3 Whatever be the reason, one thing
concerned.
that we
factories even now anywhere :
were a COMmpnmit relia! people.’
I concelve LO be cert Ain. that the Lrish people W ruld never have been
i wa
willing to endure the horrible slavery that went to the making of
1 “‘ Bnough has been said to assure the reader that the popular notions as
to the vast mineral wea th of Ireland, o1 her hidden c¢ al fi ids, waiting only
j | ‘ ’ ~. . ‘ . Qo TQ 3 \ a
for development, are myths unworthy of a serious and reflective age.
Covne’s Ireland, Industrial and Agricultural (1902), p. 26
2'To the above remarks one poss Xe pt m must be made. Coal is to
be found in the neigh! rhood of Lough Neagh, and it is stated that, as the
result of the pluck and energy f a Belfast business man, it has been proved
LO be in such quantity And TNnicKNess aS to L1\ promis of amo lerate success.
This remains to be established: previous attempts In the Ni ighbourhood
made | British companies to ex] It Tn oal fir is there resulted in consider-
able loss. This coalfield is in the Co. Ty1 , one of the Ulster six counties,
and its working is under the British régime there, owing nothing whatever to
1914), by the Rev. Dr. WalterIRELAND, 1800-1829 187
England in the first half of the nineteenth century. To pretend
that, with the aid of tariffs, Ireland’s small industries, many if not
most of them, situated considerable distances from the eastern sea-
board, and consequently handicapped by dear coal and dear trans-
port, could have competed with England’s great manufactures, is
childish folly. It is quite true that on the eastern seaboard certain
industries have grown up and flourished to an astonishing degree ;
but in these cases, the disadvantages are minimized by the locality,
and in most of them certain factors are present of a favouring
character. It is also true that a big capitalist like Mr. Ford,
applying his vast experience, his up-to-date methods, and his almost
unlimited resources to making motor cars and lorries in Cork can
make the undertaking profitable; but that is quite a different
proposition from Mr. Ford starting from scratch in the lethargic
atmosphere of Southern Ireland.
Ireland has one tremendous advantage, its proximity to the best
market in the world for agricultural produce. This it sends—not
by way of a gift as Fagan seems to imply—but in exchange for
English products ; upon England’s greatness and purchasing power
depends Ireland’s prosperity.
As already pointed out the Act of Union provided for a 10 per
cent. protective tariff for Ireland till 1820, and there was the cost of
transport as well.? Ireland’s small industries were bound to meet
the same fate as many of a similar class, though better circum-
stanced, in the south and west of England, which went down before
the mass production of Lancashire and Yorkshire.
One of the ablest economic thinkers Ireland has produced 3 sums
up the position admirably when he says:
1 Guinness’s brewery, and the distilleries can command the best of raw
materials for their trades. In Belfast, there is the advantage of a ship-
building that gives employment for men and a linen industry that gives
employment to women; the combination enabled these industries to be put
upon their feet ; low wages were paid, for all the members of the working
man’s household, male and female, were in employment.
* Some Irish manufacturers, when these protective duties were about to
cease, appealed for a renewal of them, and they so far prevailed on the British
Parliament—always anxious, according to every Irish propagandist, from
O'Connell down, to ruin Irish manufactures—to pass an Act renewing the
10 per cent. duties ‘till 1825 and providing for a gradual extinction to be
finally accomplished in 1840. A commission, however, was set up in 1823
and recommended the abolition of the duties forthwith—a course obviously
in the interests of both countries. Accordingly, the duties ceased altogether
in 1824. See O’Brien, p. 429. In 1826, the British and Irish Customs
were amalgamated. See Miss Murray, p. 345.
° W. P. Coyne, Ireland, Agricultural and Industrial, p. 26.188 HISTORY OF IRELAND
‘Tt is possible, after all, that a ploughshare and a spade made of
imported iron, and a home-bred peasant to guide them, may yet prove
the best means of utilizing the mineral wealth of Ireland, which ages
of denudation have taught us to look for in the soll.’’
The first step towards the formation of a Repeal Association was
taken at a meeting of citizens of Dublin on September 18, 1810, the
High Sheriff in the chair. Resolutions in favour of Repeal were
adopted and a permanent committee appointed. The reasons for
the movement were thus stated by a Mr. Hutton, who proposed the
resolution :
This wretched measure has pr vented our manufacturers from
having a fair competition in the world market. ... 5ir, we have now
had the experience of ten years, since the passing of the Act of Union,
‘nd. let me ask, had the Irish manufacturers had a fair competition in
the Enclish markets? Have the manufacturers of Ireland been
protected and encouraged, and have those in Dublin flourished, as we
were pl mised ‘
O’Connell delivered a speech at this meeting which ‘“‘ was much
admired and relished by his countrymen.” ! It seems to have
been, in great part, a mixture of that hyperbole and calumny for
which he was afterwards so severely censured by Grattan. He
spoke of the ten vears which had elapsed since the Union as a
melancholy period in which Ireland saw her artificers starved
her tradesmen beggin her merchants become bankrupts—
her gentry banished— her mn bility degraded . of ‘‘ the fright-
ful recollection of that avowed fact which is now part of history,
that the rebellion itself was fomented and encouraged in order to
facilitate the Union ’”’: ? and much more to the same eftect.
In the beginning, however, the Repeal movement was confined
to Dublin and some of the towns which were feeling the effects of
Acricultural Ireland, prospering, in @
ee
a eae ee ee
a ee
a lr
the industrial competition.
fashion, as long as the war with Napoleon lasted, was inert on the
subject. Moreover, first things had to come first. Catholic
Emancipation was a more obvious and a more easily attainable
reform. It absorbed, up to 1829, all the energies of O’Connell and
it was not till it was got out of the way that a national
the country ;
Meanwhile, the Repeal Associa-
Repeal movement was possible.
1 Plowden’s History of Ireland from the Union to 1810, vol. III, p. 896 n.
2 Life of O'Connell, by his Son, vol. I, p. 48.
3 Life of O’Connell, by his Son, vol. I, p. 51; as to the charge of fomenting
and encouraging tne redellon, seo p. YS ante.IRELAND, 1800-1829 189
tion, by false history and false economics, helped to pave the way for
the mighty movement that collapsed with O’Connell’s death in 1847.
It will be remembered that the scheme of the financial clauses
was: that Ireland should have a separate purse; and that she
should be taxed, at Westminster, to produce a sinking fund and
interest on her own debt, plus two-fifteenths of the cost of Imperial
services, civil and military. The yield from Ireland from the
taxation imposed upon her at Westminster was wholly inadequate
to meet these charges. She was, at this period, immune from
Income Tax, while Great Britain during the war was subject to an
Income Tax which went up to 2s.in the £; her yield from Customs
and Excise was really very small; and, unless her Customs and
Excise duties were raised to an impossible figure, by no possibility
could her budget have been made to balance. Her National Debt,
accordingly, increased every year.1' The contingency provided for
by the Act of Union under which the Exchequers were to be amalga-
mated soon happened.?
In 1817, the proportion which Ireland’s National Debt of that
year bore to England’s National Debt of that year was, roughly,
in the same proportion as Ireland’s imperial contribution bore to
the entire of the imperial charges (as 2 is to 15). Accordingly, the
condition precedent to an amalgamation of the Exchequers had
arrived ; and by a resolution of the Imperial Parliament the
Exchequers were amalgamated. Thenceforward, subject to such
exemptions as the United Parliament granted, Ireland was taxed
as if she had been a county in England. Some of these exemptions
were very important. Income Tax was not imposed on Ireland
till 1853 ; but the exemptions tended to become smaller, and when
the Union was dissolved in 1921 they were practically negligible.
Up to 1827 Ireland had a currency of its own; the rate of
exchange was always in favour of the English £. In 1821 the
currencies were assimilated. This was an obvious advantage to
both countries, but especially to Ireland. It has, however, been
one of the arguments against the Union that Ireland was deprived
of its own currency.
* As pointed out, p. 126 ante, Ireland was in no way disadvantaged by
this ; for she never paid it ; it was merged in Britain’s National Debt.
* As to Ireland’s financial condition in the period 1800-1817, see Parlia-
mentary Debates, May 20, 1816; Speech of Vesey Fitzgerald, Irish Chancellor
of the Exchequer, and Parliamentary Debates, 1815, vol. III, App. CX VIII.
Ireland’s National Debt on January 5, 1815, was £127 millions.tt a a ™ o ee
ite ddl eeetie e
ee ee
St neta agent ee Aerilemer ss etige.
a
ee oe _
ee
leet ee Ee ee
OF [IRELAND
190 HISTORY
In 1804, owing to the war, payment in specie was abolished
both in Great Britain and Ireland. The Irish bankers, including
those of the Government bank, the Bank of Ireland, are said to
have been “plain and limited traders’’;1 they proceeded to
multiply currency. It looked an easy way of getting something
for nothing; the twelve banks increased to seventy ; £5,000,000
in cash and paper soared to £20,000,000; silver disappeared ;
private banks issued notes for such small sums as 18d., 2s. 6d., and
the like ; the exchange fell and soon was 20 per cent. below that of
England.? Later in 1820 there was much distress and misery
caused by the failure of many of the banks. Eleven stopped pay-
ment in the South of Ireland, only three remained solvent in the
neighbourhood of Cork.?*
The social and economic evils from which the Irish peasantry
suffered at the time of the Union and which have been already fully
described (Chapter I) were unaffected by the Union.
The Union. however, only affected the surface of the Imsh com-
munit { . <1 in their former
directions To the 1 - or landlord, who lost his place in Parliament ;
to the barrist who f | : msistent with a seat in an
English House of Commons; to 1 various persons who were con-
cerned in the management ol ‘liamentary majorities, the distribution
of leu ind ! i ] the SS of (what
was termed tion m have prod 1 a mighty
cnange ; DUTT 1 the M inster or ‘ LugHht peas nt. who still was forced
ren ) t the same rates. and under
Ul I lav \ hy | more
infl CTi a ( th mn 1 Tit raneous transfer of the
French Sovereignty from the Durectory to thi First Consul.’’4
Tillage got a great fillip from the war, for England, particularly
in the post-Union period, was largely cut off from supplies of cereals
from abroad. Ireland had been fed by imported corn during the
middle of the eighteenth century. During the war she not only fed
herself but supplied England with £2.000.000 worth of corn and
another £1,000,000 to supply the English Expeditionary Forces
and to feed foreign nations.°
, al Reaister. 1804 2 Thed.. 1804. pv. 150. 3 Thid., 1820, p. 91.
4 Ly xmas Jas } mA, col oe Q)
> Grattan Parliamentary Debates, 1815; Life of Grattan, by his Son, vol.
V. p. 510. But curiously, Grattan thought the export of raw materials and
ants e disad' had he called them.—Lfe
of G bv his Son, \ V. pv. 508 Kohl gives the following figures: Irish
in LSO2, 461.000 quarcters ° LSOR8, 656.000IRELAND, 1800-1829 191
Partly by reason of the increased demand, and partly by reason
of the inflation of the currency the price of agricultural produce
rose to twice or thrice its former level,! and farmers with holdings
of a reasonable size flourished as long as the war lasted. So did
the landlords, who piled on the rents and doubled or trebled their
rent rolls, and altered their scale of living to suit the happier circum-
stances in which they found themselves. But the lean times came
with the conclusion of the war ; the foreigner drove the Irish pro-
ducer out of the English markets ;? adjustment to expansion is
easy, to retrenchment difficult ; the tenant wanted reduction in his
rent ; the landlord’s bloated establishments could not afford it;
there was a bitter struggle. In 1826 wholesale evictions were
resorted to in many parts of the country, and a ‘‘ No Rent ”’ fund
started to indemnify the sufferers. The embarrassed circumstances
of the future generations of many Irish landlords may be attributed
to the improvident extravagance induced by the increase in their
rent rolls during the Napoleonic War.?
In 1815 some relief was given to the Irish and British agriculturist
by a measure which practically prohibited the importation of
foreign corn unless the price of wheat and oats was very high.
The Anglo-Irish controversy teems with complaints of the damage
to Ireland’s manufactures by reason of the non-existence of a
tariff against England’s manufactured goods or by reason of the
insufficiency of the tariff that existed to 1824. But no Irish writer
condescends to notice that the preference given by England to
home-grown agricultural products, continued down to 1846, when
Peel repealed the Corn Laws, was of enormous advantage to Ireland,
or would have been of enormous advantage had the population been
kept in check, and had minute subdivision not more than counter-
acted the effect of the bonus to Irish agriculture.
But while the Irish agricultural output, reacting to the stimulus
of the war, as well as to the growing demands of the rapidly develop-
ing industrial population of the adjoining island, showed a largely
quarters ; 1818, 1,200,000 quarters; 1825, 2,000,000 quarters.—Kohl, On
Ireland (1844), p. 117. In 1837, 3,000,000 quarters; in 1838, 3,474,000
quarters.—Jbid.
* Ireland, Gustave de Beaumont, edited by Taylor (1839), vol. IT, p. 202.
* See Speech of Grattan, Parliamentary Debates, 1815, Life of Grattan, by
his Son, vol. V, pp. 510-11. ‘‘ It is utterly impossible to describe the depres-
sion which fell on the agricultural interest in the South of Ireland between
1815 and 1826.”—Butt, The Irish People and the Irish Land, p. 89.
* See De Beaumont’s Ireland, vol. II, p. 202.ee
a ca a ee ee a
ee
OF IRELAND
192 HISTORY
increased output, the condition of the landworkers, as a whole, was
not improved. The increase of population more than kept pace
with the increase of production. The very great distress of the
lower classes very general throughout Ireland was attributed by
reliable witnesses before various Parliamentary Committees to the
increase of population and the fall in the price of produce after the
war.! A terrible account was given of the state of the peasantry
in Limerick: having a quarter of an acre of ground: living in
wretched hovels, on potatoes and salt; bog sedge for bedding ;
sleeping promiscuously without distinction of sex ; ill clad; never
in the possession of any money.” What was said of Limerick could
truly be said of many other parts. The description, however,
applies solely to the small cottier holder and labourer who swarmed
everywhere ; the holder of any fair-sized farm was probably able to
eke out a decent livelihood for his family and himself, and had some
reasonable measure of prosperity as long as the war kept up the prices
of his produce.
An attempt to check the evils of subdivision of holdings was made
in 1827 when an Act was passed * to make void all sub-lettings made
without consent of the landlord. To this most useful piece of
legislation O’Connell offered a stout resistance.
For many a long day after the Union, Ireland was full of explosive
elements. Scarcely a year passed without many of the southern
counties being convulsed with agitation and outrage in one form or
another. For the most part, the disturbances had neither a political
nor a religious tinge. There were many secret societies. ‘The
Thrashers, for example, went in for the regulation of tithes and dues
chiefly, but to some extent for general reforms, such as wage and
rent reform. In speaking of the various gangs who infested the
country at this period, the Most Rev. Dr. Kelly, Catholic Archbishop
of Tuam, said, ‘“‘ They generally complain of tithes, taxes, grand
jury cess, vestry cesses, the payment of the Catholic clergy, the high
price of land; all these things together. * To the same effect is
the evidence of the Most Rev. Dr. Murray, Catholic Archbishop of
Dublin. ‘‘ They have often been directed against the dues paid to
l Evidence before Commons Committee and Lords Committee, 1824, cited
Lewis s Dist urbai cea an TIrela d. Dp RH.
2 Evidence of Major Willcocks, Inspector of Police in Munster, before the
Commons Committee, 1824. cited Lewis’s Disturbances in Ireland, p. 64.
37 George IV, c. 29, replaced by 2 William LV, c. 17.
4 Evidence before Commons Committee, 1825, p. 259, cited Lewis's Drsturb-
in Ireland, p. 74.IRELAND, 1800-1829 193
the Catholic clergy as well as against the tithes paid to the Protestant
clergy.’ In Westmeath a regular scale of dues to priests was
settled, and if any man exceeded it, he was “ carded,” his naked
back was scored with iron spikes fitted into a board which served
as a handle.?
The Thrasher disturbances in 1806 were almost as formidable as
an insurrection.
‘The entire province of Connaught, with the exception of one county
and two counties in the north-west circuit (Longford and Cavan)
were overrun by insurgents so formidable that the King’s J udges upon
a special commission could not move through the country, except under
a military escort; so formidable that the sentence of the law could
not be executed in one particular county town till a general officer
had marched from a distant quarter, at the head of a strong force, to
support the civil power.’’®
The Insurrection Act of 1796 had to be renewed, but intimidation
and outrage continued and broke out into open violence at various
intervals.
In 1811 and 1812, Tipperary, Waterford, Kilkenny, Limerick,
Westmeath, Roscommon, and King’s County were the theatre of
sanguinary tumults. In 1815 a great part of Tipperary, consider-
able portions of King’s County and Westmeath and all Limerick
were placed under the Insurrection Act. Tipperary and Limerick
were in a dreadful state till 1818. Galway was disturbed in
1820; and Limerick again in 1821.
The elements composing these secret societies were the small
cottiers and farm labourers with a sprinkling of discontented
farmers. It was not likely that the occupier of anything that could,
in reason, be called ‘‘ a farm ”’ would lend himself to a movement
fraught with danger to all who had anything that could be termed
property. Lawless gangs, by threats, intimidation and outrage,
impressed the lower orders into the service. “If a desperate gang
formed themselves in any county in Ireland, the rest of the poorer
people are either ready or are compelled to join them, and it runs
like wildfire through the county, if it is not checked in the first
* Evidence before Commons Committee, 1825, p. 237, noted Lewis’s Dis-
turbances in Ireland, p. 146.
* Commons Committee, 1824, p. 118, cited Lewis’s Disturbances in Ireland,
p. 146.
* Charge of Chief Justice Bushe at M aryborough, Special Commission, 1806,
cited Lewis’s Disturbances in Ireland, p. 40.
VOLE if. Oee
aie ne ae ae
194 HISTORY OF IRELAND
instance, to an extent that becomes alarming.’ The priests
denounced the peasants’ societies, but to little purpose.
Besides the societies which owed their origin to a desire to possess
land or to get rid of burdens arising out of the occupation of land—
‘trade unions,” as they have been called, “ for the protection of the
Irish peasantry,” 2 there were powerful secret societies of a political
and religious hue. To the Defenders, whose origin and history prior
to the Union have been already described, succeeded the Ribbon-
men, whose power lay chiefly in the North.* “ Ribbonism has
doubtless much more the character of an armed and well-organized
association, with religious and political objects, than the local and
irregular combinations of the South and West.’’ 4
O’Connell, in his evidence before the House of Commons Com-
mittee in 1825 5 could not say when the Ribbon Association began,
but that it was a continuation of the Defender system. Ribbon
system and Orangeism “act on each other; the existence of
Ribbonism makes it necessary for one perhaps to become an Orange-
man. and the existence of Orangeism has certainly created many
Ribbonmen.” O’Connell attributed a great deal of the brawls and
fights to Orange insolence: but says that in fairs, etc., a riot is
easily excited, and the Ribbonmen are equally willing to commence
‘t with the Orangemen.’ ® Ribbonism was not confined to Ireland.
Ribbonism spread to Glasgow and Liverpool, in opposition to the
Orangemen settled in those cities.’
There is evidence that the Ribbonmen in some parts took an oath
of extermination against the Orangemen. The evidence is at least
as strong as the evidence that the Orangemen took an oath of
extermination against the Papist. If the phraseology attributed to
some Ribbonmen was ever used by them at all, it seems to me to
amount to mere bombast and to be no more worthy of serious
attention than the evidence as to the Orangemen’s oath. A Mr.
Hugh Boyd Wray examined before the House of Commons Com-
mittee in 1832 ® states that he got from a Ribbonman a copy of the
oath. which was in the following terms. ‘“‘ Never spare, but per-
severe and wade knee deep in Orange blood.” A Mr. Miles O’Reilly
and a Mr. Cassidy refer to having seen an oath of the © Whitefeet ”’
l Rwidence before Commons Committee, 1832, No. 29, cited Lewis's Disturb-
nd, p. 63; see also Lewis, p. 201.
ance . trela
2 Lewis's Disturbances in. Jreland., p. YY. . Ibid., p. 155.
‘ Tbid., p. 157. 6 Ibid., p. 71. 6 Ibid., p. 156. 7 Ibid., p. 160.
5 No. oYYS, cited Lewis 8 Disturbances in Lre land, p- 165.IRELAND, 1800-1829 195
with the same phraseology.!_ Colonel Verner in his evidence before
the Committee on Orange Lodges? gives the oath as follows, ‘‘ I
will wade knee deep in Orangemen’s blood.” Bishop Doyle, on the
other hand—this testimony is of the highest value—said that the
Ribbonmen’s oath was not of the character described by a Mr.
Bennet.* The Bishop goes on:
“I leave out of calculation those mobs, whether Catholic or Protest-
ant, who are led, not by reason but by passion and which can always
be excited to espouse either what is right or what is wrong, until
education will have enlightened their minds, and rendered them
capable of discerning between truth and error, between justice and
injustice.’’4
The evidence of Catholic clergymen ® is to the same effect as that
of the Bishop, and we may dismiss this allegation against the Ribbon-
men as decisively as that against the Orange Society in reference to
the alleged Orange oath.
As between these contending factions, the fair conclusion seems
to be that the Orangemen were originally the aggressors and
were always insolent and domineering in their attitude towards
their poorer and more defenceless Catholic neighbours. Crime
begat crime ; each party feared the other; each party conceived
itself to be acting in self-defence. The impartial testimony of
Mr. Justice Fletcher (cited p. 196 post) puts the chief blame on the
shoulders of the Orangemen.
Matters were complicated enough by outrages which had some
definite object in view; but there were disturbances which had
none. Faction fighting is a relic of the old Irish system of clan-
ship. The factions arose from the most absurdly trivial causes,
such as a dispute between children playing marbles in which their
elders intervened ;? another was about a right of burial; some
were about nothing at all. The contending parties met, often in
considerable numbers, and battered each other with sticks and
stones. Ihe Major Wilcocks already mentioned speaks of seeing
500 or 600 or perhaps 1,000 men, that is, counting both sides,
* House of Commons Committee, 1832, Nos. 5834, 5981-82, cited Lewis’s
Disturbances in Ireland, p. 165.
* No. 228, cited Lewis’s Disturbances in Ireland, p. 168.
° Essay on the Catholic Claims (1826), p. 198.
©) Lb7d., p: 231. * Cited Lewis, p. 168.
° Evidence of Mr. Justice Day, cited Lewis’s Disturbances in Ireland, p. 279.
* See Lewis’s Disturbances in Ireland, p. 289.tg tt ep ™
196 HISTORY OF IRELAND
engaged in faction fighting. The police used to remain discreetly
absent on these occasions, deeming it a prudent policy to let the
parties vent their fury on each other rather than on the police or
military ; the suppression of faction fighting was one of the tasks
to which Under-Secretary Drummond afterwards set himself.
Tipperary and adjoining counties were chiefly the scene of these
fights. The factions took various appellations—Shanavists and
Caravats, Caffees and Ruskavallas,2 the Dingens and Dawsons ;
the Bootashees and Tubbers; the Cumminses and Darigs.*
The condition of affairs was described by Mr. Justice Fletcher in
his charge to the Wexford Grand Jury at the summer assizes of
1814.4 The Judge describes
‘“e@ magistracy over active in some instances and quite supine in
others. This circumstance has materially affected the administration
of the laws in Ireland. In this respect, I have found that those societies
called Orange Societies have produced most mischievous effects, and
particularly in the North of Ireland. They poison the very fountains
of justice ; and even some magistrates, under their influence, have, in
%
too many instances, violated their duty and their oaths,’
After condemning all secret societies he goes on:
‘of this I am certain, that so long as those associations are permitted
to act in the lawless manner they do, there will be no tranquillity in
this country, and particularly in the North of Ireland. There, those
disturbers of the public peace, who assume the name of Orange yeomen,
!
|
frequent the fairs and markets, with arms in their hands, under the
pretence of self-defe nce or of pr Lt eting the public peace, but with the
lurking view of inviting the attacks from the Ribbonmen, confident
that, armed as they are, thi y must overcome defenceless opponents,
and put them down. Murders have been repeat dly perpetrated upon
such occasions: an 1 though legal proses itions have ensued, yet such
have been the baneful consequences of those factious associations, that,
under their influence, petty juries have declined, upon some occasions,
to do their duty. . .. That moderate pittance which the high rents
leave to the poor peasantry, the large county assessments nearly take
from them. . .. JRoads are frequently planned and made, not for
the general advantage of the country, but to suit the particular views
l House of Lords Comm tee, 1824, p). LO6, cited Lewis 8 Disturbances un
Ireland, p. 282.
2 Kvidence of Father Costello, P.P. of Abington, County Limerick, before
Commons { lommittee, 1825, Pp. 418 19, cited Lewis 8 Disturbances un Ireland,
p. 286; he gives the numbers as varying from 300 to 600.
3 Some were fancy names, others had a real signification. Darig = red ;
Ruskavalla — name of a district: Dingens = name of a hill (Lewis, p. 288).
4 Life of O'Connell, by his Son, vol. IT, p. 158.IRELAND, 1800-1829 197
of a neighbouring landholder, at the public expense. Such abuses
shake the very foundation of the law: they ought to be checked. .. .
Superadded to these mischiefs are the permanent and occasional
absentee landlords, residing in another country, not known to their
tenantry but by their agents, who extract the uttermost penny of the
value of the lands. If a lease happens to fall in, they sell the farm by
public auction to the highest bidder. No gratitude for past services,
no preference of the fair offer ; no predilection for the ancient tenantry,
be they ever so deserving ; but if the highest price be not acceded to,
the depopulation of an entire tract of country ensues.
‘What, then, is the wretched peasant to do? Chased from the
spot where he had first drawn his breath, where he had first seen the
light of heaven, incapable of procuring any other means of existence,
vexed with those exactions I have enumerated, and harassed by the
payment of tithes, can we be surprised that a peasant of unenlightened
mind, of uneducated habits, should rush upon the perpetration of
crimes, followed by the punishment of the rope and the gibbet ?
Nothing, as the peasantry imagine, remains for them, thus harassed
and thus destitute, but with strong hand to deter the stranger from
intruding upon their farms; and to extort from the weakness and
terror of their landlords (from whose gratitude or good feelings they have
failed to win it) a kind of preference for their ancient tenantry.”’
He then goes on to refer to fraud and peculation in county pre-
sentment code ; to abuses in connexion with affidavits and oaths
to pressure put on tenantry who “ must poll for the great under-
taker, who has purchased them by his jobs,” and this is frequently
done with little regard to conscience or duty, or real value of the
alleged freehold.pm — ~ peri be,
ee mnt tly eer et
1
CHAPTER VII
IRELAND, 1829-1840
The R 11 Movement—Reform of Primary Education—Reform Acts—
ne
vO pet
The Tithe Question—The Drummond Administration.
No man had fought so strenuously against the Union as Grattan,
or brought to the contest such a powerful equipment of eloquence,
character. and trained intelligence ; but, before his death, he came
to see that it was a tolerable bargain, that any attempt to undo the
hond would involve Ireland in a struggle, long, bitter, demoralizing,
and perhaps disastrous: his last counsel to his country was to let
things be.! A similar conclusion was arrived at by Cavour, whose
views on L[reland reveal an intimate knowledge of the condition of
affairs in the country, as well as an intense sympathy with her
real orievances.
Europe, in general, has ap] lauded the conduct of O’Connell, and
has seemingly agreed with him in believing that thi legislative independ-
ence of Ireland is the only effective remedy for the evils of that country.
Is this opinion well-founded? 1 am far from so thinking. On the
contrary I regard this notion aS erroneous % nd as fatal to the uM prove-
| | ple. In my opinion, O’Connell
irse more to be deplored. Instead of encouraging
him to persist in it, the duty of all those who have at heart the interest
him to retrace his ste ps, and to resume, along
with the liberal British party, the work of progressive reform which
he has alrea Ly carried so tar onward.’
The responsibility for Ireland’s choice lay with O’Connell. He
was at the height of his power; the darling of the nation ; the
‘< Liberator ” who had found his people serfs, and made them free
men. His will was law.
1 «* Although it was well known that Grattan was no friend to the Union at
yet almost his last breath was exhausted in the expres-
the time it took place,
’—Speech of
on of a fervent wish that the Union might never be disturbed.
Wilberforce in the House of Commons, June 14, 1820, on the occasion of
rattan = cit ath.
2 Thoughts on Ir land, p. 48.IRELAND, 1829-1840 199
Gladstone once said that O’Connell could believe anything he
wished. A terrific condemnation is wrapped up in the euphemism.
Self-deception is perhaps the most dangerous, as it is undeniably
the most common form of self-indulgence. The robust intelligence
must ever be on its guard against it; all moral sense goes by the
board if this mental self-abuse is allowed free rein. Certainly
O’Connell must have yielded himself fully to it when he decided
upon a campaign for Repeal. The difficulties in the way were
enormous. The propertied and privileged classes, who still con-
trolled Parliament, were bitterly hostile. There was the genuine
fear for Imperial safety. There was the opinion, not entirely
groundless, that interference with the Union would mean a sub-
stitution for the Protestant ascendancy, who had at any rate a
respect for law and property, a Catholic ascendancy who had none,
rabble controlled in all likelihood. ‘‘ Why,’ said O’Connell on the
occasion of the dedication of a church in County Kildare, ‘if the
Parliament were sitting in Dublin and your representatives doing
wrong, you could take your short sticks in your hands some fine
morning and go up and tell them to vote honestly and rightly.” 1
What would be the fate of the Irish gentry and of the propertied
classes if they were handed over to the tender mercies of an Irish
Parliament elected by peasants who looked upon the landlords
as enemies and thieves, and who would unhesitatingly obey
advice to use their staves to compel ‘honest and right”
voting ?
Such reasoning as this, no doubt, operated upon the minds of the
members of the House of Commons in 1834, when it pledged itself
by a majority of 485 (523 to 38) to maintain the Union; the Lords
passed the same resolution unanimously. How did O’Connell
propose to get over these astounding figures? By force? He
deprecated it. By show of force such as had brought the
Kmancipation question to a climax ? What a gamble to take with
the fate of a nation. Not even a well-considered gamble, for the
Kmancipation precedent was wholly misleading. Apart from any
Irish agitation, the growth of English public opinion in favour of
political equality for all creeds was steady, and, for the period, rapid.
Most of the press and all the enlightened opinion of England were
in favour of Emancipation on its merits. It was different with the
Union. The Englishman regarded it as a contract by which Ireland
1 Annual Register, 1834, p. 29,ee a
Ye ee aa me
- seaman
- a
200 HISTORY OF IRELAND
a
was bound, and to escape from which no adequate reason was
adduced. ‘To his mind the injustice was not in perpetuating the
Union but in demanding its repeal. His own interests were vitally
concerned in its continuance. O’Connell himself, when examined
as a witness in 1823, before a House of Commons Committee, had
stated that on the settlement of the Catholic claim to Emancipation,
the great body of the people would be perfectly contented with the
Union and that a dissolution of it was alluded to in public assemblies
merely for the purpose of rhetorical excitement.’
Certain considerations must have powerfully, if unconsciously,
‘influenced O’Connell’s mind in coming to his decision to agitate for
repeal. The vision of a College Green Parliament, with himself its
creator and central figure, must have been extraordinarily attract-
ive. He had quaffed the nectar of popular applause, and must
have known that the commonplace pursuit of constructive work
under the Union would be likely not to enhance his fame, but to
destroy it.2. At any rate, he took his decision to end the Union, not
to mend it, shutting his eyes to the fact that the bar to repeal in-
cluded not only all the Irish political obstacles—the fears for the
State Church and for the landed gentry—but the English great
obstacle as well, the fear for Imperial safety.
