, while to the other party it is ruin. 
 " There, gentlemen, is a correct idea of the equality which the 
 " majority in Parliament wish to see established between those 
 " parties, and of what the Solicitor-General actually called the 
 " generosity of Parliament in its present conduct to Mr. Pamell 
 " and the Irish members. Very well, what is the issue likely 
 " to be if Mr. Pamell is found to be the author of these letters ? 
 " He will be covered with everlasting shame, and not only 
 " covered with shame, but all his power and influence, all his 
 " political career, everything for which as a public man he lives, 
 " will be utterly gone and destroyed. Yes, that is to say if he 
 " is found to be the author of these letters ; but if he is not the 
 " author of these letters, if those letters are found to be forged 
 " letters — and I must say that the language of the Times within 
 " the last few weeks gives rise to the strongest suspicion that 
 " they know that they are forged letters — what will be the 
 " position of the Times in the Court 1 There will not be per- 
 " feet equality because, while Mr. Pamell is liable to be punished 
 " in the shape of loss of his good name, upon which he wholly 
 " depends, the Times does not depend upon its good name. 
 " The Times is not read for the morality that it preaches or for 
 "the honourable principles upon which it is conducted. It is 
 " read for its admirable parliamentary reports ; it is read for the 
 " letters of eminent persons that are sent to it ; it is read on 
 " account of its general power and influence. But if the Times 
 " is "convicted of the fraud, I doubt whether it will lose a hundred 
 " subscribers. 
 
 " The Government and the majority have provided that there 
 " shall be no actions at law or any damages arising out of the 
 " matters produced before the Commission, so that before the 
 " Commission, if Mr. Parnell is found guilty of the letters, he 
 " will be a ruined man both in purse and in character, and in 
 " the whole of his future life. The Times, by an express clause 
 " in the bill, is protected from any action at law, and assured 
 " from paying one farthing. That is the sort of fair play and 
 " the sort of justice which a Tory Government and a Tory 
 
346 A KEY TO THE IKISH QUESTION. 
 
 " minority, swelled into a majority by Dissentient Liberals — 
 " and the House of Lords at their back — have thought fit to 
 " administer to the representatives of Ireland as a worthy crown 
 " to all those dark centuries of English oppression and of Irish 
 " suffering which, unfortunately, the historian has had to 
 " record." 
 
 SincQ the foregoing speeches of Lord Herschell and Mr. Glad- 
 stone were delivered, the Commissioners have practically retired 
 to consider their decision and report. In the meanwhile the 
 public have long since arrived at a very just decision of their 
 own in the matter. It is felt that there has been, from first 
 to last, an extravagant and unnecessary waste of time and 
 money, owing to the manner in which the proceedings have 
 been conducted throughout. The character of Pigott was aU 
 along known to those engaged in the prosecution and defence, 
 if one may speak without legal exactnesa How comes it that 
 a fact so notorious inside and outside theit court was so care- 
 fully concealed from the three judges alone? Again, every 
 intelligent person in the three kingdoms believed that the chief 
 if not the only point of importance in the inquiry was to ascer- 
 tain the genuineness or spuriousness of the Letters. Yet this 
 is just the very point of all others which the Commissioners 
 refrained from pressing for investigation till the latest possible 
 moment. Mr. Justice Day, whose face was as impenetrable as 
 that of the Sphinx till Pigott appeared in the box, afterwards 
 suddenly gave way to uncontrollable fits of laughter, in course 
 of which he is described as having all but tumbled off the bench. 
 It was no laughing matter ; unless, indeed, the worthy judge 
 knew the true character of the contents of the black box 
 beforehand, and laughed at the credulity of those of his political 
 friends who were not admitted to the secret. Finally, what the 
 public are now interested to know is — the forgeries against Mr. 
 Parnell having been detected and avowed — why the confederates 
 of the great Smith Ministry who suborned the forger should be 
 screened from punishment, or even pursuit, by the judges. As 
 the matter stands, the Government, not Mr. Parnell, is hence- 
 forth on its trial 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES. 
 
 Griffith's Valuation — What it is and what it is not. 
 
 A COMMON saying of the friends of the Irish landlords, in and 
 out of Parliament, is that Sir Richard Griffith (who was invited 
 by Mr. Goulbourn, Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1826, to assist 
 in preparing a bill for a general valuation of that kingdom) 
 expressly stated that his subsequent valuation was uniformly 
 twenty-five per cent, under the letting value of the land. Now 
 this is so very inaccurate a statement as to be entirely mislead- 
 ing. In 1844 Sir R Griffith prepared a Memorandum of the 
 outline of the system he adopted, from which the quotation 
 that follows is an extract. It will be seen that Griffith's 
 valuation is, he says, very near that of many of the principal 
 landed proprietors of the country, in accordance with his gene- 
 ral instructions to the valuators acting under him; though 
 about twenty-five per cent, under what may be called the rack- 
 rents of the smaller proprietors. Yet the Land Commissioners 
 appointed by Parliament to revise the rents in 1881 usually 
 struck an average between Griffith's valuation and the " full or 
 " high rent," i.e., the rack-rent of the smaller proprietor ; rarely 
 going below the former. They were, in fact, for years insisting 
 upon more than the rent required by the principal landed pro- 
 prietors of the country, at a time when English landed pro- 
 prietors were voluntarily and out of their own good-will making 
 huge reductions in their rent-rolls, amounting to thirty and, in 
 some instances, even fifty per cent. Lord Salisbury himself, 
 who, whatever his other demerits, cannot afford to be a bad 
 landlord, is reported to have made considerable reductions of 
 the kind, though he is pleased to describe the Irish farmers as 
 
348 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 connivers at robbery when they decline to pay excessive or 
 rack rents in these days of severest depression : — 
 
 " The general instructions given by me to the valuators were," 
 Sir Richard Griffith observes, "that they should value the land 
 " on a liberal scale ; that is to say, in the same manner as if 
 " employed by one of the principal landlords of the country, 
 " who was about to let the lands to solvent tenants, on leases, 
 " say of twenty-one years. ... In regard to the difference be- 
 " tween the valuations of land adopted by me under the Act 
 " [a statute regarding the basis of assessments] and the actual 
 "letting value, I have to observe that our valuation is generally 
 "about twenty-five per cent, under the full or high rent [rack- 
 " rent] value, but very near that of many of the principal 
 "landed proprietors of the country. Thus in the parish of 
 " Aghanloo, county of Derry, the valuation of the town-lands, 
 " as contained in the printed schedule, rarely diflPered as much 
 "as one shilling in the pound from the proprietors' rental. 
 "The same fact was observed respecting the rental of the 
 "different London companies, as well as of other proprietors 
 "in the county of Derry, while the full rents [rack-rents] under 
 " ordinary small proprietors were usually thirty-three per cent, 
 "above the amounts given in the printed schedule. Similar 
 "facts were observable in other counties; and I have lately 
 "noticed several remarkable coincidences of the same kind in 
 "the counties of Tyrone, Cavan, Monaghan, &c., so that it 
 " would appear that the scale of value adopted by me, under the 
 "Act, is nearly that of the great landed proprietors of Ireland, 
 " but considerably below the ordinary rents [rack-rents]." 
 
 The Irish Members and Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, M.P. 
 
 No objection was ever taken to the importation of American 
 money into Ireland so long as the earnings of the exiled Irish 
 went into the pockets of the Irish landlords in the shape of 
 rack-rents. But the moment the American Irish took it into 
 their heads to export it only for the more practical purpose of 
 overthrowing the entire agrarian system in that country, where 
 the land itself does not pay the rent, either through insuffi- 
 ciency of acreage or inferiority of soil, we are at once deluged 
 with denunciations of the base and tainted coin. In every 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES. 349 
 
 country in the civilised world, including our own colonies, 
 members of Parliament are paid for their legislative services, 
 except in Italy and England. Even in England they were for- 
 merly paid, and a resolution in favour of introducing the system 
 here again obtained considerable support in the House of Com- 
 mons twice during the present session of Parliament, including 
 a speech from Mr. John Morley. On the second occasion, on 
 the motion for going into Committee of Supply, Mr. Fenwick 
 called attention to the question of payment of members. After 
 reminding the House that the resolution moved by him on a 
 former occasion on this subject was only lost by a majority of 
 fifty-seven votes in a House of 380 members, he went on to 
 say, that since then he had obtained a return from the Govern- 
 ment which showed that at present there were 10 1 members in 
 receipt of public money for political services. Of that number, 
 twenty-two were in receipt of sums under ;;^2o ; sixteen of 
 sums from ;^2o to ;^ioo; nineteen of sums from ;^ioo to 
 ^500 ; and forty-four of from ;;^5oo to ;^ 1,000. Another return 
 revealed the fact that in the House of Lords there were twenty- 
 seven members in receipt of sums under ;^2o ; twenty-one of 
 from ;^2o to ;^ioo ; twenty-three of from ;^ioo to ^^500; and 
 eighty of from_;^5oo to j^5,ooo. In other words, 252 members 
 in both Houses of Parliament were receiving in the aggregate a 
 sum of ;^8i4,o8i. Of those who voted in the majority against 
 his resolution, fifty-eight were receiving public money in the 
 aggregate to the extent of ^^84,368, or on an average ^^1,454 
 each ; who, if they had abstained froiii voting, would have left 
 Mr. Fenwick a clear majority. But the Irish members have 
 suffered unheard-of abuse because some of them, who neglect 
 their private interests for the sake of their country, are believed 
 to have accepted from their own countrymen, whether in Ireland, 
 America, or elsewhere, this modest tribute to their single- 
 mindedness of purpose and remarkable devotion to their Par- 
 liamentary duties. How very unjust and unreasonable and 
 wilfully blind some amongst us are, to be sure ! 
 
 Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, indulging in this abuse a little 
 while back, made use of a very opprobrious epithet in reference 
 
350 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 to the Irish members. It was coarse beyond all precedent, and 
 scarcely admits of reproduction from a newspaper report. This 
 antithesis of a gentleman described them as a "kept party." 
 Hitherto nobody appears to have pointed out the special malig- 
 nity of the phrase coming from Mr. Chamberlain, who, in his 
 Preface to the JRadical Programme (1885), earnestly commends 
 to " my fellow Radicals " the propriety of restoring the former 
 English custom of paying members of Parliament ! Under the 
 head of " Machinery " for working out the Programme, great 
 pains are taken to explain his particular views on the subject 
 and dissociate him from alleged erroneous opinions ascribed to 
 him by the Tory Quarterly Review. Mr. Chamberlain's view 
 is that their parliamentary representatives should be paid by 
 the constituents, as is done at the present time in the case of 
 some of the Irish members. His speech referred to was there- 
 fore not the outcome of strong political convictions, but rather 
 a gratuitous and deliberate insult levelled at the Irish mem- 
 bers, unless he has apostatised on this point, as he has done on 
 so many other points in the Radical Programme. The grand- 
 father of the present Duke of Marlborough, Pepys (1668), Lord- 
 Chancellor Nottingham, Thomas King (1661), Lord Campbell, 
 &C., are all trotted out to vindicate Mr. Chamberlain's modera- 
 tion in proposing a measure of the kind. Nay, it is suggested 
 that the old writ of 1681, de expensis burgensium levandi, might 
 still be claimed without any new enactment to revive the usage ! 
 Here are the conclusions of the Radical Programme, which Mr. 
 Chamberlain commends to "my fellow Radicals" : — 
 
 "When it is said that payment of the people's representatives 
 " would vulgarise the people's House and would deteriorate its 
 " social qualities, one is tempted to ask whether such experience 
 " as might be cited on the point justifies the apprehension. For 
 " instance, would a comparison between the social demeanour of 
 "Earl Percy and Viscount Folkestone on the one hand, and of 
 " Mr. Burt and Mr. Broadhurst on the other, in the discharge 
 " of their parliamentary duties, be to the advantage of the 
 " former 1 If it is asserted that the scheme would make the 
 "assembly less of an ornamental lounge than it now is, and 
 " would bring into it, on an increased scale, an order of repre- 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES. 351 
 
 "sentatives who would take a view of their functions very 
 " diflferent from that taken by their superiors, the impeachment 
 " may be readily admitted, and it may be replied that this is 
 " exactly what is wanted. The men who would be sent to St. 
 "Stephen's would be men whom the majority of the constitu- 
 " encies trusted, and who came there to do the people's work. 
 " Their presence would have the effect of liberalising and brac- 
 "ing the assembly. They would, in a word, be the sort of 
 "legislators from whom measures that would secure the steady 
 "assertion of the popular influence in all matters of govem- 
 " ment would be forthcoming. Again, when it is afiirmed that 
 " the plan would give us more professional politicians than we 
 "now have, the remark which suggests itself is, that this is 
 " exactly what is required. Politics, as a matter of fact, are a 
 "profession already, and if lawyers, doctors, and professional 
 " men generally are paid, why not politicians 1 Moreover, when 
 " it was once understood that business aptitudes were required 
 " in those who addressed themselves to the business of public 
 " affairs, an effectual protest would be made against the habit 
 "of sending to the House of Commons men who regarded 
 "politics as a pastime; who, whether they are Liberals or 
 " Conservatives, are equally dilettanti, and who illustrate in the 
 " Legislature the indolence and languor of polite society." 
 
 Any one who has travelled in Ireland must know how 
 thoroughly the people have given their confidence to their 
 parliamentary representatives, and how cheerfully they sub- 
 scribe to the subsidy fund to recoup them for the expenses 
 incurred by their attendance at Westminster. There is only 
 one point upon which the constituencies find fault with their 
 members. They cannot understand, and indeed it is difficult 
 to understand, why, when Lord Salisbury, Mr. Chamberlain, 
 and others use inexcusably insulting language regarding them, 
 they do not take upon themselves to have recourse to the old- 
 fashioned ways of other days for resenting the injury. There 
 are some things which ought not to be said on the public plat- 
 form ; but if said, it should not be with impunity. And Mr. 
 Chamberlain's vile figure of speech was certainly one of them. 
 Even Sydney Smith, though a clergyman, showed some im- 
 patience of the meekness exhibited by Irish representative men 
 
3S2 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 in the days of " Percevalism and contempt." Lord Melbourne 
 could not comprehend it in the case of the Irish peasant, as may 
 be seen elsewhere. And now we find that one of the most highly 
 cultivated of English journals, the Pall Mall Gazette (23rd of 
 May 1889), "cannot refrain from marvelling at the astonishing 
 " forbearance of these representative men " of the present day, 
 who, " if they had been Englishmen or Americans, it would 
 " have been far otherwise." If Mr. Coningsby Disraeli, for 
 instance, were convinced that he ran some risk of having the 
 cane applied to his shoulders on account of his disgraceful 
 language at Bath lately, it would have had a wonderful 
 moderating influence on this latest aspirant to notoriety through 
 vituperation. This is the only point upon which there is the 
 slightest divergence of opinion either in Great Britain or Ire- 
 land as regards the personal and political character of the Irish 
 members, and it is one easily remedied. 
 
 Our Sympathy has been Keskrved for the FoBEiaNSR. 
 
 There are in the Political Writings {iZ^^) of Richard Cobden 
 some observations, undeniably true, in regard to the insane policy 
 of neglected opportunities pursued towards Ireland, generation 
 after generation, by the governing kingdom, which are well 
 deserving of reflection : — 
 
 " How shall we be able to account for the fact that com- 
 " merce and civilisation, which have from the earliest ages 
 "journeyed westward, and in their course have even stayed to 
 " enrich the marshes of the Adriatic and the fens of Holland, 
 " should have passed over in their flight to the New World — a 
 " spot more calculated by nature than almost any other besides 
 " to be the seat of a great internal and external trade % We do 
 " not profess to be able to disclose all the precise causes of 
 " the depressed state of Ireland ; still less do we pretend 
 " to off"er a panacea for all the ills that afflict her. Our object 
 " in introducing the subject here is to show the absurdity and 
 " injustice of that policy which leads us to seek amongst other 
 " nations for objects of compassion and care, and to neglect the 
 •' urgent demands that are made upon us at our very door. . . . 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES. 353 
 
 " "We lavish our sympathies upon the serfs of Poland, and 
 " the slaves of Turkey ; but who would not prefer to be one of 
 " these, to the perishing with hunger under the name of free- 
 " m&nl . . . Add to this, that our efiforts have been directed 
 " towards the assistance of States for whose welfare we are not 
 " responsible ; whilst our oppression and neglect have fallen 
 " upon a people over whom we are endowed with the power 
 " and accountable privileges of Government — and the extent 
 " of the injustice of our statesmen becomes fully disclosed. 
 " Whilst within the last twenty years our sympathies have 
 " gone forth over the whole of Europe in quest of nations 
 " suffering from, or rising up against the injustice of their rulers ; 
 " whilst Italy, Greece, Spain, France, Portugal, Turkey, Bel- 
 " gium, and I?oland, have successively filled the newspapers 
 " with tales of their domestic wrongs ; and whilst our diplo- 
 " matists, fleets, and armies have been put in motion at enor- 
 " mous cost, to carry our counsel, or, if needful, our arms, to the 
 " assistance of the people of these remote regions ; it is an un- 
 ♦' questionable fact, that the population of a great portion of 
 " our own empire has, at the same time, presented a grosser 
 " spectacle of moral and physical debasement than is to be met 
 " with in the whole civilised world. However much the con- 
 " duct of England towards the sister island . . . may have 
 " been dwelt upon for party purposes, it is so bad as scarcely to 
 " admit of exaggeration." 
 
 A Government not of Love but op Feak. 
 
 Lord Macaulay, then Mr. Macaulay, speaking in the House of 
 Commons, on the 19th of February 1844, of the supreme import- 
 ance of Ireland to England, uttered the following weighty indict- 
 ment against British rule in Ireland, which is as applicable to 
 the circumstances of 1889, as it was forty- five years ago : — 
 
 "Ireland, in extent about one-fourth of the United King- 
 " dom, in population certainly more than one-fourth ; superior, 
 " probably, in internal fruitfulness to any area of equal size in 
 " Europe ; possessed of a position which holds out the greatest 
 " facilities for commerce, at least equal to any other country of 
 " the same extent in the world ; an inexhaustible nursery of 
 " the finest soldiers ; a country beyond all doubt of far higher 
 " consequence to the prosperity and greatness of this empire 
 
 z 
 
354 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " than all its far distant dependencies, were they multiplied 
 " four of five times over ; superior to Canada added to the 
 " West Indies, and these both conjoined with our possessions 
 "at the Cape and in Australasia, and with all the wide 
 " dominions of the Moguls — such is the state to which you have 
 " reduced it, that it is a source not of confidence and strength, 
 " but of alarm and weakness. How do you govern it 1 Not 
 " by love, but by fear ; not as you govern Great Britain, but 
 " as you govern the recently conquered Scinde ; not by the con- 
 " fidence of the people in the laws and their attachment to the 
 " constitution, but by means of armed men and entrenched 
 " camps. . . . The misgovemment of Ireland has been con- 
 " stant, uninterrupted, from the reign of Henry II. to that 
 " of William IV." 
 
 " The Worst Government in the World." 
 
 The Duke of Westminster is not a statesman, or even an 
 eminent politician, though he is distinguished on account of 
 his wealth. Speaking as chairman of a public meeting held at 
 St. James's Hall on the 8th of December 1876, for the purpose 
 of conferring on the Bulgarian question, he said : — 
 
 " I remember a distinguished statesman remarking some years 
 " ago that there was only one government in Europe worse than 
 " that of Turkey, and that that government was the temporal 
 " government of the Pope. Happily for some of the fairest 
 " provinces of Italy that temporal power has passed away, and 
 "we may now hope and believe that the worst government 
 " remaining in Europe is that of Constantinople." 
 
 Now this is just the foolish talk in which so many worthy 
 people, oblivious of English government in Ireland, are prone to 
 indulge, with self-satisfaction and national vanity combined. It 
 was to denounce such stupid waste of sympathy and indignation 
 for the foreign oppressed and the oppressor that Richard Cobden 
 wrote the passage j ust quoted. At the same meeting Mr. Gladstone 
 made some remarkable observations about Ireland, which will 
 be found at page 195, and might have reminded the Duke that 
 he ought to reserve his rhetoric for something infinitely worse 
 than either Eoman or Turkish misgovemment, which was close 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES. 355 
 
 to his own doors. Sir "William Harcourt, than whom no states- 
 man, except perhaps Lord Spencer, has so faithfully seconded 
 Mr. Gladstone's efforts to bring about a reconciliation between 
 England and Ireland, has more recently told us, manfully and 
 patriotically, which is really " the worst government in Europe." 
 Speaking in the House of Commons on the nth of February 
 1887, that right honourable gentleman said : — 
 
 " In judging of a system of government, we know no test by 
 " which to distinguish good government from bad, except this — 
 " that good government is government which is conducted and 
 " founded upon the assent and consent of the government. If 
 " a government is alien to the sympathies, the wishes, and the 
 " wants of a people, that government breeds discontent, and of 
 " that discontent there is inevitably born illegal conduct and 
 " illegitimate proceedings. These are truths which are taught 
 "to us by experience, and are to be found on every page of 
 " history. "Well, sir, tried by this test, I am going to say a 
 " strong thing, Vjut I say a thing of which I am deeply con- 
 " vinced, that, at this moment, the government of Ireland by 
 " England is the worst government in the world." 
 
 Sir "William has undoubtedly said a strong thing; but he 
 might have spoken even more strongly had he dwelt upon the 
 fruits of our misgovemment in Ireland. Carlyle, in speaking 
 of the French Kevolution, and contrasting it with other and 
 greater horrors that have existed and exist still as foul blots, 
 disfiguring the divine creation, refers to them : — 
 
 " But what if history," he writes, " somewhere on this planet 
 " were to hear of a nation, the third soul of whom had not for 
 " thirty weeks each year as many third-rate seed potatoes as 
 " would sustain them ? . . . History in that case feels bound to 
 '* consider that starvation is starvation ; and that starvation from 
 " age to age presupposes much. History ventures to assert that 
 " the French sansculotte of Ninety- three, who, roused from long 
 " death-sleep, could rush at once to the frontiers and die fighting 
 " for an immortal hope and faith of deliverance for him, was 
 " but the second miserablest of men. The Irish sa?is-potato, 
 " had he not senses then 1 Nay, a soul ? In his frozen dark- 
 " ness it was bitter for him to die famishing, bitter to see his 
 " children famish." 
 
3S6 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 How " Loyalty " has been Secubed in Ulster. 
 
 When Lord Castlereagh corrupted the Irish Parliament and 
 the lawyers to enable him to carry the Union in 1800, he did 
 not even spare the press with liberal doles of the current coin of 
 the realm. Writing officially from Dublin to Wickham, in 
 London, on the 2nd of January 1799, ^^ said: — 
 
 " We cannot give that activity to the press which is requisite ; 
 " already we feel the want, and indeed the absolute necessity, 
 "of the primum mobile. We have good materials amongst the 
 " young barristers, but we cannot expect them to waste their 
 "time and starve into the bargain. I know the difficulties, and 
 " shall respect them as much as possible in the extent of our ex- 
 " penditure ; but notwithstanding every difficulty, I cannot help 
 " most earnestly requesting to receive ^5,000 in bank notes by 
 "the first messenger." 
 
 'o^ 
 
 Castlereagh also attacked the honour and independence of 
 the Irish Presbyterian ministers. Charles IL had apportioned 
 ;^6oo a year to be distributed amongst them from the Secret 
 Service fund, which William III. increased to double the 
 amount. George I. still further increased the allowance. In 
 T 784 it reached ;^2,200, and in 1 792 ;^5,ooo a year. Through- 
 out the disturbances which preceded the Union the Presbyterian 
 ministers kept secret communications with Lord Castlereagh, 
 and when it was carried, in 1800, they, through him, solicited 
 the reward of their treachery. The rank and file of the Irish 
 Presbyterian body were deeply attached to their native country, 
 and even some of the ministers were ready to engage in rebellious 
 projects for her deliverance from the thraldom of the " dead 
 " hand." But the Presbyterian ministers generally had partaken 
 of the sweets of an ever-increasing corruption, and Castlereagh, 
 knowing their weakness, determined that the Government 
 should in future have something in return. In 1802 he 
 addressed a long, confidential letter on the subject to Mr. 
 Addington, the Premier of the day, urging the claims of " our 
 " Union friends," as he styled them, within certain well-defined 
 limits. The Regium Donum, or King's gift, had until then 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES. 357 
 
 been handed to the Presbyterian Synod for distribution at their 
 discretion. It was now thought that the money was distributed 
 with too little regard for individuals who had proved themselves 
 staunch friends of the Government. Castlereagh took occasion 
 to propose a more eflFective system of corruption for the future 
 as follows, to show, he said : — 
 
 " How much may be done by an efficient protection and 
 " support given on the part of Government to those who have 
 " committed themselves in support of the State against a demo- 
 " cratic party in the Synod, several of whom, if not engaged in 
 "the rebellion [of 1798], were deeply infected with its prin- 
 " ciples. Such a body as the Presbyterians of Ireland, though 
 " consequently a branch of the Church of Scotland, have par- 
 " taken deeply, first of the popular, and since of the democratic 
 "politics of the country, so as to be an object much more of 
 "jealousy than of support to the Government. You will there- 
 " fore infer that my opinion still continues strongly in favour of 
 " coupling regulation with the proposed increase of the Regium 
 " Donum. The distribution and government of the fund is a 
 " natural engine of authority. It has hitherto been exclusively 
 "in the Synod. To render it still more subservient to demo- 
 " cracy, an attempt has lately been made to introduce the 
 "authority of the lay elders into its management. . . . Let it 
 " be an annual grant by the State to individuals by name, and 
 " not from the body of its members. That upon the appoint- 
 "ment of a minister proper certificates of his character, &c., 
 "should be laid before the Lord Lieutenant, praying that his 
 "majesty's accustomed bounty may be granted to him. The 
 "above requires that he shall not be entitled, as of right, to 
 "derive a provision from the State without furnishing Govern- 
 " ment with satisfactory testimonials of his being a loyal subject. 
 " Though many bad men might find their way into the body, 
 " yet the impression that Government might withdraw the pro- 
 " vision would in time have a material influence on their conduct. 
 " This, together with the income itself, making them less depen- 
 "dent on their congregations for subsistence, are the only means 
 " which suggest themselves to my mind for making this impor- 
 "tant class of dissenters better subjects than they have of late 
 "years proved themselves." 
 
 Thenceforward the Regium Donum was openly distributed as 
 an " engine of authority " — meaning an engine of corruption — 
 
3S8 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 until it reached a sum of ;^4o,ooo a year. It was abolished 
 on the occasion of the disestablishment of the Irish Episcopal 
 Church, but every minister then in receipt of it was secured by 
 special provisions of the most liberal character. Liberal, how- 
 ever, as such provisions were, the younger Presbyterian ministers 
 who have since succeeded to office, have not quite forgiven Mr. 
 Gladstone for not extending, in some way or other, the principle 
 of endowment to them also. And though the entire body, lay 
 and clerical, have profited largely by his agrarian legislation, they 
 are now, with some honourable exceptions, proving themselves 
 from day to day as ungrateful to the English Liberal party, their 
 generous benefactors, as the Jews. As to the services of the 
 Irish members generally in pressing forward agrarian legislation 
 in 1880, the "despicable and miserable minority," as Lord John 
 Russell once contemptuously styled them, are so devoured with 
 sectarian malice as to be incapable of recognising their bene- 
 factors. How different are they from their co-religionists in 
 Scotland ! 
 
 The House op Irish Landlords. 
 
 No one can form a just idea of the condition of things in 
 Ireland, who leaves out of account the fact that the country is 
 governed exclusively in the landlord interest. This depends for 
 support upon the House of Lords, where the combined interests 
 of the two peerages, British and Irish, are essentially and de- 
 terminedly hostile to Ireland. Mr. J. Seymour Keay, M.P. 
 for Moray and Nairn, contributed to the Pall Mall Gazette, in 
 August 1887, the following article in reference to the Irish land- 
 lords, which is of considerable interest at the present time : — 
 
 " It was rumoured," observes Mr. Keay, " that Mr. Gladstone 
 " would take an early opportunity of replying to the speech 
 " made on the 5th inst. by Mr. John Bright, in his capacity as 
 " chairman at the Liberal Unionist dinner to Lord Hartington. 
 " As Mr. Gladstone has not yet spoken, perhaps I may be per- 
 " mitted to draw attention to a very misleading statement in 
 " that speech as to the alleged impartiality of the House of 
 " Lords in the Irish Home Rule controversy. Mr. Bright said 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES. 359 
 
 " that when we find the House of Lords in a majority of ten 
 " to one against us it behoves every man of us to consider 
 " how far he is right ; for, said he, ' when you come to this 
 " question, a Peer has no more interest in the Union than I 
 " have who am not a Peer, or anybody you may meet in the 
 " streets of London.' Upon this assertion I took the trouble 
 "to look carefully through the return ordered by the House 
 " of Commons to be printed on August 10, 1876, of owners of 
 " land in Ireland. The result of my investigation shows that, 
 " so far from being an uninterested tribunal, no more flagrant 
 " instance of a set of men being judges in their own cause was 
 " ever known. Taking into consideration only holdings above 
 " 2,000 acres in extent, I find that 121 members of the House 
 " of Lords own land in Ireland, which is valued, according to 
 "the Poor-Law valuation, at ;^i, 842,631 per annum. These 
 "121 include nearly the whole of the Irish representative Peers, 
 "and a considerable proportion of the real effective working 
 " body of the House of Lords. In| addition to these there are 
 " seventy-one Irish Peers and other titled persons connected by 
 " blood, marriage, or the ties and traditions of their order, with 
 " the House of Lords, who own land in Ireland valued at 
 " ;^404, 1 09 per annum. These facts are utterly unknown to 
 " the great mass of both Liberal and Tory electors. When 
 " Lord Inchiquin asked the Government, as he did a short time 
 " since from his place in the House of Lords, * to maintain law 
 •' and order at all hazards,' was he not, in effect, asking for the 
 " maintenance of unjust land laws which secured him a rent- 
 " roll of ;^i 1,077 P^r annum? And what interpretation are 
 " we to put on the indecent utterance of Lord Rossmore when 
 "he suggested that Mr. Gladstone 'ought to be done away 
 " with, before he infects any more ignorant people with the 
 " snapping and snarling of his Home Rule rabies,' except that 
 " he fears that the establishment of a Parliament in Dublin 
 " would materially reduce his rent-roll, which is valued at 
 ";^r4,9i3 per aimumi The leader of the Liberal Unionist 
 " party is Lord Hartington. Can he be said to be a perfectly 
 " unbiassed and disinterested person while his father holds land 
 " in Ireland worth, according to the Poor-Law valuation, 
 "_;^3i,694 per annum? [Which his ancestors originally ob- 
 " tained by fraud of Sir Walter Raleigh.] I append the full 
 " particulars. These names and figures are, I think, of great 
 " importance, as they will enable the electors to judge, in future 
 " stages of the Home Rule controversy, how far the speech and 
 
36o 
 
 A KEY TO THE lEISH QUESTION. 
 
 " vote of noble lords is guided by their pecuniary interests in 
 " maintaining the present system of Irish misgovernment : " — 
 
 Poor-Law Valuation of Lands in Ireland ovmed by 121 
 Members of the House of Lords. 
 
 Abercorn, Duke of 
 Albemarle, Earl of 
 Annaly, Lord . 
 Annesley, Lord 
 Athlumney, Lord 
 Arran, Earl of . 
 Bandon, Earl of 
 Bangor, Viscount 
 Bath, Marquis of 
 Belmore, Earl of 
 Bessborough, Earl of 
 Caledon, Earl of 
 Carew, Lord 
 Carlingford, Lord 
 Castlemaine, Lord 
 Castletown, Lord 
 Carysfort, Earl of 
 Charlemont, Lord 
 Clancarty, Earl 
 Clanricarde, Marquis of 
 Clanwilliam, Earl 
 Clermont, Lord 
 Clifden, Viscount i 
 Clonbrock, Lord 
 Cloncurry, Lord 
 Clonmell, Earl of 
 Congletown, Lord 
 Conyngham, Marquis 
 Cork and Orrery, Earl 
 Courtown, Earl of 
 Crofton, Lord . 
 Darnley, Earl . 
 Dartrey, Earl of 
 Derby.i Earl of 
 De Freyne, Lord 
 De Eos, Lord . 
 De Vesci, Viscount 
 Deneraile, Viscount 
 Devon, Earl of . 
 Devonshire, Duke of 
 Digby, Lord 
 Donegal, Marquis of 
 Donoughmore, Earl 
 Dorchester, Lord 
 
 1,131 
 24.613 
 22,359 
 10,687 
 
 9,279 
 20,438 
 11,813 
 18,182 
 11,450 
 22,649 
 18,948 
 10,913 
 588 
 
 6,435 
 14,000 
 14,940 
 
 25,005 
 
 10,426 
 
 18,472 
 
 8,277 
 
 15,525 
 21,622 
 11,565 
 
 5,099 
 
 15,169 
 
 2,721 
 
 33,336 
 12,442 
 11,820 
 
 6,634 
 18,441 
 19,516 
 
 6,542 
 14,207 
 
 4,375 
 
 8,120 
 
 12,821 
 
 12,674 
 
 31,604 
 
 13.409 
 36,270 
 
 11,432 
 722 
 
 Downshire, Marquis 
 Drogheda, Marquis 
 Dufiferin, Earl of 
 Dunraven, Earl of 
 Dunsandle, Lord 
 Dunsany, Lord 
 Egmont, Earl of 
 Ely, Marquis of 
 Enniskillen, Earl of 
 Erne, Earl of , 
 Essex, Earl of . 
 Fingall, Earl ; 
 Fitzwilliam, Earl 
 Fortescue, Earl 
 Gormanston, Viscount 
 Gosford, Earl of 
 Granard, Earl . 
 Greville, Lord . 
 Hawarden, Viscount 
 Headfort, Marquis 
 Headley, Lord . 
 Hertford, Marquis of 
 Howth, Earl of 
 Huntingdon, Earl of 
 Inchiquin, Lord 
 Kenmare, Earl of 
 Kilmorey, Earl of 
 Lanesborough, Earl 
 Langford, Lord 
 Lansdowne, Marquis of 
 Leconfield, Lord 
 Leinster, Duke of 
 Leitrim, Lord . 
 LiSord, Viscount 
 Limerick, Earl . 
 Lismore, Viscount 
 Listowel, Earl of 
 Londonderry, Marquis of 
 Longford, Earl of 
 Lurgan, Lord . 
 Manchester, Duke of 
 Massereene, Viscount 
 Massy, Lord 
 Meath, Earl of . 
 
 ;^9i,077 
 12,977 
 20,282 
 10,508 
 10,439 
 4,873 
 11,720 
 22,556 
 13,883 
 23,867 
 8,068 
 
 10,376 
 
 46,955 
 2,986 
 
 9,450 
 
 17,931 
 
 26,811 
 
 13,762 
 
 9,992 
 
 15,584 
 3,268 
 
 75,679 
 11,927 
 
 3,191 
 11,077 
 
 26,951 
 25,184 
 
 9,817 
 14,642 
 
 30.941 
 20,889 
 48,841 
 
 19,039 
 
 1,164 
 
 2,980 
 
 17,780 
 
 ",131 
 
 33,14s 
 
 11,114 
 
 19,906 
 
 15,091 
 
 17,716 
 
 4,033 
 
 6,533 
 
 ^ An absentee's rental since sold out. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES. 361 
 
 Middleton, Viscount 
 
 • ;^7.329 
 
 Milltown, Earl of . 
 
 5.029 
 
 Monck, Viscount 
 
 9,025 
 
 Monteagle, Lord 
 
 4,479 
 
 Normanton, Earl of . 
 
 9.244 
 
 O'Neil, Lord . 
 
 45.308 
 
 Oramnore, Lord 
 
 2,403 
 
 Ormonde, Marquis . 
 
 17,457 
 
 Pembroke, Earl of . 
 
 7.072 
 
 Flunket, Lord . 
 
 2,501 
 
 Portarlington, Earl of 
 
 14,891 
 
 Portsmouth, Earl of . 
 
 8,901 
 
 Powerscourt, Viscount 
 
 22,324 
 
 Ranfurly, Earl of 
 
 11,081 
 
 Roden, Earl of . 
 
 9.294 
 
 Rosse, Earl of . 
 
 11,971 
 
 Rossmore, Lord 
 
 14.913 
 
 Russell, Earl . 
 
 764 
 
 Sandwich, Earl of . 
 
 ;f 1.622 
 
 Seaton, Lord . 
 
 2,814 
 
 Shannon, Earl of 
 
 9.321 
 
 Sheffield, Earl of . 
 
 1,104 
 
 Sligo, Marquis of 
 
 20,497 
 
 Stanhope, Earl of . 
 
 2,073 
 
 Stradbrooke, Earl of 
 
 S.341 
 
 Strafford, Earl of . 
 
 8,751 
 
 Stuart, Lord . 
 
 13.624 
 
 Talbot de Malahide, Lord 
 
 3.194 
 
 Templemore, Lord . 
 
 15.119 
 
 Templetown, Viscount 
 
 17,324 
 
 Vaux of Harrowden, Lord 
 
 2,528 
 
 Ventry, Lord . 
 
 15.284 
 
 Waterford, Marquis of 
 
 50,306 
 
 ;^i,842,63i 
 
 Poor-Law Valuation of Lands in Ireland owned by ji Irish 
 Peers and other Titled Persons not in the House of Lords. 
 
 Aldeborough, Earl of 
 Antrim, Lord . 
 Ashbrooke, Viscount 
 Ashtown, Lord . 
 Avonmore, Lord 
 Bantry, Lord . 
 Bazencourt, Lady de , 
 Bellew, Lord . 
 Beresford, Lady E. 
 Beresford, Lord Charles 
 Bloomfield, Lord 
 Boyle, The Ladies 
 Campbell, Lord 
 Carbery, Lord . 
 Carrick, Earl . 
 Cavan, Earl 
 Chabot, Lord . 
 Charleville, Earl 
 Charteris, Lady M. 
 Clanmorris, Lord 
 Clermont, Lord C. G. 
 Cliflford, Lady de 
 Clinton, Lord C. C. P. 
 Desart, Earl of . 
 Dillon, Viscount 
 Dunboyne, Lord 
 Dunally, Lord . 
 Famham, Lord 
 Fermoy, Lord . 
 Fitzgerald, Lady A. . 
 
 ;^i,795 
 12,600 
 
 6,579 
 8,894 
 
 760 
 
 1 1,628 
 
 1,506 
 
 4,688 
 
 441 
 2,658 
 5,824 
 3,868 
 1,706 
 8,814 
 
 722 
 
 171 
 
 4,050 
 
 10,180 
 
 10,573 
 
 8,069 
 
 211 
 
 4.890 
 
 2,621 
 
 8,949 
 19.562 
 
 379 
 
 7.754 
 
 19.347 
 
 7.891 
 
 264 
 
 Fitzgerald, Lady A. H. 
 
 . ;^i.02S 
 
 FitzGribbon, Lady I. . 
 
 8,298 
 
 Fortescue, Right Hon. C. P 
 
 1,239 
 
 Frankfort, Viscount . 
 
 3,026 
 
 Garvagh, Lord . 
 
 6,668 
 
 Gough, Lord . 
 
 5,745 
 
 Guillamore, Viscount 
 
 293 
 
 Haberton, Viscount . 
 
 3,78s 
 
 Hankey, Lady E. . 
 
 3.035 
 
 Hill, Lord G. A. 
 
 1,18s 
 
 Hill-Trevor, Lord A. E. 
 
 15,844 
 
 Kildare, Marquis 
 
 28s 
 
 Kilmaine, Lord 
 
 4,812 
 
 Kingston, Earl . 
 
 37.i8r 
 
 Lisle, Lord 
 
 6,758 
 
 Louth, Lord 
 
 3.827 
 
 Lucan, Lord 
 
 12,200 
 
 Luci, Countess de . 
 
 1,806 
 
 Mayo, Lord 
 
 8,116 
 
 Mountcashell, Lord . 
 
 3.893 
 
 Mountgarret, Viscount 
 
 8,922 
 
 Muskerry, Lord 
 
 999 
 
 Netterville, Viscount 
 
 3.362 
 
 Norbury, Countess of 
 
 4.02s 
 
 Orkney, Earl . 
 
 S.664 
 
 Palmerston, Viscount 
 
 1,697 
 
 Pigott,LadyI. . 
 
 414 
 
 Quin, Lord George . 
 
 884 
 
 Rathdonnell, Lord . 
 
 2,669 
 
 Southwell, Lord 
 
 . 6,238 
 
362 
 
 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 Stuart, Lord de Decis . ;^ 16,5 12 
 
 Temple, Hon. R. T. H. . 3,868 
 
 Thomond, Marchioness of 2,062 
 
 Tolor, Hon. O. F. G. . 5,941 
 
 Trimelston, Lord . . 6,742 
 
 Valencia, Lord . . . 1,221 
 
 Wallscourt, Lord . . 1,805 
 
 Westenra, Hon. J. C, 
 Waterpark, Lord 
 Wicklow, Earl . 
 Wolfe, Lady Charles 
 
 . ;^2,688 
 
 • 4.483 
 
 • 15.715 
 
 1,676 
 
 ;^404,109 
 
 Boycotting, Old and New. 
 
 Mr. S. Laing, the well-known and not undistinguished ex- 
 M.P. for Orkney, has accurately described the conditions apper- 
 taining to the modern practice of boycotting in Ireland, where 
 he is a frequent visitor, as follows : — 
 
 " The landlord fights with great advantages, for he has the 
 " law, the police, and the army at his back to enforce evictions 
 *' for arrears of the old unjust and impossible rents. The ten- 
 " ants have nothing to oppose to this but a combination to starve 
 " the landlord out by preventing him from getting any rent until 
 " he agrees to a compromise. It is precisely the same thing as 
 " a battle between strike and lock-out in the cotton or coal dis- 
 " tricts. In each case it is evident that the men's chance of 
 " winning turns mainly on the question whether the master or 
 " landlord, as the case may be, can get outsiders to work the 
 " mines or take the farms. If he can, he is bound to win ; if he 
 " cannot, he is pretty sure to be starved into surrender. Hence 
 " you may be sure that in either case the weaker party, whether 
 " they are called Welsh miners or Irish tenants, and whether 
 " their combination is called a Trades Union or a National 
 " League, will do all they can to prevent desertions from their 
 " own body and to keep away outsiders. The chief difference 
 " is this — that in Ireland the boycot is a far more effectual 
 " weapon than in England, where it is difficult to isolate indi- 
 " viduals in the midst of a population of different classes and 
 " interests ; while, on the other hand, the landlords' weapon of 
 " eviction is a far sharper one, for loss of employment to an 
 " English working man hardly ever signifies such a sentence of 
 " death as eviction does to a poor Irish tenant with absolutely 
 " no resource but to die in a ditch. ... I consider all boycots 
 " bad where the landlord has been willing to make such reason- 
 *' able reductions of rents and arrears as other fairly good land- 
 " lords were giving. I have never yet heard of such a case, for 
 " in all that I have known or read of such compromises have 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES. 363 
 
 " invariably been accepted ; and where the dispute has been 
 " fought out to the bitter end, the Land Commissioners have 
 " given larger reductions than were asked for by the Plan of 
 " Campaign." 
 
 But boycotting was in vogue in Ireland long before the 
 existence of the Land League. Dean Swift, about one hundred 
 and fifty years ago, in one of his Drapier Letters, said to his 
 countrymen : — 
 
 " Should any man attempt to pass those halfpence [Wood's 
 " coinage], let his name and his address and his occupation be 
 " ascertained, let it be published and made known, so that his 
 " countrymen may know him as a traitor to the interests of his 
 " country ; and if that man be known to go to a market or fair 
 "let him be followed and warned, and let the innocent people 
 " of the country be warned against him." And in his various 
 proposals for the exclusive use of Irish manufactures he advised 
 them " to burn everything that came from England but her 
 "people and her coals;" and wrote that "even a stay-lace of 
 " English manufacture should be considered scandalous." Lastly, 
 he said, " Let a firm resolution be taken by male and female 
 " never to appear with one single shred that comes from England; 
 " and let all the people say Amen." 
 
 Then O'Connell used the following words on one occasion, 
 when discussing the Irish Corporation Bill of 1836 : — 
 
 " Men of the surrounding parishes about New Eoss who 
 " afford livelihood, aye, and by your industry and money make 
 " fortunes for the voters of New Koss, meet at once in your 
 " respective parishes, appoint a deputation of three or four from 
 " every parish — appoint substantial, quiet, honest men ; let a 
 " deputation from every parish go into New Ross and canvass 
 " from door to door. Let them cheer men who are honest ; let 
 " them put on the door of every honest voter, in large letters, 
 " Talbot for ever, and No Tithes ; No Orangemen ! Let them 
 " take down and publish in their parishes the names of any of 
 " those traitors to Ireland. Let no man deal with them. Let 
 " no woman speak to them. Let the children laugh them to 
 
 Finally, Mr. Pamell, speaking at a public meeting at Ennis 
 
364 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 on September the 19th, 1880, said, as reported in the Dublin 
 newspapers : — 
 
 '* When a man takes a farm from which another has been 
 '■unjustly evicted, you must show him your detestation of the 
 " crime he has committed ; you must show it to him on the road- 
 " side when you meet him ; you must show it to him in the 
 " streets of the town ; you must show it to him in the shop ; you 
 " must show it to him on the fair-green and in the market-place, 
 " and even in the place of worship, by leaving him alone ; by 
 " putting him into a moral Coventry ; by isolating him from the 
 " rest of his countrymen, as if he were the leper of old." 
 
 The Two Battebing-Rams — Pagan and Christian. 
 
 In the Wars of Josephus, we read as follows concerning the 
 ancient battering-rams employed at the siege of Jotapata, a city 
 of Galilee, where the Romans under Vespasian and Titus were 
 for a time having the worst of it at the hands of the Jews 
 under Flavins Josephus ; who is his own historian : — 
 
 " When, therefore, Vespasian looked upon himself as in a 
 " manner besieged by these sallies of the Jews, and when his 
 " banks were now not far from the walls, he determined to 
 " make use of his battering-ram. This battering-ram is a vast 
 " beam of wood like the mast of a ship ; its fore-part is armed 
 " with a thick piece of iron at the head of it, which is so carved 
 " as to be like the head of a ram, whence its name is taken. 
 " This ram is slung in the air by ropes passing over its middle, 
 " and is hung like the balance in a pair of scales from another 
 " beam, and braced by strong beams that pass on both sides of 
 " it in the nature of a cross. When this ram is pulled back- 
 " ward by a great number of men with united force, and then 
 " thrust forward by the same men with a mighty noise, it 
 " batters the wall with that iron part which is prominent ; 
 " nor is there any tower so strong, nor walls so broad, that can 
 " resist any more than its first batteries, but all are forced to 
 " yield to it at last." 
 
 Does not this agree in all essential particulars with the 
 description given by the special correspondent of the Daily News 
 of the modern Government battering-ram lately discovered in 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES. 365 
 
 concealment at Letterkenny railway station by Mr. H. J. "Wil- 
 son, a Yorkshire M.P., and now lying in wait for offensive 
 operations against the townland of Falcarragh, in Donegal 1 
 He says : — 
 
 " The ram consists of a sexagonal log of about fifteen feet, 
 " and shaped at one end like a wedge ; or, to use another illus- 
 " tration, sharpened like a pencil This end of the beam is 
 " faced with iron, and iron bands are placed around it at inter- 
 " vals of about five feet. One of these iron bands surrounds 
 " the point at which the centre of gravity lies. To this band is 
 " attached an iron ring, and by this ring the beam is suspended 
 " from three cast-iron bars, made to meet at the top in a tri- 
 " angular manner, and bolted together. This structure, together 
 " with a supply of pulleys, ropes, and chains, constitutes the 
 " famous instrument which has been built at the expense of the 
 " people for the levelling of the people's homesteads. Amongst 
 " other weapons of ' defence ' are crowbars, scaling ladders, 
 " hatchets, sledge-hammers, hooks, and pickaxes, and a supply 
 " is also laid in of canvas-covered iron netting and iron shields, 
 " the whole paraphernalia being very suggestive of ancient war- 
 " fare. It may be added that the beam of the battering-ram is 
 " about half a ton in weight." 
 
 It is just as well to know the truth, which has been long 
 suspected, that the Judgment of Death described elsewhere by 
 the Times will in future be executed by our Christian Govern- 
 ment itself, instead of being delegated to the landlord as here- 
 tofore. The official pretence is that " it is desirable, where 
 " houses are illegally fortified and occupied by rioters [meaning 
 " the owners] in resisting the law, that effectual means should 
 " be taken in order that the limbs and lives of the police 
 " engaged might not suffer unnecessary risk." Swift once laid 
 it down as an axiom that " eleven men well armed will cer- 
 " tainly subdue one single man in his shirt." But it is evidently 
 an axiom which is not accepted by the Royal Irish Constabu- 
 lary, even when armed with swords and loaded muskets. They 
 are apparently afraid of the man in his shirt. Kather are they 
 afraid, perhaps, of the eyes of the little children peering at them 
 in terror through the chinks in their mud cabins. Thus con- 
 
366 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 science doth make cowards of us all ! "When the emergency 
 men show them the way, however, the police will probably 
 pluck up the requisite courage " in the discharge of their duty." 
 Here is how they came to the assistance of their allies, in over- 
 powering the common enemy, at the right moment, at Falcar- 
 ragh, Donegal, lately, as described by the special correspondent 
 of the Daily News : — 
 
 "In the first house visited," he writes, "the wife of the 
 " tenant resisted the advance of the emergency men. One of 
 " the cowardly creatures gave her a violent push, whereupon she 
 " seized a stool in her hand to drive him back, but before she 
 " had time to grasp it firmly another emergency man struck her 
 " on the face with a chair, causing an ugly gash, from which 
 " blood flowed freely. Another coward struck her on the breast, 
 " whereupon her husband rushed to her assistance. He was 
 "immediately thrown violently outside and arrested by the 
 " police." 
 
 Napoleon's Projected Invasion of Ireland. 
 
 Wolfe Tone, the most formidable and statesmanlike Irish 
 rebel of the last century, has left on record a clear, specific 
 statement of the primary cause of disaffection in Ireland in 
 his time ; which, but for adverse winds, might have led to 
 momentous consequences to the British Empire. His Life 
 gives an account of the proceedings at a meeting of a committee 
 for French foreign) affairs at the Hague to which he was taken 
 by the eminent French general, Hoche, in June 1797, in order 
 to discuss some arrangements with respect to the intended 
 invasion of Ireland. The concluding sentence in the following 
 passage from that work is deserving the attention of British 
 statesmen, though it does but re-echo the wise warnings of 
 Chief-Justice Fortescue in the early Tudor days, and Edmund 
 Burke in the last century, to be found elsewhere : — 
 
 " A member of the committee," he observes, " I believe it 
 " was Van Leyden, then asked us, supposing everything suc- 
 " ceeded to our wish, what was the definite object of the Irish 
 " people ? To which we replied categorically that it was to 
 " throw off the yoke of England, break for ever the connection 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES. 367 
 
 " now existing with that country, and constitute ourselves a 
 " free and independent people. They all expressed their satis- 
 " faction at this reply ; and Van Leyden observed that he had 
 " travelled through Ireland, and, to judge from the luxury of 
 " the rich and extreme misery of the poor, no country in Europe 
 " had so crying a necessity for a revolutioiL To which Lewinea 
 " [a companion of Tone] and I replied, as is most religiously 
 " the truth, that our great motive for our conduct in this busi- 
 " ness was the conviction of the wretched state of our peasantry, 
 " and the determination if possible to amend it" 
 
 The CoNPESsiONa of a Unionist. 
 
 In his EnglancPs Case against Home Rule — a work in which 
 Ireland is supposed to have no " case " — Mr. Dicey says : — 
 
 " On one point alone (it may be urged) all men, of whatever 
 " party or of whatever nation, who have seriously studied the 
 " annals of Ireland are agreed — the history is a record of in- 
 " cessant failure on the part of the Government, and of inces- 
 " sant misery on the part of the people. On this matter, if 
 " on no other, De Beaumont, Froude, and Lecky are at one. 
 "... Bad administration, religious persecution — above all, a 
 *' thoroughly vicious land tenure, accompanied by such sweep- 
 ■•' ing confiscations as to make it, at any rate, a plausible assertion 
 " that all land in Ireland has during the course of Irish history 
 " been confiscated at least thrice over, are admittedly some of 
 " the causes, if they do not constitute the whole cause, of the one 
 " immediate difficulty which perplexes the policy of England. 
 " This is nothing else than the admitted disaffection to the 
 " law of the land prevailing among large numbers of Irish 
 " people. The existence of this disaffection, whatever be the 
 " inference to be drawn from it, is undeniable. A series of so- 
 " called Coercion Acts, passed both before and since the Act of 
 " Union, give undeniable evidence, if evidence were wanted, 
 " of the ceaseless and, as it would appear, almost irrepressible 
 " resistance in Ireland offered by the people to the enforcement 
 " of the law. I have not the remotest inclination to underrate 
 " the lasting and formidable character of this opposition between 
 " opinion and law, nor can any jurist who wishes to deal seriously 
 " with a serious and infinitely painful topic question for a moment 
 " that the ultimate strength of law lies in the sympathy, or at 
 
368 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 " the lowest the acquiescence, of the mass of the population. 
 " Judges, constables, and troops become almost powerless when 
 " the conscience of the people permanently opposes the execu- 
 " tion of the law. Severity produces either no effect or bad 
 *' efifects ; executed criminals are regarded as heroes or martyrs ; 
 " and jurymen and witnesses meet with the execration and often 
 " with the fate of criminals. . . . Eighty-six years have elapsed 
 " since the conclusion of the Treaty of Union between England 
 "and Ireland. The two countries do not yet form a united 
 "nation. The Irish people are, if not more wretched (for the 
 " whole European world has made progress, and Ireland with 
 " it), yet more conscious of wretchedness, and Irish disaffection 
 " to England is, if not deeper, more widespread than in 1800. 
 " An Act meant by its authors to be a source of the prosperity 
 " and concord which, though slowly, followed upon the Union 
 " with Scotland, has not made Ireland rich, has not put an end 
 " to Irish lawlessness, has not terminated the feud between 
 " Protestants and Catholics, has not raised the position of Irish 
 " tenants, has not taken away the causes of Irish discontent, 
 " and has therefore not removed Irish disloyalty. This is the 
 " indictment which can fairly be brought against the Act of 
 " Union." 
 
 The Vagaries of a Unionist. 
 
 "While he was yet " one of the people," Mr. Joseph Cham- 
 berlain, M.P., speaking of the system of Government in Ireland, 
 said, at West Islington, on the 17th of June, 1885 : — 
 
 " I do not believe that the great majority of Englishmen have 
 " the slightest conception of the system under which this free 
 " nation attempts to rule the sister country. It is a system 
 " which is founded on the bayonets of thirty thousand soldiers 
 " encamped permanently as in a hostile country. It is a system 
 " as completely centralised and bureaucratic as that with which 
 " Russia governs Poland, or as that which prevailed in Venice 
 " under the Austrian rule. An Irishman at this moment can- 
 " not move a step ; he cannot lift a finger in any parochial, 
 " municipal, or educational work without being confronted with, 
 " interfered with, controlled by an English official, appointed 
 " by a foreign Government, and without a shade or shadow of 
 " representative authority " (loud cheers). 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES. 369 
 
 Ceasing to be one of the people, in the month of June, in the 
 following year of 1886, Mr. Chamberlain — having become one 
 of the "gentlemen of England" meanwhile — thus expressed 
 himself at another public meeting, as he is reported in the pages 
 of the Westminster Review : — 
 
 " The Irish people enjoy all your liberties, all your freedom, 
 " everything which you prize, all that you find necessary to your 
 "orderly existence. I deny altogether that Ireland is not a 
 " self -governed country. Ireland is part of a country in which 
 " Government has been carried on to a greater perfection than 
 " any other country on the face of the earth " (loud laughter). 
 
 A Unionist in his Eight Mind. 
 
 In the first edition of his Leaders of Public Opinion, Mr. 
 Lecky has summed up the Irish case against England as follows, 
 in course of an indignant protest with regard to the habitual 
 tone of depreciation which it is the custom of the British press 
 to adopt towards Ireland. No man living has done more to 
 foster public opinion in that country than the great Protestant 
 historian : — 
 
 "Another important element of dissension is the tone 
 "habitually adopted by English writers towards Ireland. 
 " Reasoning a priori, we might have imagined that common 
 " decency would have rendered that tone guarded and concilia- 
 " tory, for if England has sometimes had cause to complain of 
 " Ireland, Ireland has had incomparably more cause to com- 
 " plain of England. For seven hundred years England has 
 " ruled over a nation which has exhibited more than average 
 " intellect at home, and far more than average success abroaid 
 " — a nation which, though its faults are doubtless many 
 " and serious, is certainly neither unamiable, ungrateful, nor in- 
 " tractable ; and she has left it one of the most discontented 
 " and degraded in Europe. She has ruled over a country which 
 " seemed designed by Providence to be one of the most flourish- 
 " ing in the world ; indented with the noblest harbours, placed 
 " between two continents, as if to reap the advantages of both, 
 " possessing a temperate and salubrious climate, and a soil of 
 " more than common fertility — and she has left it one of the 
 " poorest, one of the most wretched upon earth. A fatal blast 
 " seems to rest upon it, and to counteract all the advantages of 
 
 2 A 
 
<( 
 
 370 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 "Nature. The most superficial traveller is struck with the 
 " anomaly. His first inquiry is — ' What tyranny has so 
 " thwarted the designs of Providence 1 ' He finds that, accord- 
 " ing to the confessions of English writers for the 650 years 
 " that elapsed between the Conquest and the Emancipation of 
 
 the Catholics, the English Government of Ireland was one 
 " long series of oppressions — that massacres and banishments, 
 " confiscations and disqualifications, compulsory ignorance and 
 "trade restrictions were all resorted to; that the industry of 
 " the country was so paralysed that it has never recovered its 
 " elasticity ; that the various classes of the people were so 
 " divided that they have never gained their unity ; that the 
 " character of the nation was so formed and moulded in the die 
 " of sorrow that almost every prominent vice engrained in the 
 " national character may be distinctly traced to the influences 
 " of bygone tyranny ; and that when the age of disqualifications 
 " had passed, a legislative system was still retained, in defiance 
 " of the wish of the people, by the nation which proclaims itself 
 " the most emphatic assertor of the rights of nationalities. 
 
 "Such is the past of EngHsh Government of Ireland — a 
 " tissue of brutality and hypocrisy scarcely surpassed in history. 
 " Who would not have imagined that in a more enlightened 
 " age the tone of the British press towards Ireland would have 
 " been at least moderate, friendly, and conciliatory 1 Let any 
 " candid man judge whether it is so. Let him observe the pro- 
 " minence given to every crime that is committed in Ireland, 
 " to every absurdity that can be culled from the Irish press, 
 " to every failure of an Irish movement. Let him observe 
 " the ceaseless ridicule, the unwavering contempt, the studied 
 " depreciation of the Irish character and intellect habitual in 
 
 the English newspaper. Let him observe their persistent 
 " refusal to regard Irish affairs in any light but the ridicu- 
 " lous, and then answer the question for himself. We be- 
 " lieve impartial Englishmen will scarcely deny what foreign 
 " observers unanimously declare that the object of the most in- 
 " fluential section of the English press is to discredit the Irish 
 "intellect and Irish character before England and before 
 " Europe. ' The tone of the English press towards Ireland,' 
 " said a writer in the Eevtie des Deux Mondes, when urging the 
 " Irish people to give up the dream of nationality, ' is detest- 
 " able.' • It would be about as reasonable,' remarked a recent 
 " German tourist, 'to judge of the Irish character from English 
 " writers as to take an Austrian estimate of Italian affairs.' 
 
 (< 
 
MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS AND SPEECHES. 371 
 
 " As long as this tone continues the two nations never can 
 " amalgamate, or assimilate, or cordially co-operate. A war of 
 " recriminations is an evil, but it is a greater evil for a nation 
 " tranquilly to suffer its character to be frittered away by 
 " calumny veiled in sarcasm, and by a contemptuous suppression 
 " of all facts but those which tell against itself. As long as 
 " Englishmen adopt a tone of habitual depreciation in speaking 
 " of the present of Ireland, Irishmen would betray their country 
 " were they to suffer the curtain to fall upon its past." 
 
 In a letter addressed to Colonel Donnelly, dated December 
 1880, and published in the Times on the 3rd of that month, 
 General Gordon, referring to the still too common tone of de- 
 preciation in which many of our English newspapers indulge 
 their humour when dealing with Irish questions, said : — 
 
 " Our comic prints do an infinity of harm by their carica- 
 " tures ; firstly, the caricatures are not true — for crime in 
 " Ireland is not greater than in England ; and secondly, they 
 " exasperate the people on both sides of the Channel and do 
 " no good. It is ill to laugh and scoff at a question which 
 " affects our existence." 
 
 A YiRTUous People. 
 
 Lord Normanby, an ex-Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, speaking 
 in the House of Lords on the 13 th of February 1844, thus 
 described the origin of Irish crime : — 
 
 ■'D'- 
 
 Of the inhabitants of Ireland he said, " There never was 
 " a people whose faults and sufferings more obviously arose out 
 " of their relations with man, and less out of their relations with 
 " their Maker. There is no country in the world in which there 
 " are such general privations and sufferings, and among whom 
 " there is a more general and universal practice of all the social 
 " and domestic virtues — who are better husbands, better wives, 
 " better fathers, better mothers, and better sons ; better, in 
 " short, in all those relations in which it would naturally be 
 " expected that the fniit of religious instruction would be found. 
 " It is to the struggle for that subsistence which your boasted 
 "legislation has failed to procure for them, and which your 
 " free institutions have partly withheld from them, that almost 
 " all the crimes are to be traced with which you charge them." 
 
372 A KEY TO THE IRISH QUESTION. 
 
 An Indestructiblb Nation. 
 
 How wisely has not Thierry, the eminent French historian of 
 the Norman Conquest, dwelt upon the unexampled fact that : — 
 
 "There are nations, with retentive memories, whom the 
 "thought of independence does not ahandon even in servi- 
 " tude, and who, resisting against habit, which is elsewhere so 
 "powerful, even after the lapse of ages, still detest and abjure 
 "the condition to which a superior power has reduced them. 
 " Such is the Irish nation. It is in vain that English power 
 " has exhausted itself in efforts to extinguish that memory, to 
 "make the conquest be forgotten, and make the results of armed 
 " invasion be considered as the exercise of a legal authority ; 
 " nothing has been able to destroy Irish stubbornness. In despite 
 " of seductions, menaces, and tortures, fathers have bequeathed 
 "it to their sons. . . . This unconquerable tenacity, this 
 "lengthened remembrance of departed liberty, this faculty of 
 "preserving and nourishing, through ages of physical misery 
 " and suffering, the thought of that which is no more, — of never 
 " despairing of a constantly-vanquished cause, for which many 
 "generations have successively, and in vain, perished in the 
 "field, and by the executioner, is, perhaps, the most extra- 
 " ordinary and the greatest example that a people has ever 
 " given." 
 
 In his essay on England and Ireland, Mill has well observed 
 that it is not consistent with self-respect, in a nation any more 
 than in an individual, to wait till it is compelled by uncon- 
 trollable circumstances to resign that which it cannot in con- 
 science hold. To hold Ireland permanently by the old bad 
 means is simply impossible. Neither Europe nor America would 
 now bear the sight of a Poland across the Irish ChanneL 
 "The attempt," he said, "could not long succeed with a 
 " country so vulnerable as England, having territories to defend 
 " in every part of the globe, and half her population dependent 
 " on foreign commerce." We are, in fact, face to face with a 
 people animated by a spirit of resistance which cannot be 
 overcoma 
 
APPEl^DIX. 
 
 CONTAINING THE TRAGIC STORY OF WHOLESALE 
 EVICTIONS IN THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS DURING 
 THE PRESENT CENTURY. 
 
 " O Scotland, Scotland ! many a heart is sad and sore for thee, 
 Though basely, meanly, falsely driven to dwell beyond the sea ; 
 Why stoop to those who cannot w^alk with high and upright head — 
 Whose little souls no kindred own with thy tioTe-honoured dead." 
 
 Land Tenure in the Scottish Highlands, 
 Old and New. 
 
 Having devoted so many pages at the beginning of this work to 
 the evictions which took place in England under the Plantagenets 
 and Tudors, the brief reference to the evictions which have taken 
 place in Scotland under the present dynasty appears somewhat 
 inadequate to its general scope. Hardly anything more pathetic is 
 to be found in British history, ancient or modern, than the story of 
 the Highland clearances from 1782 down to the present time. Like 
 the story of Ireland, it consists of a series of tragedies in real life, 
 before which the fiction of the novelist pales into insignificance. 
 In the Scottish Highlands, till the fatal day at CuUoden, in 1746, 
 the clans enrolled themselves under native chiefs of their own 
 blood in their respective districts. They were in a sense, from 
 time immemorial, the owners of their own soil, and the electors of 
 their own rulers. They were neither serfs nor vassals, though sub- 
 ject to a kind of civil and criminal jurisdiction under their chiefs. 
 In addition to the military service due to the latter, certain pay- 
 ments were made them by the clans, but only out of a sense of 
 duty ; and the clansmen held their lands and rights to pasture, wood 
 jand peat, fish and game, by the same title as that by which the 
 chiefs held their estates. But all this was changed by the action 
 
374 APPENDIX. 
 
 of the English Government less than forty years after Culloden, the 
 clansmen having their system of land tenure thenceforward assimi- 
 lated to that of England, without consideration for their ancient 
 rights. Their estates, forfeited by the rebellion of 1745, ''^ere 
 restored to the chiefs in 1782, but without any provision in favour 
 of the people. For a time the change was not materially felt, as 
 Mr. Russell Wallace observes, in his Land Nationalisation (1882 ): — 
 
 " Tracts of land were assigned to the more important members 
 " of the clan on payment of an annual rent, and those often sublet 
 " the land to the poorer Highlanders. The English system of entail 
 " soon became common in Scotland, and by marriage, inheritance, 
 "and purchase, the great estates became still greater, and passed 
 " into fewer hands, while the feeling of clanship became weaker, and 
 " the rights of the clansmen less clearly recognised. When, shortly 
 "afterwards, England engaged in the great American and Conti- 
 " nental wars, the Highland noblemen raised recruits from among 
 " their clansmen, and formed the famous Highland regiments ; and, 
 *• as this added to their dignity and importance, they favoured the 
 " increase of small farmers whose hardy sons would swell the ranks 
 " of the army. The larger of these tenants were called ' tacksmen,' 
 " the smaller ' crofters,' and thus most of the Highland valleys were 
 " filled with a peaceful, hardy, industrious, and contented popula- 
 " tion. The testimony on this subject is of a very uniform nature. 
 " The tacksmen, or small gentlemen farmers, lived in rude houses, 
 " but with much comfort, and were almost always men of good 
 " education and refined manners ; while Iheir hospitality was 
 "unbounded, aad they freely supported among them the poor of 
 " the district." 
 
 As to the crofters. Sir John M'Neill, in his Report on the Western 
 Highlands, describes their former tenure as permanent or even here- 
 ditary, at rents fixed for long periods. In addition to their few acres 
 of arable land, they had the right of pasture on the mountain side, 
 with fuel, fishing, &c. ; and usually possessed some cattle, sheep, and 
 a horse. From these various sources of industry they also enjoyed 
 a rude abundance, without excessive toil. Hugh Miller describes 
 the period succeeding 1745, '^liile the landlords were in hiding 
 abroad — a period of forty years — as the golden age of the High- 
 lands. It was the period also during which the English king 
 was able to summon to his standards from the populous Highland 
 glens tens of thousands of as fine soldiers as any in Europe ; soldiers 
 of whom Chatham said, speaking in 1776, " they served with fidelity, 
 " as they fought with valour, and conquered in every part of the 
 " world." But of the military features of the subject more anon. 
 For the present it is of greater importance to describe the change 
 
APPENDIX. 375 
 
 •whicli was on the eve of taking place at this time, brought about by 
 landlord rapacity and greed. Much pretty writing has been ex- 
 pended on the battle of Culloden by the poets, but the tragical 
 results of that disastrous event to the unfortunate Highlanders are 
 too prosaic for any such treatment of the subject by the political 
 economist : — 
 
 " LochieL — False Wizard, avaunt ! — I have marshalled my clan, 
 Their swords are as thousands, their bosoms are one ! 
 They are true to the last of their blood and their breath, 
 And like reapers descend to the harvest of death." 
 
 The Wizard was indeed no true seer, or he would have warned — 
 not Lochiel to beware of Cumberland — but rather Lochiel's clansmen 
 to beware of Lochiel. It was a maxim of Edward IV. (who never 
 lost or avoided a battle) "to slay the nobles and let the common 
 " folks go free." It had been well for humanity — well for England 
 — if Cumberland acted on the maxim at Culloden. The descendants 
 of the "stout Glengarrys," the "gallant Gordons," and the "wise 
 " Lochiels" — some of whose fathers were themselves, in the heat of 
 the contest, carried out of the range of sword and bullet on the 
 shoulders of their too faithful followers — repaid the Highlanders of 
 another generation by eviction, starvation, and death. The story 
 of those brave men during the past hundred years is, from first to 
 last, a story of flagrant usurpation, cruel oppression, and indescribable 
 suffering ; the victims being an exemplary, God-fearing, and most 
 deserving people. By a gradual process of encroachment the chiefs, 
 on being repossessed of their estates, assumed the pretensions of 
 feudal landowners. The tacksmen, or middlemen, were the first to 
 feel the change. Unexpectedly deprived of the privilege of sub- 
 letting a portion of their lands, they emigrated in disgust, 6,400 
 leaving for America during the years preceding 1792. Those on 
 the estate of Lord Macdonald in the Isle of Skye did, indeed, 
 attempt to withstand the chief — who fled the island — binding them- 
 selves by a solemn oath to keep down rents by refusing to offer 
 for vacant farms. But in vain. The crofters, too, as suddenly found 
 themselves deprived of pasture, wood and peat, game and fishing. 
 Thus restricted to their little crofts, their resources quickly ran out, 
 poverty supervened, and their doom was sealed. The landlords, 
 tempted by offers of greater rents (and less trouble of collection) 
 from Lowland sheep farmers, directed the tenants to take their 
 choice of " Hell or Canada." According to Aikman, the continuator 
 of Buchanan's Scotland, in some instances the landlords directed the 
 
376 APPENDIX. 
 
 factors to " drive them into the sea, let them go to the Plantations, 
 " or go to hell." The Dukes opened the Scottish eviction campaign, 
 and are, therefore, entitled to precedence in these pages, apart from 
 their rank. 
 
 The Ducal Evictions. 
 
 Of the Sutherland evictions we have already seen something 
 related in our second chapter from the pages of Mr. Alexander 
 Mackenzie's Highland Clearances,^ a work which should entitle its 
 author to the lasting gratitude of tbe British public. A fiend in 
 female form, bearing the double-barrelled name of Sutherland and 
 StafiFord, led the way, as far back as 1807. It is said that when her 
 husband faltered in the murderous work, she played the role of Lady 
 Macbeth. " Infirm of purpose ! — Give me the daggers," she shrieked. 
 And we know the dire result. In 1807 ninety families were thus 
 ejected inland, who were provided with miserably inferior lots near 
 the coast ; " between the devil and the deep sea," so to speak. The 
 factor superintending was one Sellar, a name at which young and 
 old turned pale with terror. During the removal, their crops 
 suffered greatly, the families had to sleep out of doors, some died 
 through fatigue and exposure, while others contracted diseases 
 which ultimately put an end to their existence. They were, in 
 fact, "improved" off the face of the earth. In 1816, Lady 
 Macbeth had expedited the tedious process of removal by firing 
 the cabins, exactly as is done at this day at Luggacurran, in Ireland, 
 on the property of the Marquis of Lansdowne, Governor-General 
 of India. Mr. Mackenzie describes a Sutherland clearance in that 
 year in the words of an eyewitness of the scene ; which may be 
 considered in the light of a companion picture to that Irish one to 
 be found at page loi in the present volume. The evil work com- 
 menced, we are told : — 
 
 " By setting fire to the houses of the small tenants in extensive 
 " districts — part of the parishes of Farr, Kogart, Golspie, and the 
 " whole parish of Kildonan. I was an eyewitness of the scene. 
 " This calamity came on the people quite unexpectedly. Strong 
 " parties, for each district, furnished with faggots and other com- 
 '' bustibles, rushed on the dwellings of this devoted people, and 
 " immediately commenced setting fire to them, proceeding in their 
 " work with the greatest rapidity till about three hundred houses 
 " were in flames ! The consternation and confusion were extreme ; 
 " little or no time was given for removal of persons or property — the 
 " people striving to remove the sick and the helpless before the fire 
 
 ^ Unfortunately now out of print and scarce. 
 