The social and economic condition of the country contained every
element for the production of a national agitation. The country
was subject to the exactions of a hated Church and a hated
aristocracy. A third of the population were on the line which
separates starvation from subsistence. No change could be for the
worse. The nation was ready to believe anything that fell from
O’Connell’s lips. When he pointed to repeal as the remedy, to
repeal it looked for deliverance from its woes.
In the Emancipation movement O’Connell had a noble object.
In the repeal movement—though honest Irishmen might differ
about it—his object was one to appeal to the chivalrous instinct in
mankind that takes sides with persons and peoples who complain
of oppression. O’Connell’s methods of controversy were wholly
unworthy of those great themes. They are very instructive ; no
1 Sir R. Peel’s speech in a Union Debate in 1834. Annual Register, 1834,
p. 3l.
2 As Thayer puts it,—‘‘ The wise Moses never displayed a greater wisdom
than when he died in Moab: had he lived to enter Canaan and to conduct
the ordinary business of government, men might have doubted whether he
had, indeed, once seen God tace to face.’’—Life of Cavour, I, p. 443.IRELAND, 1829-1840 201
nation that was not singularly backward and ill-informed would
have stomached them for a moment. They were a compound of
false history, false economics, gross flattery of his countrymen,
gross abuse of those who differed from him, gross vilification of the
English people, bluff, intimidation and stagecraft. He invented
the lie that “‘ Cardinal Gonsalvi, the Italian, either betrayed or
sold our Church to the British Minister at Vienna for eleven
thousand guineas, right glad, I presume, to have so good a thing
to sell as the religion of Ireland.” He taught his people that
the exchange of Irish agricultural products for English manu-
factured goods “by no means proved the existence of a
profitable trade.” He told them that they were ‘the finest
peasantry in the world,” “the bravest, most virtuous, most
religious race the sun of God ever shone upon.”
“The Irish are the finest people on the face of God’s earth. Yes!
I say you are the most moral, the most temperate, the most orderly,
the most religious people in the world. Yes! I say you exceed in
religion, in morality, in temperance any nation under the sun.”? ‘“‘ Yes,
among the nations of the earth Ireland stands number one in the physical
strength of her sons and in the beauty and purity of her daughters.
Nature herself has written her characters with the finest beauty
in the verdant plains that lie before us. Let any man here run round
the horizon with his eye, and tell me if Nature ever produced anything
so green and so lovely, so undulating, so teeming with production.
The richest harvests that any land can produce are those reaped in
Ireland, and then hers are the sweetest meadows, the greenest fields,
the loftiest mountains, the purest streams, the noblest rivers, and the
most capacious harbours, while the water power is equal to turning the
machinery of the whole world.”’
He spoke of Monsignor Quarantotti, the author of the famous
rescript on the veto, as that “‘ odious, stupid, Quarantotti.”’
On the occasion of a somewhat childish quarrel with the Press, he
said that “ neither God nor nature ever intended those who are now
on the Irish Press to be competent to discharge such duties as
they undertook.” He called Lord Kenyon an “animal”: Lord
Grey a “ wretched old man” imbued with a “‘ childish hatred and
maniac contempt of the people of Ireland”; “‘the insane dotard.”
~ I would be glad to see the face of the man, or rather of the beast,
who would dare to say he thought the Union wise or good—tor the
being who could say so must be devoid of all the feelings that
distinguish humanity.” He stigmatized those who did not join202
the
He
must have
descen: ie i
1s from
forgive
Cross.’”?
| of Waterloo,”
Then
Let
HISTORY
‘‘ He is a disgrace to his species
foul and atrocious nature.
impenitent thief who died upon the Cross, whose name, I verily believe,
been Disraeli.
him,
the heir-at-law of
He called Wellington a
Lyndhurst a
hi
Only give
He'll contrive himself to swing.
OF IRELAND
repeal movement as “ creeping, crawling, cowardly creatures.”
spoke of Disraeli:
a miscreant of his abominable,
He possesses just the qualities of the
Disraeli
Il now
aught I know, the
and the that
the blasphemous thief who died upon the
Ki r
with
present
impression he 15s,
¢
‘stunted corporal,” the “‘ chance victor
lvine miscreant,’’ ‘‘ a contumelious
1 Fagan’s Life of O'l 7. vol. II. p. 390-91. O’Connell on this occasion
had great provocation. JDuisrael had 1 rred to him as an incendiary and
: a traitor, “‘and di Inc Whig r having grasped his bloody hand ”
{Mas Donagh, Dp. 249 Ni Was f met day bel indhand 17) its
vituperation (1b7 p. 290 [It s f O'Connell as ‘‘ the big beggarman,’
the loqua is met nt.’ to which O’Connell retorted by likening The
limes to a wadry n th rouged cheeks and in faded silks takes
the alr in tl oI j ont [ts 18s No mber 26, 1835, contains
Ln I Will LI
‘ m iemned Ol Irish bog
Ru Ww lagog
B Sg se det
Nurs n lers, treas . tor
oe 6 I f T | Y” SsiIaVve
W
Or Ey \ s hater
Ir s ] : t purse
St | urs
T) tl st, 5 scorn,
Lift } n hor
Ky his
‘LI . |
Mi i on rs
La [ M
At 1 I I | | laces
Ctr t 9 r faces
Th ' nd had heir mother,
They Ww vi t rother.
By t ive purs S
Rend t! patriot lungs with bawlng,
Spout thy m4 - slim
S) inaer 15 t no cru
Safe from cl! 9 S from law,
V\ h LD ¢ n I ‘ 3 jaw,
Who c il sue @ ¢ yict liar ?
On a poltroon who w' id fire }
Thou may st walk open light,
None will kick thee, none can fight,
crant the monster leave to roam,
slaver out his foam;
him length of string,
rhIRELAND, 1829-1840 203
cur,’ Sir Henry Hardinge a “ one-armed ruffian,”’ Brougham “ the
greatest miscreant that ever breathed.’ He used to interrupt
speakers in the House of Commons by loud and prolonged yawns
and would not allow Sharman Crawford, who was in general a sup-
porter of his, to criticize his policy in some minor detail or to address
a meeting, yelling out “ What do you want here, Sharman my
boy?” “What is it you are after, Crawford my man?” He
said that Thomas Campbell Foster had been kicked out of his parlour
by Dean O’Shaughnessy of Ennis. The story was an invention ;
and the Dean contradicted it, whereupon O’Connell neither
apologised for nor withdrew his statement, but said Foster ought
to have been kicked out—whereat his audience roared. He
said that “so dishonest and besotted a people as the English
never lived.” ‘As to English stupidity it has really become
proverbial.”” That nineteen out of twenty Englishwomen had
children before their marriage.1_ He said “‘ that England had reduced
mankind to servitude; that it is the very nature of England to
subdue and make slaves of all nations, whether adjacent or remote,
that have it not in their power to resist her.’’ He told his people
in 1833 that they would get repeal before June twelve months
and repeated bluff of a similar character over and over again. One
of his Press organs in 1831, referred to Anti-Union addresses thus :
‘“Some wretches whose trade is adulation—whose creed, subser-
viency—whose God, their money—whose altar, the desk—whose
temple, the counting-house—and whose country, self—have been
going about for some days, kidnapping the unwary into a requisition
for a meeting of the chamber of commerce, to adopt a congratulatory
address to the Marquis of Anglesey. Slaves, base, degraded slaves,
beware of what you do. We know your names—we will keep close
watch upon you—and now we forewarn you, Protestant bankers, you
recreant Catholic barristers (not lawyers) and cotton spinners, and
pauper dealers that if you persevere in this course, we shall put a brand
upon you, that when you walk upon the streets, despised, abhorred
and shunned, the very dogs themselves shall bark and flee your contact.”’
On the occasion of the appointment of Sugden, an Englishman, as
Trish Lord Chancellor, O’Connell referred thus to any barrister who
1 Fagan’s Life of O’Conneil, vol. II, 406, 526 ; when brought to book about
this he said he merely repeated what a Protestant clergyman had said. Let
me give Fagan’s account of it in his own words—‘‘ But it soon came out that
this statement was made by an English Protestant clergyman, and that Mr.
O'Connell, in one of his speeches, we believe against poor laws, quoted the
observations of the clergyman ”’ (vol. II, p. 406).OF IRELAND
204 HISTORY
would not protest: ‘‘ Let the boys hoot after them as they sneak
to the courts ; let the women spit upon them at Ormonde Market,
as they go along, and let them thus, covered with the slime and
filth of their country, crouch before their English Chancellor.”’
On the occasion of the general election of 1835, O’Connell said that
a death’s head and cross bones should be painted on the door of
every elector who did not vote for the repeal candidate for Kerry,
and ‘‘ whoever shall support him” (the Unionist candidate for
New Ross) ‘his shop shall be deserted; no man shall pass his
threshold ; put up his name as a traitor to Ireland; let no man
deal with him ; let no woman speak to him ; let the children laugh
him to scorn.’’ He received an address in 1831 from the “‘ juvenile
patriots of Dublin who came to present it decorated with orange
and green scarves and rosettes. Some of the boys who moved and
seconded the resolution were not more than eight or nine years of age,
and the oldest did not exceed fifteen.’’1 Ata meeting described by
Kohl, the German observer,” the authorsays: ‘“‘ Most of O’Connell’s
friends were arrayed in rags,’’ though the repeal papers called it
‘very respectably attended. The whole assembly, on the contrary,
bore an appearance such as would have been presented in France
and Germany only after the lowest strata of society had been thrown
to the surface by the agitation of a political hurricane.” A boy of
eight was brought up to present £4, being the contribution of the lad
and his playmates to O’Connell’s coffers. ‘‘ O'Connell s gta took
off his hat to the boy, shook him by the hand, and proce imed his
name loudly to the applause of the assembly.” * O'¢ ae wept
when speaking of a deceased friend of his, a former judge, on which
Kohl remarks, ** C'est impossible, mais je l’ai vu.” He had a cap
of green velvet, with gold edging, in the form of an old Milesian
crown, presented to him at a meeting at Mullaghmast, and after-
wards always wore it in public.
By these and the like means O’Connell played upon the emotions
of hiscountrymen. They laughed with him ; wept with him ; went
into ecstasies with him. They worshipped him ; on placards he
was referred to as the ‘“‘ Immortal O’Connell.’? The Union was the
cause of all their misfortunes ; repeal w: uld relieve them from their
miseries. He was the first king in that reign of subjectivism, which
1 Fagan’s Life of O'Connell, vol. II, p. 100. A _ audience, 6,000 or
8.000, came tog as er to witness this performance (Jbid., p. 99).
. Kol ‘ s Ireland (1844), p. 146. $’ Kohl’s Ireland, p. 150.IRELAND, 1829-1840 205
has been so disastrous to the morals of the people. He brought them
to believe eventually that the base, bloody, and brutal Saxon was
responsible for the vagaries of their uncertain climate. O’Gorman
Mahon, one of O’Connell’s lieutenants, speaking in the House of
Commons, said :
~ Did honourable members imagine that they could prevent the
unfortunate men who were five feet under the snow from thinking that
they could better their condition by a repeal of the Union? It might
be said that England had not caused the snow, but the people had the
snow on them, and they thought that their connection with England
had reduced them to the state in which they now were.’’!
O’Connell preached abstention from violence, but every second
word he uttered tended to violence. Finally, he brought Ireland
to the verge of a rebellion, and then shrank from the logical conse-
quences of the situation he had created.
Had O’Connell’s patriotism been less selfish and more enlightened,
the condition of the country would have afforded ample fields for
the exercise of his organizing genius. The question of education was
of first importance, for ignorance was at the bottom of much of the
social evils of the country. A great portion of the community was
illiterate. ven in the art of making their livelihood, the great
agricultural masses were hopelessly deficient ; their social habits
were those of a primitive civilization. The influence of an educated
man, having the trust and confidence of the people, would, directly
and indirectly, have been of incalculable advantage materially as
well as morally. But the only education to which O’Connell
thought it worth while to direct his attention was the education in
agitation, based upon false premises and bolstered up by false hopes.
The great scheme of Primary Education, established in 1831, owed
little, if anything, to influence, pressure or suggestion from him.
Next in importance, in a country where there was an unduly large
proportion of destitute poor, was the question of a poor law. The
quality of O’Connell’s statesmanship may be gauged by his attitude
on this great question. He was opposed to poor law on principle ;
he said that a poor law was
‘hostile to the best interests of Ireland and contrary to the prin-
ciples of revealed religion ; poor laws tended to contract that voluntary
local charity which was the only beneficial source of poor relief and
+ Annual Register, 1831, p. 322,cert daa ae ns
SY
ete cee ee
nae len at tee ee
206 HISTORY OF IRELAND
which was the keystone of Christianity ; they were therefore neither
more nor less than a practical system of inf lelity, and as such ought
to be sci uted by every mar who like ce nol ks was dee ply impressed with
the truths of religion.’’}
On another occasion he said that the poor laws were formed on
the principle that ‘‘ the people ought to rely upon the pockets of
their more wealthy neighbours instead of their own exertions.” *
This, in a country where the poor were counted by the million, the
starving poor by the hundred-thousand! The landlord and tenant
question was next in order of importance. The rental of the country
£10,000,000 per annum. The agitation that led to
holic Emancipation itself made the
was well over
Catholic Emancipation, and Cat
landlords chary of giving leases, for the lease made the tenant
politically free— -he could vote in the open as he liked without fear
of eviction. The result was that the main body of the tenantry,
es year to year, were liable to have their rents raised at
. landlord’s will or to be ejected at his caprice. Yet this great
ens had a minor place in O’Connell’s thoughts ; his speeches
scarcely contain a mention of it ; none of h is programmes until 1840
have asyllable about it. On the tithe question O’Connell was quite
sound: but the grievance,
for the agitator, because it was such an obvious orievance, was
though it was a most convenient handle
really a minor one ; the tithe over Ire! and amounted only to £600,000
a vear. At any rate, had O’Connell advised a persistence in the
passive resistance to the system which was shown for some time,
there can be but little doubt that a remedy would have been found
much sooner.
The policy of non co-operation, adopted by O’Connell and
followed by all the political leaders since, is quite intelligible
and, from one point of view, defensible. It was feared that if
Irishmen took part in administering their own country, the demand
for secession would be weakened. At the same time, it 1s open to
question whether a policy of co-operation would not have been,
even from the secessionists’ point of view, worth the risk. Ireland
would undoubtedly have been spared much misery. In O’Connell’s
time, had Irishmen applied their talents to the great problem of
peer instead of adopting a hopeless Repeal agitation,
it is possible that the disaster of the famine would have been averted.
Asa matter of fact, a post in the ministry was more than once offered
1 Annual Register, 1832, p. 200. 2 MacDonagh, p. 277.IRELAND, 1829-1840 207
to O’Connell.t_ Later on we shall see offers refused by other Irish-
men of the position of Irish Chief Secretary. The acceptance of
office would be, so it was said, a recognition of the Act of Union ;
but to take part in the United Parliament and to vote therein on
matters exclusively relating to England or Wales or Scotland was
not.
It was the Protestant business men of Dublin who had in 1810
started the repealmovement. They wanted back the custom of the
lords and commoners who, with their retinues, lived in Dublin more
or less, but especially during the sessions of Parliament. But that
was the time of a Protestant ascendancy Parliament. The vision
of a return to these good old days had been fading before the passing
of Catholic Emancipation and entirely vanished with it. Repeal
would mean a Parliament composed—horrible thought—of Papists,
of common people ; the patriotic business men changed their minds,
turned their coats and became bitter Unionists. The landlord class,
too, was aware of its danger from an Irish Catholic Parliament.
Lord Glengall unbosomed himself of his apprehensions at a great
Orange meeting in Dublin in 1837, “and if they did not win the
battle they were fighting, under the banners of the club, the days
during which they could hold their Protestant estates were num-
bered.”’ That Ark of the Covenant, the Irish Church, was in peril ;
so was all the patronage by which the Protestant Ascendancy was
buttressed up. Catholic Emancipation drove the final wedge be-
tween Catholic and Protestant on the repeal issue. Thenceforward,
with rare exceptions, the Catholics were in favour of separation, to a
greater or less degree, the Protestants in favour of the Union. This
tendency was strengthened by the introduction of the priests into
politics, and by the tactics used by O’Connell to win Emancipation
and to forward repeal. His bombast and violence alarmed and dis-
gusted ; Grattan felt called upon publicly to rebuke him ; the ways
of the demagogue estranged people who had something to lose.
In every sphere the influence of the priest had greatly increased
since the Union. About the middle of the eighteenth century that
+ By Lord Anglesey in 1830, see MacDonagh, p. 215; again in 1831, “I
could be Attorney-General in one hour,’’ O’Connell wrote (Ibid., p. 223). He
was offered the position of Master of the Rolls in 1835 (Ibid., p- 244), and the
same position or that of Chief Baron of the Exchequer about the same time
(Ibid., p. 264).
* Latouche, a Dublin banker of popular sympathies, openly declared in
1835, that as a protest against the intimidation used by O’Connell he would
support the Conservative candidate.—Annual Register, 1835, p. 16.——
ee ee wi
Se ee
OF IRELAND
208 HISTORY
influence was at a very low ebb. It increased as the result of the
rebellion of 1798, when priests and people, innocent and guilty alike,
were confounded in the persecutions that followed.! But even fora
decade or two at least after the Union, there is evidence to show that,
among the undisciplined sections at least, the priest was held in no
very highesteem. The peasant associations took it upon themselves
to prescribe his dues, and intimidations and violence were the sanc-
tions invoked, if the limits set were not observed.
Such a thing would be inconceivable a quarter of a century later,
when universal respect and reverence were accorded to the clergy.
This increase of prestige was due to the grow th of education, secular
and religious, but no doubt, partly to the community of interest
and of action in connection with the grievances of the day. ‘The
rejection of the so-called ‘‘ Reformation ’”’ was, as I believe, a
rejection on the merits, but it was the more decisive because the
‘ Reformation ’? was English in origin and adopted by the Anglo-
Irish who had despoiled the people of their lands. So also, when the
quickening of the national intelligence made it fully conscious of
and landlord system, the combination of priests and people
against the tyranny added enormously to the influence of the
the persecution of their faith, of the iniquities of the tithe
priests, including, one may infer, even thei influence in the spiritual
domain.
It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the priests
originated any of the great popular movements In Ireland. ‘The
Catholic Emancipation movement was, both before and after
the Union, mainly a laymen’s movement; the priests did not
become very prominently associated with it till the formation by
O’Connell of his great association in 1823. The tithe movement
sprang from the people ; the Bishops of the Union date failed to see
any injustice in the tithe system.* The land movement, the
University Education movement, the language movement, the
various movements for political secession from Great Britain, owed
their inception rather to laymen than to ecclesiastics. But while
the priest inaugurated none of the popular movements, it is none
the less true to say that, from the time of Catholic Emancipation
onwards, he conspicuously concerned himself with all the political
and social questions of the day. Is any justification needed for
him? His interference in the Emancipation question was inevit-
1 See p. 34 ante. 2 See p. 5S ante.IRELAND, 1829-1840 209
able. ‘The bar was a religious bar; the fight was, in essence,
one for religious freedom, for inequality is a form of servitude.
Similar observations apply to the tithe question. As to other
questions, some justification is to be found in the circumstance
that in most parishes or districts the priest was the only person
with claim to education who had any sympathy for the people. It
was almost impossible for him to keep aloof ; even when he shrank
from the local leadership, the position was sometimes forced upon
him by the popular will.
No man can say that the conduct of the priest in Irish political
affairs has been in all respects wise or even becoming. His environ-
ment and education were, to the last degree, unlikely to give him a
broad, comprehensive or unbiassed view of human affairs. For-
merly the Irish priest had been entirely educated abroad—at Paris,
Louvain, Salamanca or Rome. The anxiety of all British Govern-
ments to befriend and endow Maynooth College was due to a desire
on their part to keep the priest at home, uncontaminated by the
spirit which the French Revolution had diffused over the continent
of Kurope. They thought that a continental education would make
the priests rebels, whereas a Maynooth education would make them
loyal. There was never a more shortsighted policy. An Irish
ecclesiastic was scarcely likely to be enamoured of theories which
brought the Church to the ground in France. Life abroad should
convince any man of intelligence that Ireland had no monopoly of
social or political grievances. The education afforded by travel is
one of the most broadening influences upon the mind and character.
On the other hand, the life of the home-raised priest was narrowing
to the last degree. On the farm where he was reared, his mind was
moulded by the prejudices and outlook of his class. Thence,
through the diocesan seminary, he went to Maynooth, where the
real formative influences, so far as social and political affairs were
concerned, were derived from association with those reared in cir-
cumstances similar to hisown. The professors, even when they had
the knowledge of political or social problems, had neither time nor
inclination to depart from the curriculum of the College. Social,
economic or political education under these conditions could not
reach any passable standard. Nor was the horizon likely to be
broadened on the priest’s ordination. His lot thenceforward was
cast for the most part amongst a rural community into which no
literature, save the Nationalist newspaper—itself a terrible product
VOL, I, Pcae a en
Seite diennien saediicdntneseie ata
oon te een
ah ge ee dee el meee =
sae Te ah ee ee on
ay
at eee 4 A.
r Oe a ip emee 2 ae ct owrigbhd
vores
ree wee
210 HISTORY OF IRELAND
—penetrated, and which included no person of the smallest pretence
to education. A man, fitted neither by station nor by training, nor
.
by experience nor by impartial judgment became the political and
social guide for the locality. He imbibed the crudest theories from
his daily paper, and passed them on, unfiltered, or perhaps with some
added crudity of his own making. to the rustic neighbourhood.
When the Great War came, he read of self-determination without
having the power or ability to sift the doctrine or to discern the
limits of its application. He talked about protection, an Trish
currency, Ireland’s mineral and water power, without the faintest
knowledge on the subjects, or even the intellectual curiosity to make
real inguiry into them. Oc asionally the spirit moved him to
as when—a glaring example showing the
express himself in print,
unfitness of the ordinary ecclesiastic for aftairs—a professor of
Maynooth ‘n 1922 boldlv enunciated the doctrine that the Irish Free
State should pass a law limiting the rate of interest within its
territory LO two per cen
In two matters in particular was the priests’ teaching of serious
political and econon ic consequence. In the interest of sexual
morality, they rather favoure qd \ arly marriace 5 in the interest of
the faith, they opp sed emigration. ‘They thereby accentuated the
most pressing ol Ireland’s social evils over-populati n. they
have been much criticized for these doctrines, and it is almost
lly assumed by Protestant wv riters that their motives were
those of personal cain, ‘| his. he WeVeEIlr, is a libe On the Lrish priest-
hood. The priests have oiten been guilty of gross errors of judg-
?
ment, and of faults w hich deserve
their people are concerned they unquestionably are not. ‘There 1s,
a stronger word, but selfish where
in my opinion, no more doubt of the sinct rity of their motives and
‘ntentions than of those of Hannah Moore when she preached sub-
mission to the ills of the industria! revolution, on the ground that the
things of the next world were the only things that mattered, while
those of this world mattered not at all. But where I conceive the
priests are open to just criticism is that the social evils to which their
teaching so largely contributed they laid at the door of the British
Government,
The priest denounced crime, and denounced it sincerely. But his
denunciation was often coupled with gibes at landlords or at the
In its right place the political part of the pronounce-
defensible, but in its context it nullified
(,overnment.
ment would have been quiteIRELAND, 1829-1840 211
the denunciation and inflamed the people. It is difficult to say
whether the denunciations of crime did more to repress crime, or
the denunciation of England and landlordism did more to foster it.
Until 1916, however, violence was, almost without exception,
denounced by the clergy. Even after 1916, the great majority
denounced it, and still more the abominable methods it assumed.
On a small minority rests the responsibility for the campaign of
political assassination and for the moral landslide which their
attempted justification brought in its train.
But, whether the political priest was right or wrong in his inter-
ference, and whether his teaching was right or wrong, he was a
terrible bugbear to the Irish Protestant, who was deeply alarmed by
the innovation. Home Rule would mean Rome Rule! Here and
there, there was some evidence of intimidation, and the altar was
unquestionably used for political purposes.1 There was this
palliation of the offence, that the landlords openly bullied their
tenants at the polls. The nearest approach to a free choice was by
setting up one intimidation as an offset against the other. But the
system was not attractive to the Protestant mind, and the repeal
issue took every day a deeper religious tinge.
Especially was this so in the North. The United Irish movement,
started by republican doctrinaires of the North, had made consider-
able headway there up to 1798. The rebellion of that year killed the
Northern Republican movement. The Northern United Irishmen
were out for a new political order, the Southern rather for a new
social order, with a levelling of property rights. The excesses of the
peasant rebellion were a revelation ; the warfare looked something
like a religious war ; the Northern Presbyterian was surprised and
startled and shrank back. When the Union came, he was too
shrewd to swallow the economic sophistries by which the repeal
cause was buttressed up. He was flourishing ; the country supplied
the flax and the towns and country turned the flax into linen. There
was not the same acrimony between landlord and tenant, nor even
between tithe payer and tithe proctor. The current of Ulster public
opinion set in from the first in favour of the Union. O’Connell, his
attitudes, his methods, his followers, so far from stemming it, swelled
its volume and quickened its flow. The North regarded O’Connell as
* This was so in connexion with the Waterford Election and the Clare
Election. In Northern Ireland, the Churches of all persuasions have been so
used to this day.et eg taper
ite ee "
212 HISTORY OF IRELAND
alice take
A ti A i it
a dangerous and bigoted Catholic demagogue, into whose hands the
‘nterests of themselves, their children, their religion or their business
could not with safety be entrusted. An “ Ulster question ” would
probably have arisen anyhow ; O' ‘onnell and his clerical following
made it inevitable. O’Connell’s occasional wooing of the Orange-
men—for a time he used to wear on his breast orange and green
favours. and he drank the toast of the *‘ glorious, pious, and immortal
memory ”’ of William I1J—cut no ice. He paid only one visit to
&
Belfast ; he came by night and disappeared in the early morning ;
Liszt. when visiting Belfast, was mistaken for him and mobbed.
Whether O’Connell’s agitation for repeal was timely or not,
one thing is certain, he had no wish for a total separation from
England. He made constant references to the ‘** golden link of the
Crown.’ and was ever most effusi\
when he received George IV on his
e in asseverations of loyalty to the
Sovereion,. as, for instance,
accession visit to Ireland in 1821, and when he presented Queen
Victoria with an address on the birth of an heir to the throne. And
while. in the main, his programme was repeal and nothing but repeal,
at times he seemed to have contemplated something in the nature
of a federal settlement. In 1832, he issued a pronouncement in
these terms:
The Lrish have been accu rad of wishing to have i separate legisla-
ture. and to be divided entirely from England. Nothing, however,
can be more untrue than this. We are too acute not to be aware of
the advantages which res ut, particularly to ourselves, from our Union \
We only want a Parliament to do our private business,
leaving the national business to a national assembly. Each of the
with England.
twenty-four states in North America has its separate legislature for
the despatch of local business w! ‘le the general business is confided to
9 National Assembly, and why should not this example hold good in
the CaSO of Ireland ‘
He explains this by saying that what he wanted was a federal
scheme under which each Parliament, so far as its own domestic
affairs were concerned, should have contr l—private bills, commerce,
agriculture and judicial system—while the Imperial Parliament was
all national concerns, peace, war, colonies,
foreign relations and other matters by which all the inhabitants of
affected. Ireland to have a quota in the
to have control over
the two islands would be
Imperial Parliament.
| For the word “‘ Union” he afterwards substituted ‘‘ Connexion.”IRELAND, 1829-1840 213
On January 1, 1830, O’Connell commenced his annual letter to the
Press, outlining his policy. He called upon the Irish Protestants to
support a domestic Parliament, telling them that they need not fear
Catholic domination, as the greatest toleration existed in Catholic
countries. He enumerated a great number of reforms, including
repeal of the Subletting Act; repeal or modification of the vestry
cess, reform of the Grand Jury system, amendment of the law of
libel, reform of corporations, abolition of tithes, reform of judicial
system ; suffrage for all males over twenty-one, voting by ballot ;
biennial Parliaments, tax on absentees, opposition to poor law.
There is no mention of the land question. In 1831 he founded an
association called the “Irish Volunteers for the Repeal of the
Union.”’ This was suppressed by order of the Lord Lieutenant
under the Algerine Act, as also was a perfectly innocuous society
called the “ Society of Friends of Ireland ” whose aims were repeal,
certain minor reforms and the discouragement of secret societies.
To avoid the proclamation, O’Connell started his “‘ Repeal Break-
fasts ’’ at which strong speeches were made denouncing the Union.
The First Anti-Repeal Association, under the presidency of the
Duke of Leinster, was established, and declared that the agitation
for repeal was injurious “‘ by diminishing that public confidence in
Ireland’s tranquillity without which it is vain to expect that capital
or enterprise can largely or beneficially be directed to the cultiva-
tion of her resources, and the profitable employment of her people.”
Ihe names of Catholic priests were to be found, it is said, to requisi-
tions calling anti-Union meetings.1_ The High Church Orange party
in a distinct document declared their determination to uphold the
Union. We trace here the growth of Protestant and business
opinion against repeal; anti-repeal addresses were signed ‘“‘ by
almost every respectable name of the Irish bar,’ by the Dublin
bankers and merchants and traders ‘‘ expressing their detestation of
the spirit of lawless turbulence which had gone abroad, generated
by popular delusions.”
O’Connell’s public breakfasts, called ostensibly for charitable
purposes, were likewise suppressed as was also an association
entitled a ‘General Association for Ireland” to prevent illegal
meetings and protect the exercise of the sacred right of petitioning.
The action of the Government in suppressing these associations and
in endeavouring to prevent the exercise of free speech seems to us
t Annual Register, 1830, p. 148. * Ibid.ee - on
ead
Ta ro
ee le ee ee
-
ee
OF IRELAND
214 HISTORY
to-day as despotic as it was fatuous. But such interference did not
strike publicists of the period in the same way. Kohl writes in 1843
(when the O’Connell movement was at its zenith) :
‘‘Tt is one of the most remarkable characteristics of the British
Constitution and of the national character, and one not sufficiently
estimated by foreigners, that a course of agitation so nearly approaching
to insurrection can be tolerated without any serious mischief following.
I will not stop to ask whether a man like O’Connell could, either
in France or Germany, have run the career he has run, without passing
through a prison or under a guillotine, but even in the freest republics
of Greece or Rome we meet with no example of a man assuming with
npunity and for a lengthened period, a position of such uncompromising
state as O’Connell has
3]
Lm)
hostility against the great aristocracy O! |
assumed against the aristocracy O] England and Ireland.
Even O’Connell’s great legal ingenuity could see no way of evading
the Alverine Act. He adve Cc ited ral rush On the banks for yr ( Id and a
excisable articles. But the banks restricted credit,
hovcott Ot
the landlords and business men stood firm ; the run was over in ten
davs. O’Connell himself seems to have forsworn alcohol, tea and
of his followers could not rise to this
eoffee: but the patriotism
sublime height: he was alone in his self-denying ordinance.
In January, 1831, O Conn: h some of his principal supporters,
preliminary investigation before a Dublin
magistrate. was charged at Green Street Court House, Dublin, with
9 breach of the Algerine Act. the breach alleged being one of
O’Connell’s ** breakfasts.’’ There were certain | gal points involved
in the proceedings. O’Connell pleaded guilty in order as he said to
sonin +) liaturhan which would follow w a convictio
cr Vf 1d bne qistul Wales Whi i} WOULG LOLLOW Ll Pt nha COnVIt lon
subject to the legal questions being argu: | before the King’s Bench.