APPENDIX. zn 
 
 " should reach them — next, straggling to save the most valuable of 
 " their effects. The cries of the women and children — the roaring of 
 " the affrighted cattle, hunted at the same time by the yelling dogs 
 " of the shepherds amid the smoke and fire — altogether presented 
 " a scene that completely baffles description : it required to be seen to 
 " be believed. A dense cloud of smoke enveloped the whole country 
 " by day, and even extended far on the sea ; at night an awfully 
 "grand, but terrific scene presented itself — all the houses in au 
 " extensive district in flames at once ! I myself ascended a height 
 " about eleven o'clock in the evening, and counted two hundred and 
 " fifty blazing houses, many of the owners of which were my rela- 
 " tions, and all of whom I personally knew ; but whose present con- 
 •*' dition, whether in or out of the flames, I could not tell. The 
 " conflagration lasted six days, till the whole of the dwellings were 
 " reduced to ashes or smoking ruins. During one of these days a 
 ■*' boat lost her way in the dense smoke as she approached the shore ; 
 *' but at night she was enabled to reach a landing-place by the light 
 " of the flames ! " 
 
 On the fatal day at Culloden the Athol Highlanders were in the 
 very front and most exposed rank of the line of battle, having 
 Lochiel's clansmen on their left, " all plaided and plumed in their 
 " tartan array." Could not the Wizard have mercifully warned 
 them also against their chief, since it is due to Lady Macbeth to 
 observe that a Duke of Athol preceded her as a pioneer in tlie work 
 of destruction, and is entitled, therefore, to the distinction of being 
 the first to claim the right of doing what you like with^the property 
 of other people % Whatever merit the Sutherland family may take 
 to themselves for levelling and firing the cabins of fifteen thousand 
 inhabitants, they cannot at least claim the merit of originality, since 
 his grace of Athol commenced proceedings in Glen Tilt as far back 
 as 1784, according to the Gloomy Memories of Donald Macleod, who 
 says :— 
 
 "This beautiful valley was occupied in the same way as other 
 " Highland valleys, each family possessing a piece of arable land, 
 " while the pasture was held in common. The people held a right 
 " and full liberty to fish in the Tilt, an excellent salmon river, and 
 "the pleasure and profits of the chase, with their chief; but the 
 " then Duke acquired a great taste for deer. The people were, from 
 " time immemorial, accustomed to take their cattle, in the summer 
 " season, to a higher glen, which is watered by the river Tarf ; but 
 " the Duke appointed Glen Tarf for a deer-forest, and built a high 
 " dyke at the head of Glen Tilt. The people submitted to this 
 " encroachment on their ancient rights. The deer increased and 
 " did not pay much regard to the march ; they would jump over the 
 " dyke and destroy the people's crops ; the people complained, and 
 
378 APPENDIX, 
 
 " his grace rejoiced ; and to gratify the roving propensities of these 
 " light-footed animals, he added another slice of some thousand acres 
 " of the people's land to the grazing ground of his favourite deer. 
 " Gradually the forest extended, and the marks of civilisation were 
 " effaced, till the last of the brave Glen Tilt men, who fought and 
 " often confronted and defeated the enemies of Scotland and her 
 " kings upon many a bloody battlefield, were routed off, and bade a 
 " final farewell to the beautiful Glen Tilt, which they and their 
 " fathers had considered their own healthy and sweet home. The 
 " Glens of Athol are intersected by smaller valleys, presenting various 
 " aspects, from the most fertile carse to the bleakest moorland. But 
 " man durst not be seen there. The image of God is forbidden 
 "unless it be stamped upon the Duke, his foresters, and game- 
 " keepers, that the deer may not be disturbed." 
 
 Pope's lines are not altogether inapplicable here to do justice to 
 the man who first showed his class how they might increase their 
 rental and enhance their sport at the same time : — 
 
 " Proud NiDBrod first the bloody chase began, 
 A mighty hunter — and his prey was man. 
 What wonder then a beast or subject slain 
 Were equal crimes in a despotic reign ? 
 Both, doomed alike, for sportive tyrants bled ; 
 But while the subject starved, the beast was fed." 
 
 On the 15th of July last, the good Duke of Argyll observed, in 
 the House of Lords : — 
 
 " It will probably be in the recollection of your lordships that 
 " among the theatrical exhibitions and evictions of tenants in Ireland 
 " got up by the Land League there was the case of Mr. Olphert, in 
 " the county of Donegal." 
 
 Mr. Stansfeld, M.P., an ex-Cabinet Minister, Mr. H. J. Wilson, a 
 Yorkshire M.P., and Mr. Conybeare, a Cornish M.P. — all three gentle- 
 men having visited Donegal in the course of the eviction campaign in 
 that county — no doubt took part in the gross imposture. Well, few 
 men know the merits of a question of the kind better than the Duke, 
 whose instincts and inclinations in regard to evictions are hereditary. 
 No Scottisb chieftain better understood, or more faithfully adopted, 
 than the founder of his family, MacCallum More : — 
 
 ♦' The good old rule, the simple plan, 
 That they should take who have the power, 
 And they should keep who can." 
 
 Lord Macaulay has dwelt upon the fact that : — 
 
APPENDIX. 379 
 
 "It was constantly repeated in verse and prose, that the finest 
 " part of the domain belonging to the ancient heads of the Gaelic 
 " nation — Islay, where they lived with the pomp of royalty — lona, 
 " where they had been interred with the pomp of religion — the Papa 
 " of Jura, the rich peninsula of Kintyre, had been transferred from 
 "the legitimate possessors to the insatiable 'MacCalluiu More.'" 
 
 Dr. Johnson, in his Journey to tlie Hebrides, says, " That man is 
 " little to be envied whose piety would not grow warmer among the 
 " ruins of lona." The Duke has written a pretty guide-book, teeming 
 with paradox, for the tourist to lona, from which, however, there are 
 some interesting omissions. On the dissolution of the monastic estab- 
 lishments, for instance, lona was annexed to the bishopric of ArgylL 
 There is still a bishopric of Argyll. In fact there are two bishoprics 
 of the name, one Catholic and the other Protestant ; the occupant of 
 the Catholic see being a Macdonald, and a collateral descendant of the 
 Lords of the Isles plundered by MacCallum More. But, oddly enough, 
 lona, the choicest portion of the ancient see, belongs to neither, 
 being in the safe keeping of, not a Bishop, but a Duke of ArgylL 
 To this fact there is, of course, no allusion in the pretty guide-book. 
 The Duke claims St. Columba (temp. 563) as being, in some sort, the 
 foster-father of the Established Church of Scotland in 1889; and 
 perhaps he thinks, as a not undistinguished member of that non- 
 Episcopal body, he has the best claim to the historic appanage of the 
 bishopric of Argyll. Anyhow, the inhabitants of both the Highlands 
 and the Islands have been severely punished through their super- 
 stitious devotion to the Scottish dukes generally. Even John Knox, 
 looking backwards, had at least one glimpse of his own credulity, 
 when — seeing around him his brother ministers starving on a beggarly 
 pittance — in the bitterness of his heart he retorted on a Buccleuch, 
 exclaiming — " Verily,' cupidity hath begotten many Reformers!" 
 When we visited lona lately, the surviving inhabitants were im- 
 patient for the arrival of the Crofter Commissioners to cut down 
 the ducal rackrents there as elsewhere. 
 
 A deputation of the Glasgow Highland Relief Board, consisting of 
 Dr. Robert Macgregor and Mr. Charles R. Baird, their Secretary, 
 visited, amongst other places in the Western Highlands, Mull (partly 
 owned by the Duke of Argyll), lona, Tiree, &c., in 1849, ^^^ they 
 immediately afterwards issued a printed report on the state of these 
 places, a few extracts from which will prove instructive. They in- 
 form tis that the population of the Island of Mull, according to the 
 Government census of 1821, was 10,612 ; of 1841, 10,064. In 1871 
 it is found reduced to 6,441, and by the census of 1881, to 5,624, or a 
 
38o APPENDIX. 
 
 fraction more than half the number that inhabited the island in 1821. 
 Tobermory, the most important village in the island, we are told, 
 " has been for some time the resort of the greater part of the small 
 " crofters and cottars ejected from their holdings and houses on the 
 "surrounding estates, and thus there has been a great accumulation 
 " of distress." lona, wholly owned by the Duke, wliicli had formerly 
 a population of 500, only now contains, according to the last census, 
 a population of 243 souls. Tiree, of which he is also the sole pro- 
 prietor, had, in 1841, a population of 4,687, which, according to the 
 same census, is now reduced to 2,733. Of the district of Kilfinichen, 
 another property of the Duke, the same charitable body- reported : — 
 
 " The crofters and cottars having been warned off, twenty-six indi- 
 " viduals emigrated to America at their own expense, and one at that 
 " of the Parochial Board ; a good many removed to Kinloch, where 
 " they are now in great poverty, and those who remained were not 
 *' allowed to cultivate any ground for crop or even garden stuffs. 
 " The stock and other effects of a number of crofters on Kinloch, 
 "last year (1848), and whose rents averaged from £$ to £1^ per 
 " annum, having been sequestrated and sold, these parties are now 
 " reduced to a state of pauperism, having no employment or means 
 " of subsistence whatever." 
 
 Respecting the district of Bunessan, our authority says : — 
 
 " It will be recollected that the [Relief] Committee, some time 
 •' ago, advanced ;^I28 to assist in procuring provisions for a number 
 " of emigrants from the Duke of Argyll's estate, in the Ross of Mull 
 "and lona, in all 243 persons — 125 adults and 118 children. . . . 
 " We have received the very melancholy and distressing intelligence 
 " that many of those emigrants had been seized with cholera on their 
 '• arrival in Canada ; that not a few of them had fallen victims to it ; 
 " and that the survivors had suffered great privations. . . . We trust 
 " that no emigration will in future be promoted by proprietors or 
 " others, which will not secure, as far as human effort can, the benefit 
 " of those who emigrate, as well as of those who are left at home." 
 
 These are but a few, not of "the theatrical exhibitions and 
 " evictions of tenants in Ireland got up by the Land League," to 
 which the Duke of Argyll refers in his speech in the House of 
 Lords on the 15th of July last, but of the evictions "got up" by 
 liimself in the Scottish Highlands in recent years. The Duke's 
 system would ruin any kingdom on earth. According to Mr. John 
 Murdoch, the indefatigable author of the Crofter Revolt (1886X ^^ 
 1831, the population of the whole Island of Islay was 14,992. But 
 in 1881 that population was reduced to 7,574. In 1833 the rent was 
 
APPENDIX, 381 
 
 about ;^ 1 5,000, or less than £1 per head; in 1881 the rent was 
 £37,^0$, 8s. 2d., or within a fraction of ;^5 per head. In other 
 •words, while the population diminished by 50. per cent., the rent 
 increased by nearly 150 per cent., or 500 per cent, per head of the all 
 but landless inhabitants ! " For," Mr. Murdoch adds, " while there 
 " could hardly have been fewer than 1,500 tenant-farmers at these 
 " earlier dates, there are only about 230 now." The Duke wants the 
 same experiment tried on an equally extensive scale in the Irish 
 Highlands also, and tells us in the same speech, on the authority of 
 Mr. Tuke — who used to be a philanthropist before he became a 
 Unionist — that : — 
 
 "A considerable number of tenants emigrated [probably under 
 " compulsion as in Argyllshire], and then it was agreed that their 
 " houses should be pulled down and their holdings added to the next 
 " area. I am told [by Mr. Tuke] that that district is thriving admir- 
 " ably. But there is one condition above all others which is indis- 
 " pensable to the permanent improvement of the country. You 
 " must teach the old doctrine of common honesty in your transactions 
 '* between man and man. (Cheers.) " 
 
 Whether the cheers were for Mr. Tuke or the Duke does not 
 appear clear, but anyhow the Irish and Scottish peerage must have 
 vigorously exercised their throats on the occasion. Pulling down 
 houses for the philanthropic purpose of rendering the condition of the 
 survivors "admirably thriving " has long been the foundation of their 
 common policy in Scotland and Ireland. The Duke is always at 
 his best when preaching the doctrine of " common honesty." In his 
 Beign of Law he is found saying : — 
 
 " It was no oratorical exaggeration, but a strict and literal descrip- 
 " tion of the truth, when Mr. Gladstone said of the old commercial 
 " policy that it was ' a system of robbing and plundering ourselves.' " 
 
 Doubtless it was so. But surely it was not so great an offence, in 
 the sight of God or man, as the agrarian policy of robbing other 
 people of the fruits of their honest labour, which has now been in 
 full operation for more tban a century in two parts of the United 
 Kingdom. In the Island of Tiree alone the Duke's rents have been 
 reduced by the itinerant Crofter Commissioners from ;£i,25i, 18s. to 
 ;£922, los. Fear of his scolding tongue and caustic pen probably 
 averted a reduction by one-half. In 1831 the population of the 
 county of Argyll was 100,973 ; in 1841 it was 97,371 ; in 1851 it 
 was reduced to 88,567 ; and in 188 1 it was down to 76,468. Of the 
 latter number the Eegistrar-General classifies 30,387 as urban, or 
 
382 APPENDIX. 
 
 the population of "towns and villages," leaving us only 46,081 as 
 the total rural population of the county of Argyll at the date of the 
 last census, in 1881. 
 
 Noble Lords and Eight Honourable Gentlemen 
 
 CONTINUE THE SpORT. 
 
 It goes against the grain, and is most repulsive work, to publish 
 a selected list of Scottish landlords as if deserving of reprobation. 
 It is necessary, therefore, it should be understood that many of those 
 now living are but the heirs of a sad inheritance. It is gratifying 
 to know, for instance, that the present Marquis of Breadalbane is a 
 good landlord, and takes an entirely different view to that of a 
 predecessor in regard to his duties and relationship to the tenants 
 on the vast property referred to here. He cannot bring back the 
 dead, though he might and ought to make restitution to the living. 
 Mr. R. Alister, author of Barriers to the National Prosperity of Scot- 
 land, had a controversy with a former Marquis of Breadalbane in 
 1 853, about the eviction of his tenantry. In a letter dated July of 
 that year, Mr. Alister made a charge against him, that he had 
 evicted, since 1834, no less than 500 families, or 2,500 souls : — 
 
 "In Glenqueich, near Amulree," he said, "some sixty families 
 " formerly lived, where there are now only four or five ; and in 
 " America there is a glen inhabited by its ousted tenants, and called 
 " Glenqueich still. The desolations here look like the ruins of Irish 
 " cabins, although the population of Glenqueich were always charac- 
 " terised as beins remarkably thrifty, economical, and wealthy. On 
 " the Braes of Taymouth, at the back of Drummond Hill, and at 
 " TuUochyoule, some forty or fifty families formerly resided where 
 " there is not one now ! Glenorchy, by the returns of 1831, showed 
 "a population of 1,806; in 1841, 831 ; — is there no depopulation 
 "there?" 
 
 In another letter the same writer said : — 
 
 " You must be aware that your late father raised 2, 500 men during 
 " the last war, and that 1,600 of that number were from the Bread- 
 " albane estates. My statement is, that 1 50 could not now be raised, 
 " which is, perhaps, the worst charge of the whole. I have often 
 " made inquiries of Highlanders on this point, and the number above 
 " stated was the highest estimate. Many who should know, state to 
 "me that your Lordship would not get fifty followers from the 
 " whole of the estates. This, then, is the position of the question, 
 " In 1793-4 there was such a numerous, hardy, and industrious popu- 
 
APPENDIX. 383 
 
 " lation on the Breadalbane estates, that there could be spared of 
 
 " valorous defenders of their country in her hour of danger . 1,600 
 
 " Highest estimate now 1 50 
 
 "Banished lj45o 
 
 " Per contra — Game of all sorts increased a hundred-fold." 
 
 The people of Skye and the Uist, where the Macdonalds for cen- 
 turies ruled in the manner of princes over a loyal and devoted 
 people, were treated not a whit better than those on the mainland, 
 when, their services were no longer required to fight the battles of the 
 Lords of the Isles, or to secure to them their possessions, their dignity, 
 and power. They were cruelly evicted, and in enormous numbers. 
 In 1 849, for instance. Lord Macdonald determined to evict between 
 600 and 700 persons from Sollas, in North Uist, of which he was 
 then proprietor. They were at the time in a state of great misery 
 from the failure of the potato crop several years in succession. Some 
 of 'the men were employed on drainage works, for which public 
 money was advanced to the proprietors ; but here, as in most other 
 places throughout the Highlands, the money earned was applied by 
 the factors to wipe off old arrears, while the people were permitted 
 generally to starve. The landlord having decided that they must 
 go, notices of ejectment were served upon them, to take effect on the 
 15th of May 1849. They asked for delay, to enable them to dispose 
 of their cattle and other effects to the best advantage at the summer 
 markets, and offered to work meanwhile making kelp, on terms 
 which would prove remunerative to the proprietors. No answers 
 were received to their petitions, which were ignored. At the same 
 time they were directed to sow as much corn and potatoes as they 
 could during the spring, for which they were told they would be 
 fully compensated, whatever happened. They sold much of their 
 effects to procure seed, and continued to work and sow up to and 
 even after the 1 5th of May. They then began to cut their peats as 
 usual, thinking that they were after all to be allowed to get the 
 benefit. They were, however, soon disappointed — their goods were 
 hypothecated. Many of them were turned out of their houses, the 
 doors locked, and everything they possessed — cattle, crops, and peats 
 — seized. Even their bits of furniture were thrown out of doors 
 in the manner which had long become the fashion in such cases. 
 Several heart-rending scenes followed of course. But the Sollas 
 evictions were not sufficient to satisfy the evicting craze of Lord 
 Macdonald. In 1851-53 he, or rather his trustee, determined to 
 evict the people from the villages of Boreraig and Suisinish, Isle of 
 
384 APPENDIX. 
 
 Skye. Some who were endeavouring to escape to America suc- 
 cumbed to a deadly fever which broke out on board ship. On the 
 4th of April 1853 those who had remained behind were all warned 
 out of their holdings to make room for deer. They petitioned and 
 pleaded to no purpose. " I remember very well the removal of 
 " the people from Boreraig twenty-six years ago," Donald Maclnixes, 
 of Duisdale, observed to the Crofter Commissioners : — 
 
 " Some of the people perished from the hardships they had to 
 " endure when put out of their houses. It was in time of snow they 
 " were put out ; one man perished. He belonged to Suishinish. He 
 " was found dead at his own door after he had been evicted. His 
 "name was Alex. Matheson. There was great hardship connected 
 " with that eviction. The fires were extinguished, the houses knocked 
 "down, and the people forced out much against their will, the 
 " officers compelling them." 
 
 The Macdonald clansmen are said to have refused to fight at Cul- 
 loden because they were not placed, as was customary, in the right 
 wing, to lead ofi: as it were. Here is another instance in which the 
 Wizard should have warned the clan of what was in store for them 
 at the hands of their chief. The tourist in Skye who takes a walk 
 of a mile from his hotel at Portree, along a quaking bog road, may 
 obtain an acquaintance with the results of legalised robbery and 
 cruelty there sufficient to spoil his appetite during the rest of his 
 stay in the island. " Much food is the tillage of the poor," accord- 
 ing to the Holy Scriptures. You might here plunge a fishing-rod 
 into the peat, and count the blades of com growing thereupon for 
 the sustenance of the inhabitants. 
 
 It is entirely beyond the scope of this work to attempt any lengthy 
 or detailed account of the Scottish clearances. But the observation 
 in regard to Lord Breadalbane has a general application. The pre- 
 sent Lord Lovat is a minor, and his father was a good landlord. A 
 predecessor in the title, however, cleared Glenstrathfarrar. Else- 
 where, a Chisholm also tried to undo the evil work of a Chisholm. 
 In the same way, if Lord Tweedmouth, who is still in the flesh, had 
 his performances in Guisachan, Strathglass, unpleasantly described 
 before a Committee of the House of Commons in 1873, a "daughter 
 of the house " has long since made restitution in his behalf by her 
 friendship for the poor and the oppressed. It was stated at the time 
 that when Sir Dudley Marjoribanks, now Lord Tweedmouth, bought 
 the property, there was a population of 255 souls upon it. What 
 has become of them all ? Sir Dudley, in his examination before the 
 Committee, said that he did not evict any of the people. Bat Mr, 
 
APPENDIX. 385 
 
 MaCombie, one of the members of the Committee, havinjr observed 
 — " Then the tenants went away of their own free will," — Sir 
 Dudley replied, " I must not say so quite. I told them that when 
 "they had found other places to go to, I wished to have their 
 "farms." And he has since converted them into a deer forest. 
 Lord Abinger, another modem peer, has been stealthily evicting his 
 tenants, along the banks of the Lochy and Spean, by threes and 
 fours at a time, to escape observation, though some of their sons 
 probably fought under the command of his father in the charge of the 
 heavy brigade at Balaclava. The lands were good, through their 
 labour, and they owed no rent. Yet were they evicted, without a 
 penny compensation for their levelled houses even, to make room for 
 the deer — and the deerstalker in the person of Sir Richard Wallace. 
 Having so far disposed of the Peers, we have but little space to 
 accommodate ,tbe imitative performances of the Commoners. Yet 
 are they not quite undeserving of notice. " I will tell you how 
 Rodil was cleared," observed one John MacDiarmid, of the Island 
 of Scalpa, addressing the Crofter Commissioners ; and he proceeded 
 to relate how a Scottish landlord — whose ancestor, probably, was 
 supported in his hiding-place abroad after 1745-6 by the fidelity of 
 his clansmen — had celebrated the first anniversary of his wedding, 
 as follows : — 
 
 " When young Macleod [the laird] came home with his newly- 
 " married wife, he went about to show her the place. Twenty of 
 " the women of Rodil came out to meet them, and danced a reel 
 " before them, so glad were they to see them. By the time the year 
 " was out — twelve months from that day — those twenty women were 
 " weeping and wailing, their houses being unroofed, and their fires 
 " quenched, by orders of the estate. I could not say who was to 
 " blame, but before the year was out one hundred and fifty fires were 
 " quenched in Rodil." 
 
 Theirs was the " dance of death " surely ! There was a Cameron 
 of Lochiel who on being asked what his rental was, answered 
 proudly, " Eight hundred Camerons ; " meaning his clansmen. The 
 grandfather of the present Lochiel probably evicted an equal num- 
 ber of souls. Chisholm, another chieftain, cleared Strathglass of 
 a considerable population, though his ancestor was carried out of 
 battle at CuUoden by one of his clansmen. The widow of a Mac- 
 donnell actually superintended the unroofing of her tenants' houses 
 in Glengarry ; and, of one cargo of her victims which sailed from 
 Fort- William for'America, fifty-three souls perished on the way out 
 by an epidemic. A Colonel Gordon of Barra, in the Outer Hebrides 
 
 2 B 
 
386 APPENDIX. 
 
 had ferocious dogs sent after unwilling emigrants to pen them alonj 
 the sea-shore, where, when necessary, they were bound hand and 
 foot preparatory to being cast on board a ship. And this in the 
 nineteenth century, with the " Mother " — or rather the " Step-mothei 
 " of Free Parliaments " looking on approvingly ! 
 
 No ancestor of the present Chief Secretary for Ireland was al 
 Bannockburn, Flodden, or even CuUoden (1746); the founder of the 
 family having, it is said, only two generations back, by his industrj 
 and cleverness as a wholesale meat contractor to the navy, put tO' 
 gether sufficient money to purchase, as a bankrupt estate, the fine 
 property of Strathconon, in Ross-shire. That property he presentee 
 to his son, who, marrying ' Lord Salisbury's sister, must needs seel 
 to increase his rental in Strathconon by the expulsion of its industri- 
 ous and prosperous inhabitants, without compensation for the laboui 
 of their lives or their levelled homes, though they did not owe Mr 
 Balfour one penny rent. He bought the estate as a speculative in- 
 vestment, and, as Mr. Froude has expressed it in regard to Iris! 
 absentee landlords, probably neither he nor his son cared any more foi 
 the souls and bodies of the unfortunate Christian people thus com- 
 mitted to his charge, " than the owners of a West Indian plantatior 
 " for the herds of slaves whose backs were blistering in the cane 
 "fields." Mr. Mackenzie, in his Highland Clearances (1883), telli 
 the story of Balfour pere as follows, with his customary impartialitj 
 and moderation : — 
 
 "From 1840 to 1848 Strathconon was almost entirely cleared 
 " its ancient inhabitants to make room for sheep and deer. The 
 " property was under trustees when the harsh proceedings were 
 " commenced by the factor, Mr. Rose, a notorious Dingwall solicitor 
 " He began by taking away, first, the extensive hill-pasture, foi 
 " generations held as club-farms by the townships, thus reducing the 
 " people from a position of comfort and independence ; and secondly 
 " as we saw done elsewhere, finally evicting them from the arable 
 " portion of the strath, though they were not a single penny in arreai 
 " of rent. Coirre-Bhuic and Scard-Roy were first cleared, and given 
 " respectively, as sheep-farms to Mr. Brown, from Morayshire, anc 
 " Colin Munro, from Dingwall. Mr. Balfour, when he came of age 
 " cleared Coirre-Feola and Achadh-an-eas ; Carnach was similarly 
 " treated, while no less than twenty-seven families were evicted froii 
 " Glen-Meine alone. Baile-a-Mhuilinn and Baile-na-Creige wer« 
 "cleared in 1844, no less than twenty-four families from thes( 
 " townships removing to the neighbourhood of Knock-farrel anc 
 " Loch Ussie, above Dingwall, where they were provided witl 
 " holdings by the late John Hay Mackenzie of Croraartie, fathei 
 "of the [late] Duchess of Sutherland. A great many more founc 
 
APPENDIX. 387 
 
 " shelter on various properties in the Black Isle — 'Some at Drynic 
 " Park, Maol-Bui ; others at Kilcoy, Allangrange, Cromarty, and the 
 " Aird. It is computed that from four to five hundred souls were 
 " thus driven from Strathconon, and cast adrift on the world, in- 
 " eluding a large number of persons quite helpless, from old age, 
 " blindness, and other infirmities. The scenes were much the 
 " same as we have described in connection with other places. There 
 "is, however, one aspect of the harshness and cruelty of the 
 " fates to be recorded in the case of many of the Strathconon people, 
 " not applicable in many other cases, namely, that in most instances 
 " where they settled down and reclaimed land, they were afterwards 
 " re-evicted, and the lands brought into cultivation by themselves, 
 " taken from them, without any compensation whatever ; and given 
 " at enhanced rents to large farmers. This is specially true of those 
 " who settled down in the Black Isle, where they reclaimed a great 
 " deal of waste now making some of the best farms in that district. 
 " Next after Mr. Rose of Dingwall, the principal instrument in clear- 
 " ing Stratliconon, was tbe late James Gillandersof Highfield, already 
 " so well and unfavourably known to the reader in connection with 
 " the evictions at Glencalvie [specially reported in the Times].^ 
 
 " It may be remarked that the Strathconon evictions are worthy 
 " of note for the forcible illustration they furnish of how, by these 
 " arbitrary and unexpected removals, hardships and ruin have fre- 
 " quently been brought on families and communities who were at 
 " the time in contented and comfortable circumstances. At one time, 
 " and previous to the earlier evictions, perhaps no glen of its size in 
 " the Highlands had a larger population than Strathconon. The club 
 " farm system, once so common in the North, seems to have been 
 " peculiarly successful there. Hence a large proportion of tiie 
 " people were well to do, but when suddenly called upon to give up 
 "their hill pasture, and afterwards their arable land, and in the 
 " absence of other suitable places to settle in, the means they had 
 " very soon disappeared, and the trials and difficulties of new coii- 
 " ditions had to be encountered. As a rule, in most of these High- 
 " land evictions, the evicted were lost sight of, they having either 
 " emigrated to foreign lands or become absorbed in the ever-increasing 
 " unemployed population of the large towns. In the case of Strath- 
 " conon it was diflferent, sis has been already stated ; many of the 
 " families evicted were allowed to settle on some of the wildest 
 "unreclaimed land in the Black Isle. Their subsequent history 
 '• there, and the excellent agricultural condition into which they in 
 " after years brought their small holdings, is a standing refutation of 
 " the charge so often made against the Highland people, that they 
 " are lazy and incapable of properly cultivating the land. 
 
 " Within recent times all the tenants to the east of Drynie, as far 
 " as Craigiehow, were turned out, one by one, to make room for one 
 " large tenant, Mr. Robertson, who had no less than four centres for 
 
 ^ See page 390. 
 
388 APPENDIX. 
 
 " stackyards. A most prosperous tenantry were turned out to make 
 " room for him, and what is the end of it all 1 Mr. Robertson has come 
 " to grief as a farmer, and now holds a very humble position in the 
 " town of Inverness. The once famous names of Drum-na-marg and 
 " Moreton are now extinct, as well as the old tenantry whose fore- 
 " fathers farmed these places for generations. Nothing can better 
 " illustrate the cruel manner in which the ancient tenantry of the 
 " country have been treated than these facts ; and special comment 
 " on the evictions from Strathconon and the Black Isle, after 
 " what has been said about others of a similar character, would be 
 " superfluous." 
 
 So far Mr. Mackenzie, whose work was published long before there 
 was any thought of Mr. Arthur Balfour becoming a "saviour of 
 " society." He believes — rightly as it appears — that the number of 
 the evicted from Strathconon was largely in excess of his estimate. 
 This beautiful valley, some twenty miles long, is flanked by 80,000 
 acres of hill pasture, and previous to the evictions is said to have 
 contained thirty-one inhabited townships. The Eev. John Mac- 
 kenzie received a " call " there, signed by no less than 1,495 persons, 
 all of whom were over fourteen years of age, and shortly afterwards 
 began to build a church capable of accommodating 1,800 souls. 
 But the trustees of Mr. Balfour, and later Mr. Balfour himself, 
 coming into power, they cleared out the inhabitants of twenty-one 
 townships to make room for big sheep farmers. In the course of 
 the clearance many of the usual deeds of cruelty and ill-usage are 
 alleged to have been perpetrated, of which no more than a few can 
 be mentioned here. One Duncan Beaton, an old man, for instance, 
 was taken out of his own house, and thrown into a hovel — sabhal 
 cool — without food or fuel, where he died. John Cameron was put 
 on a slaod — a rude kind of sledge — and dragged to a lonely bothy at 
 Blamabee, where he, also, was left to die. In the same place there 
 was a very old woman, who, putting her back to the wall, obstinately 
 refused to move out of her house even after her sons had yielded to 
 " superior force" and left the premises. What was to be done ? In 
 Ireland, in the reign of Balfour Jils, the Royal Irish Constabulary 
 would help the emergency men to throttle or brain her. In Scot- 
 land, between 1840 and 1848, there was a more peaceful but not less 
 efficacious process of ejectment in vogue. The Balfour-Gillanders 
 crowbar brigade betook themselves outside 'to the end of the house 
 where the wind blew strongest, and fired it ! 
 
 Mr. Balfour's family records must have greatly facilitated the 
 process of eviction in Ireland. The Scottish emergency men 
 
APPENDIX. 389 
 
 were well supplied with every modern appliance necessary to 
 their murderous calling. The "couples" of the doomed houses 
 were nearly sawn through, so that if any poor wretch ven- 
 tured to crawl inside for shelter, it was at the risk of having the 
 "cabers" to fall upon and crush him. Again, in 1853, at the 
 time of the Knoydart evictions in Skye by the Glengarry trustees, 
 when several persons were too ill to be removed, the evictors pressed 
 for summary expulsion notwithstanding, having taken the precau- 
 tion to secure the attendance of an emergency doctor — provided, 
 doubtless, with a galvanic battery — to meet such eventualities. 
 As is not uncommonly the case, however, the cupidity which 
 inspired this savage work failed in its object. A number of the big 
 sheep farmers were bankrupt in succession, until it became advisable 
 to convert seven-eighths of the Strathconon property into a deer forest. 
 The whole is now laid out so as to give the following singular results, 
 as shown by the Valuation KoU for the County of Ross, 1889-90. 
 With the exception of some servants engaged in the shootings and 
 remaining sheep farms, the present population (and valuation) are as 
 follows : — 
 
 £> s. 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 12 15 
 
 
 
 130 5 
 
 
 
 295 
 
 
 
 I minister 
 
 5 labourers' rents amounting to . 
 16 crofters' {£2, los. to £1$) amounting to 
 4 farmers' {£$0, £70, £7$, and ;£ioo) . 
 
 Thus a total number of 25 families have a rent value of £4^6 
 only for the present Mr. Balfour, while the rest of his property is 
 disposed of amongst : — 
 
 2 absentee sheep farmers at a rental of 
 
 4 absentee sportsmen „ 
 
 I absentee landlord „ 
 
 I factor (;£io) and i absentee cottar {£^) 
 
 Total . . ^3,301 o o 
 
 We have here, then, honest, reproductive industry accommodated 
 with a rent value of 12 per cent, only, while sheep and sport 
 monopolise not less than 88 per cent, of the Chief Secretary's 
 £3,747 ^ 7^^^ o^* of Strathconon. It is scarcely necessary to add 
 that the unfortunate crofters occupy but the poorest part of the 
 strath, and having no hill pasture, they are more or less dependent 
 for their support on the sportsmen. But where are the 1,495 persong 
 who signed Mr. Mackenzie's "call," or the 1,800 souls for whom 
 
 £ 
 766 
 
 s. 
 
 
 d. 
 
 
 2,225 
 
 
 
 
 
 295 
 
 
 
 
 
 IS 
 
 
 
 
 
390 APPENDIX. 
 
 he provided church accommodation in that lovely valley 1 The 
 man who is in possession of their inheritance should know. The 
 curse of Balfour, and the vengeance of Gillanders, pursued them 
 from Strathconon to the Black Isle, and thence, in many cases, 
 across the Atlantic, there too often resulting in hardship, disease, 
 and death. The survivors, wlio would at one time have shed their 
 blood like water for queen and country, are now chiefly to be found 
 in other lands expatriated for evermore, singing in mournful cadence 
 to a favourite Scottish air : — 
 
 " Fnwtt the dim shieling on the misty island. 
 Mountains divide us and a world of seas, 
 But still our hearts are true, our hearts are Highland, 
 
 And in our dreams we view the Hebrides. 
 Tall are these mountains, and these woods are grand, 
 But we are exiled from our father's land." 
 
 The Times — aye the Times — to its lasting honour be it told, shall 
 inform us presently of the probable number of the outraged victims 
 of those precious twin exterminators, for whom honest Hugh Latimer, 
 in a more plain-speaking age, would have predicted, as their just 
 portion, " the greedy pit of the hell-burning fire." 
 
 Many other Scottish proprietors might be mentioned liere in con- 
 nection with the clearance system. In some cases, liowever, as in 
 Lewis, Uist, &c., where the people are at war with their landlords, 
 one may be well excused shrinking from the responsibility of even 
 naming such proprietors in the circumstances. Great cruelties were 
 perpetrated, in 1845, at Glencalvie, Ross-shire, where the evicted had 
 to retire to the churchyard, to find the only shelter obtainable in 
 their native land, no persons daring to succour them, under a threat 
 of receiving similar treatment themselves. A Special Commissioner 
 sent down by the Times, writing from Ardgay, near Tain, Ross-shire, 
 on the 20th of May in that year, said : — 
 
 " Those who remember the misery and destitution into which large 
 " masses of the population were tlirown by the systematic ' Clear- 
 " ances ' (as they are here called) carried on in Sutherlandshire some 
 " twenty years ago, under the direction and on the estate of the late 
 " Marcliioness of Staff'ord — those who have not forgotten to what 
 " an extent the ancient ties which bound clansmen to their chiefs 
 " were then torn asunder — will regret to learn the heartless source 
 " with all its sequences of misery, of destitution, and of crime, is 
 " again being resorted to in Ross-shire. Amongst an imaginative 
 "people like the Highlanders, who, poetic from dwelling amongst 
 " wild and romantic scenery, shut out from the world and clinging 
 
APPENDIX. 391 
 
 " to the traditions of the past, it requires little, with fair treatment, 
 " to make them almost idolise their neritor. They would spend the 
 " last drop of their blood in his service. But this feeling of respectful 
 " attachment to the landowners, which money cannot buy, is fast 
 " passing away. This change is not without cause ; and perhaps if 
 " the dark- deeds of calculating ' feelosophy ' transacted through the 
 " instrumentality of factors in some of these lonely glens ; if the 
 " almost inconceivable misery and hopeless destitution in which, for 
 " the expected acquisition of a few pounds, hundreds of peaceable 
 " and generally industrious and contented peasants are driven out 
 " from the means of self-support to become wanderers and starving 
 " beggars, and in which a brave and valuable population is destroyed 
 " — are exposed to the gaze of the world, general indignation and 
 " disgust may effect what moral obligations and humanity cannot. 
 " One of these clearances is about to take place in the parish of 
 " Kincardine, from which I now write ; and throughout the whole 
 " district it has created the strongest feeling of indignation. This 
 " parish is divided into two districts, each of great extent ; one is 
 " called the parliamentary district of Croick. The length of this 
 " district is about twenty miles, with a breadth of from ten to fifteen 
 " miles. It extends auiongst the most remote and unfrequented 
 " parts of the country, consisting chiefly of hills of heather and rock, 
 " peopled only in a few straths and glens. This district was for- 
 " merly thickly peopled ; but one of those clearances niany years 
 " ago nearly swept away the population, and now the whole number 
 " of its inhabitants amounts, I am told, to only 370 souls. These are 
 " divided into three straths or glens, and live in a strath called 
 " Amatnatua, another strath called Greenyard, and in Glencalvie. 
 " It is the inhabitants of Glencalvie, in number ninety people, whose 
 *' turn it is now to be turned out of their homes, all at once, the 
 " aged and the helpless as well as the young and strong ; nearly the 
 " whole of them without hope or prospect for the future. The pro- 
 " prietor of this glen is Major Charles Bobertson of Kindeace, who 
 " is at present out with his regiment in Australia ; and his factor or 
 " steward who acts for him in his absence is Mr. James Gillanders 
 " of Highfield Cottage, near Dingwall. Glencalvie is situated about 
 " twenty-five miles from Tain, eastward. Bleak rough hills, whose 
 " surface is almost all rock and heather, closed in on all sides, leaving 
 " in the valley a gentle declivity of arable land of a very poor de- 
 " scription, dotted over by cairns of stone and rock, not, at the utmost 
 " computation, of more than fifteen to twenty acres in extent. For 
 " this piece of indifferent laud with a right of pasturage on the hills 
 " impinging upon it — and on which, if it were not a fact that sheep 
 " do live, you would not credit that they could live, so entirely does 
 " it seem devoid of vegetation beyond the brown heather, whilst 
 " its rocky nature makes it dangerous and impossible even for a sheep 
 "walk — the almost incredible rent of £^^, los. has been paid. I 
 " am convinced that for the same land no farmer in England would 
 • ' S^^^ jC^S ^^ '^^ utmost. And for what are all these people to be 
 
392 APPENDIX. 
 
 " reduced from comfort to beggary ? For what is this virtuous and 
 " contented community to be scattered 1 I confess I can find no 
 " answer. It is said that the factor would rather have one tenant 
 " than many, as it saves him trouble ! But so long as the rent is 
 " punctually paid as this has been, it is contrary to all experience to 
 " suppose that one large tenant will pay more rent than many small 
 " ones, or that a sheep walk can pay more rent than cultivated land. 
 " Let me add that so far from the clearance at Glencalvie being 
 " a solitary instance in this neighbourhood, it is one of many. The 
 " tenants of Newmore, near Tain, who, I am told, amount to sixteen 
 " families, are to be weeded out (as they express it here) on the 25th, 
 " by the same Mr. Gillanders. The same factor manages the Strath- 
 " conon estate [the property of Mr. Balfour, father of the present 
 " Chief Secretary for Ireland], about thirty miles from Newmore, 
 "from which, during the last four years, some hundreds of families 
 " have been weeded out. The Government Church of that district, 
 " built eighteen years ago, to meet the necessities of the population, 
 " is now almost unnecessary from the want of population. At Black 
 " Isle, near Dingwall, the same agent is pursuing the same course, 
 " and so strong is the feeling of the poor Highlanders at these 
 " outrageous proceedings, so far as they are concerned, wholly 
 " unwarranted from any cause whatever, that I am informed on the 
 " best authority, and by those who go amongst them and hear what 
 " they say, that it is owing to the influence of religion alone that 
 " they refrain from breaking out into open and turbulent resistance 
 " of the law." 
 
 The Massacre of the Rosses. 
 
 " Say, can thy soul of honour brook, 
 On the unequal strife to look." 
 
 A terrible affray took place on another property of Robertson 
 some nine years later (March 1854), in the course of which more 
 than twenty respectable women suffered brutal ill-treatment at the 
 hands of double the number of drunken policemen, acting under the 
 direction of the same Balfour-Robertson factor, Gillanders, when 
 attempting to defend their humble homes against robbery and 
 violence. It is commonly described in Scottish agrarian literature as 
 The Massacre of the Rosses, and reads exactly like those experiments 
 in maintaining "law and order," which are of such frequent occur- 
 rence in Ireland at this time under the present Mr. Balfour. In a 
 Sermon for the Times, the Rev. Richard Hibbs, of the Episcopal 
 Church, Edinburgh, referring to these evictions, says : — 
 
 " Take first the awful proof of how far in oppression men can go 
 " — men highly educated and largely gifted in every way — property, 
 " talents, all ; for the most part, indeed, they are so-called noblemen. 
 
APPENDIX. 393 
 
 "What, then, are they doing in the Highland districts, according 
 " to the testimony of a learned professor in this city 1 Why, depopu- 
 " lating those districts in order to make room for red deer. And 
 " how t by buying off the cottars, and giving them money to emigrate. 
 " Not at all, but by starving them out ; by rendering them absolutely 
 " incapable of procuring subsistence for themselves and families ; 
 " for they first take away from them their apportionments of poor 
 " lands, although they may have paid their rents ; and if that don't 
 " suffice to eradicate from their hearts that love of the soil on which 
 " they have been born and bred — a love which the great Proprietor 
 " of all has manifestly implanted in our nature — why, then, these 
 " inhuman landlords, who are far more merciful to their very beasts, 
 " take away from these poor cottars the very roofs above their 
 " defenceless heads, and expose them, worn down with age, and desti- 
 " tute of everything, to tlie inclemencies of a northern sky ; and 
 " this, forsooth, because they must have plenty of room for their 
 " dogs and deer. For plentiful instances of the most wanton bar- 
 " barities under this head we need only point to the Knoydart evic- 
 " tions. Here were perpetrated such enormities as might well have 
 " caused the very sun to hide his face at noon-day. 
 
 " I hold in my hand," Mr. Hibbs continued, "a little work entitled 
 " 7'he Massacre of the Rosses, which has passed into the second 
 " edition. The author, Mr. Donald Ross — a gentleman whom all 
 " who feel sympathy for the down-trodden and oppressed must highly 
 " esteem. What a humiliating picture of the barbarity and cruelty 
 " of fallen humanity does this little book present ! The reader, 
 " utterly appalled by its horrifying statements, finds it difficult to 
 " retain the recollection that he is perusing the history of his own 
 " times, and country too. He would fain yield himself to the tempt- 
 " ing illusion that the ruthless atrocities which are depicted were 
 " enacted in a fabulous period, in ages long past ; or at all events, 
 " if it be contemporaneous history, that the scene of such heartrend- 
 " ing cruelties, the perpetrators of which were regardless alike of the 
 " innocency of infancy and the helplessness of old age, is some far dis- 
 " tant, and as yet not merely unchristianised but wholly savage and 
 " uncivilised region of our globe. But alas ! it is Scotland, in the latter 
 " half of the nineteenth century, of which he treats. One feature of 
 " the heart-harrowing case is the shocking and barbarous cruelty that 
 " was practised on this occasion upon the female portion of the evicted 
 " clan. Mr. D. Ross, in a letter addressed to the Right Hon. the Lord 
 " Advocate, Edinburgh, dated April 19, 1854, thus writes in reference 
 " to one of those clearances and evictions which had just then taken 
 " place, under the authority of a certain sheriff of the district, and 
 " by means of a body of policemen as executioners : — 'The feeling on 
 " this subject, not only in the district, but in Sutherlandshire and 
 " Ross-shire is, among the great majority of the people, one of universal 
 " condemnation of the sheriff's reckless conduct, and of indignation 
 " and disgust at the brutality of the policemen. Such, indeed, was 
 " the sad havoc made on the females [endeavouring to prevent service 
 
394 APPENDIX. 
 
 " of notices to quit] on the banks of the Carron, on tlie memorahle 
 "31st March last, that pools of blood were on the ground — that the 
 " grass and earth were dyed red with it — that the dogs of the dis- 
 " trict came and licked up the blood ; and at last, such was the state of 
 " feeling of parties who went from a distance to see the field, that a 
 " parly (it is understood by order or instructions from headquarters) 
 " actually harrowed the ground during the night to hide the blood ! ' 
 " The affair at Greenyard," Mr. Hibbs added, " on the morning of 
 "the 31st March last, is not calculated to inspire much love of 
 " country, or rouse the martial spirit of the already ill-used High- 
 '• landers. The savage treatment of innocent females on that morn- 
 " ing, by an enraged body of police, throws the Sinope butchery into 
 " the shade ; for the Ross-shire Hayniius have shown themselves 
 " more cruel and more bloodthirsty than the Austrian women- 
 " fioggers. What could these poor men and women — with their 
 " wounds, and scars, and broken bones, and disjointed arms, stretched 
 " on beds of sickness, or moving on crutches, the result of tlie brutal 
 " treatment of them by the police at Greenyard — have to dread from 
 " the invasion of Scotland by Russia ? " 
 
 The parallel official brutalities occurring in Scotland and Ireland 
 are remarkable. At Belmullet, in the latter country, a crowd of 
 peasant men, women, and children was fired into in 1881, by 
 drunken policemen, under precisely similar circumstances ; with the 
 result that several persons were killed or wounded, including a 
 beautiful peasant girl stabbed to death. In company with Mr. 
 Frank Bussy, an English correspondent of the Central News, and a 
 clever young Irish journalist named Moore, the present writer inves- 
 tigated the circumstances on the spot. When the dying girl lay on 
 the cabin floor weltering in her blood, attended by an imbecile 
 brother, in their blindness the police actually arrested the latter for 
 this mark of filial devotion, on the pretence that he was resisting the 
 law. In their fury, too, they threw upon the fire a little pig which 
 bad run into the cabin terrified by the firing, thus nearly setting the 
 premises in a blaze. A coroner's jury brought in a verdict of murder 
 against the police, but, as is usual in such cases, the Government of 
 the day got the verdict quashed. Had the case gone before a superior 
 court, however, the result would have been precisely the same. The 
 jury would have been packed to the exclusion of even a sympathetic 
 Quaker therefrom ; the surest way to further legal preferment in 
 Ireland being to show cleverness in manipulating a jury panel 
 so as to secure a verdict for the crown, as the present Attorney- 
 General has found to his advantage. The bench, not the dock, is 
 the reward of such unscrupulousness there. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 39S 
 
 SOLITUDINEM FaCIUNT, FoRESTAM APPELLANT. 
 
 The Highland Sportsman (third edition, 1884), a publication now 
 defunct, having been killed, probably, by its excessive candour in 
 printing such dangerous matter, supplies the following interesting 
 statistical tables for the information of the political economist and 
 philanthropist in the year of our Lord 1889 : — 
 
 Area, Population, ValvMion, dec. 
 
 of the Scottish Highlands. 
 
 County. 
 
 Area in 
 Acres. 
 
 Acres 
 Cultivated. 
 
 Estimated 
 
 Area under 
 
 Deer. 
 
 Population, 
 
 Valuation. 
 
 Estimai;ed 
 
 Value of 
 
 Shootings 
 
 Let. 
 
 Aberdeen .. .. 
 
 Argyll 
 
 IJauff 
 
 Caitliness .. .. 
 Dumbartou . . 
 
 Klgin 
 
 Forf.ir 
 
 Inverness . . . . 
 Kincardine . . 
 
 Nairn 
 
 Peith 
 
 Ross and Crom- 
 arty 
 
 Sutherland . . 
 
 Total .... 
 
 1,260,624 
 
 2,083,126 
 439,219 
 455.708 
 172,677 
 340,000 
 569,840 
 
 2,723.501 
 248,284 
 137.500 
 
 1,664,690 
 
 2,016,375 
 1,207,188 
 
 573,189 
 120,522 
 
 157.353 
 100,853 
 
 41,877 
 104,149 
 
 235.613 
 114,986 
 116,912 
 24,494 
 338,845 
 
 122,248 
 23,126 
 
 155.000 
 
 165,000 
 
 30,000 
 
 50,000 
 
 1,000 
 
 51,000 
 710,000 
 
 97,000 
 
 760,000 
 136,000 
 
 268,365 
 76,604 
 61,313 
 39.859 
 78,182 
 44.250 
 
 266,020 
 
 90.546 
 
 35,465 
 
 8,447 
 
 128,884 
 
 74,467 
 22,376 
 
 ;£i,348,372 
 517.926 
 241,486 
 160,342 
 471,700 
 228,051 
 
 1,499,703 
 431.326 
 
 ; 269,070 
 
 43.729 
 1,111,262 
 
 320,530 
 108,887 
 
 ;£3I,O0O 
 34,000 
 
 7,500 
 11,000 
 
 4,000 
 
 . 12,000 
 
 16,500 
 
 91,000 
 
 6,000 
 
 2,100 
 75.000 
 
 .5-9.000 
 25,000 
 
 13.318,733 
 
 2,074,167 
 
 2,155,000 
 
 1,194,788 
 
 .<J6,752,393 
 
 ;£374,ioo 
 
 
 The Deer Forests, their Acreage, Proprietors, dbc. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Estimated 
 
 Name of Forest. 
 
 County. 
 
 Proprietor. 
 
 Tenant. 
 
 Extent 
 in Acres. 
 
 Glenmuick .... 
 
 Aberdeen 
 
 J. T. Mackenzie, Esq. 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 20,000 
 
 Glentimar . . . . 
 
 
 Marquis of Huntly, K.T. 
 
 W.C.Brooks, Esq., M.P. 
 
 20,000 
 
 Invercauld . . . . 
 
 
 Colonel Farquharson 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 30,000 
 
 Mar 
 
 
 Duke of Fife, K.T. .. 
 
 
 60,000 
 
 Achdaliew . . . . 
 
 Argyll .. 
 
 Loohiel, M.P 
 
 R. A. French Biewster, 
 Esq., MP 
 
 12,000 
 
 Ardtornish . . . . 
 
 
 J.Valentine Smith, Esq. 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 15,000 
 
 Blackmount 
 
 
 Marquis of Breadalbane 
 
 Daniel Cooper, Esq. . . 
 
 70,000 
 
 Conaglen . . . . 
 
 
 Earl of Morton . . . . 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 19,000 
 
 Dalness 
 
 11 
 
 Dugald Stuart, Esq. . . 
 
 
 6,000 
 
 Jura 
 
 )» 
 
 J.Campbell, Esq. of Jui-a 
 
 Henry Evans, Esq. . . 
 
 27,000 
 
 Glenfiddich.. .. 
 
 Banff.. .. 
 
 Duke of Richmond and 
 
 
 
 
 
 Gordon, K.G 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 15.000 
 
 Glenavon . . . . 
 
 
 
 Lord tt. Gros veno r,M . P. l 
 
 • 15,000 
 
 Langwell . . . . 
 
 Caithness 
 
 Duke of Portland . . . . 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 50 000 
 
 Bachnagaini 
 
 Forfar . . 
 
 J. T. Mackenzie, Esq. 
 
 f, •• 
 
 ■ See 
 Glenmuick 
 
 1 Now Lord iitalbridge (see page 399). 
 
396 APPENDIX. 
 
 The Deer Forests, their Acreage, Proprietors, dec. — continued. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Estimated 
 
 Name of Forest. 
 
 County. 
 
 Proprietor. 
 
 Tenant. 
 
 Extent 
 in Acres. 
 
 9,i6i 
 
 Caanlochan . . . . 
 
 Forfar . . 
 
 EarlofAirlie 
 
 J. Clifton Brown, Esq. 
 
 Gleucally . . . . 
 
 
 SirJ.G.S. Kinloch, Bt. 
 
 Colonel Laurie . . . . 
 
 Siooo 
 
 GlendoU 
 
 1 
 
 J. Gurney, Esq 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 6,ooo 
 
 Invermark . . . . 
 
 )» 
 
 Earl of Calhousie . . . . 
 
 Sir R. B. Harvey, Bt., 
 M.P 
 
 2S,000 
 
 Abernethy . . . . 
 
 Inverness 
 
 Earl of Seafield .... 
 
 Sir Henry AUsopp, Bt. 
 
 25,000 
 
 Achnacarry .... 
 
 
 Lochiel, M.P 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 6,000 
 
 Affaric 
 
 
 The Chisholm 
 
 Lord Tweedmouth . . 
 
 15,000 
 
 Amhuiiinsuidh 
 
 
 Repr. of late Sir E. H. 
 
 
 
 (Hairls) 
 
 
 Scott, Bt 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 42,000 
 
 Ardverikie . . . . 
 
 
 Sir J. Ramsdeu, Bt., 
 
 
 
 
 
 MP 
 
 
 28,000 
 
 Arisaig 
 
 
 Mrs. Nicholson .. .. 
 
 Viscount Kilcoursie . . 
 
 3,000 
 
 Balmacaan . . . . 
 
 
 Earl of Seafield .... 
 
 Bradley Martin, Esq. 
 
 28,000 
 
 Ueiialder . . . . 
 
 
 Sir J. Ramsden, Bt., 
 
 
 
 
 " 
 
 M.P .. 
 
 Lord Manners . . . 
 
 30,000 
 
 Ceanacroc . . . . 
 
 
 The Grant Trustees .. 
 
 Sir H. B. Meux, Bt. . . 
 
 33,000 
 
 Coriiehollie . . . . 
 
 
 Lord Abinger 
 
 Sir R. Walhice 
 
 9,000 
 
 Craskie 
 
 
 The Chisholm 
 
 W. L. Winans, Esq. . . 
 
 10,000 
 
 FaMiakyle . . . . 
 
 
 »j »» 
 
 
 15,000 
 
 Gaick 
 
 
 Sir Geo. Macpbersou 
 
 
 
 
 
 Grant, M.P 
 
 John Hargreaves, Esq. 
 
 25,000 
 
 Glencannich . . 
 
 
 The Chisholm 
 
 W. L. Winans, Esq. . . 
 
 12,000 
 
 Glendoe 
 
 
 Lord Lovat 
 
 G. H. Thompson, Esq. 
 
 2,200 
 
 Gleufesbie . . . . 
 
 )j 
 
 Sir Geo. Macpbersou 
 Grant, M.P., and The 
 
 
 
 
 
 Mackintosh 
 
 Sir Charles Mordaunt 
 
 39,000 
 
 Guisachan . . . . 
 
 
 Lord Tweodmouth . . 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 14,000 
 
 Glengarry . . . . 
 
 „ 
 
 Trustees, E. Ellice, Esq. 
 
 Mrs. Ellice 
 
 14,000 
 
 Glen Klngie . . 
 
 
 Lochiel, M.P 
 
 SirM.A.Bass.Bt.M.P. 
 
 16,000 
 
 Gleumore .... 
 
 
 Duke of Richmond and 
 
 Sir Henry Allsopp, Bt., 
 
 
 
 
 Gordon 
 
 M.P .. 
 
 13,000 
 
 Glenstratbfarar 
 
 " 
 
 Lord Lovat . . 
 
 W. L. Winans, Esq. . . 
 
 50,000 
 
 Glen Quoich . . 
 
 
 Trustees, E. Ellice, Esq. 
 
 Sir M. A. Bass, Bt., M.P. 
 
 33.000 
 
 Glenvormoriston 
 
 
 The Grant Trustees . . 
 
 A. Dennistoun, Esq. . . 
 
 22,000 
 
 Kinloch and Ben- 
 
 
 Mrs.CameronCampbell, 
 
 A. F. Thistlethwayte, 
 
 
 evrlech . . . . 
 Kiiirara and part 
 
 »» 
 
 and Lochiel, M.P. .. 
 The Mackintosh and 
 
 Esq 
 
 40,000 
 
 
 of Glenfeshie. . 
 
 
 Sir G. Macpherson- 
 
 Reprs. of late Earl of 
 
 
 
 
 Grant, Bt., M.P. .. 
 
 Stamford 
 
 8,500 
 
 Kinveachie . . . . 
 
 
 Earl of Seafield .... 
 
 SirGrevilleSmythe.Bt. 
 
 10,000 
 
 Knoydart . . . . 
 
 
 John Baird, Esq 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 18,000 
 
 Luskentyre .... 
 
 
 Dowager - Countess of 
 
 
 
 
 
 Dunmore 
 
 Earl of Dunmore . . . . 
 
 15,000 
 
 Macdonald 
 
 
 
 
 
 (Skye) 
 
 
 Lord Macdonald .. .. 
 
 C. T. Kettlewell, Esq. 
 
 40,000 
 
 Morar 
 
 it 
 
 Lord L«vat 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 1,600 
 
 Portclair and 
 
 
 
 
 
 Auchterawe . . 
 
 
 )i f* 
 
 F. T. Rufford, Esq. .. 
 
 15,000 
 
 Rothiemurchus 
 
 
 Sir J. P. Grant 
 
 Sir C. Lampsou, Bt. . . 
 
 18,000 
 
 Urchany 
 
 
 Lord Lovat 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 4.300 
 
 Athole 
 
 Perth.. .. 
 
 Duke of Athole, K.T. . . 
 
 
 
 50,000 
 
 Glenartney . . . . 
 
 »» 
 
 Baroness Willoughby 
 d'Eresby 
 
 Tjord Aveland 
 
 15,000 
 
 Glenbruar . . . . 
 
 ,j 
 
 Dukeof Athole, K.T... 
 
 W. 0. Dalgleish, Esq. 
 
 8,000 
 
 Fealar 
 
 >> 
 
 fi j» »» •• 
 
 Messrs. Cunningbame 
 & Merry 
 
 14,000 
 
 Rannocb 
 
 If 
 
 Sir Robert Menzies, Bt. 
 
 Earls Brownlow and 
 Cowper 
 
 10,000 
 
 Achanault . . . . 
 
 Ross and 
 
 CharlesM'Kenzie.Esq., 
 
 
 
 
 Cromarty 
 
 of Kilcoy 
 
 A. Bicrnold, Esq 
 
 5.200 
 
 11,000 
 
 Acbnasheen .. 
 
 II 1 
 
 Colonel Brown, M.P. . . 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 The Deer Forests, their Acreage, Proprietors, <fcc. — continued. 
 
 397 
 
 
 
 
 
 Estimated 
 
 Name of Forest. 
 
 County. 
 
 Proprietor. 
 
 Tenant. 
 
 Extent 
 in Acres. 
 
 Achnashellach, 
 
 Ross and 
 
 
 
 
 Oouliii, &c. . . 
 
 Cromarty 
 
 Lord Wimbome . . . . 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 50,000 
 
 Aline 
 
 If 
 
 Lady Matheson of Lews 
 
 W. H. Brancker, Esq. 
 
 12,000 
 
 Alladale 
 
 It 
 
 Reprs. lateSirC. W-A. 
 
 
 
 
 
 Ross, Bt 
 
 William Weiri Esq. . . 
 ■Robert Loder, Esq. . . 
 
 27,000 
 931 
 
 Amat 
 
 11 
 
 George Ross, Rsri 
 
 Applecross . . . . 
 
 It 
 
 Lord Middleton . . . . 
 
 J. A. Piatt, Esq 
 
 50,000 
 
 Attarlale 
 
 
 Sir A. Matheson, Bt., 
 
 
 
 
 
 M.P .. 
 
 Major Cresswell . . . . 
 
 14,000 
 
 Ben Damph and 
 
 
 
 
 
 Torridon . . . . 
 
 t> 
 
 Duncan Darrocli, Esq. 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 28,000 
 
 Ben Wyvis .... 
 
 If 
 
 CoUn G. Ross, Esq. . . 
 
 Edward Rossand James 
 Eckersley, Esqrs. . . 
 
 13.500 
 
 Braemore . . . . 
 
 1* 
 
 John Fowler, Esq. . . 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 25,000 
 
 Clunie 
 
 
 J. E. B. Baillie, Esq. . . 
 
 J. Spender Clay, Esq. 
 
 12,600 
 
 Corryhallie . . . . 
 
 II 
 
 G. F. Gilandei-8 
 
 P. T. and W. Shool- 
 bred. Esq 
 
 6,605 
 
 Coulmore . . . . 
 
 J, 
 
 Duchess of Sutherland 
 
 Unlet In 1883 
 
 30,000 
 
 Deauich 
 
 II 
 
 Reprs. of late Sir C. W. 
 
 
 
 
 
 A. Ross, Bt 
 
 J. C. Williams, Esq. .. 
 
 15,000 
 
 Diebidale .... 
 
 II 
 
 Sir A. Matheson, Bt., 
 
 
 
 
 
 M.P. 
 
 Robert Loder, Esq. . . 
 
 10,000 
 
 Dundonnell.. .. 
 
 II 
 
 H. Mackenzie, Esq. . . 
 
 Major Piatt 
 
 20,000 
 
 Fannich 
 
 ti 
 
 t» II 
 
 Lord OrmathWiiite . . 
 
 14,000 
 
 Flowerdale . . . . 
 
 
 Sir Kenneth S. Mac- 
 
 
 
 
 
 kenzie, Bt 
 
 S. W. Clowes, Esq. . . 
 
 7,500 
 
 Glassletter . . . . 
 
 
 TheOhisholra 
 
 W. L. Winans, Esq. . . 
 
 7,000 
 
 Glencalvie . . . . 
 
 II 
 
 Charles Robertson, Esq. 
 
 R. Loder, Esq 
 
 4,600 
 
 Glenshieldaig . . 
 
 II 
 
 C. J. Murrayi Esq. . . 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 13,000 
 
 Glomach 
 
 II 
 
 SirA.Mathe8on.Bt.,M.P. 
 
 W. L. Winans, Esq. . . 
 
 8,000 
 
 Inchbae, <fec. . . 
 
 II 
 
 Col. D. H. C. R. David- 
 
 
 
 
 
 son 
 
 Colonel Leyland . . . . 
 
 30,000 
 
 Inverlael .. .. 
 
 ti 
 
 Sir A. G. R. Mackenzie, 
 
 
 
 
 
 Bt 
 
 A. H. Tenant, Esq. . . 
 
 14,000 
 
 Kildermorie 
 
 II 
 
 R. C. M. Ferguson, E.<!q. 
 
 J. S. Clay, Esq 
 
 21,000 
 
 EiUilan, be. 
 
 
 Sir A. Matheson, Bt., 
 
 
 
 
 
 M.P 
 
 W. L. Winans, Esq. . . 
 
 lOiOOO 
 
 Kinlochewe 
 
 ,, 
 
 Sir Kenneth S. Mac- 
 
 
 
 
 
 kenzie, Bt 
 
 A. H. Brown, Esq. . . 
 
 24,200 
 
 Kinloehluichart 
 
 II 
 
 Lady Asliburton . . . . 
 
 Proprietrix 
 
 23,000 
 
 Kintail 
 
 II 
 
 J. T. Mackenzie, Esq. 
 
 W. L. Winans, Esq. . . 
 
 11,000 
 
 Letterewe and 
 
 
 
 
 
 Fisherfield . . 
 
 II 
 
 P. Llot Bankes, Esq. . . 
 
 C. Perkins, Esq 
 
 48,000 
 
 Luibnadamph . . 
 
 II 
 
 TheChisholm 
 
 W. L. Winans, Esq. . . 
 
 550 
 
 Monar 
 
 II 
 
 John Stirling, Esq. . . 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 20,000 
 
 Morsgail 
 
 II 
 
 Lady Matheson of Lews 
 
 H. H. Jones, Esq. 
 
 36,000 
 
 Park 
 
 
 It II 
 
 Unletini883 
 
 S5.000 
 
 Pat and Riochau 
 
 J 
 
 Sir A. Matheson, Bt., 
 
 
 
 
 
 M.P. .. 
 
 W. L. Winans, Esq. . . 
 
 7iSoo 
 
 Rhidorroch . . . . 
 
 ,, 
 
 Duchess of Sutherland 
 
 Captain Starkey . . . . 
 
 25,000 
 
 Shieldaig .... 
 
 II 
 
 Sir Kenneth S. Mac- 
 
 John Beatson,Esq. , and 
 
 
 
 
 kenzie, Bt. 
 
 Marquis of Bristol .. 
 
 6,000 
 
 Strathconon . . 
 
 II 
 
 A.J.Balfour,Esq.,M.P. 
 
 E. C. Guinness, Esq. . . 
 
 27,500 
 
 Strath vaich;.. .. 
 
 II 
 
 Sir A. G. R. Mackenzie, 
 Bt., and Thos. Mac- 
 
 
 
 
 
 kenzie, Esq., of Ord. 
 
 Frank Morrison, Esq. 
 
 22,000 
 
 Ben Armin . . . . 
 
 Sutherland 
 
 Duke of Sutherland, 
 
 
 
 
 
 K.G 
 
 H. ChapUn, Esq., M.P. 
 
 22,600 
 
 Dunrobin . . . . 
 
 II 
 
 II It 
 
 Proprietor 
 
 11,200 
 
 Glencanisp .. .. 
 
 II 
 
 It II 
 
 Lord Cloncurry . . . . 
 
 35,000 
 
 Reay 
 
 It 
 
 II It 
 
 Duke of Westminster, 
 K.G 
 
 70,000 
 
 
398 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 The same admirable Highland Sportsman, now, alas ! out of print, 
 also supplies the following interesting list : — 
 
 The Great Landowners of the Highlands. 
 
 Duke of Sutherland, K.G. 
 Marquis of Breadalbane 
 Lady Matheson, of Lews . 
 
 Earl of Seafield 
 
 Duke of Hichmond and Gordon, K.O. 
 
 Duke of Fife, K.T 
 
 Sir Alexander Matheson, Bart., M.P. 
 Duke of Athole, K.T, 
 
 Extent owned 
 in Acres. 
 .1,326,453 
 ■ 438.358 
 . 424,560 
 
 305.930 
 269,292 
 234,220 
 220,663 
 201,640 
 
 Lord Lovat 181,791 
 
 Duke of Argryll, K.T 175.114 
 
 Lady Ross, of Balnagown . . . 165,445 
 Sir Kenneth Mackenzie, Burt. . . 164,680 
 Norman Macleod, Esq. of Macleod . 141,679 
 Sir John Ramsden, Bart., M.P. . 138,000 
 Earl of Drtlhousie .... 136,602 
 
 Lord Macdoiuild 129,919 
 
 Donald Cameron, Esq. of Lochiel, M.P. 125,574 
 Sir G. Macpherson-Grant, Bart., M.P. 125,443 
 A. D. Mackintosh, Esq. of Mackintosh 124,181 
 J. S. Chisholm, Esq. of Chisholm . 113,255 
 liady Gordon Cathcait, of Cluny . 111,169 
 Col. Farquharson, of Invercauld . 107,800 
 Mrs. Ellice, of Glengarry . . . 99,545 
 Sir Robert Menzies, Bart. . . . 98,284 
 Evan Baillie, Esq. of Doclifour . 92,640 
 Duke of Portland .... 90,677 
 Sir J. W. P. Campbell Orde, Bait. . 85,745 
 Marquis of Huntly, K.T. . . . 85,560 
 Mrs. Cameron Campbell, of Fassifern 83,500 
 Sir J. G. Tolleraache Sinclair, Bart., M.P. 78,053 
 Glenmoriston Trustees . . . 77,567 
 Lady Willoughby d'Eresby . . 76,837 
 Earl of Dunmore .... 74,000 
 •T. T. Mackenzie, Esq. of Kintall . 72,429 
 A. J. Balfour, Esq. of Strathconon, M.P. 71,778 
 
 Earl of Moray 71. m 
 
 Colonel Walker, of Inverlair . . 70,940 
 
 Earl of Airlie 69.875 
 
 Mrs. Llot Banke.', of Letterewe . 69,800 
 Sir James Colquhoin, Bart. . . 67,041 
 Charles Morrison, Esq. of Islay . 67,000 
 John Baird, Esq. of Knoydart . . 67,000 
 H. Mackenzie, Esq. of Dundonnell . 64,355 
 
 Lord Middleton 63,000 
 
 Earl of Aberdeen .... 62,422 
 
 Lord Wimbome 60,000 
 
 Heir, late Sir E. H. Scott, Bart. . 59,125 
 W. S. Thomson Sinclair, Esq. . . 57,757 
 J. J. Dalgleish, Esq. of Ardnamurchan 57,400 
 R. C. Munro Ferguson, Esq. of Novar 45,484 
 James Campbell, Esq. of Jura . . 55,000 
 Sir R. S. Riddell, Bart, of Strontian 54,418 
 John Ramsay, Esq. of Kildalton, M.P. 54,250 
 G. F. W. Callander, Esq. of Ardkinglas 51,670 
 
 Earl of Cawdor 50,119 
 
 Earl of Morton 49.814 
 
 John Fowler, Esq. of Braemore . 47,148 
 Capt. W. Fraser, of Kilmuir . . 46,142 
 Sir Thos. Gladstone, Bart. . . 45,062 
 Sir A. G. R. Mackenzie, Bart, of Coul 43,189 
 Cluny Macpherson, C.B. . . . 42,000 
 A. T. Maclean; Esq. of ArdgoWer . 40,000 
 Lord Abinger . . . . . 39,414 
 
 Extent owned 
 in Acres. 
 Arch. A. L. Campbell, Esq. of Lochnell 39,000 
 
 C. S. Home Drummond Moray, Esq 
 Sir W. Gordon Cumming, Bart. 
 Appin Trust .... 
 Sir Robert Anstruther, Bart. . 
 Col. Davidson of Tulloch . 
 C. G. Campbell, Esq. of Stonefield 
 Sir John Macleod of Glendale . 
 
 F. Campbell, Esq. of Rum and Tong; 
 Sir A. D. Stewart, Bart. . 
 
 C. J. Murray, Esq. of Lnch Can-on 
 Duncan Darroch, Esq. of Torridon 
 Earl of Mansfield, K.T. 
 Col. D. R. Williamson, of Lawers 
 J. B. SherifiF, Esq. of Kingairloch 
 John Bullough, Esq. of Meggemie 
 Sir Chas. J. Forbes, Bart, of Newe 
 Lady Louisa Ashburton 
 Miss Astley df Arisaig 
 
 G. Duff Dunbar, Esq. of Hempriggs 
 M. G. Maclaine, Esq. of Lochlniy 
 
 C. J. B. Macpherson, Esq. of Belleville 26,773 
 
 E. C. Sutherland, Esq. of Skibo 
 
 E«rl of Kintore .... 
 
 Col. Macdonald of St. Martins . 
 
 T. H. G. Newton, Esq., and Rev. H 
 
 Newton of Glencreenesdale . 
 H. A. Grant, Esq. of Wester Elchies 
 Curators of Kilcoy 
 John Campbell, Esq. of Strachur 
 Sir John P. Grant, Bart, of Bothie 
 
 murchus, K.C.B. 
 Lt.-Col. C. G. Gardyne, of Glenl'orsa 
 Mrs. Robertson, sen., of Struan 
 J. A. Macdonald, Esq. of Glenaladale 
 Alexander Brodie, Esq. of Lethen 
 Lt.-Col. Ferguson of Pitfour 
 A. C. Guthrie, Esq. of Duart 
 Earl of Strathmore 
 Earl of Southesk, K.T. 
 J. C. Cuniiighame, Esq. of Foyers 
 David Carnegie, Esq. of Stronvar 
 Thos. Valentine Smith, Esq. 
 