The Act expired hefore the arcument could come on; it was then
held that no punishment could be awarded :
important by reason of certain
and O’Connell was dis-
charged. ‘The proceedings are
1) ussed betwet n ()'( ‘onnell and the Govern-
informa! negotiations that p
ment. in the course of which O’Connell’s son, Maurice, wrote to tell
who acted as a vo-between, that his father considered
a Mr. Bennett.
repeal as a means to an end. and that ‘if the same measures of
justice to Ireland were granted by the Imperial Parliament as w ould
emanate trom a domestic legislature, the repeal question would not
be pressed, and that O’Connell would use his influence with the
1 Kohl. Un lreland, Pp. 145.IRELAND, 1829-1840 215
people to give the Government a trial.1 The Annual Register Says
that O'Connell admitted the letter was dictated by himself.
O’Connell, betimes, seems to have been apprehensive of the gTOW-
ing split between the Catholics and non-Catholics and he made some
efforts to close up the ranks. In a letter of January 1, 1832, he
called for a Union between Catholics and Orangemen, Whitefeet
and Blackfeet, Blackhens and Magpies, Shanavests and Caravats,
Terryalts and Rockafellers.* In September of the same year ata
Dublin Corporation luncheon, he joined the Orangemen in drinking
their toast, the “* glorious, pious and immortal memory ” of William
of Orange. In a letter addressed specifically to the Irish Protestants
on January 1, 1834, he endeavoured to show them that they need
have no fear, as the Irish House of Commons would be essentially
Protestant. The contrast between this and his affected zeal for
manhood suffrage can only be accounted for by the theory that he
was prepared to try the experiment of manhood suffrage on the
English dog, reserving to democratic Ireland the blessings of a more
restricted franchise. In spite of these efforts to win the Protestants,
Fagan has sorrowfully to admit that O’Connell’s attack on Protestant
ascendancy had been so couched as to prevent confidence in him.4
But if O’Connell lost ground in one direction, he gained it in
another. In the elections that followed the Reform Act of 1832 the
national sentiment for repeal “‘ had lighted up into intense en-
thusiasm ”’ ; repealers were elected for most of the constituencies,
O’Connell himself being returned for Dublin. In January, 1833,
an association of Irish Volunteers to promote the cause of repeal was
established. The Irish repeal members of Parliament, calling
themselves a National Council, assembled in Dublin.
Ihe new British reformed Parliament—which owed its reform to
the Irish vote—proceeded to show its gratitude by a Coercion Act
for Ireland, which was carried by 363 to 84. The provisions were,
as usual, drastic ; to proclaim districts within which martial law
and curfew should operate, and meetings could not be held ; practi-
cal suspension of Habeas Corpus Act, powers of entry into and search
of dwelling-houses.
A flirtation between O’Connell and the Duke of Wellington’s
1 Fagan’s Life of O’Connell, vol. II, p. 95.
* Annual Register, 1831, p. 319.
*Fagan’s Life of O’Connell, vol. II, p. 123; these were the names of some
of the factions that enlivened the dulness of country life in these times.
* Life of O'Connell, vol. II, p. 280.See ee
id ie
aden ae eS el _—
a
“ie we P
atieaniied tet ten cee er ee ee
: "
weer
216 HISTORY OF IRELAND
ministry in 1833 led to an offer of ministerial office to O’Connell,
who gave his reasons for declining :
“without taking office, I shall be able to get, first, a number of bad
magistrates removed; secondly the yeomanry disarmed; _ thirdly
tithes abolished ; fourthly the establishment of the Protestant Church
reduced in every parish where the overwhelming majority are Catholic
or dissenters ; fifthly, I shall have offices filled with Liberals, to the
exclusion of Orangeists. These are great things, and instead of solicit-
of them. as I should do if I were in office, I will command
ing some
redress of Corporation
them when out of office. Add to these, the
abuses, and you will see the prospects advance for the Irish people.”
Chief Secretary, charged O’Connell with a breach of confidence in
Relations were broken off the following year, when Littleton, the
disclosing certain negot iations that had passed between them.
In 1834. O’Connell, in the House of Commons, moved for a Select
Committee
‘to inquire into and report on the means by which the dissolution of
the Parliament of Ireland was efiected ; on the effects of that measure
upon Ireland, and upon the labourers in husbandry and the operatives
in manufacture, and on the pre bable conseq USNCesS of continuing the
legislative union between both countri
In his sper ch he relied on (1) the miseries of the people up to 1778,
when the penal laws were relaxed. (2) the prosperity which, as he
said. followed legislative independence, (3) the allegation that the
rebellion was fomented in order to bring about the Union; the
bribery and corruption accompanying the Union ; (4) that Ireland
was entitled to additional representat ‘on in the House of Commons,
(5) comparison between the prosperity of the island in the period
1782-1800 and the period 1800-1834, (6) the number of Coercion
Acts passed since the Union; 1800-1500, Insurrection Act and
Martial Law: 1807-1810, Insurrection Act; 1814-1818, Insurrec-
tion Act: 1825-1828, Algerine Act ; 1899-1833. Algerine Act, and
Coercion Act. Spring Rice in his reply pointed out that in
Independent Parliament, Ireland had been on the
that she had then been dependent
last ly
the days of the
verge of a war with Portugal ;
for corn on foreign imports, whereas now she was a self-supporting
that her trade was then subject to and now
and exporting country :
that her banking system had
free from vexatious restrictions ;
immensely improved, that the public credit had been supported,
that there had been improvements in the laws relating to tithes ;IRELAND, 1829-1840 217
that a great educational scheme had been established. Emerson
Tennant, member for Belfast, said “‘ that during the last thirty years
the prosperity of Ireland had been unprecedented ; her shipping had
been doubled, her exports and imports proportionately increased,
her cotton trade created.’”” An amendment recording the deter-
mination of the House to maintain unimpaired and undisturbed the
legislative Union was carried by 523 to 38. Apparently nothing
daunted, O’Connell at the General Election of 1835, took as his
watchword “‘ Repeal, sink or swim; never die. I am for repeal.”
He had a following of forty-four members, but as we shall see,
during the friendly administration which followed, and which
lasted to 1840, O’Connell allowed the repeal movement to remain in
abeyance.
It had long been the ambition of English and Anglo-Irish states-
men and zealots to Protestantize Ireland. To this end had been
passed such statutes as 7 William ITI, c. 4 and 8 Anne ec. 38, which
forbade Catholics to teach school, or to send their children abroad for
education. With the same object active educational action had
also been taken. In 1733 the Charter Schools “ for the education
of the Popish and other poor natives ”’ were established by private
subscription ; they got several State grants; in 1769 there were
fifty-two schools and five nurseries. Ona visitation of them, by Mr.
Howard in 1769, they appeared to have 1,400 pupils; his report
showed a dreadful condition of things; in Longford, for example,
‘twelve sickly boys almost naked.’ There was no real attempt at
improvement till 1801 ; but even in 1824, when there were thirty-
four schools with 2,143 children, besides some day scholars, the
condition of these schools was very bad.t In 1792 was established
an “‘ Association for discountenancing vice and promoting religion.”
It was likewise started by private subscription but also got some State
aid ; in 1819 there were 119 schools with 8,828 scholars, of whom
4.460 were Protestants, 4,368 Catholics.2, In 1806 a London
Hibernian Society was formed which controlled, in 1825, 653 schools,
with 61,383 scholars ; it flourished mainly in Ulster. These schools
were, almost avowedly, proselytizing in character, and Catholic
children avoided them. Up to about 1817 ‘‘ Roman Catholic
children continued to remain in most instances without any other
1 First Report of Commissioners of Irish Education Inquiry, 1825, pp.
5-30.
2 Ibid., p. 30. 3 Ibid., p. 65.en ce
sie dee
ihe dee
Santee
a *
NN ee gh etre he trie finger
HISTORY OF IRELAND
218
instruction than such as they could obtain in that ordinary class of
country pay schools, generally known in Ireland by the name of
‘* Hedge Schools.”’ }
Public opinion had moved a long way from the Statute of William
when the Kildare St. schools were established. The attempts to
proselytize the Irish Papist had been a complete failure; he was
more Papist than ever; to quote from memory the grandiose
language of a school book in use in my youth, “‘ The faith had sur-
vived, notwithstanding the terrors of persecution and the blandish-
ments of proselytism.’’ Thinking people recognized that some other
principle of educating the Irish poor should be substituted.
Accordingly, about 1812, a committee of gentlemen of various
religious persuasions started a scheme of schools in which the
Scriptures should be read, without note or comment and no other
religious instruction given. Grants were given by Parliament in
1814: two model schools were established in Kildare Street in
1817; they undertook to train masters and supply books. The
schools were well spoken of and originally received the support of
the Catholic Archbishops, Doctor Troy and Doctor Curtis, and of
But Prost ly IZ1N oF atl mpts were made in some ¢ yf the
many priests.
schools: the Catholic clergy took alarm ; it was conceived that the
reading of the Scriptures without note or comment was not a
sufficient (and was therefore an improper) method of inculcating
dogma ; strong Catholic hostility was developed.
In 1824, t he position stood thus. The Kildare Place Society,
the London Hibernian Society, the Association for Discountenanc-
ing Vice, the Erasmus Smith Foundation, the Baptist Society, the
Charter Schools, and certain other similar institutions, had 2,119
schools, attended by 131,105 pupils. Certain Catholic schools—
day schools, convent schools, and Christian Brothers schools—had
422 schools, with 46,119 pupils. There were 322 schools maintained
by individuals, with 13,686 pupils. The largest number of pupils,
394,732, attended the “‘ pay schools,” which numbered 9,352. The
‘pay schools’’ were in most cases the old Catholic Hedge
Schools.” There were 1n all 11,823 of such schools, with 560,549
pupils—numbers which reflect great credit not alone upon the
1 First Report of Commissioners « f Irish Education I) quiry, 1825, p. 31.
2 Of which John O'Hagan, afterwards a Judge, wrote:
‘Still crouching “neath the sheltering hedge,
Or stretched on mountain fern,
The teacher and his pupils met feloniously to learn.IRELAND, 1829-1840 219
people, but upon the priests and others in authority over them.
It was in these circumstances that the Catholic prelates presented
their petition to Parliament.
‘In the Roman Catholic Church the literary and religious instruction
of youth are universally combined, and no system of education which
separates them can be acceptable to the members of her communion.
Roman Catholics have ever considered the reading of the Sacred
Scriptures by children as an inadequate means of imparting to them
religious instruction.”
The petition complains that former State grants have been made
to trustees who gave aid only to schools wherein the Sacred
Scriptures without note or comment were read by the children so
that Catholics were excluded from the grants. The injustice of
this complaint was proved before the Education Commission and
accordingly a scheme of National Education was framed to meet
the difficulty.
The scheme, for which Chief Secretary Stanley was responsible,
was introduced and passed in 1831. It formed a National (unpaid)
Education Board, consisting originally of seven members,! three of
whom were Protestants, two were Catholics, one was a Presbyterian
and one was a Unitarian. An annual sum of £30,000 was with-
drawn from the Kildare Place Society and the Society for Dis-
countenancing Vice and transferred to the new authority. The
general idea of the scheme was to have separate religious and com-
bined literary and moral instruction ; but it has been best described
as a denominational system with a conscience clause.
It is unnecessary to do more than to indicate the chief points of
the scheme, which have varied, though not in essentials, from time to
time. Any person could apply to have a school placed under the
Board. ‘The site and not less than one third of the expense of any
school receiving a building grant must be locally contributed. The
person who so applied was usually the clergyman and became the
patron or manager of the school, with power to employ and dismiss
the teachers. The schools were subject to inspection by inspectors
appointed by the Board. The Board had powers to dismiss and
suspend, but not to appoint the teachers. In Stanley’s time, one
or two weekdays were set aside for religious instruction; later
certain hours were prescribed.
Lhe Board eventually consisted of one half Catholic members, one
1 Afterwards twenty.ental on nt
en ing
Ce a =
=, ie
Se
220 HISTORY OF IRELAND
half non-Catholic. In practice, every school was a denominationa
school. The clergyman was the manager, the teacher was of his
persuasion, the pupils were of the same persuasion, though occa-
sionally no doubt there might be a very small sprinkling of other
persuasions. Training schools for teachers were also established.
The National Education Scheme stood the test of time. If the
composite Board have had differences they were always amicably
composed. The managerial system, on the whole, worked
well, and certainly better than any alternative system suggested
would have worked. The system of inspection was thorough and
efficient. The system was undoubtedly open to the objection that
it is a bureaucracy, and a religious bureaucracy, in which democratic
lay thought has little or no influence. But anyone who knows the
actual facts of the Irish situation, the inflexible attitude of the
Catholic Church in relation to education, and the difficulty, in most
parts of Ireland, of finding a local Board fit to take care of the edu-
cational interests of the district, will be forced to the conclusion
that the system, built upon compromises, was the best that could
be devised. Many observers have borne testimony to this effect.
Fagan says:
bly ; and we may safely assert that
in? Lu ated. The books used Hare
almost every child in Treland is being edu
admirable in every respect ; the masters employed well trained to the
ryay S . 1 a. _ . ‘ > :
Che svstem is thriving admura
whose duty it 1s to visit the schools,
profession ; and the Inspectors,
most carefully sé lected arcer tne most Tv! examination. rhe system
I
is one ¢ t the OTCATCSI bent ts bestowed UpoOotl th people.
Cavour 2 referred to the system as the “‘ establishment of a vast
system of popular education on a wide and popular basis,’ and
‘infinitely superior to the English primary schools, and I doubt that
there are in Europe any that equal them.” In 1843 there were
2.721 schools attended by 319,793 children. In 1920 there were
7898 schools attended by 670,645 pupils, and the annual grant
had been greatly increased. The percentage of illiterates in 1831
was 53 per cent. ; in 1911 was 12 per cent.
There was bitter Protestant opposition in Ireland.
‘Protestant owners refused sites, and then complained that schools
were built on the only available spots—the yards of chapels. The
1 Life of O’Connell, vol. Il, p. 117.
2 Cavour, On Ireland, p. 95. $ Nassau Senior, vol. I, p. 113.IRELAND, 1829-1840 221
Protestant tenants who ventured to assist the national schools were
threatened by their landlords, the Protestant clergy were discounten-
anced by the bishops, and the Protestant parishioners were rebuked by
the clergy ; and their landlords, bishops, and clergy proclaimed that
the combined system had failed for that the Protestants refused to
support it.’
The Christian Brothers had already started their schools. In
1802 Edmund Rice, of Waterford, submitted a plan of an organiza-
tion to Pope Pius VI, who encouraged him to proceed with it—it
was approved and confirmed by a Bull of Pope Pius VII in 1820.
It was to consist of a brotherhood of laymen, taking a vow of
poverty, of chastity, of obedience to the Superior, and to teach
children gratuitously ; the brothers might be released from their
vows by the Pope or by their Bishop. In 1825 there were about 40
Brothers in Ireland, having a few schools, at which children attend-
ing paid (if they could) ld. a week.2 In 1921 there were about
24,000 children receiving education at the Christian Brothers
schools, 18,000 in primary classes and 6,000 in intermediate classes.
As to the Irish language,
“It has been estimated that the number of Irish who employ the
ancient language of the country is not less than 500,000, and that at
least a million more, although they have some understanding of English
and can employ it forthe ordinary purposes of traffic make use of their
native tongue on all other occasions as the natural vehicle of their
thoughts.”’ 3
But the language was losing ground ; Kohl in 1844 met an old
woman near Kdgeworthtown who said that in her youth (about
fifty years before) few people in the centre of Ireland spoke or under-
stood anything but Irish; now there were few that could bless
themselves in Irish. The people did not want to learn Irish.
Kohl found that in the western parts of Scotland, in Ireland, and
in Wales, people were referred to with contempt who could not
speak English ; all endeavoured to learn it, as without it they were
quite helpless the moment they left their native hills.6 He failed
to find in Kerry or elsewhere any trace of classic learning save in the
case of two students who had been originally destined for the
Church. He saw a Hedge school in Kerry, a clay cabin, roofed with
1 Nassau Senior, vol. I, p. 116.
* Report of Commission of Education Enquiry, 1825, p. 85.
$ Ibid., p. 82. * Kohl, On Ireland, p. 13. 6 Ibid., p. 69.222 HISTORY
—
sods. without a window, without chairs ;
as payment for the tuition.?
‘“‘it is supposed that only one
Irish, and this calculation, many think, is rather over than
speak
under the truth.” ?
OF IRELAND
the students brought turf
‘“In Ireland,’ Kohl further says,
-third of the population are able to
The vear 1832 marks one of the stages in the march of English
liberty.
dependent upon the rotten borough system.
English agitation the Reform Bill of 1:
the House of Commons by the
members were against it.?
Great Britain had h
itherto been ruled by an oligarchy
In face of a formidable
Ho
32 was brought in ; it passed
[Irish vote, for the majority of British
It passed its first and second reading
in the House of Lords hut. a fatal amendment having been carried
‘n Committee. Lord Grey, the Prime Minister, asked for tl
Peers.
public excitement was inten
ment of new
the project of marching on |
seemed imminent ;
The King was obliged to rec
but the King and Queen wer
statute
900.000 to 350,000.
An Irish Refor
persons entitle:
was TO mncrease
—"
they occupied the same,
a
—
——
W hether they Occu
-——~
lease for a term of years not
OCCU} -—e8
value, whether they
to a sublease for a term -¢ et
1 Tt is not without inter to 1
carried on at thi me of |
Met idd Reeks 1700
were I wolves 1 England
fierce anin iis I }
\ COUNnLUCI
* Ke O My p. 64
3 Alis Histor ,
that b uid of the li
cn) I tome) tT) rtil tT} F
change ll th British ¢
i.e. it had been anti ited that
Crown ‘“ as to til ultumate «
ments of the difficulty which ev:
nosticating the consequences of
(;overnment
© publicly hi
the
1 of £10 clear annual value, provided
1e appolnt-
The
a vast meeting at Birmingham
King’s refusal Grey resigned.
T
At
.ondon was discussed: a revolution
Wellington tried to form a Ministry but foiled.
and the Bill was carried :
The effect of the
Britain
ut] { rey :
issed.
of (;reat
electorate from
gave the franchise to (1)
to £YO freehold.
(3) persons entitled tO a
entitled a
or not,
less than 14 years of premises of £20
the same or not. 4) persons entitled
t less than 14 years if premises of £20
that Kohl found a regular trade in eagles
Kerry. 7 t Ir volf was shot in
S : . 1680: there
1300 * Pe 3 tl x n of these
rd n the progress civilization
»us who know
fran-
atter the
nos » ten pound tl creat democratic
2 was carr i these specwiations -—
I Uy n WwW ild augment the power ol! the
cular monu-
l nion
‘ 1] Ss Wi are Sin
n the greatest intellects experience In prog-
inv considerable change in the form OlIRELAND, 1829-1840 223
value, provided they occupied the same. Of these (1) and (2)
were already in existence ; (3) and (4) were new franchises. The
electorate was increased from 26,000—to which the abolition of the
40s. freeholders in 1829 (numbering 200,000) had reduced it—to
30,000, but the change, such as it was, secured to the Catholics
the majority in most of the electoral bodies. The Act gave Ireland
five new representatives, one for Dublin University, and four for
towns whose importance had increased. At the ensuing General
Election forty-five members were returned pledged to repeal.
Nothing is so wearisome and so exasperating as the course of the
reform and ultimately of the abolition of the tithe system in Ireland.
Looking at the tithe system from the standpoint of the ordinary
Englishman of the day, there was nothing unjust in it. Ireland
and England were one. An Established Church was of the essence
of the Constitution ; indeed the Act of Union had specifically declared
that the State Church was to remain inviolate. The English Dissen-
ter had to pay tithes, though he did not love the parson. The same
idea was prevalent in Ireland some thirty years before; Catholic
bishops saw nothing unnatural or wrong in it. The peasant ob-
jected to it, but he objected to priests’ dues as well; his objection
to the tithe, at first, was rather to the amount and the manner of
its collection.
But acquiescence with conditions often proceeds from a recog-
nition of inability to escape from them; and the increase of the
Catholics in numbers, wealth and intelligence brought to the ques-
tion a new spirit which Emancipation and a growing national con-
sciousness strengthened and vivified. Why should they be called
upon to pay tithes at all? No doubt, the actual burden—£600,000
a year—was only a small fraction of the country’s produce, but it
was an unjust claim; worse, it was a badge of servitude; “a
galling cause,” as Fagan puts it.2
The figures show what a pampered body the Irish Church was.
Ibe population of Ireland was 7,943,940, consisting of 6,427,712
Catholics, 852,064 members of the Established Church, 642,356
Presbyterians, 21,808 other Protestant Dissenters. There were
1,385 benefices, 41 of which contained no member of the Estab-
lished Church at all, and a great number contained very few.?
+ Life of O'Connell, vol. II, p. 74.
? Annual Register, 1835. Public Documents, pp. 322 et seq. First Report
of Commissioners of Public Instruction, Ireland.a f
i a ia le te i
a ag lee Bie:
- ao
224 HISTORY OF IRELAND
a
The other figures were: 99 benefices contained not more than 20
members of the Established Church; 124 benefices contained
more than 20 but less than 50 members of the Established Church ;
160 benefices contained more than 50, but less than 100; 221
benefices contained more than 100 but less than 200 ; 286 benefices
contained more than 200 but less than 500; 209 benefices con-
tained more than 500 but less than 1,000 ; 139 benefices contained
more than 1.000 but less than 2,000; 91 benefices contained more
than 2,000 but less than 5,000; 12 benefices contained more than
5 000.
In England twenty-six prelates ministered to 6,000,000 members
of the Church of England ; in Ireland there were eighteen prelates
ministering to 500,000 out of a population of 7,000,000 ; in England,
several bishops had only 2,000 or £3,000 a year while no Irish
bishop received less than £4,000 a year, and some £15,000. Besides
the £600,000 a year in tithes, the Church had large en
as well, 600,000 acres of profitable land, bringing the total annual
income up to £1,200,000 per year; while the Catholic clergy had
no state provision at all.
The fight about tithes had been, more or less, confined to the
peasants ; now Catholic Ireland took up the question as one man.
The patriot bishop of Kildare, Dr. Doyle, whose letters, under the
nom-de - plume of 4 ea are masterpieces of reasoning and nervous
English, boldly took the stand that the whole system was an
immoral tyranny, and the country adopted his view. In 18382
Catholics of position, including several magistrates, took their stand
upon platforms and advised the » people not to pay. The magis-
trates were dismissed from their office; the speakers were prose-
cuted: the coercion increased the spirit of resistance.!
The various tinkerings with the problem made things no better ;
indeed, in some respects they made them worse. A statute of 1832
transferred the collection to the Government, which had the task
of distraining the produce or seizing th¢ . body of the defaulters for
the Crown debt. This only made matters worse, for it brought
the people into more direct conflict with the armed Crown forces.
Both before and after this statute there were many terrible affrays.
At Newtownbarry in January, 1831, eighteen peasants in resisting
1 Fagan’s Life of O’Connell, vol. II, p. 120. But Gavan Duffy states “ the
anti-tithe agitation was abandoned after passive resistance had rendered the
collection of tithes impossible.’ —Four Years of Irish H istory, p- 397,IRELAND, 1829-1840 225
the yeomanry were shot dead or died of their wounds. At Carrick-
shock, Co. Kilkenny, November, 1831, a party of peasants, armed
with scythes, spades and pitchforks, surprised the police in a lane ;
eighteen policemen and one process server were killed and several
other policemen were wounded. At Rathcormac, Co. Cork, an
attempt to extort tithes from a poor widow resulted in seventeen
casualties. Meanwhile goods seized could not be sold, and associa-
tions were formed like the Kilkenny hurlers, ostensibly meeting to
play the game of hurling, but really to destroy the goods distrained.
The jails were filled with tithe debtors ; the cost of collection was
twice the amount collected. The legislature had to provide sums
for the relief of the clergy.
The various statutory enactments, such as they were, were passed
with the greatest difficulty. The Church in both countries was
up in arms against any change whatsoever. The Archbishop of
Canterbury and the Bishops of London and Exeter opposed even
the establishment of a commission to inquire into the subject.
The Irish prelates presented an address to the King in the same
sense, and his Majesty went out of his way to assure them of his
determination to maintain the Church. A motion by a private
member in the House of Commons in 1834 split the Cabinet, and
some of them resigned. Several reforms that passed the Commons,
though of no very drastic character, were thrown out by the Lords.
The general idea of the statutes of the period was to substitute
for the tithe of the produce an annual sum, variable with the price
of corn, payable, not by the occupier, but by his landlord, who had
the right to pass on the burden to the tenant and collect it as he
would rent. An Act of 1824 enabled this commutation to be done
by agreement. Stanley’s Tithe Composition Act of 1832 gave
compulsory powers and established machinery for the purpose,
but the valuations under that Act were stated to be excessive, and
the tenants objected to pay. A Tithe Commutation Act of 1838
commuted the tithe, and reduced it by one-fourth. When intro-
duced, the Bill had a provision for appropriating to general Irish
purposes a surplus to be obtained by reducing the Irish Church
establishment. This provision, which had wrecked previous like
measures in 1834 and 1835, owing to opposition in the Lords from
the same cause, had to be dropped out of the Act of 1838. But the
statute of 1838 killed the tithe agitation. By merging the tithe
in the rent, the fight between tithe payer and proctor was deter-
VOL. I. Q226 HISTORY OF IRELAND
mined ; thenceforward the question was part and parcel of the
bigger question—how much should the landlord receive from the
tenant for the hire of the land ?
A Church Temporalities Act was, with O’Connell’s concurrence,
passed in 1833 reducing the numbers and cost of the Irish Church
establishment, and abolishing the Vestry Cess. It is remarkable
in this, that it introduced the system of State-aided land purchase,
enabling tenants holding under Bishops’ leases, by agreement with
the lessors, to purchase their holdings.
In 1835, the Whigs took office. ‘The British parties were evenly
divided, and the Irish vote dominated the situation. A meeting
took place between O’Connell and some of the Whig leaders at Lord
Lichfield’s house, from which the tribe of journalists who, then,
as now, dog the footsteps of the big men in a crisis, evolved the
‘Lichfield House Compact.’ O’Connell denied that there was
any compact at all. But there was, if no treaty, an entente, for
O’Connell radically altered his policy as long as the Whigs remained
in power,
He slowed down the Repeal movement, and almost reversed
the engines altogether.
In 1836 he went so far as to obtain from the Repeal party in
Dublin and throughout the provinces, permission to abandon
repeal if justice was obtained, putting the question specifically to
several meetings and getting an affirmative answer: he said he
would coalesce with the Government; his language at this time
was most remarkable :
‘+hment union we care
** Your paper union we care not for—your part
‘ity, and the rights of justice and of
5 em +S
now ior, give us @& union OT prosp
benefits, for to such a union we are ready to concede—place us on an
me of a union, for then will
equality with yourselves and then talk to
I offer you, in the name of the Irish people, not to talk of repeal. The
people of Ireland are ready to become portion of the Empire, provided
they be made so in reality and not in name alone; they are ready to
become a kind of West Britons, if made so 1n bs
if not. we are Irishmen again.”’
nefits and justice ; but
The Government, too, were to have a chance. O’Connell’s friend-
liness to it is shown by the appointment of his son Morgan to the
position of Registrar of Deeds and of his son Charles to that of
stipendiary magistrate.’
1 Fagan, vol. Il, pp. 310-320. Fagan, however, says that O’Connell had
asked for the Registrarship not for his son but for another. bid.IRELAND, 1829-1840 227
The experiment of allowing the Government to govern the
country, instead of making government impossible, has been occasion-
ally tried by Irish political leaders—the Bryce and Birrell régimes
are examples. It has sometimes been attended by satisfactory
results. On the occasion of which we are now speaking, it
produced the most popular of British administrations—that of
Thomas Drummond. I have no wish to decry the fame of that
remarkable and enlightened man when I say that his success
was due as much to the O’Connell acquiescence in his policy as to
that policy itself. Administration of a country with public opinion
behind the administrator is a comparatively easy matter.
Dublin Castle was still in the ascendancy grip. The descend-
ants of those whose forefathers had bartered their country’s inde-
pendence for security’s sake, had seen to it that they had their
pound of flesh. Although most of the legal barriers against Catholics
had been removed as far back as 1793, the caste barrier remained ;
the Catholic Irish were looked on as an inferior order of beings and
treated accordingly. ‘The galling thing about it was that there
was an actual inferiority, for the Catholics had not had the oppor-
tunities or the traditions of their Protestant competitors ; their
trained and educated men were comparatively few. There was
not a single Catholic on the High Court Bench or in any of the
major administrative offices. The scales were weighted against
the mere Irish, whether the question was one of a job or the pre-
vention or punishment of a row between Papist and Orangeman.
The mass of the people looked to the machinery of the law as
intended not for their shield, but for their oppression.
Thomas Drummond, a Scotsman, youngish as administrators go,
first tried the policy that afterwards came to be known as “ Killing
Home Rule by Kindness.” He set himself out to gain the con-
fidence and affection of the masses of the people and to win them
to the side of law and order. It was said that he favoured the
Catholics. Possibly he did. There was a dangerous and vicious
ascendancy, a product of iniquitous laws and administrative action.
A levelling up process was necessary unless the status quo was to
be maintained. A strict impartiality, however essential in the
actual administration of justice, may in the exercise of adminis-
trative discretion, properly yield to the necessity for protecting the
weak against the strong. But Drummond was as strong as any
man could be for the enforcement of the law and suppression ofee ee ee
rere ee
atic Tee ee
a
228 HISTORY OF IRELAND
crime. He created a very perfect instrument for the purpose ;
the administrative machine which he left behind him was as effi-
cient as could be devised. If statecraft is justified by results,
Drummond’s was; he got the best elements of the Irish people
on his side; he created trust and confidence where there had been
none before. ‘T’o kill the repeal movement was beyond his powers,
or those of any other man; but he scotched it. The agitation was
allowed to drop during his term of office.
Drummond, who was born in Edinburgh in 1797, commenced
his career as an officer in the Royal Engineers, and was responsible
for some useful and interesting discoveries. His work had brought
him to Ireland in connexion with the preparation of the ordnance
survey; and he was very familiar with the conditions of the
country when, after a year spent as secretary to the Chancellor
of the Exchequer, he was appointed in 1835 Lrish Under Secretary,
with Lord Morpet h (afterwards the Earl of Carlisle) as Chief Secre-
tary, and Lord Mulgrave (afterwards Lord Normanby) as Lord
Lieutenant. His energy, industry and zeal were unbounded. He
never spared himself, either in the planning of reforms or in the
detail work necessary for their execution. His feeble frame was
unequal to the strain he put upon it; and he practically died from
overwork. ‘If ever a man died for his country,’ wrote Lord
Spencer, “he did so.’ He had lofty conceptions of his duty to
Ireland, and his dying wish, which was carried out, was that he
should be buried in Ireland, *“‘the land of my adoption.’ His
courage and firmness in dealing with the ascendancy party in Lre-
land created for him, as might be expected, a host of enemies.
A Royal Commission (the Roden Commission) in 1839 was, in
substance, set up to investigate charges against the Irish adminis-
tration of having shown partiality to the Catholics and undue
severity to the Orangemen. He achieved many practical reforms ;
but he did more, he convinced the Irish people, for the first time,
that justice was to be CX PCr ted from Dublin Cast fa
One of Ireland’s greatest curses at the time was the existence of
two secret societies—the Orangemen and the Ribbonmen; the
Orangemen were secret and armed: the Ribbonmen secret and
unarmed.
A mere knowledge of the activities of the Orange order in
Ireland to-day gives no conception of its magnitude in Drum-
Xv
mond’s time. It is to-day formidable enough; but it is confinedIRELAND, 1829-1840 229
to a few counties in the north-eastern corner of Ireland. Down to
the Drummond administration, it had ramifications everywhere ;
its strength was so great that it had serious designs of changing the
succession to the Throne. It was rampant and outrageous every-
where ; Drummond dealt it a blow from which it never recovered.
McLennan says! that the proportions assumed by Orangeism
in 1835-1836 had become exceedingly alarming ; there were 1,500
lodges (with secret oaths and pass words), affiliated with one another
under the direction of a Grand Lodge, whose head was the Duke
of Cumberland. In 1836, Mr. Hume stated on authority, which
was incontrovertible, that there were 200,000 armed Orangemen
in Ireland and that they were accustomed to meet in armies of
10,000, 20,000, and even 30,000 at a time ; that these demonstrations
tended to breaches of the peace, and that the law could not be ad-
ministered till they were put down. Owing to a suspicion of an
Orange plot called the Fairman plot (after Colonel Fairman, who was
the head of it) to change the succession to the throne, a resolution
was passed in the House of Commons that an address should be
presented to the King urging the dissolution of the Orange or-
ganization, and the removal from public trusts and employment of
all who countenanced it. The address was presented and acted
upon ; Orangeism was dissolved in 1836 or, rather, it was resolved
into lodges no longer affiliated. The Orange processions and
armed demonstrations, however, still continued. They came on
as certainly as July arrived and were as certainly followed by riots
and outrages. ‘‘ About the nature and objects of Orangeism there
was no dispute. It was the phalanx of the ascendancy, ready at
any moment to reassert their domination by force of arms.’”2
Drummond in his evidence before the Roden Commission in
1839 thus describes Ribbonmen :
‘’ With regard to the members of the society, I think in some instances
they may have had in view political or religious changes; but in the
greater number they appear to have had no defined object beyond that
of standing by one another, as it is called, for mutual defence at fairs,
or assisting in the redress of real or supposed wrongs. That, I think,
is the general notion of the members of the society, but with regard to
the promoters of it, there is less difficulty in coming to a conclusion as
to their objects. They are almost all publicans—publicans of a very
' Memoir of Drummond, pp. 258-259.
9
~ McLennan’s Memoir, pp. 260, 261, 264.i
eee ee .
tee eee
eeiiesee ees ee
230 HISTORY OF IRELAND
low class and a very bad character. ... Their object is manifestly
to keep up a delusion among the ignorant and to conceal their real
motive, which is nothing more nor less than to raise money.
They are denounced publicly and constantly by the Roman Catholic
clergy, and continuously, fearlessly and powerfully, assailed by the
very man (O’Connell) whose elevation they profess to have in view.”
The faction fighting, described on p. 195 ante, continued on a large
scale, and, until Drummond effected a reform of the police, was
unchecked and connived at.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Drummond adminis-
tration was the establishment of very efficient police forces. ‘There
were two police forces in Ireland, one for Dublin and the other for
the country. The Dublin force in 1835 consisted of a small number
of day police and a considerable number of watchmen, decrepit,
worn-out old men. of whom a Dublin magistrate said it would not
do to show them in davlight—‘‘ they will excite too much the
*
ridicule of the people that there would be a risk of their very appear-
ance creating a disturbance.’! The police force in the country
was originally wholly inadequate in number, of a thoroughly
mongrel character, combining with their official position their
ordinary occupations—gatekeeper, gamekeeper, woodranger and
the like; they had no uniform, were under no supervision,
the The original statute of 1787
ls 4
subject to little di cipline or Ci ntrol.
expressly provided that the members O] this force should he
Protestant, and the appointments were vested in the Grand
Juries. When Drummond commenced his reforms the force
was prt dominantly Protestant. ‘There was some improvement by
virtue of a statute of 1822, 3 George IV, c. 103; but still the force,
which under that Act numbered 5,321, was quite inadequate to the
needs of the country. There was no co-ordination or central
authority. They had different rules and regulations in each
province.-
Drummond created a force for Dublin of which he was able to
y
say in L839.
than there is now in Dublin.’’* For the country he created a force
oat is im possible to have a more efficient police force
consisting of an inspector general, two deputy inspectors general,
1Prummond’s evidence before the JKoden Commission—McLennan’s
Memoir of Thomas Drummond, p. 267.
*(‘)rtis s Hist y of Lit ] "“LS8/ Poli é, Pp. LO, a he 14,
$ Ewidence before the Roden Commission—McLennan’s Memoir of Drum-IRELAND, 1829-1840 231
four county inspectors, thirty-five inspectors, 217 chief constables,
260 head constables, 1,350 constables and 8,000 sub-constables.
The forces were full-time men, quickly became predominantly
Catholic ; in 1869, three-fourths were Catholics! of sturdy peasant
stock, superb physique, decent education and excellent discipline.
The ranks of officers were recruited by open competition, the pro-
motions being with the Lord Lieutenant. The officers and men
were properly uniformed ; the men armed with carbines ; the officers
with swords and revolvers. Barracks were provided, mostly in
the towns and villages. The force was a magnificent agency for
the prevention and detection of crime and the suppression of dis-
order. Stipendiary magistrates were appointed ; << grossly,’ wrote
Drummond, “ have the local magistrates abused their power.’
Prompt and decisive steps were taken to enforce law and order.
Faction fights were rigorously suppressed ; as likewise were Orange
processions. ‘The whole of the prosecuting and magisterial agencies
were remodelled and invigorated. The Crown took upon itself
the prosecution of offences at Quarter Sessions, Sessional Crown
Solicitors being appointed for the purpose; Crown prosecutions,
formerly almost confined to cases of an insurrectionary or seditious
character, were extended. The immediate effects were a diminu-
tion in aggravated crime, an increase of committals in proportion
to offences, an increase of convictions in proportion to committals.
The improvement that resulted, however, was slow ; the diseased
condition of the body politic could not be cured all at once. There
were many causes in the growing distress of the population that
tended to aggravate the criminal tendencies of the country. In
1844, Kohl observes :
“To be disturbed is the regular and habitual condition of this
unfortunate country, riots, party fights, murders from revenge are more
or less the order of the day ; it is a state of things we have no idea of,
in which a whole population is engaged in a general conspiracy and at
every moment prepared for rebellion.’
The steps taken to enforce law and order were accompanied by
others that showed a genuine desire to win the respect of the people
and to enlist them on the side of Government. The practice, which
had hitherto prevailed, of setting aside Catholics from sitting on
* Curtis’s History of the Irish Police, p. 41.
* McLennan’s Memoir of Drummond, p. 275.
3 Kohl, On Ireland, p. 82.beeen Pe
tate eel .
inline ee
i i cat ee
232 HISTORY OF IRELAND
juries was abandoned. Orangemen who held Government offices
were dismissed ; where an appointment which required executive
sanction was proposed to be given to an Orangeman, it was refused.
A Northern magistrate, Colonel Verner, who at a festive gathering
gave the toast, “he Battle of the Diamond,” was promptly
dismissed from the commission of the peace. A letter dated
May 22, 1838, from Drummond to the magistrates of the County
Tipperary is a splendid statement of the responsibilities cast upon
those in high position; ‘“‘ property has its duties as well as its
rights.’”’ Catholics were promoted; Wise and Sheil were made
ministers; O’Loghlin, Woulfe, Ball and Pigot were made law
officers during this administration, and afterwards were promoted
to the judicial bench. When the Royal Dublin Society black-
balled Dr. Murray, the talented, pious and inoffensive Catholic
Archbishop of Dublin, Lord Morpeth intimated that the Govern-
ment would withdraw the annual grant to the society unless the
insult was atoned for.
Drummond tried, but unsuccessfully, to have railways built in
Ireland with State capital or credit. The only railway in the
country was the six mile line between Kingstown and Dublin, then
in course of construction.
A Poor Law Act was passed in 1838. Under it, Ireland
was divided into 130 Unions, with an average population of
62,884, managed by boards consisting partly of elected and
partly of ex-officio guardians subject to a central authority in
Dublin. One hundred and thirty workhouses were provided by
means of an Imperial loan of £1,000,000. The statute provided
that a rate should be struck and levied according to the
poor law valuation of each holding in the Union. Where the
annual value of the tenement was £4 or under the landlord was to
pay the entire rate ; above that figure, he was to pay one half, the
occupier paying the other half; this measure was “the first
example of a law passed in the sole interest of the Catholic masses
and of a sacrifice in their favour imposed upon the Protestant
landowners.’’! The Poor Law Act was amended in 1847 when
out-door relief was authorized in the case of destitute and disabled
persons and widows having two or more legitimate children depend-
ent upon them; but no person could be relieved indoor or out-
door who had more than a quarter of an acre of land.
1 Cavour, On Ireland, p. OU,IRELAND, 1829-1840 230
A scheme suggested by Poulett Scrope and supported by many
Irish politicians was to employ the poor on works of public utility
and charge the expense either to the Irish landlords or to the State.
This Senior shows to be impracticable. Assume the employment
of 2,500,000 at an average cost of maintenance and clothing of
Is. 9d. per head per week or £4 lls. per year; the total would be
£11,375,000 on works such as piers, harbours, bridges and public
buildings, bringing in no immediate return. The cost would be
prohibitive. Austria, with 37,000,000 inhabitants and 250,000
Square miles of territory, was crushed by the expense of a standing
army of 400,000; Prussia, with 107,000 square miles of territory
and 15,000,000 of the most industrious people on the Continent,
maintained with difficulty an army of less than 130,000 men:
Scrope’s proposal was to throw on the State the support of a stand-
ing army far in excess of all the military forces of Kurope.?
A glance at the development of the poor law in England is not
out of place. Nassau Senior? traces its history. The labourers
were praedial slaves from the Statute of Labourers in 1349 to the
Statute of Elizabeth passed in 1597 ; under which, if they left their
parishes, they were whipped, branded and chained ; if they stayed
where they were, no fund was set apart for their maintenance.
They passed through various stages of lessened misery, but even
in 1834 their condition was terrible. The labourer would get
perhaps 3d. a day from his employer and ls. 9d. a day from the
parish ; or he might be billeted on a farmer who would be required.
to pay him 2s. 6d. a week if single, 4s. if married without children,
and ls. 6d. a head for each child, ‘‘ such was the condition of the
labouring population in many thousands of English parishes.”
There were, in Ireland, seventy-one municipal corporations, of
which between forty and fifty had been constituted by James I
expressly in the interests of Protestantism. The population of
these municipalities was 900,000 of whom only 13,000 were electors.
In these communities plunder and peculation were systematized,?
the interests of the public were sacrificed to the interests of the few
though nominally open to Catholics, there were only 200 Catholic
electors. They were, in effect, a Protestant monopoly having
* Nassau Senior, vol. I, pp. 150, 151. “Vol. I, pp. 143-146.
* A leaseholder of Corporation lands offered £15,000 for a renewal of the
lease and was refused. He sold his interest (two and a half years outstanding)
for £2,500 to the borough patron, who got a lease for nothing. The lands
were worth £1,500 a year.—Annual Register, 1836, p. 22.aided —
nee
so
iii: oe ~~ —
234 HISTORY OF IRELAND
nearly 4,000 offices to bestow, and having the control of the
administration of justice in certain cases, the management of prisons
and in some instances the power of creating parliamentary electors.
A Bill to reform them passed the House of Commons in 1835,
but was beaten in the Lords; the same result happened in 1836,
1837, 1838, 1839; in 1840, a measure passed both Houses and
became law. By virtue of this statute the franchise was conferred
on occupiers of £10 rateable value, the power and patronage of
the corporations in Ireland being thus transferred to popular
or
hands. The old Tory Corporation of Dublin was transformed ; the
first election under the new system returned forty-seven Repealers
and Whigs to thirteen Tories.1 O’Connell was elected Lord Mayor
of Dublin, the first Catholic Lord Mayor. He attended Mass on
Sund Vy in State: but he took off his robes of office before entering
tic proceeding was intended as a protest
im
i\ ;
the church—this m«¢ lodrama
against an absurd ce] use in the mani ipation Act that ho Catholic
member of a corporation should attend Divine Service in his official
robes. He ceased to be Lord Mayor in 1842.2 O’Connell suggested
that every alternate Lord Mayor should be chosen from the Protest-
i
ants; this prac tice was carried out for a while but was afterwards
abandoned. *
The Irish Act was altered in its passage through the Lords, and
in its final form was not nearly so liberal a measure as the corre-
sponding English measure; whereas in England every ratepayer
hecame a burgess. in Ireland the franchise was limited to ratepayers
having a £10 valuation. In Dublin, too, the appointment of the
Recorder, Sheriffs, Magistrates, and the control of the police were
vested in the Government, but though these points were made a
grievance at the time, it is questionable if, having regard to the
history of the Dublin and other corporations, many Irishmen
to-day will be hardy enough to maintain that the restrictions were
unwise.
2 Ibid., p. 293.CHAPTER VIII
IRELAND, 1840-1848
Repeal Movement Continued—Young Ireland Movement—Young Ireland
v. Old Ireland—Social and Economie Conditions—The Famine—Emi-
gration—The Rebellion of 1848—Total Abstinence Movement—Grand
Jury System—Improvement Loans—Irish Charitable Trusts—Maynooth
College—University Education—Sums Advanced to Ireland 1800-1847.
On the fall of the friendly Government in 1840, O’Connell
restarted the Repeal movement. He adopted the same organization
as in the Emancipation movement. His new “ National Loyal
Repeal Association ’’ comprised associates contributing ls. a year,
and members contributing £1 a year.
The programme of the new Association comprised every con-
ceivable object that could attract the multitude: tithe abolition,
fixity of tenure, manhood suffrage, abolition of property qualifi-
cation for members of Parliament, triennial Parliaments, reform of
electoral districts.
The historians of the Young Ireland movement, for the purposes
of justifying that movement and of exaggerating its importance, lay
great stress upon the fact that O’Connell’s new movement was
slow in getting under weigh. The repeal rent, for a while, was
small; “the people continued apathetic and the middle class stood
aside and in private made a jest of O’Connell’s ‘ reconstructed
Parliament’.”! The previous General Election had sent forty
Repealers to Parliament; that of 1841 had not sent a dozen ;
O’Connell himself was beaten in Dublin, and his son in Carlow :
the Protestants had been completely estranged.
All this is true enough, and natural enough. The Drummond
regime had been distinctly soothing to the moderate elements
amongst O’Connell’s followers. With the more advanced, O’Connell
had lost in prestige. He had posed as a great tribune at whose
blast the Union ramparts would fall ; the last few years had seen him
* Gavan Duffy’s Young Ireland, pp. 34-36-37.
235236 HISTORY OF IRELAND
ond *.
little better than a camp follower of the Government in office ; his
son had got a Government job; he had trafficked in Irish seats.
He had insisted, contrary to responsible protests, on having the
Repeal funds put in his own name. He had estranged many of
the priests by his support of the Tithe Bill—which, though reducing
the tithes by 25 per cent. and changing them into a rent charge,
allowed the landlord to add the charge to the rent and thus pass
on the burden to the tenant.
But, after a while, the movement grew in strength. The O’Connell
programme was a drag net—devised by an astute and sagacious
man of affairs—to rake in all classes of the people, particularly
those who desirt d relief from mone 7 payments arising out of the
occupation of land. The inclusion, for the first time, of a claim for
security of tenure was a master stroke. The non-agricultural
portion of the community were enticed by the usual propaganda.
The old fallacies about taritts and water power were trotted out ;
pamphlets were issued broadcast containing the most fantastic
possibilities. (;reat stress
’
statements about [reland’s economic
was laid upon the alleged under representation ol [reland in the
Imperial Parliament. It is to these material considerations,
rather than to the high How I} ap pi Lis Ol] the Young lrelanders, that
the nation responded in the UTeCa eat ement 6) | [843
I
One turns with relief. however. fro! . O’Connell’s bluff, dishonesty,
vulgarity, and insolence to the partv which was formed in 184l,
and which brought a new spirit into the Irish National movement.
The Young Irelanders were of a type that every movement that
claims to be patriotic produces in mor
men of a high degree of intellect, much book knowledge, but with
no knowledge of affairs or of human nature. Living in the atmo-
sphere of idealism, they cannot imagine that the most of mankind
Thev sometimes achieve noble ends in a noble
> OF li Ss abundance— young
are stern realists.
More fy quently they start movements whose forces they
can neither fathom nor control. with disastrous results to their
ls from which the movement sprang.
way.
country and to the very idea
i iL here WAS @ Very DASLS I ident 1n L835. H Mi. AL effect, sold the
seat for Ca ' \ K nfectioner named Raphael for £1,000, and
when l r { was & CIs] [ iS 1 h rms, O Connell, to keep the con-
ners mout it 1 | iid get him a baronetcy.—See the
correspondence in A? / 1835, p. 147; and see A. Rk.
L836, ). 182 There was, however, no suggestion that the proces is of theIRELAND, 1840-1848 237
The Young Irelanders kept their idealism pure and undefiled ;
they were a noble failure. Their successors, the Sinn Feiners,
who allowed their movement to drift into a campaign of political
assassination, are an inglorious success.
The Young Irelanders moved and thought and acted on a different
plane from O’Connell and his followers. They idealized Ireland,
regarding it as something apart from its people, their defects,
their woes, their poverty, their rent, their tithes. They dreamt of
an Ireland as she ought to be,
‘*“Great, glorious and free,
First flower of the earth, first gem of the sea.”
(Moore.)
The honour and dignity of the nation required the status of an
independent sovereignty, an army, a navy, a flag, a language of
its own. They resented the introduction of any object save inde-
pendence ; good Irishmen might differ upon such questions as land
reform or tithes or manhood suffrage, but all good Irishmen should
be agreed as to the secession issue ; intrusion of extraneous objects
weakened the movement, impaired its purity, lessened its national
character, tended to make it a class and sectarian movement.
O’Connell’s methods would ‘‘ transform a national movement into
a sectarian one,’ 1 ‘‘ the Protestants were alienated by harangues
which were as much out of place in a Repeal movement as in a
Chamber of Commerce.”? They hoped to capture the landlords and
the rest of the Anglo-Irish garrison, and to impress them into the
cause of National independence. They believed it possible to instil
their own lofty principles into the souls of the common people of the
country, and to rouse in the nation an ardour which no British
Government could withstand. While not scorning arguments
derived from Ireland’s material grievances, their main appeal
was to the dignity and self-respect of the nation. They detested
O’Connell’s vulgarity and openly upbraided him with it.2 Davis
wrote to The Nation: ‘“ The Irish people will never be led to act
the manly part which liberty requires of them by being told that
the Duke, that gallant soldier and most able general, is a screaming
coward, and doting corporal.’ They preached self-reliance and
* Gavan Duffy’s Four Years of Irish History, p. 3.
a 1010: Ds 2:
* Gavan Duffy speaks of O’Connell’s ‘“‘ language of insufferable coarseness.”
*The Nation, No. 34, Gavan Duffy’s Young Ireland, p. 170.a hae
tienes tee ee
—
ee! F
ad eo
238 HISTORY OF IRELAND
self-respect ; “‘ the first and the hardest thing,” said Gavan Duffy,*
‘was to revive self-reliance and self-respect. Rigid discipline and
careful training could alone make the young men of Ireland able
to win freedom and worthy to enjoy it.2 They stressed the necessity
of maintaining a distinct national individuality ; “ Ireland must
stn
,
aim to be Irish, not Anglo-Irish.
Their newly established weekly, The Nation, was a remarkable
sroduct. The first number appeared on October 15, 1842: its
ig ) ,
t
motto was, ‘‘ to create and foster public opinion and make it racy
of the soil.’’ borrowing the language of W: ulfe in reply to Sir Robert
Peel when the latter asked what good would cor yorations do to a
I
country so poor as Ireland. The editor was Charles Gavan Duffy,
son of a Catholic shopkeeper in Monaghan, formerly sub-editor
of the Dublin Morning
Protestant. and John Blake Dillon, a Catholic, both young barristers.
stream of patriotic prose and verse,
calculated and intended to fire the youth of Ireland with love of
[Ireland and hatred of her oppressor. The Young Ireland group
maonified all the delusions with which Ireland is afflicted. They
held that at the time of th Engolish Invasion, ‘‘ Ireland was the
school of the West, the great habitation of sanctity and learning.
‘hildish notions about Ireland’s
They suffered from all the usual «
f Enoland be withdrawn—
possibilities should the van pire gTIp O]
ater power, and so forth—‘* Neither the limited
territory and population nor the history of Ireland forbade her to
6 They dreamed of a day when the voice
Register. assisted by Thomas Davis, a
The Nation pt ITs af | f TT h
sa
o
mineral resources, W
hope for a great career.
of Ireland would be hi
They persuaded themselves
rd among the concert of the Great Powers.
that talk about toleration would bring
the Protestant minority into line with them, while the Protestant
minority saw that their lands, their privileges, their ascendancy
¥ yo mp. 152. 2 Ibid., p. 156. 3 Ibid., p. 156.
‘The | Moore, 1 + not of the Young Ireland group, was in sym-
Dp y with ic. titi s great importance to Moores anti-English
\ sucn
But ' 9 rearing
G el hilt !
On oul . i |
On theirs is the Saxon and guilt ”’
and says ** Moo! he worse agitator of the two’; — Thomas
M Fathe! | Daniel O'Connell, form the great triumvirate
that pr | movement in Ireland.’’—Kohl, On Ireland,
p. 132.
. Quotatl ns tre rr he N a Javan Duffy's Y uTLg Ire la? d, p- 153.
6 Gavan Duffy's YIRELAND, 1840-1848 239
would be swept away if power was given to a population one-half
of whom were on the border-line of starvation and three-fourths of
whom regarded the Anglo-Irish as having no claim to be in the
country at all. ‘hey were the best specimens of a type that Ireland
produces in marvellous abundance, a type that ignores actual facts,
that talks well and writes well on a basis of invented facts, that
conjures a tasteful and solid looking structure out of no better
materials than its own imaginings. They were the vrecursors of
the Sinn Fein movement of later times, but their crudities were
not so obvious ; and there was this vast difference in their methods,
they believed that only righteous men by righteous deeds could
make Ireland a nation once again. Macaulay was much struck by
the energy and beauty of The Nation, and entreated the editor “ to
consider whether genius be worthily employed in inflaming natural
animosity between two countries which, from physical causes such
as no political revolution can remove, must always be either blessings
or curses to each other.’’!
Gavan Duffy is obviously wrong when he suggests that the Young
Irelanders were the backbone of the revived Repeal movement.?
The new spirit no doubt appealed to many young men, the students
of law, of medicine, in the Universities, possibly in Maynooth
College ; it attracted some Protestants to its ranks,? but when all
is said and done O’Connell’s methods, with all their defects, suited
the mass of the people better than the idealism of The Nation ;
his personality and platform were the biggest factors in the pro-
duction of the gigantic movement of 1843.
The zenith of the Repeal movement was reached in 1843. If it
had been slow in re-starting it now achieved a terrific momentum
the Repeal rent shot up to £600 a week: the membership of the
association was broadened so as to admit any man who was in
favour of Repeal, whatever his views were about other questions.
John Mitchel, a very remarkable man, joined ;: so did many of the
Catholic bishops, who had hitherto held aloof.4 William IV’s
enunciation of the doctrine of self-determination, ‘‘ It is the un-
doubted right of every people to manage their own affairs,” gave
* Gavan Duffy’s Young Ireland, p. 286.
* Young Ireland, pp. 34, 36, 37.
* Among the leaders of the movement were John Blake Dillon, Charles
Gavan Duffy, who were Catholics; Thomas Davis, Edward Dwyer Gray,
Clarence Mangan and O’Neil Daunt, who were Protestants (Lbid., pp. 45-48).
* But Dr. Murray, Archbishop of Dublin, disclaimed connexion with the
movement. (lbid.) Some others were at least neutral. Lovd., p. 211.aiid ae a eee
i
:
nd
OF IRELAND
240 HISTORY
as much joy to the Young Irelanders as President Wilson's did to
the Sinn Feiners during the Great War. Arbitration courts were
set up to which litigants were exhorted to go instead of to the
ordinary courts. A Council of Three Hundred was formed as
the framework of an Irish Parliament.
The era of monster meetings all over Ireland now commenced ;
and Peel in Parliament declared that all the resources of Govern-
ment would be used to prevent the dismemberment of the Empire.
The Arms Act was renewed; several justices of the peace were
dismissed for having taken part in Repeal meetings; O’Connell
replied to Peel in a speech at Dublin:
‘“T belong to a nation of eight millions, and there is besides a million
of Irishmen in England. If Sir Robert Peel has the audacity to cause
a contest to take place between the two countries, we will put him in
the wrong, for we will begin no rebellion ; butI tell him from this place
that he dare not begin that strife against Ireland.”’
At a meeting at Mullingar, he assumed a like defiant tone, and Dr.
Higgins, Catholic Bishop of Ardagh, in effect said that they
would resist to the scaffold.1_ A few days later O’Connell was very
specific ;
‘Tf others invade us, that is not civil war; and I promise them that
there is not a Wellingtonian of them all who would less shrink from
that contest than I, if they will enforce it upon us. We are ready to
keep the ground of the constitution as long as they will permit us to
do so. but should they throw us from that ground then Ve Victis
between the contending parties.’’
O’Connell hurled at the Government the ‘‘ Mallow Defiance ” on
June 11. 1843: ‘“ The time is coming when we must be doing.
You may have the alternative to live as slaves or die as freemen.”
O’Connell in a speech at Tara, called this year “‘ the Repeal Year”:
‘“ When on January 2 I ventured to call it the repeal year, every
person laughed at me, are they laughing now ? It is our turn to
laugh at present. Before twelve months more, the Parliament will
be in College Green; ”’ and he pretended to believe that a Par-
liament could be legally set up without any statutory repeal of the
Union: ‘‘ the Queen has only to issue the writs to revive the Irish
Parliament.’
Assistance was sought abroad. In America every busybody who
was anxious to advertise himself was requisitioned ; an Irishman
‘ Gavan Dutty's Young Ireland, p- 245.IRELAND, 1840-1848 24.1
named Gray, practising at the American bar, was deputed to collect
funds. A meeting in New York, addressed by prominent people
like Governor Seward, Governor Cass, and Horace Greeley, passed
a resolution that if England put down the Ivish national agitation
by force she should do so “‘ with the assured loss of Canada by
American Arms.” But this melodramatic declaration, translated
into action, amounted to the transmission of some small sums like
5,000 and 2,000 dollars to the Repeal Association. The amenities
of international relations were enhanced by the U.S.A. President
i Ax “(Robert Tyler) announcing himself as “‘ The decided friend of Repeal.
wr On this great question I am no halfway man.’”! At a dinner in
Vv. Paris, ostensibly given to celebrate the taking of the Bastille, but
“) in effect to express sympathy with the Irish movement, many
a violent speeches were made ; and Ledru Rollin said that in the event
of a struggle France would be ready to support an oppressed people.
In a correspondence between Rollin and O’Connell, the latter said
that the Repealers sought no foreign alliance but, that if aggression
commenced help would be necessary and welcome.
At this juncture some responsible men, apprehensive of a conflict,
sought for a va media; amongst them was Sharman Crawford,
who propounded a federal scheme, but it met with little or no
support. ‘The monster meetings continued to be held weekly or
even bi-weekly. O’Connell’s stage thunder was louder than ever.
At a great meeting at Tara, at which 500,000 are stated to have
been present, he said, “‘ If the Russians or the Scotch, aye, or the
English were to assail us against the constitution and the law they
know little of me who think that I would be amongst the last who
would stand up for Ireland.” Ata meeting at Roscommon on
August 20, 1843 ; ‘‘ Rejoice, for the day star of Irish liberty is already
on the horizon, and the full noon of Freedom shall beam round
your native land.”
The huge bluff was soon to be called; and the weakness of
O’Connell’s hand exposed. A meeting, which in numbers was to
surpass all other meetings, was called for Sunday, October 5, 1843.
A place of meeting was selected to fire the martial and patriotic
ardour of O’Connell’s followers. Clontarf was the scene of an Irish
King’s victory over the Danes, in 1014.
1 Ibid., p. 319. Five years later'Horace Greeley and John MacKean acted
on a directory formed in New York for the purpose of sending men and arms
to Ireland.—Gavan Duffy’s Young Ireland, p. 319.
VOL. I. R~ etme yell te, dan No sparta
242 HISTORY OF IRELAND
The Irish Government had 35,000 troops at its command. The
barracks had been loopholed ; forts and Martello towers had been
put in readiness; warships were on the sea. A semi-official
press statement was issued on Friday, October 3, stating that the
Government would proclaim the meeting. On the following day,
Saturday, a proclamation was issued specifically forbidding the
holding of the Clontarf meeting and enjoining magistrates and
peace officers to disperse it. A meeting of the committee of the
Repeal Association was hastily summoned. At O’Connell’s instance,
submission was decreed, and frantic efforts were made to prevent
the expected delegates from coming to the meeting place. Placards
were posted up in all the approaches to the city, and confidential
agents were sent in every direction to warn the people. ‘These
measures were successful. Conquer Hill, Clontarf, was an un-
occupied field when the Government troops took possession of it ;
there was no enemy to face the commander of the forces and the
Lord Lieutenant when they visited the ground.
It is very likely that, outside the Young Ireland group and their
immediate following, very few had taken O’Connell’s loud talk
about forcible resistance at its face value. On any other assump-
tion, it is impossible to account for the fact that this miserable end
to the rhodomontade did not shake the country’s confidence in
O’Connell. At the next meeting of the association the attendance
was described as “‘immense.’? At this meeting, O’Connell’s ever-
fertile brain brought forth a new scheme; simultaneous parochial
meetings were to be held, which it would be a physical impossibility
to put down. He also outlined the formation of a company, with
shares of £100 each, by whose operations the interest and debts and
mortgages would be paid and spent in Ireland instead of in England.
3ut on further reflection, he seems to have concluded that this
new company would not bring the British Empire to financial chaos ;
so he never mentioned it again.
A great State prosecution was now launched against the heads
of the Repeal movement; O’Connell, his son John, Ray, Steele,
Barrett. John Gray (of The Freeman), Gavan Dutty (of The Nation),
and two priests, were impleaded. The charge, stripped of the
infinity of legal verbiage in which it was clothed, was one of sedition.
O’Connell was, if possible, more buoyant than before: “ Give
him but six months of perfect peace and he would offer his head
1 Gavan Duffy’s Young Ireland, p. 374.IRELAND, 1840-1848 243
on the block if at the end of that time there was not a Parliament in
College Green.’ State prosecutions in Ireland always have had
the result of bringing adherents to the policy of the men in the
dock. This brought, amongst others, one very notable recruit—
Smith O’Brien, a Protestant gentleman of position, ability, character,
a Member of Parliament, who had up to this been a Whig Anti-
Repealer ; he now joined the Repeal Association; a few years
later he headed what is the most pathetic as well as the most
harmless attempt at rebellion in all history. The circulation of
The Nation jumped to 10,000; the Young Ireland writers make
the grossly exaggerated claim that it was actually read by nearly
250,000 persons.
After much preliminary sparring between the lawyers, the trial
commenced on January 15, 1844, before a bench of four Protestant
judges and a jury of twelve Protestants, any Catholic on the
panel who was called being ordered to “stand by” by the Crown.
There was a brilliant bar on both sides. O’Connell defended himself
in a speech justifying his policy; his effort on this occasion has
been highly praised in some quarters. All the traversers were
convicted.
There was a motion for a new trial on various technical points.
Before it came off O’Connell went to London and got ovations from
the Opposition in the House of Commons and at meetings in London,
Birmingham, and Manchester. In a debate on the question,
however, the Government had substantial majorities in both
houses—99 in the Commons, 97 in the Lords. The motion for
the new trial was unsuccessful save as to one of the priests.