 Acharanach .... 
 Donald Ogilvj-, Esq. of Clova . 
 T. Mackenzie, Esq. of Ord 
 Major-General Macdonald, of Dun, 
 
 alister .... 
 Colonel L. Macpherson, of Gleutruim 
 Alex. Fordyce, Esq. of Brucklay 
 James Small. Esq. of Dirnanean 
 A. T. F. Fraser, K-^q. of AbertarfT 
 Mrs. Mary Cameron, of Barcaldino 
 
 • of 
 
 38.797 
 38.499 
 37,345 
 36.597 
 36,130 
 35,186 
 
 3S,022 
 
 35.000 
 
 33.274 
 32,450 
 32,000 
 
 31.197 
 30,094 
 30,000 
 30,000 
 29,238 
 28,556 
 27,960 
 26,880 
 26,843 
 
 26,500 
 25.433 
 25.403 
 
 25,000 
 24,674 
 24,658 
 24.593 
 
 24,457 
 24,078 
 24,000 
 24,000 
 23,682 
 
 23.150 
 23,012 
 22,870 
 22,659 
 22.506 
 22,205 
 
 22,050 
 21,893 
 21,229 
 
 21,000 
 21,000 
 20,949 
 20,454 
 20,063 
 20,000 
 
 These returns do not include the land.^ 
 possessed by ma:iy of the great landowners 
 of the Highlands in other parts of the United 
 Kingdom, and in a number of instances it 
 gives only a moiety of their actual posses- 
 sions. Take, for example, the Duke of Port- 
 land, who is returned as holding 50,677 acres 
 in the Highlands, but whose total acreage is 
 171,307. 
 
APPENDIX. 399 
 
 That riclily - endowed young duke, whose predecessors in the 
 title are said, like Sir ToUemache Sinclair, Bart., to have indulged 
 not a little in the sport of eviction in Caithness, lately warned his 
 Scottish tenantry against unpatriotic " professional agitators," who 
 are only seeking the " disintegration of the empire." The Duke of 
 Westminster, a few years before, speaking at a meeting in Chester, 
 evoked cheers and laughter by stretching out a rather shrunken 
 arm to emphasise the fact that he proposed assisting the Almighty 
 with this attenuated emblem of British power in defeating Mr. 
 Gladstone's wicked machinations against the State. Pray take a 
 peep behind the scenes, and you will find from the foregoing 
 tables that the Duke of Portland owns 50,000 acres and the Duke 
 of Westminster rents 120,000 acres of deer forest in Caithness and 
 Sutherland respectively ; fit sport for LucuUus surely. Look again, 
 and you will find Mr. Winans, an American, renting 130,550 acres, 
 though one might imagine him contented with trotting horses in New 
 York ; as one might imagine the Messrs. F. T. and W. Shoolbreds 
 sufficiently amused by the " running deer " for a target in the back 
 gardens of Tottenham Court Road. Look once more, and you will 
 find Mr.- Arthur Balfour, Chief Secretary for Ireland, letting 27,500 
 acres of deer forest in Strathconon, depopulated by his father, to Sir 
 Cecil Guinness, the great Dublin brewer. Messrs. Bass and Allsopp, 
 Meux and Perkins, are there too, of course. And it is but in accord- 
 ance with the fitness of things that untitled Robertsons and Gillanders 
 should figure in the same list with an unaristocratic Balfour ; for 
 they are neighbours and have associations and instincts in common 
 with the Argylls and Sutherlands and Ramsdens, who have broken 
 the hearts or drawn tears from the eyes of the poor. But there is 
 just one thing that is intolerable, which makes one lose all patience, 
 and that is the effrontery of Lords Hartington and Salisbury in 
 talking of maintaining law and order in Ireland, to avert the "disin- 
 *' tegration of the empire." In reality, we know that they are but 
 anxiously engaged in a series of brutal efforts to trample out the 
 fire in that country, to prevent its wildly spreading to the Scotch 
 heather, which encircles the sweet pastures in the almost de- 
 populated straths and glens of Scotland. Did ever a meaner motive 
 animate the minds of men than that which is laid bare in these 
 statistical tables as inspiring the truculent Camarilla which now 
 fills the Council Chamber of the Sovereign 1 Look where you will 
 through the list, and it reveals the same vulgar lesson. Lord R. 
 Grosvenor, now Lord Stalbridge (the Duke of Westminster's brother), 
 must needs have 1 5,000 acres of a deer forest. He cannot live with- 
 
400 APPENDIX. 
 
 out it. And so, to put down agrarian agitation, and stifle inquiry 
 into the deerstalker's title to depopulate a kingdom for the purpose 
 of securing him six weeks' annual shooting, he subscribes to the 
 fund for suborning the Pigott forgeries. 
 
 The earlier evictors of the population in Scotland who drove the 
 peasants from the cultivable straths and glens to the sea-shore, or 
 beyond it, in order to make room for sheep, pleaded the public ad- 
 vantage as their excuse. There would be more food and clothing, 
 they said, but the true effect of their system is shown in the fact that 
 the amount spent for the relief of the poor increased from less than 
 ;^3C)o,ooo in 1846 to more than ;£9cx3,ooo in 1881 ; while in the same 
 period the population only increased from 2,770,000 to 3,627,000 ; 
 80 that pauperism has grown about nine times faster than population. 
 And now it is no longer even with sheep we have to deal, as the 
 enemies of mankind, but with wild animals having not even a fleece to 
 their backs. Ajax was undoubtedly mad when he mistook a harm- 
 less flock of sheep for his enemies. But Scotchmen will never prove 
 their sanity till they think likewise in regard to the deer, and drive 
 them into the sea, as /eroE naturae. Mr. Russell Wallace, in his work 
 already quoted, says : — 
 
 " The facts [in regard to Highland clearances] will possess, I feel 
 " sure, for many Englishmen an almost startling novelty ; the tale 
 " of oppression and cruelty they reveal reads like one of those hideous 
 " stories peculiar to the dark ages, rather than a simple record of 
 "events happening in our own land and within the memory of the 
 " present generation. For a parallel to this monstrous power of the 
 " landowner, under which life and property are entirely at his mercy, 
 " we must go back to mediaeval, or to the days when serfdom not 
 " having been abolished, the Russian noble was armed with despotic 
 " authority ; while the more pitiful results of this landlord tyranny, 
 " the wide devastation of cultivated lands, the heartless burning of 
 " houses, the reckless creation of pauperism and misery, out of well- 
 " being and contentment, could only be expected under the^rule of 
 " Turkish Sultans or greedy and cruel Pashas. Yet these cruel deeds 
 " have been perpetrated in one of the most beautiful portions of our 
 " native land. They are not the work of uncultured barbarians or 
 " of fanatic Moslems, but of so-called civilised and Christian men ; 
 " and — worst feature of all — they are not due to any high-handed 
 " exercise of power beyond the law, but are strictly legal, are in 
 " many cases the acts of members of the Legislature itself, and, not- 
 " withstanding that they have been repeatedly made known for at 
 " least sixty years past, no steps have been taken, or are even pro- 
 " posed to be taken, oy the Legislature to prevent them for the future ! 
 " Surely it is time that the people of England should declare that such 
 " things shall no longer exist — that the rich shall no longer have such 
 
APPENDIX. 401 
 
 " legal power to oppress the poor — that the land shall be free for all 
 " who are willing to pay a fair value for its use— and, as this is not 
 " possible under landlordism, that landlordism shall be abolished. 
 
 " The fact that a whole population could be driven from their 
 " homes like cattle at the will of a landlord, and that the Govem- 
 " ment which taxed them, and for whom they freely shed their blood 
 " on the battlefield, neither would nor could protect them from cruel 
 " interference with their personal liberty, is surely the most con- 
 " vincing and most absolute demonstration of the incompatibility of 
 " landlordism with the elementary rights of a free people. As if, 
 " however, to prove this still more clearly, and to show how absolutely 
 " incompatible with the well-being of the community is modern 
 " landlordism, the great lords of the soil in Scotland have for the 
 " last twenty years or more been systematically laying waste enor- 
 " mous areas of land for purposes of sport, just as the Norman Con- 
 " queror laid waste the area of the New Forest for similar purposes. 
 " At the present time more than two million acres of Scottish soil 
 " are devoted to the preservation of deer alone — an area larger than 
 " the entire cotinties of Kent and Surrey combined. Glen Tilt Forest 
 " includes ico,ooo acres ; the Black Mount is sixty miles in circuni- 
 " fereuce ; and Ben Alder Forest is fifteen miles long by seven broad. 
 " On many of these forests there is the finest pasture in Scotland, 
 " while the valleys would support a considerable population of small 
 " farmers, yet all this land is devoted to the sport of the wealthy, 
 " farms being destroyed, houses pulled down, and men, sheep, and 
 " cattle all banished to create a wilderness for the deer-stalkers !" 
 
 Here is a specimen of the way in which the landlords of Scotland 
 and Ireland (of whom a companion list will be found elsewhere) ^ 
 treated their tenantry when forcing them to quit the much-loved 
 land of their birth and their affection. It is taken from the Quebec 
 Times of 1851 : — 
 
 " "We noticed in our last the deplorable condition of the 600 
 " paupers who were sent to this country from the Kilrush Union 
 " flreland].^ We have to-day a still more dismal picture to draw. 
 "Many of our readers may not be aware that there lives such a 
 " personage as Colonel Gordon, proprietor of large estates in South 
 " Uist and Barra, in the Highlands of Scotland ; we are sorry to be 
 " obliged to introduce him to their notice, under circumstances which 
 " will not give them a very favourable opinion of his character and 
 " heart It appears that his tenants on the above-mentioned estates 
 " were on the verge of starvation, and had probably become an eye- 
 " sore to the gallant Colonel ! He decided on shipping them to 
 " America. What they were to do there ? was a question he never 
 " put to his conscience. Once landed in Canada, he had no further 
 " concern about them. Up to last week, some 1,100 souls from his 
 
 1 At page 360. ^ See page 268. 
 
 2 
 
403 APPENDIX. 
 
 " estates had landed at Quebec, and begged their way to Upper 
 " Canada ; when in the summer season, liaving only a daily morsel 
 " of food to procure, they probably escaped the extreme misery which 
 " seems to be the lot of those who followed them. 
 
 " On their arrival here, they voluntarily made and signed the fol- 
 " lowing statement : — ' We, the undersigned passengers 'per Admiral, 
 " from Stornoway, in the Highlands of Scotland, do solemnly depose 
 '• to the following facts : — That Colonel Gordon is proprietor of 
 " estates in So'uth Uist and Barra ; that among many hundreds of 
 "tenants and cottars whom he has sent this season from his estates 
 " to Canada, he gave directions to his factor, Mr. Fleming, of Cluny 
 " Castle, Aberdeenshire, to ship on board of the above-named vessel 
 " a number of nearly 4;o of said tenants and cottars, from the estate 
 " in Barra ; that accordingly, a great majority of these people, among 
 " whom were the undersigned, proceeded voluntarily to embark on 
 " board the Admiral, at Loch Boisdale, on or about the nth August 
 " 1851 ; but that several of the people who were intended to be 
 " shipped for this port, Quebec, refused to proceed on board, and, 
 " in fact, absconded from their homes to avoid the embarkation. 
 ■' Whereupon Mr. Fleming gave orders to a policeman, who was 
 " accompanied by the ground-oflicer of the estate in Barra, and some 
 " constables, to pursue the people, who had run away, among the 
 " mountains ; which they did, and succeeded in capturing about 
 " twenty from the mountains and islands in the neighbourhood ; 
 " but only came with the oflBcers on an attempt being made to hand- 
 " cuflf them ; and that some who ran away were not brought back, 
 " in consequence of which four families at least have been divided, 
 " some having come in the ships to Quebec, while the other members 
 " of the same families are left in the Highlands. 
 
 " * The undersigned further declare, that those who voluntarily 
 " embarked, did so under promises to the effect, that Colonel Gordon 
 " would detray their passage to Quebec ; that the Government Emi- 
 "gration Agent there woidd send the whole party free to Upper 
 " Canada, where, on arrival, the Government agents would give them 
 " work, and furthermore grant them land on certain conditions. 
 
 " ' The undersigned finally declare, that they are now landed in 
 " Quebec so destitute, that if immediate relief be not afforded them, 
 " and continued until they are settled in employment, the whole will 
 " be liable to perish with want. 
 
 (Signed) " ' Hector Lamont, 
 
 and seventy others.' 
 
 " This is a beautiful picture ! Had the scene been laid in Eussia 
 " or Turkey, the barbarity of the proceeding wonld have shocked the 
 " nerves of the reader ; but when it happens in Britain, emphatically 
 " the land of liberty, where every man's house, even the hut of the 
 " poorest, is said to be his castle, the expulsion of these unfortunate 
 " creatures from their homes — the man-hunt with policemen and 
 " bailiffs— the violent separation of families — the parent torn from 
 
APPENDIX, 403 
 
 " the child, the mother from her daughter, the infamous trickery 
 " practised on those who did embark — the abandonment of the aged, 
 " the infirm, women, and tender children, in a foreign land — forms 
 " a tableau which cannot be dwelt on for an instant without horror. 
 "Words cannot depict the atrocity of the deed. For cruelty less 
 " savage, the slave-dealers of the South have been held up to the 
 " execration of the world. And if, as men, the sufferings of these 
 " our fellow-creatures find sympathy in our hearts, as Canadians 
 " their wrongs concern us more dearly. The fifteen hundred souls 
 " whom Colonel Gordon has sent to Quebec this season, have all 
 " been supported for the past week at least, and conveyed to Upper 
 " Canada at the expense of the colony, and on their arrival in Toronto 
 " and Hamilton, the greater number have been dependent on the 
 " charity of the benevolent for a morsel of bread. Four hundred 
 " are in the river at present, and will arrive in a day or two, making 
 " a total of nearly 2,000 of Colonel Gordon's tenants and cottars whom 
 " the province will have to support. The winter is at hand, work 
 " is becoming scarce in Upper Canada. Where are these people to 
 "find food?" 
 
 Of course, as might have been expected, many of the Highlanders 
 shipped for Canada never reached land. Some of the Highland 
 emigrant-ships have been described as " rotten." Pieces of the wood 
 might be picked out of their sides, it was said. The Eev. Finlay 
 Cook, of Keay, observing two such vessels leaving Thurso Harbour 
 on one occasion, laden with the usual human cargo, exclaimed pro- 
 phetically, " There go two more funeral processions ! " Both went 
 to the bottom of the Atlantic, with every soul on board. Mr. 
 Alexander Mackenzie, the author of the History of the Highland 
 Clearances, already quoted, has described, in the course of a series of 
 graphic letters addressed to the Aberdeen Free Press, during a tour 
 made by him in Canada some years ago, how a third Highland 
 emigraTit-ship took fire by neglect on the voyage between Quebec 
 and Montreal, when, of 400 souls on board — men, women, and 
 children — all but seventy-six were either burnt alive or more merci- 
 fully drowned. In one of his speeches a year or two back, Mr. John 
 Morley described the fate of the Irish under the present regime as 
 "Manacles or Manitoba." But the Scottish landlords often left out 
 the " or," and provided their unhappy victims, after pursuit by dogs 
 — as at Barra, Rassay, and elsewhere — with Manacles and Manitoba. 
 Nor can it be pretended that this unique system of compulsory 
 emigration only found favour under a Tory administration, since it 
 is impossible to imagine that Liberal governments were entirely ex- 
 cluded from office throughout the long dismal period now under 
 review. Indeed, it must in strict truth be added further, in regard 
 to this question of the land in Scotland, that there is not a pin to- 
 
404 APPENDIX. 
 
 choose between the cruelty of Whig and Tory landlords. Between 
 them they have impartially crucified the Queen's subjects in the 
 Highlands, and dried up the sources of Her Majesty's naval and 
 military strength there. With similar impartiality they should be 
 brought to strict account before the bar of public opinion, and 
 imflinchingly required to make restitution for their wrong-doing 
 to the State as well as to the people. As for those whom they 
 have banished, who are still alive, there is little hope of their 
 returning : — 
 
 " Where are they now ? Tell us where are thy sons and thy daughters, 
 
 Scotland ! sad mother ! no more in thy bosom they dwell ; 
 Far, far away they have found a new home o'er the waters, 
 
 Yearning for thee with a love that no language can tell. 
 Nimrods and hunters are now lords of mountain and f(*rest, 
 
 Men but encumber the soil where their forefathers trod ; 
 The' for their country they fought when its need was the sorest, 
 
 Forth they must wander, their hope not in man, but in God." 
 
 What the Highlanders have done to deserve such 
 
 Treatment. 
 
 We are dealing with a race of men of whom the sovereign herself 
 never speaks except with pride and admiration. This is how the 
 Queen refers to them and their beautiful country in her Leaves from 
 the Journal of our Life in the Highlands. Her Majesty is departing 
 for the South : — 
 
 " At a quarter past eight o'clock we started, and were very, very 
 " sorry to leave Blair and the dear Highlands ! Every little trifle 
 " and every little spot I had become attached to ; our life of quiet 
 " and liberty, everything was so pleasant, and all the Highlanders 
 " and people who went with us I had got to like so much. Oh ! the 
 " dear hills, it mad^ me very sad to leave them behind ! " 
 
 And then on reaching England her Majesty writes with that 
 passionate feeling which mountainous countries are apt to inspire : — 
 
 " The English coast appeared terribly flat. Lord Aberdeen was 
 " quite touched when I told him I was so attached to the dear, dear 
 " Highlands, and missed the fine hills so much. There is a great 
 " peculiarity about the Highlands and the Highlanders ; and they 
 " are such a chivalrous, fine, active people. Our stay among them was 
 " so delightful. Independently of the beautiful scenery, there was 
 " a quiet, a retirement, a wildness, a liberty, and a solitude that had 
 " Buch a charm to us." 
 
APPENDIX. 405 
 
 On one occasion, in October 1858, the Queen wished that the 
 Koyal Family " might be snowed up and unable to move " from 
 the Highlands, such was her reluctance to go South. Finally, the 
 Prince Consort testifies to some more of the characteristic virtues 
 of her Highland subjects as follows : — 
 
 " We were always in the habit of conversing with the Highlanders, 
 " witli whom one comes so much in contact in the Highlands. The 
 " Prince highly appreciated the good-breeding, simplicity, and intelli- 
 " gence, which makes it so pleasant and eveu instructive to talk to 
 " tliem." 
 
 Such is the manner in which our gracious sovereign and her illustri- 
 ous and deservedly lamented husband habitually spoke and thought 
 of the Highlanders. Dr. Norman MacLeod, a man long honoured with 
 the friendship of the Queen, tells us, in his Reminiscences of a High- 
 land Parish, as a proof of the sterling qualities and high character of 
 the old Highland tacksmen (or gentlemen farmers), as well as the 
 smaller occupiers, that during the wars of the French Kevolution, 
 the Isle of Skye alonfe contributed to the army 21 lieutenant- and 
 major-generals, 48 lieutenant-colonels, 600 commissioned oflScers, 
 and 10,000 soldiers. How many officers and men does the Isle of 
 Skye now send to swell the ranks of England's defenders? The 
 contribution has practically ceased to exist, thanks to the unre- 
 strained action of the Highland landowners. Again, in his valuable 
 evidence before the Crofter Commission of 1883, Mr. Colin Chisholm, 
 of Inverness, supplied a list of the names, of military officers alone, 
 born and reared in Glencannich, one of the American Winans 
 forests in Strathglass, comprising 3 colonels, i major, 2 captains, 
 5 lieutenants, and 6 ensigns. The Glen is now reduced to absolute 
 desolation. Who forgets the " thin red line " in the kilt, described 
 by Howard Eussell in the Times, which exhibited an undaunted 
 front to the Russian foe at Balaclava 1 Who can forget their com- 
 panions in glory there, — the Scots Greys, the Enniskillens, and 
 the 4th Eoyal Irish ? Of the man Avho commanded the cavalry in 
 the Crimea, some painful reminiscences will be found at page 95 
 preceding. But one of the most shameful facts connected with those 
 wholesale clearances in Scotland and Ireland is this undeniable one, 
 that when our soldiers (and sailors) returned home, whether from the 
 Peninsula, India, the Crimea, or elsewhere, after fighting the battles 
 of England, they, alas ! too often found that the roof-tree which 
 formerly sheltered their aged parents, or their own wives and little 
 ones, had been pulled down and cast into the flames in their absence ! 
 
4o6 APPENDIX. 
 
 One cannot pen the supplementary fact, which is equally undeniable, 
 •without emotion — that the great Duke of Wellington and the Parlia- 
 ment of England looked on encouragingly while this atrocious exer- 
 cise of the rights of property was in fell operation in both kingdoms. 
 The Duke had his town mansion at Hyde Park Corner, and his 
 magnificent estate at Strathfieldsaye in an English county, gratefully 
 bestowed upon him by Parliament. But what did Parliament do — 
 what did the Duke of Wellington, when Prime Minister, see done— 
 for the soldier who had placed the laurels on his brow ? Alas ! — 
 nothing ; — 
 
 " For him no more the blazing hearth shall burn, 
 
 Or busy house-wife ply her evening care ; 
 No children run to lisp their sire's return, 
 
 Or climb his knees, the envied kiss to share." 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte w^as once the ogre of the English nursery ; 
 but Napoleon Bonaparte never rewarded his soldiers or punished 
 his subjects in this manner. The Emperor of Kussia is the ogre of 
 the present day ; but the Emperor of Russia, despot though he be, 
 does not reward his soldiers or punish his subjects so. It is reserved 
 for the boasted Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland thus to 
 trample upon the rights and privileges and happiness of the subjects 
 and soldiers of the Queen. The following passages on the military 
 aspects of the question are from the pen of a gallant and accom- 
 plished soldier. Sir William Butler, K.C.B. : — 
 
 " That other Celtic race, that soldier breed, whose home was in 
 "the rugged mountains north of the Spey, was expiring beneath the 
 " remorseless tyranny of a monstrous law — the Highlands of Scot- 
 " land were being cleared of men. If any stranger, unacquainted 
 " with our civilisation, had witnessed the cruel scenes enacted in our 
 " Highland glens in the latter half of the last century, and the first 
 " years of the present one, he would doubtless have asked in his sim- 
 " plicity, ' What have these people done against the State ? What 
 " law have they outraged 1 What class have they wronged, that they 
 " should thus suffer a penalty so dreadful?' And the answer could only 
 " have been, 'They have done no wrong. Yearly they have sent forth 
 " their thousands from these glens to follow the battle-flag of Britain 
 " wherever it flew.' It was a Highland rear-lorn hope that covered 
 " the broken wreck of Cumberland's army after the disastrous dav of 
 " Fontenoy, when more British soldiers lay dead upon the field than 
 " fell at Waterloo itself. It was another Highland regiment that 
 " scaled the rock face over the St. Lawrence, and first formed a line 
 " in the September dawn on the level sward of Abraham. It was a 
 " Highland line that broke the power of the Maharatta hordes and 
 " gave Wellington his maiden victory at Assaye, Thirty-four bat- 
 
APPENDIX. 407 
 
 " talioiis marched from these glens to fipht in America, Germany, 
 " and India ere the eighteenth century had run its course. And yet, 
 " while abroad over the eartli, Highlanders were the first in assault 
 " and last in retreat, their lowly homes in far-away glens were being 
 " dragged down, and the wail of women and the cry of children went 
 " out upon the same breeze that bore too upon its wings the scent of 
 " heather, the freshness of gorss blossom, and the myriad sweets that 
 " made the lowly life of Scotland's peasantry blest with health and 
 " happiness. There are crimes done in the dark hours of strife, and 
 " amid the blaze of man's passions, that sometimes make the blood 
 "run cold as we read them ; but they are not so terrible in their 
 " red-handed vengeance as the cold malignity of a civilised law, which 
 *• permits a brave and noble race to disappear by the operation of its 
 " legalised injustice. To convert the Highland glens into vast wastes, 
 " untenanted by human beings ; to drive fortli to distant and inhos- 
 " pitable shores men whose forefathers had held their own among 
 " these hills despite Roman legion, Saxon archer, or Norman chivalry, 
 " men whose sons died freely for England's honour through those 
 " wide dominions their bravery had won for her — such was the work 
 " of laws framed in a cruel mockery of name by tiie Commons of 
 " England. The very war in which so many of their sons were 
 " bearing part was indirectly the cause of the expulsion of the High- 
 '• landers from their homes. Sheep and oxen became of unprecedented 
 " value through the increased demand for food-supplies, and the 
 " cottage neath whose roof-tree half a dozen soldier's sons had sprung 
 " to life had to give place to a waste wherein a Hfghland ox could 
 *' browse in freedom. 
 
 " Those who imagine that such destruction of men could not be 
 " repeated in our own day are but little acquainted with the real 
 " working of the law of landlord and tenant. It has been repeated 
 " [in Ireland] in our own time in all save the disappearance of a 
 " soldier race : but that final disappearance was not prevented by any 
 " law framed to avert such a catastrophe, but rather because an outraged 
 " and infuriated peasantry had, in many instances, summarily avenged 
 " the wrong which the law had permitted. . . . [But] a dreadful 
 " famine came to the aid of the peasant clearers in Ireland. It 
 " became easier to throw down a cottage while its inmates were 
 " weakened by hunger ; the Irish peasant could be starved into the 
 " capitulation of the hovel which, fully potato fed, he would have 
 " resisted to the death. Has the nation ever realised the full meaning 
 " of the failure to carry the Redan on the 8th of September ? ' The 
 " old soldiers behaved admirably, and stood by their oflBcers to the last ; 
 " but the young,' writes an onlooker. ' were deficient in discipline and 
 *' in confidence in their officers.' He might have added more ; they 
 " were the sweepings of the large, crowded towns ; they were in fact 
 " the British infantry only in name, and yet less than a year of war 
 " had sufficed to effect this terrible change. It is said that as the 
 " first rush was made upon the salient at the Redan three old soldiers 
 " of the 41st Regiment entered with Colonel Windham. The three 
 
4o8 APPENDIX. 
 
 "were named Haitnady, Kenned j-, and Pat Maliony ; the last, a 
 " gigantic grenadier, was shot dead as he entered, crying — ' Come 
 "on, boys, come on !' There was more in the dying words of this 
 '• Celtic grenadier than the mere outburst of liis heroic heart. The 
 " garret-bred * boys ' would not go on. It is in moments such as this 
 " that the cabin on the hillside, the shieling in the Highland glen, 
 " become towers of strength to the nation that possesses them. It is 
 " in moments such as this, that between the peasant-born soldier and 
 " the man who first saw the light in a crowded ' court ;' between the 
 " coster and the cottar there comes that gulf which measures the 
 " distance between victory and defeat — Alma and Inkerman on the 
 "one side ; the Redan on the i8th of June and 8th September on 
 " the other." i 
 
 Contrasts. 
 
 " Land of my sires ! what mortal hand 
 Can e'er untie the filial band 
 That knits me to thy rugged strand ! " 
 
 Is there elsewhere on the habitable globe such scenery as that 
 which, on every side, encompasses the tourist in the Scottish High- 
 lands ? Alas ! its very loveliness does but deepen the contrast, born 
 of oppression and misgovemment, found there too ; for there is not 
 on God's earth a sadder country than Scotland, except it be Ireland. 
 The misery so often to be met with there reminds one of the picture 
 drawn by La BruySre of the condition of the agricultural classes in 
 France before the era of the great Revolution. Along the railway 
 route between Dingwall and Stromferry majestic mountains assume 
 the form of inverted cones, as they are reflected in the deep lakes, 
 clear as crystal. You may trace their geological strata thus from 
 the carriage windows, and not even Lord Wimborne's huge deer 
 forest can shut out that exquisite feature in the scenery. But where 
 are the people ? Few are to be seen save " gentlemen's gentlemen " 
 and gillies, who, imitating the very peculiar morals as well as the 
 manners of some of their masters, .ire universally said to be no 
 acquisition to any virtuous Highland district in which they settle. 
 Yet not the least picturesque glimpses on this route even are those 
 furnished by the poor crofters, where they are still permitted to 
 exist. Their miniature farms often lend warmth and colour to the 
 landscape, as numbers of them are observed together in a cluster. 
 Whether on the mountain-side, or on the low-lying moorland be- 
 neath, their too scanty little crops present, in the distance, the 
 appearance of a variegated patchwork quilt, every inch of space being 
 filled in to demonstrate indefatigable toil and labour on the part of 
 
 ^ Macmillan's Magazine, 1878. 
 
APPENDIX, 409 
 
 those wortby and industrious men. Again, above the lovely little 
 bay of Uig, on the plateau of Kilmuir, which is styled the " Granary 
 " of Skye," you behold, thirty miles away, tlie Hebridean islands of 
 Uist, Harris, and Benbecula, like clouds floating on the summer sea. 
 In the distance there is visible to the naked eye one of the scenes of 
 Charles Edward's hairbreadth escapes ; while, looking to the right, 
 with the aid of an opera-glass, is clearly distinguishable, as it glistens 
 in the bright sunshine, the monument to Flora Macdonald — " a name 
 '•that should be mentioned with honour, if courage jmd fidelity be 
 "virtues," Johnson observes, in his Journey to the Hebrides. But 
 the countrx"-, far as the eye can reach, and beyond, is given up to 
 sheep and bullocks. You may clearly trace the former dwellings of 
 the evicted human population which they have supplanted, though 
 no more than the foundations are now visible, peeping through the 
 rich herbage. Lord Macdonald's deer forest is elsewhere in the 
 island, and as deer, more dainty than sheep, require richer pasture, 
 there should be some good land there also. The entire district has 
 been made desolate as that which "marches" on both sides of the 
 Caledonian Railway between Perth and Stirling, or the country of 
 Athol and Breadalbane, which recalls the vast solitudes created by 
 Lucan and Sligo in Ireland. 
 
 Those islands opposite, shrouded in beautiful clouds of varying 
 colours, present a romantic appearance in the dazzling light, but, 
 like the island of Skye, they also are only the homes of wretchedness 
 and physical degradation. Beneath us, along the sea-shore, upon 
 land of the worst possible quality, are to be found the remains of a 
 population which have not only suffered eviction from the inland 
 glens and valleys, but have suffered re-eviction in many cases, and 
 in some instances have been evicted even a third time. It is literally 
 a case of the survival of the fittest. Their crofts are commonly two 
 acres in extent, for which they pay £^, 2S. 6d. rent, — that is, for 
 land cultivated from a state of nature, by themselves, the cabins 
 reared by their own unaided hands, and "the run for a cow." 
 Within fifty miles of London you may get good land, well cul- 
 tivated, for half the money. Driven on to the sea-shore from an 
 inland district, they must either quickly strive to learn to fish and 
 run the risk of being drowned, or perish of starvation on account 
 of their ignorance of maritime industry. Many of them have been 
 drowned, and the widows around Uig have been numerous in con- 
 sequence. The grown-up son of one went mad during the process 
 of re-eviction, and is now in a lunatic asylum. Poor fellow ! had 
 he been a student of Grotius, or a reader of the Times, or even 
 
4IO APPENDIX. 
 
 acquainted with the learned, legaXDigest of his countryman, Macallan,^ 
 he would probably have put his back to the wall, and defended the 
 mother that bore him, though the struggle cost the landlord his life. 
 That mother bore something else, too, as' a matter of daily labour. 
 She had perhaps to go miles for a basket of peat, or mayhap a 
 bundle of seaweed, which she carried home on her back like a 
 beast of burden. Time was, and not so long ago, when persons 
 of her class were provided with a little horse to do such work, 
 and with cows and sheep besides. The mountains and lakes are 
 romantic in their grandeur, but the cabins of the poor are often 
 veritable caves of misery — without chimneys or windows — requiring 
 no further description here. By the courtesy of a young Presbyterian 
 minister, who acted as our Gaelic interpreter for the occasion, we 
 gained admission to some of them. The poor people are justly 
 suspicious of professional politicians, and stoutly resent any un- 
 warrantable intrusion upon their unmerited poverty. But having 
 given them assurance that we are neither Lowland photographers 
 nor Unionist members of Parliament come to exploit the inhabi- 
 tants for our personal or party gain, and that we do not belong 
 to any League, Union, Covenant, or Association, in the three 
 kingdoms, we are at once put upon a footing of friendship and even 
 hospitality. There are few men about, many of them being absent 
 elsewhere engaged in the desperate effort to eke out a bare subsist- 
 ence. One poor man, eighty-two years of age, from whose wearied 
 eyes the light of day has all but faded, is trying to break stones on 
 the high road — shall we say it ? — to heaven. 
 
 The waters everywhere teem with splendid fish, but the peasant 
 dare not, as formerly, whip a stream or cast a net in a lake to capture 
 one.* The streams and the lakes are reserved for Cockney sportsmen, 
 willing to pay handsomely for the privilege of fishing in them. 
 Indeed, in some instances, the peasant can fish in the sea only on 
 certain well-defined conditions, one being that he gives a portion of 
 his harvest to the landlord, or sells him the whole at the land- 
 lord's own price. The same with his cattle, as you shall see. As 
 for the deer, the tines on the stag's head are the only things in ani- 
 mated nature deserving the attention of the Highland proprietor, 
 who would not be sorry if the Black Death visited this part of the 
 kingdom of Scotland so long as it spared them. Sir Walter Scott 
 
 ^ See pages 8o and 87. 
 
 * See companion Irish picture, page 134. 
 
APPENDIX. 4" 
 
 remembered once hearing a chief of the old school say, in sorrow 
 and indignation : — 
 
 " When I was a yonng man, the point upon which every Highland 
 " gentleman rested his importance, was the number of Men whom 
 " his estate could support ; the question next rested on the amount 
 "of his stock of Black Cattle ; it is now come to respect the 
 " number of Sheep ; and I suppose our posterity will inquire how 
 " many rats or mice an estate will produce." ^ 
 
 Well, it has not come to the smaller vermin yet, the deer being in 
 possession. But this by the way. Here are children M'ith beautiful 
 features, so modest and shy that they only speak in monosyllables 
 and whispers. Their little frocks do not always reach to their 
 knees, and those poor bare legs and naked feet are pink as shrimps 
 under tlie combined influence of storm and sunshine. The crofters' 
 Act of Parliament contemplated their fathers obtaining more if not 
 BuflBciently good land to live upon. But the landlords deride the 
 Act of Parliament, and so those unhappy children must continue to 
 sufi'er perennial nakedness and hunger, that the Argylls and Athols, 
 the Sutherlands and Westminsters, and the big brewers of London 
 and Burton-on-Trent, may not be disturbed in their aristocratic 
 sport. There is for those children of misfortune but another eviction 
 scene — for the series is not yet complete — after which their fathers 
 will be driven by stress of circumstances to take refuge in the High- 
 land capital of Inverness, where, as we were lately informed by Mr. 
 Fraser-Mackintosh, M.P. for the county, more than half the people on 
 the poor rates — at one period it might be two-thirds— are the victims 
 of the same terrible system of oppression, which dooms those 
 innocent children, and hundreds of thousands like them in Scotland 
 and Ireland besides, to something worse than a living death. The 
 inhabitants tell you that they remember having seen their streets 
 crowded with a shivering, homeless population evicted from Barra 
 and Uist, in years gone by, and to-day (aStli of October 1889) there 
 appears in the Times a letter from Mr. Mackintosh giving a fresh 
 picture of intolerable onpresion in North Uist, on the property of 
 Sir John Orde, Bart, in defiance of law, order, and parliament. 
 
 This island of Skye has been the scene of incredible sufi'ering for 
 generations, in which Lord Macdonald (as has been already shown) 
 Major Eraser of Kilmuir, Captain Macdonald of Waternish, Doctors 
 Martin and Maclean, &c., have acted a part. What that part has 
 been the evidence of their victims before the Crofters' Eoyal Com- 
 
 1 Tales of a Grandfather, 
 
412 APPENDIX. 
 
 mission, of which Lord Napier and Ettrick was the excellent chair- 
 man, and Mr. Fraser-Mackintosh, M.P., a most painstaking member, 
 ])roves beyond question. Of Captain Macdonald's property, one 
 Neil MacDiarmid said, " I cannot give an estimate of the land 
 " once arable, and occupied as townships, now in the proprietor's 
 " possession. If you are on board the steamer you will see that it 
 " extends from sea to sea." On one estate a new tenant was com- 
 pelled to pay the arrears of the old one. In this way Alexander 
 Maclean having paid £10 at Milovaig, he was evicted himself after 
 only two years' possession. Murdo MacLean, of Husabost, testified 
 that he had to render "duty" work to his landlord, even during 
 his absence in the fishing season, for whicl\ he received as wages 
 only abusive language he would be "ashamed to repeat." He 
 said : — 
 
 " Although only my wife were at home, and my com going to the 
 " winds, she must needs do the landlord's work when required. I 
 " remember coming home from the fishing after I had been four 
 " months away. 1 found my wife reaping the landlord's corn, and 
 " she asked, as a favour from the factor and manager, to be allowed 
 " to go home to prepare food for me, and she would not get leave. 
 " (Sensation)." 
 