O’Connell was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment ; to pay
a fine of £2,000 and to give bail, himself in £5,000, and a surety
in £5,000 for good behaviour for seven years. The others received
lesser sentences.
A writ of error which was brought to test the validity of the
proceedings did not operate as a stay of execution. O’Connell and
the others, amidst the tears of the populace, went to Richmond
penitentiary to undergo their sentence. With the consent of the
Dublin Corporation, who had control of the prison, the Governor
and Deputy Governor of the prison turned out of their quarters
to make room for their distinguished guests, who “‘ found themselves
established in a pleasant country house, situated in the midst of
extensive grounds, bright with fair women and the gambols of244 HISTORY OF IRELAND
children, and furnished with abundant means, either for study or
amusement.’’! O’Connell proceeded to hold a royal levée inside
the prison walls. The prisoners were allowed to have their own
servants; presents of fish, game, wine and flowers poured in;
everybody who was anybody, or who wanted to be thought anybody,
called and was lavishly entertained. The table was “ never set for
less than thirty persons ;” * the guests included political associates
as well as personal friends ; it was a pleasant seclusion in which fun
and wit and serious political talk alternated.
‘*O’Connell was a genial and attentive host; full of anecdote and
badinage while the ladies remained, and ready when they withdrew for
'
serious political conference or the pleasant carte and tierce of friendly
i
controversy.” ®
The Catholic bishops framed a form of prayer for public use,
beseeching God that grace might be granted to O’Connell to bear
his trials with resignation. ‘The people, as they thought of Dan’s
huge form on a narrow plank bed in a gloomy cell, prayed without
ceasing. O’Connell bore up marvellously, so much so that in the
opinion of one of his biographers, the ** Richmond picnic,” as it
was called, had undoubtedly the effect of prolonging his life.
The unexpected success of the writ of error brought this inter-
esting episode toanend. By a majority of three to two the House
of Lords set aside the proceedings, Lord Denman declaring that if
such practices in reference to the empanelling of the jury were
allowed to continue, trial by jury would become “a mockery, a
delusion and a snare.” The mass of the Irish people saw in the
decision a miracle from God; more mundane folk thought it a
triumph of COmmon sense.
The greatest of strategists have temporary lapses. On his
discharge from prison, O’Connell took the nearest cab, and drove
quietly home to the bosom of his family. It was a tragic error, for
his stage managers had other views as to the manner of his liberation.
Providentially it was not too late to retrieve it. He was kept
overnight and in the early morning was bundled back into the
—
to be taken in. To get into a jail is as difficult for most people
as it is to get out when once in. But the circumstances were
1 Gavan Duffy’s Young Ireland, p. 491. * Ibid., p. 494.
$ Ibid., p. 494. 4 MacDonagh, 353.IRELAND, 1840-1848 245
unprecedented. O’Connell might be a future dispenser of Irish
patronage ; the Governor of the jail graciously acceded to the
request. O’Connell sat down in the Governor’s most comfortable
armchair ; in such durance vile he awaited his release at the hands
of the people. The people came, six miles of them, with bands and
banners. When all was ready, the bolts were drawn, the gates
flung open, and O’Connell appeared, burly, majestic, clad in his
ereen Milesian crown-like cap.
The mob sprang at him. Like gulls that dive upon a fleshy
morsel, myriads of hands clove the air and sought his spacious
palm. The laggards, less lucky or less deserving, were content to
touch the hem of his garment. He was in some peril of suffocation
from the ardour of his admirers. But, disengaging himself, he
looked up. Did terror come upon him and blanch his cheeks ?
Was this a scaffold ? Had an angry people found him out? Not
so. There was naught but joy in the open countenances that faced
him or in the shouts that came from lusty throats. It was a tri-
umphal chariot that had been drawn up to the prison walls by six
dappled grey steeds that danced with delight. And what a chariot !
Marvel of improvisation. It was built in three tiers or platforms.
The topmost tier had a throne, gorgeous and roomy, for the popular
deity. Him brawny arms seized, and with care and delicacy of touch
—for he was no mean weight—they hoisted him, with aid of ladders,
to his lofty perch, flanking him at that giddy height with his son
Daniel Junior on one side and his chaplain on the other. On the
middle platform, in solitary grandeur, was placed a grey-beard
harper to beguile the time by patriotic tunes. The stability of
the structure was ensured by the presence on the lowest platform
of a pyramid of the grandchildren of O’Connell, apparelled in green
velvet tunics and caps with white plumes. Slowly rolled the
Juggernaut-like contrivance towards the city. Huzzas rent the air ;
the harp’s sweet strains rose and fell. Tom Steele’s carriage came
next, Tom holding with difficulty an enormous green bough cut
from the slopes of Tara. The next carriage contained the attorney
who had, for a consideration, piloted the case through the House
of Lords; he brandished in his hand the voluminous indictment
which the infamous Crown lawyers had spent such toilsome nights
in preparing. There followed carriage after carriage of people with
less pretensions to share in the moving spectacle, which attracted
not less than 200,000 persons. At one point in the journey there246 HISTORY OF IRELAND
was a pause, and a hush came upon the multitude. Slowly and
deliberately O’Connell raised his hand; the index finger pointed
to College Green. A mighty cheer went up; the incident was
passed back to those of the six-mile procession who could not see
the sublime gesture, so that they, too, might cheer in turn. So
they brought him home. With infinite tenderness and solemn-
ity, the mighty receptacle was decanted of its precious content
—Dan, Dan Junior, the priest, the harper, the numerous units of
the O’Connell tribe. There was as much pleased surprise in the
grins of his servants as if they had not seen the master for ages.
his is the story of the deliverance of the amazing liberator by
his amazing people.
Ihe intertwining of religion with politics which is so marked a
feature of Irish movements is well illustrated by an incident which
happened the following Sunday. The question was a purely secular
one and Archbishop Murray could scarcely be called a Repealer at
all. Yet O’Connell’s release by the House of Lords was celebrated
in Dublin by a solemn High Mass and Te Deum, at which Arch-
bishop Murray presided, a
—
id at which Father Miley, the preacher,
declared that O’Connell had been released by the intervention of
the Blessed Virgin.
O'Connell had much sympathy in this absurd prosecution from
men who disliked himself, his policy and his methods. Belfast had,
for more than a generation, held aloof from every national organiza-
tion. Now a number of persons of position in that city, including
some who, were hostile to repeal, assembled and voted resolutions
of sympathy with O’Connell. The English Catholics protested
against the manner in which the trial was conducted. The Repeal
movement itself got a fresh impetus; the Repeal rent exceeded
in amount anything received during the flush of the monster meet-
ings. O'Connell explained his backdown at Clontarf by saying:
‘ No human revolution is worth the effusion of one single drop of
blood. Human blood is no cement for the temple of human
liberty.”
here were soon signs of divergence of opinion between O’Connell
and the Young Irelanders. Gavan Duffy puts it thus:1 ‘“ From
the day he left Richmond prison the leader of the people never took
a step that was not in its design or in its result a step backwards.”
lf O’Connell had not seen obstacles to Repeal before, he saw them
d Young lreland, p- 533.IRELAND, 1840-1848 247
now ; he seems to have flirted with the federal idea, which though
it found some support in Belfast, and even with The Times,
languished.
On the other hand, the Young Irelanders were showing signs of
swinging towards the left. The writersin 7’he Nation became each
day more and more critical of O’Connell and his priestly organizers ;
they openly scoffed at the inclusion in the category of miracles of
the House of Lords’ decision on the writ of error. This irreverent
treatment of so sacred a subject, and their general tendency to free
criticism and free thought in politics brought them under sus-
picion. The O’Connell organ, The Pilot, called the writers in The
Nation “secret enemies of the Church and the Liberator.”
O’Connell now started a hare in reference to the Catholic Hier-
archy ; he declared that the Government were seeking to get control
of the Bishops. For this statement, he adduced no evidence ;
and the Lord Lieutenant wrote a letter to Archbishop Murray
denying it. Rome now thought that the Irish clergy had gone
too far in political affairs. A letter was received from the prefect
of the propaganda by the Primate, Archbishop Crolly, that ‘‘ it
appeared by newspapers brought under the notice of the Holy
See that speeches were made to the people at meetings and banquets
and even in churches by certain of the priesthood and by some of
the bishops which did not show them to be solely intent (as they
ought to be) on the salvation of souls and strangers to the strife
of political paths and temporal engrossments ;” and the Primate
was directed to counsel ecclesiastics, especially those holding the
episcopal office, whom he perceived in any degree wandering from
these precepts. Which Papal precepts have been habitually and
openly flouted ever since.
The impetus given to the O’Connell party by O’Connell’s im-
prisonment and vindication by the House of Lords soon exhausted
itself. The Repeal movement sagged and collapsed ; in 1845 the
Repeal rent scarcely reached a tenth part of the amount received
twelve months before, though O’Connell continued to hold
occasional meetings and banquets in the country, averring that
with sixty-five members he could carry Repeal, and restore the Par-
liament to College Green. The disappointment about the land
led to much agrarian crime.
As long as the constitutional movement led by O’Connell seemed
to have the germ of success, the Young Irelanders supported it,—
anthesis. oe ¥
rd rn nn ete
ee
248 HISTORY OF IRELAND
though some of its teaching went sorely against their grain. They
now took a line of their own and proceeded to exhort the people to
armed rebellion. But O’Connell, spending much of his life among
the peasants, or fighting their cases in the law courts, a man of
affairs and great practical sagacity, gauged his people better. He
knew that they would scarcely agitate for, much less fight for, such
a mere abstraction as the Young Ireland writers held out. The
attempt at rebellion in 1848 shows how hopelessly ignorant the
Young Irelanders were of the mentality of the people they essayed
to lead. Meanwhile, 7'’he Nation renewed its efforts to rouse the
people; Denis Florence MacCarthy and Clarence Mangan re-
doubled their writings for it; there were some recruits—Thomas
Francis Meagher, John Mitchel, Thomas D’Arcy McGee.1 They
were all men of fine intellectual quality, Mitchel being an exception-
ally interesting personality. He was now thirty years of age, the
son of a Unitarian minister, practising as a solicitor in Banbridge.
He left his profession to join the ranks of writers for The Nation.
He seems to have been consumed with hatred for England, which
he vented in publications that are masterpieces of English prose.
Ihe Nation must have occasionally trodden upon the corns of the
Catholic ecclesiastics ; we find a letter written by Father Power
referring to it as “The Godless Nation.”
Hitherto, there had been no open clash between the Young
Irelanders and the Old Irelanders, the friction confining itself to
journalistic tilts between 7’he Pilot, which was the O’Connellite
organ, and 7’he Nation. But events were so shaping themselves
that a conflict was unavoidable.
In July, 1846, the Conservative Government of Sir Robert Peel
resigned, and was succeeded by Lord John Russell’s Whig Ministry.
O’Connell, probably despairing of his project of repeal, entered into
a sort of alliance with the Whigs. He said that if Lord John
tussell would repeal the Corn Laws, hold committees on Irish
railways in Dublin, advance money to construct railways, improve
the condition of the land tenure, and restore the magistrates who
had been dismissed by Peel, he would become so popular that
O’Connell himself would have to transfer his green cap to him. A
meeting of Whigs at Lord John Russell’s residence in Chesham
Place was attended by O’Connelland hissonJohn. A correspondent
Gavan Duffy's Four Years of Irish History, p. 6. Thomas Davis, the poet,
had died in September, 1845, at the age of 31.IRELAND, 1840-1848 249
of the Dublin Hvening Mail, who purported to report the proceedings,
attributed to O’Connell a declaration that “all he wanted was a
real Union, the same laws and franchise in the two countries.”
Four Irishmen sitting for Irish constituencies accepted office—
Sheil, Wyse, More O’Ferral and Sir William Somerville. O’Connell
was charged with having personally interfered in an appointment
to the substantial office of Master in Chancery, to such effect that
an appointment already made was cancelled and the post given to
a connexion of O’Connell’s. While O’Connell professed to want
Repeaters for all seats, he nevertheless allowed Sheil to be re-elected
for Dungarvan. This gave great offence to the Young Irelanders,
already made restive by the signs of O’Connell’s weakening on the
Repeal demand. They attended a meeting at Conciliation Hall,
the head-quarters of the Repeal Association, and roundly denounced
the Dungarvan incident. Meanwhile, Mitchel had been preaching
physical force in The Nation; and in one article he described a
method of making railways impassable. O’Connell visited The
Nation office and protested against the doctrine ; but the incite-
ments to physical force and guerilla warfare continuing, a meeting
at Conciliation Hall passed a resolution of denunciation. Another
meeting was held to test the issue and the Young Irelanders only
saved themselves from expulsion by walking out.
That the country had no sympathy whatever with the Young
Irelanders was immediately made manifest. It “rallied round the
Repeal Association triumphantly. The weekly Repeal rent, which
had long averaged about £100, shot up to £400 the first week after
the secession, and £330 the second week.’’! Neither the young men
nor the old men of Ireland were to be rushed off their feet by the
high-sounding phrases of The Nation. The forces of ecclesiasticism,
scenting danger to the Church, helped to complete the débacle of
the Young Irelanders. Dr. Higgins, Bishop of Meath, whose brave
words in 1843 went as close as possible to an open advocacy of an
immediate rebellion, now wrote :
‘“ We have no physical foree men in this diocese, neither have we,
thank God, any schoolboy philosophers, false and Sanguinary repealers,
or Voltairean newspapers. All our exertions for the restoration of
Ireland’s independence are based on the sacred and immutable prin-
ciples of true Christian morality, and we pity the folly and abhor the
wickedness of any man who would rest his patriotism on other grounds.
“Gavan Duffy’s Four Years of Irish History, p. 2465,eee = ™
250 HISTORY OF IRELAND
The Nation is the most dangerous publication that ever appeared in
Treland.”’
It seemed to him and to his clergy and their flocks to tend to the
direct overthrow of Catholic Faith and morals.
The Young Irelanders, dissatisfied with O’Connell’s wishy-washy
policy, published a “* Kemonstrance ’’ which received the signature
of seventy-four Repeal wardens out of one hundred and twenty
in the metropolis. The deputation which went with it to Con-
ciliation Hall were refused admittance; and when a messenger
was sent with it, it was flung out into the gutter. Gavan Duffy's
comment is: ‘“‘ From that hour the fate of Conciliation Hall was
sealed. Thenceforth the Repeal rent barely paid the weekly
expenses.”! But the suggested inference that it was the rejection
of the Remonstrance that sealed the fate of Conciliation Hall is
probably erroneous ; the nation was in the throes of a great crisis,”
and had no thoughts for much else, while the failure of O’Connell
in his Repeal policy, now fully appreciated, was bound to damp
the ardour of followers whom he had mesmerized into the belief
that he was invincible. Attempts to bring the Young Irelanders
and the Old Irelanders together failed. The Young Irelanders
determined to strike more boldly out on their own account, and on
January 13, 1847, they founded * The Irish Confederation.”’ ‘The
contrast between the O’Connellite party—partly sectarian, partly
rent and tithe abolitionists, and last of all genuine Repealers,—and
the Young Ireland group is well shown by a letter from John
Mitchel in The Nation dated January 23, 1847:
‘“-Young Ireland, or the Irish party, or those whom the Daily News
calls physical force men, are of no single school of politics ; there are
among them Conservatives, moderate Reformers, levelling Democrats ;
and they do not, as a body, consider the ruin of the landed gentry to
be the best remedy or any remedy at all for Imish ulls.”’
If there is any fact established by Irish history, it is this—that the
driving force behind all the movements for self-government was
the desire to get rid of the landlord garrison in Ireland. Mitchel
fell into the same mistake as most doctrinaires do—he attributed
to the people the same ideas which he had himself ; his conceptions
seemed to him so eminently just, reasonable and logical that he was
incapable of thinking that all members of the same community
would not share them.
1 Gavan Duffy’s Four Years of Irish History, p. 306. 2 The famine.IRELAND, 1840-1848 251
O’Connell was taken suddenly ill in February, 1847, and was
ordered abroad for his health. He left for Rome on March 6, 1847
he reached Genoa on May 5, where his illness took an alarming turn,
and he died in that city on May 15. He directed that his heart
should be buried in Rome and his body in the Glasnevin Cemetery,
Dublin. His directions were carried out; his heart was enclosed
in a casket which is still in the Chapel of St. Agatha, Irish College,
Rome. The funeral in Dublin was a “ great and solemn spectacle.’’1
On the other hand, Dr. Maunsell, in his diary, observes : ‘‘ O’Connell’s
funeral. The exhibition was a very poor one, poor especially in
the article of grief, which none, great or small, seemed to feel in
the slightest degree.”’
What is to be our estimate of O’Connell and his achieve-
ments ?
In private life he was a queer mixture. He was intensely reli-
gious, and passionately attached to his wife and family. A letter
written by him to one of his daughters who was afflicted by doubts
about the Faith might have been penned by a wise and saintly
archbishop. But ‘‘ Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor,”’
as Hazlitt reminds us, ‘“‘is not the language of hypocrisy, but of
human nature.” He was a man of strong animal passions, and
seems to have indulged them somewhat promiscuously. The Times
charged him with the parentage of “broods” of illegitimate
children in Dublin and Kerry. A story, published in London by
a Miss Courtenay, is unpleasant reading. We may safely discount
much of it, but the residue that must be accepted goes to show that
O’Connell was not prepared to act with much generosity to one
partner in his amours.
The impression left on my mind by the conflicting evidence as
to O’Connell in his character of landlord is that he was about the
average landlord of his class—as to two-thirds of his estate he was
a middleman. Not that he was a severe or unkind landlord, but
he was careless, slovenly and negligent ; he spent no money on that
part of his estate which was agricultural—allowed subdivision to
proceed without check, took no steps to improve the material
condition or the education of his people. In a word, he had the
main faults that have been, most justly, laid at the door of land-
lordism in Ireland. Thomas Campbell Foster, the Commissioner
appointed by The Times, reported :
* Gavan Duffy’s Four Years of Irish History, p. 408.St
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252 HISTORY OF IRELAND
‘‘T have been all over England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and I
declare to you solemnly that in no part of the United Kingdom is such
neglected wretchedness—such filth, such squalor, such misery of
every kind—to be seen as I saw that day in Mr. O’Connell’s estate, in
the presence of Mr. Maurice O’Connell ”’ ; 4
and he gave the following account of Derrynane : *
‘Not a pane of glass in the parish; not a window of any kind in
half the cottages; some had a hole in the wall for light, with a board
to stop it up. In not one in a dozen was there a chair to sit upon or
anything in the cottage beyond an iron pot and a rude bedstead with
straw on it, and not always that ; in many the smoke was coming out
of the doorway, for there were no chimneys. On the estate of Daniel
O’Connell are to be found the most wretched tenants that are to be
Ireland: there was a frightful state of overpopulation on his
3
seen 1n
estate, which brought in £3,000 a vear.’
In December, 1846, Howard Russell, the famous correspondent
of The Times, was sent over and corroborated Foster’s account.
On the other hand, W. E. Forster, writing to his father on September
°7. 1846. said:
‘‘T have made a great deal of inquiry in all quarters respecting his
tenantry, and | AM CONVLNCt d that the impression made by the reports
in The Times is most unfair and untrue. I should say he is decidedly
llord in his district, but owing to his having allowed ejected
the best land!
tenants from other properties to squat on his estate at nominal rents
there are, of course, some wretched c u.bins.”’
O’Connell’s success as an advocate was extraordinary ; in 1814,
he earned £3.808, his later income is stated to have reached £8,000,
a figure reached by no other man at the Irish Bar, before or
‘
since. He was eloquent, powerful, ingenious, unscrupulous, full
of tricks as a monkey. [If irrelevant appeals to the emotions served
his purpose, then he was irrelevant and emotional; he outraged
every canon of propriety and decency, browbeat, insulted and
domineered over his judges; he could by turns bully or coax an
Irish jury to do his will in almost all cases. He had neither the time
nor the taste to become a scientific lawyer, but he had a curious
insight that showed him the flaws in his opponent's case ; he bragged
1 Campbell Foster in Ireland, p. 929. 2 Ibid., p. 399.
’ O'Connell. through his son Maurice, attempted a reply to all this ; but
his reply was no reply at all. The charge was in respect of the agricultural
estate of Derrynane Beg. Maurice O’Connell r plied by pointing to the fact
that O'Connell had spent £4,000 on a church in the Village of Cahirciveen.—
See letter to Lhe Z'vmes.IRELAND, 1840-1848 253
that he could run a coach and four through any Act of Parliament.
He was capable of writing a deliberately dishonest opinion, for there
is no other hypothesis upon which the opinion he furnished in
reference to a dispute in which he was the protagonist on the one
side and Archbishop Murray upon the other can be explained.
Even after the grant of Emancipation George IV refused to make
him a King’s Counsel. O’Connell afterwards refused the position,
but in William IV’s reign a special patent of precedence was offered
to and accepted by him.
If O’Connell sacrificed a big income at the Bar, he got a bigger
income from the pennies of the poor. The first year after Eman-
cipation, the O’Connell tribute reached the enormous figure of
£50,000 ; in the five years from 1829 to 1834 he received £91,800 ;
his average, from the time he became a paid agitator, is stated to
have been £13,000 a year. The collection of this tribute was on
the most businesslike lines ; a paid agent was employed for the pur-
pose, receiving a commission from O’Connell on the proceeds.
In spite of this large revenue and the property he received upon
his uncle’s death, he was chronically hard up. He was under the
expense of three establishments, in Kerry, London and Dublin,
where he displayed his hospitality on a lavish scale. No doubt,
too, much of the money that went into his pockets was absorbed
by the expenses of the agitation or by contributions to all and sundry
who asked for them. The conclusion, however, is inevitable that
O’Connell had a sharp sense of what was to his own interest ; his
son and other connections received Government jobs.
His personal courage cannot seriously be called in question ; he
faced d’Esterre with calmness and intrepidity in 1814. The death
of d’Esterre made a profound impression upon him, and, after he
had accepted a challenge from Peel, he formed a resolution to give
or accept no challenge, for he deemed duelling contrary to the moral
law. He was not responsible for, and openly disclaimed the cir-
cumstances which prevented, the meeting with Peel.1 But if a
man chooses to hedge himself in by a conscientious objection of
that kind, he should be doubly upon his guard to give no reason
for offence to any man. O’Connell felt no scruples on the subject ;
his speeches teem with vulgar and unprovoked abuse of his
opponents, and with attacks upon their honour, public and private.
Some challenges made to O’Connell were taken up by his son, but
* His wife lodged information, as the result of which he was arrested.254 HISTORY OF IRELAND
this altruistic championship did not meet and could not meet the
case ; the role of a public insulter of man cannot be justified by the
possession of a progeny ready and willing to fight when the giver
of the insult declines. O’Connell in 1825 apologized to Peel for the
insult of 1815, but when taunted with this, he said the apology was
given to propitiate Peel on the Catholic question. On which Peel
acidly remarked: ““I had given him credit for having made the
tardy reparation purely from a conscientious feeling that it was
due.”’
On a platform, O’Connell was supreme—a demagogue of dema-
gogues—a genius admirably suited to an emotional, excitable and
gullible people. His figure was commanding, tall and broad; his
huge head—a hat of his would go down on other men’s shoulders—
was surmounted by coal-black wavy hair; he had a fine brow, a
mobile countenance, a large, impressive and sparkling eye. His
voice was tremendous and resonant. He knew every twist and turn
of the Irish peasant’s mind ; he could appeal in turn to his sense of
injustice, his emotion, his religion, his superstition, and his greed.
He swayed his audiences at will. He had tremendous industry.
For twenty-five years of his life he rose soon after 4 a.m., and had
a genius for organization. He saw that it was necessary to go
right down to the minds and hearts of the populace ; he saw that
in the priesthood of Ireland there lay a great instrument ; in every
parish he thus created at least one zealous, unselfish, unpaid agitator,
of some education and enormous local influence ; O’Connell blended
temporal and eternal fears and hopes in the making of his great
movement.
Q’Connell’s Memoirs of lreland, published in 1843. is poor trash.
His biographer, Mr. MacDonagh, calls it “‘ absurdly chaotic and
incoherent.” The Times said it was a combination of “ drivelling
intellectual imbecility with the most diabolical wickedness.”
Public men must be judged in the main by their public achieve-
ments, and in measuring the achievements the price paid for them
must not be forgotten. So judged, O’Connell seems to me, on balance,
to have injured rather than served the country that he undoubtedly
loved with all the passion of an undisciplined and exuberant nature.
O’Connell’s great achievement was Catholic Emancipation in
1829. The position before 1829 was that Catholics were ineligible
for Parliament and for certain positions—a Catholic, for example,
could not be a King’s Counsel or a judge. The repeal of theseIRELAND, 1840-1848 255
disabilities, no doubt, meant the removal of a badge of servitude.
But it was of little advantage to the Irish peasantry that a few
Catholics were eligible for jobs which in fact they rarely got; or
that they could vote for a Catholic candidate for Parliament when
the landlord or his representative, in those days of open voting,
stood by to see that, under pain of eviction, no vote should be cast
for a Catholic who was not of the harmless sort. It is true that in
the Clare and other elections the tenants braved their landlords’
anger, but, broadly speaking, it was not possible, until the passing
of the Ballot Act, to have an Irish representation at Westminster
which would adequately voice the real grievances of the people.
Moreover, it cannot be forgotten that, even before O’Connell
had assumed the Irish leadership, the tide of English public opinion
was flowing strongly in favour of Emancipation. The bigotry of
George III and George IV was always the obstacle. In no event
could Catholic relief have been delayed after the ascent to the
throne of Queen Victoria. The highest claim that can be made for
O’Connell is that he antedated Emancipation by a decade. In
Grattan’s opinion, O’Connell postdated it; for Grattan thought
that the concession of the veto—which in truth would have made no
difference whatever—would have brought the problem to a solution.
The view I submit is that the advantages to Ireland from O’Connell’s
whirlwind emancipation campaign have been immensely overrated.
O’Connell’s lack of statemanship is clear from his choice of
objective after he had won the fight for Emancipation. A move-
ment for repeal was utterly unseasonable ; ‘‘nor time nor place
did then adhere.’”” English public opinion saw no reason to disturb
the Union, which it looked upon as a bargain, entered into by both
countries for the benefit of both countries. O’Connell seems to
have reasoned upon the analogy of the Emancipation movement ;
but there was no real analogy. Enlightened English opinion was
in favour of Emancipation ; scarcely any English opinion, enlight-
ened or unenlightened, was in favour of repeal. Emancipation
involved no disturbance of commercial relations, and no danger to
Empire interests; repeal meant a severance of one commercial
unit into two, and in English opinion involved an Empire menace
as well. How did O’Connell hope to work a revolution of English
sentiment ? By force. He deprecated it. By reason? It
was a hopeless task.
While O’Connell was ploughing the sands of repeal, the conditionee ae
rr vy
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eens a aa
256 HISTORY OF IRELAND
of agricultural Ireland afforded every scope for his mighty organizing
and agitating genius. He could have worked wonders had he applied
his energies to the landlord and tenant problem. In truth, it had
but a very minor place in his thoughts. The still greater problem
of over-population he intensified and aggravated. He opposed
poor laws in any shape or form, on the ground that if the poor were
state aided, there would be nobody to bestow charity upon, and
consequently a precious means of saving rich men’s souls would
be lost. His opposition to provisions against sub-letting and his
general attitude on emigration were some of the main contributing
causes of the famine. O’Connell, by calling for state-aided emigra-
tion, could have produced a different Ireland and, incidentally,
a different America.
A great amount of latitude may be allowed to a popular agitator
voicing a national demand. But O’Connell’s language and methods,
examples of which I have already given, went beyond all limits,
while its excesses served no useful purpose. He was not even
consistent in his venomous attacks upon the English people; for
occasionally he fawned upon them. In 1819, in a letter to the
Press, he speaks of seven centuries of oppression as already forgiven
—the “‘ English name, which we seldom pronounced with compla-
cency, begins to sound sweetly in the ears of our children.” This of
the nation of whom he had said, “ so dishonest and besotted a people
as the English never lived.’ His flattery of the bigoted George LIT
was disgusting. ‘If ever a monarch existed, abounding in every
ereat and good qualification, calculated to make a people happy,
that monarch was George III.’’ He presented a laurel crown to
George IV at Kingstown when that monarch arrived in 1821, and
his enemies said that he knelt in the waters of the harbour to make
his obeisance. Yet throughout his career he hated and despised,
or affected to hate and despise, the English people, and taught his
people to do likewise.
His flattery of his own countrymen and his childish illusions as
to Ireland’s resources were the worst features of his propaganda.
Whatever success he had was purchased at a terrific cost. He
debauched the Irish people, morally and mentally ; much of their
dishonesty and humbug is due to his successful example. The poet
Moore was demonstrably right when he said, ‘‘ O’Connell and his
ragamuffins have brought a tarnish on Irish patriotism which it
will never recover.” The Young Irelanders were of the sameIRELAND, 1840-1848 257
opinion. Gavan Duffy says “this fault’ (lying) “had an evil
influence on the people, who loved and imitated him.” For the
rest, O’Connell lashed the people into impotent fury. While he
constantly condemned violence—‘‘ he who commits a crime gives
strength to the enemy ’’—his language could not but create
violence; he gave little constructive thought to the welfare of his
country.
O’Connell did as much for England as he did for Ireland. It
was through his support that the Parliamentary Reform and
Municipal Reform Acts were passed, and he thundered at the
House of Lords in a fashion that made him a welcome speaker
at Liberal meetings in Great Britain, where in 1835 he had some-
thing like a triumphal tour. His portrait is conspicuous amongst
those of the great English reformers in the Reform Club, London,
which he helped to found.
The estimates of O’Connell differ greatly. Some of them are
absurdly extravagant. He certainly was not “the greatest man
that this or any other country ever produced,”’ nor was he “ the
greatest controversialist of his age and much superior to Cobbett or
Junius’ as one of his biographers would have us believe.t Balzac
named Napoleon, O’Connell and Cuvier, as the greatest men of the
century ; he called O’Connell ‘the incarnation of a people.”
A “ great man manqué ” was a description given to him by a writer
in The Nation. Peel described him as “an eloquent and vulgar
speaker.” Dickens, writing in 1843, said of him, “ O’Connell’s
speeches are the old thing : fretty, boastful, frothy, waspish at the
voices in the crowd, and all that ; but with no true greatness,” and
speaks of him as “ beleaguered with vanity always.” Gladstone
referred to him as the “ greatest popular leader the world has ever
seen:
Henry Grattan thus described him :
‘* Examine their leader, Mr. O’Connell—he assumes a right to direct
the Catholics of Ireland, he advises, he harangues, and he excites; he
does not attempt to allay the passions of a warm and jealous people.
Full of inflammatory matter, his declamations breathed everything but
harmony ; venting against Great Britain the most disgusting calumny,
falsehoods, and treachery, equalled only by his impudence ; describing
Great Britain as the most stupid, the most dishonest, and the most
besotted nation that ever existed, that Ireland could not confide in the
1 Fagan, vol. II, p. 238.
VOL. I.see
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HISTORY OF IRELAND
promises of England, etc. Without discrimination, he pronounced all
Protestants ‘ bigots.” When he advocated the grievances of the
Catholic body he omitted the greatest grievance—himself. A man that
could make the speeches he has made, utter the sentiments he has
uttered, abuse the characters he has abused, praise the characters that
he has praised, violate the promises that he has violated, propose such
votes and such censures as he has proposed—can have little regard for
private honour or for public character; he cannot comprehend the
spirit of liberty, and he is not fitted to receive it. He betrays such a
scattered understanding and barbarous mind, that if he got liberty he
would immediately lose it. Almost unsuited for the British Constitu-
tion, and almost ignorant of the bonds of civil society ; of such a mould
and such a disposition, as to be incapable of accomplishing any rational
object, his declamations to the lower orders are full of extravagance,
wildness, and ambiguity and set afloat the bad passions of the people,
make them restless in disposition, and impatient in action. He leaves
@& vacuum in the meaning of his harangue, to be filled up by the elevated
imagination of a warm-hearted and sensitive people. It 1s the part of
a bad man to make use of grievances as instruments of power, and
render them the means of discontent without a single honest attempt
at redress. He knows, or at least he ought to know, that this conduct
is of such a nature as must always tend to confusion in bad munisters
and strengthen their authority; it seduces people into mischief not
intended, and, after exciting them to folly, it abandons them through
fear. It may lead them to rise against an exciseman or titheman, to
burn a hayrick or murder a farmer, but it will never teach them to
redress grievances, or to bring the offending minister to the scaffold.
ravagant diction & vulgar boast, a Swappor-
ing sentence, affected bombast, and ludicrous composition. His
liberty is not liberal, his politics are not reason, his reading is not
learning, his learning is not knowledge; his rhetoric is a gaudy hyper-
such as a drabbled girl would pick
bole, carnished with taded
wll
+
~
“
uo
.
hy
up in Covent Garden, stuck in with the taste of a kitchen maid. He
makes politics a trade, to serve his desperate and interested purpose.
This man can bring forth nothing good: in abortion he is the most
fertile: the womb of his mind is of such sinful mould that 1t can never
produce anything that is not deformed. He never succeeded in any
.
project except the loss of your question. He barks and barks, and
even when the filthy slaverer has exhausted its poison, and returns to
its kennel. it there still barks and howls within unseen. No admiunis-
Montalembert’s opinion of him was:
“He is only a demagogue; he is no such thing as a great orator.
He is windy and declamatory, his arguments have no conviction, his
imagination has no charm, no freshness ; his style is harsh, abrupt and
incoherent > the more Il see of him, the more ] listen to him, the moreIRELAND, 1840-1848 259
I am confirmed in my first opinion, that he is not stamped with the seal
of genius or of true greatness. But he defends the worthiest of causes ;
he has neither a formidable adversary nor a formidable rival; he has a
magnificent part to play, and circumstances will stand to him as they
have done to so many others in the place of genius.”
Nassau Senior describes him:
‘‘ He has a vivid imagination, ready invention, great energy of mind
and body, great industry, great practice. Intellectually, he wants
comprehensiveness of mind, patience in the investigation of truth, and
consequently knowledge. Morally, he wants honesty, in its two senses
of veracity, and the performance of promises. He has an intense desire
of power, and intense selfishness. His merits and defects unite to make
him a perfect mob orator. Until Catholic Emancipation was carried,
his defects were concealed. His own interests and that of Ireland
coincided, and he addressed unrefined audiences. But in the House of
Commons he failed. His dishonesty, ignorance and utter want of
taste, moral and intellectual, render him, of all great speakers, the least
agreeable to a British audience.”
This is John Mitchel’s famous description of O’Connell :
‘ At the head of that open and legal agitation was a man of giant
proportions in body and in mind; with no profound learning, not even
indeed in his own profession of law, but with a vast and varied know-
ledge of human nature in all its strength, and especially in all its weak-
ness; with a voice like thunder and earthquake, yet musical and soft
at will, as the song of birds; with a genius and fancy tempestuous,
playful, cloudy, fiery, mournful, merry, lofty and mean by turns, as
the mood was on him—a humour, broad, bacchant, riant, genial and
jovial; with profound and spontaneous national feeling, and super-
human and subterhuman passions; yet withal, a boundless fund of
masterly affectation and consummate histrionism—hating and loving
heartily, outrageous in his merriment and passionate in his lamentation.
He had the power to make other men hate or love, laugh or weep, at
his good pleasure—insomuch that Daniel O’Connell, by virtue of being
more entirely Irish, carrying to a more extravagant pitch all Irish
strength and passion and weakness than other Irishmen, led and swayed
his people by a kind of divine or else diabolic right. He led them, as
I believe, all wrong for forty years. He was a lawyer, and never could
come to the point of denying and defying all British law. He was a
Catholic, sincere and devout, and would not see that the Church had
ever been the enemy of Irish freedom. He was an aristocrat by posi.
tion and by taste, and the name of a republic was odious to him.
Moreover, his success as a Catholic agitator ruined both him and his
country. By mere agitation, by harmless exhibition of numerical
force, by imposing demonstrations (which are fatal nonsense) and by
eternally half unsheathing a visionary sword, which friends and foes260 HISTORY OF IRELAND
alike knew to be a phantom, he had, as he believed, coerced the British
Government to pass a Relief Bill and admit Catholics to Parliament
and some offices. Poor old Dan! Wonderful, mighty, jovial and
mean old man, with silver tongue and smile of witchery and heart of
melting ruth—lying tongue, smile of treachery, heart of unfathomable
fraud. What a royal yet vulgar soul, with the keen eye and potent
sweep of a generous eagle of Cairn Tual—with the base servility of a
hound and the cold cruelty of a spider. Think of his speech for John
Magee, the most powerful forensic achievement since Demosthenes,
and think of the gorgeous and gossamer theory of moral and peace-
ful agitation, the most astounding organum of public swindling
since first man bethought him of obtaining money under false pre-
tences. And after one has thought of all this and more, what can a
mansay ? What but pray that Irish earth may lie light on O’Connell’s
breast and that the good God, who knew how to create so wondrous a
creature, may have mercy on his soul.”’
The Irish people dearly love a funeral, but most of all the funeral
of a political hero. A chance is presented for an orgy of emotion,
felt to be creditable alike to living and dead. The mourner thinks
that he has contributed, and by his presence is contributing, some-
thing to the grandeur of the mourned ; the thought raises a glow of
self-satisfaction, the enjoyment of which is heightened by the
melancholy character of the occasion, for the pleasures of melancholy
are nowhere so much appreciated as in Ireland. O’Connell’s
funeral was a superb pageant. Revenge on the Young Irelanders
who were charged with having “‘ murdered the liberator’ was a
natural vent for the laudable patriotic compound with which the
heart of the great Dublin mob was charged. Young Ireland meet-
ings were everywhere attacked with bludgeons and stones. A
Confederate meeting in Belfast was overmastered by the
O’Connellites, who passed a vote of confidence in John O’Connell.
Meanwhile, Smith O’Brien persisted in his attempts to win the
[Irish landed gentry to his side ; his opinion was “‘ they are thorough-
ly disgusted with England’s management of Irish concerns, but are
afraid of the ultra democratic and ultra Catholic tendencies of a
portion of the Repeal party.” The policy succeeded in winning
from the class it appealed to an occasional pat on the back, but
nothing more. The landlord class were too wary to trust their
interests to an Irish peasant Parliament. Of the two parties, they
preferred Smith O’Brien’s to O’Connell’s ; the former, at any rate,
had no foundation of class or sectarian prejudice ; it may be also
that they conceived that O’Brien’s party had not, while O’Connell’sIRELAND, 1840-1848 261
had within it the germ of success. In truth, the Young Irelanders
were ina bad case. Richard O’Gorman, one of their chiefs, writing
to Smith O’Brien, said :
‘“We have now been for months setting our principles before the
Irish people. They have denied us their support. We have been
abandoned by all except the Dublin Remonstrants and a few men here
and there in the provinces. At the General Election of 1847, not a
single Confederate was elected or as much as induced to become a
candidate.”
They raised a cry against the place-hunting candidates and
carpet-baggers whom Conciliation Hall foisted upon the constituen-
cies. The O’Connellites maintained that a pledge against office
was unnecessary, but, this attitude notwithstanding, nearly twenty
Members of Parliament accepted places for themselves and more than
twenty habitually begged places for others. Wallis, censor to The
Nation, wrote: ‘‘ You have a people at the lowest ebb of mental
and bodily atrophy”; and, after charging the Young Irelanders
with putting no energy into the job of rousing the people to a fight
for independence, prosperity, and power, went on to say:
‘“God says, Good Celts, and quasi Celts and demi-semi-quavering
incarnations that ye are, of every species of cowardice but personal,
you have for 3,000 years the finest country and the finest position on
this glorious planet of mine.”
Which, analysed, merely means that the plain men and women of
Ireland had no stomach at all for the Young Ireland teaching, and
were exercising the right of free men not to be bullied, coerced,
cajoled or sung into swallowing it. Thomas D’Arcy M’Ghee,
having brought back from an English town where he lived, a con-
ception of the business people of that country utterly unlike any-
thing that had been formed by any Irishman on the popular side
theretofore, was also very uncomplimentary to his fellow-country -
men. After praising the Englishman’s business habits, simplicity,
steadfastness, and infinite patience, he wrote:
‘‘ What a lesson to our idle educated young men who are choking the
professions and losing themselves in action. We have many things to
learn from the English, but most especially their manner of conducting
business. A thousand such Irishmen, with English training, as I met
in my short tour would, if transplanted here, do things for Ireland
which the 80,000 volunteers, if they rose again from the dead, would
not accomplish.”’whi lms eee
~ mw hoor
a =
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262 HISTORY OF IRELAND
Had M’Ghee been alive seventy years later and had he expressed
these sentiments, he would have been ostracized as a West Briton
by the Irish Irelanders of the period.
A really able thinker now attached himself to The Nation group—
isolated, original, and intense ; he knew more of the character of
the people, of their thoughts, emotions and passions than all the
visionaries of the Young Ireland party put together. Unlike all,
or nearly all, the scribes of The Nation, he had been brought up on
the land and had lived amongst the peasant population up to the
time of his entrance into the political arena. His father was a
Queen’s County farmer, who had been foremost in the tithe passive
resistance movement. The son, Fintan Lalor, was thrown much
upon himself, and his faculties of observation and perception were
quickened by personal defects. He was deaf, near-sighted, ungainly
and deformed. He had an uncanny vision into the facts and reali-
ties of Irish life and almost into the future. What can be more
truly prophetic than this epistle addressed to the Irish landlords ?
‘“‘Treland is yours for ages yet, on condition that you will be Irish-
men—in name, in faith, in fact. Refuse it, and you commit your-
selves, in the position of paupers, to the mercy of English ministers and
English members ; you throw your existence on English support, which
England may soon find too costly to afford; you lhe at the feet of
events ; you lie in the way of a people; and the movement of events
and the march of a people shall be over you.”’
He recognized quite clearly that it was idle to talk to the Irish
people about Repeal. Purely political objects always left them cold ;
it was necessary to hitch the Repeal movement to something that
had real motive power, and that wasthe land. He wrote as follows :
‘The only martial population Ireland possessed, the small farmers
and farm labourers, would never wield a weapon in favour of Repeal.
They were quite sick of what was called bloodless agitation, which was
not bloodless to them. To secure Repeal in the only form in which it
could be carried, Independence, there was but one way, to link it, like
a railway carriage to the engine, to some other question strong enough
to carry both itself and Repeal.’
As a practical step he suggested a No Rent conspiracy. Again
Lalor wrote:
‘“My object is to repeal the conquest—not any part or portion, but
the whole and entire conquest of seven hundred years—a thing much
more easily done than to repeal the Union. That the absolute (allo-263
IRELAND, 1840-1848
dial) ownership of the lands of Ireland is vested of right in the people
of Ireland, that they, and none but they, are the first landowners and
lords paramount, as well as the law-makers of this island—that all
titles to lands are invalid not conferred or confirmed by them—
and that no man has a right to hold one foot of Irish soil otherwise than
by grant of tenancy and fee from them, and under such conditions as
they may annex of suit and fealty, etc. ; these are my principles. To
such landowners as could be brought to recognize this right of the Irish
people, and to swear allegiance to this island queen, I would grant new
titles. 'Those who might refuse should cease to be landowners or quit
this land and their lands be vested in the occupying tenants. You
throw away the Elections too, for onno other argument than mine will
you get a frieze coat to vote for you.”
Mitchel seems to have been attracted by Lalor’s main idea,
but he knew as little of the South of Ireland ! as the South knew of
him.2 He wanted a strike against poor rate instead of against rent,
though what he conceived he would effect by the starvation of the
poor is difficult even to guess. Smith O’Brien, however, hoped
against hope that he would get the landlords upon his side, and was
opposed to anything that would tend to prevent or delay a conver-
sion of which no sign had been given or, in the nature of things, could
be expected. Gavan Duffy had a plan which only shows how raw
and immature was his intellect at that period. He proposed to
capture all the institutions and representative bodies in the country
—the corporation, grand juries, boards of guardians, town com-
missioners; that the Members of Parliament should behave at
Westminster so as to secure expulsion. Thereupon, an Irish
Parliament should be established and any authority resisting it
should be treated as in rebellion against the power, people and
distinct kingdom of Ireland. This lovely paper plan ignored
all the essential facts—that the Young Irelanders had no real
following at all, ‘‘ we had won the intelligent artisans, but cer-
tainly not the peasantry ; ” * that the sinews of war would still be
with the British Government, for all Irish taxation then consisted of
Customs and Excise duties ; that no scheme of the kind is feasible un-
less there is naked force to support it. | Lalor’s was the only possible
plan, but it required for its execution a stronger and more command-
ing personality than he was able to supply. O’Connell could prob-
1 Gavan Duffy describes him as hopelessly ignorant of conditions in the
South (Four Years of Irish History, p. 493).
2 ““The people of Munster,” said Meagher, “knew as little of Mitchel as of
Mahomet ”’ (Lbid., p. 494), 3 Joid., p. 494.eae eens ee ee
Preree ee
Stee te eel ae
264 HISTORY OF IRELAND
ably have effected a thorough land reform had he lent his genius to a
campaign such as outlined by Lalor ; but Lalor was not an O’Connell,
nor was O'Connell a Lalor. Lalor’s attempt to put his scheme into
practice wasa fiasco. He called a meeting of farmers at Holy Cross,
Co. Tipperary; it was poorly attended and only drew from the
immediate locality. He was a bad and petulant speaker and made
a& very poor impression, and his movement was stillborn.
Mitchel, who was assistant editor of T’he Nation, now left it
because Gavan Duffy would not agree to his advocating in that organ
a strike against poorrate. Hestarted the United Ireland, in which
he took up an attitude that in some respects showed him to be totally
unversed in even the elementary principles of liberty ; he defended
negro slavery and denounced the emancipation of the Jews as an
unpardonable sin. The Duffy plan of action was accepted at a
meeting of Confederates, but it was never tried, either because,
when looked at from close quarters it appeared impracticable, or
because events in France directed the Young Ireland mind into
another channel. But we must turn from the dreams and disputes
and preparations of the Young Irelanders to matters of more stern
moment to the common folk of the country.
The outstanding event of the nineteenth century Irish history is
the famine. But, before we examine it, we must consider the social
and economic conditions of Ireland at the time it took place.
[If O’Connell and the Repealers were right, a country which pro-
duced or was capable of producing “ sufficient for the support of
sixteen millions ’’ was in the last stages of decay. ‘‘ The manufac-
tures which before the Union flourished in very many of our cities
and towns, have been annihilated in most, and continued only in a
few, and with diminished productiveness.’’ + Yet, if there is any
fact clear in Irish history, it is that the country progressed and
flourished—subject to one appalling and self-inflicted evil which no
change of Government could affect, the over-rapid increase of the
poorest of the land workers.
It is true that small industries were being swamped, as they were
being swampedin England. They had felt the strain even before the
Union. In the days of the boasted Irish independent Parliament,
1782-1800, no less than twenty-four petitions were presented from
various parts of the country from various manufacturers, including
those in the woollen, silk, cotton and hosiery industries, that their
1 Manifesto of O'Connell, September 13, 1843.IRELAND, 1840-1848 265
trade was being ruined. A great number of interesting figures,
comparing the pre-Union period to the post-Union period, are
collected in R. Montgomery Martin’s Ireland Before and After the
Union, published in 1843. The writer was a Unionist, and nobody
need accept his inferences. But his figures, taken from official
sources, are incontrovertible. He takes such figures as tonnage
belonging to Irish ports, tonnage entering or leaving Irish ports,
tonnage of ships built in Ireland, exports and imports, consumption
of exciseable articles and so on. In an endeavour to show that,
under the independent Irish Parliament, Ireland was decaying, he
divides the period 1790-1800 into two periods of five years each,
and shows a substantial decrease in the later five years period.
This decrease, however, may possibly be accounted for by the dis-
turbed condition of Ireland at the time.t His comparison with the
post-Union period is, however, of real value. A substantial, and,
in some respects, a great increase is shown. Thus, the tonnage
entering Irish ports was 622,013 in 1790, 642,477 in 1800, 1,944,285
in 1841, and the intermediate figures show the gradual increase that
indicates settled and stable progress.2 The tonnage of vessels
cleared from the port of Dublin had increased from 294,750 tons in
1789, and 273,726 tons in 1800, to 601,481 tons in 1839 ; 2 in Belfast
from 67,855 in 1800 to 264,377 in 1833. In 1800, the exports and
imports of Ireland were £10 millions, in 1835 £32 millions, in 1840,
£40 millions. The Excise revenue, which was £475,000 in 1800, had
increased to upwards of £2 millions in 1843.5 Big factories were
in the making. In the South, the brewing and distilling industries
flourished ; in the North, the linen and cotton manufactures. As
to taxation, Martin points out that the yield of Irish taxation in
1843 was £4,392,101, or about 10s. per head of the population, lower
than that of any nine European countries with which he compares
it.
The evidence from other sources, too, is overwhelming that,
whilst the small peasant class were undoubtedly sinking deeper and
1 Martin, pp. 43, ef seq. 2 Ibid., p. 55. 3 Tord., p. 112.
4 [bid., p. 64. 5 Ioid., p. 142.
®These countries are: France—population, 34,000,000; taxation,
£40,000,000 ; per head, £1 3s. 6d.; Spain—12,000,000; £10,000,000 ;
l6s. 8d.; Papal States—2,700,000; £3,000,000; £1 2s. 2d; Holland—
2,800,000; £5,000,000; £1 15s. 8d.; Belgium—4,200,000; £4,000,000 ;
19s. ; Egypt—2,000,000 ; £3,000,000 ; £1 10s. ; Greece—600,000 ; £2,500,000,
£2 lds. 6d. ; Hanover—1,800,000 ; £1,300,000 ; 14s. 5d. ; Saxony, 1,600,000 ;
£1,110,000; 13s. 9d., p. 2382.ee ——
Sl enentteniieete tiie die ote
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en
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FI Neoeilinemnanineeieiemnehaemranait aiid a
266 HISTORY OF IRELAND
deeper in the rut of misery, the aggregate wealth of the country was
increasing. There were signs of progress everywhere. “ The
commerce of the country was increasing, its agriculture improving,
the value of the land rising.”’! ‘*‘ The various processes to which
agricultural produce is subject had been gradually extended and im-
proved. Grinding, malting, brewing and distilling had made great
progress.” 2 ‘‘ There was evidence of increased wealth everywhere,
especially in the towns.’’? Kohl (1844) says: ‘The trade of
Limerick, like that of most Irish cities, has increased in an astonish-
ing degree. The exports have trebled since 1820.” *
‘“The question whether Ireland is an improving country must be
answered in many respects 1n the affirmative. The external appear-
ance of the towns seems to have improve everywhi re within the last
twenty years; the roads, canals and other means of transport are
everv dav becoming better: agriculture and arboriculture are followed
‘ . 1)" , : J i a z a a. 8 aa :
with Trit re intelligence, HS You TAY convince vourselves while passing
— ¢ 7 eh a a a a oe
along Lne highway. Che LNCTreasSoS OL & h MOIS 1S extraordinary, and so LS
the diminution of crime. Party spirit, particularly in religious matters,
appears also to have lost much of its former asperity. One giant evil,
however, remains, namely, the poverty of the masses, and, amid all
the other improvements, the evi remains undiminished, nay appears
even to he Of) the mcr ;
In 1802, the « x] rt of Train LO Eng! Ln 1 from all [Ireland amounted
to 461,000 quarters, and remained nearly at this point till 1808, when
(+t reached 656.000 quarters. ‘There was a slow increase till 1818, when
the amount was 1.200.000 quarters. In 1825 1t was 2,000,000, in 1837
3,000,000, and in 1838 it reas hed its maximum or 3,474,000 quarters.
Since then there has been a falling off, but the amount is still upwards
e : ec . hci _ 22 @
of two million, chiefly oats.
There was a thriving linen manufacture and linen trade; and a
srowing cotton trade ; Kohl mentions twenty-one great cotton and
linen yarn factories, some of which employed two thousand hands ;
and speaks of seven newspapers, published in Belfast, all more or less
Liberal in politics and all hostile to the Tories and the Church of
England.’
‘“ Formerly, the flax was hand spun and woven ; the Messrs. Marshall
of Leeds. and other English houses, by the invention of spinning machin-
ery, and by great enterprise, drove the Irish spinners out of the
market, and the flax trade for a long time languished and deteriorated
McLennan’s Memoir of Drummond, p. 342.
2 Report of Railway Commission [bid., p. 359)
3 Nicholls Report, Annual Kegvster, 1837, p. 62. ‘P. 39¥.
‘ Kohl, On Ireland, p. 141. 6 Ibid., p. 112. 7 Ibid., p. 199.IRELAND, 1840-1848 267
in Ireland. At length the Messrs. Mulholland of Belfast, and Messrs.
Murland of Castlewellan, erected flax spinning mills, and were enabled
to rival and compete with the English spinners successfully, and the
linen trade in Ireland rapidly sprang up again to prosperity. In 1821,
Messrs. Mulholland was the only flax spinning mill in Belfast. No
sooner was it seen to prosper, than by the enterprise of the people, mills
were erected on every side, and there are now in Belfast twenty-eight
flax and tow spinning mills and several new ones building, and there
are in Ireland sixty-two flax and tow spinning mills, all of which, with
the exception of seven, are in the north-east counties of Ulster.” }
Such as they were, the manufacturing industries in the south of
Ireland were hampered, to an extraordinary degree, by the conduct
of the labouring classes. Whatever excuse the evils of landlordism,
tithes, pressure of the population on the land may afford for the
spirit that prevailed in the country, it is difficult to find any for the
insubordination and turbulence that prevailed amongst the fairly
well-paid artizans and mechanics of the towns. All observers are
agreed as to the existence of this spirit, and as to its effect on the
manufacturing industries of the country. Itis not merely that they
were discontented ; their methods were savage, and unintelligent
into the bargain.
O’Connell, in the House of Commons in 1838, said that there was
no tyranny equal to that which was exercised by the trade unionists
of Dublin. He spoke bitterly of the ferocious attacks upon work-
men in Dublin and elsewhere, in pursuance of combinations of one
sort or another. He instanced the destruction, from this cause, of a
cotton printers’ manufacture in Belfast,* of an important manu-
facture in Bandon, which spent £12,000 a year in wages; he said
that wages to the amount of £500,000 a year were lost to Dublin ; 3
that it paid better to go to Glasgow, and wait a couple of days there
for a suit of clothes than to buy it in Dublin ; that four shipbuilding
firms had been established in Dublin ; but that they were run out of
it ; * that
‘*‘ Within the last two or three years thirty-seven persons have been
burned with vitriol, so as to lose their eyesight ; and in Dublin there is
not a day in which some such crime is not committed. On January
1 Campbell Foster, p. 567.
* Of general anarchy or recurring trouble amongst the workmen of Belfast
there is no evidence. They had one very serious commotion—on the grand
scale—in 1906, when Mr. Birrell was Chief Secretary, but when that was
composed they went on quietly with their work.
8 Annual Register, 1838, p. 207. 4 [oid., p. 208.
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Pre tree he a oh emma
ee et gp ee ae
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268 HISTORY OF IRELAND
4 a man was dreadfully beaten, only because, not belonging to the
combination, he could not give the sign of recognition. On the llth a
man and his wife were violently beaten merely because the man was
not a combinator. Some of those who have not murdered with their
own hands, have paid three shillings a week out of their wages for the
1
.
hire of ‘ assassins,’ ’
The evidence of witnesses before the Silk Weaving Commission
testified to vitriol being thrown into the places of business and to the
departure of the employers to England owing to the anarchical
conduct of the men.? Nassau Senior says:
To prevent the use of machinery, to force the materials of labour
to be imported in the least fim hed state, to prohibit piece work, to
equalize the wages of the skilful and the ignorant, of the diligent and
the idle. of the strong and the weak, and generally to force the manu-
facturer to employ his capital a tl iechanist and chemist his know-
ledge and talents, only under the d ctation of his shortsighted and
rapacious workme! such are tl ects of the combined workpeople
who now govern every town in Ireland in which any manufacturing
capital still lingers. the means are those used in the country—tor-
ture, mutilation and murder.’
Senior roes OD
“Tt is thus that not merely is the introduction of capital prevented,
but the capital formerly existing and employed in many of the towns
of Ireland has been driven away. It is thus that ship-building, once
a flourishing trade in Dublin, has been utterly destroyed; it is thus
99 4
that bargemen have rendered the canals almost useless.
; .
‘“Treland.”? savs one of the witnesses in the Poor Law Inquiry, “is
the dearest country in the world for labour. Every description of
artisan demands at least one-third more than in England; there is
even a combination among the common porters on the quay, who
would rather starve than work under the regulated price. Bribery has
> §
no effect on my men, and if I remonstrate they stop directly.’
Mr. Murray, an architect and builder, for thirty-seven years at the
head of his profession in Dublin, gave evidence before the Commons
Committee on Combinations in 1838. He had been severely beaten
himself. He had been obliged, for two years, tocarry arms. One of
his men had been beaten to death in broad daylight in a crowded
street : another had been shot. At three different times his work-
men had been attacked, beaten and maimed in his own yard. At
I Nassau Senior, vol. ae p. 40). 2 Martin, p. S84,
3 Vol. I. vp. 39. ‘ Tbid., p. 40.
§ Jrish Poor Law Inquiry, App. ©, pp. 2, 35; Senior, p. 40.IRELAND, 1840-1848 269
other times they had been waylaid and injured on their way to him,
and his whole establishment had been maliciously set fire to and
burned down. He concluded by saying that he was going to leave
Ireland, for he did not want to rear up his boys in Ireland.1 Camp-
bell Foster, writing in 1846:
‘‘Tt is a remarkable fact that there is scarcely a trade which has
prospered in Ireland, save that of brewers and distillers. Almost
every other trade has been ruined by combinations. One brewer and
one distiller with a few unskilled labourers are sufficient for a brewery
or distillery, and there can, therefore, be no combination of skilled
workmen against them.”’
For instance, James Fagan, timber merchant, erected sawmills ;
his head sawyer, Hanlon, was murdered in open day in one of the
most populous streets of Dublin. He tried to start a graving dock ;
his men struck, and he imported Scotsmen as ship carpenters.
Some of the Scotsmen were working at a ship’s side, on a stage
suspended by ropes ; the combinators cut the ropes ; the workmen
were precipitated into the water. A Dublin magistrate treated this
murderous performance as a trivial matter, and merely bound the
perpetrators over to keep the peace. Folds, a printer, erected steam
presses. Just as he had commenced to succeed, his men combined
against him, and began to dictate terms to him ; he procured English
and Scottish printers; his establishment was maliciously burnt
down. Merchants in Cork erected sugar refining works and got over
six Englishmen to superintend the erection of the machinery. A
mob assembled and drove the Englishmen out.” Insane hostility
has always been displayed to the importation of English mechanics
or artificers. Slieveardagh Collieries had to be shut down owing to a
manager being shot. Strangman of Waterford, who started a Coast
Fishing Company, had to bring in an Englishman to instruct the
natives ; for that and other absurd reasons his nets were destroyed ;
and his lobsters taken out of his pots.* In 1842 an enterprising
merchant at Cork erected a steam engine for sawing timber ; a few
nights afterwards a quantity of vitriol was thrown in his face.*
Waterford glass-making was killed by a strike in 1850.
But perhaps the most trenchant condemnation of Irish turbulence
1 Minutes of Evidence, House of Commons Committee on Combinations in
1838, Questions 5882-5883 ; quoted Nassau Senior, vol. I, p. 41.
* Martin, p. 72. ’ Campbell Foster, p. 600.
4 Martin, p. 72.a a a * —o
a ~ —— a a
ied
ee ve
eeeiinemanincien te eieeee et eed ee ee
ayy
HISTORY OF IRELAND
came from one of the greatest, as he was incomparably the most
fearless, friend the Irish people ever had.
‘The weavers,’’ said Bishop Doyle, ‘“‘ were the cause of their own
misfortunes, for as soon as they discovered that a manufacturer had
obtained a contract for making blankets, or that there was a demand
for goods, they immediately struck and would not work unless for very
high wages ; hence the manufacturers were unable to enter into con-
tracts lest they should be disappointed, or that too high wages would
be expected from them, and the consequence was that the manufac-
tures went down altogether.” !
And then, turning to the rural population, said :
c
?> A disregard of yourselves,
your own idleness, your own
*
‘What are the sources of your evils
springing out of your own worthlessness,
drunkenness, your own want of energy and industry in improving your
own condition. ‘These are your vices, the fruits of long and grinding
oppression, the almost hereditary vices of the Irish people. Your
situation never can or will improve until unceasing industry succeeds
to idleness, until obedience to the laws of self-respect becomes the
character of the Irish people. Till then, you may complain of oppres-
sion, but it will not cease ; you may rail against the law, but it will
always persecute you ; you may hate the magistrate, but he will always
have his foot upon your necks. You complain of rack rents and tithes
and want of employment, and of the ejectment of poor tenants. You
+
2
cool
complain of all these and you complain of them most justly. But no
power On earth can at once reme Ly these evils. ‘The Government and
legislature are endeavouring to heal them ; but time is necessary for the
| I }
accomplishment of so great, so good and so difficult a work. More,
however, depends on you than on the will of Kings, or on the acts of a
Parliament. All the laws that ever were enacted would not render an
idle or a vicious people rich or happy. And, if men become sober and
industrious, abstaining from evil, and doing good, each in the state of
life or calling wherein Providence has placed him, such a people almost
without any aid from law or Government would enjoy comfort and
2
hay } ness,’”’
Ireland produced only one Bishop Doyle. It has produced
thousands of men, of all callings and conditions, who have de-
moralized the people by telling them that they were the oreatest and
noblest people under the sun, and that if they were not absolutely
perfect, it was all the fault of alien Government. In no country in
the world, at any stage of history, has there existed such a deep and
widespread conspiracy to apply Coueism to public affairs as has
1 Martin, p. 71.
2 App. to Lords Report on Tithes (1832), vol. II, p. 52; quoted Nassau
t
Senior, vol. I, p. 52,IRELAND, 1840-1848 271
existed in Ireland since the Union. The great achievement of self-
government is the destruction of the reign of deception, and the
opening of the national vision to truth.
Having regard to its output, Irish skilled labour in the South
always has been, and still is, the most costly commodity of its kind
in the world. Soon after the Union, a section of the workmen in
the woollen trade were paid at a rate bringing in 9s. and 10s. a day,
while the same class of labour in England cost £1 to £1 5s. a week.+
The evidence given before a Free State Reconstruction Committee
in 1923, over which I presided, was that the building of a certain type
of labourer’s cottage cost in England £300, in Belfast £400, and in the
Irish Free State £600.
The same insane hostility to improvement that came from outside
was even displayed in the educational sphere. John Henry Newman
came to Ireland in 1855, prepared to devote the rest of his life to
Irish higher education. A gentleman named Maurice Leyne, a
nephew of O’Connell, said: ‘‘ We have the English brought over
by Strongbow; the English brought over by Cromwell and the
English brought over by Wiliam—now we are going to have the
English brought over by Lucas.” ? Newman abandoned the attempt.