 Dr. Martin compelled his tenants to sell their fish to him 
 exclusively, at his own price, ling and cod 6d. and 4d. each 
 respectively, and it came out in evidence also that he had issued 
 a notice, which was posted on the door of the local post-office at 
 Glendale, warning competitors in his market that — " All beasts 
 " bought from the crofters will be seized, wherever found, unless the 
 "purchase price be paid to me." Donald Campbell, crofter, of 
 Struan Mor, described a custom on another estate, which reads like 
 the echo of something that has been reported time out of mind as a 
 common occurrence in Ireland : — 
 
 " If a man married, his father dare not give him shelter for a 
 " night, and the young man and his wife must needs leave and go 
 " into the cities. When the parents became old they became poorer, 
 "until they came on the poors' roll, as their children were not 
 " allowed to remain with them." And he mentioned a characteristic 
 feature in Highland landlordism besides, as follows : — " There were 
 " four or five families in Ose who were removed to another part of 
 '• the same place, and were made to build their houses on a peaty soil 
 " beside the river ; and when the river was in flood some of them 
 " had to flee for their lives." 
 
 When Dr. Maclean, a beneficent Skye sheep farmer, fonnd a 
 
APPENDIX. 413 
 
 stray sheep on his grazings, it was given in evidence that he exacted 
 halt'-a-crown fine, or failing payment of this blackmail, he performed 
 a surgical operation by cropping the ears of the poor beast to the 
 f^kuU. Malcolm MacCaskill, of Duirinish, stated that his father had 
 been evicted no less than four times, no doubt to demonstrate the 
 exemplary patience of the modern Highlander, and his resignation 
 to the landlord's pretended "decrees of providence." One John 
 MacFie, aged 74, after stating that he had been in his present croft 
 for forty-six years, said : — 
 
 "In 1840 there were seventeen families removed from Feorlick 
 ' by Mr. Gibbon, the tacksman, who took the land and the people 
 ' on it. They were placed, some by the sea, some on peat land 
 ' which had never been cultivated. Some of them did not get a 
 'place on earth on which to put a foot. I myself saw them living 
 ' under a sail spread on three poles below hi<;h-water mark. One of 
 ' the crofters, Donald Campbell, was warned by the ground-officer 
 
 • for giving refuge to a poor man who had no house. The ground- 
 ' officer came and pulled down the house, and took a pail of water 
 
 • and threw it on the fire. By the noise made in tlie extinguishing of 
 ' the fire and the denseness of the steam, the wife went out of her mind. 
 ' He never saw one so mad. Mr, Scobie came afterwards, and Macleod 
 ' of Dunvegan gave us all over to him. He said that it was God 
 'who sent him there. Rather than settle on the mossy ground 
 ' which they were shown, two of them preferred to go to Australia. 
 ' They died on the passage, and were thrown overboard. When 
 ' Campbell was put out of his house, not a tenant was allowed to 
 ' give him shelter. He had nine of a family, and they had to 
 
 emain on the hillside on a wet night. Scobie [the heavenly 
 ' messenger] took our hill pasture, which we had for fifty or sixty 
 ' years, and settled crofters upon it. We are dill -paying for that 
 ' hill pasture. We have no road, and if any of our people die in 
 ' the winter he has to be buried in the sea or in the peat moss. 
 Scobie closed up the road to the churchyard with a gate, and 
 before we could pass that way we would have to break down the 
 gate." 
 
 Mr. Alexander Mackenzie, in his excellent digest of the evidence 
 before the Royal Commission,^ has provided Scobie with a monu- 
 ment to his fame, free of expense. But there are other Scobies 
 there , though our work being essentially an Irish one, we cannot 
 extend this Appendix very much farther in pursuit of them. One 
 district in Skye was depopulated to make room for a parish minister, 
 who shall be nameless, not because he is living, but because he is 
 
 ^ Isle of Skye in 1882 (A & W. Mackenzie, Inverness). 
 
o 
 
 414 APPENDIX. 
 
 dead. The incident is, sad to say, by no means an nncommon 
 feature in the Highland clearance system. It is painfully sug- 
 gestive that the Presbyterian ministers, with some honourable ex- 
 ceptions, have never been forward to denounce the cruelties and 
 barbarities of which their people have been the victims. Before 
 1843, when the blessed "Disruption" took place, they were all 
 stipendiaries, and under no special obligation, except where con- 
 science crept in, to discharge their duty to the people otherwise than 
 in a perfunctory manner. The landlords were suspected of cun- 
 ningly silencing the shepherds with civilities and attentions, while 
 the sheep were fleeced to the skin. How otherwise are we to 
 account for their silence, which is as marked as that of the English 
 stipendiary bishops so bravely rebuked by the late Prince Consort,^ 
 because of their being churchmen rather than Christians ? 
 
 Some Scotch Members of Parliament are scarcely more sympathetic, 
 especially if they are successful lawyers. Bulwer somewhere says 
 that, as a class, they become void of the instincts of humanity through 
 inordinate ambition. There is Mr. Finlay, QC, and M.P. for Inver- 
 ness, who, having turned his coat to oblige Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, 
 his leader and preceptor, feels himself sufficiently rewarded by a 
 promise of the Woolsack when that great statesman becomes Prime 
 Minister, after the next general election. But the eviction question 
 and the coercion question are both sadly in Mr. Finlay's road to the 
 Woolsack, and he is compelled by the exigencies of his awkward 
 position to be almost as unscrupulous as Lord Salisbury himself,^ 
 in his endeavours to ensnare ignorant people by fallacious argument. 
 Referring to the eviction question, Mr. Finlay told a select body of 
 his constituents at Inverness lately that "people are evicted every 
 " day in Edinburgh and Glasgow without any such fuss being made 
 '• about them." This is Finlayism ad nauseam. The statement is per- 
 fectly true, but the inference is as perfectly — false. Tliere is not even 
 the very smallest conceivable analogy between a cityand an agricul- 
 tural eviction, Mr. Finlay knows right well ; for whatever else he is, the 
 successful lawyer is no fool. By an eviction in Edinburgh or Glasgow, 
 a man may suffer inconvenience, or even hardship, but the property 
 from which he is evicted is one in which he has no partnership. It 
 belong3 to the landlord exclusively, and the evicted tenant leaves 
 nothing there behind him — at least he is not bound to do so — which 
 is calculated to enhance the value of the premises. Besides, he does 
 
 ' See page 28. * See page 75. 
 
APPENDIX. 415 
 
 not suffer loss of employment or occupation by the proceedings, and 
 nobody thinks worse of the landlord for this ordinary exercise of his 
 legal right ; which does not even preclude the tenant from obtain- 
 ing a house or adequate shelter elsewhere. On the other hand, the 
 position of the evicted agricultural tenant, whether in Scotland or 
 Ireland, is in every respect the very reverse of this. The labour of 
 years — often of a lifetime — has been expended on his little croft or 
 holding, while the house or cabin standing upon it has been built 
 with his own hands. That croft or holding was not worth a shilling 
 an acre, perhaps, when he or his father entered upon it, though the 
 landlord now exacts — extorts rather — 30s. or £i an acre for it. To 
 evict him from this, whether for non-payment of rent, or, as is more 
 commonly the case, on account of the prospect of securing a more 
 profitable tenant, is sheer confiscation, unless, as is rarely if ever the 
 case, the evicted is provided with adequate compensation for his 
 property in the land as well as the house. Worse still, by eviction 
 he loses the only employment or occupation for which he is by 
 training and habit — one might almost say by nature — fitted. He is 
 in fact a ruined man, with no prospect before him and his wife and 
 little ones but the workhouse ; since his is not the case of a capitalist 
 capable of providing himself with a fresh eroft or holding and a 
 house elsewhere. The tenure in regard to small holdings is practic- 
 ally the same in Scotland and Ireland, and what its nature really is 
 will be found fully explained on the highest authority elsewhere.* 
 Mr. Finlay's attempt to deprive the poor man in either country of 
 public sympathy, for the purpose of personal or party gain, would 
 justify the hope that he may himself suffer eviction from the 
 representation of Inverness at the earliest opportunity. 
 
 Nemesis ! 
 
 " There is a day of vengeance still, 
 Linger it may, but come it will." 
 
 How truly did Bernard Gilpin, the eminent Protestant divine of the 
 sixteenth century, declare that the depopulators of his own day were 
 " worse than Ahab." ^ Are they a degree better to-day in Scotland 
 or Ireland ? Ahab at least offered an adequate compensation for 
 Naboth's vineyard, and if Jezebel had not interfered a friendly com- 
 promise might have been effected. Again, even Jezebel only sent out 
 
 * At page 70. * See page 18. 
 
4i6 APPENDIX, 
 
 two sons of Belial to denounce Naboth. But how manv sons of Belial 
 now daily promenade the three kingdoms denouncing Mr. Gladstone, 
 as the friend of Naboth ; declaring that he should be sent to the 
 Shades, tongue-tied, as a disturber of the public peace 1 Not two 
 but two hundred. The Highlanders, like the Irish, though differ- 
 ing in creed, are old fashioned enough to believe in " signs and 
 " wonders," and think, perhaps not foolishly, that they are being 
 worked in their behalf at the present time. In his Sketches of the 
 Highlanders, Stewart, of Garth, writing more than sixty years ago, 
 says : — 
 
 " Among the Highlanders, the belief that the punishment of the 
 " cruelty, oppression, or misconduct of an individual descended as 
 " a curse on his children to the third and fourth generation, was 
 " not confined to the common people. All ranks were influenced by 
 " it, that if the curse did not fall upon the first or second generation, 
 " it would ineviiably descend upon the succeeding.'' 
 
 Some of the families of the oppressors of the Highland peasants, at 
 all events, have already become extinct, while many more are being 
 slowly but not less surely ruined. The competition set up in America 
 against them by the very emigrants whom they banished the land is 
 already gradually helping to reduce the wliole tribe of landlords to 
 comparative poverty. In some instances more summary vengeance 
 is believed to have overtaken them in another and more marked 
 form. One specially obnoxious individual was unfortunate enough 
 to break his neck in the hunting field at an early period of his 
 career ; while of his three sons two have already, it is said, met with 
 violent deaths elsewhere. Upon this very spot in the Isle of Skye, 
 about which you have just been reading, there has been wjiged a 
 war of devilish cruelty upon an innocent and inoffensive popula- 
 tion. In return, the floodgates of heaven itself are believed to have 
 been opened upon a system which had thus brought sorrow and 
 suffering to many a virtuous peasant home. A single specimen of 
 the manner of exercising " the rights of property " here, as given in 
 evidence before the Crofter Commissioners a few years back, casts a 
 lurid light over the scene. Donald Nicolson, formerly of Totescore, 
 but now of Solitote, Kilmuir, stated that he was past 78 years of age ; 
 that he was formerly a crofter, but that Major Fraser all at once 
 doubled his rent, which increase he most reluctantly agreed to 
 pay. He was then asked to pay £1 more, and refusing to do so, 
 he was forcibly evicted, and his lot given to Mr. Macleod of Monk- 
 Etadt, local " factotum " for Major Fraser, who sent round word that 
 
APPENDIX. 417 
 
 any one M-ho gave Nicolson a night's shelter would be dealt with 
 similarly. Having related how he was evicted from his house and 
 land, Nicolson continued : — 
 
 " My son's wife and her two young children were with me, and we 
 " were all that night in a cart shed, and our neighbours were afraid 
 " to let us in, and were crying over us. There was plenty of meal 
 " outside, but we had no fire to make a cake. We lived in the stable 
 " all the summer. I could only erect one bed in it, and my daughter 
 " and my son's wife and two children slept in the bed, and myself 
 " slept on the stones. . . . Afterwards, I got refuge in the house of 
 " a poor woman at Duntulm, and the factor, Mr. Alexander Mac- 
 " donald, Portree, challenged the tacksman of Duntulm for allowing 
 " this poor woman to keep me in her house." 
 
 The witness then appealed to Mr. Dugald Maclachlan, banker, 
 Portree, for confirmation of liis story _: and at the request of Lord 
 Napier, the chairman, Mr. Maclachlan gave the following explana- 
 tion : — 
 
 "After Nicolson was put out of his house he entered a cart-shed, 
 " and thereafter he entered the stable ; then he was evicted a second 
 " time, and an interdict taken out against him, forbidding him for 
 " ever to enter his dwelling-house, or enter upon the lands. Under 
 " stress of circumstances, he entered the barn with his family. He 
 " was had up for breach of interdict, and for this was fined los., with 
 " the alternative of five days' imprisonment. The expenses of the 
 "interdict were ^8. Then there was a year's rent due, and in addi- 
 "tion to that he was charged with 'violent profits,' which means the 
 " doubling of the rent for remaining in possession after the term. 
 " The whole came to £$$ odd, which the man paid." Lord Napier 
 — " Do you mean to say that that money was really exacted, and 
 " passed into the factor's hands ? " Mr. Maclachlan — " Yes. I ar- 
 " ranged with the factor, Mr. Macdonald, for him, and advanced the 
 " money out of the bank. When the markets came round he realised 
 " his stock, and paid me every penny of it." 
 
 In conclusion, Nicolson said that his family was all scattered now, 
 but if he got a piece of land, although he was 78 years of age, he would 
 gather them about him again. " Brave old crofter ! " exclaimed 
 Lord Napier. 
 
 On a Sunday evening in the month of October 1877 (as recorded 
 in the newspapers of the time), two mountain streams suddenly 
 united near the village of Uig, and swelling into a mighty 
 torrent, destroyed by their force a solid stone bridge spanning the 
 public road, and carried away with it into the sea almost every 
 vestige of the landlord's mansion standing above ground at the 
 
 2 D 
 
4i8 APPENDIX. 
 
 same time. The morning sun revealed an appalling and unj, 
 cedented spectacle. Huge boulders had been dislodged from the 
 mountain-side by the torrent in its course. Crashing into a little 
 cemetery situated near the bed of the stream, with Titanic violence 
 they uprooted or partially destroyed every grave there save one, and 
 scattered the dead bodies of the tenantry, coffined and uncoffined, 
 over the avenue and grounds of the vanished mansion — in some 
 instances depositing the ghastly remains within what was left of 
 the foundations of the landlord's dining-room floor. Innumerable 
 bodies — " thousands " it is said — were washed outside by the surging 
 waters, never again to appear till the sea gives up its dead. But the 
 people say that some at least of those recovered, numbering between 
 ninety and a hundred, including many children, were clearly 
 recognised and identified by their surviving relatives and friends 
 as the bodies of persons who had sustained incredible suffering 
 at the hands of the evictor. They tell you further, in accents 
 broken by emotion, how, though the dead rose up as it were 
 against the living, not a soul save the landlord's overseer, who 
 was, unhappily, drowned, suffered injury either to life or limb 
 or property in the great flood. The Highlanders, appalled by 
 the enormous quantity of "dry bones" strewn along the avenue, 
 leading to the mansion, remembered a certain chapter in Ezekiel, 
 and believed that the Lord had indeed visited His people, to 
 execute vengeance upon their oppressor. No amount of scepticism 
 on your part will convince them that the awful spectacle was not 
 due to the direct intervention of Heaven. You may urge that this 
 could hardly be so, seeing that neither the landlord himself nor his 
 factor was inside the mansion at the time. They only shake their 
 heads impressively, and reply, "Ah! but he (the landlord) has 
 "never returned to Uig ; he is a broken, dispirited man ; while the 
 '•factor even is a factor no longer !" 
 
 " When wilt Thou save the people, Lord — 
 O God of Mercy ! when — 
 Not kings on thrones, but nations, 
 Not chiefs and lords, but men." 
 
 In concluding their Eeport a few years back, the Crofter Royal 
 Commissioners took occasion to observe that : — 
 
 "The land movement in the Highlands is impelled by the demo- 
 "crulic and social aspirations prevalent among various classes at 
 
APPENDIX. 419 
 
 " home, and will probably enlist the sympathies of Highlanders in 
 " all parts of the world. There is a larger, richer, more active, and 
 "more enthusiastic Celtic community beyond the limits of the 
 " Celtic region of Scotland than there is within it, and it is one of 
 "the results of increasing knowledge and expanding faculties of 
 " intercourse, that men who have forsaken (sic) the seats of their 
 " birth and early associations, continue, communicate, and transmit 
 " the affections and passions of the race with even greater warmth 
 " than those who remain behind." 
 
 To the various classes referred to by the Crofter Commissioners, 
 including English working men, these pages are humbly commended, 
 as being the only permanent record now extant, in a concise form, 
 of a great national iniquity. But it must always be recollected, how- 
 ever angry the story may tend to make us, that two wrongs do not 
 constitute a right. Mr. Henry George's proposal to drive the land- 
 lords off the land without adequate compensation is in no degree 
 more practical than Carlyle's suggestion, that those of them who 
 cannot live here at home without deer-stalking, should betake them- 
 selves to Africa, and stalk lions there. The landlords might, it is 
 true, have applied to them the language of a royal proclamation of the 
 reign of Edward VI., having brought the Scottish Highlands : — 
 
 " Into marvellous desolation, houses decayed, parishes diminished, 
 " the force of the realm weakened, and Christian people, by the 
 "greedy covetousness of some men, eaten and devoured by brute 
 " beasts, and driven from their houses by sheep and bullocks." 
 
 Yet, if their victims were alive to-day to judge them, even tliey 
 would hardly condemn, say the Duke of Argyle and the Irish 
 Chief Secretary, Mr. Arthur Balfour, though they are the most im- 
 penitent amongst those persons in wrongful possession of the pro- 
 perty of the evicted people, to be in turn " eaten and devoured " by 
 African lions, or other " brute beasts." No, there is here a great 
 problem urgently awaiting, if not demanding, solution, and there 
 is probably but a single living statesman capable of solving it 
 peaceably. It is not possible — it cannot be — that one man, for in- 
 stance, should any longer be permitted to claim as his property, in 
 addition to vast English estates, one-seventeenth part of the entire 
 kingdom of Scotland ; or that big sheep farmers should have posses- 
 sion of territories variously estimated to extend fifteen, tw'tnty-five, 
 and even forty miles in one direction, from which every human 
 being not dressed in a shepherd's plaid, has been ruthlessly banished. 
 Mr. Gladstone has found a different remedy in regard to the land 
 
420 APPENDIX. 
 
 question in Ireland, which he is prepared to apply when the electors 
 of the United Kingdom have had 'an opportunity given them of re- 
 storing him to power. And seeing that the Duke of Sutherland and 
 a few men like him have, between them, by some mediaeval or legal 
 fiction got possession of millions of acres of Scottish land, while the 
 population generally are confined to such infinitesimal portions of 
 the earth's surface as will not yield them tolerable sustenance, Mr. 
 Gladstone does not appear to be insuperably opposed to the appli- 
 cation of a drastic remedy for Scotland either. Speaking at West 
 Calder, during the Midlothian campaign of 1879, the right honour- 
 able gentleman is reported to have said, according to his published 
 speeches : — 
 
 " Those persons who possess large portions of the spaces of the 
 " earth are not altogether in the same position as the possessors of 
 " mere personalty ; that personalty does not impose the same 
 " limitations upon the action and industry of man and upon the 
 " wellbeing of the community, as does the possession of land ; and, 
 "therefore, I freely own that compulsory expropriation is a thing 
 " which, for an adequate public object, is in itself admissible, and, 
 "so far, sound in principle." 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abercrombt, Sir Ralph, licentioua- 
 nessofhisarmy during the rebellion 
 of 1798, 332 
 
 Aberdeen, Lord, on the eflFects of 
 eviction on the loyalty of the Irish, 
 98 
 
 Abinger, Lord, his stealthy evictions, 
 385 
 
 Absenteeism, in Ireland, coeval with 
 the English invasion, 237 ; denun- 
 ciation of, 238 ; the cost of, 239 ; 
 in Co. Mayo, 245 
 
 Absentees, 237-246 ; Act of Richard 
 II. affecting, and its enforcement 
 by his successors, 237 ; Act of, of 
 Henry VIII., 237, 238 ; tax on, of 
 Charles I., 237 ; subsequent taxa- 
 tion of, 237, 238; Sir Robert 
 Peel's tax on, 238; dereliction of 
 duty and meanness of, 239, 240; 
 the Society of Friends' report on, 
 240-244 
 
 Achill, case of deputation from, in 
 1847, 264 ; a parallel in Eastern 
 story, 265 
 
 Act, the Employers and Workmen, 
 41 ; the Land, 70, 200 ; the Relief, 
 of 1793, 183 ; Navigation, of 1660, 
 187; Navigation, of 1663, 187; 
 against importation of Irish cattle 
 into England, 187 ; the Emancipa- 
 tion, a dead letter for six years, 
 197; of Edward IV. on Irish 
 fisheries, 210; the Tithes, 221; 
 the Encumbered Estates, 221 ; the 
 
 . Coercion, of 1887, 226-236 ; the 
 Insurrection, 299 ; the Emancipa- 
 tion, of 1829, 304 
 
 Acts, penal, against religious freedom 
 and education, 177 ; destructive, of 
 Irish trade and commerce, 187- 
 192 
 
 Adams, Mr. Davenport, on the battle 
 of Meanee, 307 
 
 Adrian IV. , Pope, his gift of Ireland 
 to Henry II., and his character, 
 314 ; his fate, 315 ; the authenticity 
 of his Bull questioned, 315; his 
 apparent credulity, 319 
 
 Adventurers, the, 156. See PLANTERS. 
 
 Agriculture, British, article on, iu 
 Chambe7-s's Encyclopcedia, 88-90 
 
 Aitken, James, his incendiary pro- 
 jects, 35 
 
 Albert, Prince, his admonition to the 
 Bishops, 28 ; as a landlord, 28 ; on 
 the Highlanders, 405 
 
 Alexander III., Pope, confirms the 
 gift of Adrian IV., 315 
 
 Alison and the vox populi, 36 
 
 Alister, Mr., charge of, against the 
 Marquis of Breadalbane, 382 
 
 America, remonstrance from, 322; 
 Irish emigration to, 324; impatience 
 in, at English misrule of Ireland. 
 325 ; importation of coin from, 348 
 
 Animals, cruelty to, in England ahd 
 Ireland, 46; Crovernment and land- 
 lord sympathy with, 47 
 
 Anonymous writer on famine of 
 1741, 251 
 
 Annual Register, on famine of 1822, 
 253 
 
 Argyle, the Duke of, description of, 
 by Lord Rosebery, 169 ; motive for 
 his policy, 169 ; statistics of, 169 ; 
 motto of the founder of his family, 
 378; lona and St. Columba, 379; 
 evictions at his instance, and his 
 treatment of the evicted, 380 ; on 
 the blessing emigration leaves be- 
 hind it, 381 ; on the reign of law, 
 381 
 
 Army, the, and the Irish soldiers in. 
 
422 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 305-310 ; Highlanders and Irinh in, 
 and their too frequent reward, 405, 
 406 
 Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 130 
 Assassination, its origin in Ireland 
 not Celtic, 118 ; as an implement 
 of statecraft, 280-285. 
 Athol, the Duke of, the pioneer in 
 the work of eviction in the High- 
 lands, 377 ; and tlie gradual clear- 
 ance of Glen Tilt, 377 
 "Aunt Sally," an ecclesiastical, 221 
 Author, the, object and scope of his 
 present work, vii. ; his visit to the 
 evicted on the estate of Lord Sligo, 
 P3 ; his Coercion without Crime, 
 226 ; Mr. Gladstone's letter to, 
 226; his Why Ireland Wants Home 
 Rule, 329 
 
 Bacon, Lord, quoted, 51 
 
 Bagshawe, Bishop, denounces Irish 
 evictions, 26 
 
 Bale, and Archbishop Browne, 162 
 
 Balfour, Mr. Arthur, his proper work, 
 viii., 86, 105, 107 ; banquet to, 29 ; 
 on Irish girls, 108 ; effect of his 
 administration of the law, 234 ; 
 ignorance and blundering in regard 
 to evictions, 292, 294 ; the founder 
 of his family, 386 ; his father, 386 ; 
 question for, 389 
 
 Balfour plre et fils, 108 ; Mr. M'Ken- 
 zie's account of the former's whole- 
 sale evictions, 386-388 ; Times on, 
 392 
 
 Ball, John, on equal rights, 4 
 
 Bannister, Isaac, on Lord Burleigh, 
 280, 281 
 
 Barons, tyranny of, under Stephen, 2 
 
 Barrington, Sir Jonah, on the genesis 
 of rebellion, 31 ; on the Irish in 
 the navy, 311 
 
 Battering-rams, 99 ; Pagan and Chris- 
 tian, 364, 366 
 
 Battery, the galvanic, recourse to in 
 ex'remis, 99 ; its employment on 
 old Donovan, 100 
 
 Bayker, John, liis petition, 7 
 
 Beach, Sir Michael Hicks, bis experi- 
 ence in Ireland, 49 
 
 Beaumont, M. de, on the resources 
 of Ireland, 53 ; on the extreme 
 misery of Ireland, 253 
 Bede, the Venerable, on Ireland, 51 
 Bedell, Bishop, and his lawsuit, 
 160 ; the honour in which he was 
 held, 162 
 
 Beecher, Rev. Henry "Ward, on the 
 Irish in America, 69 
 
 Beesley, Prof., his abstract of report 
 on Trades Unions, 42, 43 
 
 Beggar, the English sturdy, treat- 
 ment of, 10, 14 
 
 Beggars, shave, viii. 
 
 Bellingham, the assassin, 35 
 
 Belmullet, brutalities at, 394 
 
 Benbo w, his projected raid on London, 
 35 
 
 Bennet, Mr. "William, scenes he wit- 
 nessed in Mayo, 258 
 
 Bentinck, Lord George, and his rail- 
 way measure, 203 ; liis charge 
 against the "Whig Government of 
 1847, 261-263 ; on Irish patience, 
 264 
 
 Berkeley, Bishop, quoted, 247 ; on 
 the effects of famine in 1741, 250 ; 
 on the houses of the Irish poor, 
 291 
 
 Bessborough Royal Commission, 71, 
 75, 76 
 
 Bill, the Compensation for Disturb- 
 ance, 206 ; the Catholic Relief, 
 304 
 
 Bills, the "Gagging," 36 
 
 Binns, Mr., quoted, 70 ; on the wrongs 
 of Ireland, in justification of her 
 discontent, 112 
 
 Birmingham, as a city sacked, 40 
 
 Bishops, the, and the people, 27 ; and / . 
 tlieir duty, 27, 28 ; the Irish, in 
 Spenser's time, 159 ; the number 
 and wealth of Irish, during the 
 Stuart period, 160, 161 ; Swift on, 
 162 
 
 Black Death, effect of the, on agri- 
 cultural industry, 3 
 
 Blair, Rev. Robert, on the planters 
 in his time, 1.58 
 
 Blake, Sir H. A., on the Irish in 
 Newfoundland, 65 
 
 Board, the Irish Fishery, 211, 212 ; 
 Glasgow Highland Relief, report 
 of, 379, 380 
 
 Boultou, Bishop, and famine in Ire- 
 laud, 250 
 Boycotting, modern practice of, in 
 Ireland, 362 ; commended by Swift 
 a hundred and fifty years ago, 363 ; 
 by O'Connell, 363; by Parnell, 
 364 
 Boyle, Richard, "the great Earl of 
 Cork," 132; the career of, 132, 
 133; his treatment of Raleigh, 
 134 
 
INDEX. 
 
 423 
 
 Boys, White and Bight, 31 
 
 Breadalbane, Marquis of, the pre- 
 sent,382; evictions under a former, 
 382 
 
 Bright, Mr., on Irish history, v. ; on 
 evictions, 1 ; on force as a remedy, 
 39 ; on the wrongs and resources 
 of Ireland, 55 ; his services to Ire- 
 land, 55 ; in conflict with his former 
 self and Mr. Cobden, 57 ; on the 
 virtues of the Irish, 63 ; and his 
 theory of Irish misery, 65 ; and 
 the case of the landlords, 86 ; 
 quoted, on the treatment by Par- 
 liament of the complaints of Ire- 
 land, 193 ; on the reply to Irish 
 complaint, 200 ; ou our rulers, 203 ; 
 his amazement at the imbecility of 
 the English Government in regard 
 to Ireland, 215 ; on reclaiming Irish 
 waste lands, 220 ; on coercion, 224 ; 
 on the crop of horrors in Ireland, 
 286 ; on the Irish landscape, 296 ; 
 on foreign opinion of British rule 
 in Ireland, 323; his warning, 328 
 
 Bristol, rioting and incendiarism in, 
 40 
 
 Brougham, Lord, on coercion, 223; 
 on justice in Ireland, 23fi 
 
 Browne, Arciibishop of Dublin, 160, 
 161 
 
 Brunner, Mr., M.P. , on Irish honesty, 
 66 
 
 Bryce, Mr. Jiimes, M.P. , on the 
 Compensation for Disturbance 
 Bill, 206 
 
 Buckle, on the industry of the Irish, 
 62 
 
 BuUer, Sir Redvers, on tenants' 
 rents, and the payment of them, 
 290 
 
 Bulwer, on coercion, 224; on the 
 army, 305 
 
 Burdett-Coutts, the Baroness, and 
 her Irish protigis, 214 
 
 Burke, Edmund, on a robber witness, 
 26 ; unregarded warnings of, 123 ; 
 on English policy in Ireland, 138 ; 
 on Sir John Temple's informants, 
 144 ; on the penal code of William 
 III., 175, 176 ; his indignant pro- 
 test, 188 ; on the humiliating 
 capituLition of Parliament to Ire- 
 land, 192 
 
 Burke, Hubert, account of the gene- 
 rous conduct of Barber Hill, 181 
 
 Burleigh, Lord. See Cecil, Robert. 
 
 Butler, Sir William, on the ingrati- 
 
 tude of the State to the Highland- 
 ers and Irish, 406-408 
 
 Butt, Mr. Isaac, Q.O., M.P., his 
 comparison of evictions by Crom- 
 well's troopers and evictions noT. 
 104 ; on titles to landed proi)erty, 
 130 
 
 Byron, his regret that the Irish were 
 not born black, 110 
 
 Cabins, the Irish, 291 
 
 Cade, Jack, and his grievances, 5 
 
 Cagliostro, the late Count, a compa- 
 rison, viii. 
 
 Caird, Sir James, on Irish tenants 
 and their holdings, 290 
 
 Cairns, Professor, on evictions and 
 the recorded returns of them, 293 
 
 Calling, the Gentleman's, quoted, 23 
 
 Cameron of Lochiel, and his rental, 
 385 ; a successor of his, 385 
 
 Canada, remonstrance from, 322 ; 
 sufferings of Highlanders in, 401 
 
 Canterbury, the Archbishop of, ap- 
 pealed to, 27 
 
 " Carding," one solitary instance of, 
 in Ireland, 48 
 
 Card well, Mr., on tenant-right, 199 
 
 " Caretaking," a reprieve of six 
 months, 93 
 
 Carew, Sir George, massacre under, 
 in Munster, 274 ; carried out his 
 instructions, 283 
 
 Carlingford, Lord, on difference of 
 tenure in Great Britain and Ire- 
 land, 72 ; on the absence of free- 
 dom of contract in Ireland, 76 
 
 Carlyle, on the »ans-potato, 106 ; 
 older preachers than, 107 ; on the 
 French santculotte atid the Irish 
 sans-potato, 355 ; ou lion-stalking 
 in Africa, 419 
 
 Carte, on the Lord Justices during 
 the Rebellion of 1641, 141 ; on Sir 
 AVilliam Petty, 143 
 
 Castlereagh, Lord, his repressive 
 legislation, 36 ; execrated by the 
 English people, 36; Mr. Glad- 
 stone's opinion of his conduct in 
 carrying the Union, 108, 178 ; his 
 suppressionof documents, 330; his 
 consideration for the Union, 331 ; 
 hismethods, 331,332, 356; iiiw:int 
 of the primum mobile, 356 ; his 
 letter to Mr. Addington, 356 ; his 
 proposal with regard to the dis- 
 tribution of the regium donum, 
 357 
 
424 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Catholics, the Irish, their ignorance, 
 170; its cause, 170; penal laws 
 against education of, 170 ; disabi- 
 lities of and laws against, 177 ; a 
 singular concession to, 178 ; pio- 
 tectiou of, liy Protestants, 181 ; 
 as contrasted with English, 183 ; 
 Relief of, in 1793, 183 
 
 Cato Street Conspiracy, possible con- 
 sequences of, 37 
 
 Cattle, maiming, 46 ; explanation of, 
 47 
 
 Cecil, Robert, Lord Burleigh, his 
 character, and views of it, 280 ; 
 his treatment of Latimer and Rid- 
 ley, 280 ; Macaulay on his modera- 
 tion, 281 ; his piety, 281 ; and the 
 rack, 282 ; on the Irish and re- 
 bellion, 282 ; objection to poison- 
 ing, 284 
 
 Cecil, the second, opposed to depopu- 
 lation, 13 ; unscrupulonsness of, 
 283 ; the third, a regicide, 285 
 
 Celts, the, as sailors, 313 
 
 Census Commissioners, on famine of 
 1846-47, 260 
 
 Chamberlain, Mr. Joseph, on the 
 Enclosure Acts, 21 ; iiis call for 
 restitution, 23 ; on the Parnellite 
 
 . agitation, 47 ; spits out his venom, 
 48 ; opinions on Irish subjects, 57 ; 
 under the patronage of, 62 ; on the 
 Irish members, 349, 350 ; favour- 
 able to the ])ayment of members, 
 350 ; the vagaries of, 368, 369 
 
 CItamberss Cyclopedia, on deprecia- 
 tion in value of land, 89 
 
 Chapman, Miss Ellen, on evictions 
 in Gweedore, 104, 105 
 
 Charges of Her Majesty's judges to 
 the grand juries on the absence of 
 crime uuder the Coercion Act of 
 1887, 226-234 
 
 Charles I. , tax of, on absentees, 237 
 
 Charles II., ingratitude of, his sacri- 
 fice of the Irish, 150 ; his hypo- 
 critical sympatliy, 150 
 
 Charter, Heaven's great, 14 ; the 
 People's, 40 
 
 Chatliam, on the Highland soldiers, 
 
 374 
 Cliesterfield, Lord, justification of 
 
 "Whiteboyism, 109 
 Cliichester, Lord Deputy, on the 
 superiority of famine to the sword 
 as an exterminator, 272 
 Chieftains, the Highland, ingratitude 
 of, 375 
 
 Children, Irish peasant, intelligence 
 of, 171 ; the Highland, 411 
 
 Chisholm, Mr. Colin, on the military 
 resources of Gleucannich, 405 
 
 Christianity, at its first appearance 
 in Ireland, and Irish zeal in pro- 
 pagating it, 300, 301 
 
 Church, the Irish, prolonged debate 
 on, and its final disestablishment, 
 221 
 
 Ciiurchmen, modern, and evictions, 
 25, 26, 414 
 
 Claims, the courts of, decisions of, 
 147, 149 
 
 Clauricarde, Lord, not the greatest 
 offender, 92 
 
 Clans, the Highland, their original 
 relation to the land and their 
 rulers, 373; this relation changed 
 since Culloden, 374 
 
 Clare, Lord, on land confiscation in 
 Ireland, 130, 147, 148 ; menacing 
 admonition to tlie Irish landlords, 
 149, 150 ; on Ireland after the Re- 
 bellion of 1641, 148; after the 
 Restoration, 148 ; after the Revo- 
 lution, 149 
 
 Clarendon, Lord, on the sufferings of 
 the Irish under the Puritans, vi. ; 
 his Histm-y of the Rebellion pro- 
 scribed in Ireland, 186; on Lord 
 Burleigh, 281 
 
 Clarendon, Earl of, on the iniquity of 
 the law of land-tenure in Ireland, 
 73; his inconsistent conduct when 
 Lord Lieutenant, 74 
 
 Clearances, modern, nothing new, 
 12, 13 ; the Sutherland, 24, 25 ; in 
 Mayo, 92 ; tlie story of Highland, 
 373. -See Evictions. 
 