Even his zeal and genius could not penetrate the dense mass of
‘Trish Ireland ”’ prejudice and ignorance. ‘To the Irishman of the
truly patriotic sort, there is no more heartrending reading than
Newman’s Umversity Sketches, in which he tells of his hopes and
ambitions for the new Catholic Athens of Europe.
Let us turn our attention to the condition of the land workers.
The view sometimes taken of this period, that the tithes were the
main cause of discontent, seems to me erroneous. Even before the
Tithe Commutation Act, a burden of £600,000 a year, payable by a
population of eight millions or thereabouts, was not heavy, from the
pecuniary point of view. The people had other and graver causes
for discontent ; but the tithe was such an obvious injustice that it
was the natural spearhead of any agitation for betterment.
The land question was in acurious phase. There was much bitter
feeling, for the system enabled the landlord to increase the rents at
will. The landowners who, as long as they possessed the political
souls of their tenants, had been willing enough to grant leases, refused
1 Martin, p. 71.
2 This was a reference to Newman, who, as was alleged, was brought over
through the agency of Lucas, Editor of The Tablet.—Gavan Duffy’s Life in
Two Hemispheres, p. 28.Se oe — =
a en on
272 HISTORY OF IRELAND
to do so when the tenants, once and for all, had shown that they were
freemen. A tenant’s improvements were, in effect, confiscated by
an increase ofrent. Behind it all was the notion, vague perhaps, but
ever present, that the landlord was a robber and a foreign intruder.
But opinion in Ireland as well as in England was far from the
stage when the curtailment of the landlord’s rights came to be looked
upon as right, just and essential, and still further from the stage when
it was seen that the only hope of peace lay in the abolition of the
landlord system altogether.
The development of the social structure largely consists of the
periodic sacrifice, whole or partial, of some sections of it for the
benefit of the community as a whole. In England, at this period,
the big people controlled political action; they were the high
priests, but not the victims of the sacrificial rite. In the country,
the cottier and smallholder were immolated in the interests of corn
production on the large scale. A long series of English Enclosure
Acts from 1760 to 1840 cleared the small producer as an independent
unit from off the face of the land. He was forced to become a paid
labourer, or to find a living in the rapidly growing factories of the
towns. The process was marked by terrible suffering and much
injustice ; but, so paramount were the needs of the nation for more
food, and so deep the sense of subordination amongst the masses,
that the change produced Litt le sense of grievance and comparatively
little violence or resistance. On the other hand, while the legisla-
ture was invoked freely for the extinction of the small man of the
countryside, the policy of the towns was one of laissez-faire. Hands
off the growing factories ; England’s industrial prosperity had its
roots amongst scenes of misery and suffering that baffle description.
[tis scarcely to be wondered at, therefore, that there were few in
England who thought of invading the sacred rights of the Irish land-
lords. To a Frenchman is, I think, due the credit of being the first
to recognize the solution of the Irish land problem. Gustave de
Beaumont, writing in 1839, advocated asystem of compulsory land
purchase. But he was a voice in the wilderness. In Ireland, too,
where one might expect that ideas might have been struck from the
anvil of stern necessity, the politicians of the day were singularly
lacking in the perception that a drastic remedy was called for.
O’Connell’s plan of reform in 18930, voluminous as it was—it con-
1 De Beaumont’s Ireland (1839), p. 228. John Stuart Mill and John
Bright were the first Englishmen who favoured purchasing out the landlords,IRELAND, 1840-1848 273
tained sixteen principal points and some subsidiary ones—has no
reference whatever to land reform. It was much later, in 1840, and
as subsidiary to his Repeal movement, that security of tenure re-
ceived a mention. One Irish thinker—he whom O’Connell insolently
muzzled—had concrete thoughts upon the subject. Sharman
Crawford was one of the first who fought for “tenant right,”
involving security of tenure and the right to the tenant to sell his
interest in the holding. But in the main, it is clear that at this
period the belief was general, that land was like other kinds of
property, the subject of absolute dominion. The land question was
a source of discontent, rather than a grievance. The peasant
might think to better himself by the bullet, but scarcely by legis-
lative action.
But, while tithes were a great grievance and rent was a great
burden, the main cause of the sufferings of the people can be traced
to their own social habits.
Amongst the countless facts of which a knowledge is essential to
human happiness is that more than a quart will not go into a quart
bottle. This elementary proposition is accepted by most people, in
most countries, without much apparent difficulty. But not in
Ireland. At this period—and the same may be said of much later
periods—the people had wrought themselves or been wrought into
a mental perversity under the influence of which they deemed that a
benign Providence had reversed or dispensed all the laws of nature
and reason in Ireland’s favour. Cairn Tual+ was higher than
Everest ; 2 the mountains were in the centre ; ? there was incredible
water power ; the people, sunk for the most part in poverty and
ignorance, marrying females almost before they reached the age of
puberty, engaging in deadly faction fights for no earthly reason, fond
of drink, indolent, undisciplined and turbulent, throwing vitriol
upon their employers or upon one another, were “the finest people
on the face of God’s earth—the most moral, the most temperate, the
most orderly, the most religious people in the world, exceeding in
religion, in morality, in temperance any nation under the sun.’’*
1 The highest mountain in Ireland. It is in the County of Kerry and is
about 3,300 feet high.
2 ** Here are the loftiest mountains.’’—Speech of O’Connell at Mullagh-
mast, October 1, 18438.
>See quotation from Fagan’s Life, p. 185 ante. In truth they are the
rim of the saucer.
4 Speech of O'Connell at Mullaghmast, October 1, 1843.
VOL. I.ee hee ee ee / e e ege e
ST ee ee
— wee +
eet wr
Oe Ce eT Ee Se
diated atin ee ate eee ee
: a
274. HISTORY OF IRELAND
In particular, things had been so ordained that, in Ireland, not
merely one quart or two quarts or three quarts, but any number of
quarts could be safely and adequately stowed away in the one quart
bottle. Sothat babies could be multiplied at will and still find room,
for they had no space dimension; if they were provided with
stomachs at all. that did not matter; God who sent them would
provide the food. Poor suffering morsels of humanity! What a
holocaust of victims the teaching of the day provided for the altar
of sacrifice to Irish publicists’ thoughtlessness and ignorance.
The blame for the famine has been laid at the door of the British
Government. The charge has everywhere been accepted as true.
It has been further charged that, when the famine came, the
English Government and the English nation took no real steps to
alleviate it. That charge, too, has been universally accepted. Are
these charges true or false %
In what I have just written, and what I am about to write, are to
be found my reasons for thinking that both charges are false.
What caused the famine? The country was an agricultural
country of very limited area. ‘The pretence is made that it could
have been. under its own government, a manufacturing country.
It had no mineral resources. The phantom of water power still
afflicts the Irish mind. Whatever may be thought of water power
development at the present stage of the world’s history, it 1s obvious
that it was out of the questionthen. The harnessing of a vast mass
of fluid. and the utilization of the force of gravity that acts upon it,
to produce and store and convey energy in the form of electricity
are very modernideas. In the early days of the nineteenth century,
water power meant the water w heel, which, as it revolved, produced
energy upon a very limited scale without any method of storing or
conveying it. The use of water power in England had disappeared
with the invention of the steam engine, driven by energy produced
from coal. America in those days produced its energy not from
Niagara, but from coal. As to protection, that policy had been in
force in Ireland for twenty years, and had not saved Ireland’s small
industries. No protection policy could have saved the small Irish
industry in face of the competition of the English industrial revolu-
tion.
But, whether I am right or wrong in thinking that Ireland had
not the necessary potentialities of a manufacturing country, in
actual fact, it was, as it is, an agricultural country. Now, a smallIRELAND, 1840-1848 275
agricultural country, which chooses to multiply its population, is
faced with two alternatives—emigration or starvation. ‘The choice
isinexorable. Imakeboldtosaythis. Ifany Irish statesman could
have been found, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, big
enough, honest enough and courageous enough to get the Irish people
to grasp and act upon this fundamental proposition, he would have
conferred a greater boon upon the nation than all the Irish states-
men, agitators, warriors, writers, and insurrectionaries from the time
of Brian Boru down to the present day. For the cause of nine-
tenths of the terrible sufferings which the people endured, culminat-
ing in the famine, was that they multiplied very rapidly and would
not be allowed to emigrate.
During O’Connell’s time, and indeed during all the period of the
British régime since the Union, there were two conflicting domestic
policies with regard to the small landowner—the Irish policy and the
British policy.
The priesthood favoured early marriages. The Irish publicists
favoured sub-letting. Early marriages and sub-letting, combined,
made for an over-rapid increase of population. Given an unlimited
power to sub-let, and in the course of a few generations—and the
generations followed one another with extraordinary rapidity in
Ireland—a fair-sized holding disappeared, and its place was taken
by a large number of specks on the earth’s surface, each insufficient
to provide subsistence for one person, much less for two and their
progeny. The Irish policy, again, was opposed to emigration.
Emigration was a crime against the nation. From Kerry to Antrim,
the rocks, the stones, the lakes, the rivers, the bogs, the very sods
of turf shrieked to Heaven for vengeance against it or against any
Irishman who advocated it. On the other hand, the British policy
was opposed to sub-letting. An Act was passed, to the accompani-
ment of a howl from O’Connell in 1826, making all sub-letting
without the landlord’s consent illegal. It was probably inefficacious,
for they would divide and sub-let, whether legally or not. It was
repealed in 1832.1 The British Government always favoured emi-
gration, and many of the later statutes contain provisions for state-
aided emigration. Given real Irish statesmanship, I can vision an
emigration very different from that which commenced from Southern
1'The Land Act of 1881 also contained provisions against sub-letting, as
also did the Land Purchase Acts. These salutary restrictions were always
opposed by the Irish Members of Parliament.ee
Saha ieee eee ated ae a, ae ent tee ee oneal . a
eaten elected te eh el
tara ate neem eecarena reise en ee ——
HISTORY OF IRELAND
Ireland about 1830. The unfortunate outcasts, illequipped for the
battle of life in the cities, were dumped down in New York or other
big centres, to fend for themselves as best they could, and to become
the prey of every social and political harpy. It was the refinement
of cruelty. All the while, great stretches of land in the States and in
the Colonies hungered for development. Here was a noble field for
the activities of O’Connell and the Irish bishops. To co-operate
with the British Government, to point out to them that emigration
to virgin soil was the proper destiny of Ireland’s overplus agricul-
tural population, to provide the necessary spiritual and material
guides for the uneducated emigrant, to ask the Government for the
necessary funds was an obvious duty. By this means you would
have had emigration of the kind Gladstone spoke of when intro-
ducing his Land Bill in 1881—* well regulated emigration—emigra-
tion of communities, carrying with them their local organization
and traditions and domestic ties.’’ 4
Every leader of Irish opinion adopted the fatuous policy of keep-
ing the starving population at home, and of encouraging them to
breed. Every step was taken by Irishmen to bring about, none to
ward off the inevitable famine. The trade of an agitator was too
exciting, too absorbing, and too lucrative to leave any time to
O’Connell for real thought about Ireland’s problems.
But emigration was at all times and in all forms anathema.
The bishops, in their pastoral of 1883, cursed Gladstone’s schemes
with bell, book, and candle. One colony of Irish emigrants did find
their way to the land of Minnesota, and J. H. Tuke,.? who saw them
there in IS82, speaks in the highest terms of them; hardy,
disciplined, prosperous, and nappy.
What was the alternative ’ In spite of O’Connell and the
publicists, no more than the quart would go into the quart bottle.
Emigration eventually did proceed. The poor Irish, left in the
great seaports of the U.S.A. were “ festered and degraded,’’ to use
the language of American observers to Tuke when he was study-
ing the problem. In October, 1855, a priest named Father Mullen
wrote to the Press a letter giving an appalling account of the effect
of their conditions on the faith and morals of the Irish emigrants.
Archbishop Hughes of New York, no doubt, challenged the letter as
1 Parliamentary Debates, 1881, vol. 260, p. 920.
2 Contemporary Review, 1882, vol. 41, p. 712. He does not say whether
they came from Northern Ireland or Southern Ireland.IRELAND, 1840-1848 277
containing exaggerated statements, but admitted that lapses from
religion were numerous.! But no testimony is required on such an
obvious point. The fate of many of these poor folk, young men
and young women, with the tempters from the saloon—and from
worse—at their elbows, was inevitable.
Let me quote the evidence of a Galway witness before the Poor
Law Commission in 1840.
‘‘ Tf I had a blanket to cover her, I would marry the woman I lked ;
and if I could get potatoes enough to put into my children’s mouths, [
would be as happy and content as any man and think myself as well
off as my Lord Dunlo.”
The Poor Law Commissioners reported in 1840:
‘“The Galway labourers usually marry at from eighteen to twenty-
one ; in Leitrim, from sixteen to twenty-two ; in Mayo and Sligo usually
under twenty years of age. In the county of Dublin at twenty-six;
in Kilkenny at from twenty to twenty-five ; in King’s County at from
seventeen to twenty ; in Louth, from twenty-five to thirty ; in Meath
from twenty to twenty-five ; in Queen’s County they marry at twenty-
six ; in Wicklow from twenty-three to twenty-eight, and in Kerry from
eighteen to twenty-two.”
The Rev. Father Fitzmaurice, parish priest of Templemore, Co.
Kerry, deposed before the same Commission :
‘‘T have married girls of twelve to thirteen, and at this moment
there is a married woman in Templemore who has just had a child
before the age of fourteen! A woman in the parish of Killarney had
two children before the age of fifteen !”’
W. E. Forster, sent over during the famine on behalf of the
Quakers, reported :
“The families here are something fearful. The farmer frequently
marries his daughter at twelve or thirteen, for fear of accidents, and
the peasantry marry nearly as soon. Girls are mothers generally at
sixteen. Charles O’Connell told me of a tenant of his who had two
children, not twins, before she was sixteen. On the other hand, the
standard of chastity is far higher than with us and illegitimate children
rare.”’
In the face of this, O’Connell’s Repeal Association in their mani-
festo of September 13, 1843, proclaimed that “‘ one great proof of
increasing prosperity is found in the due augmentation of the people ;
while the most decisive evidence of human misery is found in the
1 See Gavan Duffy’s Life in Two Hemispheres, p. 126.ee
eo teh ee lect te
278 HISTORY OF IRELAND
fact of a retrograding population.”” ‘The doctrine could have only
one result.
A comparison of the population density of Ireland with other
countries in 1841 gives the following results: England and Wales,
272 persons per square mile; Scotland, 86; Ireland, 251 ; United
States of America, 14; Austria, 138; Bavaria, 145; Bohemia, 208 ;
Denmark, 93; France, 161; Greece, 61; Hanover, 125; Naples
and Sicily, 190; Norway, 9; Papal States, 158; Portugal, 97;
Prussia, 138; Russia in Europe, 26; Sardinia, 16; Spain, 67;
Sweden, 17; Switzerland, 143; Turkey in Europe, 20; Turkey
in Asia, 20; Wurtemburg, 203. And it is to be noted that this
dense Irish population was not spread evenly. For example,
O’Connell’s county, Kerry, had 416 persons to the square mile of
arable land. If we deduct one-third of the area for lakes, rivers,
mountains and bog, the density all over was about 400 per square
mile. The population in 1841 was 8,175,124. The extent to
which division upon division of land had proceeded in 1841 may
be gauged from the following table, taken from Kane’s /ndustrial
Re sources O] Tre land.
Far I I Far r \ f ;
l t 1 - 15 ’ : , : rs Total
Leinster . aaa 19.152 45,595 20,584 17.889 132.290
Munster . 57,028 61,320 27,481 16.557 162,386
Ulster 100,817 98,992 25,099 9 59] 234,499
Connaught . 99,918 45,221 5,790 1 975 155.204
306.915 251,127 78.954 48 312 685.309
Nassau Senior makes a comparison of the condition of England
in 1831 with that of Ireland in 1841:
Aral Meadow Number of
Acreage. ‘ vated. | Garden and Agri tural
| ' I r Fal its
England L831) . 392 342 460 25, ' 32. 000 10.252.600 15.379.400 761.348
[Ireland (1841 , | 20,808,271 | 18,464,300 | 56,238,575 -— 974,188
so that, in Ireland, more than a fourth more families were employed
in cultivating about half the extent of cultivated land. While, ifIRELAND, 1840-1848 279
the figures for the provinces of Munster and Connaught are taken,
there was not more than three acres and a rood to an agricultural
family ; there were more than four times as many agricultural
families to a hundred acres under crop as in England.*
The same authority goes on to say :
“Tn 1831 the agricultural population of England in proportion to the
land under cultivation and to the capital employed on it was in excess. It
was the time when agricultural labourers were driven from farm to farm
as roundsmen, were sold by auction at twopence per head per day, were
harnessed on the road to gravel carts, were sent ten miles to carry a
barley straw and bring back a wheat straw, were imprisoned in the
gravel pit or kept standing morning after morning in the parish pound.
It was the time when farmers could not safely use machinery, when
labour rates were sanctioned by law. When Wilmot Horton, lecturing
on redundant population and emigration, was as vehemently denounced
as it now is for Ireland. What then, is to be done with an agricultural
population more than four times as excessive in proportion to the
demand for its labour, as one which itself was excessive ? How are we
to remedy a disproportion between cultivators and cultivated land, the
greatest that has ever pervaded a civilized country ?”’?
The tendency to subdivide holdings * had continued as long as the
Napoleonic war lasted. Corn was at a high price, sometimes
almost at a famine price ; it paid the landowner to let a small hold-
ing at a comparatively big rent ; it paid the cottier to take it. But
the inevitable slump followed the war. A tendency arose to con-
solidate holdings, whether for pasture or tillage purposes; much
land that had been devoted to tillage went back to pasture, in spite
of the preference given to Irish-grown corn in the English markets
up to 1846. The process of consolidation accentuated the difficul-
ties of the population problem.
In these conditions it would be impossible to expect a high
standard of character in the miserable land workers. The charac-
ter and standard of knowledge are recorded in reliable testimony.
Their indolence and ignorance admit of no manner of doubt, how-
ever open to controversy the causes may be. The Irishman,
according to Nassau Senior,
‘who under supervision at least works hard in Great Britain or in the
United States of America in his own country is indolent. All who have
1 Senior, vol. I, p. 263. 2 Nassau Senior, vol. I, p. 264.
3 Kohl instances County Tipperary—-out of 3,400 holdings there were 280
of less than one acre and 1,056 of more than one acre but less than five.—
Kohl’s Ireland, p. 10.280 HISTORY OF IRELAND
compared the habits of the hired artisans, or of the agricultural labourers
in Ireland, with those of similar classes in England and Scotland admit
the inferiority In industry of the former. The indolence of the great
mass of the people, the occupiers of land, is obvious even to the passing
traveller, Even in Ulster—the province in which, as we have already
remarked, the peculiarities of the Irish character were least exhibited—
not only are the cabins and even the farmhouses deformed (within and
without) by accumulations of filth which the least exertion would
remove, but the land itself is suffered to waste a great portion of its
product lve power, We have ourselves seen held after field in which the
weeds covered as much space as the crops. From the time that his
crops are sown and planted until they are reaped the peasant and his
family are cowering over the fire or smoking or lounging before the door—
i when an hour or two a day employed in weeding their potatoes or oats
or flax would perhaps increase the produce by one-third.”’ 1
“ They are naturally an indolent people and do not like any inno-
vation.” *
Kohl thought 3
~ that the main root of Irish misery is to be sought in the indolence,
levity, extravagance and want of energy of the national character.”
The farmers “‘ are ignorant of the proper rotation of crops, of the pre-
servation and use of manure, in short of the means by which the land,
tor which they are ready to sacrifice their neighbours’ lives and to risk
their own, is to be made productive. Their manufactures, such as
they are, are rude and imperfect; and the Irish labourer, whether
peasant or artisan. who OmiegeTates to U»reatl Britain. never POSSESSES
skill sufficient to raise him above the lowest rank in his trade.’”? In
Kilrush district *‘ the mode of scratching the land does not deserve the
name of cultivation. Their attempts are inferior to what I have seen
among North American Indians.’’ 4
Griffith,’ examined before the Commission on Valuation. was of
a
opinion that, “under a good system of farming, the farmers in
[reland might not only pay much higher rents, but live much better
than they did ; the people, if they exerted themselves could pay the
rents extremely well, but they did not.” ® ‘The farmers of this
county (Waterford) know no more of a proper rotation of crops than
they do about the rotation of the planetary system.”’? Drummond
1 Nassau Sen r. Wol tL Dp. 16,
3 Kind e of Rev. Dennis Mahoney before Land Commiss n, Part I, p.
917, quoted Foster, p. 393.
* Kohl, On Ireland, p. 49. 4 Thid.
> The Government valuer who gave his name to “ Griffiths valuation,” a
general valuation of land made in 18651.
®* Question 78, 102, Foster’s Letters on Ireland, p. 144.
7 Kan , nis of M ie Ba ‘ron. Land f OMMUSSION Enquiry, Part Een: Dp. 446,
cited Foster, p. +69,
EG eeIRELAND, 1840-1848 281
accepted the finding of the Poor Law Commission that the average
produce of the soil was not much above one-half the average produce
in England, whilst the number of labourers employed in agriculture
was, in proportion to the quantity of land under cultivation more
than double, namely as five to two; thus, ten labourers in Ireland
raised only the same quantity of produce that two labourers raised
in England and this produce, too, was generally of an inferior
quality. Nicholl summed up the condition of affairs thus:
‘Ireland is now suffering under a circle of evils producing and
reproducing each other—want of capital produces want of employment—
want of employment, turbulence and misery—turbulence and misery,
insecurity—insecurity prevents the introduction and accumulation of
capital,andso on. Until this circle is broken, the evil must continues,
and probably augment.” ?
Of the extraordinarily large leaven of poverty and wretchedness,
the West had more than its share. There, the inhabitants were
decidedly inferior in condition and appearance ; their food consisted
of the potato alone, without meal, or in most cases without milk ;
their cabins were wretched hovels ; their beds straw ; the wages were
not more than 6d. a day ; poverty and misery deprived them of all
energy ; labour brought no adequate return ; and every motive to
exertion was destroyed. Agriculture was in the rudest and lowest
state ; the substantial farmer employing labourers, and cultivating
his land according to the improved modes of modern husbandry, was
rarely to be found amongst them.* The South and Midlands were
little better ; poor habitations, food consisting of potatoes and milk
without meal; wages low, but the peasantry robust, active and
athletic, capable of great exertion, inured to great privations ;
ignorant, but eager for instruction ; readily trained under judicious
management to habits of order and steady industry.4 The
Northerner was better lodged, clothed and fed than the others ;
wages of labour higher, food consisting chiefly of meal, potatoes,
and milk,
‘a frugal, industrious, and intelligent race, inhabiting a district for
the most part inferior in natural fertility to the southern portion of
Ireland but cultivating it better, and paying higher rents in proportion
to the quality of the land notwithstanding the higher rate of wages.” 5
1 McLennan’s Memoir, p. 356. * See McLennan, p. 308.
* Report of Railway Commission, written by Drummond; McLennan’s
Memovrr, p. 356.
*McLennan’s Memoir, ~. 356. 5 Jbid., p. 355.iin tte
Oe ee
5 ite Waki a eee
282 HISTORY OF IRELAND
‘“'The system of agriculture which prevails in the counties of Derry,
Antrim, and Down and other Northern Counties is so superior to that
which prevails in the west as to amount to full 50 per cent. difference
in the value of the land.’’ !
The extent of the poverty may be gathered from Nicholl’s report for
the Poor Law Commission of 1838:
‘There were 2,385,000 persons in Ireland insufficiently provided
with the common necessities of life and requiring relief for thirty weeks
in the year, owing to want of work, and the wives of many others are
obliged to beg systematically, while mendicancy is the sole resource of
the aged and impotent.’’
Foster noticed a tremendous difference between the standard of
living on the eastern seaboard and the rest of the country.
= | no he west | never saw a Woman helow the rank of A lady or in
town below that of a shopkeeper’s wife. who wore stockings and shoes.
In the countv of Wexford I have not seen any woman not decently
clad with stockings and sho
and he contrasts the same county of Wexford with the inland town of
Tipperary, ‘‘ with its fine land and low rents where dirt and disorder
and bad cultivation and savage brutality reign triumphant’; the
soil of Wexford being ‘‘ poor, thin soil, a kind of sandy loam ; highly
rented ; but the rents were paid and the farmhouses comfortable.” 3
Nearly three and a half millions of the people lived in mud cabins,
badly thatched with straw, having each but one room, and often
without either a window or a chimney.* In Kerry the percentage
of such habitations was 66 per cent. of the total dwellings.°
The distressing conditions of the rural parts were reflected in the
disorders of the country. There was much murder and other crime,
and intimidation was rampant. ‘‘ Men bear things and do things
contrary to their inclination for fear of offending persons or of be-
coming unpopular, or of being threatened to be shot.’”’® The Land
42):
—_
i
oi
=~
pt
#3
feelin
I
—
'
—
L
wo
a
—
‘In Tipperary, for a long time past, and in some other counties more
recently, there has prevailed a system of lawless violence, which has led
in numerous instances to the perpetration of cold-blooded murders.
‘some supposed injury inflictedIRELAND, 1840-1848 283
upon the party who commits or instigates the commission of the
outrage. But the notions entertained of injury in such cases are
regulated by a standard fixed by the will of the most lawless and
unprincipled members of the community. If a tenant is removed,
even after repeated warnings, from land which he has neglected or
misused, he is looked upon in the districts to which we are now referring
as an injured man, and the decree too often goes out for vengeance upon
the landlord or the agent, and upon the man who succeeds to the farm ;
and at times a large numerical proportion of the neighbourhood look
with indifference upon the most atrocious acts of violence, and, by
screening the criminal, abet and encourage the crime. Murders are
perpetrated at noon-day on a public highway, and whilst the assassin
coolly retires, the people look on, and evince no horror at the bloody
deed. The whole nature of Christian men appears in such cases to be
changed and the one absorbing feeling as to the possession of land
stifles all others, and extinguishes the plainest principles of humanity.”’
Speaking of sympathy with crime, Campbell Foster! says:
‘“Many farmers well to do are engaged in them. They have for
their object a system of terrorism, which shall set the law and the
rights of individuals at defiance, and they are directly fostered and
increased by the Repeal agitation which is going on. I have it on un-
doubted authority, and from numerous parties, that the expectation
of the small farmer is that if he gets repeal he will secure the possession
of his land without acknowledgment or rent to anybody. Under this
impression a code of terrorism is encouraged which resists not only
ejectment from land, and the payment of arrears of rent; but which
forbids the turning away of a servant, resists the payment of debts;
prevents the giving of evidence and punishes the assertion of every
right with the threat of violence or death, which is almost invariably
carried out.”
He gives examples: (1) Evictions of tenant for non-payment of
rents ; incoming tenant had to work land under police protection ;
(2) tenant named Hooley sold his plot of half an acre for £20 ; the
purchaser was threatened by Hooley’s brother ; (3) shots discharged
at the home of a steward who had dismissed a ploughman ; (4) a
local doctor who was manager of a local loan fund board, dreadfully
beaten either because he refused a loan or enforced payment ; (5)
Poor Law clerk threatened if he did not do as he was required in
reference to his duty as clerk ; (6) steward murdered because he was
the means of dismissing lazy workmen, and Aubrey de Vere spoke
of a farmer who was threatened by armed men if he did not kill his
calves, for the poor required milk ; if a farm had employment for
1 Letters on Ireland, p. 347.a te te
eee
Spd “Sse e ow ey ayee eee. oe
/ ail)
284 HISTORY OF IRELAND
fifty men and a hundred were looking for it, they prevented the
others working, so that they should not have employment either.
The Journal des Débats* remarked :
‘“ What in that country renders the repression of crime almost im-
possible is the passive complicity of a part of the population. In
Ireland the murderer is frequently considered as the victim and is
regarded as a martyr; he executes his vengeance in the open day on the
public road and sometimes withdraws without a pursuit. Of what
avail are laws against morals which absolve even assassination ?
Railroads are voted for the country and it is wished to extract British
capital. But how do the Irish receive the introduction of railroads ?
What use do they intend to make of them ? Do they wish to use them
for the development of their commerce and to operate by the union of
distance one of customers and interests ? No, they simply calculate
on converting them into an arm against England in case of a contest.”’
The Journal gives quotations from The Nation, and stigmatizes
them as ** barbarous folly.”
But, while Ireland’s political guides taught the people that they
had a monopoly of distress and grievances, the fact was that other
countries would have been as bad had there existed the same reck-
less increase of population and aversion from emigration. Martin
(p. 130) cites
‘“So great is the emigration from the Highlands this season (June,
L831) that the passengers are forced to go to England and Ireland to
procure conveyances to transport them across the Atlantic. There are
one or two districts in the Highlands that already present a gloomy and
desolate appearance ; and ere the emigration season is over, it is calcu-
lated that in many cases tracts of land, ten miles in extent, will be
tenantless ! The system of rack-renting has been carried to such an
extent by the Hy rhiar lairds that their tenants, that hardy Trace of
men, are reluctantly compelled to expatriate themselves from the land
of their fathers. Young persons go to provide a home for their parents,
or parents to join their families who are settled in America, but by far
the great part go upon chance, declaring that they can be no worse.”’
‘‘ In a great proportion of Scotland, where the poor laws are not carried
into effect, miseries similar to that which pervaded Ireland exist. All
the Highlands are in this state.’ ‘‘ Many of the Scotch poor are so
neglected by landlords and their men of business as to be driven out
into other parts of the kingdom as common beggars. Swarms of
common beggars from all quarters infest the northern country and
raise contributions far exceeding what would support the district
1 December, 1845, quoted Times, December 8, 1845.
2 Glasqow Chronicle, June, 1831. 3 Nimmo. Evidence in 1824.
yIRELAND, 1840-1848 285
poor.” ! ‘‘Itwould puzzle any man, even those who are intimate with
the condition and habits of the Highland peasantry, to say in what
manner a great proportion of them subsist. When the potato fails
from mildew or frost, the unhappy natives are reduced to the extremity
of want; the luxury of butchers’ meat is so rare as not to deserve
classification in this place ; the state of the Scotch islanders is such that
should a fish be found mangled by gulls, or even in the incipient stage
of putrefaction, it is joyfully seized upon, seaweed and shellfish are eaten
by them; and at a moderate estimate one-sixth of their food consists
of these miserable scrapings.”’ *
And Newenham, giving evidence before the Poor Law Inquiry of
1830, said that the poorer classes of the Irish were better off than
those of the same class in France and Italy.®
In 1846, the gaunt spectre of famine was stalking towards the land.
There had been visitations before. The year 1741 was called
Bliadhain an air or year of slaughter.t According to Wyse this
famine carried off 400,000 persons.® It is not unworthy of mention
that the Irish Parliament of that day made neither grant nor loan
to assuage the distress, though it passed a statute 15 George II, c. 8
“for the effectual securing of the payment of rents and preventing
fraud by tenants.’”’ There was a partial famine in 1822. On that
occasion the British Parliament voted over £300,000 towards public
works to provide employment ; a meeting in London, at which the
Archbishop of Canterbury attended, raised £311,081, of which
£44,177 was raised in Ireland. There was distress in 1835, 1836,
1839; to relieve which sums were raised by Parliamentary vote
or by appeal to the British charitable public.
The condition of the potato-fed peasantry has been already
described. The potato is a precarious crop, and the famine of 1822
had been caused by its failure in certain districts. It was now to be
attacked by a new enemy—the disease called the blight, which in the
course of a few days can turn an abundant harvest into a mass of
rotten vegetation. The blight first appeared in North America in
1 Brewster’s Encyclopedia, 1830.
* Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, No. 7.