 Clergy, the, past and present, con- 
 trasted, 19, 20; Irish Episcopal, in 
 Spenser's time, 159 ; Popish and 
 Protestant, compared, 159 ; cor- 
 ruptions among the Protestant 
 Irish, 160, 162, 163 ; excellent char- 
 acter of the present Protestant, 
 163 ; lamentably prejudiced, 163 ; 
 their political subserviency, 163 ; 
 in the Highlands, and the victims 
 of landlord cruelty, 414 
 
 Cobden, Ricliard, on the fertility of 
 Ireland, 53; on Irish labourers, 
 60 ; on neglected opportunities, 
 352 
 
 Coercion, the policy of, and the Acts 
 embodying, 222, 224 ; the purport 
 of these Acts, 222 ; warnings by 
 
INDEX. 
 
 425 
 
 Brougham and Bulwer against, 223, 
 224 ; without crime, 22&-234 
 
 Coke, Sir £., on eviction and de- 
 population, 15, 16 ; his abuse of 
 lUleigli, 132 
 
 Coleraine, county, vested in London 
 corporations, 137 
 
 Coleridge, lines of, commended, 47 
 
 (Jollier, on the surrender of Galway, 
 152 
 
 CoUings, Mr. Jesse, and his allot- 
 ments scheme, 23 
 
 Collingwood, liord, on his Irish 
 sailors, and his proposal in regard 
 to, 312, 313 
 
 Columba, St., claimed by the Duke 
 of Argyll, 379 
 
 Combinations, a necessity, 41 ; sta- 
 tutes against, 41 ; unlawfulness of, 
 41 
 
 Commerce in Ireland till Charles 
 II. 's time, 187 
 
 Commission, the Cowper Royal, on 
 the Irish character, 64 ; the Devon 
 and Bessborough, 71, 75, 76 ; re- 
 port of the Devon, in 1845, 198 ; 
 the Devon on Waste Lands Kecla- 
 mation, 218; the Parnell, 336- 
 346 ; the Crofters' Royal, evidence 
 before, 411-414 ; conclusion of 
 their report, 418 
 
 Commissions, Royal, barren, 12, 13, 
 198 
 
 Committees, Parliamentary, incom- 
 petence of, to deal with Irish ques- 
 tions, 198, 212, 213; select, on 
 Irish cabins, 291 
 
 Common, a, defined, 21 ; many a, 
 filched from the people, 22 
 
 Confiscation, inefficacious to crush 
 Ireland, vi. ; of land and property 
 in Ireland, 130, 131; under Crom- 
 well, 148 ; under James I., 149 ; at 
 the Revolution, 149, 154 
 
 Conlan, Mr. P. J., case of, 121, 122 
 
 Connaught, Queen Elizabeth's con- 
 fiscations in, 131 ; transplantation 
 to, 147, 151 ; emigration from, 165 ; 
 holdings in, 166 
 
 Conquest, the Norman, effect of, on 
 the tenant and his lord, 3 
 
 Conspiracy, in England against 
 George II. and George III. , 34 ; 
 tlie Ciito Street, 37 ; against truth, 
 89, 164 
 
 Constabulary, the Royal Irish, 101 
 
 Contract, absence of freedom of, in 
 Ireland, 75-78 
 
 Conybeare, Mr., M.P., sent to prison, 
 116 
 
 Coote, Sir Charles, fiendish cruelty 
 of, 279 
 
 Cornwallis, Lord, on the Irish yeo- 
 manry and militia, 168; address 
 of the Bishop of Ossorv to, and 
 Curran's pai-allel to it, 178 ; his re- 
 morse in connection witli the pro- 
 ceedings that attended the Union, 
 330 ; on the licentiousness of the 
 army under him after the rebellion 
 of 1798, 332 
 
 Costello, Colonel, his spirited appeal 
 to Charles II., 150 
 
 Courier, his witty saying, 36 
 
 Coventry, Lord Keepei-, quoted, 1 ; 
 on depopulation, 16 
 
 Coverdale, on begging in his time, 10 
 
 Cow, the magic, 23 
 
 Cowper, Earl, on the resident magis- 
 tracy, 122 
 
 Coyne and livery, tlie system of, 247 
 
 Craik, Mrs., on the Donegal pea- 
 sants, 105 
 
 Creasy, Sir E., on Ireland in the 
 seventh century, 302; 310, note; 
 on Henry II. 's conquest of Ire- 
 land, 315 
 
 Crime, in the assertion of right, 31 ; 
 in England and Scotland, genesis 
 of, 30 ; in England and Ireland, 45 ; 
 witnesses on the connection of, 
 with oppression, 117 ; diminution 
 of, witliout coercion, 226-236 ; the 
 origin of Irish, 371 
 
 Criminals, screening, 47 ; number of 
 apprehensions of, in Ireland and 
 England compared, 47 ; but, for 
 the "rights of property," 95 
 
 Crofters, the Scottish, concession to, 
 206 ; the, and their rights, 374 ; 
 their fate, 375 
 
 Crofts, the Highland, in the land- 
 scape, 408 
 
 Croker, his lament over absenteeism 
 in Ireland, 238 
 
 Croker Correspondence, the, 261 
 
 Cromelin and his patent, 155 
 
 Cromwell, his work ineffectual, vi. ; 
 the descendants of his settlers in 
 Ireland, 118-120, 148 ; of his land- 
 owners, 123, 127 ; his conduct in 
 Ireland due to exaggerated reports, 
 144 ; his sentence of deportation, 
 147 ; how he rewarded his soldiers, 
 148 ; rascality of his officers, 151 ; 
 his cruel system of emigration, 152 
 
426. 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Cromwell, Henry, in Galway, 152 ; 
 
 his blasphemous justificatioa of 
 
 force, 153 
 Crowbar brigade, the, 17, et passim. 
 Crowley, Robert, on the oppressors 
 
 of the poor, 18, 106 
 Crown, practices of the, in criminal 
 
 cases, 74 
 CuUoden, land tenure before and 
 
 after battle of, 373, 374 ; tragical 
 
 results of, 375 
 Curry, on Sir John Temple's history 
 
 of the Rebellion, 145 
 Curwen, Archbishop, his blasted 
 
 character, 161 
 Curwen, on the evils of absenteeism, 
 
 238 
 
 Daily News, the, on Irish eviction 
 scenes, 100, 102, 103 ; on Irish des- 
 titution, 366 
 
 Dalrymple, on the expatriated Irish, 
 152 
 
 Dance of death, the, 385 
 
 Davis, Sir Jolin, quoted, 45; de- 
 scription of Ireland, 52 ; on Irish 
 oppression, 57 ; on the Norman 
 confiscation of nil Ireland, 130 ; 
 assurance to the natives of Ulster, 
 137, 138; Green on, 138; on the 
 parish clergy imported from Eng- 
 land, 160 ; on the denial of English 
 laws to Ireland, 194 ; on the system 
 of Coyne and Livery, 247 
 
 Davy, Sir Humphry, 53 
 
 Day, Mr. Justice, on the bench, 
 346 
 
 Deer forests in the Highlands, their 
 acreage, proprietorship, &c., 395- 
 397 
 
 Demos, the English, aroused, 39 
 
 Depopulatoris agrorum, the, 16 
 
 Depew, Mr. Chauucey, on the Irish 
 in America, 326 
 
 Derby, Lord, on the Catholic Eman- 
 cipation Act, 185; on agitation 
 with violence as a means of pro- 
 curing reform, 208 ; on the cause 
 of the fall of the Irish Church, 
 221 ; and the stupidity of the class 
 to which he belongs, 221 
 
 Derby, late Earl of, on the Irish 
 landlords, ai;d their neglect of 
 duty, 239, 240 
 
 Despard, Colonel, his conspiracy, 34 
 
 Destitution in Ireland, 288, 289 
 
 Devonshire, the Duke of, his Irish 
 estates, 134 ; his fishery rights on 
 
 the Blackwater, 134 ; an absentee, 
 134 ; a reflection for, 136 
 
 Dicey, Mr., the confessions of, 367 
 
 Dilke, Sir Charles, his Greater Bri- 
 tain, 324 
 
 Discontent, agrarian, English, in 
 Henry VIII. 's reign, 11 ; chronic, 
 in England, 34 
 
 Disraeli, Mr., to the rescue, 40; ac- 
 counts for Mr. Gladstone's resigna- 
 tion of office in 1874, 49 ; on the 
 Pollock clearances, 115 
 
 Disraeli, Mr. Coningsby, 352 
 
 Distress in Ireland traced to its true 
 cause, 249 
 
 Doctors, emergency, 99, 100 
 
 Domains of the poor, the, 289 
 
 Dominic, Sister Mary, her report of 
 the schools at Gort and Kiuvara, 
 171, 172 
 
 Donoughmore, Lord, his reason for 
 suppressing Captain Drummond's 
 letter, 127 
 
 Donum regium, origin and distribu- 
 tion of, 356, 357 ; abolition of, 358 
 
 Doubleday, on ejectment, 80 
 
 Dowse, Baron, his joke on the de- 
 crease of crime under Mr. Balfour's 
 administration, 234 
 
 Draper, Sir William, on the military 
 exigencies of England in 1769, 304 
 
 Drummond, Captain, on the patience 
 and energy of the Irish, 60 ; letter 
 of refusal to the magistrates of 
 Tipperary, 126 ; its suppression, 
 and the reason why, 126, 127; 
 statue to his memory, 127 
 
 Dufferin, Lord, on the Irish emi- 
 grants in America, 67 ; quoted, 79 
 
 Duigan, Dr. C.B., his statement re- 
 garding the Irish under Nelson, 
 313 
 
 Dunne, the case of the old man, 99, 
 281 
 
 Dutch, the, and the Irish fisheries, 
 210 ; settlers and the Bog of Allen, 
 215 
 
 Education, statistics of, fifty years 
 
 ago, 170 ; Lord Derby's system, its 
 
 primary object, 186 
 Edward L, and the Irish, 193 
 Edward III., revival of Acts of, 121, 
 
 122 ; important legislation under, 
 
 122 ; and the Irish, 193 
 Edward IV., maxim of, 375 
 Edward VI., his spoliation of Church 
 
 lands, 11 ; proclamation of, 12, 419 
 
INDEX. 
 
 427 
 
 Edwards, Mr., on the second Cecil 
 and his subordinates, 283 
 
 Ejectment, notice of, what it amounts 
 to, 79, 87 ; the sport of, 216. See 
 Evictions. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, Ireland under, v. , 
 vi. ; and the landlords, 13 ; follows 
 in her predecessors' footsteps, 13 ; 
 forfeitures in the reign of, in Ire- 
 land, 131 ; Mayor of Coventry's 
 famous speech to, 178 ; her instruc- 
 tions to her officers, 283 ; and the 
 zeal of her couiicillorB, 284 
 
 Eldon, Lord, his zeal exemplified, 37 
 
 Ellenborough, Lord, his offer to send 
 wheat to Ireland from India treated 
 with scorn, 261 
 
 Emancipation, Catholic, and a Knight 
 of the goose, 183 ; Catholic, con- 
 ferred because it could not be 
 safely withheld, 184, 185, 196 
 
 Emergency men, 86, 101; 102, note; 
 at Falcarragh, 366; Scottish, 388, 
 389 
 
 Emigrant ships. Highland, rotten, 
 403 ; one on fire, 403. 
 
 Emigrants, Irish, sold as slaves, 152, 
 153 ; miseries and tragic fate of, 258 
 
 Emigration from Ireland, 165; sta- 
 tistics of, 324 
 
 Emparkment, old complaints against, 
 7 
 
 Enclosure, Acts of, in George III.'s 
 reign, 20-23 
 
 England, obligations of, to Ireland, 
 for Christianity and civilisation, 
 300-303 ; for military services, 303- 
 310; for naval renown, 310-313. 
 
 Englishmen, and the wolf hunger, 
 34 ; a warning to, 310 
 
 Essex, Earl of, failure of, in Ireland, 
 276 ; lament of, and the reason, 282 
 
 Essex, Lord-Lieutenant, describes 
 Ireland in the reign of Charles II., 
 vi. 
 
 Establishment, the Irish Episcopal, 
 in 1576, 158, 159 
 
 Estates, creation of, by tenants, 77 
 
 Evicted, the, underEuglisliand under 
 Irish law, 121 
 
 Evictions, the era of, vi. ; not con- 
 fined to Ireland, 1 ; under the Tu- 
 dors, and contrasted with modern, 
 1, 2 ; early, in England, 1-14 ; inthe 
 Highlands, 24, 25 ; from an English 
 standpoint, '88-108 ; still proceed- 
 ing as usual, 99 ; in 1650 and in 
 1850, 104 ; in Donegal, 104 105 ; 
 
 murder, in Mr. Waddy's words, 
 106 ; the Ponsonby, 107 ; in the 
 Kilrush Union, 268 ; impolicy of, 
 in Ireland and Scotland, 309 ; the 
 Sutherland, 376 ; the Glen Tilt, 
 377, 378; the Argyle, 379-381; 
 the Breadalbane, 382; of Mac- 
 donald of the Isles, in Skye and 
 North Uist, 383, 384 ; at Rodil, 
 385 ; of Lochiel, 385 ; Glengarry, 
 385 ; in Barra, 385 ; in Strathconon, 
 386-388 ; at Knoydart, 389 ; eflfects 
 of, 400; the difference between 
 city and agricultural, 414, 415 
 
 Ewing, Dr., the late Bishop of 
 Argyle, on evictions, 27 
 
 Exports, of food, from Ireland, in 
 1821-23, 286 
 
 Famine, the, of 1822, and the land- 
 lords, 239; of 1846-47, and the 
 Society of Friends, 240-244; of 
 1879-80, and the charity of the 
 United States and Australia, 244 ; 
 the miseries of Irish, 250, 253 ; of 
 1741, 250, 251; of 1817, 252; of 
 1846-47, 254-260; Lord George 
 Bentinck's indictment of Whig 
 Grovernment in reference thereto, 
 261-263 ; false explanation of, in 
 Ireland, 286, 287 
 
 Famines and massacres, military, 
 272-279 
 
 Fenwick, Mr., return obtained by, 
 of members of Parliament paid 
 out of the public funds, 349 
 
 Fife, Duke of, 29 
 
 Finlay, Mr., Q.C., M.P., on the evic- 
 tion question, refutation of, 414, 
 415 
 
 Fisher, Mr. C. M., on the emigrant 
 Irish in America, 69 
 
 Fisheries, the Irish, 209-214 ; peti- 
 tions complaining of, 210 ; peti- 
 tions against a bill in favour of, 
 211 ; period of prosperity of, 211, 
 212 ; the Scotch, 212 ; abortive 
 bills in furtherance of the Irish, 
 212, 213; statistics of, 213; im- 
 portance of, 213 ; the result of 
 loans for development of, uni- 
 formly satisfactory, 214 
 
 Fletcher, Mr. Justice, courageous 
 outspokenness of, 125 ; on the 
 peccadilloes of certain landlords, 
 248, 249 
 
 Foley, Sir Thomas, and his lady, on 
 the Irish sailors under Nelson, 313 
 
428 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Forbes, Sir John, on religious com- 
 muDities, 171 
 
 Forster, Mr. W. E., and his Coercion 
 Act, 4C, 48 ; on filial affection 
 among the Irish, 67; on the law 
 of ejectment, 77 ; on the famine in 
 Galway in 1847, 259 
 
 Fortescue, Chief-Justice, quoted, 6 ; 
 on insurrection, 109 
 
 Foster, Mr. Vere, singular appeal of, 
 68 
 
 Foster, Mr., on the Irish soldiers in 
 Egypt, 305 ; and at the Nile, 311 
 
 Fox, Charles James, on recruiting 
 the English army, 304 
 
 Fox, Justice, degradation and ruin 
 of, 125 
 
 Fraser-Mackintosh, Mr., M.P., on 
 oppression in North Uist, 411 ; on 
 the consequences of Highland evic- 
 tions, 411 
 
 Freeman, Professor, quoted, 2 
 
 Friends, the Society of, reports of 
 members of, during the famine of 
 1846-47, 240-244, 258 
 
 Froude, Mr. , on the guilt of resisting 
 unjust laws, 84 ; on landlordism in 
 Ireland and Mr. Gladstone's Land 
 Act, 117 ; on Archbishop Lof tus, 
 161 ; on the first Navigation Act, 
 187 ; on the iniquitous destruction 
 of Irish trade and manufactures, 
 188-190 ; on the condition of Ire- 
 land in 1779, 190 ; on WUliam III. 's 
 answer to the addresses of his Par- 
 liament in 1698, 192 ; on the effects 
 of the attempts to force a foreign 
 religion on Ireland, 195 ; on Ireland 
 prior to 1798, 196 ; Ireland's deadly 
 lesson, 203 ; on absentees, 246 ; on 
 the cruelties perpetrated by Eliza- 
 beth's soldiers, 278 ; on Irish blood 
 spilt under Cromwell, 278 ; on the 
 Irish as soldiers, 303 ; on the Irish 
 in the army, 306 
 
 Fund, the Irish reproductive, 213 
 
 Galwat, surrender of, and expulsion 
 of the inhabitants, in 1652, 152 ; 
 importance of, 152 
 
 Gentry, the Irish, of the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries, 156 
 
 Geoghegan, and the sacrifice of his 
 horses, 181 
 
 George III. , his bigotry, 34 ; his car- 
 riage stoned, 34 
 
 George, Henry, his proposal unprac- 
 tical, 419 
 
 Gillanders, 387-392; vengeance of, 
 390 
 
 Gilpin, Bernard, quoted, 15 ; anathe- 
 matises evictors, 18, 415 
 
 Giraldus Cambrensis, 314 
 
 Gladstone, Mr., on the era of evic- 
 tion, vi. ; on the record of failure 
 of English statesmanship in Ire- 
 land, vii. ; on cattle-maiming in 
 Ireland, 46 ; on relation of land- 
 lord and tenant, 78 ; attack on, 
 of the Times, 82, 83; on eviction 
 and its consequences, 83 ; on the 
 case of Dunne, 99 ; not yet in 
 political existence, 103 ; on Lord 
 Castlereagh's methods and policy 
 in carrying the Union in Ireland, 
 108, 330-332 ; on the origin of the 
 spirit of resistance, 118 ; on the law- 
 makers and law-breakers, 121 ; on 
 Lord Hartington's last speech at 
 Belfast, 135 ; on the suppression 
 of the rebellion in 1798, 167 ; on 
 Ireland a hundred years ago, 195 ; 
 on the Encumbered Estates Act, 
 221 ; and the Irish Church, 221 ; 
 on pretended legislation against 
 crime, 222 ; letter to the author 
 on Coercion without Crime, 226 ; 
 on Mr. Justice O'Brien, 235 ; on 
 the deeds of the landlords, par- 
 liament parliceps criminis with 
 them, 267, 270 ; on the number of 
 evictions, 292 ; his motive in the 
 Home Rule movement, 327, 328 ; 
 on the suppression of Union docu- 
 ments, 330 ; on the history of the 
 Union, 330, 332 ; his influence in 
 awakening an interest in Ireland 
 and its rights, 332 ; his charges 
 against the course of action by 
 which the Union was carried, 333- 
 335 ; speech of, on the Parnell 
 case, 341-346 ; his detractors, 416 ; 
 his remedy different from Henry 
 George's, 419 ; on possessors of 
 land, 419 ; their expropriation, 420 
 
 Glen Tilt, the clearance of, 377 
 
 Glencalvie, evictions at, 390 
 
 Glencannich and its soldiers, 405 
 
 Godkin, Mr., on eviction and its con- 
 sequences, 84 ; apology for agra- 
 rian outrages in Ireland, 285 
 
 Gordon, General, 309, note; on the 
 caricatures of comic prints, 371 
 
 Gordon, Colonel, and his expatriated 
 Hebridean tenants, 401-403 
 
 Goschen, Mr., lied out of oflSce, 49 ; 
 
INDEX. 
 
 429 
 
 his present painful position, 50; 
 submissive to party requirements, 
 50 
 
 Government, the measures of the 
 present, in regard to Ireland, vii. , 
 viii. ; policy in regard to Ireland, 
 its general aim, 194 ; Mr. Froude's 
 name for it, 194; from 1801 to 
 
 I 1829, 196 ; not sufficiently alarmed, 
 203 ; indiflEerence to Ireland in 
 times of famine, 252, 260, 264; 
 cannot plead ignorance of things 
 in Ireland, 267-270; on its trial, 
 346 ; not of love, but of fear, 353 ; 
 the worst, in the world, 354 
 
 Grattan, 196 ; on the proportion of 
 Irish in the navy in the American 
 War, 310, 311. 312 
 
 Gray, Mr. Dwyer, and his Relief 
 Committee, 244 
 
 Green, on the persecution of Catho- 
 lics, 179, 180 ; on Lord Burleigh, 
 281; on Christianity in Ireland, and 
 the zeal of its first missionaries, 300 
 
 Grey, Earl, on the resources of Ire- 
 land, 54 ; on the character of the 
 Irish, 61 ; and foreign opinion, 322 ; 
 on the disgrace to Britain of the 
 state of Ireland, 322 
 
 Grey, Mr. Charles, his amendment 
 in 1800 to the resolutions for Union, 
 331 
 
 Grievance, an Irish and Scottish, 
 note, 307 
 
 Griffith, Sir Bichard, his survey of 
 waste lands in Ireland, 216 ; his 
 valuation, 347, 348 
 
 Grotius, law of nature defined by, 87 
 
 Habeas Corpus Act, suspension of, 
 in 1848, and its result, 271 
 
 Hale, Sir Matthew, on illegal prohi- 
 bition, 16 
 
 Hales, John, offends the English 
 landed gentry, 13 
 
 Hallam, on spoliation of church 
 lands, quoted, 11 ; on the re- 
 bellion of 1641, 139, 140 ; quoted, 
 170; on the vain efforts of the 
 Irish, during the reigns of Edward 
 I. and Edward III., to be put 
 under English law, 193; on Ire- 
 land in the seventh and eighth 
 centuries, 302 
 
 Hancock, Mr., on the inviolability of 
 tenant-right in Ulster, 200 
 
 Harbours, unrivalled, in Ireland, 51 
 
 Harcourt, Sir AVilliam, as a sup- 
 
 porter of Mr. Gladstone, 355 ; on 
 the worst government in the world, 
 355 
 
 Harrison, Mr., in the clutches of the 
 police for his humanity, 116 
 
 Harrison, President, his sympathy 
 with the Home Rule movement, 
 322, 327 
 
 Hartington, Lord, 20 ; trusts to the 
 patience of the Irish, 87 ; humane 
 provision of, 99 ; his responsibility, 
 106, 116 ; an ancestor of, 132-134 ; 
 and his confederates, 135 ; his last 
 speech at Belfast, 135 ; a reflection 
 for, 136 ; his aims in Ireland, 316 ; 
 the effrontery of, 399 
 
 Head, Sir Francis, and the virtues 
 of Irish women, 108 
 
 Healy, Mr. T. M., M.P., biographer 
 of Richard Boyle and his descen- 
 dants, 133, 134 
 
 Hendricks, Mr., on English mis- 
 government in Ireland, 326, 328 
 
 Henry II., Ireland under, v. ; the gift 
 of Ireland to, 314 ; his mission to 
 Ireland, 316 ; England under, 317 ; 
 his character, 318, 319 
 
 Henry VII., his landholding legisla- 
 tion, 6, 7; Act of, on ploughed lands, 
 17, 121 
 
 Henry VIII., his land legislation, 
 7, 136 ; petition to, against large 
 farm holdings, 7 ; and the "vaga- 
 bond " class, 10, 11 ; threatened 
 with a curse, 15 ; his act of absen- 
 tees, 237, 238 
 
 Herbert, Sir William, letter of, to 
 Lord Burleigh, on the pretext and 
 aims of the English in Ireland, 131 
 
 Heron, Serjeant, Q.C., on charity 
 from America, 67 
 
 Herschell, Lord, speech of, on the 
 second reading of the Charges and 
 Allegations Bill, 336-341 
 
 Hibbs, the Rev. Bichard, on the 
 massacre of the Rosses, 392 
 
 Highlanders, the, 24 ; and the land, 
 now and originally, 373, 374 ; and 
 their sufferings, 375 ; the Athol, 
 377 ; in exile, 401 
 
 Highlands, the Scottish, area, popu- 
 lation, valuation, &c., of, 395; deer 
 forests in, their acreage, pro- 
 prietors," &c., 395-397; great land- 
 owners of, 398 ; the scenery in 
 contrast with the misery of, 408; 
 the streams and lakes in, 410 ; 
 foimer gentlemen of, 411 
 
43° 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Hill, Rev. George, on the Ulster 
 plantation of Jiimes I., 146 
 
 Hippesly, Sir J. Cox, on Irish 
 Catholic soldiers in the English 
 army, 305 ; on Irish Catholic sea- 
 men in the fleet, 311 
 
 Hodge, 20 ; poor, iionxed, 23 
 
 Holdings, "in Co.," 94; Royal Com- 
 mission on, 94 ; under a rental 
 of £6, 166 ; complaint of the divi- 
 sion of, 183 ; number of, in 1881 and 
 1886, 289 ; different classes of, 290 
 
 Holinshed, on tlie devastation and 
 misery of Munster in his time, 275 
 
 Holmes, Mr. Justice, in Parliament, 
 235, 2.36; on the bench, 235, 236 
 
 Horses, penal law in regard to, ad- 
 vantage taken of, 181 ; found detri- 
 mental to good breeding, 182 ; 
 references to, by Pope and Dryden, 
 182 
 
 Horsman, Mr., on rights superior to 
 those of property, 116 ; pleadings 
 for an address to the Crown to in- 
 quire into the state of Ireland, 202 
 
 Houses, of the poor, 291 
 
 Howley, Sir John, repression of 
 faction - fighting ; and the Irish 
 justices, 127 ; unexpected difiBcul- 
 ties in suppiessing it, 128 
 
 Hume, on English tyranny in Ireland 
 under Elizabeth, 277 
 
 Hunt, Henry, presumption of, and 
 the Tory revenge, 35 
 
 Ignorance, Irish, 170 ; enforced by 
 Act of Parliament, 177 
 
 "Illiterates," statistics of, 169 
 
 Industries, Irish, sacrificed to Eng- 
 land's commercial jealousy, 188 
 
 Insurgents, the Devonshire, their 
 motives, 11, note 
 
 Insurrections, a harvest of, in Eng- 
 land, 11 ; against improvements in 
 manufacture, 33 ; among the Eng- 
 lish, 34, 35 ; in Wales, 41 ; Justice 
 Fortescue on, 109 
 
 Inverness, poor rates in, 411 
 
 lona, and the Duke of Argyle, 379 ; 
 reduced population of, 380 
 
 Ireland, on the vain efforts to crush, 
 v., vi. ; under Charles II. , vi. ; its 
 industrial and commercial re- 
 sources, 51; its harbours, 51 ; its fer- 
 tility, 51-55 ; divisions of.as regards 
 Celtic and Saxon occupancy, 118, 
 119 ; situation of, at the Revolu- 
 . 149 ; the poverty of, 155 ; a 
 
 hundred years ago, 182; English 
 jealousy of the prosperity of, 194 ; 
 natural advantages of, 209 ; the 
 unfailing specific for, 225 ; false 
 theory of the misery of, 286 ; and 
 Christianity in England, 300, 301 ; 
 a refuge of learning and Christian- 
 ity in the Middle Ages, 301-303 ; 
 England's military and naval obli- 
 gations to, 303-313 ; American, 322- 
 328 ; provoked to rebellion, 332 
 
 Irish, the, the battle they are fight- 
 ing, 20 ; their patience, 34, 87 ; 
 charge against, by the i>ress and 
 platform orators, 45-50 ; charge of 
 laziness against, 56, 61 ; industry 
 and general character of, 58-69 ; 
 in Newfoundland, 65 ; in New Zea- 
 land, 66 ; emigrants in America, 
 67-69 ; filial affection of, 67 ; the 
 illogical side of their character, 
 85, 86 ; Cromwell's treatment of 
 the native, after the Rebellion of 
 I64I, 147, 153 ; banished by Crom- 
 well, 152, 153; boys and girls sold 
 as slaves, 152, 153 ; in Henry VIII. 's 
 time, 247 ; in time of famine, 260 ; 
 their clothing and houses, 291, 292 ; 
 confidence of, in their representa- 
 tives, 351 ; forbearance, 351, 352 
 
 Islands, Hebridean, romantic appear- 
 ance of, in the distance, 409 ; but 
 the homes of wretchedness, 409 
 
 Islay, reduced population of, 380 
 
 JAUE3 I. and the Ulster plantation 
 of, 137 ; singular proclamation for 
 his beloved subjects, 139 ; disas- 
 trous results of plantation, 146 
 
 Jebb, Bishop, on the meanness of 
 certain absentees, 239 
 
 Jefferies, Judge, a stickler for the 
 law, 98 
 
 Jezebel, 415 
 
 John of Salisburv, and his story to 
 Pope Adrian IV., 314, 316 
 
 Johnson, Dr., on the singularity of 
 persecution in Ireland, 179 ; on 
 Ireland in the Middle Ages, 302 ; 
 on lona, 379; on Flora Macdonald, 
 409 
 
 Johnstone, Justice, degradation and 
 ruin of, 125 
 
 Joinville, Prince de, on the cycle of 
 Irish woes, vi. 
 
 Josephus, on the Roman battering- 
 ram, 364 
 
 Joyce, Rev. "W., called to administer 
 
INDEX. 
 
 43t 
 
 the last rites of the Church to an 
 old evicted peasant, 94, 95 
 
 Judges, in Ireland, their excessive 
 numbers, 129 
 
 Junius, on the crisis which arrives 
 when a nation is roused to resist- 
 ance, iv. 
 
 Jury, trial by, practically discarded, 
 122 ; general practice to iiack an 
 Irish, 74, 122 
 
 Justice of Peace, office of, suspended, 
 122 
 
 Justices, the Lords, during the Rebel- 
 lion of 1641, 140-142 
 
 Kane, Sir Robert, on the resources 
 
 of Ireland, 53 
 Kavanagh, Mr. Arthur, on tenants' 
 
 improvements, 71 
 Kay, Mr. Joseph, on Ireland, 54 ; on 
 
 Irish energy, 59 ; his statistics of 
 
 eviction, 295 
 Keay, Mr. J. Seymour, M.P., on the 
 
 House of Irish landlords, 358 
 Keble, his Lyra Jnnocentium quoted, 
 , 278 
 
 Kelly, the widow, 102 
 Kennedy, Captain, ou report of the 
 
 untold suffering caused by evic- 
 tions in Kilrush Union, 268 
 Kerry, the peasantry of, 118-120 
 Killala, the Catholic Bishop of, on 
 
 female chastity, 108 
 King - Harman, Colonel, on his 
 
 countrymen, 64 
 Knipe, Mr. Thomas, on the fall in 
 
 value of land produce, &c., 91 
 Knox, John, his bitter retort, 379 
 Kohl, on Irish misery, 253 
 
 Labourers, old statute regarding, 3 ; 
 Euglish agricultural, 9, note ; han- 
 dicapped, 41 ; Cobden on Irish, 59 
 
 Laing, Mr., on boycotting in Ireland, 
 362 ; his charges against Mr. Bright 
 and Mr. Chamberlain, 57 ; on Irish 
 industry, as against Mr. Bright, 65 
 
 Land, waste, abortive Bills and other 
 steps for reclaiming, 215-220 ; re- 
 clamation of, at Pobble O'Keefe, 
 217 ; report on the practicability 
 and importance of reclaiming, 218 ; 
 reclaimed in England, France, 
 Prussia, and Ireland, 220 ; Mr. 
 Bright on reclamation of, in Ire- 
 
 . land, 220 
 
 Land, arable. Coke on, 16; tenure 
 different in Great Britain and Ire- 
 
 land, 70-74 ; improvements of, in 
 Ireland the work of the tenants, 
 71, 72; set out by the Court of 
 Claims, 147, 149 
 
 Landless men, English, statutes re- 
 garding, 10, 14 
 
 Landlordism, in Ireland, Mr. Froude 
 on, 117, 120; in the Highlands, 
 412-417 
 
 Landlords, modern English, 1, 90; 
 under the Plantageiiets, 5, 6 ; dur- 
 ing the Wars of the Koses, 6 ; 
 Irish, their prototype, 58 ; and 
 tenants, 76, 78 ; resistance of, to 
 reduction of rents, 92 ; evicting, 
 92 ; unscrupulous, 94 ; criminals 
 but fertile "rights of property," 
 95 ; denounced by the Times, 113 ; 
 different in England, 126 ; a caution 
 to, 147 ; and the division of hold- 
 ings, 183, 184 ; measures of, to 
 facilitate ejectment, 184 ; lostpower 
 of, 184 ; absentee, and their tenants 
 in distress, 245 ; the resident, 245 ; 
 deeds of Irish, 267; the number of, 
 290 ; the land they own, 290 ; House 
 of Irish, 358, 359 ; the Highland. 
 375 ; worse than Ahab, 415 
 
 Lands, Poor Law valuation of, in Ire- 
 land held by Irish peers and other 
 titled persons, 360-362 
 
 Landscape, an Irish, the story it tells, 
 296, 297 ; in contrast witha Russian, 
 297 ; noticeable absence of wood 
 in, 298 ; this explained, 298 
 
 Lansdowne, Lord, a typical absentee 
 landlord, 143 ; the founder of his 
 family, 143 
 
 Latimer, Bishop, on the yeomen of 
 his and his father's time, 8 ; de- 
 nounces evictions and evictors, 17, 
 18,20 
 
 Lavelle, on Lords Sligo and Lucan, 
 92 ; on Lord Lucan, 96 
 
 Lavergne, De, on the soil of Ireland, 
 53 
 
 Law, the, on the side of the oppressor. 
 98 ; its implements and victims, 98 
 
 Laws, penal, in Ireland, 170, 173- 
 183; of "William III., 173, 174, 177; 
 peculiaritv of, 178, 179 ; their real 
 object, 180 
 
 Laziness, alleged, of the Irish, un- 
 founded allegation, 56-69 
 
 League, the National, and the people, 
 291 
 
 Lecky, Mr., imputation of crimes of 
 combination to English settlers in 
 
432 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Ireland, 118 ; on the Rebellion of 
 1641, 140 ; on tlie desolation caused 
 in suppressing the Rebellion, 153 ; 
 on Ireland's financial inability to 
 venture on the cultivation of fiax, 
 155 ; account of the penal laws, 
 173-175; on the effects of those 
 laws, 176 ; on the victims of the 
 penal code, 178 ; on the unfail- 
 ing spirit of toleration amongst 
 Irish Catholics, 185'; on the con- 
 cession of Catholic emancipation, 
 196 ; on the famine of 1741, 250 ; on 
 the massacre iu Munster under Sir 
 George Carew, 274 ; on massacres 
 under Cromwell, 278 ; on Ire- 
 land in the Middle Ages, 301 ; 
 quoted, 329 ; in his right mind, 
 369 
 
 Legge, Mr. Secretary, his concern 
 about the Treasury, 252 
 
 Legislation in Ireland, in the landlord 
 interest, 72 ; necessity for, as re- 
 gards the relation between landlord 
 and tenant, 198,199; English, since 
 the Union, 211 
 
 Leland. on Queen Elizabeth's claim 
 on Ulster, 131 ; on the butchery 
 of an Italian garrison , 132 ; on the 
 Lords Justices in the Rebellion of 
 1641, 140 ; on the Irish freed from 
 English molestation, 193, 194 
 
 Leinster, Queen Elizabeth's confisca- 
 tions in, 131 ; emigration from, 
 165; holdings in, 166 
 
 Leslie, Mr. ClifFe, on waste of indus- 
 trial power in Ireland, 325 ; on 
 emigration from, 325 
 
 Lewis, Sir G. Cornewall, on popular 
 outrages, 30 ; on origin of agrarian 
 outrages, 112 ; on the counties 
 most familiar with crime, 118 ; on 
 the effect of the penal laws on the 
 condition of the Irish, 179 ; on 
 Irish cabins, 292 
 
 Lingard, on treatment of English 
 "vagabonds," 14 ; on Henry II. 's 
 cruelty, 318 
 
 Liverpool, Lord, his horror of Re- 
 form, 36 
 
 Lochiel, and his clansmen, 375 
 
 Loftus, Primate, Mr. Froude on, 
 161 
 
 London, the Bishop of, appealed to, 
 27 ; Coleraine county vested in cor- 
 poration and guilds of, 137 ; Lon- 
 don Tavern Committee of, in 1822, 
 its report on Irish landlords, 249 
 
 Lords, the House of, the support of 
 the landlord interest, 358 
 
 Lucan, Lord, 92; his clearances, 96; 
 his shifts to escape additional 
 
 Eoor-rate, 96 ; a terrible story of 
 is cruelty, 96; made "war" on 
 liis tenants, 98 ; his testimony to 
 Irish forbearance, 99 
 Lyell, Sir Charles, on the Irish in 
 America, 68 ; their industry and 
 thrift, 68 
 
 Macallum More, his motto, 378 ; 
 insatiable, 379 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, quoted, 30; on the 
 Saxon Right Boys, 31 ; on the capa- 
 bilities of Ireland, 54 ; how he 
 regarded assassination among the 
 oppressed Saxons, 119 ; on Lord 
 Burleigh, 281 ; on foreign attach- 
 ments, 822; his indictment against 
 British rule in Ireland, 353 ; on 
 
 , Macallum More, 378 
 
 Macdonald, Flora, Johnson's pane- 
 gyric on, 409 
 
 Macdonald, Lord, and his clansmen, 
 375 ; evictions by, 383, 384 
 
 MacFie, John, evidence of, 413 
 
 Maclnnes, Donald, evidence of, 384 
 
 Mackenzie, Mr. Alexander, on the 
 Sutherland clearances, 24, 376 ; his 
 book, 108, 376 ; his description of 
 a Sutherland clearance, 376 ; on 
 B.iIfour pire, 386, 388; his Isle uf 
 Skye, 413 
 
 Mackintosh, Sir James, on earning 
 eternal glory, 26 ; on ancient Irish 
 history, 301 
 
 Maclean, Dr., a beneficent Skye land-< 
 lord, 412 
 
 MacLean, Murdo, evidence of, 412 
 
 Macleod, Dr. Norman, on the con- 
 tributions to the army of the Isle 
 of Skye, 405 
 
 Macneill, Mr. Swift, M.P., his vol- 
 ume on the Union, 329 
 
 M'Carthy, Mr. J. G., his "Waste 
 Lands Bill," and his account of its 
 fate, 219 
 
 M'Cutchan, Rev. Mr., on Lord Lans- 
 downe's tenants, 143 
 
 M'Lagan, Mr., M.P., on the fertility 
 of Southern Ireland, 53 
 
 M'Neill, Sir John, on the crofters, 
 374 
 
 Magistrates, paid, described by Mr. 
 Nassau Senior, 122 ; importance 
 of their o£5ce, 122 ; and the people, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 433 
 
 123 ; charges of Justice Fletcher 
 against, 125; how the people re- 
 gard, 129 ; Wakefield on, 129 
 
 Malby, Sir Nicholas, his massacres 
 and devastation in Connaught, 275 
 
 Mansions of the poor, the, 291 
 
 Manslaughter, charge of, againstLord 
 John Kussell, 266 
 
 Manufactures in Ireland, present 
 ■want of, 91; till Charles II. 's 
 time, 187 ; paralysed by England, 
 188; total destruction of, 190 
 
 Marlborough Relief Committee, the, 
 on nakedness of the poor, 292 
 
 Martin, Dr., and his high-handed 
 proceedings in Skye, 412 
 
 Martineau, Miss, on Irish industry, 
 62 
 
 Massacres in Ulster in 1607, 272 ; in 
 Munster under Queen Elizabeth, 
 273-275; in Connaught, 275; under 
 Cromwell, 278, 279 
 
 Matthews, Mr. Secretary, 50 
 
 Mayo, County, absenteeism in, 245 ; 
 the acreage, and its value, 245 
 
 Measures, table of rejected remedial, 
 204, 205 ; table of coercive, 225 
 
 Melbourne, Lord, and Irish "illogi- 
 cality," 85, 86 ; on the assassina- 
 tion of a landlord, 86 ; hooted from 
 oflSce, 112 
 
 Members, the Irish, and Mr. Cham- 
 berlain, 348-351 
 
 Militia, the Orange, 168 
 
 Mill, J. S., quoted, 56 ; on England's 
 hold of Ireland, 372 
 
 Miller, Hugh, on the Sutherland 
 clearances, 24 ; on the golden age 
 of the Highlands, 374 
 
 Milman, quoted, 314 
 
 Moli^re, the specific for all diseases 
 in his Malade Imaginaire, 225 
 
 Monahan, Rev. Mr., bis pleading in 
 behalf of the suffering peasants in 
 AchiU, 264, 265 
 
 Montreal Emigrant Society, report 
 of, 258 
 
 Moran, Cardinal, 315, note 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, on the social 
 wrongs of his time, 9 ; his Utopia 
 quoted, 9, 10; and the evicted 
 peasantry, 101 
 
 Morley, Mr. John, on absentee land- 
 lords, 136 ; on local government in 
 Ireland, 207; favourable to pay- 
 ment of members, 349 
 
 Morris, Mr. O'Connor, on lawful 
 spoliation, 73 ; traces agrarianism 
 
 to the English settlers, 119 ; on 
 tenants-at-will in Kerry, 120 
 
 Moryson, his narrative of Mountjoy's 
 proceedings, 276, 277 
 
 Mountjoy, Lord, commissioned by 
 Elizabeth to suppress rebellion in 
 Ireland, 276; and his deeds of 
 devastation, 277 
 
 Mulhall, Mr., his statistics, and his 
 defence of them, 292, 293 
 
 Mull, reduced population of, 379 
 
 Munster, in the hands of the " under- 
 takers," 131 ; land in, forfeited on 
 the fall of the Desmonds, 131 ; 
 emigration from, 165 ; holdings in, 
 166 
 
 Murdoch, Mr. John, on Islay, 380, 381 
 
 Naboth's vineyard, 415. 
 
 Napier and Ettrick, Lord, and Crof- 
 ters' Royal Commission, 412, 417 
 
 Napier, Sir Charles, on the resources 
 of Ireland, 53; on the tame sub- 
 mission of the Irish, 87 ; on coer- 
 cion in Ireland, 222, 261; on in- 
 difference of Ministers to distress 
 in Ireland, 260 ; his offer to send 
 wheat to Ireland in 1847, 261 ; 
 letter of, on eve of battle, 3(^; and 
 the 22nd regiment, 307, 308 ; his 
 identification of " Irish " with 
 "British," 307; on bayonets and 
 famine, 309 
 
 Napier, Sir W. F., on the devotion of 
 an Irish regiment- in Scinde to the 
 glory of England, 308 ; how their 
 kinsfolk were rewarded, 309 
 
 Napoleon, his regret that he had not 
 invaded Ireland, 313 
 
 Nares, on Lord Burleigh, 280 
 
 Nature, the law of, to be obeyed, 87 
 
 Navy, Irish in the, 310-313 
 
 Nelson, Lord, comparison of, with 
 Wellington, 271 
 
 Nero, his treatment of evictors, 95 
 
 Newenham his "View of Ireland," 
 51 ; on Irish cabins, 291 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, on the disaster 
 to William III.'s statue and the 
 Orangemen's distress, 168 ; his 
 astonishment at the consent of the 
 Popes to the union of Ireland with 
 England, 319 ; on Roman malaria, 
 321 
 
 Nicholson, Bishop, and the famished 
 cottagers, 250 
 
 Nicolson, Donald, the story of, 416 
 417 
 
 2 E 
 
434 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Nimmo, Mr., on the Irish labourer, 
 59 ; his survey o'f waste lands, 216 
 
 Nortnanby, Lord, on the social and 
 domestic virtues of the Irish, 371 ; 
 on the origin of Irish crime, 371 
 
 Nottingham, riot at, 40 
 
 Nugent, Lord, on Irish suffering, 252 
 
 Nymph Bank, the. Fishery Bill, 211 
 
 Oath, cotton spinners', 42 
 
 O'Brien, Mr. R. Barry, Life of 
 Captain Drummond, 127 
 
 O'Brien, Mr. Justice, admonished 
 by Mr. Gladstone, 235; his inex- 
 cusability, 235 
 
 O'Byrnes, the, of Wicklow, treat- 
 ment of, 142 ; and the Rebellion 
 of 1641, 143 
 
 O'Connell, his "shave beggars," viii. ; 
 the trial of, 74 ; the dictum of, 86 ; 
 his influence on elections, 184, 196 ; 
 and the Pope and Pope's ministers, 
 321; recommendation of boycot- 
 ting, 363 
 
 O'Connor, Mr. Charles, Memoir i of, 
 quoted, 177 
 
 O'Connor, Mr. T. P., M.P., on the 
 Irish landscape, 296 
 
 Offences, malicious, in England and 
 Wales, 49 
 
 O'Leary, the tragic case of, 181, 182 
 
 Orangeism, and illegitimacy, 166 
 
 Orangemen, 166 ; Ulster, and their 
 "Fathers," 166, 167; idolatry of 
 William IIL, 168 
 
 Ormonde, letter of, to Lord Bur- 
 leigh, 283, 284 ; the present Mar- 
 quis of, note, 299 
 
 Osborne, Lord Sydney Godolphin, 
 on the criminality of the evictors, 
 and their agents, 98 
 
 Outrages, in connection with Trades 
 Unions, 42-44 ; agrarian. Lord 
 Chesterfield on, 109 ; Shelley on, 
 110 ; Mr. Poulett-Scrope on, 110- 
 112 ; Sir Comewall Lewis and Mr. 
 Binns on origin of, 112; apology 
 for, 285 
 
 Paine, Robert, on Queen Elizabeth's 
 planters in Ireland, 157; on the 
 inhabitants themselves, 157 
 
 PM Mall Gazette, on Orangeism, 
 166 ; on the forbearance of Irish 
 representative men, 352 
 
 Palmerston, Lord, on the Irish char- 
 acter and Irish industry, 63 ; on 
 tenant-right, 199, 200 
 
 Parliament, the potence and im- 
 potence of, 115 ; sympathy of, with 
 landlords, 136 ; responsibility of, 
 for the troubles of Ireland, 201, 
 254 ; strange inaction of, 267, 270 ; 
 insufficient legislation of, 270 ; 
 deaf to humanity, only, not deaf 
 to the claims of the landlords, 271 ; 
 payment of members of, 349-351 ; 
 Scottish members of, and oppres- 
 sion in the Highlands, 414 
 
 Parnell, Mr., his loyalty to the royal 
 family, 29 ; his Arrears Bill, 206 ; 
 the forged letters ascribed to him, 
 346 ; speeches of Lord Herschell 
 and Mr. Gladstone on case of, 
 336-346 ; the public on the case, 
 346 ; recommends boycotting, 363 
 
 Parnell, Sir Henry, on a singular 
 concession to the Catholics, 177, 178 
 
 Parsons, Sir William, his atrocious 
 policy, 141 ; career of, 141, 142, 
 and the O'Byrnes of Wicklow, 142 ; 
 stimulated the Rebellion of 1641, 
 143 
 
 Peasant, an Irish evicted, his despair, 
 85 
 
 Peasantry, the English, 14; of Done- 
 gal, 105, 106 ; electoral revolt of, 
 under O'Connell, 184 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, denounced, 39 ; his 
 secretary assassinated, 40 ; as deaf 
 as a milestone, 112 ; his pathetic 
 lament over the lost power of the 
 landlords, 184 ; and Catholic 
 Emancipation, 184; his "message 
 of peace '' to Ireland, 191 ; and 
 Lord John Russell, 203; and his 
 scheme of arterial drainage, 218 ; 
 on Captain Kennedy's report, 269 ; 
 his momentary indignation, 269; 
 his familiarity with the condition 
 of Ireland, 269 ; played the part of 
 Pilate, 270 
 
 Pelham, Sir William, report to Queen 
 Elizabeth of his murderous pro- 
 ceedings, 273 ; on service in Ire- 
 land, 282 
 
 Pennefather, Baron, on the law of 
 landlord and tenant, 72 
 
 Pension List, the infamous, quartered 
 on the Irish Exchequer, 154, 1.55 
 
 Perceval, Mr., the assassination of, 35 
 
 Percevalism and contempt, 352 
 
 Perilous counsel, 29 
 
 Peterloo, the massacre of, 35 
 
 Petty, Sir William, on Irish "laz- 
 ing," 58 ; capable of taking care of 
 
INDEX. 
 
 435 
 
 himself, 143 ; his witnesses, 143 ; 
 on Cromwell's cruelty, 152; on 
 absentees, 238. 
 
 Pharaoh, the modern, 58 
 
 Philip II. , his compact entitling him 
 to fish on the coast of Ireland, 
 210 
 
 Philps, on Norman tyranny in Eng- 
 land, 2 
 
 Piers Plowman, sounds the knell of 
 feudal slavery, 3, 4 
 
 Pigott, his character known all along 
 to the prosecution and the defence, 
 346 
 
 Pike, on the Cato Street conspiracy, 
 37 ; on the England of Henry II. 's 
 time, 317 
 
 Pitt, 178 ; a consequence of his policy 
 in Ireland, 332 
 
 Plantation, under Elizabeth, 130- 
 136 ; James I.s in Ulster, 137, 146 ; 
 in Muuster, 137 
 
 Planters, Queen Elizabeth's, 157 ; 
 James I.'s, 158, 167 
 
 Plunket, Lord and Bishop, an evictor, 
 25, 26 ; denounced by the Times, 26 
 
 Poisoning, old i)enalty for, 284 
 
 Pollock, Mr., a Gal way evictor, the 
 Times on, 114; legislation in favour 
 of, 115 ; Mr. Disraeli on, 115 
 
 Poor, the, Job and the Proverbs on 
 the oppressors of, 107 ; report of 
 Committee on, 216 ; numlaer of, 
 in receipt of relief of late years, 
 288, 289 ; the "domains " of, 289 ; 
 the "mansions "of, 291 
 
 Poor law, the, 20 
 
 Poor rates, payment of, 94 
 
 Pope, quoted, 378 
 
 Pope, the, and his dealings with 
 Ireland, 320, 321 
 
 Population of Ireland, tables of, 
 287, 288; in Henry II. 's time, 
 314 
 
 Portland, the Dnke of, his warning 
 to his tenantry, 399; his motive, 
 399 
 
 Poulett-Scrope, Mr., M.P., 53; on 
 the Irish labourer, 59 ; on evic- 
 tion, 80 ; on the real grievances 
 of Ireland, and in vindication of 
 Whiteboyism, 110-112 ; advocacy 
 of reclamation of waste lands, 218 
 
 Presbyterians, the bribery of, 356 ; 
 the younger, and Mr. Gladstone, 
 358 ; their ingratitude to the Eng- 
 lish Liberal party, 358 
 
 Press-gangs, employed, 152 
 
 Priests, their advice to the people, 
 86 ; unfounded charge against the 
 Catholic, 170 
 
 Processions, maritime funeral, 403 
 
 Proclamation, singular, of James I., 
 139 ; an extraordinary, during the 
 famine of 1741, 252 ; Edward VL's, 
 and its bearing on the present state 
 of the Highlands, 419 
 
 Property, landed, rights of, in Ire- 
 land, based on confiscation, 130 
 
 Protestants, generous conduct of 
 some Irish, 181 
 
 Providence, at fault, 26 
 
 Quebec Times, on afiSicting condition 
 of evicted Highlanders in Canada, 
 401 
 
 Queen, the, the target of an assassin, 
 40 ; "a wiser, gentler, and happier 
 Elizabeth," 168 ; on the Scottish 
 Highlands and their people, 404 
 
 Raleigh, a landed proprietor in 
 Munster, 131 ; his cruel treat- 
 ment of an Italian garrison, 132 ; 
 treatment of, by James I. and the 
 second Cecil, 132; stigmatised by 
 Coke, 132 ; taken compassion on 
 by Richard Boyle, 132, 133; his 
 Irish estates juggled away, 133; 
 his experience of fighting with the 
 Irish, 283 ; commends indiscrimi- 
 nate slaughter, 283 
 
 Rebellions, early English, 4, 5 ; under 
 Edward VL, 11, 12; the three 
 great Irish, 33 ; of 1641 , cause of 
 these, 139-146 ; issue of, 147 ; how 
 suppressed, 167 ; of 1798, 178, 332 
 
 Rebels, "practises against," 283 
 
 Rebeccaites, the, 41 
 
 Reform Bill, the, riots preceding, 
 39,40 
 
 Reformers, the, of 1832, and their 
 banners, 39, 40 
 
 Regent, the Prince, outrage on, 35 
 
 Regiment, the 87th Irish, at Monte 
 Video, 305; the 22nd Irish in 
 Scinde, 306, 309 
 
 Regiments, the Highland, 305 
 
 Reid, on character of the first settlers 
 in Ulster, 158 
 
 Rents, the agitation for reduction of, 
 88, 91 ; reduction of, in England, 
 88, 91 ; of land in Ireland, 91 ; the 
 people willing to pay, 290 
 
 Representatives, the Irish parlia- 
 mentary, 212 
 
436 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Republic, attempt to establish an 
 Irish, 201 
 
 Keturns, the constabulary, of evic- 
 tions, illusory, 292, 293, 295 
 
 Returns, revenue for 1847-1849, 
 265 
 
 Review, the Edinburgh, on the cruel 
 oppression by the landlords of the 
 Irish, 249 
 
 Reporter of 1515, the, on the wretch- 
 edness of Ireland, 247 
 
 Richard II., and the Kentish men, 
 5 ; and his parliament, 5 ; tax on 
 absentees, 237, 238 
 
 Richmond Royal Commission, 72, 
 76 
 
 Roebuck, Mr., his rancorous inso- 
 lence, 200 
 
 Rogers, Prof., on the people of Eng- 
 land as losers by the Reformation, 
 14 ; on contracts and the right of 
 the State in the matter, 78 
 
 Roman malaria, the, 321 
 
 Ross, Mr., on the destruction of 
 Union documents, 329, 330 
 
 Rosse, Lord, on stipendiary magis- 
 trates, 128, 129 ; an ancestor of, 
 141, 142 
 
 Rosses, the massacre of the, 392-394 
 
 Rous, John, of Warwick, his denun- 
 ciation of evictoi-s, 17 
 
 Routh, Sir R., his reply to Achill 
 deputation, 264, 265 
 
 Russell, Sir Charles, Q.C., M.P., on 
 Lord Lansdowne's tenants, 144 
 
 Russell, Lord John, quoted, 38 ; on 
 misgovernment in Ireland, 38 ; on 
 crime and outrage in England, 38, 
 39 ; on the native industry of the 
 Irish, 60 ; impugned the constitu- 
 tion of the jury in O'Connells' 
 trial, 74 ; on the cruelty of evic- 
 tions, 115 ; would fain legislate 
 generously for Ireland, 203; his 
 quotation from Romeo's address 
 to the Apothecary, 268; inaction 
 of, 270 
 
 Sadler, Mr., on the evictions and 
 their authors, 103 ; a voice crying 
 in the wilderness, 103 ; on the 
 absentee, and absenteeism, 237, 
 239 
 Salford, Bishop of, appeal to, 27 
 Salisbury, Lord, his eccentric kins- 
 man, viii., 20, 40; his reckless 
 dictum, 75; trusts to Irish patience, 
 
 87 ; abuse of the Irish people, 
 88 ; humane provision of, 99 ; an 
 ancestor of, 132; his ancestral 
 piety, 281 ; and the Royal Com- 
 mission, 284 ; his assurance to the 
 Pope, 316 ; as a landlord, 347 ; the 
 effrontery of, 399 
 
 Saunderson, Colonel, the redoubt- 
 able, 164-167 
 
 Schonberg, Marshal, on delicately- 
 bred English soldiers, 304 
 
 Schools, poor, in Ireland, 171 ; girls', 
 the, and the Sisters of Mercy, the 
 thirst for knowledge, 171 
 
 Scotland, before Ireland in rebellion, 
 33 ; riots in, 33 
 
 Scotsmen, a caution to, 309, 310 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, on evictions, 25 ; 
 on Ireland and its future, 54 ; on 
 Irish labourers, 59 ; on commercial 
 restrictions, 186 ; on Irish misery, 
 253 ; on the possible disappearance 
 from the Highlands of the pibroch, 
 310 ; on the pride of the Highland 
 laird, 411 
 
 Seamen, Irish, large proportion of, 
 in the navy, 310-313 ; their part at 
 Trafalgar and the Nile, 310-313 
 
 Self-preservation, the law of, 86, 87 
 
 Sellar, the Sutherland factor and 
 eviction superintendent, 376 
 
 Selwyn, Bishop, on the Irish in New 
 Zealand, 65 
 
 Senior, Mr. Nassau, on crime in Ire- 
 land, 45 ; on clearances, 45, note ; 
 on landlord and tenant in Ireland, 
 77 ; on paid magistrates, 122, 129 
 
 Sennet, the Messrs., on their Irish 
 workpeople, 67 
 
 Sermons, modern, 27 
 
 Settlement, law of, of Charles II., 
 20, 121 ; of Ulster and the Crom- 
 wellian, 130 
 
 Shannon, the, order to cross, 151 
 
 Shaw-Lefevre, Mr., M.P., on the 
 period between the Union .ind 
 1829, 197 
 
 Sheffield, the grinders of, and the 
 non-unionists, 43, 44 
 
 Shelburne, the Earl of, on the deter- 
 mined attitude of Ireland in 1779, 
 191 
 
 Shelley, on the Union and its efiFects, 
 110 
 
 Ships, Highland emigrant, wrecked 
 and burnt, 403 
 
 Sidley, Rev. Mr. De Burgh, on Earl 
 of Lucan's humanity, 96 
 
INDEX. 
 
 437 
 
 Sidney, Algernon, quoted, 74 
 
 Sidney, Sir Henry, on the Irish Epis- 
 copal Church and its clergy in his 
 time, 158 
 
 Sigerson, Professor, quoted, 127 
 
 Sin, the unforgiven, 15 
 
 Sisters of Mercy, Irish, 171 ; in the 
 Crimean war, note, 172 
 
 Skye, evictions in, 384 ; once a nur- 
 sery for the army, 405 ; landlords' 
 tyranny in, 411-417 
 
 Sligo, the Marquis of, his rank among 
 evictors, 92 ; a typical absentee, 
 92 ; his rental, 92 ; his tenants 
 and their grievance against the 
 "oflSce," 92, 93; his tenants "care- 
 takers," 93 ; his systematic oppres- 
 sion of them, 93, 94 ; his cupidity 
 not yet satiated — still evicting, 94, 
 95 
 
 Smiles, Mr., on the Rebellion of 1641, 
 139 
 
 Smith, Mr. W. H., and the Pamell 
 Commission, hia selection of three 
 judges of his own party, 50 
 
 Smith, Mr. Goldwin, on the point 
 of interest in Irish history, v. ; in 
 a judicial frame of mind, 9 ; on the 
 descendants of the Cromwellian 
 landowners, 123 ; on Sir John 
 Temple, 144 ; on efforts to be just 
 to Ireland, 208 
 
 Smith, Sidney, on the demands of 
 Ireland, 208 ; on the absentee land- 
 lord, 246 ; on Irish meekness, 351 
 
 Society of Friends, Transactions of, 
 on Irish absentees, 240 
 
 Soldiers, Irish, 303, 304-310; the 
 English, in William III.'s time, 
 304 ; the Highland, 374, 406-408 
 
 Solitudinem Faciunt, Forestam Ap- 
 pellant, 395 
 
 Somerset, on Lord Burleigh, 280 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, on titles to land, 
 137 
 
 Spencer, Lord, 355 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, on Ireland's un- 
 merited sufferings, v. ; description 
 of Ireland, 51, 52 ; on Queen Eliza- 
 beth's confiscations in Ireland, 131 ; 
 on the Irish Protestant bishops of 
 his time, 159; oh the Protestant 
 and Popish clergy, 159 ; his un- 
 poetical plan for the reduction of 
 Munster, 273 ; on the effects of 
 its operation, 273 ; on the Irish 
 soldier, 282 ; on Ireland's goodly 
 woods, 297 
 
 Spurgeon, Mr., appealed to, 27 ; on 
 the people, 27 
 
 St. Albans, the Duke of, and Mr. 
 Chamberlain, 155 
 
 St. James's Gazette, on the honesty 
 of Irish fishermen, 214 
 
 St. Leger, his cruelty, 277 
 
 Stalbridge, Lord, his need of a deer 
 forest, 399 ; subscribes to the Pigott 
 fund, 400 
 
 Standard, the, on evictions, quoted, 
 88 
 
 Stansfeld, Mr., M.P., 378 
 
 Staples and Archbishop Browne, 161 
 
 Star, the, on eviction scenes, 101, 
 102 
 
 Starvation in the midst of plenty, 
 263-266 
 
 Statesman's Year - Book, statistics 
 from, note, 289 
 
 Statesmen, heaven -born, and the 
 Irish peasants, 138 ; contention of 
 English, in reference to Ireland, 
 255 
 
 Statistics, criminal, of England and 
 Wales, 48 
 
 Stead, Mr., his Irish and Russian 
 contrasts, 297 
 
 Stewart of Garth, warning of, 416 
 
 Stewart, Rev. Andrew, on James.I. 's 
 planters, 158 
 
 Stock, live, fall in value of, 91 
 
 Stone, Primate, his licentiousness, 
 161 
 
 Strathconon, a district bedewed with 
 tears, viii. ; the story of, and evic- 
 tions in, 386-388 ; population and 
 rental, 389 ; Times on, 390, 392 
 
 Straw, Jack, rebellion under, 4 
 
 Strickland, Miss, on Lord Burleigh, 
 280 
 
 Strype, his Eechsiastical Memorials 
 quoted, 11, 12, 13, 15, 18 
 
 Sullivan, Mr. T., on the Popes as 
 authorities in secular matters, 316 
 
 Sully, quoted by Burke, 123 
 
 Sutherland, the Duke of, his pro- 
 perty, 25 ; enormous extent of, 419 
 
 Sutherland, the Countess of, 26 ; as 
 Lady Macbeth, 376 ; and the evic- 
 tions, 376 
 
 Sweden, the right to fish on the 
 coast of Ireland, 210 
 
 Swift, on the cause of Irish indolence, 
 .58 ; on Irish clearances, 96 ; on tlie 
 Irish gentry, 156 ; on the Irish 
 Episcopal bishops, 162 ; his veiled 
 protest, 186; on the government 
 
438 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 of Ireland, 211 ; on absentees, 239 ; 
 a lament of, 298 ; on England's 
 obligations to Ireland, 303 ; com- 
 mends boycotting, 363 
 
 Tacitus, quoted, 306 
 
 Tacksmen in the Highlands, 374, 375 
 
 Tailors, the ancient and loyal guild 
 of, 183 
 
 Taylor, Dr. Cooke, his account of the 
 number killed during the Irish Re- 
 bellion, 144, 145 
 
 Taylor, historian, on the old and the 
 new Irish aristocracy, 156 
 
 Telegraph, the Daily, on Lord Sligo's 
 tenants, 92, 93 ; on Irish agrarian 
 crime, 119 
 
 Temple, Sir "William, on the natural 
 advantages of Ireland, 209 ; on the 
 effects of the plagues following the 
 famine of 1741, 252 
 
 Temple, Sir John, his doings in Ire- 
 land, 144 ; a self -convicted rascal, 
 145 
 
 Tenant-right flouted in Parliament, 
 200 ; existent in Ulster, 200 
 
 Tenants, futile attempts to legislate 
 for, 199 ; two classes of, 290 
 
 Tenure, land, difference of, in Eng- 
 land and Ireland, 71, 72 ; in the 
 Highlands, now and formerly, 373, 
 374 
 
 Text-books, Archbishop Whateley's, 
 manipulation of, 186, 187 ; on Irish 
 manufactures and commerce, 187 
 
 Thackeray, on Ireland, 54, 108 ; on 
 the condition of the Irish in 1843, 
 254 
 
 Thierry, M., on the retentive memo- 
 ries of the Irish, and their un- 
 exampled tenacity of purpose, 372 
 
 Thistlewood, his conspiracy, 37 
 
 Thornton, Mr., on alleged Irish in- 
 dolence, 61 ; on destitution and 
 crime, 80 
 
 Tillage, statute of, quoted, 6 
 
 Times, the, on the relation between 
 landlord and tenant, 76 ; on a 
 notice of ejectment and its effect, 
 81 ; sympathy of, with the ejected, 
 81 ; envenomed attack on Mr. 
 Gladstone, 81-83 ; on the legacy 
 of tyranny, 109 ; a word for, 113 ; 
 denunciation of Irish landlords, 
 113 ; on a cruel eviction in Galway, 
 114 ; on the politics of Ulster, 
 164 ; on agricultural holdings, 166 ; 
 on parliamentary commissions on 
 
 Ireland, 201 ; on small holdings, 
 290 ; on proportion of Catholics in 
 the army, 305 ; prophecy of, re- 
 garding the Irish exodus, 328 ; on 
 clearances in Ross-shire at Glen- 
 calvie and in Strathconon, 390-392 
 
 Tipperary, not Celtic, the inhabitants 
 of, 118, 119 
 
 Tiree, reduced population of, 380 ; 
 enforced redaction of rents in, 
 381 , 
 
 Tobermory, accumulation of distress 
 in, 380 
 
 Tone, "Wolfe, on Irishmen in the 
 navy, 311, 312 ; at a meeting to 
 discuss the invasion of Ireland, 
 366 
 
 Torrens, Mr. M'Cullagh, M.P., his 
 story of Lord Melbourne, 86, 86 
 
 Townshend, Lord, on the wretched- 
 ness of the Irish people, 248 
 
 Trade, Irish, paralysed by England, 
 188 ; destruction of, 190 
 
 Trades Unions, English and Scottish, 
 report on, 42 ; outrages in connec- 
 tion with, 43, 44 
 
 Transplantatioa under Cromwell, 
 147, 151 
 
 Trench, Mr. Stewart, on deaths by 
 starvation in Kenmare, 256 
 
 Trench, Archbishop, 245 
 
 Trench, Rev. F. F., experience of 
 famine in Cork County in 1847, 255 
 
 Trevelyan, Sir Charles, on famine of 
 1741, 251 
 
 Trevelyan, Sir George, on evictions, 
 79; on Dublin Castle, 236; his 
 charge against the Government, 
 271 
 
 Troubles, agrarian, in England, put 
 an end to, 20 
 
 Tudor, Mary, her commission to re- 
 strain the English landlords, 12 ; 
 her injustice to Ireland, 12 
 
 Tuke, Mr., on ejectment and the 
 workhouse, 84 ; quoted by the 
 Duke of Argyle, 381 
 
 Tweedmouth, Lord, and the disap- 
 pearance of his tenants, 384 
 
 Tyler, "Wat, Rebellion under, 4, 5 ; 
 its fruit, 5 
 
 Tyranny, English resistance of, 30 
 
 Tyrconnel and Tyrone, the Ulster 
 chiefs, flight of. 137 
 
 UiG, the widow of, 409 ; fate of her 
 son, 409, 410 ; appalling spectacle 
 at, 417, 418 
 
INDEX. 
 
 439 
 
 Ulster, the settlement of, 130 ; half 
 of, vested in Queen Elizabeth, 131 ; 
 preparations for plantation of, 137 ; 
 sects and parties in, 164, 165 ; 
 emigration from, 165 ; its rank as 
 regards income-tax and rateable 
 property, 166 ; holdings in, 166 ; 
 primus in Orange immorality only, 
 166 ; character of its people, 166 ; 
 fate of, about 1607, 272; how 
 "loyalty" has been secured in, 
 356-358 
 
 Undertakers, the, explanation of the 
 name, 157 
 
 Union, the, documents in connection 
 with, suppressed, 329, 330 ; cor- 
 ruption in connection with, 330, 
 332 ; the Irish people against it, 
 331 ; Bill, how passed, 331 
 
 Upper Ossory, Lord, on St. Leger's 
 execrable cruelty, 277 
 
 Usher's, Archbishop, account of 
 women converted by famine into 
 wolves, 250 
 
 Utopia, 9 ; quoted by Lord John Kus- 
 sell, 9 
 
 "Vagabonds," English, their bar- 
 barous treatment, 10, 14 
 
 Viceroys, absentee, 248 
 
 Voters, statistics of illiterate, in Ire- 
 land, 169 ; increase of, 184 
 
 Waddy, Mr., Q.C., M.P., his defini- 
 tion of eviction, 106 
 
 Wakefield, on the Irish magistrates, 
 129 ; on the exactions of the land- 
 lords, 248 
 
 Wales, Prince of, 29 
 
 Wallace, Mr. Russell, on the High- 
 
 - land holdings, 374 ; on the High- 
 land clearances and their abettors, 
 400 
 
 Wallop, Sir Henry, remorse of, 282 
 
 Walpole, on Richard Boyle, 132 ; on 
 the expulsion of 1611, 138 ; on Sir 
 William Parsons, 141, 142 ; on the 
 cruel treatment of the Irish after 
 the RebeUion, 151, 153 
 
 Walton, Isaak, his advice to the 
 angler, 282 
 
 Ware, Sir James, on the Irish 
 fisheries, 209 
 
 Warner, Rev. Dr., on the Lords 
 Justices and the Rebellion of 1641, 
 140, 141 ; on the numbers killed 
 in the Rebellion of 1641, 145; on 
 
 England's obligations to Ireland, 
 300 
 
 Wars, the Napoleonic, and the Eng- 
 lish peasant and artisan, 35 
 
 Waste lands, Par. Comm. reports 
 upon, 216, 218 ; Weale, his report 
 on, 217 
 
 Watchword, our, x. 
 
 Weavers, the London silk, risings 
 among, 33 
 
 Wellesley, Sir Arthur. See Wel- 
 lington. 
 
 Wellington, the Duke of, unpopu- 
 larity of, in 1819, 35; his contempt 
 for the masses, 37 ; denounced, 39 ; 
 remarkable letter of, in 1808, to 
 Brigadier-General Lee, 124 ; his 
 forgetfulness of what he owed to 
 Ireland, 271 ; his reward,— but his 
 soldiers? 406 
 
 Wesley, John, on Protestant methods 
 of conversion, and on the Irish 
 people, 172, 173 
 
 Westminster, the Duke of, on the 
 worst government in the world, 
 354 ; his zeal for the State, and 
 strong right arm, 399; his deer 
 forest, 399 
 
 Whately, Archbishop, his manipu- 
 lated school text-books, 186 ; his 
 zeal in urging inquiry into the re- 
 clamation of waste lands, 218 
 
 Whiteboyism, justified, 109-112 
 
 Wilde, Sir William, on years of 
 absolute want, 252 
 
 William III., grants of lands by, and 
 their resumption by Parliament, 
 154 ; statue of, in Dublin, and the 
 Orangemen, 168 ; penal code of, 
 173-175 
 
 Wilson, Mr. H. J., M.P., his dis- 
 covery of the Balfour-ram, 365 
 
 Winans, Mr. , of New York, and his 
 shootings in Scotland, 399 
 
 Window-breaking, well-founded ap- 
 prehension of, ^1 
 
 Wizard, the, warning of, before 
 CuUoden, 376 ; no true seer, 375 
 
 Women, Irish, Mr. Chamberlain's 
 mock indignation in regard to, 48 ; 
 outcast for loss of virtue, 85 
 
 "Woodcock," the, 86 
 
 "Woods, the Island of," 297; de- 
 struction of, 297, 298; the poor 
 falsely charged with this, 298 
 
 Wool, restrictions on, and the wool 
 trade of Ireland, 187, 188 
 
 Works, list of, to which the author 
 
440 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 refers bis readers, and depdts for 
 
 distribution or sale of useful Irisb 
 
 literature, ix., x. 
 Writing, a, on the wall, 107 
 Wyse, of Waterford, and his protest, 
 
 181 
 
 Ykomankt, the Orange, 168 
 Yeomen, English, extinct, 9, note 
 York, the Archbishop of, his conduct 
 contrasted with that of Bishop 
 Lalimer, 20 ; bespeaks an enthusi- 
 astic welcome for Mr. Balfour, 20 
 YouDg, Arthur, on Limerick and 
 
 Tipperary, 52, 53; on Ireland 
 generally, 53 ; on Irish industry 
 58 ; on Irish government, 123 ; on 
 the penal laws, 180 ; on the im 
 portance of fisheries to Ireland, 
 209 ; on the Irish cabins, 291 ; on 
 the destruction of Irish woods, 298 
 299 ; his drastic remedy therefor, 
 296, 299 
 
 Zealand, New, the Irish in, 65 
 guarded by Irish soldiers only, 66 
 
 Zeluco, Highlander's complaint in, 
 307, noU 
 
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