3’ Part III, p. 357, cited Martin, p. 116.
4 Trevelyan’s Irish Crisis, p. 11.
6 History of Catholic Emancvpation, vol. I, p. 30.
6 Father Mathew, travelling from Cork to Dublin on July 27, 1846, saw the
potato plant blooming everywhere ‘“‘in all the luxuriance of an abundant
harvest’; returning on August 3, it was a ‘“* waste of putrefying vegetation.
In many places the wretched people were seated on the fences of their decay-
ing gardens, wringing their hands and wailing bitterly the destruction that
had left them foodless’’ (Trevelyan, p. 39).a eee ee eS eet ee
rr i Ne ee ae ee
286 HISTORY OF IRELAND
1844; it made its way to Europe in 1845, attacking Belgium,
Hungary, Germany, Holland, and the United Kingdom. The
United Kingdom felt its worst effects, scarcely a district escaping.
Its ravages continued in 1846 and 1847.
The relief of a nation suddenly deprived of its food supplies and
without the means of substituting others is a stupendous task. It
requires constructive genius, colossal organization and heavy
financial aid. No one can say that the measures taken were ade-
quate, but it is merely silly and stupid anti- British propaganda to
suggest that the Government and the British public were not fully
alive to their responsibilities and determined, as far as humanly
possible, to shoulder them.
On the first appearance of the disease in 1845, a Royal Commission
was appointed to inquire into the subject. The Government pur-
chased £100,000 worth of Indian corn for the purpose of porridge.
Ihe people at first had a strong prejudice against ‘‘ Peel’s brim-
stone “ as it was called, there being an old superstition that it had
the effect of turning those who ate it black. A system of public
works was established, chiefly connected with the making of roads.
Nearlv LOO OF 4) men were emp! Vv
—
The early crop escaped in
1845, and the attack was only partial.
In 1846, the blight took place earlier and was of a much more
sweeping kind, and greater exertions were necessary. The system
of public works was renewed. Some idea of the character of the
ganization required may be had from the facts that the Board of
OT
Works had 5,000 separate works to superintend; they employed
hfteen thousand officers,' they had to deal with an average of 800
letters a day." In October an average of 114,000 persons were
employed, the number rose to 285,000 in November: 440,000 in
December: 570.000 in January, 1847: and 734,000 in March,
1847.° he employment of this 734,000 cost £1,050,772 per month,
and meant the relief of three million persons, taking an average of
: ‘ . er
four persons to the family of each person employed. Relief
* Senior, vol. Il, p. 4.
7 On January 4 there were 3,104 letters to be attended to; February 15,
4.900: April 19, 4.340: Mav 17. 6.033. An official of the Board of Works,
writing to a friend, observed: ‘‘ I hi pe never to set such a winter and spring
again. tJ can truly say, in looking back upon it, even now, that it appears to
me, not a succession of weeks and davs, but one long continuous day, with
’ | } |
Ot casional Intervals OT nightmare Ssieep. Rest Orit ouliad never nave, nicht
nor aay, when one felt that in evs ry minute |ost a score OI men might die, —
l‘re\ i ivan S [Trish Lrists, P yy.
5 Tbid., pP-IRELAND, 1840-1848 287
committees were appointed all over the country, and Indian corn
was distributed. A drawback to the relief works became manifest.
The prospect of the “ Queen’s pay ”’ drew the people from their
agricultural pursuits ; further, the wages often went into the pockets
of those who were by no means the worst off, and who in many cases
had some method of livelihood, leaving the most destitute and help-
less unrelieved. Accordingly, the relief works were gradually re-
duced and a more extensive system of direct feeding of the people
established instead. ‘The taste for maize grew ; there were imported
into Ireland in the first six months of 1847, 2,849,508 quarters,
worth, at the current prices, £8,764,943.1 The Lord Lieutenant was
able to report with truth, that “‘ the Irish market was freer, cheaper
and better supplied than that of any country where distress pre-
vailed and where those measures of interference and restriction had
been unwisely adopted which were successfully resisted here.” 2
The best brains in the English public service were put on the job.
The young gentlemen of the Young Ireland Party, without business
training or experience of any kind whatsoever, thought the right
thing to do was to prohibit the export of any corn from Ireland,
which at that time exported 2,000,000 quarters annually to Great
Britain and imported 500,000 quarters.2 What damage may be
done to a country by ill-digested schemes of this sort is proved by an
incident in earlier Irish history.
“In the month of February, 1776, Government laid an embargo
by proclamation on the export of provisions from Ireland. In con-
sequence of this, the distress of the country greatly increased, her linen
trade declined, her provision trade was stopped, thousands of artisans
were unemployed in Dublin, and the complaints were general through-
out the kingdom.” 4
The figures above given are the best answer to the Young Ireland
plan. The scheme of enabling the country, without any dislocation
of trade or wrench of the economic fabric, to import a food, cheap,
sustaining and not unpalatable, in great abundance was obviously
preferable. The people were able to pay for the Indian corn out
of their wages. Relief committees were established, with statutory
authority, consisting of magistrates, clergymen of all denominations,
and the largest ratepayers, in each electoral division. In July,
1 Trevelyan, p. 73. 2 Trevelyan, p. 73.
’ Gavan Duffy’s Four Years of Irish History, p. 44.
4 Life of Grattan, by his Son, vol. I, p. 288.Oe
eR a ay
— eee aden mane ne
ee ae
288 HISTORY OF IRELAND
1847, out of the 2,049 electoral divisions into which Ireland was then
divided, 1,826 were brought under the operation of the Act; and
3,020,712 persons received separate rations, of whom 2,265,534 were
adults and 755,178 were children.’ Cooking utensils and grinding
mills were provided for a people whose ignorant and primitive ideas
were not the least obstacle to any reliefscheme. By these means was
the famine stayed.
Private charity was alsoinvoked. ‘The Queen proclaimed a day of
fast and prayer (March 24, 1847) which was rigorously observed.
Subscription lists were opened. British citizens from the ends
of the earth sent their contributions, from India, Mexico, and
the backwoods of Canada. A list initiated by the Queen brought
in £171,533, another under the auspices of the British Associa-
tion totalled £263,251, making a total of £434,748, of which
Ireland got five-sixths and Scotland, which was also suffering,
got the remaining sixth. There were many thousands of other
smaller channels through which subscriptions were sent.” The
total sum raised by British charities was £1,100,000.% It was a
common practice for ladies in England to have parishes assigned to
them in Ireland, and each lady did all she could. The self-denial
necessary to support this charitable drain was carried to such an
extent at Brighton and elsewhere that the confectioners and trades-
people complained that they suffered severely in their business.
But the bounty of the U.S.A. transcended everything. ‘Ihe sup-
plies sent across the Atlantic ‘‘ were on a scale unp iralleled in the
history of the world.”* The entire amount advanced by the British
Government in relief of the famine was £7,132,268, of which
£3.377,529, was a free grant, and the remainder was a loan, which
was remitted in 1853 when Ireland became subject to Income Tax.?
From January 13, 1847, to November 1, of the same year, 278,005
persons landed at Liverpool from Ireland ; of these 122,981 sailed
from that port to foreign countries. The remainder stayed, to form
the nucleus of the large Irish population in Liverpool. The city of
Liverpool received with great kindness the unfortunate outcasts,
many of whom were suffering from fever and other diseases.
Thirteen relief stations were put up; twenty-four additional reliev-
ing officers were appointed; the district medical officers were
1 Trevelyan, pp. 84, 88. 2 Trevelyan, p. 116.
* Godkins’ Land War, p. 249. 4 Godkins’ Land War, p. 299.
>O’Brien’s Hceonomic History } Ireland from the Union to the Famine,289
IRELAND, 1840-1848
increased from six to twenty-one. Nineteen relieving officers caught
the fever and died. The influx of poor Irish by way of Glasgow
and many other British ports was very large. In self-defence the
city of Boston, U.S.A., was obliged to pass laws restricting immigra-
tion.”
But, in spite of Government and private aid, the sufferings of the
people were terrible. Mr. W.E. Forster * describes the people in
Westport as
“sauntering to and fro, with hopeless air, and hunger-struck look,
a, mob of starved almost naked women round the poorhouse clamouring
for soup-tickets, our inn, the headquarters of the road engineer and pay
clerks were beset by a crowd of beggars for work ”’ ;
and, speaking of another district,
‘““ some of the women and children we saw on the road were abject cases
of poverty and almost naked. The few rags they had on were with
the greatest difficulty held together, and in a few weeks, as they are
utterly unable to provide themselves with fresh clothes unless they be
given them, they must become absolutely naked ” -
There were many deaths from starvation: in 1842, 187; in
1845, 516; in 1846, 2,041; in 1847, 6,058; in 1848, and 1849,
together, 9,395 ; in 1850, more than in 1846 ; in the first quarter of
1851, 652 ; total from 1841-1851, 21,770.5 There were also many
deaths from fever and other disease. The total mortality for the
five years ending in 1851 from all causes in Ireland was close on a
million.®
During the famine years, 30,000 ejectments were served, but
O’Connell bore testimony to the forbearance of the landlord class as
awhole. ‘ Asa general rule no one can find fault with the conduct
of the Irish landlords since the awful calamity came upon us.” 7
It would be too heartless to say that the famine was a blessing in
disguise ; yet some beneficial results flowed from it. It checked the
tendency to over rapid increase in the population; it stimulated
emigration ; it taught the people not to place too much reliance on
1 Trevelyan, p. 130.
2 Trevelyan’s Irish Crisis, p. 143.
’ Afterwards Irish Chief Secretary.
4 Gavan Duffy’s Four Years of Irish History, p. 431.
5 Census of Ireland, 1851.—O’Brien, p. 248. Prior to 1841 the average
of deaths from starvation was in Ireland about sixty, in England about a
hundred.
6 985,366, Census, p. 246. O’Brien, 246.
7 Speech at Conciliation Hall, January 11, 1847. Gavan Duffy’s Four
Years of Irish History, p. 278.
VOL, I. Uacl ath et sienna delat atl ie eet tee ede ee ae ee eee tines
ste eed heen adit eo eee edimnaen a TTY cecil Duemnaie tate
- php eee
a ee ee ee
A ae a a pt to ee ts
290 HISTORY OF IRELAND
the precarious potato ; it encouraged the production of cereals ; it
marked the beginning of the era of prosperity and progress which,
with some interruptions, has marked Ireland’s course ever since.
John O’Connell was candid enough and courageous enough to pay
tribute to the efforts of the Government to afford relief.+
‘*In the year in which we write, the year 1846, we have nearly the
same state of affairs as in 1822, with the difference, that the Govern-
ment did wisely and timelily step'in this year, and do what the Govern-
ment of the former period threw upon the benevolence of private indi-
viduals to do, namely to supply to the starving millions of Ireland and
prevent the depopulation of the land by the cruel death of starvation.
For doing this, for so promptly and efficaciously stepping in to remove
or lighten the terrible effects of the calamity with which it has pleasec
Providence for its own inscrutable purposes, to visit this afflicted land,
Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues in office have received deserved
commendation, and those who have recently succeeded them in the
administration of affairs are showing a most laudable anxiety to carry
out the plans of relief they found so active and successfully at work.”’
But the Young Ireland Party put the blame for the famine on the
Government. ‘‘ Was any price,’ Gavan Duffy asked, “‘ too high
to pay for the chance of deliverance from a dominion which per-
mitted or inflicted horrors like these ?”’ The Irish people believed
this and added to it something of their own imagining ; to this day
the general belief in Ireland, and amongst the Irish in America, is
that England and the English people looked callously on while the
adjoining island suffered the pangs of starvation. Ignorance of all
the essential facts relating to the famine is one of the causes that
account for the terrible legacy of hatred of England which survives
to this day, and which is expressed by ‘Tynan In his History of the
Invincibles * thus:
‘There was no famine in 1846—7, but an artificial famine. The
failure of a single esculent—the potato—this could not be called famine
in a land that produced enough corn and cattle in either of these years
to feed more than twenty millions of people; but this corn and cattle
had to be shipped to England to feed their British foes, while the Irish
people died like rotten sheep by the wayside.”’
In the eight years from 1847 to 1854, no less than 1,600,000
persons emigrated, the greater part of them to the United States,
where they found employment in occupations that rank lowest in
that country :
A Life of O’C onnell, vol. II, p. 361. =P, 205.IRELAND, 1840-1848
EMIGRATION FIGURES 1845-1867."
Year. Total from U.K. Trish.
|
GS ee eee gre ran 93,501 52,189
1846 129,851 72,478
1847 258,270 144,157
1848 248,089 138,474
1849 299,498 167,169
1850 280,849 156,760
1851 335,966 187,324
1852 368,764 205,831
USDaue tee ee) 329,937 205,269
SoS ie. 323,429 159,415
1855 176,807 86,824
1856 176,554 80,269
1857 212,875 94,787
1858 113,972 49,573
1859 120,432 62,841
1860 128,469 717,746
1861 91,770 48,437
1862 121,214 59,579
1863 223,758 129,765
1864 208,900 118,187
1865 209,801 103,788
1866 204,882 102,980
1867 195,953 92,785
A marked tendency to increase in the size of farms was one of the
results of the famine.
TABLE SHOWING SIZE OF HOLDINGS.’
Not exceeding | acre
Exceeding 1 but not 5
5 ‘5 15
15 3 30
2?
30
1841 1851
134,314 37,728
310,436 88,083
252,799 191,854
79,342 141,311
48,625 149,090
While the famine was approaching the Young Irelanders were
To the ears of the writers of T'he Nation
the French Revolution of 1848 ‘“‘ sounded like a message from
heading towards rebellion.
1 Nassau Senior, vol. I, p. 281,
* O’Brien, p. 59.Oe ee Oe He
ie teed el eee a ee
eet TT ae
te ee ee ee eae
mit a i ae ee
292 HISTORY OF IRELAND
Heaven.” ! The Nation thought (and the reasoning is difficult to
follow, for England was at peace with France and with the world)
that “ Ireland’s opportunity—thank God and France—has come at
last.” 2 Mitchel, in the United Irishman, was as outspoken as any
Crown prosecutor wishing for evidence against him could desire ;
he repeated Wolfe Tone’s motto,
‘‘Our Independence must be had at all hazards. If the men of
property will not support us, they must fall ; we can support ourselves
by the aid of that numerous and respectable class of the community,
the men of no property.’’
While The Nation would have been content with an Irish Parlia-
ment, a native Privy Council, an Irish flag and a National Guard,
Mitchel was for nothing short of a Republic ; he threw caution to the
winds ; he had no definite plans, but boldly announced his intention
of taking the field and dared the Government to do its worst.
The Government took steps to counter a rising ; 12,000 soldiers
were stationed in Dublin; all the public buildings were occupied.
The Northern Orangemen and the Southern Loyalists armed them-
selves.
The confederates met and sent a message of congratulation to the
new Government of France. Lamartine’s reply was to the effect
that France could not interfere in the internal affairs of the British
Empire. The Government had a copy of the reply posted on all the
police stations in Ireland. This was depressing; but the sus-
ceptibility to thrills of the physical force men was again to be tested.
A revolution in Wurtemburg, and the possibility of a Chartist rising
in England opportunely presented themselves. The effect of the
former is described as ‘“‘ electric’; ? but Wurtemburg in travail, as
the events showed, was no help to insurgents in Tipperary. The
Chartist situation was quietly handled ; the proclamation of and the
precautionary measures against an intended great procession to
Westminster easily disposed of that business.
O’Brien and Meagher were prosecuted for sedition; but were
saved by disagreement of the respective juries. Mitchel, who was
tried on May 21, 1848, was not so fortunate ; he was found guilty.
and sentenced to twenty years’ transportation. Gavan Duffy pays a
tribute to the manner of his treatment on board the ship which
1 Gavan Duffy’s Four Years of Irish History, p. 530.
2 The Nation, cited wid., p. 537. 8 Ibid., p. 556.
*Gavan Duffy’s Four Years of Irish History, p. 576.IRELAND, 1840-1848 293
brought him to Van Diemen’s Land; he was allowed to take his
meals at the Commander’s table. The measure of support he had
in the country may be gauged by comparing the sum of £1,700 sub-
scribed for his wife and family, with the sums subscribed to the
O’Connell movement.
About to engage the power of England, the confederates now
thought it high time to organize for the purpose ; an attractive form
of enlistment in a National Guard issued from their printer’s hands.
The Government promptly proclaimed the National Guard and a
proposed Council of Three Hundred. Gavan Duffy states that
Dublin City and County had thirty clubs numbering from two
hundred to five hundred members ; Cork had eleven clubs ; County
Tipperary ten; County Wexford four ; Ennis one. But there
were no supplies, little or no arms or ammunition, and no money.
The Government had 50,000 troops, with all the appliances
and organization of war, at their disposal. Further, the Govern-
ment had, at its back, the majority of the nation which had no
wish to be stampeded into a disastrous rebellion. Before his con-
viction, Mitchel had gone to Limerick to rouse that county ; he had
to take refuge from an angry mob, who stoned the room where he
lay, and burnt him in effigy. Whena Bill to strengthen the Treason
Felony Act, by bringing incitements to treason within the statute,
was before the House of Commons, some of the Repealers voted for
it ; a meeting of Irish peers and members of Parliament, including
John O’Connell and the O’Gorman Mahon, placed their services at
the disposal of the Crown in the event of a rising.
Gavan Duffy explains the want of preparation up to this time :
“Mitchel had all along derided preparation, and O’Brien could not
make up his mind to abandon hope of support from the gentry.” +
Emissaries were now sent to the United States and to France.
A new Directory or Council was appointed—Smith O’Brien, Meagher,
Gavan Duffy, John Dillon, Richard O’Gorman and John Martin.
Martin published the Irish Felon, successor to the United Irishman,
and of it Fintan Lalor became the leading spirit and stamped his
policy on the journal. Lalor “thought the gentry were irrecon-
cilable and ought to be expelled from the country.” * Duffy him-
self seems to have come round to Lalor’s view :
‘‘Tf a revolution had prospered one of the first acts of a successful
general would probably have been to suspend the payment of rent and
1 Gavan Duffy’s Four Years of Irish History, p. 607. 2 Ibid., p. 613.i a ee a
eee ee ee
Seniesa iie ee
Se ee _
294 HISTORY OF IRELAND
order the people to take possession of the land and fight hard to keep
it a ! the landlords ‘‘ scarce hope to remain as annuitants without
political influence or authority in a country which they might have
led and ruled,”’ 3
In July, 1848, Duffy, O'Doherty, Doheny, Williams, and Meagher
were arrested and lodged in Newgate, a prison under the control of
the Dublin Corporation. They were treated with great liberality
and consideration. They were allowed to see everybody ; the con-
ferences of the Confederation were in effect held in Newgate from
that time forth. Martin and Duffy wrote as usual for their respect-
ive journals. Even allowing for a certain amount of exaggera-
tion on the part of Gavan Duffy, some progress seems to have been
made in the enrolment of persons in the Confederate clubs: he
puts the number of clubs at 150, numbering 50,000 men. _ A large
meeting was held by Meagher and Doheny on the slopes of Slievena-
mon, a hill near Clonmel in Tipperary. Gavan Duffy says that
50,000 people were at the meeting. The Annual Register puts the
number at 10,000 to 15,000.5 Meagher told them that as all the
property had originally belonged to the people, a division of it
“
4
would only be a resumption of their own property to the people.®
Q’Brien’s career in the South and South-West was a “‘ continuous
triumph“; “ he found that the pulse of the country beat passion-
ately for action.”’* How much of this was froth, and how much
solid substance, we shall see presently. lo a Government proclama-
tion enjoining the people to give up arms, Martin and Duffy replied
by articles exhorting the people to keep them.
Certain discussions that went on show the leaders in a lament-
able state of vacillation; apparently waiting for something to turn
up. But unless the movement was to fizzle out, without having
signalized its entry into the world with anything better than loud
talk, something had to be done. The council of the Confederates
met—Dillon, Meagher, McGhee and P. J. Smyth being present—
and resolved upon a rising.
he story of the attempt is related in Gavan Duffy’s Four Years of
Irish History (pp. 641-700) and, having regard to the authorship,
we may assume that the spirit of the narrative is as favourable as
can be imagined.
1 Gavan Duffy’s Four Years of Irish
2 Tbid.. QD. 6? 1. 3 7} ze a RPA 1IRELAND, 1840-1848 295
Not Don Quixote, in his tawdry apparel, in his flaming ardour for
the betterment of a bad, bold world, presents a spectacle more
sorry, more pathetic, more tragic, more out of relation to human
affairs, passions and emotions, and withal, more chivalrous and
gallant than that presented by Smith O’Brien and his comrades
when they went forth to stir up the peasantry of Ireland to a conflict
with the might of the British Empire. The plan of campaign was
Dillon’s—to seize Kilkenny, call the people to arms, throw up defence
works, and from the old historic seat of Government, proclaim the
independence of Ireland. Dillon and others went by the Wexford
coach to Loughlinstown, Co. Carlow, where they met O’Brien ;
and with him travelled to Enniscorthy. A public meeting in that
town was held; O’Brien announced the rising; “ the people were
greatly moved”; “ when the popular leaders left for Kilkenny a
large procession on foot and on horseback accompanied them and
left them with passionate prayers for their success ; 1 put of
material help they seem to have got none. They made a diversion
on their way to Graiguenamanagh to get a blessing from General
Cloney, of 1798 fame. At Graiguenamanagh “a procession of
stout boatmen and peasants was immediately formed to escort
O’Brien into Kilkenny ;” but they were met by Dr. Cane, a gentle-
man who seems to have hadsome commonsense. He warned them
that the Kilkenny garrison had been strengthened, and they were
persuaded that if Kilkenny alone rose they would be defeated.
Accordingly, it was decided to draw the County Tipperary. ‘They
reached Callan, where their coming was anticipated, and that dull
town, which never before had had such a lark, turned out to meet
them.
“A band, bonfires, green boughs, and all the ordinary evidences of
popular favour awaited them. They held a hasty meeting and warned
the people to be ready for a speedy summons to fight for Treland.
Many of the Royal Irish Hussars, who were stationed in the town,
attended the meeting, and it was noted that they were among the most
delighted of the audience.” ®
If it were not irreverent to say so in relation to so sacred a theme,
one might be tempted to suggest that those Hussars had more
sense of humour than the chronicler of the events ; for the en-
thusiasm produced no recruits.
On then to Carrick. ‘‘ A memorable spectacle awaited them.
1 Gavan Duffy’s Four Years of Irish History, p. 647. 2 Tbid., p. 648.a ee ee a
eaten ceed ee te te ed
tab te!
296 HISTORY OF IRELAND
Their coming had been announced, and the whole population was
abroad, wild with excitement.’?1 A council of war was held, and
stock taken. In the vicinity there were 300 rifles and muskets,
a good many pikes, possibly 3,000 men; but at Pilltown there were
1,200 British soldiers, with two howitzers and two field pieces, and
Waterford and Clonmel close by to send reinforcements. Carrick
was abandoned ; and they trudged to Cashel of the Kings. But
here a great disappointment awaited them.
~ Instead of sentinels and watchfires, columns of sturdy peasants,
carts laden with provisions, flaming smithies where strong men were
hammering iron and steel into serviceable weapons and all the pie-
turesque incidents of peasant war which their eager fancy had painted,
Cashel was like a city of the dead.” 2
But shouting and flagwaving never won a war. The Young
Irelanders were so far generals without an army ; so they left the
towns and went in search of the more martially patriotic rustics of
the countryside. At Killenaule a couple of hundred peasants
~ Showed great readiness to fight,”’ but were damped in their ardour
by being told just to hold themselves in readiness. On to Mullina-
hone, where the local smith said he was “ killed’ trying to hammer
out pikeheads enough for the numberless stout arms that itched
for them ; Kickham, who was present, says there were ‘“‘ 6,000 men
armed with fowling pieces, impromptu pikes and pitchforks.” 4
Drill was necessary to make them ready to meet the British army,
so drilled they were during the night ; in the morning they went
off to breakfast and never came back. O’Brien walked into the
police barrack ; the door of it was open ; a jovial, big policeman—here
I quote from Kickham—‘ “ put his head out of the upper window
and said, ‘ Yerrah! Sure, the time isn’t come yet to surrender our
arms. Dye wait till the right time comes.’” O’Brien went off :
when his back was turned the policemen—treacherous fellows—
walked quietly to another station, taking their arms withthem. Off
to Ballingarry, on the way to which they were met by 500
men, at whose head they marched into the village. The priests
told the five hundred they were going to their doom; 450
of them saw that the advice was good and went off to finish
digging the potatoes; poor O’Brien sat down on a bank, and
tears of shame and mortification ran down his cheeks. According
+ Gavan Duffy’s Four Years of Irish History, p. 649. 4 Ibid., p. 658.
* Ibid., p. 658. * Ibid., p. 661. ® Ibid., p. 661. ° Ibid., p. 663.TRELAND, 1840-1848 297
to McManus, who was present, the force had dwindled to a dozen on
Wednesday, July 26; apparently O’Brien had sent some to forage
for provisions, but like the dove from the ark, having found safety,
they never returned. On Thursday morning, by ringing chapel
bells, they got some 150 together ; drilled them ; marched them to
Mullinahone. On the parish priest’s advice, one-third of the
number left ; thence to Slievenamon, the scene of the 50,000 or so
meeting already spoken of. ‘ Where were the singing multitudes
now,’ poor Gavan Duffy asks. Desertions occurred by the way ;
there was not a score left when Slievenamon was reached; and
these were dismissed.”
There was an incident at Killenaule, where O’Brien and his com-
rades next found themselves, which for a while promised some
excitement. Some barricades had been put up; a party of British
cavalry approached. There were thirty insurgent peasants with
one rifle, two muskets, some pikes and pitchforks, and a crowd of
women and children. The troops demanded to pass. They were
asked to give an assurance that they were not out for O’Brien’s
capture. As they had never heard of the great man before, and
must have been fairly puzzled by the whole performance, they had
no hesitation in giving the required assurance. They were allowed
through, quite politely, but one at atime. The people cheered the
troops. McManus comments on the episode: ‘‘ Thus ended the
affair at Killenaule. It may be sneered at as a paltry business but,
all the circumstances considered, it was, in fact, an act of reckless
bravery.” ® Mitchel afterwards blamed Dillon for not having
commenced the “ war” at Killenaule, but Gavan Duffy says “‘ to
attack a troop of dragoons with one rifle and two muskets was
scarcely an enterprise which commended itself to a man of Dillon’s
brains and judgment.” Gavan Duffy goes on to say, “‘ The news
of this trifling success had such an effect on the people that they
began to stream into the village.”
A consultation was held, at which several alternative plans were
discussed : (1) to wait for harvest time, remaining in hiding mean-
while ; (2) to form a National Government, offering farms rent free
to every man who would fight, seizing everything necessary, and
paying therefor by drafts on the said Government ; (3) to raise
other districts, O’Brien remaining at Killenaule. The last was
1 Gavan Duffy’s Four Years of Irish History, p. 663. 2 Ibid., p. 666.
Quoted Gavan Duffy’s Four Years of Irish History, p. 666.Seal aeielelitieeatieneienatieatiinenten idm antiieieet eee aated ree
Ce ee ee ee
bri elaine issip thither
A a gt i it i i a tn cy mt —
298 HISTORY OF IRELAND
agreed to. Dillon, with some others, went to Templedorney.
There lived a Father Kenyon, who some years before had been
most forward in the movement. He refused them aid, shelter
or advice. The unsympathetic creature would not even allow
them to go through the performance of ringing the chapel bell
for recruits.
The movement collapsed with what is known as the fight of
Widow McCormack’s cabbage garden. Some forty of the Royal
Irish Constabulary were approaching the village of Ballingarry.
Hearing that the rebels were in the village, they ensconced them-
selves in a small two-storeyed house on one of the roads command-
ing the village. The rebels, who had about twenty guns and pistols
and as many pikes and pitchforks, approached fhe house through
the adjoining cabbage garden. One or two volleys from the police,
and the peasants fled, leaving some dead and wounded behind ;
Smith O’Brien’s “ rebellion ’’ was over.
Attempts in other directions were also futile. A scheme to
assemble at Blan ‘-hardstown and thence march to Navan and ‘Trim,
where the garrisons were reported friendly, resulted in sixteen men
turning up at the rendezvous, whereupon the project was aban-
doned. O’Gorman and two local attorneys made a sort of a show
at Abbeyfeale, Co. Limerick ; they seized the mails: but the little
band dispersed on hearing the news from Ballingarry. McGhee
had been deputed to seize a ship at Glasgow with the aid of the Irish
in that city. No ship was seized; McGhee made his way to Sligo,
where he tried to raise the people, but failed.
The comment of one of the leaders writing to Gavan Duffy was
just :
“The people did not want to fight ; they were dissatisfied, but not
stirred by that noble rage which impels men to face great odds and
prefer even death to a life of misery and degradation. . . . Moreover,
they were very ignorant on the subject of politics. The horizon of their
thoughts was bounded by the parish in which they lived, or at best,
by the county, and an Irish Nation was a phrase to which no real
meaning was attached”’;
and Smith O’Brien himself wrote : ‘‘ The people preferred to die of
starvation at home, or to flee as voluntary exiles to other lands,
rather than to fight for their lives and liberties.”
The Morning Chronicle (London) paid a fine tribute to the
gallantry of the Confederates.IRELAND, 1840-1848 299
‘““The confederates ran a career, brief indeed, but not undistin-
guished by the display of talent, eloquence, vigour, and determination
of no common order. It fell because its tone was pitched too high for
‘chronic agitation,’ and because in the Irish people, there was nothing
like the material for a successful rebellion against British power. But
at least it fell with a crash ; its champions did their very best to carry
all their professed designs into execution, and were themselves the
first, if not the only, victims of their treasonable rashness. ‘They were
most criminal, and most foolish, but they were neither mean, nor false,
nor cowardly. To do them justice, we will say that the world saw no
shrinking in their ranks; there was not a single conspicuous man
among the Young Ireland Party, who did not deliberately set his life
upon the cast and throw for a successful revolution or the gallows.” +
The leaders were tried. O’Brien, Meagher, MacManus, Martin
and O’ Doherty were convicted and sentenced to death, but reprieved
and sent to Van Diemen’s Land. Gavan Duffy was tried four
times, the jury disagreeing each time ; whereupon the prosecution
was abandoned. O’Gorman escaped to America and became a
judge of the Superior Court of New York. ‘here was an amnesty
in 1854. Dillon went to America and later, in 1866, returned and
became a Member of the British House of Commons representing an
Irish constituency. Smith and Martin also became Members of
Parliament ; the former was one of the most eloquent men in the
House'of Commons. Meagher fought for the North in the war of the
American Secession; he became Acting Governor of Montana.
Mitchel followed the profession of journalism in America and
devoted his pen to abuse of England, advocacy of negro slavery,
and praise of Louis Napoleon. McGhee went to Canada,
where he achieved distinction. ‘“‘He came back to Ireland
and pampered the pride of her enemies by repudiating his early
career. His resistance to a Fenian invasion of a country where
Irishmen were generously received and fairly treated was not an
offence but a merit. ... And the end of his career was that he
was foully murdered, doubtless by some scoundrel of his own race.’’*
Gavan Duffy restarted The Nation, but on entirely different lines.
It became definitely anti-revolutionary ; and, instead, advocated
the cause of land reform. He entered Parliament in 1852, but
being impatient of the slow methods of that assembly, he went to
Australia where he became a state Prime Minister.
1 Gavan Duffy’s Four Years of Irish History, p. 643 n.
2 Ibid., p. 776.300 HISTORY OF IRELAND
A Tenant League was formed, of which Gavan Duffy afterwards—
in 1882—remarked :
‘